02 May 2010
28 April 2010
22 April 2010
17 April 2010
Bloggers vs. Chiropractors
Too little knowledge is a dangerous thing...
The British Chiropractic Association has been suing [Simon] Singh personally for the past 15 months, over a piece in the Guardian where he criticised the BCA for claiming that its members could treat children for colic, ear infections, asthma, prolonged crying, and sleeping and feeding conditions by manipulating their spines.
The BCA maintains that the efficacy of these treatments is well documented. Singh said that claims were made without sufficient evidence, described the treatments as "bogus", and criticised the BCA for "happily promoting" them.
An international petition against the BCA has been signed by professors, journalists, celebrities and more, with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Fry alongside the previous head of the Medical Research Council and the last government chief scientific adviser. There have been public meetings, with stickers and badges. But it is a ragged band of science bloggers who has done the most detailed work. Fifteen months after the case began, the BCA finally released the academic evidence it was using to support specific claims. Within 24 hours this was taken apart meticulously by bloggers, referencing primary research papers, and looking in every corner.
...there are lessons from this debacle – beyond the ethical concerns over suing in the field of science and medicine – and they are clear. First, if you have reputation and superficial plausibility more than evidence to support your activities, then it may be wise to keep under the radar, rather than start expensive fights. But more interestingly than that, a ragged band of bloggers from all walks of life has, to my mind, done a better job of subjecting an entire industry's claims to meaningful, public, scientific scrutiny than the media, the industry itself, and even its own regulator. It's strange this task has fallen to them, but I'm glad someone is doing it, and they do it very, very well indeed.
The British Chiropractic Association has been suing [Simon] Singh personally for the past 15 months, over a piece in the Guardian where he criticised the BCA for claiming that its members could treat children for colic, ear infections, asthma, prolonged crying, and sleeping and feeding conditions by manipulating their spines.
The BCA maintains that the efficacy of these treatments is well documented. Singh said that claims were made without sufficient evidence, described the treatments as "bogus", and criticised the BCA for "happily promoting" them.
An international petition against the BCA has been signed by professors, journalists, celebrities and more, with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Fry alongside the previous head of the Medical Research Council and the last government chief scientific adviser. There have been public meetings, with stickers and badges. But it is a ragged band of science bloggers who has done the most detailed work. Fifteen months after the case began, the BCA finally released the academic evidence it was using to support specific claims. Within 24 hours this was taken apart meticulously by bloggers, referencing primary research papers, and looking in every corner.
...there are lessons from this debacle – beyond the ethical concerns over suing in the field of science and medicine – and they are clear. First, if you have reputation and superficial plausibility more than evidence to support your activities, then it may be wise to keep under the radar, rather than start expensive fights. But more interestingly than that, a ragged band of bloggers from all walks of life has, to my mind, done a better job of subjecting an entire industry's claims to meaningful, public, scientific scrutiny than the media, the industry itself, and even its own regulator. It's strange this task has fallen to them, but I'm glad someone is doing it, and they do it very, very well indeed.
12 April 2010
Fountain Square "Ecosculptures"
I have an knee-jerk aversion to the name "Butterfly..."
...but this is creative and fun. Nice!
This is Bags in Bloom. The bags are from Sands Montessori, which apparently has a lot of junk food and diapers.
This is The Eye of Providence by Rachel Argo and Adam Chow, 9th-graders at Summit Country Day. It is a pyramid made out of about 750 wire hangers and some cut up soda cans. Believe me, these pics do NOT do justice to this sculpture. I can't believe a couple of 9th graders took a bunch of trash and came up with this. These are the people we need to keep in Ohio, which is why you should vote YES on ISSUE 1 in May.
Top of the pyramid. I just took it because I like how the fore- and background go together.
This is Aluminum Anomaly by Isabella King, a 14-year old at Nagel Middle School. Impressive... can't imagine how much time it took to cut all the cans up!
"Atlas Recycled... Fragments of 14 atlases and road maps form the skin..."I particularly like the statement about one of the artists: "Kendra Conklin is a belly dancer and Physics student at the University of Cincinnati."
"Belly dancer" and "physics student" in the same sentence... I'm going to Moe's!
"This sculpture is not only made from recycled materials but is a receptacle for aluminum cans as well."
These artists drank 5,000 Budweisers so we could enjoy public art.
09 April 2010
05 April 2010
A Rough Estimation of the Number of Way-Out Racists
Today I read this article about the murder of a prominent South African white supremacist. The article mentioned that South Africa's population is 50 million and the membership of the white supremacist AWB party is 7000.
So 14 out of every 100,000 people are racist enough to join a party based upon the idea of racial purity, at least in South Africa.
I have no evidence-based reason to apply the same proportion to the United States, but we're just talking here. So for the U.S. population of 300 million, this would predict we have about 42,000 people willing to join a white supremacist political party.
That is not a lot of people, and they're probably too stupid to do anything in an organized fashion. Unless, of course, someone else is willing to do it for them.
UPDATED WITH MORE STATISTICAL SUPREMACY!!!
As insightfully pointed out in the comments, South Africa is only about 10% white. So 14 out of every 10,000 are supremacists. The U.S. is about 75% white (2000 census) which translates to a new U.S. white supremacist count of about 315,000. So it's a little worse than I first thought.
So 14 out of every 100,000 people are racist enough to join a party based upon the idea of racial purity, at least in South Africa.
I have no evidence-based reason to apply the same proportion to the United States, but we're just talking here. So for the U.S. population of 300 million, this would predict we have about 42,000 people willing to join a white supremacist political party.
That is not a lot of people, and they're probably too stupid to do anything in an organized fashion. Unless, of course, someone else is willing to do it for them.
UPDATED WITH MORE STATISTICAL SUPREMACY!!!
As insightfully pointed out in the comments, South Africa is only about 10% white. So 14 out of every 10,000 are supremacists. The U.S. is about 75% white (2000 census) which translates to a new U.S. white supremacist count of about 315,000. So it's a little worse than I first thought.
29 March 2010
PSA for Vegetarians
A few months ago, my co-workers and I moved from a crappy office in a decent part of town to a decent office in a crappy part of town. Almost immediately, several co-workers began to regularly complain that the new office was cold. As I passed by them during the day I would see them wearing coats, shawls, even ear muffs.
I felt bad about the whole thing because I felt fine and thought the temperature was just right. In a way I was hoping the thermostat would not get changed because then I would feel too warm (it never did change). But I wondered why several people felt cold. The only thing they had in common was that they were all female. I have never heard of females being more sensitive to the cold so that did not seem to be the answer.
Then I realized that several of the several were vegetarians. Not all the coldies were vegetarian, but all the vegetarians were coldies. If you are reading along and making diagrams, this would be a small circle labeled "V" inside a big circle labeled "C."
Now, the first thing one thinks of when trying to link vegetarianism with coldness is iron. Iron is poorly absorbed no matter what, but non-meat sources are even more poorly absorbed. I know this is true because I saw it on FOX News. So it is not out of the question that a vegetarian could be iron deficient. And women are more at risk than men due to their monthly visit from the iron collector. So iron deficiency is one possibility. But vegetarians are supposed to know about that and eat their green leafy vegetables, aren't they?
Then I read an article in the Polish journal ACTA Scientiarum Polonorum Technologia Alimentaria (link here if you think I am making it up) about a study to investigate the effects of a vegetarian diet on vitamin B12 levels.
The test subjects ate a lacto-ovo-vegetarian (LOV) diet. But one half included B12-fortified foods in their diet while the other half did not. The study only had 16 subjects total (which is small), but they did follow them for five years (which is long).
They found a "significant decrease" in B12 levels in the half that ate the natural foods (i.e. non-fortified) LOV diet. It was not so low as to be considered an official B12 deficiency, just significantly decreased.
The B12 factor can also be an answer to our cold case. B12 is used to make hemoglobin so B12 deficiency can basically mean hemoglobin deficiency. In fact, there is a disease called "pernicious anemia" in which B12 cannot be adequately absorbed by the body. I know someone with this and she has to get B12 shots every few months. When she told me this I asked her if she felt cold and she said she was always cold as a child.
So in conclusion, if you are vegetarian and you feel cold and tire easily and can't breathe in the Rocky Mountains, etc., then you should totally panic because you are going to die of anemia very soon, probably in the next few days.
I felt bad about the whole thing because I felt fine and thought the temperature was just right. In a way I was hoping the thermostat would not get changed because then I would feel too warm (it never did change). But I wondered why several people felt cold. The only thing they had in common was that they were all female. I have never heard of females being more sensitive to the cold so that did not seem to be the answer.
Then I realized that several of the several were vegetarians. Not all the coldies were vegetarian, but all the vegetarians were coldies. If you are reading along and making diagrams, this would be a small circle labeled "V" inside a big circle labeled "C."
Now, the first thing one thinks of when trying to link vegetarianism with coldness is iron. Iron is poorly absorbed no matter what, but non-meat sources are even more poorly absorbed. I know this is true because I saw it on FOX News. So it is not out of the question that a vegetarian could be iron deficient. And women are more at risk than men due to their monthly visit from the iron collector. So iron deficiency is one possibility. But vegetarians are supposed to know about that and eat their green leafy vegetables, aren't they?
Then I read an article in the Polish journal ACTA Scientiarum Polonorum Technologia Alimentaria (link here if you think I am making it up) about a study to investigate the effects of a vegetarian diet on vitamin B12 levels.
The test subjects ate a lacto-ovo-vegetarian (LOV) diet. But one half included B12-fortified foods in their diet while the other half did not. The study only had 16 subjects total (which is small), but they did follow them for five years (which is long).
They found a "significant decrease" in B12 levels in the half that ate the natural foods (i.e. non-fortified) LOV diet. It was not so low as to be considered an official B12 deficiency, just significantly decreased.
The B12 factor can also be an answer to our cold case. B12 is used to make hemoglobin so B12 deficiency can basically mean hemoglobin deficiency. In fact, there is a disease called "pernicious anemia" in which B12 cannot be adequately absorbed by the body. I know someone with this and she has to get B12 shots every few months. When she told me this I asked her if she felt cold and she said she was always cold as a child.
So in conclusion, if you are vegetarian and you feel cold and tire easily and can't breathe in the Rocky Mountains, etc., then you should totally panic because you are going to die of anemia very soon, probably in the next few days.
18 March 2010
Mo' Money
Yes, it's a funny name but in business one must market to a target audience.
What I find interesting is the logo, which shows a fist full of money with wings, perhaps suggesting "we gonna have 'MO MONEY 'cause we gonna fly away wit YO' MONEY!!!"
What I find interesting is the logo, which shows a fist full of money with wings, perhaps suggesting "we gonna have 'MO MONEY 'cause we gonna fly away wit YO' MONEY!!!"
17 March 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)