Knut.

BEAR!

My brother passed his qualifiers. I don't know if I mentioned that. I've yet to get more details, except he answered one question in true brother fashion with "crushing beer cans on your head or running with scissors." Since his field is brain tumors, I really want to know what the question was.

His weakness?

Knut.

Oh. My. Goodness! CUTE!

I really want to know what the question was.

What are the most common dumb ways to give yourself a brain boo-boo?

Damn. Apparently certain hobbies make it more risky to have an affair....

Skydiver charged with murder after love rival fell 13,000ft to her death

A married woman who was having an affair with a fellow skydiver plunged 13,000ft (4,000m) to her death after her love rival and best friend tampered with her parachute, police say.

Els Van Doren, 37, fell to earth in a garden in front of a group of onlookers. Els Clottemans, 22, has been charged with her murder.

Minutes earlier the pair had joined hands in a star formation with two other skydivers including Ms Clottemans’s boyfriend, a Dutchman named only as Marcel, who police say was having an affair with Mrs Van Doren.

While he and Ms Clottemans broke away at 4,000ft when their parachutes inflated, Mrs Van Doren, a mother of two, was unable to open either her main parachute or the reserve and crashed to her death in the town of Opglabbeek, Belgium.

...

According to the Belgian media, Marcel tried to arrange his liaisons so that neither woman found out about the other. His affair with Ms Clottemans began a year ago and he would spend Friday evening through to Saturday morning with her.

In the afternoon, he would meet Mrs Van Doren after she had spent the morning working in her husband’s jewellery shop. Their relationship had begun some years earlier and the two would spend the night in nearby Eindhoven, before returning to the skydiving club the next day.

Despite Marcel’s precautions, Ms Clottemans appears to have found out about her rival, although Mrs Van Doren was unaware that he was also involved with her close friend.

If anyone is confused as to the difference between correlation and causation - here is an excellent article: [link]

One thing you'll constantly hear in discussions is "correlation does not imply causation". Causation isn't really a mathematical notion - and that's the root of that confusion. Correlation means that as one value changes, another variable changes in the same way. Causation means that when one value changes, it causes the other to change. There is a very big difference between causation and correlation.

...

One more really interesting example that I read about when my daughter was little. There was a study published a few years ago showing a pretty strong correlation between leaving a night-light on in a child's room, and that child developing nearsightedness. This caused a big stir at the time; it got written up in newspapers, reported on by various television programs, etc. But other studies were unable to reproduce that correlation. Finally a group from Ohio State found that while they could not consistently reproduce a direct linkage between night-lights and nearsightedness, they could find a correlation between nearsighted parents and nearsighted children, and that there was also a correlation between nearsighted parents and the likelihood of having a night-light in their child's room. In other words, children whose parents are nearsighted are more likely to have a night-light in their childrens' rooms, and children are also likely to inherit nearsightedness from their parents. Correlation, but not causation: both the night-lights and the nearsightedness are caused by the parents' nearsightedness; there's no causal connection between the night-lights and the nearsightedness.

I think that all children should be taught skills in critical thinking. Stuff like logical fallacies, common mistakes when people (especially the media) try to explain scientific results or mathematical analysis of things, common ways that politicians, corporations, etc. try to mislead us, etc.

Anyway, this sorta' fits with that....

His weakness?

Well, he's been known to do both.

What are the most common dumb ways to give yourself a brain boo-boo?

Well, it turns out, one of the side effects of the drug is that it can inhibit the formation of scar tissue and clotting (cause it is designed to inhibit the formation of new blood vessels in the tumor specifically, but could affect other systems) and the question was about if that made it more dangerous. His answer was "only if you go around..."

So you aren't far from wrong!

Also talked with my SIL. By "talk," I mean laugh my ass off as she and brother have a sparring match over her pedestrian taste in food. I couldn't have a relationship with all that mock conflict, but the two of them thrive on it. She's 23 weeks and is shocked she's only gained 1.5 lbs despite eating like a horse. Ultrasound tomorrow at 2 pm my time! Told my brother he is to call me at work. The flake probably won't.

This is my dad looking like a big dork.

It makes me laugh (from one of his S&R trainings.) He loves this stuff.