even funnier

90s flowchart.http://xkcd.com

friday fun!

macgyver gets lazy
http://xkcd.com

Steve's Killer Links Plus Other Fun!

My buddy steve is always sending me all sorts of cool stuff, but I haven't given it its fair blog-due yet. Well, wait no longer, world.

1. Orangutans use tools! - Intelligent designers throw a hissy fit everywhere as the link between ourselves and our evolutionary forebears grows stronger and stronger. But in any case, the story is just cool.

2. Red Meat: No Good - Sorry carnivores, but it turns out that a little sialic acid called Neu5Gc will be the bane of your future existence. What's the problem with this molecule? Humans don't make it. We make a variant of it, Neu5Ac. Who does make alot of Neu5Gc? Plenty of other mammals. Neu5Gc appears foreign to our immune system, but is perfectly normal to immune systems of other mammals, such as chimpanzees. And, to quote:

Chimpanzees do not seem to suffer from heart disease, cancers, rheumatoid arthritis or bronchial asthma - common conditions in humans. Nor do they get sick from the human malaria parasite, which uses sialic acid to latch on to our blood cells.

NeuGc is also a common component of serum sickness, a complication of treatment with, you guessed it, animal serum (which has been used because its a way to flood the body with neutralizing antibodies and prevent immune over-reactions). So: cut down on that steak.

3. Waterboarding is Definitely Torture - Because some idiot at Vanity Fair tried it. No offense, but I was already convinced. It was a pretty interesting article, though. Are you listening, everyone who thought that FIMA was OK? This is the same line of thinking.

Now, some contributions of my own!

How did Wall-E get it wrong?
1. Obesity - Daniel Engber has some interesting thoughts on this. While he enjoyed the movie (didn't we all), he took issue with the tacit association of obesity with ecological destruction. While I think his assertion that the movie attempts to pin the planet's environmental collapse on the overweight (quote: "If only society could get off its big, fat ass and go on a diet!") is an overreaction (its far, far more an indictment of consumerism), I think the article is worth reading, first because it corrects a number of inappropriate assumptions about obesity, and second because it (correctly) criticizes Pixar's choice to depict the result of such consumerism primarily as a group of obese citizens. Read the article; pay particular attention to the closing paragraph.

2. Cockroaches - Also incorrect: the the cockroach as the last remnant of life on Earth. Are cockroaches so hardy that they would outlast every other living being? Not quite, although they apparently are sturdy enough to live without their head for weeks. Sweet.

Health Related Tidbits - Two fantastic articles on the value, and danger, of 2 senses

1. The Itch - Atul Gawande delivers another impeccable anecdote, but I find the article to be most interesting because of the qualification of "itchiness" as an entirely separate sense, quite distinct from pain. This was proved with an ingenious experiment discussed in the article, in which increasing amounts of painful stimuli had no impact on the itchiness of said stimuli. What follows is some amazing insight into the transmission of 'itch' signals via distinct neuronal pathways whose sensors have a molecular makeup that will amaze you in their design.

2. Anosmia - One of the most interesting aspects of this self-portrait of losing the sense of smell by Elizabeth Zierah was how undervalued smell is ("equivalent to losing a big toe," according to the article). Not true, it turns out; the devastating impact of losing one's sense of smell is yet more evidence of the imporance of synergy between your senses.

National Election Stuff

1. Barack's "OPod" - The New Republic gives us this very interesting piece on the content of Barack Obama's IPod. Aside from the quick disemboweling of John Kerry in the initial paragraph (who couldn't even muster a preference between the Stones and the Beatles), the piece tells us what we can learn from the Senator's playlist. Most importantly:

"...The fact that he responds to Wenner's question about hip-hop with the most straight-down-the-middle liberal platitudes imaginable (praising it as "rebel music" while expressing concern about its "misogyny and materialism") clearly matters less than the fact that there's a guy running for President who knows who Jay-Z is."

2. Making fun of Obama - This is a fascinating article from the Times on the struggles of late-night and other comedians to (successfully) make fun of Obama. What's a little less clear are the reasons behind this difficulty. Two have been offered: 1) He hasn't done something identifiably stupid to serve as a rallying point, and 2) making fun of him makes you feel a little guilty. I agree with both. This is part of his whole 'teflon' image (I realize that "teflon" carries a negative connotation, but I don't mean it that way) - he seems sqeaky clean, bizarelly so when you consider that nobody really thinks that he is. Of course, the race issue doesn't help either. What's more interesting is how we react to rare circumstances in which someone chooses to poke fun at him, as in the case of:

3. The Infamous New Yorker Cover (pictured, right). So here we have a perfect scenario. A progressive magazine publishes a cover image in obvious satire of the insane stereotypes levied against Obama, all in combination - that is is a Muslim in cahoots with Osama bin Laden, that he is a flag burner whose terrorist fist-jab clearly implies Middle Eastern allegiances. (His wife's Afro is a subtle touch). But obvious satire such has this has inspired uproar, and why? Because we all know and fear the misinterpretation of this joke. Calling McCain old isn't dangerous, but calling Obama a terrorist is, because 10% of America thinks this is true. And it doesn't matter whether the tone of the cover is obviously satirical or not. To quote Jake Tapper of ABC News:

Intent factors into these matters, of course, but no Upper East Side liberal—no matter how superior they feel their intellect is—should assume that just because they're mocking such ridiculousness, the illustration won't feed into the same beast in emails and other media. It's a recruitment poster for the right-wing.

It pains me, but he's right.

4. McCain fears computers - Does this include robots? Does he refuse to watch Wall-E? We should look into this. And if he does start using the internet, maybe he can respond to this New Republic piece threatening a return to Cold War-era politics under his aegis.

This was a long-ass post. Later: myanmar and sports.

its called epMotion.

now, a few important notes before you watch.

1. Eppendorf paid to have this video made. Way to know your audience. I mean, how better to market to a bunch of 23-35 year olds stuck in lab than with a catchy boy band ballad, with pipet references?
2. There's a downloadable ringtone.
3. Thanks, Fooks, for the link.

With that, enjoy.

antiprobiotics.

Probiotics are stupid. The premise, ostensibly, is that eating a bunch of bacteria might help the digestion of people with IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). This is awfully convenient, because IBS cannot be assessed quantifiably (the readout is generally based on patient symptoms) making this type of "therapy" succeptible to a whopping placebo effect. Who says that these bacteria can out-compete your endogenous flora? And even if it did, how do we know that is a good thing? Commensal bacteria constitute a vital presence in your gut, serving many functions other than digestion. They help prevent infection by more dangerous bacteria. They make sure your immune system doesn't respond inappropriately to harmless bacteria. In fact, one of the more popular models for inflammatory bowel disease involves a damaged immune response to your gut flora. Plus, as Lauren Sandler points out, the marketing techniques essentially imply that you can use 'probiotic' therapy to lose weight. Its even more egregious overseas. So, don't pay a premium for something that is in no way scientifically validated to be helpful.

On the other hand, using worms to treat allergies - that may actually work, and interestingly, in a way that commensals might also act - by serving to dampen your immune response so it doesn't respond to inappropriate things, like pollen. This is summed up in the hygiene hypothesis.

Other Science thoughts, courtesy of Nature News:
1. SIDS - Excellent work from Cornelius Gross's group. They engineered a mouse with excess levels of the serotonin 1A receptor, which acts as a negative regulator of serotonin levels, based on prior associations of serotonin with SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). The resulting mice experienced sudden drops in heart rates and sudden death at early ages, mimicking SIDS phenotypes. Nature News article here, Science paper here.

2. Schroedinger's Cat, alive! - Someone explain this to the nerd in me who owns A Cartoon History of Time and wants to understand shit like the Copenhagen Interpretation!

The notion is exemplified by the paradox of Schrödinger's cat, a thought experiment in which a cat is locked in a box with a vial of poisonous gas that would be broken if a quantum particle was in one state, and remain intact if the particle was in another. While the box is closed, the particle exists in a superposition of both states simultaneously, so the poison must also simultaneously be both released and contained, and, in turn, the cat must be both alive and dead. When the box is opened, the quantum superposition collapses, and the cat is either killed or saved, in an instant.

Now, Nadav Katz at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his colleagues have performed an experiment in which they pull a quantum state back from the brink of collapse, 'uncollapsing' it and returning it to its unobserved state. Effectively, they have peeked at Schrodinger's cat in its box, but saved it from near-certain death (N. Katz et al. http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3547).

To physicists raised on the textbook Copenhagen interpretation, any notion of uncollapsing a quantum state seems “astonishing”, says Markus Büttiker, a quantum physicist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. “On opening the box, Schrödinger's cat is either dead or alive — there is no in between.”

Help!!!!

Other, Other Thoughts:
1. Nadal triumphs at Wimbledon - Now, I'm a huge Federer fan. I think he's a true surgeon on the court, hitting impossible angles and exhibiting that 'sixth sense' where he sees 5 shots ahead. But Nadal bested him honestly this time, and he did so with an almost inhuman defensive consistency, hitting precision groundstrokes, forcing Federer to come to the net, and then hitting passing shot after passing shot. It was pretty phenomenal. I'll just say 2 things. First, I really hope this inspires Federer to raise his game. He's got about 4-5 years left, so hopefully he's still got some great tennis in him. I think he's been stagnant for lack of a true challenger in the past few years, so this is exciting. And 2) I didn't really appreciate the Nadal homerism by the commentators. It goes back to the desire to see a champion torn down, to see him (or her) exposed as mortal. Why not appreciate the dominant run that we've seen for the last 4 years (12 of the last 13 grand slam finals, 13 grand slam titles including 5 wimbeldon, 4 us open, 4 australian open titles) instead of being so eager to anoint a successor? It's kind of a shame.

2. Destruction of the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan - The attack clearly appears to be a response to the growing threat of Indian influence in Afghanistan. To quote:

Pakistani intelligence has long supported militant groups fighting in Kashmir and Afghanistan as a means to influence regions on its borders and, according to some Western diplomats and military officials, it maintains those links today, including with some elements of the Taliban.
Pakistani intelligence, which regards Afghanistan as its backyard, fiercely resents India’s growing influence here, Afghan officials said. The Afghan Interior Ministry said it believed that the attack was carried out in collaboration with “an active intelligence service in the region.”

The US has for a long time been allied with Pakistan, which included use of Pakistani airspace for attacks on Afghanistan shortly after 9/11. One would assume, however, that the recent pattern of behavior would demand a shift in policy.

3. This American Life: By Proxy: This week's This American Life is fantastic. It speaks of people who have had to act as proxies for others in many facets. The most interesting, and gut-wrenching, is the story of an Iraqi translator who gets caught in the crossfire between American soldiers, for whom he works and considers noble until the events of Abu Ghraib, and Iraqi civilians growing increasingly resentful of American occupation. By the way, on the Wikipedia page for the events of Abu Ghraib (which everyone should flip through just to be fully aware of what happened), I just want to highlight a couple of responses.

Rush Limbaugh: "This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of emotional release?"

Senator James Inhofe: "I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment [...] [They] are not there for traffic violations. [...] If they're in cell block 1A or 1B, these prisoners — they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. [...] Many of them probably have American blood on their hands. And here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals." (It's been estimated that at least 90% of detainees were innocent)

Yes, I know this was a million years ago. But please. Don't listen to Rush Limbaugh or any program on which he appears. And please, for the love of God, don't ever vote for James Inhofe.

4. Should abortion procedures be taught in medical school? (Obviously, yes). E.J. Graff at Slate had an interesting perspective on this, as he noted that in a recent poll, 80% of people believe that abortion should be allowed in at least some cases. Isn't this enough that ob-gyns should be formally trained in this procedure? Thoughts?

someone says it way better than i do

and that would be bob cesca of the huffington post. in this fantastic story he reflects on senator obama's centrist migration, but presents a compelling perspective on why its not as bad as both his and my knee-jerk reactions might have suggested. Amana put this in a comment, but its such a good story that I wanted to put it in a main post, so, go read it.

This is your brain on drugs

Some pretty great stuff today.

First, roid rage hits the labs! Apparently, beta blockers and ritalin are not only used on college campuses, but amongst neuroscientists to make them smarter! Maybe they're hitting the pills to compensate for beer-induced publication lag implied in a recent Oikos article. Or maybe, they're TRYING TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD! Zort.

Apparently, scientists aren't the only people who could use a little cognitive jolt. Medical doctors may need it to try and break the shackles of legislative oppression. Talk about forcing your hand. I totally agree with the author's perspective here, which is that whatever your political/religious ideals, its probably not a good idea to force doctors to say something that they may not believe is true:

The South Dakota law requires doctors to give patients who come for an abortion a written statement telling them that "the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being," and that they have "an existing relationship with that unborn human being" that is constitutionally protected. (What does the constitutionally protected part mean? Who knows.) In addition, doctors are ordered to describe "all known medical risks of the procedure and statistically significant risk factors," including "depression and related psychological distress" and "increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide."

Yikes.

Now, lets shift gears. David Greenberg at Slate wrote one of the most interesting articles I've read in awhile, about how Republicans have been so effective at restrictively defining the meaning of patriotism to use it as a weapon. I find everything he has to say about how conservatives and liberals have tended to define patriotism to be pretty accurate. I guess its not surprising that the Republicans have won this battle, but what is most interesting is the requisite communal, unquestioning nature of Republican patriotism versus the progress-by-debate nature of Democratic patriotism. In lieu of this mentality, is it any surprise that Republican party members often sublimate their personal agendas to support the party while the Democratic party is often fractured and weakened by similar 'diversity of thought'? This point was made absolutely to perfection by Bill Bradley 3 years ago in one of the best Op-Ed pieces I've ever read.

The unity of the Republican party should be kept in mind as recent stories have revealed that interrogation techniques used in Guantanamo were based quite directly on Chinese Communist techniques used to extract false confessions from American prisoners during the Korean War. Oh, but they did remember to change the the name given in the original report on these techniques: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.” Wow.

Meanwhile, I may have gone a little overboard on the Obama-hatred in my last post (for example, he is against the retroactive immunity granted to phone companies in the wiretapping bill from Congress). Still, the faith-based pandering irks me. Good thing someone is watching his centripetal progress.

And finally, the Red Sox and Yankees start a series today. This in the wake of a disastrous 3-game series in which the Sox were swept by the surging Tampa Bay Rays. So, rather than get depressed over that, I'll instead point you to an excellent study from the Hardball Times concerning how important speed differential is to the value of a change-up. Enjoy!

you've got to be kidding me

with this:

"Obama Wants to Expand Role of Religious Groups"

So. Here are the deep thoughts of our Democratic nominee, ever since he clinched the nomination:
1. Supports overturning of gun control legislation
2. Speaks out against a decision restricting the use of capital punishment to convicted murderers.
3. Supports a Foreign Intelligence Act passed by Congress which "includes immunity to lawsuits for phone companies over their role in assisting in the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program" (from NYTimes.com)
4. Wants to establish the "Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships" which would allocate a cool 500 million dollars to faith-based organizations to perform community outreach.

Now, this is ludicrous bullshit for a number of reasons. What type of "faith-based" community outreach programs do you think are going to get this money? And how exactly does he plan to "prevent" these groups from using their money "to proselytize"? I will eat my own hand if someone 2 years from now tells me about a Hindu or Muslim-based community initiative that got any legitimate chunk of money from this 'Council'. There's only one prominent religious group with the combined motivation of evangelism and political leverage of the religious Right that will enjoy the spoils here, and we all know it.

So, kudos to you, Senator Obama, on your fourth pathetic display of pandering in a short 2 weeks. Apparently, your "Yes We Can" slogan, is followed by the fine print "...compromise our political ideals to shamelessly court middle American conservative voters and in doing so alienate the supporters who us the nomination, relying on the fact that they will turn out and vote Democrat simply due to their blind hope for a lesser evil." Why don't you just appoint Steve Forbes to your cabinet and unveil a new flat tax plan? Douche.