Hello Linux

Those of you who know me know that I'm a bit of a computer nerd, or maybe more appropriately a computer nerd wannabe. As further evidence, I discovered the other day that it is possible to download and burn a bootable CD that will run the free Linux operating system on your computer. It takes a little bit of work (the download is over 650 MB and I had to change my CMOS settings to get the computer to recognize the CD ROM drive when it was booting up), but once that was done, the Linux OS installed in a snap. Because it's running from a CD rather than a hard drive, it's a little slow, but very cool ... it seems to do everything that Windows does just as well as Windows does, and it's free. It also comes with a number of very functional free programs to do all of the more common tasks ... a web browser (Firefox), an image viewer and editor, and the OpenOffice suite, which is compatible with Word, Excel, etc. The one thing that isn't clear (and I think it's a limitation) is the compatibility of other common programs with the OS, which is obviously a problem. Still, when you think how much the cost of Windows, MS Office, etc. etc. adds to the total cost of a new computer, Linux looks better and better.

You can download the CD image file here.

My Mother's Proof of the Existence of God

For those of you who enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy this proof of God's existence, sent in response to the post via e-mail from my mother:

"Your Mother believes in God, therefore He exists."

Hey, those Presbyterians have some fight in them!

I will note, though, that I suspect that for a lot of people, this probably is an accurate proof.

Thanks, Mom.

Inaccurate Scientific Medical Studies

This week's Economist contains an interesting article on a study evaluating the accuracy of published medical research articles. The conclusion:

When Dr Ioannidis ran the numbers through his model, he concluded that even a large, well-designed study with little researcher bias has only an 85% chance of being right. An underpowered, poorly performed drug trial with researcher bias has but a 17% chance of producing true conclusions. Overall, more than half of all published research is probably wrong.

This study is a reminder that there is a difference between the predictive power and accuracy of science as an overall, long-term investigatory method, and the accuracy of any one particular study, particularly in areas such as medicine or biology, where variables are hard to control. To say that one conclusion is the result of "scientific" reasearch does not mean that this one conclusion is necessarily correct. But conclusions tested and found true again and again are probably correct. The devil is in the details. Those who assume unquestionably that because something is labeled "science" it must be true misunderstand what science is supposed to be: a process, not a promise of truth in every instance.

The study itself can be found here. I confess I have not yet read it, only the summary in the Economist.

Overdue Post

The SSSBlog apologizes for the lack of recent posts. The adjustment to the first week of school got in the way. But, coming soon are two posts, one about baseball, the other about science. The Grump also has a brief post.