Am I a Bot? My Mom says NO

by à voir etc…

Um, say what?:
[Via Bad Astronomy]
I’m always curious about who links to this blog; it can be very helpful as a blogger, and it can tell you what the buzz is. In my case it helps me find both opponents and allies, which in the skeptic business is important. So I have Google alert me …

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Over at Bad Astronomy, they had a discussion yesterday about a really weird site that had linked to that blog. The author of the blog, Phil Plait, found out about that site because he has a Google Alert set up to find instances when his blog’s name is used.

Well, I also have a Google Alert set up to tell me when this blog’s name is used. I found this in the comments at Bad Astronomy:

Phil, hi,

Just to add to what LMK and Shane said… it has to do with the the way Google PageRank works. Not only is the amount of incoming links important to your PageRank (BA has a PageRank of 7, BTW), but also the PageRank of the sites those links come from. As you know, PageRank determines the order search results are displayed in. So what is happening is:

1. A spam bot discovers that your blog has a high PageRank, and that no registration is required in order to post comments.
2. Spam bot posts a comment here on your blog that links back to the blog he wants to boost the PageRank of.
3. Profit!

It’s a really despicable practice, but one I think you are in a good position to combat. I thought your moderators had to approve all comments with links in them. If so, just tell them to not allow these ones that are obvious spam to get through. For instance, I see a lot of them linking back to this ‘amanwithaphd’ blog over at wordpress :-\

Regards,
Steve

Wow! It is nice to have fans ;-) In a reverse of the Turing Test (where no difference can be seen between a program’s responses and a human’s), I appear to have been mistaken for a program.

I left a comment at 10:15 (The first I ever have at Bad Astronomy and it was still awaiting comment at 10:25 PDT). I can only assume that he is referring to my pingbacks that I alway use when commenting on Bad Astronomy stuff.

I write about Bad Astronomy because I love the content, not because I hope to raise my PageRank. I have written this blog because I love lots of things and want to write about them. If people notice, wonderful. But it has never been to increase my PageRank.

So now I get to have a little fun trying to track down this little rumor that I am a bot. Well, at least someone knows my blog’s name!

I guess what is kind of cute is that I only found out that someone was disparaging the blog (which I have been writing since 2002) because I also had the same warning system using Google Alerts.

This is a big shout out to Google Alerts. I hope Phil sees this in Google Alerts and realizes there is a real human being behind this blog.

Technorati Tags: Science, Web 2.0

My op-ed

I have an article published online at the Xconomy Forum called Biotech Needs Charity, and Profit Motive, To Flourish.

It discusses the possible role of non-profit research institutions in Seattle in new drug development. It also mentions a new corporate entity called an L3C that could have some impact in this area.

I had fun writing it. Go take a look.

Technorati Tags: Science

Some useful numbers on the pandemic flu

from CDC
Support for H1N1 Pandemic Alert:

[Via AAAS News - RSS Feed]

SCIENCE: Early Look at H1N1 Flu Supports Pandemic Alert

An early look at the H1N1 flu outbreak, released Monday by Science, suggests the World Health Organization was justified in its recent decision to raise the global pandemic alert level.

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Some important numbers have now been calculated for this swine flu virus. The critical things to be aware of for any flu are its virulence and its transmissibility. At the moment, this flu does not seem to be as virulent as the earlier 1918 flu which killed, by some estimates 2.5-5% of those infected.

But that is comparing the current outbreak to the more deadly second and third waves of the Spanish flu. It is better to compare this to the initial outbreak of the Spanish flu in 1918.

Here are some of the preliminary numbers from the paper. This swine flu appeared in late April to have an estimated case fatality ratio (CFR) of 0.3% to 1.5%. (The CFR is a measure of the percentage of deaths in a population.) These numbers were based on the original outbreak. Including more recent data gives an upper bound for CFR of about 0.6%.

This puts it, at the end of April, in Category 3 of the CDC Pandemic Severity Index. This was already worse than the last two pandemic outbreaks in 1957 and in 1968. This fatality rate is higher than normal flu, which is about 0.1%.

The authors also estimated the transmissibility of the new virus – its reproductive number. This is a measure of how many people a single case infects. Flu is normally not very easily transmitted from human to human. Whereas measles has a reproductive number of 12-16, influenza has one of about 1.2-3. The number that has been estimated for the current flu outbreak is about 1.5. That does not seem so bad.

But these are actually worrisome facts and why it is a good thing that the WHO brought us all through this process as strongly as they did.

When the 1918 flu first hit, in the spring of 1918, it too had a slightly higher mortality rate than normal. About 0.5% Say a Category 3. That was in the late spring. But 4 months later, during normal flu season, it came back with a vengeance. Its death rate now was over 5 times higher. It had become a Category 5.

Similarly with the reproductive number. The initial outbreak of the Spanish flu has a number of about 1.5. It had more than doubled to 3.5 by the next wave.

The numbers that WHO was working with suggested a flu with similar virulence and transmissibility as the initial wave of Spanish flu. The precautions they took may have slowed the progression of the virus in this initial wave.

While more recent data indicate that the virulence of swine flu may not be as high as in the initial outbreak in Mexico, the estimated numbers suggest continuing caution and observation.

So the fact that this swine flu is not as deadly as the 1918 flu pandemic is not very relevant at this point. In fact, it is about as virulent as the Spanish flu at the same point in the outbreaks. Its CFR and reproductive number are also similar to that seen with the initial wave of Spanish Flu.

Finally, the authors mention that the presence of cross-immunity might be a possibility for the difference in mortality for the swine flu. That is, previous exposure to a different Type A influenza virus may confer some protection to a population. This was suggested by some of the data that indicated that children less that 15 years old were much more susceptible to the virus than those over 15.

Thus, some populations may have some initial protection not found in other populations. The difference in mortality rates between Mexico and the US may not just be a consequence of health care but could be because the US population was exposed in an earlier year to a Type A not seen in Mexico. I am sure this conjecture will be a focus of intense investigation.

The swine flu will spend a few months in the Southern Hemisphere before returning. WHO and others will be watching its progress there to see if real virulency and increased transmissibility are acquired.

I think we are far from done with this virus. I’m just hoping the numbers do not change much.

Technorati Tags: Science

Too much fun

BA Review: Star Trek:
[Via Bad Astronomy]

Note: A slightly different version of this has been posted at TrekMovie.com. My thanks to Tony Pascale for letting me crosspost on his site!

OK, here’s the deal: I’m a big Trek fan. I watched the original series as a kid and saw the reruns a bazillion times. I loved the …

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Don’t read this until after you have seen the movie. It is a lot of fun to see what they got right, scientifically, and what they did because it made a great image.

Telling a good story is something that too few Star Trek movies have actually accomplished. I wonder if they can continue this. Origin stories are sometime much easier than the followups.

Technorati Tags: Entertainment, Science

There is a problem

Can the Texas BoE walk and deny evolution at the same time?:
[Via Bad Astronomy]

What does it say about your Board of Education when ad executives for a chewing gum company understand evolution better than you do?

… or a beer company, for that matter. Of course, that’s a European beer… and evidently beer was invented before the Universe itself was.

Tip o’ bacterium’s flagellum to …

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What makes this so ironic is that, while it is true that the ads display an understanding of evolution that is Promethean compared to the Texas BoE, they still display some misunderstandings of the pace and character of evolution.

There is not an instantaneous change from one form to another. And many of the species used are not even that related. Also, one species does not disappear to create another.

That is, we are related to chimpanzees as cousins are related. Both species are descended from another species that was not really a chimp or a human.

But then, if the ads were to actually display the full complexity of evolution, they would be much longer than a minute. And not be a very compelling ad.

I do, therefore, salute their ingenuity.

Technorati Tags: Science

5 researchers helped by science 2.0

I posted this over at SpreadingScience.

Scientific research contains many characters familiar to anyone who has ever worked for long in a lab. I’ve identified 5 that can find substantial benefits using Web 2.0 technologies
• The Innovators.
• The Technical Experts.
• The Troubleshooters.
• The Connectors.
• The Subject Matter Experts.

[More details at SpreadingScience]

Technorati Tags: Science, Web 2.0

A long fight

by lu_lu
Giving vaccines a shot in the arm:
[Via Bad Astronomy]

Reading through the truly awful antivax responses to my post where I state flatly and with conviction and evidence that the antivax movement is killing people, I was stunned to see Toni McCaffery had posted a response as well. Ms. McCaffery is the mother of Dana, the infant who died …

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Anti-vax purity has real world consequences, such as the death of children too young to be vaccinated surrounded by too many who refused. The loss of herd immunity is one of the great tragedies of the modern world, since it is s easily maintained.

Pertussis has one of the highest reproduction numbers – the average number of other people than can be infected by one person with the disease. Only measles comes close (and it kills children in unvaccinated populations). Most of the other preventable diseases are half of that, or more. This is because pertussis is spread by the moist droplets expelled during the severe coughing fits that can last for weeks, with the patient remaining infective the entire time.

So, to provide herd immunity against pertussis, a much higher percentage (over 90%) of the surrounding populations MUST be immunized. This is to protect those that can not be protected any other way. This need for high levels of vaccination means that even small increases in anti-vaccination cases in a population substantially increases the chance of pertussis outbreaks.

Anti-vaxers help spread communicable diseases.

The benefit of vaccination to society is not merely that it prevents someone from getting a disease. That simply benefits the individual. Society’s benefit derives from the fact that vaccination STOPS the spread of the disease. There are fewer sick and fewer to spread the disease. Those who refuse vaccination make it easier to spread disease and thus result in the death of people, of infants too young to fight off the disease.

The number of children who die due to pertussis in the US has increased rapidly over the last few years. This loss of herd immunity is worrisome.

It is good to read about those that are pushing back against the deniers. Anti-vaccination efforts hurt our entire society. It is generally only found in areas of the world where they have forgotten how terrible many of these easily preventable diseases actually are.

Anti-vax people are not only playing around with medical decisions for their own children. They are deciding life or death for others around them. Children will die who should not have.

Technorati Tags: Health

A new approch to learning

by jurvetson
MIT President Sees “Third Revolution” in Life Sciences:
[Via AAAS News - RSS Feed]

MIT President Susan Hockfield, at AAAS Forum, Envisions “Third Revolution” in Life Sciences

The convergence of life sciences with physical and engineering sciences could have dramatic human benefits, MIT President Susan Hockfield said at the AAAS Forum on S&T Policy.

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This may get beyond me very rapidly but the idea of a third revolution, tying biology and physics in ways to create new batteries and human therapies, sounds very much like science fiction. I’ll have to see just what is going on.

I have a hard time really seeing how these nanomachines are going to work without a power source. Now maybe if we found a way to harness the mitochondria, we might have something.

Funny that this is a discussion happening now when we are going to have 2 big blockbusters this summer about sentient machines that act like they are alive – Transformers and Terminator.

Blood Music, written over 25 years ago, deals with some of these issues. While I don’t really think we are going to create something that has a similar effect as in the book, I do really like Hockfield’s discussion of how universities need to alter themselves, to make it easier for multi-disciplnary study.

The first two revolutions were analytical in approach, a reductionist way of doing things. The complexities of life were reduced to a single isolated protein in a tube, to a single DNA sequence. We gained a lot of understanding but we are now entering a new era.

This is when we try to build things back up, to add the isolated proteins back together. This is the opposite of analysis. It is synthesis. And it requires a different way of learning. Instead of deep specialties, it will require wide generalities.

Learning organizations will have to adapt to this manner of teaching in order to be most successful. This will be part of the revolution that we will see in higher education and in the lab.

Technorati Tags: Education, Science

I love google

Pitchers are sissies now:
[Via Lawyers, Guns and Money]

“Now” being 1946, according to the great Kid Nichols.

This reads like a perfect parody of the “in my day we didn’t have fancy curve balls or surgery for bone chips, and we had to work the turnstiles too” genre.

Except he literally says those things.

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Some things never change, particularly old people grumbling about the slovenly habits of youngsters who only have to go to school up hill in one direction, rather than both directions, like it was back in the old days.

This article could be reprinted today with just a few changes and will probably be published again in another 40 years. No one ever went broke complaining about how wonderful that Golden Age was just 40 years ago.

Technorati Tags: General

Maybe Texas is not the epicenter of crazy

by Pixel Addict
When Is It Unconstitutional to Call Nonsense Nonsense?:
[Via The Panda's Thumb]

A court in California has ruled that the Establishment Clause was violated by comments a schoolteacher made against certain religious propositions. Ed Brayton has details here. Personally, I’m troubled by the ruling for reasons that First Amendment expert Eugene Volokh explains here.

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A teacher loses a case for saying creationism is religious nonsense thus hurting the sensibilities of a student. So, speaking scientific fact by a teacher can result in a lawsuit and the payment of a fine.

Of course, gander and goose and all, if a teacher says something about the Bible or creationism in science class, I guess any non-Christian or atheist can sue them for the same thing. How about when an elected official with control over textbooks claims that the Earth is only 6000 years old? Can they be sued, as a government official, since it really hurts my sensibilities?

It is hard to see how this case could hold up to any kind of real scrutiny or set any sort of precedent. Do all our public officials lose their rights to state facts because someone somewhere might have their religious nonsense held up to ridicule?

Just crazy. Well, it is Orange County.

Technorati Tags: Politics, Science

A great writter

How I believe in God:

[Via Roger Ebert's Journal]

When I was in first or second grade and had just been introduced by the nuns to the concept of a limitless God, I lay awake at night driving myself nuts by repeating over and over, But how could God have no beginning? And how could he have no end? And then I thought of all the stars in the sky: But how could there be a last one? Wouldn’t there always have to be one more? Many years later I know the answer to the second question, but I still don’t know the answer to the first one.

I took it up with a favorite nun, Sister Marie Donald, who led our rhythm band and was our basketball coach. “Roger,” she said, “that is just something you have to believe. Pray for faith.” Then I lay awake wondering how I could pray for faith to a God I could not believe in without faith. That seemed to leave me suspended between two questions. These logical puzzles seemed to be generated spontaneously within my mind. They didn’t come from my school or my family. Most of my neighborhood friends were Protestants who were not interested in theories about God, apart from the fact that of course he existed.

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Roger Ebert is such an interesting writer and it is so nice that we can read his writings at his blog. I’m not sure where he would have been able to publish this one before the internet but it is interesting nonetheless.

HIs path through Catholicism is not too different from others. He has spent a lot of time thinking about so many things and then letting us see those thoughts.

He knows he will die someday and does not appear to be afraid. He is jusr discussing things that are important to him. I love him.

Technorati Tags: Entertainment, General

Kung Fu Monkey Love

Quote of the Day – 30 April 2009

[Via The Questionable Authority]

I was planning to take a couple of days off, but five or six people have emailed me the link to this quote, and it’s far too good not to feature:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

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I used this since the Kung Fu Monkey post is a little long. This is such a nice quote, handy for any Randian. Plus KFM is the place to get the inside scoop on Leverage, one of the best shoes on TV. Having someone inside blog about the show just adds to the geeky fun of the whole thing.

Technorati Tags: Entertainment, General

The danger of snark

Quoth the Rocketboom: Nevermore:
[Via Bad Astronomy]

Rocketboom was one of the original video blogs, taking current geek news and making fun of it.

Sometimes though they’re the victim of their own snark. On April 29th they posted this video:

The thing is, that whole thing I posted about the Shuttle image being faked? Yeah, Rocketboom, oops. So …

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As mentioned Poe’s Law states “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won’t mistake for the real thing.”

Of course the goal of the first piece was to pull in someone who would agree with it, not disparage it, but I guess that still fulfills Poe’s Law.

Now , just make sure you know what snark is ;-) Smiley face added to make sure we are clear that Poe’s law is not applicable <grin>

Technorati Tags: Education, General, Science

Ken Layne said it best

Just Keep Calling It Fact-Checking And Someday They’ll Believe You:
[Via The Loom]

Zachary Smith at Talking Points Memo, among others, notes that the Washington Post editorial page editor is still claiming that George Will’s many misrepresentations about global warming were subject to “careful fact-checking,” some two months after many people showed they were anything but–including some who explained the errors in the …

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In 2001, Ken Layne famously said ” We can fact-check your ass!” In fact, people on the web just hate it when information, which is easily checked, is wrong. And when an organizations continually tries to claim that they did careful fact-checking, when it is so obviously proved that they did not.. well, let’s just say their credibility takes a big hit.

For the Washington Post editor to still claim how careful their were when the online fact-checkers have demonstrated otherwise simply displays for all their ignorance.

This is how a newspaper falls. By its inability to keep up with the world around them. It is part of the reason why I stopped buying dead-tree newspapers several years ago. They were several years behind the times, especially when it came to the ability for the readers to be a part of the conversation.

Many papers really do not relish the idea that its readers could push back hard when the editors are wrong. Many like to deal with a readership mostly through the letters section.

That is why I am glad washingtonpost.com is a different entity. They may still screw up but they appear to have more up to date sensibilities on checking facts.

UPDATE (12:30) – Apparently washingtonpost.com will be merging with the daily. I hope they do not screw that up.

Technorati Tags: Science, Social media

How can they call it science?

by Pirate_J

AIG Creation AntiScience Fair:

[Via The Panda's Thumb]

Last month I was a judge at a regional science fair for middle- and high-school students, and it was great to see aisle after aisle of smart and hard-working kids doing interesting and careful science. A few weeks later, at a Science Cafe where I was presenting, I had the chance to talk with (and coach a little) two of them who are going to nationals. Those kids are bright shining examples of what we want public education to produce.

On the other hand, there’s the creation science fair. PZ has recently posted on a creation science fair in Minnesota, but now they’re going big time: Ken Ham’s Creation Museum is hosting one next year. (Added in edit: I see PZ has posted on this one already this morning, too.)

A Creation Science Fair? Since when do they care about science? They care about the ‘factual’ basis of the Bible. If sceince fits that, fine. If not, ignore it or fight it.

In fact, they are quite blatant about this:

There’s a catch, however: In order to enter, kids have to agree with AIG’s Statement of Faith.

Among other things, that requires that kids sign on to these principles:

“The account of origins presented in Genesis is a simple but factual presentation of actual events and therefore provides a reliable framework for scientific research into the question of the origin and history of life, mankind, the Earth and the universe.”

and

“The great Flood of Genesis was an actual historic event, worldwide (global) in its extent and effect.”

and

“By definition, no apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.”

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So, anything resembling geology, biology, cosmology and most other -ologies will be absent. I’d love to see what wins and just how far removed from reality it really is.

We have so much work to do actually educating those who eschew education. I imagine many of these people would be much happier in a world where they only had to hunt wooly mammoths, gather nuts and sacrifice animals (or sometimes humans) to God. Life was so simple then.

Technorati Tags: Education, Science