Archive for November, 2007

What’s Your Answer?

November 26, 2007 at 3:25 pm · Filed under Art Freak Culture

Come out tonight and join us for What’s Your Answer?!!

From the same people who’ve chosen to accept the BLAME (and some limited legal responsibility) for such FAMOUS travesties as URBAN Golf, The BUZZED BEE, The $25,000 Pyramid Scheme, and Crackhouses For Humanity comes the most COMPELLING underground entertainment EVENT of the first part of this week:

“WHAT’S YOUR ANSWER?” - the Pub Quiz night where the most humorous answer wins!

At “What’s Your Answer?” we don’t care how many obscure historical facts you’ve memorized, or which team has kept up to date on the latest dirt about Britney Lohiltonhan, or who knows which rogue nation just now broke off all diplomatic ties with the U.S. and is threatening an imminent nuclear attack. Well, okay, we might care a little bit about that last one. But ONLY if your answer is funny.

That’s right. The answer that gets the most LAUGHS will also get the most points, as awarded by our panel of celebrity judges. At “What’s Your Answer?” there’s NO NEED to actually KNOW ANYTHING, just so long as you and your team can crack wise. Or crack stupid. We really DON’T care. But at the end of the night, the team with the most points will win some fabulously crass PRIZES, and bragging rights (or “street cred”) redeemable within a laughably small and hopelessly ESOTERIC local sub-culture!!!

This NOT-TO-BE-MISSED show will DEBUT at 9pm on MONDAY the 26th at renowned Mission Street hotspot 12 GALAXIES.

$5 dollars admission, no one turned away for lack of funds, taste, timing or tact.

More details at the “What’s Your Answer?” Web Experience
As seen on LAUGHING SQUID

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Cutting Through the Stem Cell Hype

November 21, 2007 at 12:31 pm · Filed under Politics + Science & Skepticism

Recent stem cell advancements have been been exploding across the headlines. If you somehow missed these headlines, the bulk of it is “researchers have figured out how to reprogram adult cell into a state that is nearly indistinguishable from embryonic, pluripotent stem cells.”

Unlike some science stories in the news this isn’t pure hype; it is truly important and has been tested by multiple labs. However, like normal, the media reports are mostly lacking in details and full of loud pronouncements about how this tolls the end of the culture wars and how using embryonic stem cells is now “old-fashioned.”

Like always the truth is more complex. And of course the fabulous ScienceBlogs lays it all out where the media falls flat. PZ Myers, of Pharyngula offers an excellent explanation of the research and it’s implications entitled Stem Cell Breakthrough. Also, the Denialism Blog has a great post about it entitled, Reprogramming adult cells into pluripotent stem cells - what do these new results mean. The blog Framing Science wrote two posts detailing how this is going to effect the future of the stem cell debate: The Next Stage in the Stem Cell Debate Begins! and THE DISCOVERY: What It Means for Framing & News Coverage.

I highly recommend you read these excellent articles, but for those of you who are too busy I offer a few important bullet points:

• “Americans did not make this discovery; Japanese researchers did. It required understanding of gene expression in embryonic stem cells, an understanding that was hampered in our country. ” (PZ Myers)
• This discovery is truly important and has been tested by multiple labs.
• “What the investigators have accomplished is to discover the reset button for the cell, but the way they currently press it is by hitting it hard with a ball peen hammer.” (PZ Myers)
• This new method is still somewhat crude and this means that the cells cannot be used for theraputic purposes as these cells have a higher chance of becoming cancerous than embryonic stem cells.
• This does not spell the end of embryonic stem cells as in order to find a more eloquent way of switching the “reset button” more research using embryonic stem cells will be needed.

Sadly, I think science has already lost the (religiously polarized, scientifically illiterate) American public on this issue. The media has already spin this as a win for the Christian Right and is ignoring that fact that it is really a win for embryonic stem cell researchers — and more importantly that more embryonic stem cell research is needed.

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People like this make it hard to be a “nice” skeptic

November 16, 2007 at 2:52 pm · Filed under uncategorized + Minds, Brains, & inbetween + Politics

The Society of Homeopaths is holding a symposium on the treatment of AIDS in December. Their flier states that “Harry van der Zee will introduce us to a completely different and controversial treatment for AIDS in Africa using a new set of healing remedies created by Peter Chappell.”

And what is this “completely different and controversial treatment” you ask? He offers “healing downloads”:

“Downloads are based upon resonance which is an ancient principle for healing and resonance is a natural law that has always existed. Modern quantum physics is confirming resonance works on all levels of existence.”

And how do you get these “healing downloads”? Well he sells them on iTunes of course “engrafted” onto jazz music!

“The music is simply the carrier and alerts you to listen. The download is engrafted on the music by a special process. That is the new technology.”

Hell maybe we can just preload his quantum engrafted ancient healing resonance music on all those XO Laptops! That’ll solve the African AIDS crisis in no time!

ugh

It’s this sorta shit that pisses me off about hemopathology and all the other new ager placebo crap. I’m not gonna even bother disproving hemopathology for you here as others have done it better than me.

I ran into someone tangentially in my social circle the other day who exclaimed the benefits of using magnets to balance the body. I admit that my initial response was mildly snarky, and in turn their response was basically an outright distrust of “western medicine” because that’s “how [they] were raised.” For them it had become a religion.

Reiki, acupuncture, hemeopathology, prayer, MMR vaccine hysteria, witch doctors, raping virgins to get rid of AIDS — it’s all part of the same circle of faith-based medicine. At best it’s hucksterism sucking money out of wallets of dupes; and at worst it’s spreading disinformation and killing patients who forgo vaccines and real treatment. Obviously, it’s mostly the latter that pisses me off about the former.

When faced with this sorta new ager stuff (fairly common here in San Francisco), I think it’s important to challenge these ideas. However, it can be hard not to come off sounding disdainful (because frankly that’s basically how I feel).

Any other skeptics out there have ways of approaching these conversations?

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Medic Computer Down!

November 15, 2007 at 1:22 pm · Filed under uncategorized

Been in self tech support hell lately. A couple weeks ago, a power outage switched off my external drive in the middle of it being used which destroyed the file hierarchy. For various reasons it took about a week to recover all the data which didn’t live elsewheres. I restored the hard drive and copied everything back on to it.

Then just a couple days ago, my laptop froze up and then refused to boot again. I launched it in firewire target disk mode — which thankfully worked — attached it to Nifer’s machine, and backed up everything in my home folder to my external. Then I rebooted with a bootable DiskWarrior cd and set it to repair. This seemed to work. My machine booted, I immediately installed superduper and did a full clone of my laptop.

The next day, it froze again. I ran DiskWarrior again and it repaired a couple useless permissions but that was about it. Interestingly, it would boot in safe mode fine, but normal boots always resulted in either a generic lockup or this lovely corrupt stack kernel panic message:

Last night, I tried doing a fresh install of the operating system just in case. Unfortunately, the install process just errored out every time.

At this point, it’s looking like a hardware issue, so tonight I’ll run TechTool on it.

I’m glad I can do my own tech support, but I really wish I didn’t have to — I don’t have time for this.

UPDATE: TechTool was worthless as it said everything was peachy. I tried removing the one 3rd party RAM chip I have in there and sure enough that seems to have done the trick so far. Install completed fine and it loaded alright. Now I’m just restoring block-level from my superduper backup as I figure it wasn’t a software problem.

I’ll need to get some more RAM though as 256MB is just not enough. Interestingly it says lifetime warranty on the chip so I’ll have to look into that.

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Internet Savvy “country doctor” in Brooklyn

November 14, 2007 at 12:07 pm · Filed under Online Health Care + Politics

Interesting completely different approach that this internet mobile based doctor, Jay Parkinson MD, is taking to online healthcare.

Nice site too though a bit too trendy web2.0 looking for my tastes – it would look professional for a techno DJ, but for a doctor it just feels fake. Interestingly, this doctor designed and built the site himself. It’s a fine example of someone with a spot of web design talent and no branding or identity knowhow.

He’s acting as a sole practitioner “country doctor” that doesn’t take insurance. However, he is available 24/7 by email, IM, or phone and makes housecalls but conducts most consults as eVisits. Also, he acts as a middle man of sorts to find the best healthcare specialist deals.

His whole practice is based on the fact that there is a whole swath of uninsured people out there looking for inexpensive healthcare. His practice and his offer to find good health deals brings up a several interesting points about the state of health care in America:

• There are so many uninsured patients that they now constitute a market in themselves.
• This market of uninsured patients is not having it’s needs met, as most health care targets insured patients. (Note they do not target medicare/medicaid since doctors don’t get enough money from those programs to justify the extensive paperwork that comes with treating patients on medicare/medicaid).
• The actual cost of health care is hidden because of the insurance industry and the ubiquitous $15 co-pay
• Competition for services between doctors is stifled because of the fact that costs are hidden and because patients are locked into choosing a preferred provider in a select doctor network
• Jay Parkinson’s entire business strategy would be out the window if universal health care became a reality

It’s funny how much the republicans cry and whine about the horrors of socialized medicine when our own health care industry stifles their beloved “capitalist competition.” If there was truly a open market for health care the needs of the uninsured would be getting met better. I’m not arguing that this is a good idea mind you since a truly open health care market may also lead to hospitals becoming more like car mechanic shops — where 9 out of 10 are trying to rip you off.

Personally, I’m in favor of some form of universal health care for several reasons; however I think Jay Parkinson is doing a good service that is needed right now. Until a universal health care system is created, we need more solutions for uninsured patients rather then just having them go the emergency room for treatment. And if the market can figure out a way to service these people where our government has floundered, that’s great.

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All quiet on the catcubed front

November 14, 2007 at 11:22 am · Filed under Life, Meaning, & Selfhood

Been a bit crazy in my world lately, and I haven’t had much of chance to update this blog in a while. Actually have started on a few posts, but haven’t had time to finish them. They are just sitting there in my drafts staring at me.

So what have I been up to you ask?

• Normal work has been keeping me busy
• I had one week of a bad chest cold (the same one everyone else got)
• I’ve been working on new logo designs for interpretive arson
• I’m working on a new event (more on this later)
• I’ve been poring lots of time into helping Nifer with NifNaks.com (check out her new datawormz flashdrives they’re awesome!)
• And I’ve been trying to work in some social life in order to keep myself sane (went to the Maze Party in Half Moon Bay which was a whole lot of fun)

I miss my blog writing so I hope to squeeze in a bit more time for this soon.

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