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A Picture of 70
August 30, 2007 02:57 PM
I am doing this to memorialize my 70th birthday. It is my first picture with my shirt off. Actually, I take my shirt off often, but I don't like people staring at me, which they often do. If you saw me in my clothes you would not guess how much muscle I carry beneath them. This is at 196 pounds, just about a perfect weight for me now.
I had no one to take it as I spent my birthday alone and I did not have my camera. So, I shot my reflection with my iPhone in the gym at Punta Esmeralda, where my place here in Puerto Vallarta is located.
It is all a bit strange, but I felt it was important to note how I look on my 70th and this was the only way to do it. For me, 70 is a nice age; I can do whatever I want and feel wonderful. And I have learned a bit over the years.
The picture follows...
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LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Sports · Comments (9)
70
Ironically, I spent my 70th birthday here alone in Puerto Vallarta. My children had wanted a family reunion for my birthday, but I had to come down here to close on my property, which has been delayed but will take place tomorrow. WW flew home so she would not have to make the hard drive.
I spent part of the afternoon at this pool in our complex watching dolphins play in the bay.
My daughter Stacy sent this lovely email for my birthday:
This day is a fine day, it is your birthday! Not an ordinary day by any means, you have done well in your life and have truely found how to live your life comfortably and fun. At your age many look at life on the front page of the newspaper delivered to their door or on the T.V. from the comfort of an arm chair. Not you, you are still active and in full charge of your mental and physical being. I am looking at a living role model, not a made up hollywood superhero, just my hero and someone I very much look up to and aspire to be like. Many people say that turning 70 is an accomplishment, not unless it is done in the way you have turned 70, you did this gracefully and with style. Nobody ever believes me when I tell them your age. In the whimsical words of Billy Crystal, "you look Marvelous". Today you can look to the heavens and imagine a cake using the stars as your candles it will be safer this way. Make a wonderful wish and may it come true.I wish I could be with on this fine and very special day, know that you are in my mind and in my heart. I love you with all my heart and wish you many many more birthdays.
I love that girl and am proud of her.
Bandwidth
I fixed the bandwidth problem. There is a monthly limit of 40MB, which we exceeded. I upped it to 50MB. Even that may not fix it. Movable Type tops out at 100MB. It may be time to move to some other blogging system that does not have the comment problems we have experienced. When I return from Mexico, I will look into all this.
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Peacock for Lunch
August 28, 2007 07:46 PM
As I was eating lunch at La Petite, a restaurant here in Puerto Vallarta operated by a French chef, I was joined by this peacock who came up to my table.
I am eating only from 1 to 2 meals a day while here. There are many fine restaurants, but it still isn't the sort of food that WW and I make. I am not as active here and I do find that my eating matches my activity extremely well. When it may fail is when you are inactive, so I take the precaution of less frequent eating. I don't try to limit calories, just how often I eat.
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In Nature's Casino
August 27, 2007 07:48 PM
A friend sent me this link In Nature's Casino (subscription required) to an article by Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball and a good writer who gets the details right or close.
The problem with the title and at least some of the book's foundation is that Nature is far wilder than any casino. Nassim Taleb has pointed this out in his book The Black Swan and an even elementary analysis of the probabilities of a card game or a roulette wheel makes it clear that there are no extremums of the magnitude that occur in Nature or even any aspect of real life. Barry Bonds could never exist if the odds were those of a casino. Nor could Hurricane Andrew, or the Pinatuba eruption, or Vesuvis. Using a casino model to think about real life misleads. You never expect the really big moves or events to happen. But, they happen often enough and are of such magnitude that nothing else really matters.
To Lewis' main point, it is really not that hard to define instruments that cover extremal events, I did it with the Extremal Security (patent pending).
LINK · Uncertainty · Comments (1)
Sweet Fruits
Nassim Taleb sent me a few thoughts and observations on fruits . His historical observations are especially interesting.
I sent him this reply: It is true that fruits are far sweeter than in times past and sweeter here than in Europe. I am in Mexico right now and I find that fruits are as sweet here as in the US. Perhaps that is because they sell so much product to the US market these days.
The process for producing sweetness and tenderness is selective breeding, as you note, and selection for neotony, the retention of juvenile traits in the adult. Ah, it seems that is true of people these days as well. Many fail to achieve adulthood. On the other hand, humans evolved a form of neotony and retain their juvenile traits of playfulness and pleasure longer than chimps and other animals. It was an advantage for our large-brained, highly social species to retain aspects of youthfulness.
Seedless fruits, watermelon for example, are grown by selecting for neotony. Vegetables are going through the same process; strong tastes and texture are being selectively bred out of modern versions of vegetables.
I suspect the phyto-nutrients, often the source of strong tastes and colors, are being lost through this process.
LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Meals · Comments (0)
Carbs on Display
August 26, 2007 09:30 PM
I have noticed that Mexicans here in Puerto Vallarta are a bit heavy, with a sort of uniform mild obesity that seems to affect a high percentage of the populace. On the other hand, I have seen no extreme cases of obesity of the kind you can encounter every day in most American cities.
Wandering into a grocery store gave me part of the explanation. Here is the display I encountered. It was staggering to see in person. My iPhone only captures part of the towers and towers (at least 8 of them) of donuts, breads, sweet breads, cakes, cookies, and other products that pass for food.
LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Meals · Comments (0)
Shopping and Gathering
In my experience, a woman is a far better shopper than a man. My wife can shop until I drop and I can never remember where the last dress she tried on is located in the store.
So, I found this research interesting and entirely in line with evolutionary reasoning Gathering is Shopping.
It is especially interesting that women were 9% more accurate in depicting the angle of departure to the market location, since this geometric representation is more a male's model of space than a woman's. Had the research asked what stalls are near the location or a sequence of stalls to pass leading to the destination I think women would have done even better.
As to a preference for pink in the female brain, the answer is fascinating; check the article for the evolutionary explanation.
Speaking of shopping, I find that the cuban cigars are not better than the Nigaraguan cigars that I favor. They are expensive even here in Mexico and harsh.
LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (3)
Cellular Autophagy
August 24, 2007 09:16 AM
T. J. Hall sent a link to an article describing the relationship between nutrient status and autophagy that you should read. I have been reading about the same process in a review of Cancer and Aging that I will comment on soon.
Autophagy (self eating or consumption) is a crucial process in the cell. The cell consumes and recycles damaged internal material; this is an energy sparing process and important for scavenging old and damaged material within the cell. Autophagy is an important element in energy management and damage repair. The energy and protein content of damaged material is used to fuel rebuilding and cellular energetics.
The process seems to be triggered when the energy content of the cell declines so that the cell literally consumes itself. It goes after the damaged materials first, so there is a strong link between repair of damaged tissues and fasting or low energy state in the cell. So, it you are over-fed you down regulate cellular repair. You want to go hungy episodically to turn on cellular autophagy and repair those damaged tissues.
This makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary perspective. When the energy in the cell declines, the cell eats the damaged tissues for energy and that recycles the damaged tissues to make new material. The result is a healthier cell. It is efficient for the cell to turn to damaged materials first as a source of energy, thus sparing healthy tissues. So, in addition to fat, damaged internal materials of the cell are a source of energy. A fat person has a lot of damaged tissues inside cells and never recycles and repairs them because there is too much energy in the cell.
Of course, exercise has the same effect because it lowers energy stores in the cells and also because it damages muscle cells, causing them to repair themselves through autophagy.
I am in Puerto Vallarta moving into my new house; with the long drive down and getting set up I have not had time to say much on the blog, but I felt this was important enough as a subject to take a moment to tell you something about this crucial process.
LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (4)
De Vany's Law of Home Runs
August 16, 2007 10:50 AM
I decided to make my home run paper easier to locate by putting a link in the right margin where it can be downloaded. It has been downloaded quite a bit and I keep getting emails inquiring where it can be found on the site. This is a prepublication version of the paper quite close to the version that will appear in Economic Inquiry, a journal I once co-edited. It is now edited by Preston McAfee who has just taken it over from Tom Saving and Dennis Jantzen.
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Barry Bonds Leads in Pitches Taken
Barry Bonds leads both leagues in what you might think of as an obscure statistic: percentage of pitches taken. He takes almost 70% of the pitches thrown to him. There are two reasons for this: he is one of the most disciplined hitters, and he gets more bad pitches than most hitters.
Remember all the claims about "roid rage" from steroids? There is only a little credibility to them; heavy steroid users do have less mental control. This would be a seldom mentioned downside of steroid use by hitters. We know Barry is not taking steroids now since he has not tested positively for steroids and never has. His unbroken discipline at the plate, even when he was pushing this year for the career record favors the hypothesis that he did not take steriods.
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Carmina Burana and the first biological weapon
August 15, 2007 09:45 AM
I have been looking through parts of Michael Kennedy's A Brief History of Disease, Science, & Medicine. It is quite a tour and I am enjoying the ride.
A couple of anecdotes from his amazing book:
1. Carmina Burana by Carl Orff (a favorite of mine) is a composition setting to music the poems of the Lollards, a group that challenged the authority of the Church after the Black Death of 1346. They objected to the sale of offices and pardons by the Church. They were supressed, but the Lollards reemerged with Martin Luther.
2. Around the same time, Muslim Tartars fighting Italian merchants in Crimea invented biological warfare by catapulting corpses of plague victims into the citadel where the Italians had taken refuge. Some things are not so new as they seem.
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Bioidentical Hormones?
I read this interesting article in this week's eSkeptic issue.
This is a "therapy" I would not do myself. And how many times do you see the claim that Big Pharma is blocking this or that alternative treatment? It reminds me of the old claims that the Big Automakers were blocking a carburator that would deliver 50 miles per gallon. Just yesterday I received a magazine that claimed the FDA was blocking known cancer therapies. I have no love for the FDA, but the level of cynicism and destructiveness required for it to act this way are unthinkable. It is time the personal testimonies of stars count for less than the science. Harriet Hall's article is a worthy debunking of the genre.
In this week’s eSkeptic we present Dr. Harriet Hall’s most recent column in Skeptic magazine (vol 13. no. 2) on bioidentical hormone treatment which has been touted by Suzanne Somers on Larry King Live but looked at skeptically by the mainstream medical community. In this column Dr. Hall, Skeptic’s resident expert on all matters medical, examines the evidence carefully.
Bioidentical Hormones
Estrogen is Good. No, It’s Bad. No, It’s Good
by Harriet Hall, M.D. (a.k.a. The SkepDoc)Menopausal women used to have no escape from the sufferings of the dreaded “Change.” In the mid-20th century, they were offered a reprieve. They could take a pill to replace their missing hormones, and feel back to normal. That was good in itself, but then they found that replacing estrogens could prevent osteoporosis and hip fractures. We knew there were some risks, but we thought the benefits outweighed the risks. Some doctors recommended all menopausal women take estrogens to “stay young.” Then there was more good news: evidence seemed to show that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) could reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, and cancer in postmenopausal women.
The optimism came to a screeching halt in 2002, when the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study said, “OOPS! It looks like hormones do more harm than good.” Thousands of women were scared into going off their hormones. Sales of Premarin dropped from $2 billion to $880 million. Some of these women tried other remedies and then went back to Premarin because it was the only thing that worked for them. Doctors learned to prescribe more selectively, and sales are rising again.
Now all of a sudden hormones are being touted as a miracle cure for whatever ails you. Suzanne Somers has a new book, Ageless: The Naked Truth about Bioidentical Hormones, recommending everyone take supplemental hormones, even men. My local newspaper has been advertising seminars by an MD on hormones for menopause, weight control, and romance: “Skinny Hormones, Happy Hormones, Youthful Hormones and Sexy Hormones.” Anti-aging clinics and longevity doctors are promoting bioidentical estrogen and progesterone along with testosterone, thyroid, and human growth hormone to prevent aging. What’s going on?
The claim is that Premarin and Provera, the drugs studied in the WHI study, are artificial and harmful, while bioidentical hormones are natural and harmless. Some also claim that bioidenticals prevent aging and the diseases associated with aging and make people feel better than they ever did before. What is the evidence behind these claims?
First we need to understand what the WHI study really said. It has been misrepresented and misinterpreted. Media reports gave the impression that HRT was killing women. Not so. Over 10,000 person-years, women on estrogen plus progestin had 7 more coronary events, 8 more strokes, 8 more pulmonary emboli, and 8 more invasive breast cancers than women who didn’t take hormones; but they also had 6 fewer colorectal cancers and 5 fewer hip fractures, and the same number of deaths overall.So women weren’t dying because of HRT, but they were increasing their risk of some diseases while reducing their risk of others. Overall the risks exceeded the benefits. Current recommendations are to use HRT for a limited time only to control menopausal symptoms, and not to use it for disease prevention. Most of us think these recommendations will be altered in the future as we learn more about risk factors and genetic susceptibility. Meanwhile, we try to individualize advice: your doctor is more likely to recommend HRT if you are at very low risk of cardiovascular disease and at high risk of osteoporosis or colorectal cancer.
Evil Big Pharma Plot?
The bioidentical folks tell us that Premarin and Provera are unnatural and harmful substances cynically foisted on us by Big Pharma to make profits. They don’t seem to realize that all doctors are either women, married to women, or sons of women, who presumably are more concerned about women’s health than about Big Pharma profits, and that doctors have read all the same information they have. They recommend estrogens and progesterone from natural plant sources. Premarin comes from pregnant mare’s urine: that seems more natural to me, since we’re much more closely related to a horse, another mammal, than we are to a plant. And the plant isn’t used in a natural form; it’s used as the basis of laboratory synthesis. And there is a reason that we started giving women progestins like Provera instead of natural progesterone: natural progesterone is not absorbed well. Progestins were reliably absorbed and dosage easily controlled.
“Bioidentical” is not standard medical terminology. It’s their way of saying it is the same exact chemical compound found in the human body. But there are lots of different estrogenic compounds found in the body, including estriol, estradiol and estrone. Nothing we do is likely to replace all the estrogenic compounds in exactly the way they occur in the body. There are around 30 different estrogens in Premarin. One, equilin, is present in horses but not in women. Curiously, that “unnatural” element appears to be neuroprotective and is being studied as a possible treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. There’s no solid evidence that any supplemental mixture of hormones is ideal. Anything that has hormonal effects may have hormonal side effects, and for all we know good old Premarin and Provera may be less harmful than some other mixtures.
Compounding pharmacists make up the bioidentical remedies, often in the form of a cream. Advocates themselves recognize that there is inconsistency between pharmacies, and they may have tried two or three different compounders before they hit on one that seems to work consistently for them. In one survey, about a third of the compounded samples tested had substandard amounts of drugs. The FDA is concerned about the growing popularity of compounding and the need for better regulation.
There are hypothetical reasons to think “bioidentical” hormones should be superior to Premarin and Provera. But there are also hypothetical reasons to think that they may be no more effective and no safer. The only way to know for sure is to test them in a properly designed placebo-controlled trial. Until this is done, most of us feel more comfortable with the devil we know than the devil we don’t know.
What other options are there for hot flashes? Several other prescription drugs have been tried, including antidepressants, but they don’t work as well as estrogen and they all have side effects. A number of alternative natural remedies have been tried, from chasteberry to wild yam. According to The Natural Medicines Database there is insufficient evidence to support any of these but black cohosh, soy, and flaxseed; and these are only rated “possibly effective” and “possibly safe.” Black cohosh was the most promising — until a recent well-designed study found black cohosh no better than placebo.
Bioidentical Insanity
Suzanne Somers and others keep harping about “balancing” your hormones. I have difficulty understanding this concept. Hormones are complicated. There are lots of different estrogens; estrogen levels are higher early in the monthly cycle and progesterone peaks later in the cycle: if you graph them, you see that each follows a curve, and the ratio between estrogens and progesterone is constantly changing from day to day and hour to hour. So what can the bioidentical advocates mean when they say they are “balancing” your hormones?
I finally realized that they don’t have any idea what they’re “balancing.” When they do lab tests, they use salivary levels, which they think are more reliable (most endocrinologists disagree). Since they know the test only reflects one instant in time, they feel free to disregard it except as a rough starting point. Instead, they have the patient report any symptoms such as insomnia, dry skin, or lack of energy, interpret those symptoms as signs of unbalanced hormones, and adjust the dosage.
It would be bad enough if they stuck to menopause, but Somers recommends hormone regimens for every age group, including adolescents, and for both men and women.
This creates a scenario where wishful thinking and testimonials take precedence over science, where quackery can go hog wild. Patients get to obsess about every little ache and sniffle, doctors get to tweak their prescriptions, and if patients don’t improve, they just say the balance isn’t quite right yet and they try again. Lots of personal attention and caring. Certainty that they have the answer to all their problems. Enthusiasm over a new method. Oh, and they combine the hormone therapy with all sorts of diet and exercise advice, and with handfuls of supplement pills, detoxifications, homeopathic remedies, and of course the FaceMaster machine that Suzanne sells and uses regularly for electrical facelifts. If you’re still not feeling perfect, you can try going to sleep at 9 PM. And sleeping in total darkness. Or add some testosterone just for the heck of it. There’s always something more to try; there’s always a satisfying explanation for everything.The doctors who support these true believers are creating an elite following of self-absorbed, self-deluded, obsessive-compulsive health nuts. I suppose it’s nice for these people to have a hobby.
Can Hormones Prevent Aging?
Women produce estrogen until menopause, then they get old. Men produce less testosterone as they age. Maybe a lack of estrogen and testosterone is what makes them age. Maybe if we give them estrogen and testosterone, they will stay young. Maybe not.
Children drink milk and they are young. Adults don’t drink much milk, and they get old. Maybe a lack of milk is what makes them age. Maybe if we give them milk, they will stay young. Maybe not.The adult body is not the same as a child’s body. Milk gives some adults bloating and diarrhea because their body no longer makes the lactase it did in childhood. A 70-year old body is not the same as a 30-year old body: maybe hormones good for the 30-year old body are not so good for the 70-year old body.
In 1889, Brown Sequard injected himself with the crushed testicles of young dogs and guinea pigs. Early 20th century doctors transplanted goat glands. Patients in both treatments got wonderful results … which were later shown to be placebo effects. Anti-aging medicine remains a will o’ the wisp. I wish Suzanne Somers were right. I wish hormones were the answer. But the evidence just isn’t there.
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LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Uncertainty · Comments (4)
EFit Meals
August 14, 2007 11:00 AM
A few recent meals showing WW's touch on the EFit way of cooking. They are self-explanatory.
LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Meals · Comments (2)
Comments by readers on the last few posts
August 13, 2007 08:46 PM
I do enjoy the comments I get and am grateful for them as I do learn a great deal from them.
My guess on tennis players and their tummies seems to be confirmed by several commenters, a tennis coach and a Spaniard who knows what Nadal eats. Their diets will shorten their careers and leave a competitive edge to someone who takes the next step toward fitness by abandoning outmoded and incorrect advice from fitness experts.
As to Barry Bonds, I do not know if he ever took steroids or if he unknowingly took them, thinking they may have been flax seed oil. He has never tested positive. Even though his "trainer" had a protocol that included steroids, he has said Barry was not on that. My main point is that you cannot see what his critics seem to see in his statistics.
Too many people are seeing patterns where there is only randomness. Humans do that. It may have been adaptive in the evolutionary environment, which though complex did not approach the complexity we confront now. This is really a failing; a failure to see randomness rather than pattern. Nassim Taleb has written a nice book on this called Fooled by Randomness. This whole home run thing is a problem of being fooled by randomness.
Barry may or may not have taken steroids. His increased mass is easily attainable by someone who trains for mass and speed without steroids. I weighed just a bit less than he at the age of 65, though I have recently gone for more power to weight in my body composition. The decline of other athletes that is cited as evidence of steroid use is illusory. Aaron did not decline by much either. And nobody among older players trained like Barry. Moreover, there is not a shred of evidence that steroids alter aging patterns.
Journalists have to sell papers. Ted Williams was excoriated in the Boston press, largely by a single sports writer who later told Ted that he had to sell papers. This is one of the greatest and most disciplined and moral players ever to play the game. So, ignore the journalists. What do they know or care about but to sell papers.
Thus, where do we go for the "truth"? What do you want for truth? You seldom will get it when things are as variable as home run hitting is. The truth is that we can't see patterns in the data that confirm any belief and yet, if we are eager enough, we can see things that confirm any belief you want to have.
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Tennis Players with Tummies
I have begun my quest to become a good tennis player. I haven't played in years, so I think as a soon-to-be 70 year old it is time to try to take up tennis. I like to take up a new sport now and then. WW likes it too and we can play for years together.
Naturally, I have several books on tennis by now and have subscribed to the tennisplayer.net site. My top spin forehand is beginning to work. It is fun to watch the ball drop as it goes over the net. And I can hit it almost as hard as I would like to, well not quite yet but getting there.
The tennisplayer.net site has a wealth of technical information and great film clips of tennis strokes. Of course, I love this technical stuff. Watching the Tennis Channel and going to the site brought me to a suprising conjecture or tentative conclusion: most tennis players have a bit of a tummie. They may be a bit too fat to play at the highest level of which they may be capable. They are unquestionably fit and highly skilled. The best modern players aer beyond the best of the past, or so I think. This is because of new tennis technology, particularly racket and shoe design.
But, when Federer or even Roddick hits a forehand and the shirt flies up you see a tummie that ought not to be there on an elite athlete. And their skin is a bit smooth, showing less than optimal definition, implying a bit of subcutaneous fat. Djokovic, number 3 in ATP rankings, took his shirt off after a match to throw it to the crowd and there was that same slightly soft tummie.
So, why is this so? Am I just wrong and is this slight tummie a sign of optimal body compostion for a tennis player? I recall that when Ivan Lendl was a top player, but still below his eventual dominance his advisors consulted Michael Colgan of the Colgan Institute (his Institute was the one that rated my biological age at 32 quite some years ago now). Dr. Colgan told Lendl to lose 5 pounds of body fat. He did, and the rest is history. Lendl moved to Number One for a period of time until Sampras pushed everybody aside.
What did Cogan have in mind? It is body composition and its effect on power to weight ratio. This is a topic I discussed before and it is well established for elite college wrestlers that the power to weight ratio of the best wrestlers is superior to lesser ranked wrestlers. I also documented Lance Armstrong's progress in power output and power to weight ratio. Some other numbers for Lance: His maximum aerobic power (MA) divided by fat mass was 49.5 in 1999, up from 42.74 in 1997. This was a consequence of going from a body weight of 79.5 kg to 79.7 while dropping 1.6 kg of fat. Put another way, his lean body mass went from 67.9 kg to 69.6 kg. So he gained 2 kg of lean mass while he lost 1.6 kg of fat. He continued progress in this direction through the later part of his career and improved MAP as well.
A more dramatic improvement was shown by Gary Holmes whose fat mass dropped from 29.7 kg to 11.7 kg. This alone increased his max power to weight ratio from 4.09 to 4.81 watts per kg. Similar improvements would be likely for pro tennis players.
Given the nature of tennis, a rest-burst primarily FT activity, why do the players have that little tummie? Have you seen what they eat? I don't know their diets, but you can see them drinking various sugar-laden (maybe polymers, but still high glycemic) drinks and eating bananas and such during a match. Beyond that I can't say because I have not read anything of their diets. It seems likely though, that they are into the same kind of poor eating of starches and high glycemic foods and drinks as runners and cyclists because that is what the "fitness" industry, coaches, and consultants recommends.
I doubt that this is right for tennis and it surely has an adverse effect on body composition and thus power to weight ratio. The time between points, sets, games, and matches is ample time for FT energy sources to be regenerated. The source for the regeneration is fat. Each player carries thousands of calories in fat, easily enough to play a 5 hour match. Trying to pick up quick energy during a match with foods that raise insulin adversely affects the blood sugar supply to the brain and alters body composition unfavorably. I don't think it is a good idea.
LINK · Sports · Comments (5)
More on the US temperature data problem: it is all over the world
August 12, 2007 12:31 PM
Steve McIntyre has responded to comments on climate blogs regarding the errors in Y2K and station "corrections" and what this means for US and global temperatures here. It is a thorough and reasoned discussion of the issue. More transparency in data and data corrections and less of saying "it doesn't matter" would be a healthy response in the climate research community.
LINK · Uncertainty · Comments (2)
John Lott Discusses Freedomnomics on C-SPAN
I almost forgot to mention that John will discuss his terrific book, Freedomnomics, on C-SPAN at 11:00 am EDT. The interview repeats at midnight and the booktv site has the full schedule for subsequent replays.
Go see it, the book is wonderfully ingenious, clearly written, and the balance of evidence and analysis makes John one of the formidable economists in the public policy arena.
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Climate Audit Finds a Big Error in Temperature Data
August 11, 2007 12:36 PM
I have followed Steve McIntyre's Climate Audit site for some time. I referred readers to an earlier post by Steve showing the bizarre locations of some temperature gauges that record data for NASA and others.
Steve has recently been working on the NASA temperature data and finds that when they are corrected for a Y2K glitch (there is more to it than that) the record hottest years change. 1934 rather than 1998 goes into the lead and there are other changes as well. Here is Steve's post on the old ranking and the corrected on The Historical Temperature Rankings.
DailyTech already has an article detailing the Y2K bug and how it was detected in the NASA series by Steve.
This is a developing topic that is not likely to receive much media attention. Slowly, climate modelers are being forced to make the data publically available, as has been the practice in economics for some time.
LINK · Uncertainty · Comments (2)
Comparing Aaron, Bonds, and Everyone Else
August 10, 2007 02:21 PM
I used lifetime hitting statistics to look at all players who played MLB from 1871 to 2004 to see how Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds, and all other players stacked up.
The statement sum g ab h hr hrhit hrab yrs startyr endyr is a Stata command that summarizes, in order, games, at bats, hits, home runs, home runs per hit, home runs per at bat, years played, the starting year and ending year of the player's career or 2004, whichever occurs first.
. sum g ab h hr hrhit hrab yrs startyr endyrVariable | Obs Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
-------------+--------------------------------------------------------
g | 16208 271.6803 451.0802 1 3562
ab | 16208 777.2142 1592.251 0 14053
h | 16208 203.7318 448.6123 0 4256
hr | 16208 14.22378 47.41726 0 755
hrhit | 12747 .0389471 .0706693 0 1
-------------+--------------------------------------------------------
hrab | 14733 .0079549 .0163393 0 .5
yrs | 16208 4.627962 5.025919 0 35
startyr | 16208 1946.452 38.18067 1871 2004
endyr | 16208 1951.08 38.8478 1871 2004. sum g ab h hr hrhit hrab yrs startyr endyr if namelast=="Aaron" & namefirst=="Han
> k"Variable | Obs Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
-------------+--------------------------------------------------------
g | 1 3298 . 3298 3298
ab | 1 12364 . 12364 12364
h | 1 3771 . 3771 3771
hr | 1 755 . 755 755
hrhit | 1 .2002122 . .2002122 .2002122
-------------+--------------------------------------------------------
hrab | 1 .0610644 . .0610644 .0610644
yrs | 1 22 . 22 22
startyr | 1 1954 . 1954 1954
endyr | 1 1976 . 1976 1976. sum g ab h hr hrhit hrab yrs startyr endyr if namelast=="Bonds" & namefirst=="Bar
> ry"Variable | Obs Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
-------------+--------------------------------------------------------
g | 1 2716 . 2716 2716
ab | 1 9098 . 9098 9098
h | 1 2730 . 2730 2730
hr | 1 703 . 703 703
hrhit | 1 .2575092 . .2575092 .2575092
-------------+--------------------------------------------------------
hrab | 1 .0772697 . .0772697 .0772697
yrs | 1 18 . 18 18
startyr | 1 1986 . 1986 1986
endyr | 1 2004 . 2004 2004
The average number of games played is 271 for all players. Aaron played 3298 and Bonds 2714 (through 2004). Both are far above the MLB average. They are 4 or 5 standard deviations above the mean (nothing is normal with exceptional talent).
Aaron played 22 years, Bonds was in MLB 18 years in 2004 and will have played 21 years at the end of this season. The average for all players is just 4.6. Again, Aaron and Bonds are way above the average, in fact they are so far above that they are 6 to 7 standard deviations above the mean. But, you should know by now that nothing is normal here (the normal distribution would say this is an impossible feat).
The average player (there is no such player, this is just a phrase that leads to poor thinking) had 777 at bats, Aaron had 12364 and Bonds 9098, somewhat behind Aaron and both are far beyond the mean.
Hits, home runs, and the other statistics can be read from the tables. Aaron had about 1000 more hit than Bonds. They are both 9 or more standard deviations above the mean for all players. Nothing Normal once again.
14 career home runs is average, but Hammerin' Hank got his famous 755 and Bonds had 703 in 2004 and has since gone to 756 last I heard.( I have been out riding and have not kept up.) This means Aaron is 15.75 standard deviations above the mean of all players. Bonds is 14.65 std above the mean at 703 and 15.78 std above the mean at his record 756. They are both so far above the mean that their achievements would not be matched in millions of years of baseball if home run hitting were a normal feat. They are impossible, but they exist. So, get over any thinking about norms of home run hitting.
Bonds' home runs per at bat are only a little higher than Aaron's being 0.077 versus 0.061. The mean for all players is 0.0079. Barry is almost 10 times more likely to hit a home run in an at bat as the average for all players. Hank is almost 8 times.
Home runs per hit is a good measure of power: Barry hits 0.257 home runs per hit. Hank hits 0.200. The mean for all players is 0.039. On average a player hits 4 home runs in every 100 hits. Hank hits 20 and Barry hits 26. In his record year, McGwire hit 52 home runs in every 100 hits. Many others have exceeded Barry's career stats for home runs per hit in individual seasons. In his record year, Barry hit 46.7 home runs per 100 hits. Kilibrew, Maris, Mantle, Kingman, Schmidt, Jackson, Stargell, Fielder, Buhner and Williams all exceeded 30 home runs per 100 hits. If you compare that to the MLB average of 4 home runs per 100 hits you see how different the leading home run hitters are.
It is also intriguing to look at how small positive variations, say an increase in home runs per hit or just more hits with the same power combined with more at bats, can drive a player's performance to new highs. The variability of all these measures is so high, that slumps and outstanding years are largely due to chance.
I have to conclude that anyone who posits some kind of norm for home run hitting, whether in a year or a career, doesn't know what he is talking about. In truth, all these results follow from De Vany's Law of Home Runs. Season home runs follows an infinite variance stable distribution. Career home runs is so variable that it does not even have a mean (technically the probabiiities are so diffuse and heavy far out on the upper tail that the first moment of the distribution does not converge -- its value is infinite which is to say that the mean does not exist).
LINK · Sports · Comments (4)
A Good (but incorrect) Argument over Bonds' HRs
August 8, 2007 07:29 PM
This is pretty good argument, except that it falls into the unfalsifiable trap at the end, as most proponents of the argument that Bonds couldn't have done it without SOMETHING. The original comment is is quotes and my response is in brackets.
"First with regard to the reader comments posted by Art, Aaron was an all-time great player who batted .305 lifetime, had 3771 hits, won an MVP award and 3 Gold Gloves, and was a 25-time All-Star in addition to his 755 HRs. He was hardly just a beneficiary of a lengthy career." [No one made the claim that he was "just" the beneficiary of a lengthly career. He is truly an exceptional player in all respects. And you must take care of yourself and be a bit lucky to last as long as he did. Beyond that, he had to have the power to take advantage of his many at bats.]
"With regard to Art's work and the reader's post, it would be my contention that the time series of MLB homeruns is not nearly as relevant as the the time series of Bond's career. The issue that most baseball stat guys have is that Bonds went on a HR barrage when the typical, and even great player, starts to decline (sometimes precipitously like his godfather Mays)." [You will find some detail on Bonds, McGwire, Sosa and Palmeiro in my paper. But, Bonds grew throughout his career and gained mass as well. Everyone is biologically and genetically unique. With his commitment to training and a good diet, there is no reason to decline much if at all. Men gain strength into the 40s. At the age of 45 I routinely had most home runs in softball tournaments. So, I see no reason why Bonds should not progress through most of his career.]
"Maris was 26 when he hit 61. Ruth was 26 when he hit 59 and 32 when he hit 60. Mays peaked with 52 at age 34. Frank Robinson peaked at age 30 with 49 HRs and Hank Greenberg was 27 when he hit 58." [The year they hit the most HR is not the year they hit a physical peak, it is due to a combination of random variations that coincide to produce a burst of HR. Everyone goes through this in any creative or demanding profession. Don't make Bonds guilty of something because you can't place it in a standard, aging framework. There are many data points, individuals, who falsify the theory that Bonds or anyone ought to age accroding to the experience of others.]
"Bonds is a great hitter, but he peaked at age 36 and then had 3 more near peak HR seasons (46, 45, 45) at age 37, 38, and 39. THAT's the statistical anomaly to me and many other baseball fans that lead us to suspect steriods in addition to the fact that we KNOW the drug is used by some baseball players and football players based on drug tests and some personal testimony from retired players." [But, it is only a statistical anomaly if you have a model of the process of HR hitting over a lifetime. No one has this model. Moreover, you cannot detect a statistical anomaly unless you know the statistical law of home runs. This is what I estimated and tested against other models. His performance, and even greater performances are not anomalies. They are expected variations within the stochastics of HR production. And, yes, we do know some minor league players who took steroids and went no where. One has to do the double blind test to really see the effects of steroids. It Hasn't been done, but the minor league players discussed in my paper, provide negative evidence.]
"And lastly, just because Bond's performance "fits" into the statistical model, is not PROOF that he did not take steroids. Neither is it proof that we have seen no libel suits from " Bonds, Sosa, etc., but boy that surely would make sense if you were sure of your innocence, wouldn't it?" [But, it does not fit into any standard model or argument that has been offered as an explanation for his "departure" from the norm. There is no norm, which your argument and most others advances. Genius does not follow a process that can be normed. My argument is simple and is in the paper. Basically, most people are using an implicit normal distribution model of HRs and they claim that his performance cannot come from the model. Hence, he must have taken something. This is wrong. His performance is within the natural variation of HR hitting, but the model is not a normal distribution. Why should it be? A normal distribution applies when most people are close to the average. This has nothing to do with HRs. If you role snake eyes three times in a row, do you think there has to be an explanation? No, it is in the variation. Just chance. The dice are not on steroids. What is worse is that people who claim "he did it and it worked" don't know much about the physiology of steroids. They weaken connective tissue and interfere with concentration when they are taken in large doses. They primarily increase protein synthesis is ST muscle fibers, which are no good for hitting HRs. Lastly, most people who formulate the argument do not have a falsifiable hypothesis, and this is not science. They take his performance, which no one else has ever done, and claim that you cannot prove that it was not due to steroids. "He took steroids and therefore hit 73 HRs" cannot be falsified. Because the conclusion is true, the statement is vacuous. It is true no matter what the premise.]
Home Runs and At Batss
To hit a lot of home runs, you have to have a lot of chances. The best measure of chances is probably at bats. At bats do not include walks, even though there may be a strike thrown during that particular time at the plate.
Bonds hits a lot of home runs, even though he is walked often. The same thing is true of all the big time home run hitters. Take a look at this graph of home runs against at bats over the past 25 years in MLB. It shows clearly that you have to have a lot of at bats to hit a lot of home runs. But, it also shows that most hitters just do not hit a lot of home runs, no matter how many times they are up to the plate.
What is particularly revealing is how far above the crowd a few hitters are. They are rare, but so exceptional they stand out. This is true for all levels of at bats, but clearly the high points at pretty far out on the at bats. As I said in my paper, if Bonds had Sosa's at bats he might have hit 80 or more home runs. The guy is exceptional in every wayk.
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Bonds' Chase
August 6, 2007 10:02 AM
Barry Bonds isn't through. He has tied Hammering Hank at 755, but he could go much further. He could easily hit 800 or more before he is done. 900 is not out of reach. Here is what my Law of Home Runs says about records, quoting from my paper:
The law of home runs says there is no typical home run year in baseball or typical home run hitter. Like earthquakes, home runs can come in bursts and there can be longer intervals of calm. The number of quakes per day, week, month, or year is random and they have the same distribution (similarity again). There is some longer term correlation between quakes. So, earthquakes come in clusters and bursts of all sizes. They are not spread out like margarine on bread, all even and smooth.That is the nature of the wild statistical distributions that describe earthquakes, storms and rainfall, disasters, stock markets (where there is evidence of volatility clustering), and home runs. They are all ``bursty'' processes and, according to the law, the size of fluctuations is greater among the most prolific home run hitters. This is apparent in Figure~\ref{fig:example} where the maximum home runs per season is more volatile than the 90th and lower quantiles. This is not an anomaly. It is implied by the law of home runs; a power law tail implies that fluctuations increase with higher rank \citep{sornette:2000}. So clusters of events occur, they have no typical size, and the fluctuations are larger among the best home run hitters. Thus records are made and fall in an unpredictable and intermittent manner. The burst of home run records in 1998 through 2001 is well within our expectation from the statistical law of home runs. There is no need for recourse to an external cause like steroids to explain it. This cluster of records looks very much like the cluster from 1921 to 1927.
...
According to the law of home runs, the probability that Bonds' single season record will be broken is 0.007206.
Barry Bonds occupies a unique spot in the history of baseball. He holds the record for most home runs in a year (73 in 2001) and most total home runs (755 and soon to go higher). This is a crowning achievement.
For those who think it is steroids, get real. Read my paper and have a look at this smart comment from a reader of my paper (I lightly edited it).
Read More »A Vegan/Aerobicizer Hits the Wall
August 5, 2007 10:51 AM
I ran into a guy at the gym whom I had not seen for a couple of months, maybe more.
He was in the gym hours on end (when I used to see him) doing aerobics. He did so much treadmill work that he constantly limped and had a brace on his foot, sometimes on his knee. He had poor posture from walking slumped over looking at the track or the monitor. Nothing in his work outs addressed his posture and his aerobic work only reinforced it. He worked out every day as far as I could tell because he was always there when I came in.
He was a pure vegetarian. He ate a lot of beans and spinach and always told me how fresh he felt from his food. He had no muscle and was a "fat-skinny" jogger or treadmill addict. Sklnny arms, little legs and a bony back.
I was a bit shocked though to see how his appearance had degraded in the few months since I had last seen him. He had gotten quite thick around the waist, but not anywhere else. Still no muscle and a tired, haggard look and slumped posture. At least he was not limping and had no braces on. Rather than ask him if he had been ill, I just asked how he was doing. He really didn't answer but he did say he had been gone 2 months working on a cabin.
I don't want to speculate, but it does seem to me that his diet and training make his fitness vulnerable or brittle. He is poised on a razor's edge in a sense that any small change in diet or exercise sends him down a steep slope. He quickly loses fitness and his body composition quickly fades if he changes either his diet or his exercise. I doubt that his diet changed. So, it is likely his energy expenditures and particularly his peak expenditures that changed. It was easy to see that his insulin sensitivity had declined because all the new weight was gathered in the abdominal area. Maybe he had an illness or went through a major stress. On the other hand, there is seldom a "cause" for human physiology is so complex it is not possible to trace a major change of this magnitude to a single factor.
What I am driving at is that his approach to diet and fitness left him vulnerable. He has to stay on that treadmill or he falls hard. Even on the treadmill, though he managed his weight, he was on the boundary of good health. Not enough nutrition or rest and doing the wrong sorts of exercise. He looked depleted then and even more so now.
I am sorry to see this happen, but I don't think I can do anything about it. If there is any lesson here it is to adopt a fitness approach that does not leave you vulnerable to damage, poor nutrition, or unusual stress. If you are on the edge in terms of nutrition (either trying to "bulk up" or lose weight or eating a narrow range of foods) or exercise (over training and doing repetitive work outs), you become vulnerable. You are living on the edge. An easy approach mixing intensity, variety, and great food is more healthful and leaves you poised to adapt to stresses that are bound to occur.
LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (7)
Glutathione, Aging and Cancer
August 4, 2007 10:18 AM
Here is a bit more on why I think supplementing with glutathione (GSH) is a good practice as we get older. The mechanisms through which GSH reduces aging and prevents cancer are described (to the extent they are known, there may be others such as preventing cell senescence of cells by reducing oxidation of telomeres so that the Hayflick limit is not hit).
I have only quoted part of the article; those of you who have access can read it all. GSH detoxifies numerous metabolic products that promote aging and cancer, particularly toxins and carcinogens. I think it may be true that the aging we see in excessive runners is due to the depletion of GSH. Almost surely, depleted GSH is a factor in inflammation. A high carb diet supplies little GSH or other natural antioxidants and promotes a burst of free radicals that deplete GSH and other endogenous antioxidants. It also damages the HPA axis (the hypothalmic, adrenal, pituitary network) which is ruinous. Perhaps the only reason slightly better longevity is found in runners is that the rest of the subjects (the controls) live so poorly; with almost as bad a diet and too little exercise. Do recall that the mortalilty curve is J-shaped; it declines with exercise, hits a bottom and then rises. The over-exercised fare no better than the underexercised.
For those of you trying to gain muscle mass, be reasonable in your goals: wanting too much mass and too quickly is a prescription for getting fat and is unhealthy in so many ways. But, do note that GSH is important to muscle synthesis. I can put on muscle, even at my "advanced" age, just by looking at a barbell. I think GSH is one of several reasons for my response to exercise.
The text from the article is below...
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118
Last month people from 118 countries visited the blog, a new record.
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Sudden Death in Athletes
August 3, 2007 01:58 PM
Coming on the heels of the death of a 51 year old marathoner is the news that PaleoGal sent regarding a young man trying to become the World's Strongest Man. See also Jesse Marunde's Workouts and Diet.
While the media looks for reasons in Jesse Marunde's training and diet (and even speculate about what it means to be a man), they say nothing like that in the death of Brian Maxwell, the marathoner. It seems few journalists question the health benefits of marathoning, when it kills far more people than the bizarre lifting and eating that Jesse Marunde did. Of course, neither are worth the cost or the risk.
In Jesse's case, it is likely hypertrophic cardiomyopathy that killed him. It is the most common cause of death in young athletes, accounting for 34% of such deaths. A heavy blow to the chest is the next most common cause, accounting for about 20% of deaths in young persons engaged in athletics. Coronary artery malformations are found in about 14% of such deaths. Barring a blow to the chest then, congenital heart problems account for the greatest number of deaths.
Mocarditis, inflammation of heart tissue, is the cause of just over 5% of athlete deaths. Viral infections are the leading cause. So, it is unwise to run or train when you have a cold or the flu. Another cause of heart inflammation is overuse as might occur in a chronic runner. Perhaps that was a factor in Brian Maxwell's death as myocarditis kills cardiac muscle and induces arrhythmia and sudden death.
Heat stroke and possible drug use also cause sudden cardiac death, but I don't think anyone has the numbers to say how many. For a small fraction of sudden deaths the cause is not known. It is also well known that heavy muscle contraction raises blood pressure and that competitive lifters tend to develop enlarged heart muscles and thickened arteries. While you may be tempted to think this makes for a strong heart, an imbalanced musculature in the heart may alter the cascade of impulses across the heart tissue and alter the contraction pattern. I don't know if this contributes to arrhythmia, but it may.
Jesse Marunde's eating patterns can only be described as bizarre. They are probably not very dissimilar to some other strength athletes, who are not likely to have good longevity. The old adage that to be big you have to eat big or be in positive nitrogen balance has never really been tested. Eating excess calories puts on fat, not muscle. The heightened muscle gene expression caused by a work out is dampened in a high carbohydrate environment. Thus, the "window of gene expression" is closed if you ingest gainer drinks during the "window for replenishment."
LINK · Endurance Training: Death, Injury, and Risk ~ · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (6)
Beethoven
August 1, 2007 09:01 PM
From a book review of a recent biography of Beethoven by Doctor Mai: Diagnosing Genius: The Life and Death of Beethoven.
"The cause of Beethoven's death was liver failure due to alcohol abuse. The autopsy was performed by Dr. Johann Wagner, who was assisted by Dr. Karl von Rokitansky. Rokitansky was a resident in pathology, and Beethoven's autopsy was the first one he performed. He subsequently performed 59,786 autopsies in his outstanding career as a pathologist and became famous for his observations on the gross features of pathologic abnormalities of organs.
At Beethoven's autopsy, Wagner and Rokitansky found — besides cirrhosis of the liver due to alcohol abuse — ascites, splenomegaly, pancreatitis, and thickened bones of the skull. The eighth cranial nerves were wrinkled and shriveled because they had been compressed by the thick skull bones, a finding consistent with Paget's disease of bone, which can cause deafness. Other conditions that have been put forth as the cause of Beethoven's deafness — including head trauma inflicted by his alcoholic father, syphilis, and otosclerosis — lack credibility. There is also some question of whether lead poisoning caused Beethoven's illnesses. In 1996, a lock of his hair was found to contain high levels of lead. Lead poisoning was common in Europe during Beethoven's time because wine contained lead that had leached from its containers."
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