Different Standards

The last time we had a guy running for president who basically got his fortune by marrying a super rich heiress (Teresa Heinz Kerry), the traditional media thought it was Vitally Important to Democracy and Transparent Politics that she release her tax returns.

Apparently, the same standard doesn't apply to Cindy McCain. I'm sure the situation is COMPLETELY and totally different; otherwise, our "ultra-liberal socialist America-hating terrorist-loving media" would be screaming bloody murder.

Surely they would.

Duck!

Ducking office hours worked well today. Rather than go into detail, I'll just say it had the desired effect on me and defused a couple of potential confrontations. As a great fictional man once said, I love it when a plan comes together. Now if only my students would finish their finals early so I could have time to go to lunch before picking up the little ones.

And I have all of my grading done except for this last test, which I'll tear through tonight. The weather forecast looks good, too, so we may have another end-of-semester celebration this weekend by going to the local ren fest thing.

Almost Done

Maybe it was the double overload in the Fall or just the weird schedule this Spring, but either way, I'm very ready for the semester to end, which happens tomorrow. I've been pretty sloppy this semester in responding to student emails (in some cases confirming wrong answers as correct, which then came back to bite people on exams so I had to fix that a few times), and I've had a few really high-maintenance students this semester that have at times sucked the life force out of me. Mostly grade grubbing.

Summer will be busy, but I'm ready for a change. My last office hour of the semester is tomorrow, and I will probably just skip it and go to the bookstore. Better for all concerned. There's nothing that can't be solved by email or corrected after the semester is over, if needed, and I'm crabby enough at some people that I would otherwise possibly say something I would later regret.

I already was sarcastic to one person this morning, expressing how NOT shocked I was that they came to my office an hour before the final with detailed questions even though I told them I never do that sort of thing on test day (for a variety of very good reasons). Oops. Not so bad, but then later another guy showed up with a ton of questions even though my office hours had ended a while back. I dealt with him, but I'm sure my lack of enthusiasm was infectious.

Spam Killer

It is very gratifying that I finally found an easy solution to spam, which was turning off comments on archived entries. People can still comment off of main page links just not on links from individual entries, and that has killed 99.99% of spam that used to hit the site, a much better batting average than blacklist had (though blacklist still blocks 99% of what remains, which is still way too much).

I forgot to mention earlier that at the festival this weekend we saw a really interesting little band called Ume. Punk rock, and a little blond girl on lead guitar was also the lead singer, and she spasmed all over the stage, then after offered a petite little "thank you, we're Ume" like a cartoon character. This video is fairly representative. I couldn't listen to it for any extended length of time, but it was a neat little show.

Virgo

Just North of the Corvus/Crater/Hydra combination is the second largest constellation in the sky, Virgo. Many cultures share a similar story of this constellation as a maiden or virgin carrying a stalk of wheat (indicating by Alpha Virginis, or Spica, which translates to ear of wheat). Even in Greek mythology, this constellation sometimes represents Persephone, who was lured into the underworld by her uncle, the God Hades, where she ate the seeds of a pomegranite and was eventually forced to spend half of her life there as a princess after some negotiation by her father Zeus (this is related to the seasonal cycle).

Other stories identify her as Callisto, who also figures prominently in the legends of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Or perhaps she is Astraea the goddess of justice (which is fitting given the nearby Libra the Scales in the sky), who ruled a benevolent age of the Earth until the ways of mankind became so violent and upsetting that she retreated back to the heavens. The story that seems to have passed the test of time is that of the winged harvest goddess holding the ear of wheat.

The bright star Spica is surely the easiest to spot in Virgo, found most easily by following the arc of the handle of the Big Dipper through Arcturus and on to Spica. Spica is very close to the ecliptic plane, so the moon and the planets frequently pass very close to it, and the moon even occults Spica occasionally. Spica is a closely-paired system of two hot blue stars, the combined light of which is over 2000 times the luminosity of the Sun, making it a bright 1st magnitude star even at 260 light years away (30 times further than Sirius).

While these two stars do not eclipse each other from our perspective, the light curve does vary a bit as the stars orbit. That's because the two stars are so close together that their shapes are tidally distorted, so sometimes we see them elongated and sometimes end-on, making the total light from the system vary. Kaler reports that lunar occultation studies confirm the presence of more than two stars in this system, perhaps as many as three more dim companions, but they are very hard to study individually due to the intense amount of light given off by the central binary.

Spica was important to the Egyptians, and it was identified with their goddess of love Hathor. A temple was built at Thebes in such a way as to align with the rising of Spica on the autumnal equinox, when it was time for the harvest, but over time, the precession of the Earth has caused that alignment to shift noticeably. This is an example from the field of archeoastronomy, and it provided some of the first evidence that precession means the celestial sphere is not fixed.

About 20 degrees Northwest of Spica, a bit less than halfway along a line drawn from Spica to the tail of Leo the Lion, Denebola, is the 2nd brightest star in this constellation (though it is designated Gamma Virginis), named Porrima after the goddess of prophecy. Porrima makes up the vertex of a right-angled cup that extends about 20 degrees North and 20 degrees West, opening up toward Leo (see the star chart here for visual help).

Between this "cup" and Leo, you will find all of the Messier objects in Virgo except for M 104 (the famous Sombrero Galaxy). This is no coincidence as the nearby Virgo cluster of galaxies is located in this direction, so this an extremely rich field for extragalactic astronomy. The stars in the cup are all five in the neighborhood of 3rd or 4th magnitude. Porrima is actually a double star, with the two virtually identical stars separated by a very small angle, currently about 3 arcseconds apart (an arcsecond is the diameter of a stellar image in a telescope if the viewing conditions are excellent). The two stars are both on the main sequence and only a little more massive and hotter than the Sun, about 40 light years away.

Kaler points out that stars like Porrima mark an interesting transition point for stellar behavior. First of all, at about this mass, the nuclear fusion process in the core becomes more efficient (using Carbon, Nitrogen and Oxygen as a facilitator instead of purely the proton-proton chain), so the luminosity increases a bit faster as mass increases. Also, at this mass and higher, stars begin to transition away from having large convection zones in their outer layers like the Sun. Instead, their interiors are dominated largely by their radiative zones (at the extreme, very hot stars have no convection and are ionized all the way through, meaning spectral absorption lines are very weak or non-existant).

Convection helps a star generate a strong magnetic field, which in turn helps slow down the star's rotation. When the field interacts with the gas and dust that usually exists in a surrounding disk after the star forms, this acts as a brake on the star's rotation. For more purely radiative stars, this braking action doesn't exist and so they can become very fast rotators. Remember Regulus in Leo? Or Gamma Cassiopeia? There are plenty of hot blue stars in the sky that are very fast rotators thanks to this.

Porrima probably should've been named Zavijava, which is the name given to Beta Virginis, at the Western tip of the cup, 15 degrees due South from Denebola in Leo. Zavijava translates to "the angle of the dog kennel" and was originally the name given to what is now Porrima, but confusion over the years has changed our conventions on this and so we're stuck with Zavijava at the end of the line rather than at the true vertex of the angle.

Zavijava is very similar to either of the two stars in the double-star system Porrima that we discussed previously, and it is at about the same distance, 36 light years away. About halfway between Porrima and Zavijava on the Western arm of the cup is Eta Virginis, or Zaniah. Zaniah is almost exactly on the Celestial Equator, which splits the constellation Virgo into a Northern and Southern half, and one of the two intersections of the Celestial Equator and the Ecliptic is located halfway between Zaniah and Zavijava: the autumnal equinox. This is the location in the sky of the Sun on the first day of Autumn. Recall that Virgo is usually associated with harvest time because the Sun has historically been near this constellation at this time of year. This is likely also why Persephone (who spent Fall and Winter in the Underworld, then Spring and Summer in freedom) is associated with this constellation.

Zaniah is a very close triple of hot blue stars. They are so close (and the system so distant at 250 light years) that it is very difficult to separate the light from each component to study them all individually, though this was recently accomplished using optical interferometry. The name originates from another name for this angle of stars, the mouth of the barking dog or perhaps the kennel of the barking dogs (al zawiah translates to kennel). Moving North from the vertex at Porrima, about six degrees NNE, we run into Delta Virginis, which some have named Awwa or Auva for "angle" or "turn", so now you can see where Zavijava got its name, from a mish-mash of al Zawiah and Awwa. Awwa is a cool M-class red giant star about 200 light years away.

Finally, at the Northern tip of the cup, about 12 degrees North (and 1 degree West) from Porrima, we find the third brightest star in Virgo, for some reason designated Epsilon Virginis: Vindemiatrix. This name translates to the grape gatherer, as this star rises just before dawn during the grape harvest. The star is a yellow giant, about 100 light years distant, very similar to one of the components of the bright double star Capella in Auriga. Wikipedia notes that this star shares some characteristics (distance, motion or composition, not sure which) with the stars of the Hyades cluster in Taurus, but I have not been able to find a source to back up this claim.

It seems unlikely to me as the Hyades is on nearly the opposite side of the sky, and I'm certain we are not completely enveloped by the Hyades cluster so that we would have members all over the sky. The cluster is about 150 light years away and estimated to be less than 100 light years in diameter with most stars being in an inner 10 light year diameter sphere. Just goes to show that while Wikipedia can be very useful, it is important to read what's there with a skeptical eye and always look for credible backup sources if it is an important topic.

Moving on, I will now talk about some of the eleven Messier objects in the constellation Virgo. I suppose one way to do it systematically is to move from the Southernmost and work North toward the center of the Virgo cluster, so I'll start with Messier 104, also known as the Sombrero Galaxy. This is an outlier but generally accepted as a member of the cluster. The Virgo Cluster of galaxies is found mostly in a square whose opposite corners are Spica and Denebola (the tail of Leo). The central concentration is about halfway between Denebola and Vindemiatrix, a star I talked about previously.

The Virgo Cluster is a large group of galaxies (between 1000-2000) centered on a point about 60 million light years from us, and our own Local Group is a little bubble of 30-40 galaxies about 10-20 million light years in diameter that forms another part of the supercluster we share with Virgo. Most of the cluster galaxies are in the direction of Virgo, but some lie just across the border into Coma Berenices, a constellation I will talk about next time. Getting back to M104, this is a very nice nearly edge-on spiral (tilted about six degrees toward us) on the front side of the Virgo Cluster, about 30 million light years away from us. At 8th magnitude, it shows up nicely in a 8" or 10" telescope, which is ideal for most of the bright Messier objects I will talk about in this constellation.

In this deep image, you can see that it is a large, extended, low surface brightness halo with a couple of tidal tails extended from within the bright center. Like our own galaxy, the Sombrero has some satellite galaxies that it is slowly devouring, though this galaxy is only about half the visible diameter of our own Milky Way. The dust lane in the disk of this galaxy can be very clearly seen in this Infrared image taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope, and it doesn't look very disturbed.

Though we are pretty good at determining distances to galaxies these days, the distance to the Sombrero is still somewhat uncertain. I see quotes of distances anywhere from 28-50 million light years, though I tend to trust the lower end projections since they fit so many other aspects of the galaxy. The problem is that galaxies in the Virgo Cluster are a little bit too far away from our normal distance determination methods (using Cepheids or Planetary Nebulae or star clusters or bright stars) to work well. Normally, with an accurate value for Hubble's constant (which we have now thanks to observations by WMAP), we can use Hubble's Law to find the distance.

That's just d = v/H where v is the radial velocity of the galaxy and H is Hubble's Constant. The problem is that galaxies in Virgo have large peculiar velocities since they are in a cluster. They are swarming about the center of mass like a bunch of angry hornets, and this velocity adds a random component to their Hubble flow speeds. Ideally, a galaxy 60 million light years away should be receding from us at a speed of 1400 km/sec, but the peculiar velocities in Virgo can be as high as 2000 km/sec, overwhelming the "signal" we get from cosmological expansion. Since the cluster is close to us, this random component is very large compared to the cosmological expansion velocity, so that makes using Hubble's Law very tough. As our technology improves, so does our ability to pick out standard candles in these distant galaxies and improve our distance accuracy.

Now, a quick aside about dark matter. I mentioned that the peculiar velocities in this cluster are very high, on the order of 2000 km/sec. This fact and our knowledge that the cluster is bound together is another piece of evidence that tells us of the existence of dark matter. Here's how: when we look at galaxy clusters, we assume they are bound. That means all (or almost all) of the galaxies are gravitationally bound to their clusters. This is a good assumption because most galaxies exist in clusters, and we don't see clusters in varying degrees of dissipation in our Universe.

Compare the state of affairs for galaxy clusters with that of open clusters in our galaxy. Open clusters in our galaxy are NOT bound (due to the strength of tidal forces in the disk of the galaxy), and so we see them in varying degrees of concentration. Some very young ones are very tightly grouped together while most older clusters are very loosely bound, sometimes almost to the point where they are unrecognizable as clusters. With galaxy clusters, they are all pretty similar in terms of their concentration and velocity distribution, much like the globular clusters in our galactic halo, so we assume they are bound together.

The escape velocity of a cluster is like a speed limit. If a galaxy is moving faster than the escape velocity, then it will escape, and it is considered to be not bound to the cluster. The escape velocity depends on the mass and size of the cluster. The more massive the cluster, the harder it is to escape the cluster's gravity. So, if we count up the mass of all of the visible matter in Virgo, which means all of the stars, gas and dust, we can estimate the escape velocity of the Virgo Cluster. We get a number of about 1000 km/sec.

This is a problem, because if the escape velocity of Virgo were really that low while galaxy velocities are often as high as 2000 km/sec, then the cluster should be flying apart! The solution comes with dark matter: When we make the assumption that dark matter is 10 times more common than visible matter, like it is in our own galaxy, the escape velocity from Virgo grows to about 4000 km/sec, easily high enough to contain all of the "angry hornets" buzzing around the cluster's center of mass at 2000 km/sec or so.

There is also very hot gas bound to galaxy clusters, seen in X-ray images due to its high energy radiation. If we measure the velocity of such gas (which is related to the temperature), we also get a very high number. If we assume the hot gas is bound to the cluster, then you need a lot more mass than what you can see to contain that gas, and so the need for dark matter appears. Fritz Zwicky was the first to advance this argument for dark matter way back in the 1930's, but his ideas weren't generally accepted until more evidence came to light decades later. The problem is not so much that Zwicky was unfairly ignored, it's just that he had a lot of crazy ideas, many of which turned out to be wrong, and so when he claimed to discover dark matter, he wasn't taken as seriously as, say, Einstein or Hubble would have been.

Moving North about 15 degrees toward the center of the cluster, we move into the Messier Objects contained in Virgo's cup, starting with M61, a 10th magnitude galaxy very similar in properties to the Milky Way and located about 60 million light years away. This makes it one of the largest spirals in the Virgo Cluster. Moving North about four degrees brings us to the next Messier object, M49, one of the giant elliptical galaxies in the cluster with a major axis of 160,000 light years in length or possibly longer depending upon the angle of orientation with respect to us. It is at least five times more massive than our own galaxy, which is itself one of the largest galaxies in our own little cluster.

Going north another four degrees or so, we stumble across a string of galaxies known as Markarian's Chain, at the heart of the Virgo Cluster. In the linked image, that's roughly the same angular size as a standard photograph of the Pleiades. Most prominent on the Western end are two giant elliptical galaxies, M84 and M86. Proceeding East from there, we see a pair of connected galaxies that looks at first glance like a pair of eyes, known as Markarian's Eyes. They are also known as NGC 4438 and NGC 4435, and you can see in the linked image the dramatic effects of tidal forces on these two closely passing galaxies. A full moon would just barely cover the two ellipticals and the two eyes, to give you some idea of how separated these objects are in a line on the sky.

A degree or so Southeast of the Eyes, we find Virgo A, also known as M87, probably the largest galaxy in the Virgo Cluster, probably at least 20 times more massive than the Milky Way galaxy. In deep exposures, the surface brightness of the extended halo of this galaxy fills a region in the sky roughly equivalent to the Full Moon, and this is a galaxy that is 60 million light years away! At the heart of Virgo A is likely a supermassive black hole, from which is emanating an enormously powerful jet, a stream of plasma extended around 5000 light years from the core of the galaxy.

Another couple of degrees East from M87 is a cluster of five messier objects loosely arranged in a 180 degree arc of a circle that it about 3 degrees in diameter. The Southeastern part of the arc is anchored by the giant elliptical galaxy M60 and a close companion spiral galaxy known as NGC 4649 (seen better in this image). A little less than a degree West of M60 is M59, another large elliptical galaxy. To give you some idea of how big these big ellipticals are in Virgo, M59 has about 2000 globular clusters in orbit around it, over ten times more than our own Milky Way galaxy has. Each of these clusters contains anywhere from 50,000 to 10 million stars.

The last three Messier objects in the "cup" of Virgo formed by Vindemiatrix, Porrima and Zavijava about 25 degrees Northwest of Spica are M58, M89 and M90, three galaxies within about a degree of one another and about 1-2 degrees West of Virgo A. M58 is one of the few barred spiral galaxies in Messier's list, and it is also a rare spiral to be found so close to the directional center of Virgo. It is hard to say how far this is from the true center of Virgo. With a velocity about half that of the highest peculiar velocities, it is likely safely outside of the true core and so not subjected currently to the kind of tidal forces that can strip its gas and disrupt its structure.

M89 is another giant elliptical, almost perfectly round in shape. It isn't clear whether it is a true sphere or just an ellipsoid being viewed end-on from our perspective. Deep images of M89 show a little bit more asymmetry, including a jet-like feature similar to that seen in M87 (Virgo A). Most of the scruff surrounding the main body of this galaxy is probably tidally disrupted remnants of galaxies that have been devoured in the recent past.

M90 is another bright spiral with a two-phase structure. The inner disk is lumpy and clearly split into regions thick with dust and clumps of vigorous star formation. Then about a third of the way out from the center to the visible edge of the disk, it transforms into a very smooth appearance similar to that of a lenticular galaxy, which it may be evolving into. M90 also has a high enough peculiar velocity that it should be able to escape the Virgo Cluster. The peculiar velocity is so high that it is currently larger than the expansion velocity of the cluster as a whole and so the net radial motion is toward us, one of a very small fraction of galaxies in the sky that seems to "violate" Hubble's Law. It is only a technical violation, really, as I talked about previously.

Some other galaxies in this same little area that are not to be missed: NGC 4216 is a pretty nearly-edge-on spiral about 4 degrees West of Markarian's Chain. The pair NGC 4762 and NGC 4754 is also a very nice target a few degrees east of M60, at the eastern edge of the group of Messier objects I've been describing. Four degrees South from M58 is a large, bright face-on spiral NGC 4535. This spiral has been a good target for finding Cepheids and has helped the Hubble Space Telescope establish a proper distance to the Virgo Cluster.
Just half a degree South from NGC 4535 is another beautiful spiral, NGC 4526, reminiscent of the Sombrero Galaxy with its prominent dust lane and bright central region. This one is famous for hosting an elusive Type Ia supernova in 1994, a type of explosion that is an extremely important brightness standard used in distance determination.

Before I move out of the Virgo Cluster region of the constellation Virgo, I should point out a very nice sky chart of the "cup" of Virgo and the cluster galaxies within it. Now for a few more highlight galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. Next up is NGC 4527, a nearly edge-on spiral reminiscent of Andromeda but about 20 times further away on the near side of the cluster. Right next to it on the sky is NGC 4536, but distance estimates seem to put this one on the far side of the cluster, about 70 million light years away (a distance obtained thanks to a bright type Ia supernova, 1981b, which also made this a target for the Hubble Space Telescope years later). These two galaxies are so close together in the sky that they would fit within a full moon angular diameter, and they are found about 4 degrees Northwest of Porrima (the vertex of the cup), just across on the north side of the Celestial Equator.

Nearby, just a couple of degrees East of this pair, we find the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4636, recently a target of the Chandra X-Ray observatory. The goal was to measure the concentration of dark matter in the galaxy by measuring the detailed properties of the hot gas in the galactic halo. Turns out the dark matter is very concentrated, not a diffuse extended halo as some theories might predict, and this rules out a few models (such as that dark matter can diffuse outward or puff up like a halo of stars in a globular cluster or a galaxy). NGC 4636 isn't much to see visually, just an ordinary elliptical, almost perfectly spherically symmetric (but the X-rays tell a different story).

To finish off the bright galaxies in the Virgo cluster (in this constellation, anyway), we need to look several degrees to the East of the main body, about 22 degrees due Northeast from Spica, and there we find the bright spiral galaxy NGC 5566, a barred spiral with a ring of stars around the center. It is imaged here with a couple of fainter companion galaxies. There are still a few galaxies left to cover, though, and they are in a little group just South of Spica and north of Gamma Hydrae. Their membership in the Virgo cluster is on the iffy side, but some are at the right distance.

NGC 5247 is the most prominent of this group, a face-on grand design spiral about 50 million light years away, and just a couple of degrees to the West is a tilted 11th magnitude spiral about 90 million light years away (probably not a member of the cluster) known as NGC 5054. South of these two is a nearby spiral NGC 5068 only about 20 million light years away but rather faint for this distance, indicating it is a small galaxy. Finally, a little further south is another small member of the group, NGC 5084, seen in this gallery of Virgo galaxies.

Over near the Eastern end of Virgo, following the Celestial Equator east from Porrima about 45 degrees and just a few degrees north is the faint star 109 Virginis, marking one of Virgo's feet. Right next to this star is the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 5746. This is another galaxy that recently drew the attention of the Chandra X-Ray observatory. Chandra discovered a hot halo of gas surrounding this galaxy, which is a little unusual because most galaxies with hot halos have that gas due to vigorous star formation (and stellar explosions), but NGC 5746 shows a rather quiet history. Instead, the hot gas is actually gas from the intergalactic medium falling into this galaxy and heating up as it does so.

The final object I want to mention in Virgo is a frequently overlooked globular cluster, NGC 5634, just under 5 degrees due East from the bright star Syrma in the Southeast corner of Virgo near its border with Libra. Astronomers speculate that this globular cluster once belonged to the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, a small irregular galaxy currently being tidally ripped apart thanks to repeated passages through the disk of the Milky Way galaxy. This cluster is located in the extended tidal stream of the dwarf galaxy and also has a similar population of stars (and similar composition) to the clusters associated with this dwarf.

Weekend Trip

M*chelle and I went out of town for the weekend, thanks very much to a grandma who was willing to babysit the clan for 48 hours. We stayed at a nice hotel. We even got the first night comped thanks to a room mixup where they checked our room out to someone else at 9pm. At least we had the latch on the door so they didn't just barge in. We were just sitting on the bed watching "Juno" after a nice relaxing hour or so in a hot tub.

We had lots of good food, and we got to see lots of live music, which made M*chelle happy. Unfortunately, the place we went Saturday night to watch music started off ok. We got there 30 minutes before the show in a little open courtyard between two big buildings. There were about two dozen tables, and we sat in the front.

As time went on, more and more people showed up, and it was becoming abundantly clear there weren't going to be enough chairs and tables for everyone, so people just started standing in front of us. Oh well, I guess we have to stand for the show. Then it got so packed that we were like sardines. Our chairs were useful to have behind us so we could have a little bit of a buffer between the rest of the crowd on one side and also so we could sit between sets.

Fun, very loud show, and the crowd was fairly drunk and unruly. Me, I'd rather be on the couch watching a baseball game, but it was an interesting experience, definitely my first one in what effectively turned into a mosh pit.

This morning, it is back to reality with an 8am final. I didn't like taking them as a student, and I don't like giving them as a faculty member.

Talking Down to the Rubes

Several blogs have pointed to this story in the NY Times in which they send several food reviewers out into the hinterlands to pass judgement on the horrible chain restaurants that populate the areas where the rubes reside in the flyover states.

It is almost impossible not to hate such a snooty attitude. It's a shame, really, because the reporters who work for that paper still do very important work occasionally when their corporate editors allow them to do something besides research Obama's bowling technique.

Conspiracy Theory

So, a DC madam says that she has the goods on several Washington bigwigs (including members of Congress) who have used her escort service to acquire the services of hookers, and she'll rat them all out rather than go to jail. Then she turns up dead, and it looks like a suicide.

Pardon me for thinking something's fishy and we'll never know what. If I were her, I would do a "Tom Cruise in 'The Firm'" thing and put all of the damning information out there in a safe place and make sure everyone knew that if I turned up dead, that information would find its way out. Otherwise, the boat would just keep right on sailing forever and never find a harbor.

Maybe she did this. I guess we'll know soon enough. Link via the always linky Sideshow.

Survivor

I haven't been posting here about Survivor this season because I've been getting my fix of Survivor analysis via podcast. Still, I have to say here that this has been a very entertaining and unpredictable season so far. Last night's episode was a master class in using an immunity idol to completely change the numbers in a game. Even though there are still five more people to go, I suspect Amanda may have earned herself a million dollars last night and atoned for her horrible performance in the China season at the final tribal council. CBS is doing an excellent job this season of providing lots of extra clips on the Survivor website, too. It's a win-win because I get extra content, and they finally get a way to force me to watch a 15 or 30 second commercial every once in a while (but I can still mute it).

Aftermath

Well, my student from the other day who pissed me off (one of a couple) finally came to see me face-to-face, and rather than report on the whole conversation in detail on a public blog, I'll just say that the encounter played out in the way I suspected it would.

There is justice in this big universe of ours, after all.

Oh, and if this student does end up taking the final, I'll be making a Xerox copy of it before returning it, just to be on the safe side. I smelled a rat on this one, but it turned out not to make a difference because the overall grade was so awful that trying to get a little tricky here and there wasn't really sufficient. It was like trying to hide an ace up your sleeve when you're down $500 in a nickel/dime limit poker game.

FTP

I've played enough ring games over the past couple of months that I built up a bunch of bonus "Full Tilt Points". The only problem is that these are almost exclusively used to enter tournaments or satellites to tournaments, and I really had to swear off tournaments. They just take too much of a consecutive-hours time commitment.

Ring games are much easier and better because I can get up or sit down at any time, at least if I'm willing to play hold 'em. Lately, I've been playing a lot of Omaha Hi/Lo, and that has actually been more profitable than Hold 'Em. Six weeks ago, my bankroll was at about $240 and slowly climbing, but I guess I changed the way I was playing or something because I started going down despite earning bonus money.

It is probably because I tried to multitable for a while to earn cash bonuses quickly within the three-week window they provided. I earned about $160 in cash bonuses over three weeks, but my bankroll actually went DOWN to about $200 in that time. It actually dipped as low as $120 before I seriously tightened up my game, and maybe now I've recovered a style of play that will let me slowly build up again. Playing only one or two tables at a time works best for me because I can take notes on others.

Or maybe I'm just on another lucky streak. Either way, thanks to Omaha and Hold 'Em (mostly Omaha), I'm up to around $170 again. I think the Omaha players are the weakest and easiest to exploit, but there is SO much luck involved that my bankroll will fluctuate wildly if I don't play super-tight (which means I miss lots of opportunities to draw). I've probably netted about $120 in profit from Omaha over the last month while losing at least that much in Hold 'Em.

I think I've figured out what was wrong with my Hold 'Em game, because I'm on a pretty good week-long positive streak now. In the meantime, I've been earning bonus points that you can either use to enter tournaments (for cash) or trade for merchandise. A year ago, I bought a regular deck of cards with my bonus points. This time, I spent a lot more points to buy a two-deck set of plastic cards. They just came yesterday and are very nice, definitely worth more than my $50 buy-in from a few years ago.

Grade Grumbles

When a student comes to me to assert that I've made an honest mistake in my grading, for example, misinterpreting an answer or missing something important that deserves more credit, etc, then I really do listen with an open mind and welcoming attitude. I know it is intimidating to go to a faculty office to argue about grades for some, and to be fair, I don't want to discourage anyone.

With that said, here's what pisses me off: A student emails or initiates a conversation about a grade with the direct or indirect statement that I have somehow been unfair or unethical or incompetent because I took off too many points. 90% of these conversations end with no change of grade because nothing is deserved, and the attitude seems to be just a bargaining chip to try to get some points.

I look at all grade revision situations the same way. I look at it fresh and see if I gave a reasonable score. If I took off too few points, I will never adjust a grade downward. If I took off too many, I will revise to the new grade as needed. Simple as that. And I tell students this after I hand back almost every exam, so much that I'm sure they're tired of hearing the script. And if I end up giving points back, I almost always apologize for making the mistake in the first place and inconveniencing the student.

My favorite is the student who can't be bothered to attend class to pick up an exam and so shows up at my office while I'm busy, asking me to dig up an exam from 3+ weeks ago that she just remembered she didn't get back. And then she wants a full explanation of all points taken off. I tell her that the full solutions are posted on the web, please look at those and then we can talk about your dispute. Nope, not good enough, this is unfair and you took off way too many points and you need to talk to me about this right now.

Ok, fine. Here. This part is incorrect, and that's about 1/3 of the entire solution. From there, you made another mistake and completely made up this equation, which doesn't represent any real situation and has never been a part of any homework. That's about another 1/3 of the solution. Here is a simple arithmetic error worth a few percentage points of the problem. And then your answer is about two orders of magnitude off from what you could have estimated from the beginning.

And I only took off 40% of the points.

If you are satisfied, I strongly recommend you now go download the solution, which I told you to do in the first place, and study it before the final exam.

Is there anything else I can help you with, given my "go to hell" facial expression? No? Thanks, see you later.

Just Shut Up and Write

You know, I kind of like the idea of the government getting a bunch of gifted speculative fiction authors together to bounch unconventional ideas around about how to solve society's problem, but ummm, I think you have to remember to mix in a dash of morality and ethics into your crazy ideas so that you don't end up sounding like Larry Niven:

Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.

“The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren’t going to pay for anything anyway,” Niven said.

“Do you know how politically incorrect you are?” Pournelle asked.

“I know it may not be possible to use this solution, but it does work,” Niven replied.

Oh please please please, Mr. Niven, won't you please go on Larry King and talk about how much you would love it if John McCain were president?

Please?

I'll buy all of your books. In hardback.

(Link from Sadly, No!)

ER

Two nights ago, about about 330 in the morning, I woke up to M*chelle wracked with pain somewhere in her guts. Scared the hell out of both of us. I didn't know if it was her appendix or a kidney stone or what, but it was extremely painful for her. By about 4am, I had convinced her that we should err on the side of caution and go to the ER.

There are two ER's I was considering. There's a downtown ER that we have been to a few times before. There's often a good wait there, but they will see people quickly if they are in a lot of pain. You have to wait if you are coming to get antibiotics for a cold or something. There's also a relatively new branch hospital near us, maybe five minutes closer, so I decided to go there.

I walked in to the ER lobby and two receptionists were chatting. They stopped after a second or two and looked at me. I said, "My wife is out there in the car writhing in pain, something in her abdomen, and we're not sure what to do."

They looked at me blankly like I had just recited Maxwell's Equations to them or derived the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. Finally, the one nearest me spoke, "Ok, well, bring her on in and we'll get her checked in."

Am I stupid for expecting them to have an orderly or something to go out there and help her into a wheelchair? For there to be a triage nurse at the front desk to come out and see what's going on? I don't know, so I wheel her in, and they take their time checking us in and getting all of our information as though we were here for a check-up at 430am. After that's all done, we get to see our first medical professional, the triage nurse.

She asks several questions, starts a history and a chart, takes blood pressure and pulse and then hands us off to someone who leads us down a quiet, deserted hallway to one of the rooms. There doesn't seem to be any activity here, no people roaming the halls, no noise really at all, so I figure it is a quiet night and we'll be seen quickly.

430am becomes 515am, and M*chelle has changed into a hospital gown, peed in a cup (very dark, probably blood) and generally writhed in pain on the bed for 30 minutes. The nurse comes in and offers to put in an IV for pain control. M*chelle won't have any of that. I explained to the nurse that M*chelle didn't even get pain meds for giving birth, she's so afraid of needles.

Ok, the nurse leaves with a weird expression on her face, but then THIRTY MORE MINUTES PASS and nothing happens. We first arrived at 430am with my wife in excruciating pain and it is now 545am. Fortunately, the pain has been gradually getting better for her, and to be fair, the hospital did offer morphine while she waited, after being there for about 45 minutes.

I go down the hall to the nurse's station and very respectfully ask what the delay is. The nurse explains that a new doctor is due to come on shift at 6am, and we'll be seen after that. The doctor on the night shift didn't want to start a new patient so close to the end of the night (this would've been at 445am after we were checked in), and so in the interest of continuous care, they decided to wait for the shift change.

I was dumbstruck.

Seriously, what the fuck?

I said, "That sounds kinda silly. We've been waiting for an hour because we are waiting for a shift change? Isn't this the emergency room?" At least, that's what should've come out of my mouth. Instead, I said, "So we'll be seen at 6, is that what you're saying?"

She said that we would be seen after the doctor comes on at six.

I (really) said, "I don't mean to be difficult here, but we've been here over an hour, and as I've said to you already, my wife is pretty freaked out by hospitals. It is an indication of how much pain she's in that she's even here. I really hope she is seen soon, because otherwise, I think we're going to leave."

The nurse said, "It's just ten more minutes before six. Please try to stay, and the doctor will be here."

So I went back to the room and we waited while nothing happened until 605am. I walked back down to the nurse's station and said, "Ok, what do we have to sign or do to leave? We're not waiting any longer. I gave you ten minutes and then another five on top of that."

She said, "I only said you would be seen after the doctor got on shift, I can't control when he comes to see you. If you leave, it will not be in your best interests. It will be against medical advice."

I said, "I appreciate that. We're leaving. Please do what you need to do or tell who you need to tell."

She came down to the room and had Michelle sign a paper that said we were leaving against medical advice. I said, "Do we get to know the results of the urine test?"

The nurse said, "No, only the doctor can discuss that with you."

M*chelle and I were both thinking (but didn't say), "Oh, so you can start an IV with morphine and order M*chelle not to drink any water, but we need a doctor her to talk to her about her pee?" M*chelle signed the paper and by 610, we were out the door. The pain had gotten more manageable, and M*chelle was able to sleep again once we were home.

She went to her regular doctor in the morning and had a urine sample done in about 15 minutes total. She has some kind of infection in her bladder or urinary tract or something. She may have passed a small kidney stone. Hard to say, but now she's on antibiotics, and they're waiting on lab results for more information about the infection, and she hasn't had any pain since then (nearly 48 hours now).

I'm hoping the little hospital we went to contacts us at some point about billing so that we can ask who to talk to about evaluating what went on there. I can't wait for them to try to bill us for the urine test. I'll say, "Oh, sure I'll pay it if you can tell me the results, which we never got BECAUSE WE WAITED 90 MINUTES IN AN ER ROOM DURING A DEAD TIME OF INACTIVITY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND NEVER SAW A DOCTOR." It would be nice if someone were held accountable. At least we'll never return to that ER.

Linkage

You know why Reverend Wright is "bad" for the candidacy of Barack Obama? Because the traditional media says he's bad and because they say he's important. Without Obama to bring into it, Wright is just another black pastor the media and everyone else can safely ignore. With Obama, he sells papers, and that's the point, to hell with anything else.

Perhaps the media will start following McCain's big supporter, John Hagee, around and quote him at every opportunity, talking about how awful it is for McCain that Hagee was a bunch of stupid beliefs.

Oh wait, sorry, that last part was a fantasy I sometimes have of a world in which we have a liberal media instead of a corporate media that spins facts in McCain's favor at every opportunity.

Stimulus

Found this via StumbleUpon, and I thought it was appropriate with our big rebate checks coming out soon:

Dave Barry on the Economic Stimulus Payment

"This year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format:

"Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
"A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

"Q. Where will the government get this money?
"A. From taxpayers.

"Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
"A. Only a smidgen.

"Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
"A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

"Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
"A. Shut up."

Baseball

The timing was pretty good, and the tickets were fairly cheap, so I took M*chelle, 18-year-old J*stin, 13-year-old C*dy and 4-year-old Daniel to the Rangers game on Sunday afternoon. We left 15-year-old Ashl*y home to babysit little 2-year-old Obi-Wan (Ben), and that went well. We had done some diaper changing practice earlier in the week, and she probably is perfectly fine with the little ones as long as her two brothers aren't around to cause trouble. She was happy for the responsibility and the chance to earn a little money.

Anyway, it was pretty cold for the game, mid-50's with a strong North wind, but we were sheltered from the wind in the stands so that we could hardly feel it. It was comfortable unless we walked out on the open concourse, and then it was very blustery. The game went well. Against the odds, the Rangers won big and hit a few home runs. Daniel was pretty bored for much of the game. He's at an age where he gets bored very easily. He's starting to complain that school is boring because he doesn't get to do what he wants (which is to build and play with his wooden train tracks or cut pictures out of toy catalogs or watch a Thomas DVD), which is new for him.

So I spent a good part of the game keeping him amused and had to kind of ignore the other boys. They seemed to enjoy themselves, and I bribed them with some money to go get food. M*chelle pretty much hated it. The only thing she liked (big Strawberry Margarita) was like twelve bucks, and she wasn't impressed by the food. There is some good food there, but you have to experiment to find something that suits your tastes. There are a lot of choices down on the main level (we were in the upper deck behind home plate, but the up/down escalators were 50 feet from our seats).

At one point during the game, Daniel says in that loud four-year-old voice that carries 100 yards, "Look, Dad! Why are those three black guys down on the field?" Well, turns out he meant the umpires who were wearing all black, which we explained to him very loudly for all around to hear. M*chelle won't be going back, but she was a trooper and gave it a shot, and I hope to take the older boys again. Daniel liked it enough that I'm sure he'll ask to go again if he knows I'm going, but he'll be bored stiff if he does go. I'll have to sneak away to the ball game when he's off at grandma's next time or something.

In other news, M*chelle and I are going to be able to get away for two whole nights this coming weekend. That is the most peace and quiet and time away from home we've had since we went to Port Aransas last January, I think. We're looking forward to good food and a quiet hotel room with a jacuzzi. It will celebrate the end of audit season for her and the end of the Spring semester for me (almost, I'll still have finals week to go when I return).

Celebrity Jeopardy

Maybe my favorite skit of all time from the SNL shows of the Will Ferrell era was "Celebrity Jeopardy" with Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek hosting various celebrity impersonations (always Sean Connery). Now hulu.com has a couple of these skits (here is the other one) in their archives. It's gold, Jerry! Gold!

Principle

In a way, I agree with Hunter over on Daily Kos, that Obama caving in to appear on a Fox News program is a mistake. On the other hand, I don't really care, and I think most people who vote don't really care. As bad as Fox News is, they're not THAT much worse than typical coverage on any of the other major networks, which says a lot more about how bad the traditional media is rather than how not-bad Fox is.

And not going on Fox sends signals to stupid wingnuts that Obama is somehow being held captive by the loony left and kept from appearing on a "rational, balanced" news network like Fox. Enough Republicans are willing to vote for Obama that I would like to see him actively court them. Let's transform the map and turn this into a 50-state election and rout those fucking wingnuts out of Congress.

And, as a proud member of the loony left, let me just say for the record that I vehemently, angrily oppose Obama conceding anything to Fox. If he does this, he's abandoning people like me!

There, I'm sure the wingnuts will like that.