Posts about Junk Science as of September 1, 2009

WEST HOLLYWOOD. THE SUNSET STRIP It might appear to some who have read what I’ve been writing that I have a problem with AA, which I do not. The program of Alcoholics Anonymous, as laid out in the simple text of its book, is straight ahead, and works. My problems were with me and various members of the program who attempted to shove their version of AA down my throat, and then say they were only trying to help. If you’ve read my story, you are aware that I probably came to the program a mess.

When we finished the basement, we envisioned a space that could be used by the whole family.  We added a guest room/office, full bath, closet, utility room, and a great room with a sectional couch and TV.  We put in Dupont’s Smart Strand carpet, which cannot be stained.  Not by a pukey cat, not by a purple marker, not by A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G.  It is a marvel of modern day science and is so soft that I like to roll around on it and sing silly little songs like, “Why can’t I afford this carpet upstairs?”,

Sept. 1, 2009 How do you improve K-12 student’s health knowledge, inspire creative writing, support eco-values of refurbished technology, and use whimsical hand-painted art of animated monsters to reach and teach? Launch a Playnormous custom-contest of amped up art that looks like it crawled out of a Pixar flick!

SOS Forests : Utah Governor Slams USFS for Foofurb Disaster Forest Carbon Emissions Model Report No. 3 Federal Judge Rules DOI Cannot Withdraw Regulations Without Process A Sane Proposal for a Middle Path to Wilderness Fires Rod Mendes: Does anyone care about our air? Forest fire cost report solidly based in science, accounting Accident Takes Life of Wallowa-Whitman National Forest Employee Time to Fight Back Ned Pence on the Cascade Complex Fires of 2007 Roadless Rule Will

Researchers have shed new light on Ewing’s sarcoma, an often deadly bone cancer that typically afflicts children and young adults. The rest is here:New Hope For Deadly Childhood Bone Cancer: Surprising Discovery Made By Studying ‘Junk DNA’ (Science Daily)

A look at today’s science and health policy news: Tax junk food, drinks to fight child obesity-report Reuters — A strongly worded report on child obesity released on Tuesday recommends that state and local governments tax junk food and soft drinks, give tax breaks to grocery stores that open in blighted neighborhoods and build bike trails.

I know I have posted the following before but it needs repeating

Body: On Aug. 31 NAA filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in an Arizona state appellate court. The brief sets forth legal and public policy arguments that address litigation arising out of a resident’s exposure to mold at an apartment community – specifically, the dearth of scientific evidence supporting a causal link between mold exposure and adverse health effects. Claims of physical injuries attributed to the presence of mold in housing have been the basis for an explosion of litigation over the past twenty years.

IWF alum Charlotte Allen socks it to the out-to-lunch food snob crowd in her Sunday editorial in the Los Angeles Times with her hilarious observations of the nutty eco-foodie world which (as if they weren’t annoying enough) seems to have blended with a new category of social bellyachers intent of making us feel guilty for (are you ready for this?) spending too little on food, clothing, furniture, and gas.  Dire economic circumstances don’t seem to faze these spendinenthusiasts, who scold us

While handheld/personal breathalyzers are a drinkers best friend as the difference between a good night with a sweet morning or a bad night resulting in a hefty fine and lengthy jail stint is a mere 0.08%. For those who don’t drink, a breathalyzer is obviously useless. For those that do, and do so often or simply want to know precisely when they’ve had a tad too much. Sure you can get any run of the mill breathalyzer that sniffs out alcohol on your breath. Or, you can go the extra mile and get a little extra bang for your buck.

The end of the summer that wasn’t (warm), back to school, and tidbits from the ether you may find of note… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. This month… Blog Roll : Maria Kallman on Benjamin Franklin; The Gen M Manifesto; The Longest Way Home; Containing A Capital Letter Or Two… Cooking : Eat Well Guide; RIP Julie Lukins; Cheese And Burger Society; Attempting Beef Fourguignon; 100 Easiest, Fastest Recipes Ever; Medievil Gastronomy; Eggs Benedict… Design : Quotes On Design;

Consumer enemy numero uno, Wayne Pacelle of HSUS (in case you forgot, the radical animal anti-farming activist lobbying group) is none too happy with the American Veterinary Medical Association. AVMA, you see, has its own opinions about the well-being of animals on the farm, and they don’t happen to line up with the activists’ ideological and fund-raising agendas. Remember well that HSUS is driven by donor dollars, and as a business, will act in its own rational self-interest, rather than in the best interest of farm animals or the farmers who care for them on a daily basis.

A spectacular explosion on the Sun that rocked the Earth 150 years ago this week could threaten the lives of tens of millions of people if it happened again today. The solar storm in September 1859 gave the Earth the mother of all buffetings. A worldwide aurora turned night into day. Telegraph operators were knocked out or shocked as sparks and flames leapt from their wires in a huge electrical surge. But in today’s technology-dependent world, a similar event could bring down civilization in the biggest disaster ever to hit mankind.

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September 1, 2009 I wanted to tell you something about my dad while it’s all fresh in my head. I was lucky enough to have an amazing dad. He could make ribs fall off the bone, he built amazing things with just a little bit of elbow grease and a garage full of junk. He taught me about computers, science, woodworking and when we stood together outside looking at the stars, he became my philosopher. He picked me up when I fell – over and over again. He was there for me in spirit when that was all he could give.And yes, he gave me my first camera.

Arson investigations that put two Texas men on death row were poorly conducted and reached conclusions that couldn’t be supported by fire science or investigative standards, an independent expert hired by the state concluded in a report released Tuesday. The new study comports with findings in 2006 of five fire-investigation experts hired by the Innocence Project: that The determination that the fires were intentionally set was based on faulty and obsolete myths about fire behavior.

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Posted by Mark KleimanIf Cameron Todd Willingham had followed his lawyer’s advice and pleaded guilty to burning his three daughters to death, accpeting a life sentence instead of risking the death penalty, we would probably never have known that he was innocent. Because he was on Death Row, his conviction – based on junk-science psychiatric and forensic evidence and (as usual) the testimony of a jailhouse snitch – has now been shown to be wrongful.

Books of The Times How Did They End Up That Way? ‘Using his patented blend of fact and fiction, E. L. Doctorow has tackled the Collyer brothers, producing a slight, unsatisfying, Poe-like story that turns out to be a study in morbid By MICHIKO KAKUTANI Published in the New York Ties, : August 31, 2009 HOMER & LANGLEY By E. L. Doctorow 208 pages. Random House. $26. The last name of the title characters of E. L.

Constantly Furious doesn’t give out awards, but if he did , one of the first would undoubtedly go to Mr Idris Francis. Mr Francis was the recipient of one of those nauseatingly chatty little communiques from Ed Milliband, trying to drum up some support for ‘ EdsPledge’ , some bandwagon-jumping nonsense that Milliband dreamt up whilst he should have been doing his real job. ‘Ed’ addressees Mr. Francis in ridiculous faux-matey terms, drivels on about ‘the climate’ and Twitter, and then somewhat arrogantly ends “Thanks for your support”.

This day was bound to come. There is perhaps no single issue for which I feel as much passion as I do in my stance against the death penalty. I am convinced that it is a moral evil; an irreversible punishment, shown to be biased against the poor, the uneducated, the disadvantaged, and the non-white, and riddled with a long history of wrongful convictions. David Grann has a 16,000 word masterpiece in the New Yorker that details the sad tale of Cameron Todd Willingham.

[[IMAGE:http://images.blogstream.com/i/userImages/121/121633_35308.jpg,342x400]]           The bushy red head sitting across the desk in the Chicago Division Office of Standard Oil on Wacker Drive was candid: At 30 you will be competing with much younger men, so you will have to work twice as hard to keep up. Competition for advancement in 1951 was ferocious.         At 30, I had multivariate work experience ranging from being a general insurance agent in my hometown of Northfield, Minnesota, at age 17 when my dad dropped dead at 47.

S upplements are supposed to be used in addition to good, wholesome food, not in place of it. Nothing can replace natural, health-building food. You won’t gain properly without it, and you might as well accept the fact. It takes a lot of groceries to build muscle, but you can only stuff so much into your stomach. Unless you’ve got a gut like an elephant, your food intake has a limit. If you load up with a lot of junk, you’re just wasting space that could be used to further your muscle building progress.

Soldiers Turn A March Into A Charge Engineers are developing a way to capture the kinetic energy produced when soldiers march and use it to power their equipment. Report: U.S. companies waste $2.8B per year powering unused PCs Both financial and environmental incentives should compel organizations to embrace PC power management READ MORE New Power Source For Portable Electronic Devices Microfluidic fuel cells could provide the necessary energy to provide continuous power to remote sensors, mobile phones and laptops, according to a student.

You may have heard of “homeopathy” but you are not sure what it is. Simply put, it is a system of medicine that treats a condition with highly diluted natural substances that mimic the symptoms of the condition being treated. This concept seems paradoxical to most. Homeopathy is a difficult concept to grasp. How do you cure someone of an illness by giving them a tiny concentration of something that can actually cause the disease? One would think that this would simply make the person even more sick.

This is certainly one of the longest articles I’ve recommended in quite some time, but it’s also an exceptionally well-written article on how the bloodlust that is the Texas judicial system most likely put an innocent man to death based on junk science , poor attention to detail, system of legal checks and balances that are rarely followed. In this piece by David Grann , he lays out the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in 2004 for the deaths of his three children by arson.

Recently, I’ve been wondering how Hollywood gets their ideas for Science Fiction movies. Depressingly, I’m pretty sure they get ‘em from a combination of crappy old 80s cartoons, comic books, and things they find written on the walls in public restrooms. Not that there’s anything wrong with loitering around public restrooms waiting for inspiration to hit.

Creativity is not about pitting your mind against that of others. It’s about extending the boundaries of your conditioned mind and keep pushing them even when you thought you’ve reached the limits of your mind. In essence, you’re pitting against no one but yourself. Here are some ways to expand your mind by challenging habitual routines that dull the mind. Remember, no matter which way you choose, don’t forget to have fun! For creativity is usually born out of play time when we least expected.

How many reputable ‘who’s who’ registries are there operating in the USA? One or two: Marquis and A&C Black? Over the past several weeks, I’ve been e-mailed and phoned by yet another ‘who’s who’ registry seeking to include me among nearly a million other ‘high rollers’ – then to sell me the volume, along with a plaque.   I don’t think they really ‘hear’ me (in the sense of ‘hear with understanding’) that an ethical vegan does NOT want a leather-bound volume that includes those names in the registry.  Not I (if you didn’t realize that questions is merely rhetorical, with only a negative answer possible).

Note: Cross posted from [blogger angelzfury] Battered Women, Battered Children, Custody Abuse.Permalink According to NNEDV, DV LEAP, SFV, and NCADV, victims of domestic violence face a surprisingly uphill battle in family court to win custody of and safety for their children. All too often, courts award custody and unsupervised visitation to parents found to have committed domestic abuse.

Note: Cross posted from [blogger angelzfury] Battered Women, Battered Children, Custody Abuse . Permalink According to NNEDV , DV LEAP , SFV , and NCADV, victims of domestic violence face a surprisingly uphill battle in family court to win custody of and safety for their children. All too often, courts award custody and unsupervised visitation to parents found to have committed domestic abuse.

Note: Cross posted from [blogger angelzfury] Battered Women, Battered Children, Custody Abuse . Permalink According to NNEDV , DV LEAP , SFV , and NCADV, victims of domestic violence face a surprisingly uphill battle in family court to win custody of and safety for their children. All too often, courts award custody and unsupervised visitation to parents found to have committed domestic abuse.

Note: Cross posted from [blogger angelzfury] Battered Women, Battered Children, Custody Abuse . Permalink According to NNEDV , DV LEAP , SFV , and NCADV, victims of domestic violence face a surprisingly uphill battle in family court to win custody of and safety for their children. All too often, courts award custody and unsupervised visitation to parents found to have committed domestic abuse.

Note: Cross posted from [blogger angelzfury] Battered Women, Battered Children, Custody Abuse . Permalink According to NNEDV , DV LEAP , SFV , and NCADV, victims of domestic violence face a surprisingly uphill battle in family court to win custody of and safety for their children. All too often, courts award custody and unsupervised visitation to parents found to have committed domestic abuse.

Note: Cross posted from [blogger angelzfury] Battered Women, Battered Children, Custody Abuse . Permalink According to NNEDV , DV LEAP , SFV , and NCADV, victims of domestic violence face a surprisingly uphill battle in family court to win custody of and safety for their children. All too often, courts award custody and unsupervised visitation to parents found to have committed domestic abuse.

Note: Cross posted from [blogger angelzfury] Battered Women, Battered Children, Custody Abuse.Permalink According to NNEDV, DV LEAP, SFV, and NCADV, victims of domestic violence face a surprisingly uphill battle in family court to win custody of and safety for their children. All too often, courts award custody and unsupervised visitation to parents found to have committed domestic abuse.

Leonard Sirowitz “My Graphic Concept”(2)in Englishチューリッヒからの英文手紙の主—Mr. Dominik Imseng は、同地のコピーライターらしいと、atsushi さんがリサーチしたくださいました(きのうのコメント欄)。次は、どうしてぼくのメール・アドレスを知ったかですが—じつは、ぼくの個人アドレスあてに来たきたのではなく、オフィスあてでした。それで、ジョージ・ロイス氏に聞いたなとわかりました。きのう半日、その謎解きでした。My Graphic Concept(２）Lecturein Zurich 1967 SpringLeonard SirowitzSONYWhen Sony brought its account to DDB it too seemed like a real challenge. They brought to us a very fine product. One which we felt we could do an exciting job for.We tried to find out everything we could about their products.

Here are my links and such for the month of August. There aren’t as many as there could have been, as I’ve had to become a bit more discriminating this month due to big projects and short deadlines. But hopefully everyone who reads this will find something of interest. These links are all from my previous tweets. I’ve listed them here, all in one post, and with additional detail and comment. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter.

[[IMAGE:http://images.blogstream.com/i/userImages/121/121633_35308.jpg,342x400,80%]]          The bushy red head sitting across the desk in the Chicago Division Office of Standard Oil on Wacker Drive was candid: At 30 you will be competing with much younger men, so you will have to work twice as hard to keep up. Competition for advancement in1951 was ferocious. At 30, I had multivariate work experience ranging from being a general insurance agent in my hometown of Northfield, Minnesota, at age 17 when my dad dropped dead at 47.

Courtesy Lydia Elle @ Flickr (by-nc license) I just finished a great lecture series on the history of mathematics by Dr. David Bressoud recently 1 . Remember how I once spoke about elegance in inelegance? How some people have argued (eg: Lee Smolin ) that the universe just might be complex by nature? How mankind might just be wrong about looking for simple and thus elegant solutions to explain physical phenomena? Well, I was pretty intrigued by some of the stuff I learned about Henri Poincare ’s work in this regard.

And this is your spoiler alert. I’m going to dissect the movie so move on if you don’t want to know what happens in some of it. There’s been a lot of hype about District 9. It was discussed some on my writers group list and people have seen all the bus ads and trailers. My neighbor said, “Oh that’s supposed to be one of the best movies of the year.” It’s produced by Peter Jackson of  LOTR fame and director Neill Blomkamp. And while I found the movie good, it wasn’t great.

Who would ape the Luddite U.S. Chamber of Commerce in their call for “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” on global warming ?  Why the monkey-see, monkey do deniers at Planet Gore and the office of Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL). Inhofe’s office actually quoted me: Joe Romm, of the Center for American Progress, asks the board members of the Chamber “to declare whether they are evolved members of humanity or dedicated to our self-destruction.” This scathing, ad hominem response brings to mind John Stuart Mill, who, in his renowned essay “On Liberty,” discussed the practical implications of stifling opinions thought to be incorrect or misguided.

MobilWhen the Mobiloil Corp. asked DDB to handle its account I was very excited, naturally, to handle the account. The account was at the Ted Bates Co. where their consumer advertising was being done. The account was not taken away from Ted Bates. For the first time the company decided to do institutional advertising. This had nothing to do with selling the product itself …. but do a campaign that would “endear them in the hearts of the American people forever”.

The Marshfield News-Herald has a column that is so full of lies and disinformation that it is almost laughable. On Tuesday, the price of a pack of cigarettes jumps another 75 cents. That new tax, added to the federal tax increase in April, makes total taxes on a pack of cigarettes $3.53 — and a total price of $6 to $7 per pack. There will be some bitter complaints about this, and they’re understandable. That’s an enormous tax on the fifth of adults in this state who smoke, many of whom are lower-income.

Researchers have found that a (virtually unknown to the public) form of cholesterol called oxycholesterol may be your most serious cardiovascular health threat . “Total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL), and the heart-healthy high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) are still important health issues,” says study leader Zhen-Yu Chen, Ph.D., of Chinese University of Hong Kong . “But the public should recognize that oxycholesterol is also important and cannot be ignored.

Dear friends; welcome to this article on how to lose weight. There is so much information out there that it can be hard to scour for the kernels of truth. So much of it is there to promote this product or that. All we are going to try and do is offer the unvarnished truth. The truth on weight loss from the battle hardened veterans who have succeeded. And following this advice you will succeed too. How do we know? Because thousands of folks have succeeded. That’s how.

Weed killers, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, genetically modified crops–BAN THEM ALL!  A lovely piece by Gwyn Morgan, sadly in the Globe and Mail’s “Report on Business” where many readers will miss it.  Pity how much good stuff of general interest is relegated there–see, e.g., second part of this post . Mark Ottawa

European Vegetarian and Animal News Alliance (EVANA) Newsletter August 2009 ————————————— In this compilation you can read about the following issues: 1. EVANA asks: “What changes do you expect in tomorrow’s vegetarian world?” 2. Why meat eating is not a personal matter 3. Animal torture in the name of science 4. Is that a way to treat our cousins? 5. Bull-fighting as part of the UNESCO Immaterial World Cultural Heritage? 6. August Snippets 7. Interesting compilations, Films, Videos ——————————————– 1.

Art The cover art for the next Dresden Files novel is out! Not only does is it appropriately bad-ass, but after eleven entries in the series, we finally get a cover that includes Harry’s face. Film Before They Were Basterds : “Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is perhaps his most deft handling of reference and homage yet. The video store nerds at Scarecrow Video would like to present to you an unofficial and in progress footnotes companion to Basterds.

Last week, I saw a slew of media headlines about the HaLeigh Cummings case and how certain methods used by investigators indicated that HaLeigh’s step-mother was lying or being deceptive.  What I didn’t see was anyone holding up a hand and saying, “Wait a minute.  Are these methods really scientifically accepted as deception detectors?” This might be a good time to point out that they’re not.