Friday November 20, 2009
Friday November 20, 2009
Thursday November 19, 2009
H1N1
Given that I took all 3 of my kids to finally get the H1N1 vaccine yesterday, it's about time I link to this Slate story I've been meaning to. I think one of the under-reported facets of the flu story is the fact that H1N1 has basically completely crowded out the seasonal flu virus. In short, if you've got the flu, you've got H1N1. Of course, my seasonal flu vaccine is thus pretty much worthless, but I've mostly been worried about getting the boys the H1N1 vaccine as 1) they are the primary vectors I need to worry about, and 2) Alex has a reasonable probability of breakthrough seizures if he gets the flu and David has underlying respiratory issues that could make it worse.
Anyway, Marc Siegel's story in Slate is an interesting look at why there's been such shortages of the vaccine. I found the most interesting criticism to be not technical, but in health care bureaucrats being too conservative.
The slow process is compounded by the fact that our health officials believe too much in the old technology. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services decided to finish making the seasonal flu vaccine before transitioning to the new vaccine, even as evidence suggested that the new pandemic was going to crowd out the yearly flu. "It is difficult to turn production to new directions based on inertia," says Lone Simonsen, an epidemiologist and nationally recognized flu pandemic expert at George Washington University. But it is just this inertia that makes redirection in vaccine production so crucial.
Last March, as the emerging influenza flu strain took hold in Mexico, infecting thousands before taking hold in the United States, studies showed that this new flu was dominant: It was found in more than 90 percent of the flu cases in Mexico. This new crab grass taking over the lawn was predictable. Since most people (especially the young) had never been exposed to this virus before, there were few barriers to transmission.
Instead of switching immediately to the manufacture of a new pandemic vaccine, the seasonal flu vaccine was completed first. By early fall, 115 million doses of the seasonal flu vaccine were rolled out, and compliance was at an all-time high, thanks to a massive national campaign to promote compliance. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said during a Sept. 10 press conference that "getting vaccinated for seasonal flu right now is good advice." Accordingly, more than 60 million rolled up their sleeves and got the vaccine by October, despite the fact that there was no seasonal flu to be found. Lost in the frenzy for flu shots was the fact that the yearly flu season didn't typically peak until late January or February, while pandemics characteristically do not obey the boundaries of traditional winter flu seasons.
Meanwhile, apparently many Americans have been listening to Bill Maher and Glenn Beck rather than public health and medical professionals for their health care advice.
Tuesday November 17, 2009
Quick Hits
1) Nice little list from Newsweek of "12 comics who aren't funny." I'm definitely in agreement. Interestingly, I actually saw Carrot Top in person-- the only stand-up I've ever seen. Not funny.
2) Why Sarah Palin will not be president-- short version: Sarah Palin = Dan Quayle.
3) Really love this one-- why the Pledge of Allegiance is, in fact, fundamentally un-American. Read it.
How to lie with statistics
That's the title of one of my favorite books. This graph brilliantly illustrates the concept from the Atlantic on-line:
The lesson here is not that Pitchfork's editors should get behind "Drill, baby, drill." The lesson is that US oil production has fallen steadily for 40 years, and Rolling Stone's editors are absurdly biased toward songs written between 1965 and 1980.
(Thanks to Big Steve for this one)
Posted by shgreene ( Nov 17 2009, 03:38:01 PM EST ) Permalink Comments [0]
Monday November 16, 2009
They love me in Spain
If you can read Spanish and want a clearer image, it's here.
Friday November 13, 2009
Are your boobs wearing the right shoes?
I could not resist copying the title from Kate Harding's takedown in Salon.com of these ridiculously sexist Reebok ads.
I could be wrong, but I just don't see these ads as being that effective. We know you can fool men into buying things by ogling women's bodies in ads, but will that really get women to buy products? Harding:
I trust I don't need to repeat my rant from yesterday on why companies trying to sell women products with images that appeal primarily to heterosexual men is infuriating. But the depressing question I didn't get to in that post is: How well does it work? Sterling-Cooper lost the Patio account with the Ann-Margret ripoff Peggy objected to, but Reebok paid for these and paid to run them. (Well, at least one -- has anyone seen the boob ad somewhere other than YouTube?) Some decision-maker was confident that women will be so enchanted by the thought of being ogled more often, they'll run out and buy these shoes. And what's really scary to consider is, they might not be wrong -- not entirely, anyway.
I hope they aren't effective, because if it's not bad enough all the sexism in ads aimed at men, we certainly don't need to add to the objectification of women in ads actually aimed at women. If I were a woman I'd be totally offended (I'm a man and I'm offended), but than again, unlike most, I'm actually an admitted feminist.
Y'all (and I know you are reading this) don't comment enough-- I'm really curious about your thoughts on these ads.
Worst email scam ever?
Probably not, but I could not believe the amateurishness of the email that somehow just made it through my spam filter:
This message is from the Database Information Technology service messaging
center, to all our e-mail account user. All Mailhub systems will
undergo regularly scheduled maintenance. Access to your mailbox via our mail
portal will be unavailable for some period of time during this
maintenanceperiod.
We shall be carrying out service maintenance on our database and e-mail account
center for better online services. We are deleting all
unused-mail accounts to create more space for new accounts.
In order to ensure you do not experience service interruptions/possible deactivation
Please you must reply to this email
immediately confirming your email account details below for confirmation/identification.
1. First Name & Last Nam
2. Full Login Email Address
3. Username & Password
4. Confirnation
Also, the return address was not one of those pseudo-tricky "reply@yahoo_upgrade.com" or something like that, but rather just: corteingles@iplanmail.com.ar. I almost feel like someone who falls for this one deserves to get hacked. Kind of a Darwinian on-line survival of the fittest.
Posted by shgreene ( Nov 13 2009, 11:42:05 AM EST ) Permalink Comments [0]
Thursday November 12, 2009
Quick hits
1) The Fort Hood police officer who took down the shooter and got hit in her femoral artery in the process apparently had two thoughts at that point:
In an extreme example of the multi-tasking familiar to moms everywhere, one of the police officers hailed as a Fort Hood hero says she had two priorities after she and her partner stopped a gunman who had just killed 13 people.
One: get a tourniquet applied to her thigh, bleeding heavily where a bullet had pierced her femoral artery.
Two: arrange for someone to pick up her toddler from day care.
2) Support for gay marriage varies a lot by state (NC is 41st). Also, the support gap between those 18-29 as compared to 30-44 is huge.
3) The DVR is pretty much the greatest invention since the world wide web. In large part, because you get to easily skip through all the commercials. Amazingly, nearly half of all viewers watching shows on DVR playback are still watching the ads. (There's some other really interesting analysis about the role of DVRs in the article, too).
Monday November 09, 2009
H1N1 vaccine irony
They've got H1N1 vaccine in Wake county today! The nearest clinic is at Colonial Baptist church in Cary. I went to the church's website and clicked on their "beliefs" section, where we get this:
Creation
We believe the Genesis account of creation as being neither allegory nor myth but a literal, historical account of the direct, immediate, creative acts of God over six literal days without any evolutionary process; that man -spirit, soul and body -was created by a direct work of God and not from previously existing forms of life; and that all men are descended from the historical Adam and Eve, first parents of the entire human race. (Genesis 1-2; John 1:3; Colossians 1:16, 17)
Of course, if you are in complete denial of evolution, you probably should not be getting a flu shot. I wonder if they realized that when they agreed to host the clinic.
Friday November 06, 2009
Book Recommendation
I finished reading Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer last night. Great combination-- Tillman's story is truly fascinating and Krakauer is a terrific writer (Into Thin Air remains my favorite non-fiction book ever). I had remembered that Tillman was actually killed by friendly fire and that there was somewhat of a cover-up, but I had no idea of the depth of the bad faith and malfeasance with which the US Army acted to cover this up, rather than ruin the great political story of Tillman going down fighting as a hero. That's actually only the last 1/3 or so of the book, the major portion of the book is really just the amazing story of Tillman's life until then. I knew he was an incredible fellow, but had no idea he managed to carry a 3.8 GPA while starring for a major Division I football team. I also had no idea that he was quite the liberal free-thinker and strongly opposed to the Iraq war. Krakauer also does a good job giving a sense of the context in Afghanistan without bogging down the narrative. Still, the extraordinary senselessness of the friendly fire incident that led to Tillman's death and the Army cover-up are the highlight of the book. Dexter Filkins' somewhat ambivalent review summarizes this wonderfully, so I'll copy:
While most of the facts have been reported before, Krakauer performs a valuable service by bringing them all together — particularly those about the cover-up. The details, even five years later, are nauseating to read: After Tillman’s death, Army commanders, aided and abetted by members of the Bush administration, violated many of their own rules, not to mention elementary standards of decency, to turn the killing into a propaganda coup for the American side. Tillman’s clothing and notebooks were burned — a flouting of Army regulations — and he was fast-tracked for a posthumous Silver Star, which, as Krakauer shows, was a fraud. Members of his unit were ordered to stay silent about the manner of his death. Even part of Tillman’s body disappeared. Most important, Army commanders went to great lengths to keep the facts of Tillman’s death a secret and allowed the story that he died at the hands of the Taliban to flourish. The low point came at his memorial service, where he was lionized before television cameras, while officials who knew the truth stayed quiet.
Anyway, wellI worth reading. And feel free to ask to borrow my copy after I use it for an upcoming book discussion.
Gilbert & Sullivan and false certainty
I got in a little debate at lunch yesterday about the origins of Gilbert & Sullivan's "Model of a Modern Major General." I was willing to bet Bill Boettcher $100 that it was from HMS Pinafore, which I recall my dad dragging me to a bunch of times, whereas Bill was quite convinced it was from Pirates of Penzance (which to his discredit, he did not think was G&S). Fortunately, Bill backed down from the bet in the face of my certainty. Here's a clip of it from the Pirates of Penzance (notice Kevin Kline)
I was especially abashed as just yesterday I had been having a conversation with David about how I never insist on something unless I am truly certain (after assuring my whole family that surely the bike race coming through Geneva, Switzerland during our 1990 visit could not be the Tour de France, as we were in Switzerland-- little did I know then it regularly ventures outside of France). So, the amateur cognitive scientist in me was really curious as to how I could have been so wrong. Anyway, I realized that the G&S song I know so well from HMS Pinafore is "He is an Englishman," but since I think "Modern Major General" has more cultural penetration, when I thought "famous G&S song I know really well," that's what stuck in my brain despite my being 100% wrong that it was from Penzance. Anyway, I will now redouble my efforts to not speak with certainty unless I truly am certain. We'll have to see how that works.
Wednesday November 04, 2009
Fun with google
Generally speaking, I quite like the auto-complete feature on google. Here's a fun article in Slate that's a bit of amateur sociology, e.g., the different suggestions you get typing in "how 2" versus "how do I" etc. Pretty interesting. A sample
vs.
Tuesday November 03, 2009
Islamic creationism
Interesting article in Science Times today on creationism and evolution in the Muslim world. Apparently, most Muslims except pretty much all of evolutionary theory except that humans are descended from apes. That, they cannot take. This was my favorite part of the article:
For many Muslims, even evolution and the notion that life flourished without the intervening hand of Allah is largely compatible with their religion. What many find unacceptable is human evolution, the idea that humans evolved from primitive primates. The Koran states that Allah created Adam, the first man, separately out of clay.
Pervez A. Hoodbhoy, a prominent atomic physicist at Quaid-e-Azam University in Pakistan, said that when he gave lectures covering the sweep of cosmological history from the Big Bang to the evolution of life on Earth, the audience listened without objection to most of it. “Everything is O.K. until the apes stand up,” Dr. Hoodbhoy said.
Mentioning human evolution led to near riots, and he had to be escorted out. “That’s the one thing that will never be possible to bridge,” he said. “Your lineage is what determines your worth.”
I'll leave aside for the moment the fact that in Pakistan the response to an academic speaker you disagree with is apparently to riot. I'd have to wear body armor to class.
Preserve your battery life
Very helpful article from Farhad Manjoo about preserving battery life in modern electronic devices. It starts out somewhat depressing though:
Buchman also runs Battery University, a very helpful Web site for battery enthusiasts and engineers. I asked Buchmann how we can make sure that our batteries last a long time. "There is not too much to discuss," he began, and then launched into a conversation exploring the numerous frailties of batteries. The upshot is this happy factoid: No matter what you do, your battery will become a useless piece of junk—one day it will reach a point where it can no longer be charged, and then you'll have to recycle it. It will die if you use it often. It will die if you hardly ever use it. It will die if you charge it too much. It will die if you charge it too little. You can pull the battery out of your camera, stuff it under your mattress, and come back for it in five years. Guess what? Your battery will be dead. And when I say dead, I mean dead—not that it's run out of juice, but that it can no longer hold a charge.
That said, the great sin of battery life is over-charging. Don't do it. I've been guilty and I'm going to stop.
Ideally, Buchmann says, you should try to keep your battery charged from 20 percent to 80 percent. Keep in mind that these are guidelines for ideal use—it's generally inconvenient to unplug your machine before it goes all the way to 100. But even if you're not on constant guard, be mindful of charging your machine constantly, well past when you know it's full. You also should be conscious of letting your battery run all the way to zero.
Try to keep your laptop as cool as possible. The best technique here is to charge up your battery when the computer is turned off.
Pretty handy. The basic rule seems to be the 20-80 and keep things from getting hot. Words to live by in our gadget-filled age.
Thursday October 29, 2009
Nurtureshock
About a month ago, I blogged about perhaps my favorite book I have read this year, Nurtureshock (which I sadly typo-d in the original post). Anyway, how exciting for me to discover there's a Nurtureshock blog now. Definitely added to my bookmarks. The first post I came across was one about Disney refunding millions of dollars to the Baby Einstein customers (suckers?) who actually believed watching these videos would make their children smarter. I believe PT Barnum would have something to say about this. Anyway, Disney has tacitly (though not explicitly, it turns out) admitted defeat by this refund.
There was a lot of hoopla about Baby Einstein over the weekend. To understand it, you need a brief backstory – and then some deeper backstory, too.
A month and a half ago, Disney announced in a press release that it was going to begin issuing refunds for its Baby Einstein videos: buyers of the DVDs can return them to Disney for $15.99 or exchange them for other products.
However, nobody noticed – not until this past Friday, when the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood (CCCF) issued its own press release. In that statement, the CCCF claimed that the refund offer was a victory for the organization, borne out of its ongoing campaign against Baby Einstein and the makers of other baby DVDs.
Within hours, the New York Times suggested that CCCF had won a major concession, and Disney's refund offer "appear[s] to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect," an assessment soon repeated by the Wall Street Journal and in other publications.
You can read more about the subject at the blog. The book, which you really should read, has a nice explanation on how the videos are little more than a cheap babysitter. There is value in that, but nobody should think it's making their children smarter.
| Archives | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Language | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Links | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
For some reason, I feel like combining the following:
1) From Matt Yglesias, a nice graph showing how the Murder rate in the US is much higher than most comparable nations:
2) For fans of the Wire only, this is terrific (and definitely not meant for workplace viewing):
Posted by shgreene ( Nov 20 2009, 08:13:31 PM EST ) Permalink Comments [0]