Manton Reece: The only 2 fixes for the iPhone platform
... There are a lot of well-intentioned suggestions for improving the App Store, but the result will always be the same until we acknowledge the root problem. The only fix is for Apple to remove itself as gatekeeper, or let us route around them...Apple is channeling the wrong side of 1984. Apple has become the enemy.
Verizon: How Much Do You Charge Now? - Pogue’s Posts Blog - NYTimes.com:For the record, here's a list of the mobile phone scams I know of ...
...Starting next week, Verizon will double the early-termination fee for smartphones...
...The phone is designed in such a way that you can almost never avoid getting $1.99 charge on the bill. Around the OK button on a typical flip phone are the up, down, left, right arrows. If you open the flip and accidentally press the up arrow key, you see that the phone starts to connect to the web. So you hit END right away. Well, too late. You will be charged $1.99 for that 0.02 kilobytes of data...
...Every month, the 87 million customers will accidentally hit that key a few times a month! That’s over $300 million per month in data revenue off a simple mistake!..
...Now, you can ask to have this feature blocked. But even then, if you one of those buttons by accident, your phone transmits data; you get a message that you cannot use the service because it’s blocked–BUT you just used 0.06 kilobytes of data to get that message, so you are now charged $1.99 again!...
“They have started training us reps that too many data blocks are being put on accounts now; they’re actually making us take classes called Alternatives to Data Blocks. They do not want all the blocks, because 40% of Verizon’s revenue now comes from data use. I just know there are millions of people out there that don’t even notice this $1.99 on the bill.”"
… I'm really disappointed with the Republicans. They are supposed to be the budget hawks, but instead they've spent their time railing against abortion funding, illegal immigrants, and death panels, along with scientific research and taxes on device manufacturers. Instead of attempting to govern responsibly, they've abandoned all morality in their quest to re-energize the lunatic fringe of their once-dominant party…
… While there's plenty of blame to pile at the door of the Republicans, it is the Democrats who are to blame for coming up with a huge entitlement program set up to do nothing but grow…
Well, yes.
The GOP decided that their one and only mission was to make Barack Obama look bad. That meant this bill would attract no more than 1-2 GOP rebels. That in turn meant no constituency could be offended, which meant no serious efforts to control costs.
If we had a less dysrational electorate, then we’d have a better GOP. But we’re stuck with the GOP we’ve got.
So any bill that can pass will give everyone everything they want.
It’s not even lying. Anyone capable of perceiving reality knows there will be a reckoning. This is about building the arena for the real battle to come.
Not pretty, but that’s modern America. It’s the best we can do, and it’s much better than nothing. In stage II, assuming we get this sausage made, we’ll be talking price.
Temperament is what you’re born with. Character is what life does with temperament.
Things aren’t so clear with intelligence. It’s very likely that one’s maximal “IQ performance” is largely determined by genes and intrauterine environment, but even so we know that IQ measurements increase with test training. More than that, there are lots of smart people who seem unable to reason rationally.
Reason is more than IQ …
Rational and Irrational Thought- The Thinking That IQ Tests Miss- Scientific American
- Traditional IQ tests miss some of the most important aspects of real-world intelligence. It is possible to test high in IQ yet to suffer from the logical-thought defect known as dysrationalia.
- One cause of dysrationalia is that people tend to be cognitive misers, meaning that they take the easy way out when trying to solve problems, often leading to solutions that are illogical and wrong.
- Another cause of dysrationalia is the mindware gap, which occurs when people lack the specific knowledge, rules and strategies needed to think rationally.
- Tests do exist that can measure dysrationalia, and they should be given more often to pick up the deficiencies that IQ tests miss.
I’m excited by this analysis. I’d have more to say but the full article isn’t available online yet and I can’t find much extended commentary.
I can note that analyses of errors in reasoning are very old – at least as old as Greek analyses of rhetoric. In the 1970s and 1980s several excellent books on medical reasoning and diagnosis characterized common errors of cognition, and in the early 1990s my CogSci grad coursework plumbed the depths. We’ve developed an extensive language for talking about errors in reasoning.
Even so, this recent article’s explicit study of the persistently dysrational (a better term than “arational” or “dysreasonal”) feels like a useful way to reframe the discussion. From Bush to Rumsfeld to Climate change deniers we’ve seen some fairly smart to brilliant people stuck in dysrational modes. If we can understand what produces dysrationalia, and how to intervene in early life, we may take a big step towards enlightenment 2.0 and rational discourse though not universal agreement.
See also: Be the Best You can Be- IQ and reasoning - not quite the same thing
... To be skeptical of climate models and credulous about things like carbon-eating trees and cloudmaking machinery and hoses that shoot sulfur into the sky is to replace a faith in science with a belief in science fiction. This is the turn that “SuperFreakonomics” takes, even as its authors repeatedly extoll their hard-headedness. All of which goes to show that, while some forms of horseshit are no longer a problem, others will always be with us.
I had a real bad feeling when the American Academy of Family Physicians closed our once excellent web site to public access. So I wasn’t all that surprised by their latest move …
How the World Works – Family Doctors go better with Coke - Salon.com
… directed to this story from the Cleveland Plain Dealer reporting that the American Association of Family Doctors has "a six-figure grant from the Coca-Cola Co. to create content about beverages and sweeteners for the academy's consumer Web site, FamilyDoctor.org."…
… From the AAFP press release: “The Consumer Alliance program is a way of working with interested companies to develop educational materials to help consumers make informed decisions so they can include the products they love in a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle," said AAFP President-elect Lori Heim, M.D., of Vass, N.C…
…The Consumer Alliance program also will create a new source of funding for AAFP, which, in recent years, has broadened its search for funding outside the pharmaceutical industry…”
I just sent these guys over $600 for my 1 year membership – to find out that the AAFP’s consumer health site is doing covert marketing. Next up – the health benefits of e-cigarettes.
Worst bit? Maybe this is an improvement over pharmaceutical funding.
I expect this will be my last year of AAFP membership.
Update: I received a standard response letter signed by AAFP President Lori Heim when I wrote the academy. It included a bit of further context ...
... I would finally note that this is not new territory for the AAFP. Over the past 4 years we have had funding relationships with Pepsi and McDonald's for support of the AIM program - and we have managed them very well in maintaining a positive image for the Academy while advancing our message about fitness, activity, and healthy choices. And Coca-Cola has been a corporate member of our Foundation for several years as well which is why we reached out to them initially.So why not Philip Morris? These are publicly traded companies -- their mission is not public health. Their mission is to make money from people who buy Pepsi, Coke and McDonald's products.
Op-Ed Columnist - Paranoia Strikes Deep - NYTimes.comKrugman is not always right. Unfortunately, he's the best prognosticator we've got, even if he's better at forecasting doom than at coming up with practical alternatives (perhaps because we don't have a lot of practical options).
Last Thursday there was a rally outside the U.S. Capitol to protest pending health care legislation, featuring the kinds of things we’ve grown accustomed to, including large signs showing piles of bodies at Dachau with the caption “National Socialist Healthcare.” It was grotesque — and it was also ominous. For what we may be seeing is America starting to be Californiafied...
...In fact, the party of Limbaugh and Beck could well make major gains in the midterm elections. The Obama administration’s job-creation efforts have fallen short, so that unemployment is likely to stay disastrously high through next year and beyond. The banker-friendly bailout of Wall Street has angered voters, and might even let Republicans claim the mantle of economic populism. Conservatives may not have better ideas, but voters might support them out of sheer frustration.
And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster...
Cigarettes Without Smoke, or Regulation - June 2, 2009 - NYTimes.com
FALL RIVER, Mass. — During 34 years of smoking, Carolyn Smeaton has tried countless ways to reduce her three-pack-a-day habit, including a nicotine patch, nicotine gum and a prescription drug. But stop-smoking aids always failed her.
Then, having watched a TV infomercial at her home here, Ms. Smeaton tried an electronic cigarette, which claimed to be a less dangerous way to feed her addiction. The battery-powered device she bought online delivered an odorless dose of nicotine and flavoring without cigarette tar or additives, and produced a vapor mist nearly identical in appearance to tobacco smoke.
... the Food and Drug Administration has already refused entry to dozens of shipments of e-cigarettes coming into the country, mostly from China, the chief maker of them, where manufacture began about five years ago. The F.D.A. took similar action in 1989, refusing shipments of an earlier, less appealing version, Favor Smoke-Free Cigarettes.
“These appear to be unapproved drug device products,” said Karen Riley, a spokeswoman for the agency, “and as unapproved products they can’t enter the United States.”
But enough of the e-cigarettes have made their way into the country that they continue to proliferate online and in the malls.
For $100 to $150 or so, a user can buy a starter kit including a battery-powered cigarette and replaceable cartridges that typically contain nicotine (though cartridges can be bought without it), flavoring and propylene glycol, a liquid whose vaporizing produces the smokelike mist. When a user inhales, a sensor heats the cartridge. The flavorings include tobacco, menthol and cherry, and the levels of nicotine vary by cartridge.
Propylene glycol is used in antifreeze, and also to create artificial smoke or fog in theatrical productions. The F.D.A. has classified it as an additive that is “generally recognized as safe” for use in food. But when asked whether inhaling it was safe, Dr. Richard D. Hurt, director of the Nicotine Dependence Center at the Mayo Clinic, said, “I don’t think so, but I’m not sure anyone knows for sure.”
Of the e-cigarettes themselves, Dr. Hurt added: “We basically don’t know anything about them. They’ve never been tested for safety or efficacy to help people stop smoking.”
Public health officials also worry that the devices’ fruit flavors, novelty and ease of access may entice children.
“It looks like a cigarette and is marketed as a cigarette,” said Jonathan P. Winickoff, an associate professor at the Massachusetts General Hospital for Children and chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics Tobacco Consortium. “There’s nothing that prevents youth from getting addicted to nicotine.”
Sales and use of electronic cigarettes are already illegal on safety grounds in Australia and Hong Kong, and some other countries regulate them as medicinal devices or forbid their advertising. So far the United States has focused only on stopping them at the border, although Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, has asked the drug agency to take them off the market until they can be tested.
Distributors of electronic cigarettes fear that a bill making its way through Congress that would give the F.D.A. the authority to regulate tobacco could be used to put them out of business as well. The bill has passed the House and could be taken up by the Senate this week.
The only American study of electronic cigarettes, now under way at Virginia Commonwealth University and financed by the National Cancer Institute, deals not with the kind of safety questions raised by propylene glycol but rather with the amount of nicotine processed by the bodies of the products’ users.
Another study, conducted this year at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and financed by Ruyan, an electronic cigarette company, shows that users typically receive 10 percent to 18 percent of the nicotine delivered by a tobacco cigarette...
Berlin's moment of freedom that turned world history | World news | The Guardian
...Later that night, a young East German scientist called Angela Merkel walked across the same crossing. Now the chancellor of united Germany, she will do the same again this afternoon, accompanied by a group of East German opposition activists, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa and doubtless a media scrum."...I knew Angela Merkel was Chancellor of course, but I'd forgotten that she was born in East Germany. She crossed over on the day East Germany was freed.
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Exclusive Story Opportunity...
...One of the filthiest hacks on the beat has been trying to curry favor with Katie, and she's playing along, pretending to be his friend, hoping we can maybe use him for something at some point. Katie calls this her "back pocket strategy," meaning it's always good to keep a few of these frigtards in your back pocket in case you need them someday....
...If you want to see the full version of the pitch letter you can find it here. I didn't want to fill up this post with the whole thing because it's pretty long. But it's also pretty hilarious reading, especially if you've ever wondered how those big features on giant companies end up in your magazine.
Little hint: The companies think them up themselves, and put together a complete package, with charts and statistics, phone numbers for analysts and "independent observers" (all of them fully prepped and totally on message) -- and then, when they've got the whole thing wrapped up with ribbons and bows, they go looking for a hack to write it up for them.
What makes this case especially ridiculous is that the hack who passed us this pitch has had a somewhat rocky relationship with the Original Borg. In fact, this hack was once on an O.B. blacklist...
Another time the two top flacks at IBM actually met with the top two editors at this hack's publication and demanded that the editors remove this hack from the IBM beat. Another times, an O.B. exec and his minions orchestrated letter-writing campaigns against this hack, bombarding the hack's publications with letters denouncing him. The O.B. exec wrote his own letters to the publication, too, and in his he demanded that the hack should be terminated...IBM won't be trying pitches to Lyons for a while. Must have been someone who didn't know the back story.
Now they want a favor. Funny how that shit comes around, isn't it?
HowStuffWorks "Rosary Pea"
.... rosary pea seeds contain the poison abrin. The seeds are only dangerous when the coating is broken -- swallowed whole, the rosary pea doesn't present any danger. But if the seed is scratched or damaged, it's deadly. The rosary pea poses greater danger to the jewelry maker than to the wearer. There are many reported cases of death when jewelry makers prick a finger while handling the rosary pea...
