Links Of Incredible Interest

I know plenty of people who need to go on Hetracil.

Netdisaster has all new ways to destroy a website.

How companies come up with their names. I knew Mozilla had something to do with Godzilla!

Excellent presentation on the history of forensics!

Too much time on the hands of a teacher, a neuroscientist, and this guy.

Guide to sleeping in airports.

The Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency.

Funny church signs.

Japanese monsters.

Take your pick: Interesting stuff or Amazing stuff.







Now here it is, your url of the day ( you glutton!):
How To Trace An Email

The Bode Miller Effect

The perpetually fascinating 3quarksdaily blog has this interesting discussion of the Bode Miller phenomenom compared with that of Hamas - both had trumped-up and blind expectations by the world which they did not meet: Miller was to win 5 gold medals, and Hamas was to fade away into fundamentalist oblivion.

Thinking about Hamas is like thinking about our own Religious Right Christian movement here in the U.S. Its fundamental, quaint, absurd, soulless, selfish, and just-plain wrong interpretations of religious metaphors are as strong as ever. And the more it's persecuted, the the more powerful it seems to become.


However, in the case of Bode Miller he is not quite innocent of the blind expectations when he says things like, "The expectations were other peoples'. I'm comfortable with what I accomplished."

Yeah, right.

That's the true thoughts of a totally selfish and self-justifying dickhead right there. The comment section to the 3quarksdaily post above appropriately compares him to Bush.

R.I.P. Mr. Chicken

Don Knotts died this weekend.

He was the star of one of my favorite movies I saw as a kid, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.

And, of course, he played Barney Fife, the legendary and masterful comic performance of all time.

90% of the world is Barney Fife.







Now here it is, your url of the day:
Virtual Pig Dissection

It's 12-Stepping, Not 12-Talking

I might as well wrap this week up with another take on science. This one I found via Kevin, M.D. It's a funny little article talking about doctors teaching patients.

It points out that saying stuff like "studies show..." makes nary a dent in most patients' interest, but showing them a neighbor or family member to illustrate a fact will really hit home.

It's common sense that people are more influenced by individual experience than some distant high-falutin scientific study.

This was striking back when I worked in psych where talking about how to deal with chemical dependency or depression did very little, but showing people - giving them an experience - worked wonders.

I had to drive patients to AA and NA meetings three or four times a week for about 6 years or more, and I had to sit there with them. That's a lot of 12-step meetings to endure for a non-addict!

Now, I don't have a lot against 12-step meetings - I think they really help a lot of people in the initial stages of trying to get off alcohol and drugs.

The thing that bothered me about them were the people who were still going to these things after a year or more. Some had been going to them for over 40 years! It really rang strange when they would say that if they missed even one meeting after 40 years, they'd relapse.

I thought that was just silly. They weren't changing their lives at all, just trading one addiction for another (the addiction to 12-steps). Sure, it's a hell of a lot better (and cheaper!) to go to a meeting than get stinking drunk, but the 12-steps always seemed to me to be designed for one to grow above and beyond.

I watched a wonderful Penn & Teller Bullshit episode that delved into the 12-step world. They crystallized what I had always suspected: 12-step programs are cults, addiction isn't a disease, and there is no "addiction" gene.

12-step programs, like I said, can help in the beginning by showing and giving a person the personal experience of how to change their lives, and it's also that initial personal experience that is the most helpful to get through the general detox period as the body adjusts to living without the drug or alcohol, or overeating, or whatever.

But after that, it's time to move on. The experience has been had and it's time to get on with life.

"Oh sure, easier said than done," one might counter.

That's actually correct. That's what that 40-year member of AA is doing: still saying and not experiencing, not doing.









Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.elderwisdomcircle.org

Good Science/Religion Relations

In my last post I went mouthing-off oblivious to what the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) just did just last week (I'm just staying in full compliance with the motto of this blog, "oblivious mouthing-off").

The AAAS met with not only teachers, but clergy too, in order to fight against religious fundamentalist encroachments into science.

That's a smart move to make. With all the press things like intelligent design get, people tend to forget that it's a fringe movement - a dangerous one, but still fringe. The majority of religious leaders recognize that there is "no conflict between evolution and religion". In other words, they are not metaphorically challenged. They've even started the Clergy Letter Project to gain signatures supporting non-metaphorically challenged religious practice.

There were no tragedies during the AAAS meeting, so I guess Pat Robertson is probably a little disappointed with God's wrath this week.

The AAAS is doing the same thing the AU (Americans United for the Separation of Church and State) has been doing for a long time - enlisting the help of clergy in a common cause.
Again, the majority of churches out there do not want to be entangled in government. It is only those few soulless fundamentalist religious organizations that are clamoring to have our government suckle at their barren witch-cold teats.

I belonged to AU for several years, but I had to stop after receiving an average of four to five mailings each month begging for more money. I emailed them, imploring them to stop spending the little membership money I could spare on all the mailings, but got no reply.

Sorry, AU. I am still passionate about Church and State Separation, and I understand that you need to beg for all the money you can get to fight very expensive legal battles, but it just got a little ridiculous there.








Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.moviecliches.com

Peer Review Kills The Rabbit Named Truthiness

I've come across several discussions this week about the marketing of science. The questions seem to boil down to these:

1. Should science leave its objective track a bit and go on the offense in promoting itself?

2. How sensational should that promotion be allowed to get without disrupting scientific integrity?

3. And should that promotion enter into the political arena as a full and proud player?


At the core of this issue is scientific integrity. How do we protect it from all the deviousness and hucksterism that comes with marketing? In other words, how do scientists do marketing in the absolute opposite manner of entities such as Big Pharm and Big Oil? Or even more succinctly: can marketing truth succeed, and has anyone ever tried it?

Look at the example of global warming, a scientific theory that is hardly disputed inside the scientific community but politically spun as some crazy, chaotic idea outside of it. The public is unfortunately more aware of the latter.

Science's overall trepidation to enter into promotion comes from its natural measured approach to truth. The scientific method is the tortoise that will ultimately win the truth-race, but the rabbit meanwhile gets all its fallacious ideas into public policy. The tortoise usually arrives a day late and a dollar short.

Chis Mooney's book The Republican War On Science talks about things to be done:

1. Bring back the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment in a more efficient form to advice Congress, and also build up the Executive Branch's Science advisory role (the latter will have to wait until there's a non-puppet administration, obviously).

2. Safeguard scientific advisory panels to speak out without political and legal threat.

3. Encourage journalists to perform their job better by reporting science more responsibly and not being so distracted by every shiny spin thrown in front of them.

4. Be more vigilant in persecuting science abuse.

5. Encourage scientists to step out of their ivory towers, especially on the local level.


But what science has going for it, and which is used all too little in public view, is peer review. Peer review is the blade that glows brightly when around government orcs, and they fear it. They fear open and honest peer review like the plague. It makes them scatter like nothing else.

For science to enter into marketing of itself, it has to hold that peer review blade high.








Now here it is, your url of the day:
Twin Peaks

Links Of Amazing Interest

the Perry Bible Fellowship, very eclectic and funny cartoons.

Muppet Wiki! and did you know they are making a Dark Crystal sequel?

More mind parasites: viruses are our creators! This would be a great sci-fi movie combined with nanotechnology, like a alien vs predator thing. Nanotechnology is so cool.

A blog celebrating the last-place olympic athletes.

How products are made.

How to be persuasive.

The Borowitz Report, political satire.

Random quotes that don't suck... mostly.

Cool world maps.

For the thousandth time, go to Neatorama and be amazed!

Turn your dead loved-ones into a nice diamond. Doesn't it sound like some evil alien plot to turn all our life-forces into gems that can be used for interstellar warp drives? No? Ok, just checking.

How to fold a *#%!*#@ fitted sheet.

Samorost2, more fun than the first or Planetarium.

Bender.

John K.'s blog.

Hawaii picture blog with shocking tale of stolen camera.

Play with a face.

Post-It wisdom.






Some sources:

Grow-a-brain
Linkbunnies
Found on the Web
MonkeyFilter

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Risk Is Relative To The Rich

Here's the whole human dilemma with scientists:

When they announce that the world is warming and some resulting bad shit is very probable, most people shrug and a few get "prove it!" pissed (the latter are obviously the rich).
But when they announce that dark chocolate is good for you, people cry "Hooray!" and second-guessing is nowhere to be seen (screw those deep-core chocolate samples!).

I was thinking about that while watching the 60 Minutes story (Scott Pelley, can you be any more annoying?) last night about global warming. It's very scary stuff and suggests that even cutting out all greenhouse gas emissions immediately will not turn the tide that has been launched.
That unfortunate curling stone has been pushed toward the side of the track and no amount of brushing at this point will bring it back to center.

We can do our best to progressively lower greenhouse emissions and deal with the inevitable tragedies global warming unleashes, but to just ignore it or to continually 'demand more evidence' before acting (Bush-stalling) is foolishness indeed.








Now here it is, your url of the day:
How To Detect Lies

Oh, Was There A Baby In That BathWater?

It's interesting to see the reaction to the recent study which suggests that a low-fat diet doesn't decrease the risk of heart disease in women. That finding was just a sideline; the study was really looking at a correlation between low-fat diets and cancer risks.

As with any study, the media goes gonzo over the results and pays little heed to validity (which this study rather failed at, as the women didn't stick to the diet goal) or reliability.

The media are like those kids in the schoolyard you tell to eat worms because it will give them superpowers, and they do it.

Someday someone is going to publish a little study that suggests we would all lose weight if we jam bacon strips in our ears. The Today show will do a piece on the best and most fashionable bacon we can use to jam in our ears. And all that week people will be walking around with smelly pieces of bacon dangling out of their heads...

...but only until the next study comes along saying that you should eat just peanut butter and onions in order to lose weight.

That'll be another odorous week.






Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com

The Gospel Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster

Now there's a book coming out about the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I'll bet it's absolutely noodly.

Order yours today!

Meanwhile, Merry Valentines Day. Send a FSM valentine whydontcha?





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The Joy Of A Diamond Found

We watched a movie last night that I have to add to my top ten of all time, Millions.
What an utter joy this thing is! Why did it pass by last year so quietly under the radar?

The movie is about a kid in the United Kingdom who finds a bag of money, but it quickly evolves beyond being just a morality tale. The morality is wonderfully woven with many other things into a much grander vision of life's tapestry. It's hilarious and touching and it is told in a celebration of what the world looks like through a kid's eyes. On top of that, it is a very smart movie, very sophisticated. My children enjoyed it immensely.

Millions is like a modern To Kill A Mockingbird. Just brilliant.








Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://wiki.ehow.com

Musings On The Mob Mentality

The Islamic rioting over the past week or so because of the publication of Muhammad cartoons is quite interesting. I think it is a very pointed example of the failure of religion and state combination. Now, certainly many of those angry mobs could care less about the cartoons; they are just using the situation to get their riot on.
But the bigger picture is that when you infuse a religion into civil laws it creates a primed situation for mob mentality, mob manipulation, and mob violence. The clerics know this all too well.

In our own country, where the separation of church and state is active (at least in principle), it is less likely for a violent mob to break out if, for example, Jesus is portrayed on a cross submerged in piss. There will be outcry, but no widespread rioting (even though many will try to incite just such a thing).

The lesson to us to keep our church and state separate is clear. But what about Islamic nations?
Their state laws are rock-solid hard with their religion. Will church/state separation ever be something they'll be able to utilize?

This is the main ignorance the Bush administration has regarding their pipe dream of Iraq. They went in there with absolute blindness to the religious aspect of Islamic governments, and this arrogance has obviously created a mess.
Would things have turned out better if we'd gone in there with more Islamic savvy?
Undoubtedly.
Knocking over terrorist regimes is easy, but reconstruction takes smarts. Too bad we elected people lacking smarts, eh?


In kind of a related issue, the story last night on 60 Minutes about frozen embryos was rather interesting. It's the whole issue of using them for stem-cell research or not.

The pro-life cry is that if you do anything with them other than grow them or keep them frozen indefinitely, then you are disrespecting "human dignity" as one guy put it. He views the little collection of cells as humans with the same right to dignity as you or I, whatever that means.
It's an absurdity, but the same argument is used against abortion.

The counter argument is that thousands of embryos are destroyed at fertility clinics everyday without even a passing glance from anyone. Why can't they be used for stem-cell research instead?

It's because someone's shiny hypocritical religious ideas are infused into government policy. The clerics...uh...I mean the evangelicals have infected the state in many ways, but this one is scary because it's a policy of principle and not practicality.

Nonetheless if one of those evangelicals gets sick and could benefit from a little stem-cell treatment, then you'll see shiny hypocrisy blind its owners so fast it'll make your head spin!








Now here it is, your url of the day:
Webster's World Of Cultural Issues

Grammys, Edens, And Dinosaurs

Congrats to all the rockers who won the big Grammy's last night - U2, Green Day, Springstein. I personally would've liked the Gorillaz to win more, they are a brilliant group. Their opening visuals were quite brilliant.

Thank God that Mariah didn't win much, that would've been very annoying, Celine Dion-annoying.

Speaking of thanking God, I wonder if Kanye West thanked Him whenever he lost. I mean come on, it's a little selfish to thank God only when you win. If it's all part of God's plan then you should thank Her whether you win or lose, shouldn't you?

I keed Kanye. I actually enjoyed his number with Jamie Fox - it's a good song and they had a lot of fun with it. But the shots of Kanye praying before winning announcements was enough to make you wish you could throw a pie at him.

And just who extracted herself from whoreland for the night? Why it was Christina Aguilar! That girl can sing!

But who really shut the audience down in totaly awe? The Boss did. Now that was a song! Springstein was channeling Dylan's ghost there...uh...if Dylan was...uh...dead...

How about that John Legend dude, that's some talent there!

And McCartney, who annoys more these days than he entertains, even he killed with an absolute blazing Helter Skelter. A little later, though, he came out to sing Yesterday with Linkin Park and JayZ and he looked a bit lost.


Anyway, my Grammy review is getting lame here (getting??!).

The real amazing news this week is that just when you think that every inch of Earth's surface has been trampled on (except for the ocean's untapped mysteries), they find a lost paradise in Indonesia full of dozens of new species! What a find!

But can that beat a 10-foot T. rex ancestor, Guanlong wucaii?

Come on, you can't beat dinosaurs.








Now here it is, your url of the day:
John Allen Paulos

Just Add A Little Water, Shake It Up: More Robitussin!

Ok, so I go down to the drugstore to buy some Robitussin for my sick kid who is producing their body weight daily in snot, and I find that all the pseudoephedrine products are now kept behind the pharmacy counter to help stop illegal methamphetamine lab activity.

It's a minor annoyance - no biggie - and I grab the little Robitussin card and head over to the counter. The pharmacy-tech then asks me for my driver's license.
"What for?" I ask. Good Lord, it's just a bottle of Robitussin!

"We have to put you in a database. You're only allowed to buy so many products containing pseudoephedrine."

A little uncomfortable with being put in a database for a simple bottle of Robitussin, I hesitate but then shrug it off. Whatever. If it'll stop some stoned asshole meth addict from slamming into my family's car and killing us all someday, then fine.

He puts the data in and now I figure I'm good to go. But then he hands me a slip of paper to sign. "What's this for?" I ask.

"You have to sign for it, too."

Sweet Zombie Jesus! I sign the paper, pay for the Robitussin, and leave more disturbed than I naturally already am.

Fortunately, we don't use cold medicines all that much. The last bottle of Robitussin I bought lasted about a year.

This bottle may be the last.


That's all we had when I was a kid: Robitussin.
No matter what you got, Robitussin better handle it.
"Daddy, I got asthma." "Robitussin!"
"I got cancer." "Robitussin!"
I broke my leg. Daddy poured Robitussin on it.
"Yeah boy, let that 'tussin get in there!"
--Chris Rock








Now here it is, your url of the day:
Eggcorn Database

3quarksdaily Takes The Lead

3quarksdaily is fast becoming my favorite blog because of amazingly wonderful posts like this.

I was walking my son to school this morning and on the way back I was enjoying the sky, the bubbling creek, the crisp air, and trying to think about what to blog today. When I got home and sat down with my coffee to read the post above, I realized I got nuthin'.

I'm going outside to play.






Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.animatedknots.com

Quote Of The Month

Religion is a way of walking, not a way of talking.

-William R. Inge



I want a bumpersticker with that!

Clean Blades Here! Get Your Clean Blades!

In England there is apparently some debate about whether to give "self-harmers" clean blades to use or not.
Self-harmers, or "cutters" are those psychiatric disordered people who like to cut or scrape on themselves (usually on their arms) in order to feel self-inflicted pain.

When I worked in psych I had the horrific pleasure of taking care of a few dozen cutters over time. The response from the treatment team varied quite a bit - there was everything from "let's strap them down so they can't do it!" to "oh, leave them alone and let them slice away."

Ok, the latter response wasn't quite so cavalier, but there were many who realized that the cutters were going to do it one way or another. You can't follow someone around 24/7; at some point you have to let them be responsible for their actions.

From the hospital's standpoint though, there is the legal threat. How can you let someone cut on themselves under your care? Cutters very, very rarely do harm to themselves other than superficial lacerations with a little bleeding and some scars later on. But what about that one idiot who accidentaly knicks an artery and bleeds to death in their bathroom? And from the UK nurses' standpoint above, what about that idiot who cuts on themselves with a piece of dirty broken glass and gets some serious infection?
But can a hospital seriously give a patient a clean blade to slice themselves without any legal ramifications?

Even by not saying the obvious and just giving patients a "bathroom kit" containing toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, and straight razor, with the unsaid knowledge that the cutter can use the clean straight razor for their arm carvings, a hospital can still face a good legal thrashing.

The argument that giving out blades is encouraging cutting behavior is silly, just as much as giving out condoms encourages sex. That's just ignorant bullshit.

The best response to the problem (in a treatment environment) that I came across was to not allow the patient access to anything obvious that they may harm themselves with. The cutters would usually find something anyway and slice away (you'd be surprised how many could secretly get a hold of razor blade).
When found they would be treated and encouraged to talk about the incident and ways they could deal with things without cutting next time.
Attention to the cutting behavior was kept to a minimum, meaning no "Oh my God! You've cut yourself!" It was more of "Oh, you did some cutting, eh? Well, let's clean it up and go talk."

The cutting I saw was usually done by a razor blade, broken plastic or glass, or some piece of metal and the cutters usually took the time to clean their cutting object. Also, the less sensationalism paid to the cutting behavior, the less it occurred.

The True Mind Parasite: Ampulex compressa

This is absolutely fascinating: This Ampulex compressa wasp can land on the head of a cockroach, drill their stinger into its brain, and by secreting some chemicals it can then control its actions and literally 'drive' the cockroach home to the wasp's burrow where it can lay eggs in it!

Bacterial mind parasites and now this? Good God, they're everywhere!


A few more interesting things:

Confessions of a car salesman.

Cthulego!

Quick cool facts.

Cyborg name decoder.

Marilyn vos Savant is wrong!

Milestones in film special effects.

Vikings filed their teeth. Where's my Dremmel tool?

Mythbusting Star Wars.

The Huge Entity, a very interesting blog.

Mathematical photography.

The Contortion home page. Ouch!

The world's smallest website.

The art of Jim Woodring.



Some sources:
Linkbunnies
Neatorama
Monkeyfilter






Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.thinkprogress.org

The Debate Team Clone War

I just read an article in the latest Newsweek called "Cut, Thrust and Christ" which talks about college debate teams being groomed by the Religious Right. It quotes Jerry Falwell as saying, "We are training debaters who can perform assault ministry, meaning becoming the conscience of the culture."
The article states Falwell's school spends a half million dollars a year "with the goal of eventually flooding the system with "thousands" of conservative Christian lawyers."

Then I went and read in the latest Rolling Stone an article called "God's Senator" about Kansas Senator Brownback who wants to take America back to the 1950's and chain women to the kitchen (I'm not kidding!).
Every Tuesday, it seems, Senator Brownback leads some sort of secret Fundamentalist mind-terror cell called the Values Action Team which includes Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the Eagle Forum, the Christian Coalition, and the Traditional Values Coalition.

The article says, "The VAT is a war council, and the enemy, says one participant, is "secularism." The VAT coordinates the efforts of fundamentalist pressure groups, unifying their message and arming congressional staffers with the data and language they need to pass legislation."

Yow! Brownback is Count Dooku!

The Rebel Alliance had better learn their debate skills inside and out!








Now here it is, your url of the day:
The Colbert Report