Tue, 27 Jun 2006 05:40:55 GMT

Thomas Jefferson. “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” [Quotes of the Day]

Kurt Vonnegut. “There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don�t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.” [Quotes of the Day]

Georges Clemenceau. “War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.” [Quotes of the Day]

Albert Einstein. “To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.” [Quotes of the Day]

David Smith. “In this business you either sink or swim or you don’t.” [Quotes of the Day]

Nice set of quotes. I like Albert’s a lot.

Sun, 18 Jun 2006 23:43:28 GMT

Humans As Cat Chow.

Two hundred thousand years ago or thereabouts, an African lion killed someone. Along with a meal, the big cat got a wicked stomachache. Today a record of that unfortunate death still survives, in the bacteria that make big cats sick.

The trail of this strange story starts in the 1980s, when scientists discovered that ulcers are caused by bacteria known as known as Helicobacter pylori. H. pylori is found in people around the world, and scientists learned how to recognize the different strains they carried. Based on the patterns of the strains, a team of scientists concluded in 2003 that Helicobacter pylori must have been present early in the history of our species, and was spread across the world during the migration of humans. (I wrote a long post on H. pylori and human evolution when the scientists who discovered its link to ulcers got the Nobel Prize.)

But there were skeptics.

Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post… [The Loom]

A compelling story. We hear a lot about diseases jumping from animals to humans. Here is an instance of a disease jumping from humans to carnovores. I guess at one time we were not at the top of the food chain.

Sun, 18 Jun 2006 05:50:36 GMT

And Speaking of Pharmaceutical Companies… [The Corpus Callosum]. This is pretty sickening:

Drugs
firm blocks cheap blindness cure
Company will only seek licence for medicine that costs
100
times more

Sarah Boseley, health editor
Saturday June 17, 2006

A major drug company is blocking access to a medicine that is cheaply
and effectively saving thousands of people from going blind because it
wants to launch a more expensive product on the market.

Ophthalmologists around the world, on their own initiative, are
injecting tiny quantities of a colon cancer drug called Avastin
[link added] into the eyes of patients with wet macular degeneration, a
common condition of older age that can lead to severely impaired
eyesight and blindness. They report remarkable success at very low cost
because one phial can be split and used for dozens of patients.

But Genentech
[link added], the company that invented Avastin, does not want it used
in this way. Instead it is applying to license a fragment of Avastin,
called Lucentis, which is packaged in the tiny quantities suitable for
eyes at a higher cost. Speculation in the US suggests it could cost
£1,000 per dose instead of less than £10. The
company says Lucentis [link added] is specifically
designed for eyes, with modifications over Avastin, and has been
through 10 years of testing to prove it is safe….

Sometimes, reports such as this are exaggerated. I just saw
this, and have not looked into any more than just reading the news
article. But it appears to convey a valid, serious, concern.

Read the comments on this post… By Joseph j7uy5 none@example.com. [ScienceBlogs : Combined Feed]

Sometimes pharma just shoot themselves in the foot. There is probably a better explanation for the 100 fold increase in price than sheer greed but they do not seem to have provided that reason. So all the media feeds the story that pharma companies are out to rip off the patients. Macular degeneration is a horrible disease and anything that can fight it will be used. But to raise the price 100-fold will seem like price gouging.

Both Avastin and Lucentis appear to be antibodies to VEGF, a protein that is involved in blood vessel formation, a key component of macular degeneration. Lucentis is a fragment of the whole antibody, so it is smaller and may be able to penetrate tissues that the full antibody structure can not. But it does not appear that Genentech has done a head to head comparison between Avastin and Lucentis. So docs are taking Avastin, diluting it down and using it, at a cost in the tens of dollar range, rather than using the repackaged fragment, Lucentis, which is in the $2000 range.

Avastin is used as an anti-tumor drug. It is normally priced to be used in high doses. But macular degeneration is used in much smaller doses. It is a use that was probably not anticipated when the pricing for Avastin was determined. So, now it appears the Genentech might be trying to do an end run around the price differential by reformulating the drug and increasing the effective price.

Genentech had to know that simply repricing this would cause an uproar over possible price gouging. It should have prepared the market better with medical rationales for this. I wonder if the insurance companies will be as happy to reimburse for a $2000 treatment if a $20 treatment would have worked as well? Genentech may have a touch row to hoe with this. It should be interesting.

Sun, 18 Jun 2006 05:28:19 GMT

Measles and mumps World Cup action [Effect Measure].

The 64 World Cup soccer (fotbol) matches started a week ago in 12 German cities and will continue until July 9. Three million soccer fans are expected from Europe and beyond. Three of the cities where matches will be played, Cologne, Dortmund and Gelsenkirchen, are in the German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen. So is a measles outbreak in children and young adults. The Ukraine is also experiencing a large measles outbreak, with case numbers exceeding 20,000 by the end of February. The Ukrainian National team qualified for the tournament and will undoubtedly have many fans there. Meanwhile nearby Austria is having a mumps outbreak concentrated in the 18 – 30 age group in southern Austria (Carinthia; via Eurosurveillance). A mumps case, in a 23 year old British fan has already been reported at the Nuremberg venue. The game is afoot.

Recently we posted on a measles outbreak in Boston traced to an Indian computer programmer who infected others in a high rise office building shortly after arrival. Measles and mumps are preventable diseases and vaccination has produced a substantial herd immunity in the European and American population. But because both diseases are quite contagious (high basic reproductive numbers, R₀), the immunization coverage must also be high to prevent an outbreak. The strategy of “free-riding” that depends on others being vaccinated is risky, at best. We are also unsure how long the measles and mumps vaccines provide protection. The original view it was life-long is probably incorrect.

German public health authorities have instituted a special World Cup surveillance effort. If you want to follow a different kind of action you can find an an English language infectious disease play-by-play at a special website established by the Rudolph Koch Institute.

Read the comments on this post… By revere none@example.com. [ScienceBlogs : Combined Feed]

I had not thought about the public health aspects of the World Cup but it is obvious now. What other sports events bring so many from so far together in one place? Seems to me only the Olympics is in the same league.

Sun, 18 Jun 2006 05:13:35 GMT

Good Math, Repeating Decimals, and Bad Math [Good Math, Bad Math].

Just saw a nice post at another math blog called Polymathematics about something that bugs me too… The way that people don’t understand what repeating decimals mean. In particular, the way that people will insist that 0.9999999… != 1. As a CS geek, I tend to see this as an issue of how people screw up syntax and semantics.

And it has some really funny stupidity in the comments. 0.9999999… = 1.

One quick quote from the post, just because it’s a nifty demonstration of the fact which I’ve not seen before: (I replaced a GIF image in the original post with a text transcription.)

Let x = 0.9999999…, and then multiply both sides by 10, so you get 10x = 9.9999999… because multiplying by 10 just moves the decimal point to the right. Then stack those two equations and subtract them (this is a legal move because you’re subtracting the same quantity from the left side, where it’s called x, as from the right, where it’s called .9999999…, but they’re the same because they’re equal. We said so, remember?):

10x = 9.99999999...
-        x =  0.99999999...
-------------------------
9x = 9

Surely if 9x = 9, then x = 1. But since x also equals .9999999… we get that .9999999… = 1. The algebra is impeccable.

I also need to quote the closing of one of the comments, just for its sheer humor value:

Bottom line is, you will never EVER get 1/1 to equal .99999999… You people think you can hide behind elementary algebra to fool everyone, but in reality, you’re only fooling yourselves. Infinity: The state or quality of being infinite, unlimited by space or time, without end, without beginning or end. Not even your silly blog can refute that.

Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post… By Mark C. Chu-Carroll none@example.com. [ScienceBlogs : Combined Feed]

It really says something about some people that even when it is proven that 1=0.9999… they continue to deny reality. weird>

Sun, 18 Jun 2006 00:26:09 GMT

GreenLeaf: A Virtual Farmer’s Market. By marc

Via Growers & Grocers, this is interesting:

The Internet-based business, Greenleaf LLC, gets under way this summer. [...] Greenleaf could be a virtual farmer’s market that never closes.

Local farmers will be able to post what they have to sell, such as fresh produce and meats.

Buyers will be able to browse through the offerings and make online purchases from the farmers.

Greenleaf will charge sellers a fee, perhaps 2% of a sale. Buyers will pay an annual subscription fee, that hasn’t been finalized, to use the service.

Buyers and sellers will be responsible for making their own arrangements for payments and deliveries. [Former Whole Foods employee Heather] Hilleren said she will stay out of the transactions as much as possible.

“It’s strictly between the buyer and the seller,” much like eBay, she said.

The whole story is worth reading. I wonder if this would work; while the eBay analogy is better for the press, this feels more like Etsy Foods to me. I love that.

[O'Reilly Radar]

An interesting concept. I could see small co-ops or neighbors getting together to buy directly from the grower rather than the supermarket. But will its distribution actually wrk as well as we see now.

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 06:20:26 GMT

Yojimbo plugin for Quicksilver (or: My heart just skipped a beat).

Filed under: Software, Productivity, Internet Tools

I need to make more of a habit of rooting around in Quicksilver’s plugin pane, as I almost always find stellar new tools each and every time I open it. This time around I stumbled on a Yojimbo plugin for Quicksilver that seems to do a better job of adding items to the Yojimbo database than the bookmarklets that BareBones added themselves in the latest 1.2 update. Tim Gaden at Hawk Wings agrees, and he even beat me to the punch with a post that elaborates how this plugin works, complete with screenshot goodness. Be sure to check it out for a needed tip on turning this operating into a Quicksilver Trigger.

After tinkering with this plugin, I am even happier that I uninstalled StickyBrain. The beauty of these actions is that, when adding or archiving a webpage to Yojimbo, this plugin doesn’t force Yojimbo to the front, taking the focus away from whatever else you were doing. I don’t know how these Quicksilver ninja developers managed to pull this off, as this is one of the main advantages over those new bookmarklets I mentioned.

I hope I speak for many users of Quicksilver and Yojimbo when I say: thank you, Quicksilver ninjas.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

[The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)]

Quicksilver is one of those things I keep hearing about. I may really need to look into it.

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 23:21:58 GMT

The Most Amazing Birdsong Ever (VIDEO). The male Lyrebird impresses mates by imitating chainsaws, car alarms, camera shutters, and other sounds of the forest. [digg]

An amazing bird who can imitate sounds such as a camera shutter, chainsaws and car alarms in order to attract a mate.

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 23:12:38 GMT

One quarter of my heritage at its finest.

I’ve probably never mentioned it before, buy I’m 1/4 Lithuanian. Here’s something one of my cousins sent me to make me “proud” of that heritage:

VILNIUS, Lithuania – Lithuanian police were so astonished by a breath test that registered 18 times the legal alcohol limit, they thought their device must be broken. It wasn’t.

Police said Tuesday 41-year-old Vidmantas Sungaila registered 7.27 grams per liter of alcohol in his blood repeatedly on different devices after he was pulled over Saturday for driving his truck down the center of a two-lane highway 60 miles from the capital, Vilnius.

Lithuania’s legal limit is 0.4 grams per liter.

“This guy should have been lying dead, but he was still driving. It must be an unofficial national record,” Saulius Skvernelis, director of the national police traffic control service, told the AP. “He was of high spirits and grinning the whole time he was questioned.”

Medical experts say anything above 3.5 grams per liter of alcohol in the blood is lethal for most people.

“A person this intoxicated should be in an intensive care unit, not behind the wheel,” said Tautvydas Zikaras, head of the dependence illness center in the country’s second-largest city, Kaunas. Zikaras said he had never heard or read of someone being so drunk.

Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post… [Respectful Insolence]

Still hard to believe. That guy must have some interesting biochemistry going on to prevent alcohol toxicity from killing him.

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 23:03:33 GMT

The Simpsons almost disprove Fermat’s Last Theorem. This is so cool; remember the Halloween episode where two dimensional Homer gets sucked into the third dimension? Remember this innocent-looking equation: 178212 + 184112 = 192212 floating by? [digg]

More cartoons but this time, the Simpsons help increase our knowledge, not just make funny jokes.

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 22:33:19 GMT

Family Guy Voice Actor’s Speech @ Harvard (VIDEO). Seth MacFarlane spoke at this year’s Harvard Class Day. It’s pretty funny. I am surprised he got away with some of the stuff he said. [digg]

The man behind The Family Guy gves an hilarious speech at Harvard. And he does get away with some stuff but nothing other comedians have not done. And the voices…

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 05:52:23 GMT

Open-source science tackles two tropical diseases. The Synaptic Leap has launched an open-source research project to cure or alleviate two tropical diseases. (Thanks to Glyn Moody.) Excerpt:

Biomedical science is indivisible. The physical and psychological barriers that divide scientific communities are ultimately artificial and counterproductive. We see online collaboration as a natural way to bridge these gaps and pool information that is currently too fragmented for anyone to use. An open, collaborative research community will find new ways to do science, answering questions that current institutions find difficult or impossible….
We are beginning our journey focused on the two tropical diseases malaria and schistosomiasis. Diseases found exclusively in tropical regions predominantly afflict poor people in developing countries. The typical profit-driven pharmaceutical economic model fails with these diseases because there is simply no money to be made. However, the very fact that there’s no profit incentive to research these diseases makes them perfect candidates for open source style research; there’s no profit incentive to keep secrets either. Our pilot research communities are: [1] Malaria and [2] Schistosomiasis….
Open source communities are only as strong as the volunteers who support them. To begin participating you need to create a username for yourself and login. Get off the sidelines and become a part of this revolutionary new experiment!

By noemail@noemail.org (Peter Suber). [Open Access News]

I’ll have to keep an eye on this. Open Source Science!?!

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 02:08:10 GMT

A day in the life, i.e., no post today. There was some news story in a local paper yesterday about my “real” work, and this morning another local paper called to interview me about it for half a fucking hour, and tonight some photographer’s coming over to take a picture and the house is a mess and I don’t want people over, and PK has a school carnival all afternoon, and I didn’t work on my STILL TOTALLY OVERDUE article yesterday so I hate myself, and the news articles are about the real article I’m supposed to be writing and what if it doesn’t get published b/c it’s so late, or b/c it turns out crappy, and Mr. B. thought his doctor’s appointment today was at 2 instead of 1, and when he got home from grocery shopping at 1:20 and I wrote him a note to say that the doctor’s office had called (b/c at this point I was on the phone with local reporter for the SECOND TIME) he got flustered and dropped a glass bottle of juice all over the porch steps, and then i got off the phone and cleaned up the glass while he called the doctor and found out we have to pay for the missed appointment and then he was upset and slamming around the house and swearing while I put some of the grocieres away and now he has to take a cake to the carnival and he and I both volunteered to work for half an hour each and PK is ALL EXCITED about the carnival and I know it probably starts right after school, i.e., in half an hour, but I’m not showered or dressed yet and b/c of all this other REALLY PETTY crap I also haven’t done ANY WRITING today, either, yet, and I’m pretending that I don’t know the carnival starts at 3:30 but I know PK’ll be upset when Mr. B. shows up and I don’t so I have to get in the shower and dress so I’ll only be a LITTLE late and a LITTLE disappointing and then the photographer’s coming over at SEVEN and when am I going to get some fucking writing done? And it’s all my fault because I should have done it yesterday, or really, I should have done it WEEKS AGO and so anyway, that’s why I’m not posting on my blog today. SUCK IT UP. By noemail@noemail.org (bitchphd). [Bitch. Ph.D.]

A scientist’s lament.

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 02:05:46 GMT

Shredding scissors — five-scissor blades on one handle. Cory Doctorow:

These Japanese shredding scissors are a nice, low-tech way to discard of docs at your desk.

Link

(via Shiny Shiny)

By mark@boingboing.net. [Boing Boing]

I have a vision of 100 people weilding these scissors trying to shred documents because the power went out.

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 12:51:22 GMT

Why Journalism Matters.

I love to rip on sportswriters who ask the same questions each and every year, with only the names, records and
teams changes to protect the bored.

Why ? Because journalism matters. Every game is its own ecosystem (welcome to the new tech buzzword inserted here to
make you say.. huh ?). It takes on a life of its own, with strategy, personalities, sub plots. The best we get in
questions is “what happened coach ?” or prompts that the reporter hopes will result in someone getting in trouble “What
did you think of the refs ?” No depth.

I realize its not really the reporters fault. Its the result of newsenomics. Or to paraphrase the masthead
of a once great, now decent newspaper, “all the news we can now afford to find and print”.

Of course thats a shame, but it also is missing the opportunity of a lifetime.

The perception from traditional media seems to be that “media savvy youth of today” dont read , or need newspapers.
They dont need the traditional 6pm news. They dont need news networks.

Thats true, they dont need them. They do want them however.

The problem is that they want them packaged to their liking – with a payoff.

Thats what media is missing with kids today. Its not the medium that acts as the circulation prevention team,
its the lack of payoff and packaging.

Howard Stern has absolutely no problem discussing everything and anything happening in the world today. None. His
listeners are without question better educated about the role of the FCC along with any number of important
relevant issues happening today, than viewers of the CBS Evening News. Kids and adults will listen to Howard. Why ?
With Howard, you get a payoff. You know if there is an angle to be exploited to find the humor, irony or hypocrisy, he
will find it.

Remember when “Mike Wallace with 60 Minutes” used to strike fear in the hearts of evil doers across the world ? And
viewers of 60 minutes loved it. Why ? Because we knew there was always a payoff coming. Anyone fit that role
anymore ?

Journalism matters.

ABC hired Charles Gibson. Why ? Because he represents what ? Tonights stories on
ABC all feature a talking head showing a picture , then talking some more , describing the picture.

A simple question. What is it that a viewer can get on world news tonight that couldnt be found on any Yahoo
/Google?Yourfave newsite ? Where is the payoff ? Where is the journalism ?

Want to get younger viewers ? Go out and hire the very best recent college journalism graduates you can find. Give them
a camera, a computer and an area of specialty; Business, local politics, national politics, whatever. Better yet,
ask them what they think matters. Enable them to be the new “mike wallace and 60 minutes” . Tell them their
only requirement is that they are equal parts journalist and adrenalin junkies. Focused on fearlessly finding the truth
behind stories that matter to them, their families and friends. Guess what, even for a 21 year old, its not just
about Paris Hilton, Bradgelina and the latest Rap feud.

Kids want to learn. They want to know.

Journalism matters.

But they arent going to turn in unless there is a payoff.

Does anyone in mainstream media honestly believe user generated content stops with parodies of Lazy Sunday ? Troll
through myspace. Its not only for personal branding. (yes, thats what Myspace is all about. Personal Branding.
MySpace = your indvidual CSS. You are what you post on your myspace page). Do a search on
haditha,

timor, any topic you can find in the news, and there are hundreds with an opinion about it on myspace, the other
social networks and of course personal blogs like this.

Which leads to the question. Who will amass a material audience first. Young, energetic journalism
graduates who post about the topics they care about on their own sites, or the main
stream media.

The race is on. Unless of course you hire the people that can provide the payoff that people of all ages want.

I just hired a young, award winning journalist to partner with me on a blog that will do nothing but try to
uncover corporate fraud. Young, energetic, fired up and damn the stuff i have seen so far is good.
Will the payoff be about accounting gone bad ? Will it be a Skilling and Lay standing in front of the mike picture with
accompanying text ? No chance.

If we found the enron scam, I would push to tell the story with a flash animation parody of Skilling and Lay to
Shaggies “It wasnt me” along side a Bethany McLean/Peter Elkind quality story. Just as the movie “Enron The Smartest
Guys in the Room ” told the story in a detailed and entertaining way, our goal will be to do the same.

Business is an easy place for me to start because the fraud and sithlord wannabes uncovered can not only create
great stories of interest for the webite and HDNet World
Report, but also allow me to buy and the sell the stocks of the company. A journalistic conflict you
say ? Not any more. Not in this world. It will be fully disclosed and explained. This site is for the profit of its
owners and we will buy and sell stocks that are discussed, before they are made available on the site. So make any
decisions based on this information accordingly.

Facts are facts. Right is its own defense. If we can uncover companies whose stock is public and that can be bought or
sold and that allows us to pay for more in depth research and effort. Im good with that.

HDNet news is also working on hiring the young and the restless to
go out and produce stories that matter. Stories that have a payoff. Will we package them to reach a young
audience ? Nope. HDNet isnt trolling to reduce the average age of our viewers. We dont care how old they are. We will
produce news reports that matter to people of all ages. Our show Deadline is a nice little
test with short , unique, irreverant stories coming from 30 plus stringers worldwide.

Journalism Matters. Im hoping the growing ignorance of this fact will make the news component of
HDNet stronger and stronger and help us grow as a network

.

If you are a journalism major that can uncover stories others cant find and tell them in a way that others want to
read. Send me an email with samples.

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© 2006 Weblogs, Inc.

[Blog Maverick]

He is right more often then he is wrong. It is why the Mavs are my team for the playoffs. Because Mark Cuban so often gets it. People want news. But fewer of them want it read to them by a talking head. especially when they can get just that via the Internet. They want context and settings, not just the cold hard facts. The current MSM tries so hard to be objective that it has lost context. Mass media is losing its mass appeal.