Yeah, I'd Go Running...if it Weren't for These Damn Knees!

When people discover I run and by discover, I mean I inform them what a pretentious bastard I am by the about of land I covered the previous night - usually they add in that "Well I'd run, but I just don't have the knees for it" or perhaps "I get sore if I run too long." Go ahead, I'll give you some time to think about this before continuing on.

I'm not really sure how this thought process prevails as a legitimate excuse to one's self, but clearly it must be working as these people continue to simply not exercise (america is rather overweight last time I checked). However, a common trend amongst the physically unfit is being the first point out healthy activities that require no physical exertion.

"Oh you know, tea is so good for you."

"Eating organic food prevents cancer."

"Did you know during your average workday you walk half a mile?"

I need not even be curious as to why these people are so quick to point out a short cut to physical fitness. My only guess is that they believe they've found a loophole in the system and beaten someone like myse...you know what. I'm a bad example. Let's use my brother. The tri-athlete. No wait, still not good enough. Let's use Dean Karnazes, the ultramarathon runner. Here's a guy that ran two marathons back to back (thats 52 some miles) and during which he ordered a pizza, drank two Starbuck's lattes, and an order of baklava. He ate/drank this whilst running. WHILST! THATS MORE SERIOUS THAN "WHILE." He's the same guy who did a marathon everyday for a month.

Secondly, these individuals are rather reluctant to have you point out the holes in their logic and supporting evidence. No doubt, tea probably has some kind of benefit...but I can't imagine the quantities you would have to consume to actually have something of a noticeable benefit. Eating organic foods prevent cancer? That isn't even worth my time, at least in this post.

The next time someone says they wish they could run if it weren't for their damn knees, ask them if they've been on a scale recently.

23andme.com - The Wrap Up Post

Have I facebooked about this event enough? No, because science - the kind of thing that enriches peoples lives and does more than Jersey Shore can't be talked about enough. How many newspapers have astrology columns? Now how many have science columns? You know what...I can't even get into that. That's another post for another time. Never the less, let me press forward.

I wrote several weeks ago about going into the 23andme process (http://adamdzak.blogspot.com/2010/12/23andme_27.html) and you know what was waiting in my email today when I got home from work? An email with the following subject line...

Your Genetic Profile is Ready at 23andMe!

Yeah, I flipped out. I lost it. My heart was beating a bit faster. I was about to see and understand an insane amount of information about myself in but a single click. Was I going to discover my mother was wrong and heritage isn't mexican? What if I'm actually african american? What if I'm asian? What if the cancer my grandfather denied he had, he actually did and I'm genetically predisposed to possibly get it? This list of what if's goes on for quite some time and I won't repeat myself with what I outlined in my first blog post on this topic.

So I went over to the website, I logged in...and suddenly the page that was otherwise empty for the past weeks was now vomiting data all over the page. My elevated health risks, my decreased risks, my traits (that's right, I spit into a tube and they can tell me my eye color. Yeah. Let that sit in for awhile), my carrier status for disease, and my response to drugs. The last one is kind of the beneficial endgame of this, drugs would be prescribed to you based on your expected response to it. Perhaps the dosage needs to be higher because you have some obscure resistance to it. That kind of treatment sounds beyond promising to me.

So what's this? Information warfare against myself for the future? Maybe it's bad word usage but it sounds neat to me. Without sharing specific results as I'm still figuring out how sensitive I am to this information being publically disclosed I can see my likelihood for getting diseases. That sounds beyond useful to me. That sounds like something I want to share with my doctors and that could be planned for and possibly prevented. What could be better than that? What if I have a 62.49% chance of getting really severe arthritis? Would I not want to possibly be able to prevent this? But what about the diseases my family knows nothing about? The ones they, and now have in turn me made into a carrier for? Would I not want to take preventative measures?

I will tell you some obvious information that I don't mind sharing, because they are some interesting traits that you think "Oh, hey thats weird to point out. But neat." Here are a few things that have been pointed out to me merely by spitting into a tube:

Eye color: Likely brown (I do have brown eyes)

Muscles: Likely a sprinter (so far this is on par, I run a lot but I have trouble running anything past 3 miles)

Alcohol Flush Reaction: Does not flush (this is known as "Asian Glow" and happens when you don't process alcohol like everyone else, resulting in a red glow. Typically, people of Asian heritage suffer from this.)

Caffeine Metabolism: Metabolizes quickly (fair enough, I enjoy coffee, mountain dew, and other caffeinated beverages on occasion and I don't have crazy reactions to them.)

Bitter Taste Perception: Unlikely to taste - correct. I don't really taste bitter things.

Lactose Intolerance: Likely tolerant - correct. I drink milk and consume dairy with no adverse effects. My father on the other hand is lactose intolerant.

Freckles: Unlikely - but interesting my "people" are disposed to have them. I however specifically am not.

But what do I mean by my "people"? I'm white. My mother says I have mexican heritage and my father is from a serbian background. But I'm American. I mean, really...what else there to say on this topic? People always talk about their ethnic backgrounds but what if that information was wrong? Better yet, what if it was right but only on the most superficial levels? Well, interesting fact here...I am in fact Asian and African American. Yeah. My mom's family line while mexican actually started off as eastern asians. My dad on the other hand, is of serbian/european descent.

It's funny because all I did was joke before/during this process was say "It'd be great if I turn out to be asian or black...or both!" Lone behold, I am those two things.

What's left after that? Discovering any relative who may have done this process as well...well all the relatives I don't know about who've done this. I got the health/ancestry today and according to the site in a week they will share family heritage with me. It will link me to other members on the website who I am actually related too and I kid you not, possibly discovering fifth cousins.

On top of all of this, I am going to receive up to date information every month on genetic information pertinent to me. But before I close, there was one bit of information I was really curious about. I am a Type 1 diabetic. 23andme.com explicity states they can't/won't diagnose you but merely show you your genetic predisposition to certain disease. I laughed thinking about results coming back saying "You're diabetic" but here's what interesting. Here's what I truly found to be a kick in the pants.

Out of 100 people, I had less than a 1% chance of contracting diabetes. It was 0.70% to be exact. It would seem that someone has to be the statistic.

The Purdue Math Department...Sucks.

I'm a graduate of Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN. Summer class of 2010 with a degree in Computer and Information Technology, with a specialization in Network Engineering. In short, my degree qualifies me to defend networks, personal, small, big, corporate, government, national, international. It's a degree in the internet and it's security.

My coursework outlines my knowledge of Windows, Unix, Linux, Mac OS, and other operating system. C#, ASP.NET, and Java encompass some of the languages I know (these three were required for my degree). HTML, CSS, Flash, Silverlight speaks to my web developer side. Programming routers, configuring switches, deploying servers, testing email receipt, faking email on behalf of other people, are things within my ability. Knowledge of Microsoft Office should be assumed, and troubleshooting is my indispensable tool of the trade. Windows Mobile certifications, CCNA's, MSCA's...the tests can and do go on to further add certifications too my Black and Gold degree.

However - there is a single thing for which I can't grasp. That seemingly couldn't be explained to me and could have prevented my very graduation and seal of approval in my various fields of Information Technology. The culprit is calculus, but the bad guy was really the Math Department.

Calculus 1 and 2 were two classes that since my freshman year of college I saw the two largest impetus' of my degree. In fact, I failed Calculus 1 (Calc 221) three times. I failed Calculus 1 (Calc 223) once. I then failed Calculus 2 (224) once. How did I pass them? I didn't take them at West Lafayette I can tell you that much. If you could hunt down any of my classmates, they'll tell you I was an idiot when it came to math. I was, even I know this. I was horrendous. In fact, it was in my senior year that I actually managed to pass these entry level, freshman courses, just not in Lafayette.

The math department of lafayette subscribes to their own method of grading, only which I can assume is done because they are mathmatics majors and thats just what they do. What else do you do with that degree? I don't know, I won't criticize, but this certainly seems like a good start. I digress. Anyway. Here's the short unpleasant version with an explanation following it. What if I said you do well on homework, quizzes, and exams. So well, that you are scoring a 90% minimum on everything. You can see this, but your grade can't be confirmed or denied until the end of the semester (aka the report card) when the grades come in you discover you got a B. How can this be you ask? You did the work, and got the results of at least an A, yet receive a B. Here comes the explanation directly from the syllabus no less.

There is a total of 550 points in the course. Homework and quizzes combined count 100 points. Each of the three mid-term exams counts 100 points, and the nal exam counts 150 points. Since the only assessments common to all students and graded identically for all students are the two, course-wide exams (Exam 2 and the Final Exam), a normalization process based on them is used to determine the number of each letter grade given in a section. The Department decides on an A{range, B{range, C{range, etc., for the combined two exams. Each instructor then gives the same number of A's, B's, C's, etc., that his section earned on the combined exams. The assignment of the letter grades is based on students' total points (a number between 0 and 550). For example, if in a particular section there are 8 A's, 10 B's, etc., on the two combined exams, the 8 students with the highest total points receive an A, the next 10 a B, and so on.

Does this make sense to you? If it does, explain it to me. If it doesn't, then keep thinking about it until your head explodes. Believe it or not, this system actually is to the student's advantage. Well, the slightly less intelligent students. It ensures the bottom of the barrel students still perform somewhat average. It makes things far more challenging for students who want to do well. Interestingly enough, there is one way to cheat this system but it would never work given the coordination involved. If you could convince every students to fail, or only do so good as a point perhaps. Then everyone gets an A. Because there isn't enough of a "scale" to distribute grades to point values. Hell if everyone fails, and everyone gets a 0 out of 550. Then the highest grade is 0, meaning 0's get A's. It wouldn't work because there is no way you could convince the number of students enrolled in your particular class, let alone entire course to do it.

With this being said, it is possible to do A quality work and yet only receive a B. However in my case, the system never benefited me. I did so consistently poor, this "curve" was of no benefit to me. I couldn't even pull a D in these classes, more importantly, a D was all I needed as far as my degree was concerned to move onto the the next level course and ultimately graduate. But that didn't happen, always got the F in these courses. Anyway, the department in my view designed me to fail. I couldn't perform in this kind of competitive grading environment. Something about getting a grade, only to find out the grade really isn't mine seems odd. Why shouldn't it be odd? Every other class I take a quiz, and now I know exactly what my quiz grades are.

One summer I decided to go to a satellite campus, Purdue Calumet. This campus is located in Hammond, Indiana and has a FAR more community college atmosphere to it. It also, has a far larger mix of people. This is the college where it's not entirely my 20 something peers, it's fully grown adults. It's people with full time jobs coming back to college for a degree, taking night classes, etc. I sat down in my class that hot summer day for calculus one and prepared for how this school was going to teach me the same class I had already failed. But class hasn't started, it's syllabus time first and then class time.

50% and below is an F.

WHAT?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

51% - 59.9% is a D

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE JOKING.

60% - 69.99 is a C

REALLY?! THIS IS A WHOLE TEN PERCENT LOWER!

70% - 85% is a B

...

And you can guess A range. This was ridiculous, this was unheard of. The grade range was known ahead of time and the standards are ridiculously lower at this campus. It's going to transfer as the same credit and I'm going to pass it. I did pass it, with flying colors. I did Calculus 2 the same way. I cheated the system by going to the campus with lower standards and doing it. I tried Calculus 2 at Lafayette, even more impossible than one.

Here's where Lafayette, fails absolutely, hands down miserably at teaching this subject and why I and others have and will continue to fail at it:

1. TA's teach classes, what's worse is they barely speak English.

Look, I'm all for equal opportunity employment. But when I have to ask someone to repeat everything at least 2 times all the time. It gets frustrating.

2. 50 minute classes

The typical class follows suit as such - 10 minutes for homework questions, every TA will say how they cant answer all of them because they need time to lecture that day. The day's lecture will take anywhere from 20 minutes to the rest of the class. What's worse is when quizzes are introduced. You will truly enjoy watching how these people budget their time to better suit themselves than the student.

3. TA's are students with schedules, not Professors with jobs.

The problem with TA's is they are students just like those in the class, they have homework themselves. They have classes to get to themselves. They have their own pursuits and then have to grade your work, quizzes, and tests. Let me say this, good luck finding "Office Hours" for one of these folks. They don't exist, if they do it is but for minutes. Even if you do find office hourS (notice the plural use of hour) you better hope you have some free time. Maybe you'll have to skip a class. Be late to another. Start work later. Don't get me wrong, you go to college for college and to learn and no one is more unsympathetic than the college itself.

4. Online homework

This honestly seemed like a good idea when it was introduced to me the third time around in calculus. Let's do away with submitting homework with paper, and instead require students to spend money on an online subscription service to grade you. Here's the problem, computers don't give partial credit. They simply don't understand your math, merely the final answer. The advantage of a human grading my work is following the steps I made, seeing where I went wrong and correcting me. More importantly, giving some degree of credit for getting somewhere with the problem. Because when you are struggling, you'll take all the credit you can get. A plus instead of a minus, but still the right absolute answer? Plus you can't ask questions, the program has a help program but only explains it one way with no further help. What if I need further help? Oh right, I need to find my TA's office hours...but I already went over that part.

5. The Math Help Room

There is a math help room, which has go to be the largest joke I have ever witnessed. I went regularly to discover 4 various employees (students) standing around waiting to be hailed over to problems. Chatting and talking amongst themselves and then discouraged when a hand is raised to go help. When asked for a question, you are immediately presented with an answer - not help, an answer as to what to do next. The help then walks away and you are assumed to go about your work until you need them again. It's a worthless investment as the room only supports about 16 - 20 students. It's like the math departments solution for dealing with problems without having to deal with them. Such as "Oh have you tried the math help room?"

6. Tutoring

There is a recommended tutor list on the departments website, but tutors aren't linked to the department in anyway other than "we trust this person to do a decent job." But you have to pay them, because the department doesn't. Which means you are again, working with someone's schedule (a student's more times than not.) You are paying them directly, with no guarantee of service or a "I'll give you some money back" or anything of the sorts. Students, living on student wages. Then there are rogue tutors on campus, they aren't on the department website but have done this "forever" and have an extensive client list and promise a certain letter grade. I did this, because I was desperate. I wasn't expecting the promised B minimum, a D would have done just fine but you know what. Whatever, maybe I'll get a C. We'll see what happens.

Needless to say the old french guy by the name of Jacque on the West Lafayete campus, with a very large black mustache who always wears a baseball cap should not be trusted. $25 an hour and promising a B minimum and will refund up to 30% of your money otherwise. Seems to me I was tutored, then told "You can't do this, and should drop." Really meant "I'll continue to tutor you, but won't give you any money back because you aren't smart enough to do this." Oh well, what's $1250 as a student.

7. Emailing the head of the department for help

Also doesn't result in as much as you think it would. Actually, it results in greater insanity. I told her I wasn't getting any help from any of the sources I was told I could. Nothing was working. In response I was told "You should go sit in on other TA's lectures and see if hearing it from different sources helps." A perfectly plausible thing for me as an 18 credit hour student with a job to do.

Needless to say, I decided to say screw it and take the class during the summer at Purdue Calumet. It worked out well both times. It was taught by professors. I got as much or as little time as I needed from professors. I had professors who were willing to meet on weekends to help me. Coincidently, I also saw what a change in location does in terms of expectations. Standards are drastically reduced. Also - you can use full scientific calculator during exams. That's right, that would imply you CAN'T in Lafayette. That is not a typo, that is the truth. Only simple calculators that DON'T display the equation you are working on are allowed during exams in Lafayette. Go ahead and sit on that one for awhile.

So sure I've graduated, I got my degree, and it's the seal of approval on my IT knowledge. But I will never forget the Purdue Lafayette Math Department and what I had to go through merely to receive that seal. Two freshman level courses that took essentially my career to complete. I hate math.

Hail the Knoy Hall of Technology.

I'm Doing 23andme.com

So about a week ago, I decided that I'd get my genome mapped out. Why? Because the service that was once $1000, then $750, then $400, then $500, and then a limited time offer of $100 if you acted during the month of December before Christmas this year of 2010.

I couldn't resist, the thought has no joke long been hanging in my head about how cool it would be to glean some of this information. Now that I'm done with college, college wages, and the luck of this $100 pricing I had to bite. Now granted I have to surrender to a single year of $5/month payments for this "Personal Genome Service." As it's billed/marketed they send you updates about your genes in the way of new research, and other information gathered in the way of science and you. Alright so now this $100 service is really $160. But still - not bad in comparison to those other prices I laid out earlier. Either this company is desperate for profits or it's doing so well they can afford to do this...then again with genetics information this cheap you wonder what kind of markup takes place. But you can only wonder, it's a privately owned company and they clearly have beaten everyone else to the market with this kind of QoS.

I've been asked by several family members, friends, and other inquiring minds about why I would subject myself to such a task and said monies. There are several reasons why I am doing this, and I still am working on an order of importance. But I also question given the information I'm about to glean if a pecking order is necessary or I should be just ecstatic with said information. Never the less, here's my reasoning.

Genetic Predisposition to Diseases

What could be more responsible (from a health standpoint) than knowing what could possibly become a detriment to my health before it even happens? Let's say these results come back and I have a large percent chance of developing heart disease. I can say that I would certainly want to alter my lifestyle. I'd want to know what is currently known about preventing heart disease given that I know I have a high chance of getting it.

Now let's say results come back and I have a low chance for developing heart disease, sure it's unlikely but something is on my radar now. Surely this is information worth knowing is it not?

I've also been faced with the philosophical dilemmna of truth. If there is not just a good chance I'll develop a heart disease, but an insanely good chance that I will. Let's say 97% chance I'll develop it. Would I rather this diagnosis come by surprise? Wouldn't I want to be able to know and be able to potentially alter this? Several of my friends have actually said this is information they would rather not know. Not specifically heart disease, they don't want any of this disease information in general.

It's important to make the point to any people in a gray area of genetic knowledge that just because I am genetically predisposed to develop some disorder doesn't mean that I will. Even if I had a 97% chance of developing a heart disease there is still a 3% chance I won't. Not to mention, numbers aside...it still doesn't mean I'll develop it. If I'm proactive in taking preventative measures I can completely rule out the possibility of developing a heart disease.

So to be clear, it's not like by doing this test I'm about to reveal my future/fate to myself. That's the wrong way to view this I believe. To quote GI Joe - "...and knowing is half the battle."

NOTE: No history of heart disease in my family (mothers or fathers) and I am a very active runner with no signs of any cardio related conditions. Furthermore, it should be understood I'm generalizing this "heart disease" and is used solely as an example.

Just Where the Hell Did I Come From?

Ok. This seems huge to me. I've been told I have a large mexican background what could be crazier than proving that completely wrong? What if it turns out that my "true" background is European? African? Italian? By no means will it change who I am, or my culture but it certainly will allow a more accurate description of me. Because let me tell you, anything would be more convincing than mexican heritage given my appearance. When people ask my ethnic background I either make it up or say "American." I'm clearly the product of a lot of interracial hookups.

But this point segue's into my next one, that I consider crazy huge.

Let's End Racism in the Hour

I'm white. Look at me. I'm white. Wait. Am I? How sure am I of this fact? Just looking at me, yes I am of Caucasian descent. I have black hair, brown eyes, and features of no particular race (at least I don't think so). But just skin color...I mean...that can't prove what I am. Look at my grandparents (well you can't but just go with me here) they were a bit darker, they were a bit more hispanic looking. But myself? Nuh uh. I look incredibly white. But what did their parents look like? Their grandparents? Who were these people?

Go back far enough and I'm sure we could see the interracial hookups happening left and right in the early lineage of the family. So on some level I could be 13% african american. I don't share the skin color with my african american counterparts but genetically I may come from the same pool.

You want to end racism over night? The black president it would seem didn't do it according to some people. No you're right. The (white) majority country votes in a black president and racism is still a problem? In pockets probably, on the majority? Don't even try to fight common sense and logic here. But still. Fine. Sure. Let's say America and a lot of the world is crazy insane racists and bigots. Seems like the most valuable use of money and time these groups could make use of is for paying people to get their genome's mapped. Problem solved.

But Adam, even in the face of evidence and undeniable proof people will still hold their beliefs, their bigotry, and racism. - Fine, let them. Watch how quickly society will solve this problem and how quickly we can publicly label people idiots. How quickly we will discount their opinions and views. Doesn't sound bad to me. But am I being overly optimistic? Possibly. But isn't the point made?

Drug Reaction

A doctor prescribes me a drug, but only does so once consulting my genetic response to it. Will I have an adverse reaction to the drug? Will the drug have any effect on me at all? Is the drug the best one given the options in response my to genes? Will I have side effects? These questions have answers and more importantly can be readily answered within a visitation by merely consulting concrete information about myself.

I'm not a doctor, that's why I go to see one. Wouldn't I want to provide them the most possible information so as to better treat me as a patient?

So it's for these very high level reasons (that each have a lot to delve into more separately) that I want to get this done. For the price tag, game on. This is the kind of test that stands to alter science, culture, philosophy, civil rights, I mean...come ON. Am I crazy in saying any of this? According to several I actually am. I was actually told "that seems like a waste of money..." and "...it doesn't seem like anything meaningful could be gleaned from such a procedure." When asked on the reasoning behind this I was told that "I don't know, just seems like a scam." I didn't press this person any further as I was short on time but had I not been I would have presented them with the very points for why I want to get this done. Besides, I just spit into a tube and mail it back. Let me repeat that as it bears repeating - you spit into a tube they mail you, and then you mail it back. Results in 6-8 weeks according to the site.

Finally. I am in no way affiliated with this company or hold any stake in it what so ever. I am an individual merely offering his thoughts on the service going into it.

Just Another Outlet

You know, it only recently dawned on me I have a lot of outlets for expressing myself. In fact, all of them are expressed in such a haphazard disorganized fashion that it only seemed to make sense to me to somewhat mash my incredibly opinionated personality into a blog.

Like a few other projects, I don't really expect myself keeping up with this. But you know what, it's worth a shot.