Oprah Winfrey is a problem

Oprah Winfrey is now promoting irrational beliefs about vaccination and autism.

She can't possibly cause as much harm as the hundreds of thousands of people effectively killed by the irrational beliefs of Thabo Mbeki. She will cause harm though. Some children that should have lived will die, and much energy that might go to preventing or managing cognitive disorders will be wasted countering her stupidity.

Whatever good she's done in her life will soon be outmatched by the harm she will cause.

If you are a person of reason, don't let your money go to Oprah Winfrey.

Update 5/16/09: Salon article on the Oprah problem. Twenty years ago "Dear Abby" had a milder version of the Oprah disease -- she championed the surgical and medical advice of her elite physician friends, even when there was no supporting science.

Weirdest email ever

Via my old web site's contact link, I just read the weirdest email I've ever gotten...

... My name is ... and I am a Casting Producer for the ABC hit reality show 'Wife Swap.' We are currently casting for our fifth season and we are looking for families that are really into Ski Joring together or one family member is very passionate about the sport.

The premise of Wife Swap is simple: for seven days, two wives from two different families with very different values exchange husbands, children and lives (but not bedrooms) to discover what it's like to live a different family's life. It's an interesting social experiment and a great way to see your family in a whole new light. It is shot as a documentary series, so NO scripts and no set. It's just one camera that is documenting your life.

Families that appear on the show will receive a financial honorarium for lost wages, time and commitment. And if you refer a family that appears on the show you would receive $1000. Here at 'Wife Swap' we look for a two-parent home with at least one child between the ages of 6 and 17 living at home full time.

If you are interested, please email me your contact information and tell me a little about your family. Or if you would like to refer a family, please email me their contact information and I will be in touch.

Casting Associate Producer
RDF Media USA
100 6th Ave, 3rd Floor,Suite 3-29
...

I figured it was some kind of phishing scheme, but the skijoring referral comes from an old page of mine, written when Molly was young. Kateva, our current mongrel, isn't big on pulling.

RDF USA exists, and so does the wife swap tv show - though it's not quite as exciting as it sounds "...the wives from these two families exchange husbands, children and lives (but not bedrooms)".

I'm sure that would work really well with our children.

Turns out even the person who signed the email exists; she has a LinkedIn page that fits the story (I omitted her name).

So it looks real. I won't mention this to my wife, there's way to high a risk she'd bail for a two week break.

Still, skijoring?!

Anyway, if you're into skijoring and weird TV shows, send me an email and I'll pass it on to the casting director. It could be your big break.

Amazon Vine – free products for reviews

Interesting move from Amazon …

Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more

…As a top reviewer, we would like to invite you to join Amazon Vine. Open to a limited number of customers, Vine members receive pre-release and new products - free of charge - in exchange for customer reviews…

I can’t afford free things I don’t need, so I’ll have to pass on this one.

Google Voice quality falls off a cliff

I've been saving big bucks on my calls to Canada with Google Grand Central and, more recently, Google Voice. Until about a week ago, that is.

About that time Google Voice call quality went from variable to completely worthless. So I'm back paying the big bucks for an AT&T mobile call. Good thing I didn't drop my discounted Canada calling plan!

I wondered if I was alone, but I'm not ...

...I, too, have noticed poorer quality and longer delay on most of my calls in the past week or so, both incoming and outgoing. All of my calls were domestic...

... i have also seen very very poor quality both incoming and outgoing. Unfortunately this has been the worst since using the service...

...I suspect they're playing with audio codecs and changing them frequently. Truthfully, Grand Central seemed to be a product much closer to public release...

...I have also been experiencing very poor call quality within Canada and from Canada using GV in the past couple of days. And I agree that Google seems to be trying to tweak things at the technical level. Over the past week or so there were DTMF issues in Canada and perhaps elsewhere; these seem to be resolving (so far), but audio quality is now suffering...

...I am in Canada and have had terrible call quality when I receive calls on GV. It reminds me of the quality I used to have with Vonage a few years ago. People say my voice is breaking up, etc, like a bad cell phone call. I can hear my callers just fine though. This has been going on for over a week, and it is happening to my husband and his work colleague, both also in Canada...

So it's nice to know I have company. Of course we don't know the root cause; some phone carriers may not feel entirely happy about carrying Google's VOIP traffic -- for example.

Frustrating, but nothing to do about it at this time. It is a good lesson about limits to "cloud service" quality and customer communication. No, "beta" is not an excuse; when your email app is in beta for several years the word kind of loses its protective power.

Update 5/7/09: Phew. It's back to normal again. An anonymous but seemingly well informed reader tells us a quality improvement measure had failed and was reversed.

Update 1/9/10: Sometimes it's bad for a while, usually it's good. Google has a reporting form for quality issues. I think they use it!

The Virus

Wonderful article ...

The 10 Genes of a Human Flu Virus, Furiously Evolving - Carl (The Loom) Zimmer - NYTimes.com

... The sheer number of viruses on Earth is beyond our ability to imagine. “In a small drop of water there are a billion viruses,” Dr. Wolkowicz said. Virologists have estimated that there are a million trillion trillion viruses in the world’s oceans.

Viruses are also turning out to be astonishingly diverse. Shannon Williamson of the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., has been analyzing the genes of ocean viruses. A tank of 100 to 200 liters of sea water may hold 100,000 genetically distinct viruses. “We’re just scratching the surface of virus diversity,” Dr. Williamson said. “I think we’re going to be continually surprised...

By what order of magnitude does the sum of their DNA exceed that of all multicellular animals?

The Way of the Palm - I'm a lapsed member

I've abandoned the Way of the Palm for the seductions of the iPhone, but reading this description I realize I was almost a charter member once ...

True believers: The biggest cults in tech | Adventures in IT - InfoWorld

When Jonathan Ezor walked into a J&R Music store in the fall of 1996 and encountered his first Pilot 1000, it wasn't exactly a religious experience, but it was life-altering. He immediately began speaking in tongues -- or, more accurately, writing in flawless Graffiti, the Pilot's handwriting recognition alphabet...

.. Ezor says he's owned seven Palm PDAs in his life (he currently uses a TX) ...

...You can identify true devotees because they're the ones standing around beaming contact info and free apps to each other through their Palms' IR ports, says Ezor....

..."I think the true believers are the ones who had the Pilot 1000 or 5000, who jumped on the Palm before it went mainstream," he says. "And the orthodox sect belongs to people who prefer Graffiti 1 over Graffiti 2...

I'm not sure I qualify as a true believer (I think the Palm III was my first), but I do think I had about 6-7 devices and I was definitely orthodox. Graffiti 2 was a grievous wound.

As a former member of the tribe, I have nothing but fond wishes for the Pre. In fact, I'm praying for it to put "the fear" into the heart of Apple, and force them to rethink their disdainful support for the "Four Paths of PIM Productivity (contacts, calendaring, tasks, notes).

I missed the Tao of Newton, but I was almost there. I'm so disappointed that they omitted the Flagellants of OS/2.

The ideological roots of climate change nihilism

For many Americans, climate nihilism has become a core ideology ...

Anti-green economics - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com 

... I don’t especially mean to pick on Samuelson, but this column exemplifies a strange thing about the climate change debate. Opponents of a policy change generally believe that market economies are wonderful things, able to adapt to just about anything — anything, that is, except a government policy that puts a price on greenhouse gas emissions. Limits on the world supply of oil, land, water — no problem. Limits on the amount of CO2 we can emit — total disaster. 

Funny how that is.

No matter the question, the answer is always 'do nothing'. So 'do nothing' if the earth is cooling, 'do nothing' if the earth is warming, 'do nothing' if CO2 is warming the earth, 'do nothing' if it's all due to cosmic rays.

I'm trying to think of similar nihilism on the left. When did the right push for change, and the left irrationally deny the need for change?

Education comes to mind, but even there the left is not counseling nihilism.

The catalog of cell lines - as a book

This morning I arrived early for a student exam, and I found myself in a medical library for the first time in many years.

I strolled the neglected aisles. There's not much cause now to pull these old books out. There I found the "catalog of cell lines" ...



They appear to be bound dot matrix printouts; even in the early 1980s this was not really the stuff of books. It went on for a few years, then we come to a softcover, then a few desultory binders. Today there are many databases of cell lines; you can order any one of 3,400 for home delivery.

Once these were bound books that scholars pulled from shelves.

No, religion does not make you a better person

It's commonly claimed that religious belief is associated with good behavior.

That may be so, depending on how you define "good" ...

Survey: Support for terror suspect torture differs among the faithful - CNN.com

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did...

In many allegedly Christian religions the chief deity tortures sinners not for an hour, nor for a month, but for all eternity. So if "good" is as "God does", then torture is good, indeed, godly.

Given the astounding amount of evangelical Protestant support for torture, I'm impressed that McCain came out against torture (though he later retreated into ambiguity).

I wonder what the comparable numbers are for Buddhists.

If I'm ever a prisoner of war, I'll take the secular humanist guard please.

More proof of Google's mere humantity

We have evidence Googlers are imperfect ...

Gordon's Notes: Proof that Google is mortal - Gmail Contacts: "The proof of Google's banality is the current version of Google Contacts, and particularly Google Contact Groups."

Here's more. Picasa Web Uploader for Mac has been around for at least a year.

The latest version still won't install in a non-admin account (hint - request privilege escalation!), and it still doesn't give a meaningful error message if you try.

Not just feet of clay. Google has clay to the knobby knees and more.

Interesting data on pandemic flu mortality

Interesting summary (but caveat below) ...

A Century of Flu Pandemics - Health Blog - WSJ

... There was the Spanish Flu of 1918, which this historical overview from the feds calls “the catastrophe against which all modern pandemics are measured.” Some 30% of the world’s inhabitants fell ill; there were an estimated 500,000 deaths in the U.S. alone.

The other major pandemics of the century were less severe. In the Asian Flu of 1957, some 70,000 people in the U.S. died. In the Hong Kong Flu outbreak of 1967, about 33,800 people died in this country.

Yes, those numbers are high. But consider this: In a typical year, some 36,000 Americans die of regular, garden-variety flu, and hundreds of thousands are hospitalized. Those are useful figures to keep in mind for a sense of context as the confirmed cases of swine flu continue to rise...

That's a reassuring number, but slightly misleading for several reasons.

1. The US population in 1967 was 200 million, now we're at 300 million.
2. We have immunizations and vastly better medical care than 1967, so our death rates should be much lower.
3. Routine flu most often kills elderly frail people with a very limited lifespan. The big pandemics take the young.

It's worth remembering that influenza does kill a lot of people every year, but that shouldn't make us think that Hong Kong outbreak of 1967 was nothing special.

Terrific set of bicycle commuting tips

Via Ride Boldly: Alan Snel's: Let's Bust The Bike-Commuting Myths. The title is a bit misleading, it's a set of tips to mitigate common issues with bicycle commuting. Here are just a few of my favorites:

...3. It's too far
-- Try riding to work and taking mass transit home, then alternating the next day
-- Ride to a coworker's house and carpool to work...

...7. I have to dress up
-- Keep multiple sets of clothing at work; rotate them on days you drive
-- Have work clothes cleaned at nearby laundromats or dry cleaners
-- Pack clothes with you and change at work; try rolling clothes instead of folding...

8. It's raining
-- If you are at work, take transit or carpool to get home; ride home the next day...

There were a few silly ones however ...

9. The roads aren't safe
-- You are at no greater risk than driving a car

and

...Trips of 5 to 7 miles in urban areas take the same or less by car...

There is absolutely no way riding a bicycle on unsafe roads is as safe as driving in a car on the same roads. That's just nuts.  Also, the 5-7 miles claim is only true in highly congested urban areas; where I live a 7 mile car trip is about 1/4 the time required to transit from door to desk (Ok, so Lance Armstrong results may vary).

All Swine Flu all the time -- the WSJ page

Can't get enough news about the latest pandemic wannabe? The Wall Street Journal has your number: Swine Flu - WSJ.com.

I'm surprised it doesn't have a feed and tweeter. Maybe tomorrow.

You'd think after the SARS experience we'd have spent more money trying to figure out why the "same" virus [1] can be so lethal in some places (Hong Kong, Toronto) and so relatively benign everywhere else.

[1] One might debate if the word "same" is meaningful when applied to something as mutable as a virus (or a river, for fans of Zen).

And now for the health care wars … compensation, round one

Them’s fighting words …

Doctor Shortage Proves Obstacle to Obama Goals - NYTimes.com

… Senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat and chairman of the Finance Committee, said Medicare payments were skewed against primary care doctors…

“Primary care physicians are grossly underpaid compared with many specialists,” said Mr. Baucus, who vowed to increase primary care payments as part of legislation to overhaul the health care system…

“Grossly underpaid” is rather strong, especially from the chairman of the Finance Committee.

There is an elephant in the room of physician compensation. The primary care physician supply can be increased by paying these physicians substantially more, but it can also be increased by paying specialists substantially less.

There are plenty of applications for medical school, and plenty of physicians entering practice. If we really want a different mix, we can do that fairly cheaply.

Android netbook – things start to get interesting again

The Netbook news has been boring lately. Lots of junky $500 machines running XP – viral fodder basically. Heck, that’s in range of a used MacBook. No news there, except that $25/machine XP licensing has torn a hole in Microsoft’s profit. Instead of making an insane profit they’re only making an obscene profit.

Things only get interesting when the crummy little buggers fall below $150. Anything else, short of a $250 5” diagonal iTouch from Apple, is boring.

So this report is interestingly only because it’s a marker of the drive to $150 …

Report: First Android Netbook to cost $250 | Crave - CNET

The Alpha 680, as the laptop is known as, is going through final testing at Guangzhou Skytone Transmission Technologies, Skytone co-founder Nixon White told the site.

The Netbook uses a 533MHz ARM 11 CPU and sports a 7-inch LCD screen, keyboard, touchpad, and built-in Wi-Fi, according to the report. However, the Alpha 680's 2-cell battery will last only two to four hours while surfing the Internet, much lower than the expected 12 hours.

… manufacturers attempt to drive the price of Netbooks to around $200 or less…

The Alpha 680 will be quickly forgotten of course. The big one will be the Google branded netbook debuting at $180.