by mickeymox
Look Up! The Billion-Bug Highway You Can’t See (video)
[Via A Blog Around The Clock]
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I wonder just how many of them end up in the exhausts of jet engines? The idea of passing through a cloud of bugs to reach altitude was not an image I needed.
How Google’s brand is at risk with Android
[Via MacDailyNews]
“‘The public doesn’t trust Google as much as it does Apple. And the Nexus One debacle proves that without a customer service infrastructure, you’re screwed.’ So wrote the best music analyst and one of the best bloggers extant, Bob Lefsetz on Lefsetz.com last week,” Cody Willard writes for MarketWatch. “He was making a point about how Apple’s biggest secrets to success lie in the company’s ability to simply deliver the best customer experience of any corporation on the planet.”
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There is a lot of education that has to go into getting people to recognize that Android is Google. And there may well be some confusion when something does not work or an app crashes. Who has real responsibility and expertise for fix that for the consumer?
From what I can tell, it is really the handset sellers who will be responsible. If so, that looks like a real train wreck coming. With the iPhone, if it is a connection problem, call the wireless teleco. If it is the hardware or software, call Apple.
The article did have this wonderful statement which had a very funny reply in the comments:
As powerful as any band, Steve’s now got a tribe of early adopters who will buy anything Apple offers, and will tell everybody who doesn’t have it how great it is. Come on, if you haven’t been harangued by an Apple fan, you live in isolation in the Arctic.’”
And the comment by Not True was:
“Come on, if you haven’t been harangued by an Apple fan, you live in isolation in the Arctic.” That is a flat out lie. I have friends that live in the arctic and they use Macs, and I am sure they pester non-believers.
Now who knows someone with a Mac in Antarctica so we can do away with that myth too.
LOL.
iOS 4.1 results in faster performance for iPhone 3G users
[Via Edible Apple]
In the wake of the iOS 4.0 software update, a number of iPhone 3G owners reported that they were experiencing significant system sluggishness. Apple forums were filled with users complaining of poor system responsiveness, decreased battery efficiency, and some even called the update unusable.
In response, Apple eventually announced that they were looking into the matter and they appear to have resolved the iPhone 3G’s system woes with the recent release of iOS 4.1. Below, LifeHacker posted a video comparing system performance with iOS 4 and iOS 4.1 on the iPhone 3G. Note that the official release of iOS 4.1 is scheduled to drop on Wednesday. As such, the video below showcases the final developer build of iOS 4.1.
The video demonstrates the results, but here they are in all their glory:
- Messages: iOS 4.1 Wins (By a Little)
- Maps: iOS 4.1 Wins (By a Lot)
- Photos: iOS 4.1 Wins (Just Barely)
- Safari: iOS 4.1 Wins (Just Barely)
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It says that it can take some time as it will back everything up so I’ll do it while recharging tonight. if I remember. Now if November would get here sooner so I can upgrade the iPad.
Domestic Conflict, Explained by Stock Photos
[Via Daring Fireball]
“Kevin Nguyen imagines the backstories behind the stock photos he found of couples fighting.” (Via Jim Coudal.)
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This could be a fun meme for stock photos. Some of these are hilarious.
By Raggadorr’s Seven Rings!
By Cyttorak’s Crimson Bands!
Let yon demons feel Valtorr’s Stings –
So Dr. Strange commands!
‘Doctor Strange’ Movie In The Works
[Via ScifiSquad.com]
Filed under: News/Reactions
While at DragonCon this past weekend, Stan Lee let slip that he will have an upcoming cameo in the forthcoming Doctor Strange movie (to be released in 2012 apparently, which is when the Mayans predicted the end of the world. Coincidence?). He also admitted that the movie had no director or star currently attached, but it would be filmed by Marvel’s masters at Disney.
Granted, there was that television movie (a.k.a. failed pilot) in 1978 starring Peter Hooten. The character has also appeared in various animated shows from Marvel. This, however, would be the first theatrical appearance for the character and given the recent hype for magic-based characters (such as Harry Potter) and the level at which computer effects have risen, it seems the right time for the good doctor to get his own movie.
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Dr. Strange was my favorite Marvel character in the 70s. I would feel better if they had a director attached but it would be cool to see Steven Strange doing those cool incantations. I want to hear how you really say some of those words.
Cracked had a nice send up of the three problems that have to be overcome for a Dr. Strange movie. But I love one of their suggestions, which is to take progressive music lyrics form the 70s and use them as parts of incantations. Such as “In and around the Lake. Mountains come out of the sky and they STAND THERE!”
I could do this all say, as I have several playlists that are only progressive bands from the 70s. How about “Now the earth gives forth its secrets. Held in mountain sea and plain. They have never been forgotten. Only locked inside my brain.”
or “Schindleria praematurus”
or “Turn and run. Nothing can stop them. Around every river and canal their Power is growing. Stamp them out. We must destroy them. They infiltrate each city with their thick dark warning odor. They are invincible”
or “Take the face that you see for the man, Clown and minstrel, I am what I am. All my family, not of my kin. Home, wherever, the place that I’m in.”
or “Born with a strength untold. Foreseen to have great age. Set in Gargantuan mould, Joyful laugh, yet quick to rage. Princely wisdom, habits bold; Power, glory, lauded sage”
or “And no one sings me lullabies. And no one makes me close my eyes. So I throw the windows wide. And call to you across the sky.”
or “I chase the wind of a prism ship. To taste the sweet and sour. The pattern juggler lifts his hand; The orchestra begin.”
or “Guardians of a new clear dawn. Let the maps of war be drawn.”
or “There’s no end to my life, No beginning to my death: Death is life.”
They almost write themselves.
Immigration – A better metaphor will help us break through the noise
[Via Robert Paterson's Weblog]
This is what America looks like today. Where if you disagree with me you are at least Stupid or worse Evil.
For our debates about immigration and all important aspects of life today are rooted in beliefs and not in knowledge. Two great tribes struggle for power. Their ideology affects everything.
They look a lot like this diagram of the Left and the Right produced by David McCandless.
“Secure the Border” is a cultural and tribal battle cry as is “Racists“.
Neither side can hear the truth in the other. Both sides make the other angry. The result is that America is splitting apart. Civic discourse is dying and it is nearly impossible to get anything done anymore.
So how do we escape this trap?
I think that we need to change the rules of the game entirely. What might help is to shift the underlying metaphor.
The metaphor we use today is “Fortress America“.
In the Fortress you are in or out. There is a wall. All that matters is the wall. You make it perfect or you leave holes in it. Motive or the circumstances for people outside the wall or inside the wall mean nothing. This is a mechanical and a simple model that is not suited to a complex and organic problem.
Being simple, such a metaphor insists on a right or a wrong answer and so can never produce what is demanded in a complex problem.
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The idea of fixing immigration problems by building walls, real and metaphorical, is something that will not have a long-lasting effect on a complex problem. Fixing the problem first requires the recognition that there are no simple single solutions. A wall, while simple, does not examine the root causes or find an effective solution. It is like amputating a toe when the kidneys are failing.
Paterson likens America not to a walled city but to something more organic and complex – the human body
I think that a better metaphor might allow this. I think that a better metaphor might enable us to keep our tribal beliefs but to agree with others about things that do not need beliefs to understand and agree on.
A Better Metaphor – Our Body and its Immune System
A better metaphor is our body and our immune system. It represents the dynamic reality of America and Immigration much better than a wall. It can show us ways of seeing our response that are not in the realm of ethics but in the realm of system dynamics.
Now Paterson is focussing on the issue of immigration but I think the metaphor can go further. Only something like the complexities of the human body can really provide useful metaphors of complex situations. Our immune system is the most adaptive system in our body, providing us with a wonderful way of dealing with the hostile world we live in.
Without it we would die very quickly. But it can react improperly, particularly when the body itself is having severe problems.
Paterson writes a wonderfully deep article that tries to develop a better metaphor than a fortress with some people inside and others outside. Battling the other will not work in the world today, no matter how much the power structure wants to divide us up into a wide group of walled cities, thus removing our power. If we are all in walled cities, we can not help each other in our struggles. Keeping us divided makes it easier for corrupt leaders to keep power.
I happened to run across this video, produced by the War department after WW2. It is called “Don’t be a sucker”
Dividing people into coasts vs heartlands, elites vs plain folk, religious vs skeptics, citizen vs. immigrant – that is how some of those in power keep their corrupt practices alive.
And it is easier to do the dividing when the body is in poor health. But separating out parts of the body does not make it healthier; it makes it more ill. A kidney can not survive on its own, no matter how much it might like to.
How many of us could survive if 1% of our bodies got 60% of the food, while 50% of our body only got 2.5%? Yet that is where we find ourselves, with the top 1% doing very well in the economy and the rest of us not doing well at all.
And it has been that way for almost a generation now.
I’ve talked about this interesting split that started about 30 years ago.
Things were much more in balance 30 years ago. From the years from 1947 until 1979, all Americans saw just about equal increases in real income. In fact, the richest did not improve as fast as the poorest.
Not so since then. All Americans have seen no real increase in wages, except for the richest. The top 1% have doubled their after tax income while the bottom 20% have seen a 6% increase since 1979
A few years ago, the Brookings Institute and the Pew Charitable Trust produced a great report entitled Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well? It has this wonderful figure which measures productivity vs compensation.
Until 1979, productivity and median family income grew together, almost equally. Then in 1979, they diverged for good, with productivity going up 80% and wages only increasing 20%. It got even worse in 2000, with productivity increasing substantially and wages actually decreasing.
I would imagine has gotten worse since 2005 with the current economic debacle. If the average salary had kept up with productivity, as it had until 1979, it would be about $58,000. In 2007, it was $36,000, instead.
How about this one, comparing men in their 30s between generations, 30 years apart:
Men in their 30s today make substantially less money than did their father’s even though the costs housing, food, medicine and other costs have risen a lot.
With a damaged body, the immune system is not going to react properly. It is acting like an auto-immune disease, where the body begins to attack its own parts in an attempt to deal with the damage.
The normally adaptive immune system becomes maladaptive, hurting a damaged body more than helping it.
Our body is sick because we have not been providing nutrients to it in a sustainable fashion. We have been living off of stored fat and muscle but those are no longer present. Most of the body is becoming unhealthy and is dying. Our immune system is reacting improperly.
Without attending to the problem of the whole body, it will not be healed. Simply going after the ‘invaders’ from the outside will do little in the long run to prevent the death of the body.
It needs intervention at multiple locations simultaneously, in order to properly heal.
Yet, we still have leaders that want to keep the system divided, that want to prevent the nourishment from getting to the parts that are hurting. Some simply want to do nothing. Some want to just cut off parts. Others want to stop using medications that have sustained the body for a long time and use crack pot solutions.
Maybe the new medications will not provide complete relief. But doing nothing will only result in a greater collapse of the entire system.
by umjanedoan
Taxes Clash with Free Speech in the Philadelphia Blogosphere
[Via The Scholarly Kitchen]
Philadelphia extends local small business fees to bloggers making money, arguing they are just like anyone else trying to make money in the city. But given the free speech element, they aren’t “just like anyone else.”
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This has all sorts of interesting possibilities for free speech vs the government but it could easily be dealt with in a very fair fashion – simply say that any business that has revenues under $1000 (or some limit) does not have to register and pay the fee.
Problem solved. I expect that many lawyers and much time will be involved before this simple solution is reached.
by CarbonNYC
The saga of Avastin and breast cancer
[Via Respectful Insolence]
One of the most frustrating aspects of taking care of cancer patients is that in general, with a handful of specific exceptions, we do not have good curative therapies for patients with stage IV cancer, particularly solid tumors. Consequently, we are forced to view patients with stage IV cancer as “incurable” because, the vast majority of the time, they are incurable. Over the years, we have thrown everything but the kitchen sink at patients with stage IV disease, largely with dissapointing results. That’s not to say that the few specific exceptions to which I alluded are not a reason for hope. After all, patients with colorectal cancer and liver metastases used to have a median survival of around 6 months, but these days, with newer chemotherapeutic regimens like FOLFOX plus Avastin, median survival has more than tripled. While expecting to live less than two years is cold comfort to cancer patients with this particular clinical situation, the prognosis is far better than it was.
Of course, I specifically mentioned Avastin because it’s been in the news a lot recently with respect to my area of clinical specialty, breast cancer. Specifically, beginning in July there started appearing a spate of stories about the FDA considering revoking the approval of Avastin for advanced breast cancer based on recent studies that demonstrate that it does not prolong survival in these patients. Many lay people and patients find this reconsideration of Avastin to be quite puzzling, given that the drug was granted accelerated approval in 2008 and has since gone on to be used fairly widely. Given that the case of Avastin in breast cancer is rapidly becoming a classic case study of how messy science-based medicine can be when practiced in the public eye and debated among pharmaceutical companies, the government, and patient advocacy groups.
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The data now indicate that this drug, which costs up to $100,000 a year to take, may be having very little effect at all, if any, on increasing the survival time for patients or on quality of life. It was approved over the objection of the expert FDA panel dealing with the drug.
That panel has again voted to withdraw approval due to the lack of efficacy of the drug. BUt politicians have begun making this a partisan issue, with women suffering breast cancer being pawns in an election year.
Thus the introduction of what Orac calls the burning stupid. Sure is nice when science-based medicine gets in the hands of politicians with an election coming up.
SpreadingScience
Sustainable Path Foundation Idea Club
