 |
| Solar noon from the downtown library. The length of the short arm of the shadow indicates a solar altitude of 84.9 degrees. Its direction indicates true north. |
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Fact check: Florida youth suicide rate
I came across an odd side-note in Michael Gannon's Short History of Florida (1992, updated 2003) on pages 147-8 which reads: "Civic and religious spokespersons began talking in earnest about the need to protect, nurture, and guide Florida's young, all the more so when it became known that the state had the nation's highest youth suicide rate."
Gannon provides no reference for this statement, but I happen to know the CDC publishes detailed mortality statistics for every state in the nation all the way back to 1968. Their "Wonder" online database application allows you to break down these data by age group and use them to rank the states. Of course Florida never had the highest rate for youths ages 15-24 (that distinction belongs principally to Alaska) but I assume Gannon meant Florida was highest among the 20 most populous states.
By that measure Florida indeed was #1 in the years 1980 and 81, but those were the only two years I could find that true. Florida ranked #2 in 1969, 75, 84, and 96. It ranked #3 in 1970, 74, and 82. In the 90s we ranked mostly between 5-10th place, and in the 2000s we ranked mostly 10-15th place, as adjusted to the nearest census year.
Florida has an extraordinarily high suicide rate in the 55-and-up age group, however, ranking in the top 3 for every year I checked including 2010, the most recent year for which data were available. With 1,151 suicides we were second only to California in number of deaths, and second only to Arizona (371 deaths) in terms of crude rate per 100,000 in population.
That aside, the point Gannon seemed to be making is that Florida didn't take very good care of its kids in the late 20th century, which can be confirmed through other measures like the Annie E. Casey Foundation's "Kids Count" Data Book, published since 1989, which ranks the states based on a variety of measures of child well-being. Florida spent many years in the bottom 5 of that last list, but has since climbed up to the mid-30s, on a scale from 50 to 1 where 50 is the worst (New Mexico) and 1 is the best (New Hampshire). For the complete 2013 list see page 16 of this PDF file: http://www.aecf.org/~/media/Pubs/Initiatives/KIDS%20COUNT/123/2013KIDSCOUNTDataBook/2013KIDSCOUNTDataBookr.pdf
Monday, April 21, 2014
Friday, April 18, 2014
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Tampa's Pride
[Commissioner] Victor Crist unsuccessfully sought formal assurances that the vote would not result in Hillsborough County supporting obscene, prurient events not appropriate for families.
 |
| Gasparilla 1968 Florida Archives |
"The festivals, the activities and things need to have a little different tone to them," said Crist, a Republican. "Parading around in lingerie, pasties, g-strings and outfits that promote your sexual organs is not necessarily an appropriate thing to do in Hillsborough County."
"That's Gasparilla," a member of the audience replied, bringing laughter.
June 5, 2013 Tampa Bay Times
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Solar Mysteries Resolved
If you're reading this please send me a note. I hate lurkers. I really, really hate them. That said, I'm now going to experiment with producing original content:
Mystery #1: The ultraviolet "danger zone"
The ultraviolet "danger times" are often given as "2 hours before and 4 hours after noon." This could lead a reasonable person to presume that UV is somehow less dangerous in the morning than it is in the afternoon. The reality is the recommendation has more to do with politics than it does with science.
Science tells us the danger period is roughly 2 hours before and after solar noon. Solar noon rarely occurs at the same time as noon on a standard clock for several reasons. For one, the time zones have been re-drawn for political reasons so it's possible for you to live in a place that's very far from the longitude nearest to your solar noon time. Second, even after correcting for time zones, solar noon itself varies throughout the year by up to 30 minutes thanks to our elliptical orbit and a few other factors. So to account for this the CDC bumped up the times to 3 hours before and after clock noon as a rule-of-thumb.
The problem most relevant to the morning/afternoon asymmetry, however, is that we observe Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. during most of the year, which puts solar noon off by an additional hour for most people. Instead of expanding the danger times further, the CDC simply shifted them ahead by one hour to match DST. This is probably best because UV tends to get more press coverage in the summer months, and after all it's only a rule-of-thumb. OK, but a rule-of-thumb that can lead reasonable people to form erroneous assumptions about the sun. Furthermore, UV can actually be more dangerous in winter, particularly at high altitudes and in the presence of snow.
Mystery #2: The sun overhead
While walking home the other day I was irritated that the sun appeared to be shining on the north sides of buildings as I passed by. It was my understanding that when one lives above the tropic of cancer the sun is never directly overhead. I interpreted this to mean that buildings north of the tropics must always have a shadow on their north face. I happened to know the street I was walking on was built along a TRS line, however, and therefore was very precisely a north-south road. So, what was going on?
It turns out my interpretation is only partially correct. A building north of the tropics will only always have a shadow at solar noon. On the summer solstice in Tampa this shadow can be as small as 5 degrees as measured from the top of the building. As the sun sweeps an arc across the sky on the solstice, its compass position can pass up to 28 degrees north of the east-west line. This occurs from 6:30 AM to 11:00 AM and from 4:00 PM to 8:30 PM on that day, when its azimuth is less than 90 or greater than 270 degrees, and its elevation is less than 60 degrees.
So on summer evenings in Tampa there is likely more shade to be found on the south side of a building than there is on the north side, a handy thing to know for people who fear the sun.
Mystery #3: The analemma
A circle has one center, an ellipse has two. Our orbit around the sun is an ellipse with two centers. The sun occupies one center, and the other is empty space. The gravity of the sun is what's swinging us around the ellipse, however, and so we are moving faster when we're closer to it, and slower when we're closer to empty space.
An analemma is a plot of where the sun appears in the sky at clock noon every day for a year. The distance from the top to the bottom of the chart represents the distance between the tropics of capricorn and cancer. Using the chart we can tell when the apparent motion of the sun in the sky is moving "fast" or "slow" and therefore gives us an earlier or later solar noon reading relative to clock time.
It also happens that the analemma forms a pleasant shape which is suitable for placing on the sides of globes, particularly in the vast boring empty stretches around the Pacific ocean. It also makes for a neat year-long composite camera image for people with patience and good timing.
Mystery #4: UVA is NOT harmless, and it's everywhere
UVC is the nightmare radiation that seeps through the ozone hole. Most people don't get this without cooking themselves nude on a beach at solar noon on the summer solstice. UVB is the more familiar type that causes sunburn when you stay out too long without sunscreen on a sunny day.
UVA, however, is the stuff that goes right through your sunscreen, your clothes, and into the deeper layers of your skin. It goes through clouds, it goes through glass, it goes through just about everything that isn't opaque. Furthermore, because it penetrates the skin it is the radiation that causes the wonderful long-lasting deep glowing tan hawked as "safe" by tanning salons. The problem is because it operates at the structural level of the skin, it tends to cause the sort of loosening and wrinkling damage associated with aged skin. Second, if you're going to get cancer from ultraviolet exposure, then you want to have it on the surface where UVB operates, because those tumors are slow-growing and easily removed. If you get cancer deep in your skin, then it will often grow faster, making it harder to get at and remove before it spreads to other body parts and kills you.
Now for the freaky part. UVA is EVERYWHERE. You cannot escape it. If you can see light, even if it's an artificial light, then you're probably getting a measurable dose of UVA. If there is enough sun outside to necessitate wearing sunglasses, then you're probably getting dosed with UVA and B. If you're watching the sunset you're getting UVA. If you're working under fluorescent lights you're getting UVA. If you're staring at a monitor, then UVA could be getting into your eyes (such screens are normally polarized...I don't know how that affects it) My feeling is the new LED bulbs in the warm range probably emit the least UVA, but I don't know for sure. I'm also unclear on which bits of the spectrum are more likely to be reflected off cement pavement, or that will bounce around the margins of curtains to get inside your home.
Mystery #1: The ultraviolet "danger zone"
The ultraviolet "danger times" are often given as "2 hours before and 4 hours after noon." This could lead a reasonable person to presume that UV is somehow less dangerous in the morning than it is in the afternoon. The reality is the recommendation has more to do with politics than it does with science.
Science tells us the danger period is roughly 2 hours before and after solar noon. Solar noon rarely occurs at the same time as noon on a standard clock for several reasons. For one, the time zones have been re-drawn for political reasons so it's possible for you to live in a place that's very far from the longitude nearest to your solar noon time. Second, even after correcting for time zones, solar noon itself varies throughout the year by up to 30 minutes thanks to our elliptical orbit and a few other factors. So to account for this the CDC bumped up the times to 3 hours before and after clock noon as a rule-of-thumb.
The problem most relevant to the morning/afternoon asymmetry, however, is that we observe Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. during most of the year, which puts solar noon off by an additional hour for most people. Instead of expanding the danger times further, the CDC simply shifted them ahead by one hour to match DST. This is probably best because UV tends to get more press coverage in the summer months, and after all it's only a rule-of-thumb. OK, but a rule-of-thumb that can lead reasonable people to form erroneous assumptions about the sun. Furthermore, UV can actually be more dangerous in winter, particularly at high altitudes and in the presence of snow.
Mystery #2: The sun overhead
While walking home the other day I was irritated that the sun appeared to be shining on the north sides of buildings as I passed by. It was my understanding that when one lives above the tropic of cancer the sun is never directly overhead. I interpreted this to mean that buildings north of the tropics must always have a shadow on their north face. I happened to know the street I was walking on was built along a TRS line, however, and therefore was very precisely a north-south road. So, what was going on?
It turns out my interpretation is only partially correct. A building north of the tropics will only always have a shadow at solar noon. On the summer solstice in Tampa this shadow can be as small as 5 degrees as measured from the top of the building. As the sun sweeps an arc across the sky on the solstice, its compass position can pass up to 28 degrees north of the east-west line. This occurs from 6:30 AM to 11:00 AM and from 4:00 PM to 8:30 PM on that day, when its azimuth is less than 90 or greater than 270 degrees, and its elevation is less than 60 degrees.
So on summer evenings in Tampa there is likely more shade to be found on the south side of a building than there is on the north side, a handy thing to know for people who fear the sun.
Mystery #3: The analemma
A circle has one center, an ellipse has two. Our orbit around the sun is an ellipse with two centers. The sun occupies one center, and the other is empty space. The gravity of the sun is what's swinging us around the ellipse, however, and so we are moving faster when we're closer to it, and slower when we're closer to empty space.
An analemma is a plot of where the sun appears in the sky at clock noon every day for a year. The distance from the top to the bottom of the chart represents the distance between the tropics of capricorn and cancer. Using the chart we can tell when the apparent motion of the sun in the sky is moving "fast" or "slow" and therefore gives us an earlier or later solar noon reading relative to clock time.
It also happens that the analemma forms a pleasant shape which is suitable for placing on the sides of globes, particularly in the vast boring empty stretches around the Pacific ocean. It also makes for a neat year-long composite camera image for people with patience and good timing.
Mystery #4: UVA is NOT harmless, and it's everywhere
UVC is the nightmare radiation that seeps through the ozone hole. Most people don't get this without cooking themselves nude on a beach at solar noon on the summer solstice. UVB is the more familiar type that causes sunburn when you stay out too long without sunscreen on a sunny day.
UVA, however, is the stuff that goes right through your sunscreen, your clothes, and into the deeper layers of your skin. It goes through clouds, it goes through glass, it goes through just about everything that isn't opaque. Furthermore, because it penetrates the skin it is the radiation that causes the wonderful long-lasting deep glowing tan hawked as "safe" by tanning salons. The problem is because it operates at the structural level of the skin, it tends to cause the sort of loosening and wrinkling damage associated with aged skin. Second, if you're going to get cancer from ultraviolet exposure, then you want to have it on the surface where UVB operates, because those tumors are slow-growing and easily removed. If you get cancer deep in your skin, then it will often grow faster, making it harder to get at and remove before it spreads to other body parts and kills you.
Now for the freaky part. UVA is EVERYWHERE. You cannot escape it. If you can see light, even if it's an artificial light, then you're probably getting a measurable dose of UVA. If there is enough sun outside to necessitate wearing sunglasses, then you're probably getting dosed with UVA and B. If you're watching the sunset you're getting UVA. If you're working under fluorescent lights you're getting UVA. If you're staring at a monitor, then UVA could be getting into your eyes (such screens are normally polarized...I don't know how that affects it) My feeling is the new LED bulbs in the warm range probably emit the least UVA, but I don't know for sure. I'm also unclear on which bits of the spectrum are more likely to be reflected off cement pavement, or that will bounce around the margins of curtains to get inside your home.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Workforce
Waldon's semi truck and a BMW sedan were traveling south on I-75 approaching the Alafia River bridge around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday when the truck hit the back of the [BMW] sedan. The BMW traveled off the inside shoulder of the bridge and into the Alafia River. James Dylan Proctor, 42, of Parrish, died at the scene. The semi overturned, spilling a large portion of the 30,000 gallons of alcoholic beverages it was carrying onto the highway. [...] Florida law does not prevent a person's driving history from allowing them to get a commercial license. So far, no charges have been filed. (baynews9)
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Monday, January 27, 2014
Blame Karl
In colonial New England the birth rate averaged over seven children per woman of childbearing age. Men and women needed the labor of children. Producing offspring was as necessary for survival as producing grain. Sex was harnessed to procreation. […] By the 1970s, however, the birth rate had dropped to under two. With the exception of the postWorld War II baby boom, the decline has been continuous for two centuries, paralleling the spread of capitalist relations of production. It occurred when access to contraceptive devices and abortion was systematically curtailed. The decline has included every segment of the population – urban and rural families, blacks and whites, ethnics and WASPS, the middle class and the working class. As wage labor spread and production became socialized, then, it became possible to release sexuality from the ‘imperative’ to procreate. Ideologically, heterosexual expression came to be a means of establishing intimacy, promoting happiness, and experiencing pleasure. In divesting the household of its economic independence and fostering the separation of sexuality from procreation, capitalism has created conditions that allow some men and women to organize a personal life around their erotic/emotional attraction to their own sex. (d'emilio)
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Soviet-Harvard Style
Nothing dates faster than people's fantasies about the future. [Brasilia] is what you get when perfectly decent, intelligent, and talented men start thinking in terms of space rather than place; and single rather than multiple meanings. It's what you get when you design for political aspirations rather than real human needs. You get miles of jerry-built platonic nowhere infested with Volkswagens. This, one may fervently hope, is the last experiment of its kind. The utopian buck stops here. — Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New, Episode 4: Trouble in Utopia, (1980)
From a 1950s perspective, however, cigarettes weren't that different. The annual consumption of tobacco was approximately 12 pounds per capita, and 80 percent of men smoked cigarettes at least occasionally. Smoking was an important social practice, and, for many, a reliable way to relieve anxiety. Although the link between smoking and lung cancer was evident by the end of the decade, few people recognized that tobacco would become the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. Smoking cessation seemed unnecessary and unwise, if not unfathomable. Giving up grilled, smoked and fried meats seems equally bizarre today, but population-wide changes in dietary staples have dramatically affected cancer rates in other parts of the world. (slate)
From a 1950s perspective, however, cigarettes weren't that different. The annual consumption of tobacco was approximately 12 pounds per capita, and 80 percent of men smoked cigarettes at least occasionally. Smoking was an important social practice, and, for many, a reliable way to relieve anxiety. Although the link between smoking and lung cancer was evident by the end of the decade, few people recognized that tobacco would become the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. Smoking cessation seemed unnecessary and unwise, if not unfathomable. Giving up grilled, smoked and fried meats seems equally bizarre today, but population-wide changes in dietary staples have dramatically affected cancer rates in other parts of the world. (slate)
Parking Lot Success
“Today, if you walk across the University of South Florida campus, I’d like to think that whether it’s the parking lot attendant, the food services attendant, a resident assistant or a professor, they all recognize and are committed to how important this thing we call student success is,” said Ralph Wilcox, USF’s provost and executive vice president. “It really has become part of the university’s DNA.” (tbo)
Friday, January 24, 2014
Truthiness
C. Glenn Begley, who is chief scientific officer at TetraLogic Pharmaceuticals, described an experience he had while at Amgen, another drug company. He and his colleagues could not replicate 47 of 53 landmark papers about cancer. Some of the results could not be reproduced even with the help of the original scientists working in their own labs. Given what is at stake, it seems like a moral failing that the titles of the papers were not revealed. That was forbidden, we’re told, by confidentiality agreements imposed by the labs. (nyt)
...identity politics of the 1970s through the 1990s stressed the import of gay identity and community. Unsurprisingly, histories generated during that time privileged and, in part, produced identity and community in prior eras. My call today for a queer history, to be focused upon the ever-changing relationship of normalcy to deviancy, happens alongside a contemporary focus on queer desire over gay identity. A deeply historicist project thus situates in time not only the object of study but also the conductor of the study. Both the history and the historian must be historicised. We should ask not only what do we study, but who are we who study? Who are we in relationship to what we study? (howard)
It was not that it was all right to be a lesbian because there had been lesbians in the past. Nor was it that what I was feeling was all right because it was not “homosexuality.” Rather, it was that our modern categories of heterosexuality and homosexuality (and even bisexuality) are not complex enough to capture the slippery reality of love and desire. I seized upon this article because Smith-Rosenberg’s vision of a world in which love and sexuality had no easy relation to sexual identity made sense to me, unsure as I was if I yet merited the label “lesbian.” And though the woman I fell in love with is now married to a man and I happily identify as a lesbian, I do not take that to mean those were the only possible outcomes. (rupp)
...identity politics of the 1970s through the 1990s stressed the import of gay identity and community. Unsurprisingly, histories generated during that time privileged and, in part, produced identity and community in prior eras. My call today for a queer history, to be focused upon the ever-changing relationship of normalcy to deviancy, happens alongside a contemporary focus on queer desire over gay identity. A deeply historicist project thus situates in time not only the object of study but also the conductor of the study. Both the history and the historian must be historicised. We should ask not only what do we study, but who are we who study? Who are we in relationship to what we study? (howard)
It was not that it was all right to be a lesbian because there had been lesbians in the past. Nor was it that what I was feeling was all right because it was not “homosexuality.” Rather, it was that our modern categories of heterosexuality and homosexuality (and even bisexuality) are not complex enough to capture the slippery reality of love and desire. I seized upon this article because Smith-Rosenberg’s vision of a world in which love and sexuality had no easy relation to sexual identity made sense to me, unsure as I was if I yet merited the label “lesbian.” And though the woman I fell in love with is now married to a man and I happily identify as a lesbian, I do not take that to mean those were the only possible outcomes. (rupp)
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Sexist Shooters
He began his attack by entering a classroom at the university, where he separated the male and female students. After claiming that he was "fighting feminism" and calling the women "a bunch of feminists," he shot all nine women in the room, killing six. He then moved through corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, specifically targeting women to shoot. Overall, he killed fourteen women and injured ten other women and four men in just under twenty minutes before turning the gun on himself. (1989)
He ordered the hostages to line up against the chalkboard and released the 15 male students present, along with a pregnant woman and three parents with infants. The remaining 10 female students he kept inside the schoolhouse. […] The gunman apparently killed himself along with five school girls. Three of the girls died at the scene, with two more dying the next morning from related injuries. Five girls were in the hospital in critical condition. Reports have stated that the girls were shot execution style in the head. The ages of the victims ranged from 6 to 13. (2006)
The shooting occurred at a women's aerobics class at the LA Fitness center in The Great Southern Shopping Center of Collier Township at approximately 8:15 pm EDT. The shooter entered the class, placed a duffel bag on the ground, turned off the lights, took out two handguns and began firing […] Three women and the gunman died, and about nine other people were injured. (2009)
Ed. the case of Arunya Rouch (heard of her?) makes me think there might be more cases of women attempting the reverse, they just don't get much attention. Amy Bishop is a conspicuous example, along with Aileen Wournos. Some Googling turns up Laurie Dann, Jennifer San Marco, Brenda Spencer, and Sylvia Seegrist. It's all nonsense, of course. Like hutu and tutsi, the difference between males and females (above the shoulders, anyway) is fiction.
Ed. how could I forget Julie Schenecker? We must specialize in this stuff in the bay area. To whit: all our female teacher sex scandals, Debra Lafave et al.
He ordered the hostages to line up against the chalkboard and released the 15 male students present, along with a pregnant woman and three parents with infants. The remaining 10 female students he kept inside the schoolhouse. […] The gunman apparently killed himself along with five school girls. Three of the girls died at the scene, with two more dying the next morning from related injuries. Five girls were in the hospital in critical condition. Reports have stated that the girls were shot execution style in the head. The ages of the victims ranged from 6 to 13. (2006)
The shooting occurred at a women's aerobics class at the LA Fitness center in The Great Southern Shopping Center of Collier Township at approximately 8:15 pm EDT. The shooter entered the class, placed a duffel bag on the ground, turned off the lights, took out two handguns and began firing […] Three women and the gunman died, and about nine other people were injured. (2009)
Ed. the case of Arunya Rouch (heard of her?) makes me think there might be more cases of women attempting the reverse, they just don't get much attention. Amy Bishop is a conspicuous example, along with Aileen Wournos. Some Googling turns up Laurie Dann, Jennifer San Marco, Brenda Spencer, and Sylvia Seegrist. It's all nonsense, of course. Like hutu and tutsi, the difference between males and females (above the shoulders, anyway) is fiction.
Ed. how could I forget Julie Schenecker? We must specialize in this stuff in the bay area. To whit: all our female teacher sex scandals, Debra Lafave et al.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
om
In May, the journal Psychological Science published the results of a randomized trial showing that undergraduates instructed to spend a mere 10 minutes a day for two weeks practicing mindfulness [meditating] made significant improvement on the verbal portion of the Graduate Record Exam — a gain of 16 percentile points. They also significantly increased their working memory capacity, the ability to maintain and manipulate multiple items of attention. (nyt 1-14-2014)
I meditate at bus stops.
I meditate at bus stops.
Monday, January 20, 2014
Breathe it All In
Theo de Kok of Maastricht University in the Netherlands […] and his collaborators found that PM10 from candles might be especially harmful because, in the body, unidentified constituents of the smoke readily generate free radicals that damage cells. After candles had burned in a Dutch chapel for 9 hours, particles in the air there formed 10 times as many free radicals as airborne particulates collected along busy roadways do, de Kok’s group reported
A study published in 2008 in the medical journal Cancer found that incense use is associated with a statistically significant higher risk of cancers of the upper respiratory tract […] The link between incense use and increased cancer risk held when the researchers weighed other factors, including cigarette smoking, diet and drinking habits. The research team noted that "This association is consistent with a large number of studies identifying carcinogens in incense smoke, and given the widespread and sometimes involuntary exposure to smoke from burning incense, these findings carry significant public health implications."
According to recent research, some laser printers emit sub-micrometer particles which have been associated in other environmental studies with respiratory diseases. An unpublished study at the University of Rostock in Germany is reported to have found that the microscopic particles in toners are carcinogenic, similar to asbestos.
A study published in 2008 in the medical journal Cancer found that incense use is associated with a statistically significant higher risk of cancers of the upper respiratory tract […] The link between incense use and increased cancer risk held when the researchers weighed other factors, including cigarette smoking, diet and drinking habits. The research team noted that "This association is consistent with a large number of studies identifying carcinogens in incense smoke, and given the widespread and sometimes involuntary exposure to smoke from burning incense, these findings carry significant public health implications."
According to recent research, some laser printers emit sub-micrometer particles which have been associated in other environmental studies with respiratory diseases. An unpublished study at the University of Rostock in Germany is reported to have found that the microscopic particles in toners are carcinogenic, similar to asbestos.
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