Category: Science

Heart Rate

What amazed me during my studies were rest heart rates of cyclists and other athletes, e.g. Lance Armstrong – 32 bpm. After my bypass surgery they gave me a pacemaker when my heart dropped below fifty while I was deeply sleeping one night, and it only kicks in when my BPM goes too low.

I’ve been investigating maximum recommended heart rates since mine is “high” for the charts typically used to gauge such things, and I need to set some bounds when exercising and recuperating from my heart surgery. There’s really not a clear cut determination on what your beats per minute should be since there are too many factors besides just age at play. The max heart rate for my age is 165 by the most popular method, which is fallible (+ or – 20 BPM). (See Chart Below) By more recent method and studies it’s 168-170 and the latter is supposed to be accurate to within 6-8 BPM.

What amazed me during my studies were rest heart rates of cyclists and other athletes, e.g. Lance Armstrong – 32 bpm. After my bypass surgery they gave me a pacemaker when my heart dropped below fifty while I was deeply sleeping one night, and it only kicks in when my BPM goes too low.

Below is the standard chart, but remember this could be off by as much as 20 BPM either direction:

The Gross Details

I’m posting this ugly picture in the hope of saving some lives – without a cardio scan and some good referrals from docs who were both smart and caring, I wouldn’t have had this operation and sometime over the next couple of years I probably would have died of a massive heart failure. If you have a few of the known the risk factors for heart disease,  (smoking, obesity, family history, male, Diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc.) then you really should go get a scan. In KC there’s a firesale on them the rest of the year, they are only $50.00 and your life is certainly worth more than that.

Now on to the kudos, great thanks go to Dr’s Bernhardt, Thompson, Pierson, Hannah, Forman, and Nunes for literally saving my life. Thanks also to the wonderful staff at OPRMC for all of the great care.

This also lets you know what I’ve been up to the past two weeks, don’t let that period of time scare ya, these usually get you out of the hospital in under 7 days, I just had some complications.

The other thing most worthy of noting here: no prayer, no homepathic remedy, no natural woo food would have saved me here – the arteries to the bottom back of my heart were 90 percent blocked – it’s Science and real medicine that I owe my life to.

No exercise regimen, no psychic healer, nor any pyramid power could have corrected my electrical path discontinuities — instead I owe my life to Science and modern medical technology in the form of a pacemaker.

Retroviruses, Pseudogenes, and Common Descent

Proofs of common descent that are pretty devastating to AIG, ICR’s, and Discovery Institute’s creationist arguments are the genetic histories of our species.

Proofs of common descent that are pretty devastating to AIG, ICR’s, and Discovery Institute’s creationist arguments are the genetic histories of our species. In our genes you will find retrovirus strands in the same places you find them in our common ancestor species. With this data and these proofs the phylogenetic tree is being tuned by researchers and once enough full gene maps are compared we will know our full ancestry, and we will know it without any substantive doubts.

How To Be a Denialist in Ten Easy Steps

In the latest New Scientist they cover the ever blooming fields of denialism that popped up everywhere or that bloomed anew in the first decade of the new millennium. One of their references is an important paper from Martin Mckee, and it’s at the European Journal of Public Health.
Here are his main points on how to be a denialist, I’ve expanded some bullets where I believe Martin conflated two separate tactics in the Denialist Arsenal.

  1. Allege that there’s a conspiracy. Claim that scientific consensus has arisen through collusion rather than the accumulation of evidence.
  2. Use fake experts to support your story. “Denial always starts with a cadre of pseudo-experts with some credentials that create a facade of credibility,” says Seth Kalichman of the University of Connecticut.
  3. Cherry-pick the evidence: trumpet whatever appears to support your case and ignore or rubbish the rest.
  4. Carry on trotting out supportive evidence even after it has been discredited.
  5. Create impossible standards for your opponents. Claim that the existing evidence is not good enough and demand more.
  6. If your opponent comes up with evidence you have demanded, move the goalposts.
  7. Use logical fallacies. Hitler opposed smoking, so anti-smoking measures are Nazi.
  8. Deliberately misrepresent the scientific consensus and then knock down your straw man.
  9. Manufacture doubt. Falsely portray scientists as so divided that basing policy on their advice would be premature.
  10. Insist “both sides” must be heard and cry censorship when “dissenting” arguments or experts are rejected.

Simple but Eloquent Proofs of our Common Ancestry

Science uses some of the SINEs and LINEs of our times to track our common ancestry, and determine some of what had to be true of your evolution and mine.

Our great national shame is that only Turkey has lower belief in the science of evolution than we do. We can not hope to maintain our lead in science, technology and to keep our pre-eminence as a world power if this ignorance continues  far into this century.

Measuring the Ice: ESA

There’s been a lot of controversy over ice extent and thickness, and most of the controversy has been generated from the traditional denialist camps and outlets and they are bent on distorting and devaluing what is reported. With the new NASA measures underway, and new ESA satellite measurements outlined below the evidence will become incontrovertible.

Please also take note of this video from Peter Sinclair outlining some of the ploys used to attack the data.

When Creationists Put on Their Angsty Panties

You can bet that Fox news will cover it since it continues their “Culture Wars” theme and keeps their bile-fed elderly market share pumped up and angered enough to watch. Christians are being persecuted daily after all and there are lions waiting around the corner for every one of them… (ok — so I’m not practiced at snarkasm and that didn’t work well but let’s continue anyway…) I have to have some humor here because otherwise I might cry in frustration at how some humans misuse their time by trying to get books banned.

At the intersection of science and superstition

In the latest incident you find a fundamentalist creationist Christian upset because a biology text had the temerity to state that 7 literal day creation is “Myth.” Since only fundamentalist creationists believe the bible to be “inerrant” and the majority of Christians view the Bible as inexact, or allegorical, or subject to interpretation and translations errors by humans over the past 20 centuries, you have to wonder why Fox pimps such a minority view of Christianity.

On the other hand if you’ve been following the infamous Discovery Institute created culture wars for a while then you know exactly what’s going on. In Discovery Institute’s view if you are a tolerant, non fundamentalist sort then you aren’t really a true Christian, and not a true Culture warrior — and you certainly aren’t feeling persecuted enough yet.  You are “CINO”. Christian in name only. Leave it to Fox news to further the fundamentalist’s faux outrage.

Looking at the Text book in question you see that it gets pretty rave reviews and even seems modern and up to date with the latest real discoveries and controveries.

“Asking About Life” Allan Tobin and Jennie Dusheck

[remaining question: do angsty panties come in red and are they hair lined?]

Update: More at Little Green Footballs and Video of Fox and Friends

Measuring Extent and Depth of Sea Ice 2010

Nasa’s program to measure glacier and sea ice extent and depth returns much better data than just satellite measurements.

Nasa’s program to measure glacier and sea ice extent and depth returns much better data than just satellite measurements.