Nodar Kumaritashvili's Olympics luge death fault of track design

Georgian Luger Nodar Kumaritashvili's Olympics luge death during a training run was the fault of the track at the Whistler Sliding Centre, not the athlete.

That is the opinion of this blogger as of this writing, not anyone else. It runs counter to the official view of Olympic officials, who fault the athlete and not the track. This bloggers' view comes from a back understanding of how a vessel moves along a surface at a certain speed.

The basic problem is the track, which has been adjusted since the accident, was such that it had the luger coming from a curved, banked part of the track to a right-angled, straight-away portion. If one takes the curve high, it literally tosses the luger into the wall that is the straight-away part of the course coming out of the turn.

While many have criticized NBC for showing the video of the crash, the public should see it, given the design issues the track presented. What's curious is how, in the 21st Century, the course designers could have overlooked such an obvious flaw?

And update as this blog post is being written: Deadspin reports that the Whistler Sliding Centre track's design was questioned by many athletes and observers. Three riders were hospitalized in 2008 duing the World Cup. Deadspin quotes American lugar Tony Benshoof as telling NBC that someone "was going to kill themselves" on the track.

Having higher track walls isn't the answer at all. The whole track needs to be torn down and rebuilt. It's simply too dangerous to be used.

We Are The World 2010 - Miley Cyrus kills it

25 years ago Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, and Quincy Jones joined forces to make a song benefit for Africa called "We Are The World" which got together top music artists from Bob Dylan to The King of Pop for what's turned out to be a classic song.



In 2010 Lionel Richie, and Quincy Jones, and members of The Jackson Family joined with a more contemporary set of artists, from LL Cool J to Lil Wayne, Justin Bieber, and Barbara Streisand. But of all of the singers, the one who's got everyone talking is Miley Cyrus.

The teen pop sensation from the TV Show Hanna Montana sang her heart out and in a way some did not expect. Not this blogger.

Miley Cyrus can sing. Some, particularly on Twitter, express the idea in a way that they're surprised that this 17-year old white girl has a soulful voice. All of it has degenerated into a #WeLoveMileyCyrus v. #WeHateMileyCyrus tweet battle. But even with all of the sex-based marketing, if Miley Cyrus couldn't sing she would not have top selling albums or singles.

Moreover, Miley Cyrus is showing an interest in helping those less fortunate than she and teaming up with artists like Timbalind who are just outside her normal song genre.

Give Miley Cyrus a break and a real chance.

Oakland Raiders Stadium study: competitive bid and minority involvement missing?

The Oakland Tribune article on the possibility of a shared football stadium between the Oakland Raiders and the San Francisco 49ers is certainly exciting news, but lost in the hope that the Raiders get a new stadium - 49ers or not - is any attention to the process behind getting to that point.

In this case, on Friday February 19th the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority is considering a proposal from CSL International, an event planning and stadium development consulting firm to write a feasibility study of a stadium for the Oakland Raiders.

Great, but where's the competitive bid for the consultant? And what about minority involvement in the study's development? Now that the Oakland Raiders have finally succeeded in getting the City of Oakland to see that it needs a new stadium, it's important to make sure the Oakland Coliseum Authority doesn't screw it up.

Where public monies are used, sole-source consultant contracts are frowned on and have been for decades. The reasons are simple: such contracts are looked at as political gifts or favors to a friend unless there's solid evidence that that company, and only that firm, can do the job required.

In the case of a feasibility study for a stadium for the Oakland Raiders that may include the San Francisco 49ers, there's no evidence or source that can confirm that the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority conducted a competitive bid process, out of which CSL International emerged.

The contract is reportedly for $125,000, not below $5,000, which is the California legal level at which a contract must be below if it is "sole-sourced" or without a competitive bid process. And as Oakland is a charter city, this process goes against the City of Oakland's own process and it's "hire Oakland first" mandate for the use of Oakland's public funds for contracts.

As one who's done feasibility study work, this blogger can assert that what the Oakland Coliseum is looking for does not take a rocket scientist to do. (And this blogger has no interest in being considered for any City of Oakland contract.)

These questions must be answered by the Coliseum Authority:

1) which firms out there in Oakland and in the San Francisco Bay Area can do this work?

2) Where they contacted in writing by the Coliseum Authority's Executive Director?

3) What was their written response?

4) Why was CSL International selected out of the competitive bid process?

5) Does CSL International have people of color on its staff?

If all of these questions can be answered, then CSL International was selected fairly. But if not and it appears that CSL International was chosen out of an informal and process controlled by the current Coliseum executive director, their proposal should be rejected. The Coliseum executive director should be made to start the process over, the right way.

The Oakland Raiders deserve a new stadium. But there's no hurry; the process toward a new facility should be done in an inclusive, not secretive, way.

Dr. Amy Bishop of Alabama-Huntsville well regarded by students

Dr. Amy Bishop, who has been charged with murder and could receive the death penalty in the wake of the shooting of Gopi K. Podila, Maria Ragland Davis and Adriel Johnson, all professors in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alabama's Huntsville campus. According to the Huffington Post, Amy Bishop could be heard saying "It didn't happen. There's no way .... they are still alive." No students were harmed in the shooting.

If this is a case of Amy Bishop allegedly "going off" - and as there's a man who's a "person-of-interest" so this matter is far from clear - she didn't do so to her students. And from online grades Amy Bishop received, the professor was well regarded by her students.

At the "Rate My Professor" page for Amy Bishop, students gave her an overall grade of 3.6, with her only low grade a 2.3 for "Average Easiness". Bishop received a 3.7 for Average Helpfulness.

Students comments painted a picture of a teacher who cared about her subjects, and of students who seemed to care about her. They also show a person who's bright, gives lectures that go off on "tangents", and who at least one student described as "hot":

am in her lab and her class. She is smart, talks about more stuff than just the book. She lets me sit in her office and study. She always dresses nice. She should stop trying to straighten her hair and go natural!

Bishop uses the online stuff, the internet, powerpoint, from the book and some stuff not from the book. If you show up to class and listen to what she tells you what is important and what is not as important you will get an A. Her animations from that anatomy program always crash the laptop(last year). This year her she bought her own laptop.

Study wha she tells u to study. If you have previous exams, u are more likely to get an A. Make sure u have good friends in that class, b/c they might have more resources to share with ya. Dont sweat it and go for it.

Dr.Bishop is so cool!

She is very nice, but her class is boring. Human A&P all we do is highlight the book. She reads straight from the book. I can do that at home. There is tons of material and she doesn't really narrow down what's going to be on the test. However, the class wasn't too hard though. There's just a lot of studying.

This prof is absolutely the bomb! Knows her stuff cold, and quick witted too. Never met anyone who knows more random knowledge. Sci-fi to quantum mechanics with a little art history thrown in the mix. Who knew? Definitely take one of her courses!

Dr. Bishop says she has to teach us about so much so we are ready for nursing classes. It is so much material! But she is nice, helpful and makes it interesting. I like her study day she has before the test.I heard she is from Harvard.I hope she remembers that she is not at Harvard.

Dr. Bishop is a great teacher! She talks about the stuff in the book but then she talks about extra stuff like diseases. This makes the class fun. She's super smart and thinks everyone else is too so sometimes she goes too fast.

Dr. Bishop tries to be a good teacher, but it's really pointless to come to class. All you do is highlight the book word for word. She is also very vague about her tests and what you should study; her answer is just study everything (which is the entire book.) She might have graduated from Harvard, but she has very little common sense.

I don't know what you people are talking about! She is not "easy" unless you are her favorite. She gets off on random**** all the time and is sooo completely scatter brained! I was there everyday, studied HARD, and still barely passed. I don't like her and don't recomend her.

Beware of Tangent Square Root!

Awesome teacher. She tends to make a lot of tangents but you learn a lot and she's always willing to help you out.

Mrs Bishop was totally awesome! She made this class fun and entertaining with her great sense of humor. She is always willing to help, and is great at working with students. I highly recommend this teacher!!

brilliant & hot

She makes class fun eventhough it is still hard.I thought because she is from Harvard she would be a snob but she isn't.She does not give multiple choice tests so her tests are hard. By the way Diane teaches BYS310 not Dr. Bishop.

If you didn't understand something in this class, she was willing to take time and give you a hand. She does what a professor is suppose to do: helps you and doesn't make you feel stupid.

She makes it seem like it is going to be hard but it is extremly easy. She is very unorganized, but its easy to get an A

Dr. Bishop is brilliant. Her research is fascinating. She will surely get the Nobel Prize. She is the best teacher I have ever had.

r. Bishop is extremely knowledgable about her field. She is grateful to help, you just have to ask. Her lectures are disorganized, but if you read your book, you'll get an A. I learned alot.

Dr. Bishop is very unclear in her test preparation, grading, and overall teaching style. She is not at all organized and neither are her lab instructors. The tests are fairly easy and you never really have to go to class except on review day.

Since Amy Bishop's not yet entered a plea regarding the murder charge, and the "person of interest" is still outstanding, we can't be absolute in our discussion of what happened. But what's clear to this blogger is there's a weird "Southern" issue with a "Harvard-trained" professor. The Alabama media stuck that tag as if to imply it had something to do with her alleged shooting of the three faculty members.

But the reference may be a clue to another problem: Dr. Bishop may have experienced a kind of anti-intellectual prejudice from the University of Alabama-Huntsville culture that could have just driven Bishop batty. A "You think you're better than us because you're from Harvard" attitude that may very well have blocked her from fair consideration by her peers.

I think there's something there worth investigating. This is not to excuse the action of murder, but an honest, cold, read of the situation with the current available information would lead a reasonable person to think Bishop was being discriminated against in the way I described. What's the point of mentioning that she's "Harvard-trained"?

If this happened at U.C. Berkeley (God forbid), no media outlet would mention that Bishop was "Harvard-trained", yet a ton of Berkeley faculty and instructors are. Something's wrong here.

Stay tuned.

Snow in Atlanta, Georgia cripples cars and travel (video)

(This is an update on an earlier blog post called "Snow in Atlanta".)

The Atlanta, Georgia area is getting a healthy dose of snow, and this blogger, taking care of his mother's home in suburban Atlanta, is in the middle of it. The snow is coming down fast and here's the video of it all:



To think. Exactly one week ago on Friday, I was in balmy South Beach, Miami, Florida for the Super Bowl festivities...



Now I'm here.

The snowy conditions have forced thousands of flight cancellations at Atlanta-Harsfield-Jackson Airport. But flying in the snow is one thing; driving in it something else. For those of us trained by their fathers to drive in midwestern snow, this is not a problem. But then, it's the other Southern drivers that really concern me.

Reportedly, this is supposed to go on all day long, and it has done that and is still snowing albeit at a really slow rate, then we reportedly get a break on Saturday, and it starts up again Sunday.

That trip into Atlanta I planned never happened; I've got snow to shovel.

Stay tuned.

University shooting at Alabama-Huntsville: Dr. Amy Bishop is suspect

A university shooting at Alabama-Huntsville University has neuroscientist Dr. Amy Bishop as the key suspect (the Huntsville Times reports Bishop's Harvard-trained but what relevance that is to the story is a mystery). Bishop's being held, along with her husband, but has not been charged with a crime as of this writing. Three people, all Alabama-Huntsville faculty members, are dead.

Amy Bishop joined the UAH faculty in 2003. With her husband, Jim Anderson, Bishop created a portable cell-incubator called "InQ" which won the couple an award in a state competition and won $25,000 of seed money in a business competition, money they could use to start a company around the invention.

Amy Bishop

A search for the name "Amy Bishop" revealed a web page that had this text, instead of Bishop's profile:

There has been a shooting on campus. The shooter has been apprehended. The campus is closed tonight. Everyone is encouraged to go home. Classes are cancelled for tonight. Any additional cancellations or changes will be announced as they become available. There is a Command Center set up at Madison Hall Room 109. Counselors are available in University Center Rooms 125, 126 and 127 for anyone who wishes to speak with a counselor.

Dr. Bishop was also working on a cybernetics project called The Neuristor, using neurons as we use integrated circuits in a living computer. Bishop wrote:

Neuroengineering

My laboratory's goal will be to continue in our effort to develop a neural computer, the Neuristor™, using living neurons. This computer will exploit all of the advantages of neurons. Specifically, neurons rich with the nitric oxide NO dependent learning receptor, N Methyl D Aspartate receptor NMDAR, will be utilized. These have previously been studied in the context of induced adaptive resistance to NO IAR. For the Neuristor™ we will take advantage of the IAR phenomena since it has been demonstrated that IAR neurons express more learning and memory receptors NMDAR as well as increased neurite outgrowth. The neurons that we are currently using are mammalian motor neurons. We are exploring the possibility of using neurons derived from adult stem cells, and from bony fishes provided by Bruce Stallsmith Ph.D. This laboratory has created a portable cell culture incubator, the Cell Drive™ that is an ideal support structure for the Neuristor".

Amy Bishop was reportedly denied tenure. What happened after that, a hypothesis, may be that Bishop went off when she perceived the University as trying to take and profit off of an idea she developed, just as they were getting rid of her. At that point, Bishop may have went berserk.

Stay tuned.

Bill Clinton out of hospital and back to work today

Former President Bill Clinton is out of the hospital in New York City and back to the same schedule he maintained before he complained of a "discomfort" in his chest on Thursday.



The 42nd President of the United States walked out of New York Presbyterian Hospital Friday after an overnight stay to have two stents installed to restore healthly blood flow. President Clinton had quadruple bypass surgery for four blocked arteries in 2004.

President Clinton was joined by his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and his daughter Chelsea Clinton at the hospital.

As I said in this video, Clinton needs to take time from his Bush - Clinton - Haiti work to get some rest:



Stay tuned.

Tim Wise speaks in Oakland: anti-racist activist

Even with the election of President Barack Obama, America is still plagued by racism, according to author Tim Wise. The anti-racist activist was in Oakland last week discussing his most recent book, "Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama."

Students packed a Laney College classroom Wednesday, Feb. 3 Tim Wise lecture, part of the campus' Black History Month lecture program.

Wise -- who is white -- said the recent economic downturn, fear over health care reform, the changing demographics of America, and the election of the first African American president in the U.S. has caused great anxiety for white people in America. The rise of the “Tea Party” demonstrations and much of the backlash against the Obama administration is due to a perceived loss of “white privilege.”

"For the first time you actually have to realize that America’s not just about white folks,” Wise said, referring to the luxury of America being seen as a nation for white people. “When all of a sudden that changes, an awful lot of people aren’t ready.”

“All of a sudden you have a white America” no longer “totally convinced that everything’s going to be okay. He added that the economic collapse has caused many white people to feel as if they are “losing” the country and wanting “their” country back. “They’re talking about going back to the day when they were the norm. They could take it for granted that they were the norm.”

During the question and answer period, his advice on confronting subtle or subconscious racism was confrontation, critically. He said some whites may not be conscious of their racism, but by asking questions or critiquing racist remarks and statements, people who are not overtly or intentionally racist, will improve.

“You don’t want to just jump on them, you want them to think,” Wise suggests.

Read the complete article or watch a video recording on TheBlackHour.com.

Snow in Atlanta, Georgia coming down fast

The Atlanta, Georgia area is getting a healthy dose of snow, and this blogger, taking care of his mother's home in suburban Atlanta, is in the middle of it. The snow is coming down fast and a video of it all is coming soon.

The snowy conditions have forced thousands of flight cancellations at Atlanta-Harsfield-Jackson Airport. But flying in the snow is one thing; driving in it something else. For those of us trained by their fathers to drive in midwestern snow, this is not a problem. But then, it's the other Southern drivers that really concern me.

Reportedly, this is supposed to go on all day long, then we get a break on Saturday, and it starts up again Sunday.

That trip into Atlanta's looking all the more risky.

Stay tuned. Video coming.

DC Metro train Red Line derailment is second incident in one year

DC Metro train Red Line derailment is second incident in one year

A DC Metro train derailed for the second time in the young 21st Century. On Friday, the first two cars of the DC Metro Red Line train derailed at 10:13 am EST, as it was leaving the Farragut North Station. There were 345 passengers, but only three were injured.

Here's the Associated Press video:



While some passengers reported they didn't feel the train derailment, the incident marks the second major DC Metro accident in less than a year. During the Monday evening rush hour of June 22nd of 2009 a DC Metro train crashed into another one right in front of it, killing nine people. It was the worst accident in the DC Metro rail system's 33 year history.

DC Metro crash video from YouTube:



DC Metro crash video from AP:



The DC Metro, MARTA in Atlanta, and BART in the San Francisco Bay Area, were all developed and built in the 70s by Westinghouse, which created the ROHR cars (see here and here). Now, with the DC Metro's two accidents, it's time to ask if these systems are in need of a major overhaul.

Dan Abrams on NBC; expands Mediaite with Geekosystem

Dan Abrams (in photo), who at one point had his own show on MSNBC, was on NBC again Friday after a bit of a television hiatus to start the media news website Mediaite. Now, TechCrunch has taken note of Publisher and founder: Dan Abrams's new site called Geekosystem.

This young, black, bald, geek blogger was totally underwhelmed by Geekosystem because it seems to reflect what Geek culture looks like from a young, white, frat boy perspective. (Not that Dan Abrams is such a person). Not the term "Geek" wasn't used to describe that view. Geekosystem, to the extent such a thing really exists - and it does - contains blacks, whites, Asians, Latinos and Latinas, Indians, and a large number of people of color.

The Geekosystem also contains a large number of women that aren't represented in Dan Abrams' version of The Geekosystem.

One woman that Dan Abrams should be aware of is Jane McGonigal at The Institute for The Future, who spends much of her time not only playing games, but making games and studying how people interact within a game structure, which could be anything from a board game to, well, the whole World. Yet, there's nothing about, say, the top 10 female programmers or game developers.

But on that note, Geekosystem's "Top 10 Programmers" does include one woman, indicating the influence of Dan Abrams associate Rachel Sklar, maybe? One can only hope.

In fact, that's the problem. Geekosystem's Editor-At-Large is not Rachel Sklar, but Andrew Cedotal. Nothing against Andrew, but Dan was better off having Rachel fill that role. Of course, the bias here is that Rachel's a friend of this blogger, and this blogger is a contributor to Mediaite, but the overarching issue is the theme, message, and direction of Geekosystem: it's a mess that does not live up to its mission:

The mission of Geekosystem is to unite all the tribes of geekdom under one common banner. There’s a lot of overlap between the different families of geekery: The geeks who are into gadgets and computers are often one and the same as the geeks who are into comics and sci-fi are often just the same as the geeks who are fueling the culture of the Web — one forum or imageboard at a time. As the site’s name suggests, Geekosystem recognizes and celebrates these interconnections and the oft-overlooked personalities that hold it all together.

It's the in the "oft-overlooked personalities" that Dan Abrams new venture fails. More often than not, the "oft-overlooked personalities" are geeks who women and people of color. A token mention does not solve the problem; a total Geekosystem overhaul is necessary.

Zennie62 Twitter conversations

Zennie62 Twitter conversations