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Monday, August 31st, 2009
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3:46 pm - Free concert: choir and organ
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Scots is doing a choir and organ concert tomorrow night, featuring Elgar's Great is the Lord, Rutter's Winchester Te Deum, and Bairstow's Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent (short, but an all time favourite church anthem).
6:15pm, Tuesday September 1, 2009
Scots Church, corner of Collins and Russell St, Melbourne
Entry is free (although a donation may be strongly hinted at).
Conductor: Douglas Lawrence
Organist: Robin Batterham
I feel obliged to mention that we haven't rehearsed with Douglas for the last two weeks, and will not have a chance to rehearse with him before the concert. So there may be some mismatch between the cues Douglas gives, and the cues Robin and the choir expect to see. But hey, it's free. Come along and see what happens!
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| Saturday, July 18th, 2009
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2:43 am - Hello world
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I've recently attended several conferences: SPSP, AAP, AAHPSSS and ISHPSSB. I gave a paper at SPSP (on randomised controlled trials) and another at AAP (on peer disagreement). It's been a wonderful experience; I met crowds of great people and learned mountains of new stuff.
I've also achieved the cardinal purpose of travel: I appreciate being back home. I look forward to knuckling down and finishing my honours thesis over the next month, and to that end, the study groups restart first thing next week. Please let me know if you're interested in studying with me (i.e. not working on the same material, just sharing the same space).
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| Friday, July 10th, 2009
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10:33 am - How to get rid of hiccups
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I have just figured out a new way to get rid of hiccups. It's quick, easy, and has a theoretical and empirical basis. So I'd like to share this knowledge, and perhaps find out if it works on people other than myself.
Hiccups are myoclonic jerks of the diaphragm. Over the last couple of years I've been getting lots of myoclonic jerks in other muscle groups (imagine your arms hiccuping), and I've noticed that they don't occur when I'm using those muscle groups, only when they're relaxed.
So, to chase off a bout of hiccups, simply tense your diaphragm for some length of time. Make sure it really is the thoracic diaphragm you're using, not your abs - try pushing your tummy out. You can still breathe while doing this, by using the muscles in your ribs, so you could do it until your diaphragm gets tired, but I've found it doesn't take that long for the hiccups to go away.
Tell me whether it works for you (and for SCIENCE)!
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| Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
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6:17 pm - Do it for SCIENCE
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An academic friend of mine is looking for participants in his survey. He wants to hear from people in any discipline, 3rd year uni or higher (up to PhD), who've encountered Confidence Intervals (CIs) before.
The survey takes under 15 minutes. It's not a test of you, it's a test of the materials, to see what materials produce what kind of intuitions.
http://psy6045.psy.latrobe.edu.au/survey.php
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| Friday, June 5th, 2009
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4:56 pm - I should have done this years ago
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So instead of working on either of my soon-to-be-due papers, today I taught myself how to use LaTeX.
Thesis is SO PRETTY now. ^_^
This may technically count as working on my stats paper, in that I can't typeset the math properly in other programs, so I was going to have to do this at some point anyway. But it still feels like procrastination.
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| Friday, April 10th, 2009
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5:58 pm
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Bad timing: getting a cold just before singing the St John Passion. Hopefully that'll be the only timing mistake I make tonight.
I do encourage you to come along, if only to check out the baroque orchestra - they even have a theorbo (bass lute)! Here's a video of a theorbo in action.
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| Friday, April 3rd, 2009
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1:52 am - Easter Music
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On Good Friday (the 10th of April), J. S. Bach's St John Passion will be performed by the Scots' Choir, baroque orchestra and soloists. It's a lovely work, and Scots is good at it. I welcome everyone to come along - I love seeing faces I know in the audience. :)
Soloists: Deborah Kayser, Felicity Bolitho, Elizabeth Anderson, Vaughan McAlley (Evangelist), Timothy Reynolds, Jerzy Koslowski,Thomas Drent
Leader: Julia Fredersdorff
Conductor: Douglas Lawrence
Location: Scots Church, corner of Collins St and Russel St, Melbourne CBD
Date and time: 8pm, 10/4/09
Cost: Entry is free, though a donation is usually requested.
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| Sunday, February 15th, 2009
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5:04 pm - Lamentations
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Scots Church is putting on a concert to raise money to assist those who have suffered in the recent bushfires.
( Lamentations )
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| Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
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10:53 pm - Attention Americans: VOTE
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mistersteve pointed me to this article in the New York Times, because two of the authors are notorious republican Newt Gingrich, and last election's democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry. What could these two possibly collaborate on?
A big pile of stupid, apparently. The article is titled, "How to Take American Health Care From Worst to First". It points out that: "the United States spends more than twice as much per capita on health care than almost every other country in the world — and with worse health quality than most industrialized nations." True, and shameful. So what are the Americans to do about it?
According to Beane, Gingrich and Kerry, they ought to take their cue from the world of professional baseball: start using statistics to determine which medical practices give us the most bang for our buck. (The first author, Billy Beane, is probably responsible for the baseball analogy.) America needs to start evaluating how effective various treatments are, and start giving doctors incentives to use the most cost-effective procedures available. In short, the USA needs to start using Evidence-Based Medicine.
Start?! Welcome to the party, guys, it's been going for fifteen years or so.
Beane, Gingrich and Kerry propose a stereotypically American solution: "the federal government and the private sector should create a new institute for evidence-based medicine. This institute would conduct new studies and systematically review the existing medical literature to help inform our nation's over-stretched medical providers." That's right. Create a new department to fix everything. Never mind that the Cochrane Collaboration already does a decent job of systematically reviewing the evidence, for free.
This article misses the point by so far that you have to zoom out to satellite level to see where it landed. American health care doesn't suck just because doctors don't know what treatments to provide. It's not like the rest of the world is keeping some super secret health data away from the Americans - hell, much of the science we use is produced in the States! The reason we use that information so much better than the USA is, purely and simply, because we apply it to all patients.
American medicine doesn't lack evidence, it lacks adequate access to care. Too many Americans are uninsured, or inadequately insured. They can't afford to see doctors to get cheap, preventative medicine, so they end up getting sick in expensive ways. Rampant medical litigation pushes doctors' fees through the ceiling. Pharmaceutical companies are allowed to charge exorbitant prices - far in excess of what's necessary to recoup R&D expenses. The system is so goddamn broken. The incentives all flow the wrong way. It makes my head hurt and I don't understand how people can't see it.
American conservatives keep giving excuse after excuse for why their health care sucks, because they don't want to admit the real reason: a whole lot of Americans just don't have enough health care.
I discussed this with metisket. She said that given Newt Gingrich is one of the authors, I should not assume stupidity when malice is a perfectly good explanation.
current mood:  Grr, Argh
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| Sunday, September 28th, 2008
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4:47 pm
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| Friday, August 15th, 2008
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7:43 pm
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Dick Boyd (defender of the external world): "One of the common reasons people end up in philosophy is because they're interested in the humanities but they were always good at maths."
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| Tuesday, July 8th, 2008
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1:11 pm - Serendipity!
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Everyone who commented on my last post (and everyone who had an idea but didn't bother to comment) should know about the build your own lifeform contest sponsored by io9.
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| Saturday, June 21st, 2008
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11:59 pm - Play God with me
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If you were a genetic engineer, with the power to manipulate DNA as you saw fit ... what would you do? What would you make?
Assume no ethical, monetary or time constraints, but limit yourself to abilities that could be built using biological apparatus (cells and proteins and so on). Wings and horns are fine, lasers and telekinesis are not.
Dragons, unicorns, and humans with wings are the obvious answers. But you could do so much more! I'm thinking, for starters, of giving humans the ability to synthesise all the essential amino acids and vitamins. You'd solve half the world's malnutrition problems in one fell swoop. Also: salt-resistant tomato plants. Not only could you grow them in saline soils, the tomatoes would taste salty and delicious!
So maybe salty tomatoes are not the height of mutant coolness. Tell me what is. :)
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| Wednesday, November 8th, 2006
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12:58 pm - Flying Spaghetti Monster Save the Queen
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Another free concert! This one's in honour of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, so the music is all from her original coronation. It's on at 8pm this Saturday the 11th, at Scots church (corner of Collins and Russel St, CBD).
The programme:
Zadok the Priest - by Handel
I was glad - by Parry
O taste and see - by Vaughan Williams
O clap your hands - by Gibbons
And possibly more. The choir will be backed by a massive organ and a brass ensemble (really this time!).
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| Monday, October 30th, 2006
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9:16 am
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Reminder: FREE CONCERT tomorrow at 6:15pm, Scots Church (corner Russel & Collins Streets in the City).
Apologies: I was wrong about the two organs/organ and brass. Apparently there will only be one organ, and no brass. But that organ is massive enough to be worth at least three standard organs.
In other news: zanovar draws on the evidence for malign design to formalise his Misanthropic Principle.
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| Thursday, October 19th, 2006
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12:15 pm - Free Halloween Concert: Solemn Mass
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| Thursday, October 13th, 2005
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2:25 am
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Quote of the day:"The great thing about doing medicine is that you finally learn what the spleen does." - zanovar
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| Thursday, August 25th, 2005
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7:40 am - Come to my concert!
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| Monday, May 2nd, 2005
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2:07 am - Pluggery
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| Monday, January 17th, 2005
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11:30 pm - So, mesongles - if that is your real name ...
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