j7uy5 | September 26, 2006The Detroit Free Press has a brief
href="http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006609230319">article
on a book,
href="http://www.amazon.com/Weird-Michigan-Mark-Moran/dp/1402739079/ref=sr_11_1/102-1767958-2700922?ie=UTF8">Wierd
Michigan, by Linda Godfrey. One choice
selection:
Bill Jarrett, 81, of Wyoming, a self-described
authority on toilet paper who's out to solve a great debate: Should the
loose end of a toilet paper roll hang next to the wall or away from it?
Check out his Web site,
href="http://thegreatamericantoiletpaperdebate.com/">…
j7uy5 | September 25, 2006I am not feeling well today, so here is a low-overhead (for me) set of
links. Anything thoughtful that goes up here yesterday,
today, or tomorrow was written ahead of time, and scheduled.
The last one was from science news. This one is
from blogs. Anyway, here goes:
href="http://amygdalagf.blogspot.com/2006/09/elizabeth-holtzman-knows-war-crimes.html">Amygdala
on the War Crimes Act [and another reason to think about
impeachment]
href="http://ronbeas2.blogspot.com/2006/09/irrational-drums-of-war.html">Ron
on the propaganda battle to provide a rationale for war in Iran.Screwy
Hoolie…
j7uy5 | September 25, 2006I am not feeling well today, so here is a low-overhead (for me) set of
links. Anything thoughtful that goes up here yesterday,
today, or tomorrow was written ahead of time, and scheduled.
Anyway, here goes:Stem
Cell Transplantation Safely Improves Heart Failure in Humans
(Medscape; free registration required) Shows a real
therapeutic effect from stem cells. It does not, however,
address the controversy about embryonic stem cells,
because autologous stem cells are used.
href="http://www.psychiatrysource.com/NewsItem/Transdermal-nicotine-attenuates-depression-symptom.aspx?l1=3&…
j7uy5 | September 25, 2006One of the nutty aspects of the Medicare prescription drug program is
the so-called "
href="http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/09/21/the_face_on_the_doughnut_hole.php">doughnut
hole." The doughnut hole occurs once the
beneficiary reaches a certain spending limit. This is
described in a recent
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/24/AR2006092400957.html">Washington
Post article:
Under the standard plan, however, the government
picks up the bulk of
drug costs only until the beneficiary and the government together have
spent $2,250 for the year. At…
j7uy5 | September 25, 2006...That the hospital I work in finally installed an electronic medical
record system. I was messing around with it and discovered
that the hospital administration had accessed a record of a sleep study
the hospital had done on me. It turned out that they were
trying to figure out a way to use my brain power while I was sleeping.
In essence, they wanted me to work 24 hours a day.
j7uy5 | September 25, 2006This is a follow-up to yesterday's post. Yesterday, I pointed
out that the EPA ignored the advice of its own scientists in developing
new rules for fine particulate matter pollution. Now, we hear
what some of those experts have to say. Furthermore, they
point out that the EPA not only ignored expert advice, it did not even
follow the Clean Air Act.
Medpage Today has a
href="http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/EnvironmentalHealth/tb/4158">scathing
article about the response of the medical community to the
new EPA standards for PM2.5.
NEW YORK, Sept. 22 -- The Environmental…
j7uy5 | September 24, 2006Frank O'Donnell, writing at TomPaine.com,
has an article about the RWOS
as applied to clean air regulation. It turns out that the EPA
has developed new air quality standards for the control of particulate
matter pollution. But the new rules are not based upon the
advice of their scientists and the scientists they involved in the
process. The new standards are weaker than what was
recommended.
href="http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/09/21/tainted_science.php">Tainted
Science
Frank O'Donnell
September 21, 2006
...The issue at hand is the Bush administration’s decision on
particle…
j7uy5 | September 23, 2006There is no additional comment needed; the study speaks for itself:
href="http://today.reuters.com/news/ArticleNews.aspx?type=domesticnews&storyID=2006-09-20T191504Z_01_N20379527_RTRUKOC_0_US-LIFE-CHEATING.xml">Business
grad students most likely to cheat: study
Wed Sep 20, 2006
Reuters
BOSTON (Reuters) - Graduate business students in the United States and
Canada are more likely to cheat on their work than their counterparts
in other academic fields, the author of a research paper said on
Wednesday.
The study of 5,300 graduate students in the United States and Canada
found that 56…
j7uy5 | September 22, 2006Funny how sometimes things fall into place. Yesterday, I
wrote a post about DeVos' promotion of the teaching of Intelligent
Design/Creationism. I also heard that
href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060922/wr_nm/chavez_dc_1">Hugo
Chavez' mention of Noam Chomsky's book,
href="http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?pwb=1&ean=9780805076882">Hegemony
or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance,
resulted in instant promotion of the book to bestseller status.
That brought to mind the recent
href="http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/09/…
j7uy5 | September 21, 2006When I came home from work, and saw the headline: DeVos Backs
Discussion of Intelligent Design, I knew I wanted to blog it.
Alas, I get the afternoon paper.
href="http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/devos_and_intelligent_design.php#more">Ed
Brayton gets the
href="http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060920/NEWS99/60920015">morning
paper, and had already beaten me to it. Not only
that, but
href="http://scienceblogs.com/mikethemadbiologist/2006/09/the_republican_war_on_science_1.php">Mike
and
href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/09/…
j7uy5 | September 21, 2006If you decry the practice of "legislating from the bench," then why is it OK to legislate from the corporate boardroom?
j7uy5 | September 20, 2006I find it interesting that one of the recipients of a Lasker Clinical
Research Award this year was
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Beck" rel="tag">Aaron
Beck. Dr. Beck is a psychiatrist. He is
widely regarded as the originator of cognitive therapy.
The rationale is outlined in the NYT
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/health/17lasker.html?ex=1316145600&en=f2f082f5fbdc459b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">article
on the awards:
The psychiatrist, Dr. Aaron T. Beck, 85, of the
University of Pennsylvania, won the Lasker clinical research award. Dr.…
j7uy5 | September 20, 2006I'll be curious to see if there turns out to be a parallel between what
is happening now in the auto industry, and what happens in the future
in the computing industry.
We recently passed the 25th anniversary of the original IBM PC (
href="http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc25/pc25_intro.html">model
5150). Ever since then, computer marketing has been
oriented toward progressively faster, more capable machines.
Original IBM PC
photo from IBM archive
But now, we hear that
rel="tag">Intel is
href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/09/11/37NNintellayoffs_1.html">…
j7uy5 | September 19, 2006
This is from the Chicago
Tribune "Images in the News" feature.
Unfortunately, I saved it to my flash drive earlier in the
week. Now, it is no longer on their site, so I cannot provide
the caption or the photo credit. So do me a favor and go to
their site, and click on some of the ads. Just don't read
about the Lions and Bears game while you are there.
j7uy5 | September 19, 2006The tagline on my old blog was "Observation are gold; hypotheses,
silver; and conclusions, bronze." This reflects my
philosophy, that observation is the fundamental source of all
knowledge. The father you go from your raw observations, the
more likely you are to make a mistake.
To illustrate: When I was about 14, one day my sister came to me and
asked me if I could take some links out of her bicycle chain.
For some perverse reason, I had this habit of trying to make a lesson
out of everything for my little sisters.
I knew that it was possible to remove links, but I also knew that it…
j7uy5 | September 19, 2006Now we learn that the keys that open Diebold voting machines are widely available on the Internet. These people are fools. The nutty thing is this: Diebold also makes ATMs. Are their ATMs constructed with such shoddy security? Probably not. What does this mean?
j7uy5 | September 18, 2006Facetime
Communications has
href="http://www.facetime.com/pr/pr060918.aspx">announced
that they have seen evidence of a new Internet worm that spreads via
AOL Instant Messenger. It comes in the guise of a picture,
that is astually an executable file.
The user first sees an ordinarily link, but when the link is clicked,
it downloads a file called image18.com. Details follow...
Like many IM worms, W32.pipeline first appears as an
instant message from a familiar contact, luring users into clicking on
a link with a contextual phrase. The IM message "hey would it okay if i
upload this…
j7uy5 | September 18, 2006The
style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> ImpeachBUSHYard
color="blue" size="5">Signs
color="blue" size="5">.org
site is back online. It was
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/09/impeach_bush_kerfuffle.php">shut
down for a few days because
it was hosted on a site that got the Internet bandwidth from the County
government. Now it is on a private server.