I have no words after reading this other than to say that you should read it as well.
h/t Driftglass
Monthly Archives: February 2010
Why You Should be Skeptical of Science Headlines
Amy Tuteur has an important post over at Science-Based Medicine that you really should take the time to read. In a nutshell, she points out the problems with accepting the LATEST AND GREATEST SCIENCE DISCOVERY OF ALL TIME headlines that media organizations and (some) journalists love to put out there as a way to get attention.
Very much worth the read. And the next time someone tells you that red wine will make you live forever or that some breakthrough new drug is going to cure all of our metaphysical ills with a small pill, you owe yourself some followup to determine if there is actual science behind the claim or if it’s all just bread and circuses.
Most people are unaware that scientists issue press releases about their work and they are certainly unaware that medical journalists often copy them word for word. Instead of presenting an accurate representation of medical research, medical journalists have become complicit in transmitting inaccurate or deceptive “puff pieces” designed to hype the supposed discovery and hide any deficiencies in the research.
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Love Bursting Like a Chestburster
Witches Commies and Terrorists Oh My!
For a country that prides itself on democracy and freedom, the U.S. has a long history of blind and unthinking allegiance to scapegoating whoever the government wants scapegoated. What is amusing is that this blind, unthinking, slack-jawed version of democracy, while not a product of any one political party, is particularly apparent in the conservative love of authoritarianism that is in marked opposition to the rhetoric they often spew about freedom and liberty and the rule of law.
From Glenn Greenwald:
All throughout the Bush years, no matter what one objected to — illegal eavesdropping, torture, rendition, indefinite detention, denial of civilian trials — the response from Bush followers was the same: “But these are Terrorists, and Terrorists have no rights, so who cares what is done to them?” What they actually meant was: “the Government has claimed they are Terrorists,” but in their minds, that was the same thing as: “they are Terrorists.” They recognized no distinction between “a government accusation” and “unchallengeable truth”; in the authoritarian’s mind, by definition, those are synonymous. The whole point of the Bush-era controversies was that — away from an actual battlefield and where the Constitution applies (on U.S. soil and/or towards American citizens wherever they are) — the Government should have to demonstrate someone’s guilt before it’s assumed (e.g., they should have to show probable cause to a court and obtain warrants before eavesdropping; they should have to offer evidence that a person engaged in Terrorism before locking them in a cage, etc.). But to someone who equates unproven government accusations with proof, those processes are entirely unnecessary. Even in the absence of those processes, they already know that these persons are Terrorists. How do they know that? Because the Government said so. Even when it comes to their fellow citizens, that’s all the “proof” that is needed. (Link)
And just to go on to prove that this attitude is not limited to the conservative idiocy of GOP supporters, Greenwald points to a disturbing trend in Obama supporters and liberals who are reacting in exactly the same way when the Government points its finger and says, “that one is a TERRORIST.” Idiocy and stupidity and fear and knee-jerk reactions and the desire for vengeance and scapegoating are human traits and not solely owned and operated by tea-partiers, GOP supporters, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-nazis, etc. The Red Scare and the Communist witch hunts of the 50s were made possible by liberals who allowed and bought into the fears that the Government was peddling. Obama, for whatever reasons, has decided to continue using the same mechanism of scapegoating that Bush put into place.
Without the rule of law, we have lost.
Without the a system of justice that depends on proof and judicial process and the ability to defend oneself against one’s accuser, our experiment in democracy is nearing an end. Like it or not, civilization needs to do its level best to keep emotions and personal feelings out of our justice system and depend as much as possible on the rule of law. Even for the most brutal killer. Even for the most guilty of terrorists. Even, and especially, for anyone accused and not yet proven guilty of any damn thing.
One would think that, as American’s, we might all be able to get behind the rule of law instead of mob mentality. Sure, each and every one of us has felt the siren song of vengeance and blood-for-blood. As a nation, we should be better than our basest selves, otherwise we are no better than those who blow up innocent people to make a point.
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One Way to Avoid the Crowds
Live here, on Vestmannaeyjar Island in Iceland:
I think I’d love to live like that for a month or two, bring my guitar and my computer, no internet access, nothing but my thoughts, the wind, the ocean, the stars at night, and a chance to radically shift gears for a while. I’m guessing that after about 45 – 60 days, I might have to get back to people and coffee shops and all the stuff that we have when not on an island in the cold Atlantic sea.
How long do you think you could live in a place like this?
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Big Supplement
Why is it that the people who are concerned about “Big Pharma” seem to to accept that all those aisles and aisles of supplements that are marketed as panaceas for nearly every physical ailment (including age and death), and that cost significant amounts of money are put out there for the good of the consumer instead of to line somebody’s pocket with cold, hard, cash?
a recent GAO report estimated that the supplement industry has grown to a $23.7 billion industry in 2007. Moreover, so lax is the regulation of supplements that it took a very extreme and egregious act, namely the marketing of an industrial chelator as an “antioxidant” supplement for the treatment of autism, before the FDA finally acted. Link
While I’m not prepared to get into any kind of discussion about the utility or efficacy of any one particular supplement, the fact is that supplements are a huge business . . . and wherever there is a market there are people eager to make a buck without caring one iota if they are helping or hurting people. That goes for your big pharmaceutical companies as well as your suppliers of melatonin, st. johns wort, ginkgo biloba, etc.
Skepticism should always be used when examining the claims and the money trail of corporations, whether they are wrapped up in the logos of Big Pharma or Big Supplement. And since the supplement industry gets to operate with little to no regulation, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that there needs to be some extra skepticism sauce poured on their claims of ever-lasting youth and vitality.
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Netflix and the Nyquil Dreams
From Joseph Devon comes The Five Stages of Netflix. For me, the funniest moment is when he points out, so very very rightly, that the show:
Lost at the speed of NetFlix is like a Nyquil dream and you stay up late nights wondering if that hatch and that hydrogen bomb are really from the same show.
Yes. So very yes.
A Bunny and a Bear on a Beach with Ukulele
Wait Wait . . . BRAINS!
h/t to BoingBoing for the link to this fabulous script for a Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me episode coming to us from the zombie apocalypse:
PETER: Steve, you’re going to start us off with “Who’s Carl This Time?” Carl will recreate for you three voices from the week’s news. Your job is to identify them. If you get two out of three right, you win our prize, Carl’s voice on your answering machine. Of course, since civilization is disintegrating around us, we’ll probably be relying on smoke signals for the next generation or two. Here’s your first quote.
CARL: “I am tired of these m-f’ing zombies in my m-f’ing White House!”
PETER: That was a slightly edited version of a quote from which world leader, in response to the zombie threat?
STEVE: Brains?
PETER: No, I’m sorry, it was Vice-President Joe Biden, who went, and we quote the vice-president again, “all Samuel L. Jackson on their asses.” President Obama, meanwhile, defended the West Wing with a functioning lightsaber that the Pentagon had apparently built for him in secret.
Go here to read the rest.
A Brave and Glorious Folly
One of the definitions of folly is “an often extravagant picturesque building erected to suit a fanciful taste.” It is in this sense, metaphorically, that I refer to Lewis Pugh’s swim across the North Pole. Not, as one might imagine, clad in some spage-age material to shield him from the -1.7 celsius water but in a fraking speedo, cap, goggles, and core body temperature sensor.
Imagine, swimming through water colder than ice for one kilometer, for over 18 minutes.
You can’t. I can’t. On some deep and fundamental level, the act is one of folly. But a folly that is beyond merely fanciful. The point that Mr. Pugh wanted to make was simple: it should be impossible to make the swim when and where he did because that entire area should have been solid ice. But it was not. Vast areas of open water at the North Pole indicating some of the most troubling effects of climate change. Mr. Pugh made this impossible swim—impossible on so many levels—to raise awareness of climate change.
In so doing he also demonstrated just how capable the human body and mind and spirit can be; just how beautiful and courageous we can become if we believe in ourselves and work with others to achieve what might appear to be folly. There is a glut in this world of cheap, misguided, and short-sighted folly, mostly focused in those who make political and economic decisions at the highest levels of government and corporations (is there a difference?). There is, as Lewis Pugh shows us, another kind of folly. One that takes your breath away and reveals the best of what it means to be human.