“…will only add to the perception that justice is skewed in Texas”

Only in Texas would a death penalty case be upheld even after it has been revealed that the prosecutor and the judge were having an affair. I guess in Texas boinking the judge really does have professional benefits.

And, of course, the third world judiciary that is Texas, stated that the defendant should have brought this fact up in an earlier appeal, some 18 years before he knew that there even was an affair. It is almost like medieval tests for witches.

‘If he was really innocent, he would have brought these facts to our notice 18 years ago, before anyone knew there was an affair. Since he only told us about this after he found out about the affair, he must be guilty.’

I sincerely hope there is something not being discussed here because this really indicates how out of touch the Texas judiciary is.

Technorati Tags: Politics

Facts are dangerous for those who misrepresent

by bobster855
Reality Check: The Truth About “Czars”:
[Via White House.gov Blog Feed: WhiteHouse.gov Blog]

Last week, when the President addressed the Joint Session of Congress in a speech on health reform, he referred to some of the untruths – okay, lies – that have been spread about the plan and sent a clear message to those who seek to undermine his agenda and his presidency with these tactics: “We will call you out.” So consider this one of those calls.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen with increasing frequency and volume issues raised around the use of “czars” by this Administration. Although some Members have asked serious questions around the makeup of the White House staff, the bulk of the noise you hear began first with partisan commentators, suggesting that this is somehow a new and sinister development that threatens our democracy. This is, of course, ridiculous. Just to be clear, the job title “czar” doesn’t exist in the Obama Administration. Many of the officials cited by conservative commentators have been confirmed by the Senate. Many hold policy jobs that have existed in previous Administrations. And some hold jobs that involved coordinating the work of agencies on President Obama’s key policy priorities: health insurance reform, energy and green jobs, and building a new foundation for long-lasting economic growth

[More]

Yep, it is very easy to track all of this and so very easy to see the strictly partisan nature of this issue since previous President’s have had more of these people. In addition, the same Republicans that pushed for some of these positions when there was a Republican in the White House are now against them with a Democrat.

They do not really care about these so-called czars. They do not care about cost, oversight etc. They only care that it is a Democrat as President.

Them’s the facts.

Technorati Tags: Politics

Humor in the midst of a debacle

Looks like the New York Times got it right. This was buried towards the end of the article:

Most Republicans have been deeply unhappy with the Democratic health care proposals so far, and Republicans on the Finance Committee were said to be bracing for two possibilities: a partisan proposal that they were going to oppose, or a bipartisan proposal that they were going to oppose.

The Democrats – waiting for the party of No to say Yes. I don’t know which is more shameful or idiotic but neither represents and kind of leadership.

Technorati Tags: Politics

Where does your state rank?

Now With More Molecules!:
[Via Balloon Juice]

Q: Is our children learning?

A: No, they is not.

[More]

These questions are taken from the citizenship test required for anyone who wants to become naturalized. Normally at least a 60% is needed to pass. Less than 3% of the students accomplished this.

Only 6 students out of 1000 got even 7 of the questions correct. The 99 percentile students in OK got a 70, barely a C.

Interestingly, there were only 2 questions where ‘I don’t know”‘ was not the number 1 response. Most of the 1000 high school students in Oklahoma knew the Atlantic was off the East coast (Incredibly, 30 students put the Indian Ocean). Most knew that George Washington was the first President, although Abe Lincoln came in a close second.

51% did not know who was in charge of the Executive Branch and 58% did not know what were the two parts of the Congress.

Only 4 states spend less per student than OK. Only Idaho and Utah spend less on salaries than OK. 40% of students entering college in OK need remedial coursework. Perhaps there is a correlation.

It certainly makes me worry about the ability of OK to provide what is needed for a functioning democracy. But I fear this is not only a problem for OK. There is a continuing trend to denigrate education in this country, to call anyone who is informed an elitist, to claim that there is no real need to know any of this stuff.

Jefferson wrote, “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government” and “Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree.”

Who benefits from a poorly educated citizenry? The same that have always benefited throughout the ages. They are easy to find.

Technorati Tags: Education

Pre-exisiting conditions for women

by Daquella manera
Health Insurers Consider A Caesarean-Section Pregnancy A Pre-Existing Condition:
[Via AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth]

From ThinkProgress. And remember, being a victim of domestic violence is also a pre-existing condition.

[More]

Only 14 states mandate that private health insurers pay for maternity care at all. The rest allow the companies to view pregnancy as a choice so they do not have to provide any coverage.

But it is the fact that by previously having a Caesarean can be used to turn down coverage. Yep, a woman can be unable to get health insurance simply because she had a difficulty with a previous birth.

One insurance company said that if a woman had been sterilized they would then allow her application to go through. Another nice note is that if the women are refused coverage at one insurance company, their name is red-flagged, making it more difficult to get insurance at other companies.

So, besides being turned down because of previous incidents of domestic violence, as mentioned above, women can be refused health insurance simply because of a previous medical procedure, one that is done about a million time a year.

Because insurance companies, naturally, only want to insure people who will not need insurance. I bet that if they could, they would not like to cover any woman who might get pregnant, since there would most likely be medical expenses along the way.

But that route would land them in a heap of trouble, so they only prevent women who have previously been pregnant and delivered a child by a procedure used in upwards of 30% of all pregnancies.

Yet almost half of the states mandate that insurance companies pay for Viagra as part of any prescription drug plan. Because while pregnancy is a choice for women, sex apparently is not for men.

Technorati Tags: Health

One reason research is evolutionary, not revolutionary

by NIOSH – Nat Inst for Occupational Safety & Health
An Uneasy Balance in Biomedical Research:
[Via AAAS News - RSS Feed]

Scientists Frustrated by System that Often Funds Incremental Work over Risk- Taking, Historian Says

Research with medical applications is valuable, but an archive of interviews shows that many scientists yearn for work that takes more risks, historian David J. Caruso said at AAAS.

[More]

What is interesting here is that the scientists interviewed were recipients of Pew biomedical awards. Providing an unrestricted grant for up to $60,000 for four years to young researchers, these are the guys who want the most to change the system. Because their Pew grant gives them the opportunity to try something that would not get funded by the NIH.

Because of the way that NIH grants are provided (i.e. peer review by committee) coupled with a scoring system designed for another era, only grants that have a high likelihood of success will get funded.

Essentially, there are too many good grants chasing too little money. Many, many grants get a fundable score by the committees but do not get any money. The committees know this, so are likely to provide better scores for grants that come from well-established labs, which have demonstrated success before, or for projects that can easily succeed.

Committees that provide lots of money for projects that only provide negative data are viewed as ‘wasting’ the taxpayer’s money. Yet failure is a huge part of the scientific endeavor.

Why do you think they call it re-search?

Perhaps other granting agencies, such as Pew or Gates, which are not beholden to the yoke of the taxpayer, can provide what is needed to get more revolutionary science going. I hope so because we have some huge problems ahead of us and we will have many failures before we can hope for success.

Technorati Tags: Politics, Science, Technology

The perfect Christmas present

xkcd: volume 0:
[Via xkcd]

The xkcd book is now officially available in the store! (There are also a handful of new shirts available for preorder, and we’ve got the signed prints back in stock).

[More]

I hope my Mom still checks out my blog. I’d love this book for Christmas. Plus the money goes to help build a school.

Technorati Tags: Science, Social media, Technology

Help with skeptics

Ask Umbra on combating climate denial:
[Via Gristmill]
[Crossposted at Path To Sustainable]
by Umbra Fisk

Send your question to Umbra!

Q. Dear Umbra,

This “year with no summer“ and some alleged statistics I have seen quoted about earth-wide temperatures for the last ten years have resulted in claims that the earth is not heating – it may even be cooling. What about it?

Arthur Waskow
Shalom Center, Philadelphia

A. Dearest Arthur,

The oceans are too getting warmer!That would be great. The planet needs some cooling, and humans certainly aren’t doing anything to help. But let us remember the difference between weather and climate.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration does confirm that summer 2009 in the contiguous U.S. was 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit below the 20th Century average of 72.1 degrees. We notice no concomitant change in policy from the U.S. Global Change Research Program, or any other reputable source, so we must conclude that a cool summer was only weather, and that in general the overall climate remains on track for warming.

[More]

This post has some nice links to info to help in any discussion with climate skeptics. No, the world is not cooling. And, while the US might have had a cooler summer than usual it was matched by warmer summers elsewhere. In fact, the Southern Hemisphere just had the warmest August ever.

Here is the global temperature map for June-August:

New Zealand had the warmest August in 155 years of temperature measurements. Australlia had the warmest August ever.

Yes, the US was cooler but Europe was much warmer. Get used to this because it appears that the PDO is entering a cool phase, so the US will be cooler over the next decade or so. This has to do with normal cycles, not with climate change.

And with an El Nino developing, this could be a warm winter.

But the US is not the world and while it may be cooler here, climate change is worldwide.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Science

Denial is not just a rive in Egypt

Climate change Deniers are NOT from Mars:
[Via Greenfyre's]

If Climate change Deniers actually were from Mars they would know better than to claim that warming on Mars or any other planets was evidence that solar variability had anything to do with climate change on Earth. Given that warming has been detected on only 6 out of the over 100 bodies in the solar system, they’d have been smarter not to mention it at all.

Naturally the claim that “the other planets are warming” is just another Denier fable that contradicts the facts, but what makes the Mars fable interesting is the number of ways in which it contradicts many other Denier claims. It really serves to underscore the incoherence of many Deniers, and the extent to which they have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.

[More]

Since Greenfyre’s led me too Denial Depot, I love having a chance to discuss a post there. There are a lot of useful tidbits in this article. The data are not very definitive that Mars is warming. Or that Deniers love the Mars data based on a few data points that do not actually measure temperature but disavow over a centuries worth of real temperatures on Earth.

This ability to champion sparse data while ignoring plentiful is a hallmark of denialist culture. Cherrypicking is almost a requirement. Read the whole post and watch the video. Lots of fun.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Science

Remember Poe’s Law

Where’s the warming?:
[Via DenialDepot]

Where is the warming? I have truth aligned the above graph in complex ways that you might not understand.

Let me explain

The warmists use something called an “anomaly” on the Y-axis, an arbitary choice, but one which I decided to follow. However the alarmists only plot a Y-axis range of about 2 degrees C wheras I plotted the full 20 degrees of temperature range on the Y-axis. This is more typical of the daily temperature cycle and so more realistic.

I used the hadcrut surface record rather than rely on one of the suspiciously “adjusted” and biased satellite records. I also avoided drawing the plot in red as that assigns unnecessary weight and significance to it.

Looks very flat doesn’t it? Where’s the warming. Is there any? I can’t tell. We might never know. Doubt.

[More]

Poe’s Law, while formulated originally for parodies of Fundamentalism, can be applied to a wide range of thought exemplified by Denialism. While obviously a parody site, it actually uses some of the same techniques used at real sites, just in a way to expose the denialism inherent in the material.

You have to really love a site that straight up states:

We are not afraid to be called climate “deniers”. In fact we embrace it as medal of honor bestowed on us by our alarmist foes. Galileo was a Denier. It is not an insult. I call this blog “Denier Depot” for that reason.

Welcome to my climate science blog.

I believe that one day all science will be done on blogs because we bloggers are natural skeptics, disbelieving the mainstream and accepting the possibility of any alternative idea.

We stand unimpressed by “textbooks”, “peer review journals” and so-called “facts”. There are no facts, just dissenting opinion. We are infinitely small compared to nature and can’t grasp anything as certain as a fact.

Nothing is settled and we should question everything. The debate is NOT over Gore! When so-called “experts” in their “peer reviewed journals” say one thing, we dare the impossible and find imaginative ways to believe something else entirely.

So, it can now become a part of the other parody sites. But it also does a good job of using its parody to demonstrate many of the techniques used at real denialist sites, so its parody serves a useful purpose. As all great parody really does.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Science

The hype of showerheads

by sburke2478
Taking showers ‘can make you ill’:
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition]
Showering may be bad for your health say scientists who have shown dirty shower heads can deliver harmful bacteria.
[More]
Hype with a few weasel words makes a MSM science article.

“Showering may be bad for your health say scientists who have shown dirty shower heads can deliver harmful bacteria.” Then followed by these sentences:

Tests revealed nearly a third of devices harbour significant levels of a bug that causes lung disease.

Levels of Mycobacterium avium were 100 times higher than those found in typical household water supplies.

M. avium forms a biofilm that clings to the inside of the shower head, reports the National Academy of Science.

Sounds bad. But when I read this I always wonder just what the perspective is. Because people are not constantly falling prey to lung diseases after taking a shower. Does 100 times higher mean 100 bacteria versus 1? What are significant levels? Again, the BBC has no links to the paper, which I had to find myself.

I could only read the abstract, which is not very forthcoming with details.

So I checked out the NHS site Behind the Headlines, which is becoming my go to site for real perspective on these sorts of headlines. It had some very good information about the study, particularly the details of the study and some real results.

It is, first of all, a small study, looking at 45 shower heads in 9 cities. So it is an exploratory study, one done initially just to determine if there is really anything interesting to study. Sounds like it will be.

But now to some interesting mistakes. From the NHS:

Mycobacteria avium was identified in one in five showerhead samples, and accounted for an average of 32% of the microbes found in these samples.

So, 9 shower heads out of 45 had the bacterium. But, the BBC said it was almost 33% of the devices not 20%. What is going on? It appears that the BBC confused the 32% with the 20%. Almost 1/3 of all the bacteria found were the Mycobacterium, not 1/3 of the shower heads.

What this indicates to me is that a small number of the Mycobacterium-containing shower heads had a LOT of the bacteria, raising its overall incidence to 32%.

The techniques used to identify the bacteria are very sensitive, so even a few bacteria can be found. For instance, 0.05% of the bacteria found were the microbe that causes Legionnaire’s disease (Legionella pneumophila).

And one key fact left out is how many bacteria are needed to cause disease? It is very unlikely that even inhaling a single bacterium will be deadly. Some reports state that between 10,000 and 10,000,000 of the bacteria are required to cause an infection. That is quite a lot of the bacteria and remember, not every infection is lethal.

So you need to inhale an awful lot of showe rwater.

But then here is this:

When the researchers tested the aerosols created by running the showers, they found that the aerosols contained microbes representative of the water being fed into the shower, rather than the microbes living inside the showerhead.

So, the water droplets suspended in the air contained none of the bacteria in the shower heads but only the bacteria of the water itself.

But the BBC article said this:

Water spurting from shower heads can distribute bacteria-filled droplets that suspend themselves in the air and can easily be inhaled into the deepest parts of the lungs, say the scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Lead researcher Professor Norman Pace, said: “If you are getting a face full of water when you first turn your shower on, that means you are probably getting a particularly high load of Mycobacterium avium, which may not be too healthy.”

Something seems awry here. Let’s parse this a little. He said when you first turn on your shower. How many of us put out face in the water flow as soon as it is turned on? Usually it flows for a little until it warms up.

The researchers found that the bacteria were not found in the shower water after the initial flush of water. Any aerosols were no different than tap water so the likelihood of any problems would be greatly reduced.

If you are going to take a cold shower, let it run a little first.

So, an interesting observation but as long as one does not put one’s face in the first flow from the shower head, one has little to worry about. As the NHS states:

These findings should not cause undue alarm as humans are constantly exposed to microbes. The authors of the study point out that indoor air usually has about a million bacteria per cubic metre, and tap water at least ten million bacteria per litre. Mycobacterium avium is one of several largely unavoidable bacteria known to occur in water, and particularly in hot water supplies and aerosolised water, such as fountains. Many of these bacteria are not harmful to humans, and our bodies’ defences are capable of protecting us from those that are harmful.

Learn to take hype of scientific research with a grain of salt. If shower heads were really as deadly as the MSM might make it seem, we would have known a long time ago.

Technorati Tags: Health, Science

But what about troughs?

Urinal protocol vulnerability:
[Via xkcd]

When a guy goes into the bathroom, which urinal does he pick? Most guys are familiar with the International Choice of Urinal Protocol. It’s discussed at length elsewhere, but the basic premise is that the first guy picks an end urinal, and every subsequent guy chooses the urinal which puts him furthest from anyone else peeing. At least one buffer urinal is required between any two guys or Awkwardness ensues.

[More]

Check out the great discussion and the nice mathematical formula derived to determine the optimal number of urinals. And the comments are great, bringing in the timing factor as will as the P-shy variable.

Unfortunately, this describes the situation when discrete urinals are provided (quantized). What happens when only a trough is provided, so that the distances are more dynamic? Does it still follow the same principles as the Urinal protocol or do other factors result in a different distribution?

I would speculate that as the trough becomes more crowded the Stall Protocol becomes more prominent. That is, I chose to wait for a stall and a little privacy. But how crowded does the trough have to be before that Stall Protocol overrides the Urinal Protocol and does this vary for different cultures?

All great questions but I think there would be a real problem. The xkcd post deals with the abstract. No where was there any real measurement of what actually happens. It is theoretical.

So realtime observation would be necessary. However, the presence of a man with a clipboard, taking notes would most likely alter the normal protocols, as would a closed circuit camera.

It might require the observer to go underground, either by pretending to use a urinal (not optimal) or pretending to wash their hands and slowly drying them (not too hard to fake since so many of the newer faucets, as well as paper towel dispensers require some sort of odd hand-passing routine to get them to work).

Anyway, a fascinating discussion of what appears to be a male-only problem.

Technorati Tags: Health, Science

A nice system

by Jing a Ling

Key gene ‘controls disease fight’:
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition]

A master gene that helps mobilise the immune system to fight disease has been discovered by UK scientists.

[More]

Another in a series, I guess, of very misleading leads. These researchers did not discover this gene. A quick examination via Google finds papers from the early 90 describing this molecule. including one implicating the molecule in childhood leukemias.

And, naturally, this article hypes the research even more by saying it could be used to fight diabetes and multiple sclerosis. Maybe but all they have now is a mouse.

The BBC page does not provide a direct link to the article and only an abstract is available for free. Not wanting to spend $32 to read the article, I looked for something with a little more depth and found this nice write up from the NHS in England.

Ignore the headline, although they do put the words ‘Cancer killing gene’ in quotes so maybe that is a subtle dig at the hype. There is a lot more background on the gene and the system here. In fact, it not only has links to other news media articles, it also has a direct link to the paper. It really does represent something only the Web could provide, up to date scientific research, with links to the work to allow the reader to see the primary sources. I wish more of the MSM recognized that links are important.

Anyway, who ever wrote this up for the NHS did a great job. Just read the first 3 paragraphs and you know more about the gene and its impact, in perspective, to be both excited about the research yet understanding that it is still very early in any progress to a drug:

British scientists have identified the “key master gene that can kill cancer”, according to the Daily Mail, which says that the gene is the ‘masterswitch’ in the body’s battle against cancer. According to the newspaper, the key E4bp4 gene triggers the production of natural killer cells from stem cells and could be used to bolster our bodies’ defences. The researchers involved are reported to have stumbled across the gene while researching childhood leukaemia.

This exciting research is important for the field of immunology because researchers have characterised the factors involved in the development of natural killer cells. Natural killer cells are part of the immune system humans are born with (innate), and can act to destroy tumours and infected cells. It will be some time before the direct relevance of these findings to human immunity is clear, as this was a study in mice.

This discovery is an important step in the understanding of how the body may respond to tumours. However, any drug that can potentially bolster the production of these cells will need to be preceded by a great deal of further research and then many years of safety and efficacy testing.

First, not only have they found an important gene but they ‘stumbled’ on it while looking for something else. This happens so often in science, when we find out something really interesting while looking for something else. It is nice to see that recognized.

Then we find out why this work is important followed by the needed perspective: done in mice and a lot more research to find a drug. Compare to the beginning of the BBC post:

It causes stem cells in the blood to become disease-fighting “Natural Killer” (NK) immune cells.

It is hoped the discovery will lead to new ways to boost the body’s production of these frontline cells – potentially creating a new way to kill cancer.

The Nature Immunology study may also help development of new treatments for type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

Not much meat there but lots of hype.

The NHS article goes into much more scientific detail than the BBC or other MSM sources and then ends with its own perspective. First, how important is the research:

The findings from this laboratory study are important in the field of immunology because scientists have discovered a crucial gene that switches on the development of the natural killer type of white blood cell. The natural killer cells are part of the innate immune system that defend the body in a non-specific way and are responsible for destroying tumour cells and cells that are infected with viruses.

Two sentences that explain why this is something to examine further. Then these two paragraphs which I wish every article would address: the possible inadequacies of the work as it stands now.

There are a number of issues to keep in mind when interpreting the results of this study, firstly that this is a study using animals so how the findings apply to the human body is not clear. More research will be needed to investigate this.

Equally, it is still unclear how the production of these natural killer cells can be enhanced. While some newspapers discuss the idea of a “drug that boosts natural killer cell numbers”, it is not apparent how this might actually work and such a development is likely to be some distance in the future. In order to potentially develop these findings into a treatment for cancer, there will first need to be further research into the action of the E4bp4 genes in humans and the technologies to enhance them in living systems, followed by further research if this work shows promise.

These are true for almost every bit of basic research. The model systems may not work in humans and we have no idea of what drugs will really work. But, because of work like this, the path to answer both of those questions is a little clearer.

I’m adding the NHS Behind the News page to my newsfeed. There are a lot of really useful and well written articles there.

Technorati Tags: Health, Science

I can’t walk

by .Larry Page

I’ve developed a nice little injury called Runner’s Knee, even though i was not running. It cam from sitting too much!

I like the name patellofemoral syndrome. It is essentially a muscle strain. I’ve had problems with weak quadriceps over the years, more specifically, an underdevelopment of the vastus medialis part compared with the quadriceps. In fact, even when i was in shape, I’d wear a simple knee wrap with a knee cap cutout.

Well, it turns out that sitting for very long periods of time can overload this muscle. It is put under a lot of stress, even though it is not being used. It’s stabilizing effect on the knee cap is overwhelmed by the other parts of the quadriceps. The knee cap can then get moved out of position and result in some nice damage to the whole area. Even when nothing really traumatic happens.

When you have pain on the front or sides of the kneecap, this is the likely culprit.

The way I know this is that yesterday, for no apparent reason, the front of my knee hurt like hell. Some of the worst pain I have ever felt and I figured I had just wrenched it somehow. But during the day the muscle in my thigh really started hurting. A quick perusal of Wikipedia determined that the pain was following right up the vastus.

A search by Google for ‘vastus medialis pain’ revealed that I had Runner’s knee. Now I just have to rest it but it is a bummer to be in so much pain when all I did was sit.

Technorati Tags: Health

Why I fear for America

A film about Darwin is too controversial to be shown in America, simply because it examines the life and ideas of Darwin, not because it has anything inappropriate. The rest of the world will get to see this movie starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly. But, so far, no distributer in the US will touch it so far. It opens in the UK on September 25.

The shrieking bullies gain another win, I guess. You can read a little reason for why this is: The easiest way to deal with irate nuts is to do what they want. It works for almost everything since the whole point point being a sensible person is not to be an irate nut. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, no matter how out of round it is.

In fact, if you read the discussion boards at IMDB, you can get an idea of the problem. Most of the posts seem to be about creationists and scientists. Hardly any mention of the merits of the film. In fact, the longest threads sound like the ones that are found at any blob that discusses evolution.

You can read Roger Ebert’s comments on the film as he saw it at the Toronto Film Festival. I guess if there had been more explosions we would be sure to see it. Or maybe zombies.

I fIgure what will probably happen is either some small distributor will get it and we will only see it in limited release or some cable company will get it to show in their channel.

To wit, the idiots in America may prevent us from seeing a movie that the rest of the world will. Self-censorship is often worse than anything the State would do.

Every day I begin to worry that The Marching Morons might not be satire.

Technorati Tags: Education, Science