Photo Credit: Mike Harding, Location: Exploratorium

The human brain is nothing short of amazing. I realize that as I’m working with my daughter on reading, moving from assembling letters into words and then ultimately to word recognition. That’s why most people can, minimal effort, read through the words on the image above and make sense of them – because you’re not literally reading the letters, you’re performing pattern recognition at the word level. No wonder texting is second nature, we can all figure out “C U l8r.”

And, if you haven’t visited the Exploratorium with your kids (or grandkids) you’re missing out. Well worth the time and effort.

LB James Laurinaitis

Photo Credit: Bucknuts

Yesterday, the Scarlet beat the Gray 20-7 in front of a crowd of over 76,000 at a rainy Ohio Stadium. Courtesy of the Big Ten Network, I was able to watch the game, time-delayed, in California last night and it was great!

For those of you who don’t breathe college football, there is a spring practice session for the team that has two “game” situations, one is the jersey scrimmage where the offense goes into live play against the defense. Whomever wins gets the honor of wearing the scarlet jerseys for that year’s practice (and yes, it is a big deal to the players.) The offense won that last week. The other is the “spring game” where the players draft teams and compete against each other for a short game (11 minute quarters.)

Getting back to my regular game observations (in fact, my spring practice) is the usual, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly breakdown.

The Good

• Receivers improving – Even against a tough secondary, the receivers showed progression from last year running crisper routes and creating good separation.
• Generating turnovers – There were no fumbles forced, but two interceptions were recorded on the night, both fantastic grabs by Kurt Coleman and Ross Homan. There was only one dropped pick (a problem last year.)
• Defensive interior – Line play is tough to see in the spring, but the tackles were holding the point of the attack and very few yards came “up the gut” on running plays. Also, there seemed to be consistent penetration particularly by the tackles.
• Special teams – They weren’t so special last year, we saw some great returns, a 48 yard field goal in the rain, and only one gaff on a punt where the return man was not given a chance to catch the ball.
• No “happy feet” – QB Todd Boeckman had a bad case of happy feet by the end of last season, that was not on display yesterday. He looked in command and was sharp for the most part.

The Bad

• Offensive line – This isn’t fair to point out given that it was a patchwork line due to injuries, but the defensive line had their way with the offensive line for the most part. If this were the “real” season, we’d be in trouble.
• Throwing interceptions – Boeckman threw two, one was just a great play on the ball by the safety, the other was an error not accounting for a linebacker. Henton threw one (it didn’t count, but the defender did come up with it.)
• Running game – Sure, Beanie was held out, but there wasn’t much to talk about except that redshirt freshman Danny Herron looks live, he’ll see the field this year I believe.
• Penalties – This is something that killed the Bucks in the losses to Illinois and LSU last year, they picked up right where they left off with holding in particular pushing them out of the red zone once and negating a 62 yard TD pass.

The Ugly

• Injuries – No fewer than 10 players were held out of the game due to injuries and linebacker Jermale Hines suffered what looked to be a season-ending knee injury on the field yesterday. It’s part of the game, but you hate to see it.

So, what to take away from the spring game? This team is loaded. It has talent and experience having lost only 2 starters on defense (Larry Grant and Vernon Gholston) and and 2 starters on offense (Kirk Barton and Dionte Johnson.) If they can minimize their mistakes (turnovers and penalties) there is an excellent chance to run through the season undefeated, even with a tough road game at USC, and reach the BCS championship game a third year in a row. If that happens, let’s hope the third time is a charm.

I can’t wait until the season! Go Bucks!

Let’s start this entry by stating clearly and bluntly that I am biased. I view all faith-based belief systems as dangerous delusional control methods often used to the detriment of mankind. People are free to believe whatever they want, but faith-based belief is best kept to non-essential areas and generally, I believe we would all be better served if we used our own minds and judgment a little more and our faith a little less.

It seems every time I read the news there is a new article on how godless heathens are threatening the very fabric of our civilization by advancing these fantastical theories “based on science” instead of dogmatically accepting a series of myths compiled by our ancestors 1,700 years ago. Yes, that’s the right timeline, because it’s when the the Roman rulers embraced Christianity and determined which myths were to be included in the bible and which were not worthy (the Council of Nicea in 325 CE.) This effectively created the root of the modern day Christian bible and beliefs (Nicean Creed) making religion a more consistent tool for governance of the populace.

Yesterday, I read a truly awful series of reviews on the current mockumentary (ala Michael Moore) called Expelled. Former game show host Ben Stein is advancing the notion that Creationists advancing the Intelligent Design argument in academia are being excluded from consideration and discriminated against by their peers and their institutions for their beliefs. While the movie is, without a doubt, a gigantic load of biased horse hockey; but Stein has a point, those so called scientists are rightly being laughed out of positions of power and influence.

Why? Because they are advancing a fiction that is neither structured as a theory nor advancing any alternative that can be tested by established methods. When people in positions of power and influence make it known that they are advancing faith-based beliefs rather than fact-based, testable theories, it demonstrates a lack of judgment and understanding of the core principals of science. This results in credibility defecit and ultimately, their exclusion from the process.

Think of it this way, you’re sick. Say you have syphilis. The first stages are nasty (lesions and such) and then it “goes away” – but it doesn’t really, it’s still in your body invisibly attacking your internal organs and will eventually kill you unless diagnosed and treated. And if detected late in the process, the disease can be wiped out, but the damage done to that point is permanent. It was common practice in the not so distant past to be able to go “men’s doctors” who would provide some useless home remedy to “cure” syphilis. Due to the behavior of the disease, carriers would believe that the disease was cured when the early symptoms disappeared and would carry on infecting others and ultimately becoming fatal victims of an undiagnosed and untreated case of syphilis.

Syphilis is a disease that can be cured completely when diagnosed early and addressed with antibiotics as any first year medical student knows. Should then, the “men’s doctors” who were treating this disease be admitted into the medical fraternity because they claim treatment and cure of the disease? If you were infected and then given a choice, which medical care would you opt to receive?

Fact-based belief systems are pretty useful, have saved many lives, and have resulted in the Earth being able to support 6+ billion human beings. Such rational approaches to everyday problems yield results no matter what one’s religious affiliation may be. Faith-based belief systems are best employed in areas where they can do no harm, and arguably, sticking to creation stories isn’t a bad application of the system because no one knows for sure how the universe began, it doesn’t matter if the event was 6,000 years ago as advanced by creationists or 14 billion years ago if you subscribe to the big bang theory. Regardless of what’s “correct”, little harm can result from the debate, unlike the treatment of diseases and debate over who’s worthy to govern by making them the most faithful to an outdated and ancient series of myths.

I know and respect many people who have deeply held faith and convictions who are intelligent and rational people. They’ve found a way to reconcile their faith-based belief systems with the world around them. They are not all ignorant, Confederate flag flying, Nascar fans who are missing teeth and vote Republican because of god and guns. They are complex people, by and large, who often subscribe to the hopeful part of the messages of faith and religion and behave in very civilized, kind, caring, and consistent ways. But, even with their deeply held faith, because they are rational people, they do tend to reap the benefits of fact-based belief systems in the professional and personal lives and again, ultimately find a way to reconcile the contradictions that arise from their faith.

People like Brent Bozell are really part of the problem, they simplify this debate as liberal vs. conservative and faithful vs. heathens using propaganda as a means to “win” the great debate and prove that their position is “right.” Good luck with that. The thing that is most galling is to see characters like Stein advance ideas like Darwinism (natural selection in particular) is responsible for the Holocaust, as is depicted in the movie Expelled.

If Stein had done one bit of homework on the subject, he would have known that Hitler was a Catholic (cited by John Toland, Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography, New York: Anchor Publishing, 1992, p. 507 ISBN 0-385-42053-6.) who used religion as a tool in the persecution of Jews among others going even so far as to put the phrase “God With Us” as a basic part of the SS uniform. That’s right, while it’s often advanced that Hitler was atheist, he was, in fact, a Catholic. Admittedly, the kind of Catholic that makes anyone weep and certainly not the kind of person you would want associated with your clique or belief system.

Evil is one of those things that will use any tool (religion, scientific theory, etc.) as a means to accomplish its goal. Too bad we’re allowing the present day evils to hijack faith-based belief systems as their tool of preference, again, to advance their agenda of hate and division. Regardless of one’s religious position, fact-based belief systems are pretty handy tools to be able to separate the facts from the myths and make decisions about how to proceed. We might find that we advance a bit in humanity if we use our heads a little more and our faith a little less. If we keep to our present path we may find ourselves in a society where there is an enforced faith-based segregation.

Meanwhile, shame on you Ben Stein, and shame on you Brent Bozell, you’re both carriers of a disease that seems to have no cure.

If you’ve ever wanted to see personal jet transportation, here’s your chance. SwissAir pilot Yves Rossy has crafted a light weight composite wing and attached two small jet engines to it. Rossy becomes the fuselage after, get this, jumping out of an airplane with the rig on. You really have to see it to believe it – and it looks phenomenally dangerous, and might I say, way fun.

He’s got up to 4 minutes of power and then folds the wings up and parachutes back to earth. The vehicle/man combo has achieved speeds up to 100 knots.

Believe it or not, there are now one thousand and one posts on Musings from the Coast. I first started blogging while at Sun in 2004 for an internal audience only. My first attempt was spotty and I didn’t really find a voice gave it up after a few months. I started again in 2005 and that’s what has morphed into MftC. Here are a few other interesting numbers:

• 103,703 spam comments
• 3,200 page views per day on average
• 1,800 unique visitors per day on average
• 820 legitimate comments
• 106 RSS subscribers per day on average
• 80 total tags
• 13 content categories

The first post on this blog had to do with a startup in China, Saybot, that taught English language using computer software, a microphone, speech recognition, and speakers. Rereading it now, I can see the bias toward the internal stakeholder community (my former team at Sun) and also the bias toward innovation and interesting ideas (at least interesting to me.)

Now, what do the readers of this rag like? That’s an entirely different list, here are the Top 10 posts all time you’ve seemed to enjoy:

1. Want to get $3,500?
2. A Mighty Wind
3. MORONS
4. Sexy Pole Vault
5. Geek Chic
6. Hellenologophobia
7. Global Warming: The Proof is in the Knickers
8. College Football Rethink
9. Prison Population Growth
10. Children with Checkbooks

Well, the first thousand posts have been fun, thank you for taking the time to visit and read them over time. Hopefully, the next thousand will not only be fun to read, but also fun to comment upon and participate. Happy reading and enjoy the weekend!