From yesterdays New York Times, front page:

“We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is PowerPoint”

The corporatization of the US military has had an unintended consequence: the ubiquitous use of mind-numbing PowerPoint presentations in place of critical thinking. Soon, military analysts will be like most corporate managers and executives: unable to write a coherent sentence.

“When you’re looking at truth versus gossip, truth doesn’t stand a chance.”

– Barbara Mikkelson, cofounder (with her husband David) of Snopes.com
Quoted in the New York Times, April 5, 2010

For those of you who have followed my posts on running over the last year, you’ll know that I ran my first Marathon in November. You’ll also recall that it was a disaster – the temperature was 79F when I crossed the finish line (nearly five hours after I started), causing the closet thing I’ve come to a near-death experience. It was a very disappointing race because I know I could have done better (I walked most of the last six miles), but I just couldn’t beat the heat. So yesterday was my chance to redeem myself: the day of the Austin Marathon.

The Austin Marathon was definitely risky for me. The first half is difficult because it is full of hills. The second half is difficult because, well, it’s the second half of a Marathon. More experienced runners advised me to pick a flatter course to make my “comeback” easier. But it was just too hard to pass up a Marathon in my backyard. Redemption or Downfall – it was going to be one or the other.

And it was redemptive. My goal was to come out at a set pace (around 10 minutes/mile) and keep that pace for the whole race, finishing strong (in other words, the exact opposite of my first Marathon experience). And I accomplished that goal: I ran the first half at a pace of 9:40/mile and the second half at a pace of 9:50/mile. I finished in 4:18:30, better than my stretch goal of 4:20. But more importantly, I felt good crossing the finish line – heck, I even sprinted the last tenth of a mile. It was a success.

I also hoped that I might be able to make it into the “fast half” of the men, with a time less than the median finish time. And since I’m teaching an intro to statistics course at UT this semester, I dove into the statistics of the results when they were posted last night. Alas, I beat the mean, but not the median. The average finish time for men was 4:23:23, and the median finish time was 4:17:25. I was in the slow half, but just barely. I thought that maybe I would be in the fast half of my age group, but amazingly the M45 – 49 group was the fastest age group in the race. Go figure. It’s median finish time was 4:08:48, with a mean of 4:17:37. The next fastest group was 40 – 44, followed by 30 – 34, then 35 – 39, then 25 – 29 and 20 – 24. So much for the race belonging to the young. Interestingly, though, age 50 seems to be the point of decline. The 50 – 54 age group median was slower than 45 – 49 by 23 minutes. Since I turn 50 in less than 3 months, maybe my best running days are soon to be over. Or maybe I’ll have a narrow window of being one of the fast guys my age before I start to crumble and fall apart.

Since I started running a year and a half ago, every race has resulted in a PR – a person record. It’s pretty easy to do, given that the first time you do anything is always your best try to-date. Yesterday I had my first chance to break my PR streak – I finally ran a race for the second time. Last year I ran the 3M half marathon with a result I was very happy with, 1:56 (1 hour, 56 minutes). Would I be able to beat that time this year?

Circumstances were not optimal. I’m training for the Austin Marathon, and so went on a 26 mile training run one week before the half marathon race. It takes more than one week to fully recover from a 26 mile run. On race day yesterday, the temperature was almost perfect, but it was very windy. So windy, in fact, that road barricades were blown over and the police delayed the start of the race by one hour to get them put back up. Standing at the start line for over an hour just waiting is not a great way to start. Still, I thought I was in better shape than a year ago and so I was hoping for a good run.

And it was good. I finished at 1:49:45 – seven minutes faster than last year (woohoo!) and an earned PR. Given the circumstances, I think there is still room for improvement. I’m not retiring yet.

By the way, I was not the only Austin lithographer to run the 3M. Paul Zimmerman, an Intel assignee to Sematech, ran the race as well. He is what we call an “elite” runner, given a spot at the front of the pack so that no weaving around us slow folks is required. And he earned his title. Paul runs in the Masters category (40 years and older) and finished second at 1:09:47, just one second behind the winner (who, by the way, was nine years younger than Paul). That’s a full 40 minutes faster than me! Whew! Way to go, Paul!

February of this year marked the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. As part of the many ways this date was marked, celebrated, reviled and exploited, Gallup conducted a poll to ask Americans if they “believe in evolution”.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/114544/darwin-birthday-believe-evolution.aspx

The exact question was “Do you, personally, believe in the theory of evolution, do you not believe in evolution, or don’t you have an opinion either way?”

Unfortunately, like many such polls, interpretation of the results of the poll is fatally marred by the nature of the question.

The word “believe” has different meanings in different contexts (and for different people). For example, if I say that I believe in God, that means I have made a choice, based on faith, to believe in something that I have no way of proving or confirming. If I say that I believe it will rain tomorrow, it means that my best guess, given evidence available to me, is that it will rain. These are two very different meanings. Which sense is being used in this question?

Does it even make sense to ask the question “do you believe in evolution”? What if I asked “do you believe in relativity?” Or quantum mechanics? It sounds a little silly. These aren’t things that we normally associate “belief” with. I don’t think that a poll question asking about my “belief” in a scientific theory is an accurate way of judging my science literacy. Or is the question designed to discover something else besides science literacy? If so, what?

Given the discussion above, what does it mean to say I “believe” in evolution? Let’s assume that I am not trained as a professional evolutionary biologist and am not capable of independently evaluating the evidence for this scientific theory (that is the target audience for the question, after all). Then I suggest that the statement “I believe in evolution” means three things: 1) I believe in science and the scientific method as a means for developing descriptions of nature that are increasingly more accurate and useful; 2) I’m familiar enough with the basics of the theory and evidence to support it to know that virtually all scientists working in this field accept evolution; and 3) I believe that the experts that have been working as a community on evolutionary science for the last 150 years are not part of a vast conspiracy to pull the wool over my eyes.

When people don’t “believe” in evolution, then they disagree with one or more of the statements above. Some of the most extreme creationists are certainly conspiracy nuts as well, believing that scientists are working towards their evil plan to promote atheism. And certainly science literacy in the U.S. is none too great, so it is possible that some people would disagree with #2. But I suspect that the majority of the evolution “non-believers” disagree only with statement #1 – they are unwilling to give up the idea that science is, and always should be, the handmaiden of religion. The culture war over evolution is in fact a power struggle: who has the power to describe how the world works, the scientist or the theologian? I’m a firm believer in the disjointed domains of science and theology (Stephen Jay Gould called them “Nonoverlapping Magisteria”), but many others long for the simpler days of a powerful and autocratic religious structure to make sense of the world for them.

So, if the poll below indicates a lack of science literacy, that is an indictment of our educational system (and a not very surprising one). But to the extent that the poll results show an unwillingness to accept science as the best approach for understanding nature, then ignorance is not the worst thing to fear.

And what were the results of the poll? 39% of respondents “believe” in evolution, 25% do not, and 36% have no opinion (95% confidence interval = +/- 3%).

Mike Coffin is a friend and neighbor. Four years ago his daughter, Mary Hatley, was born 35 hours and 50 feet from my daughter Sarah, and they are best friends. Mike just won an Emmy for making a series of shorts called “I am CNBC”. Mike is overly modest, saying he doesn’t deserve it and that it doesn’t mean much anyway. Humbug! Winning an Emmy is a big deal! The whole neighborhood is proud of you, Mike. Besides, I want a picture of me next to the statue, so whatever you do Mike, you better not hide it in the closet!

In my last post I described my first marathon, in all its ignominy. It was hot and I started out too fast, and I hit the proverbial wall at mile 18. At that point, disappointment and pain led to dark thoughts – should I just give up? But I had something to keep me going, waiting to save me at mile 21.

My good friend William Howard has run several marathons, and when he heard I was running my first he made a remarkable offer: he would come to San Antonio, meet me at mile 21, and run the rest of the race with me. He knew all about hitting the wall and knew that a little encouragement for the last five miles of a marathon went a long way. He sure was right. Even though I hit my wall a little earlier than most, I could keep myself motivated with chants of “three more miles till William”, then “two more miles”, until I got to the 21 mile marker. He ran and walked (mostly walked) with me for the rest of the race, and I’m not sure I would have finished without his help. Thank you, William. An inspiring example of true friendship.

Yesterday, I ran my first Marathon. I survived. And that is the best thing I can say about the experience. It was exciting, fun, exhausting, absolutely miserable, worse than miserable, and finally over, in that order.

I had trained pretty well for the race, with a long run of 29 miles four weeks before race day. I felt good, despite a pulled muscle three weeks before the race (I recovered well from that injury, so I don’t think it had a major impact on my performance). Unfortunately, race conditions were not good – a temperature of 65F at race start and nearly 80F by the end. It was mostly cloudy, but there was enough sun out that I finished the day with a sunburned face. If you haven’t done any long running, let me tell you that this is at least 20 degrees too hot. But even more than the temperature, it was my race strategy that did me in.

Ask any marathoner for race advice and the first thing out of their mouth will be “Don’t start out too fast.” I knew this. But for your first marathon, how do you know how fast is too fast? I found out with great certainty what too fast was for me. I guessed that I could do a half-marathon that day in 1:55, so I slowed down my pace from there and crossed the half-way point at 2:05. That turned out to be way too fast. By the 15 mile point I was starting to feel spent. By the 18 mile point I was in trouble – I began walking more than I was running. At 24 miles, I thought death could not come too soon. I walked the rest of the way, running only the last 0.1 mile to cross the finish line. My time: 4 hours, 59 minutes. I started the race thinking I could do 4:20.

Their were 422 men aged 45 – 49 who finished the marathon. The median time for that group was 4:46, so I didn’t meet my goal of being in the ‘fast’ half. The winner, by the way, finished in 2:14:39. None of these stats make me feel good. But I finished (alive), so at least the primary goal was accomplished. They say you never forget your first (marathon), but I’m hopeful for some selective forgetting about yesterday.

And things could have been worse. I was saved at mile 21 by a true act of friendship. But I’ll tell that story later. For now, I think I’ll take a nap.

A month ago I wrote about the credit report scam website, freecreditreport.com. Obviously I am not alone in being agitated by the blatantly inaccurate web address – it was the subject of a front-page article today in the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/your-money/credit-scores/03scores.html?_r=2&hp

“In the last five years, Experian has paid $1.25 million to settle F.T.C. charges that it misled consumers who may have been seeking their free credit report at AnnualCreditReport.com, but ended up paying for a subscription on the similarly named freecreditreport.com.”

And yet, the scam continues…

It’s hard to admit when you have been the victim of a scam. In hindsight, it’s so obvious that just a little more attention would have averted the whole thing. You feel stupid. But you also feel used. After all, the scammers have spent a lot of time perfecting their scam and finding the best ways to trick you. And when the scammer is a large corporation, they have a certain resource advantage as well.

I am the victim of a credit report scam perpetrated by the biggest credit reporting company in the U.S. – Experian. Here is how it worked.

I am aware that I am entitled to one free credit report per year, thanks to federal legislation. Of course, however, I do not have the website address memorized where I can get that free credit report (answer: www.annualcreditreport.com). So, I Googled it. While the top search result was the one I wanted, I made the mistake of clicking on the second search result since it was titled “Free Credit Report”, and that seemed logical. The website www.freecreditreport.com looks quite respectable, and lists Experian, Equifax and TransUnion along the top. There is a very prominent button on the right with large print that says “Click Here to see your Free Credit Report & Score”. There is also some fine print on the left side that explains that it is not free. But like most people, I didn’t read that. The intentional design of the website encourages this, and like most people I was in a hurry to get past the minutia and get what I wanted. After clicking on the button and getting what I thought was my free credit report, I exited the website. They asked for my credit card number, but said they wouldn’t charge me and that it was required to “set up my account”. That was a clue, I know, but I didn’t pick up on it. I also ignored some more fine print that I should have read under the label “Privacy Policy”. Three weeks later I received my credit card bill and noticed a $15.88 charge from “info.ExperianDirect.com”. (I’m lucky I happened to look closely at my bill this month – it’s not something I usually do.) This, by the way, is not a one-time fee – it is a monthly fee. A little searching online and I found their customer service number and called to tell them they made a mistake and that I never intended to join their “Triple Advantage” monthly service. I had never even heard of the “Triple Advantage” service that I had apparently joined. But, looking back at the fine print that I had missed on the website, by asking for my “free” credit report I was in fact signing up for this service – unless I called within 7 days to cancel.

It is very clear that the business model of this website is to trick people into signing up for services and fees that they are unaware of and have no intention of agreeing to. When I called the ExperianDirect customer service number to complain, they told me they were unwilling and unable to refund the $15.88 already charged to my account. Requests to speak to a supervisor resulted in me being disconnected. A scam, pure and simple. And probably perfectly legal.