Monthly Archives: July 2009

Michele Bachmann Out-Foxed?

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Hmmmm. If you listen to the Fox people … the details … they actually do a pretty good job of making Michele Bachmann look foolish. But they are very excited to have her on the show.

Here are the FOX digs that I noticed:

  • Isn’t your claim about “Obama counties” getting more money bogus? (Answer …. evade! evade! evade!)
  • Only 10% of stimulus “3.0” is out on the street so how do you really know how it will work? Now tell us how it won’t work.
  • Snarking out on “faith based.”
  • Tell us how it really works with Acorn… (answer: Well, not really an issue there if you look like facts but I’ll keep lying about it anyway)
  • Your idea of auditing the Fed will ruin everything. (Answer: Whoa… hard to characterize how dumb that was.)

Did I miss anything?

(Hat tip DMB)

He Should Have Been Wearing a Helmet

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I ran over and made myself look big so that cars coming down the street would notice us and not run us over. He was now on his side convulsing heavily and continuously. His convulsing was causing his head and neck to whip around, so I got down and held his body in place so he would damage himself less. Two people who had walked out of a local store and did not see the accident came over and yelled at me.

“Leave him alone!” one of them screamed at me.

“He’s an epileptic! He’s just having an epileptic fit! Don’t treat him like he was sick or something.”

Read the rest at Quiche Moraine.

NASA Really Did Find Lost Tapes That Don’t Exist …

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… Maybe …. Sorta….

We’ve been burned by this one before. As you will recall, the claim was made that the visuals we all saw of the first steps on the moon by humans were a black and white compressed image sent from Australia, shown on a TV at Mission Control (or someplace) and then shot with an old fashioned TV camera (they only had the “old fashioned” ones back in those days, of course).

But, we were told, high quality color videos were taken at the same time but then lost right away. Then, we were told, they were found.

Then we were told by other people who seemed to know what they were talking about that these higher quality tapes did not exist, could not have existed, because the camera needed to make them was not sent to the moon on that first trip.

Well, now we have something directly fro NASA:

Continue reading NASA Really Did Find Lost Tapes That Don’t Exist … →

Darwin and Wallace 1858

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Darwin and Wallace, chillin’
Let’s talk about Darwin and Wallace’s joint presentation on Natural Selection in 1858.

It is not usually the case that I write a blog post for a carnival. I usually just write for the blog, then now and then sit down and figure out which posts should go to with carnivals. That is not the case with this post.

Some time ago I thought, while writing a Peer Reviewed Research post, that it would be interesting to write up older papers, classics, or more recent papers that were of great interest for one reason or another but maybe a few years old. Just around that time, this idea of a classic carnival … a carnival of classic science papers … came around (details here and here), and I thought that was a very cool idea.

I have a plan to write a couple of different series of posts, one with Bob Trivers’ papers (see this for a taste), which will come along very easily, as I have taught a course based primarily on his work. Another would be on papers regarding Race and Racism. Again, this would draw heavily on my course on Race and Gender. A third stream of posts may come from the Bioanthropology tutorial I taught at Harvard. That was some years ago, so even the ‘current’ papers from that effort may now be classics (Tim Caro’s work with hyenas springs instantly to mind). Thinking about that approach led me to consider the first paper I usually assigned in that tutorial, and in fact, ‘the’ first paper in the field of evolutionary biology (perhaps, depending on your perspective).

That paper, I thought, is what this post should be about. Darwin and Wallace’s first composite paper on Natural Selection.

The only question remains: How many other people are going to do the same thing? Probably scads of them. So, I’ll have to make this a little different…..

Continue reading Darwin and Wallace 1858 →

A True Ghost Story Part 2: The Ghost In the Hall

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… continued …

So there we were in the Haunted Guest Quarters of the Old Infirmary, and I had already heard the ghost once. In the morning, my colleague and BFF Lynne who was staying with us for a couple of days noted that she had heard the mysterious footsteps as well….
Continue reading A True Ghost Story Part 2: The Ghost In the Hall →

On Generic Drugs and Health Care Savings

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When Ella was three years old, she began exhibiting strange behaviors and for several days we had no clue as to their meaning. She was having difficulty with her toilet training, and we guessed that the stress was manifesting itself in what we shortly learned were partial-complex seizures. The expressions varied in the first few days, so when we attempted to describe them to the primary care physician, he was prone to agree with our assessment but asked us to come back in if the behaviors continued….

A new post by Mike at Quiche Moraine.

Unscientific America Related Items

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I was sick Sunday, and I’m a bit off today, so everything is 36 to 48 hours off. So, my review of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future will be delayed. In the mean time you can have a look at these items:

1) An interesting post by David Dobbs places the current discussion regarding religion and science in an historical context: PZ Myers, Chris Mooney, Asa Gray, and the religion-science divide

2) Stephanie Zvan at Almost Diamonds discusses the Mooney/Kirshenbaum strategy.

3) Stephanie also addresses this issue a bit more circumspectly in a post on “Mere Factual Accuracy” at Quiche Moraine.

Microsoft: So evil it can make smart people stupid

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CNN is supposed to be a professional news outlet. But even the editors and writers at CNN’s Fortune desk are no match for Microsoft’s’ Stupid-Ray Gun.

This piece is virtually giddy about the fact that the next version of Microsoft Office will be just like Google Office. Free and on line .

Now, think about that for five seconds and imagine yourself to be a writer for CNN. Do you actually believe that Microsoft Office is going to be available for free? Like, me, Greg Laden, can just decide “Oh, I’ve had enough of Google Docs … I’m going to switch to the online version of Microsoft Office instead. It’s free!!!” … and then I sign up for an account and I have this on line free service and no money has changed hands?

If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge over some swamp land in Florida that comes with it’s own Nigerian Bank account that I’d love to sell you.

Continue reading Microsoft: So evil it can make smart people stupid →

Is obesity a risk factor for H1N1 Novel Swine Flu infection?

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… or is obesity simply Yet Another Risk Factor in severity of this illness?

Probably the latter, but health officials seem interested in the developing data.

From CTV:

… in a report released Friday, health officials detailed the cases of 10 Michigan patients who were very sick from swine flu in late May and early June and ended up at a specialized hospital in Ann Arbor. Three of them died.

Nine of the 10 were either obese or extremely obese. Only three of the 10 had other health problems. Two of the three that died had no other health conditions.

This hardly settles the question of whether obesity is its own risk factor for swine flu. It’s possible the patients had undiagnosed heart problems or other unidentified conditions.

The report is called Intensive-Care Patients With Severe Novel Influenza A (H1N1) Virus Infection — Michigan, June 2009 and is published in MMWR, the CDC’s rapid turnaround publication for disease. The report warns:

This report describes the clinical findings of a limited series of patients with novel influenza A (H1N1) virus infection and refractory ARDS …. This patient group represents the most severely ill subset of persons with novel influenza A (H1N1) virus infection and is notable for the predominance of males, the high prevalence of obesity (especially extreme obesity), and the frequency of clinically significant pulmonary emboli and MODS. All required advanced mechanical ventilator support, reflecting severe pulmonary damage. The pulmonary compromise described in this report suggests that severe pulmonary damage occurred as a result of primary viral pneumonia. Although data are not available, this damage also might be attributable to secondary host immune responses (e.g., through cytokine dysregulation triggered by high viral replication). However, bacterial coinfection in the lung not identified by blood culture or bronchoalveolar lavage cannot be excluded.

…

The high prevalence of obesity in this case series is striking. Whether obesity is an independent risk factor for severe complications of novel influenza A (H1N1) virus infection is unknown. Obesity has not been identified previously as a risk factor for severe complications of seasonal influenza. ….

Further characterization of severe cases of novel influenza A (H1N1) virus infection in the United States and worldwide is needed to determine the frequency of the findings from this limited case-series.

You can read the report here.

Clearly this is very preliminary and I suspect that this will not develop. In other words, I suspect that existing poor health related to the cardiopulmonary system is a serious risk factor with any flu. But we shall see.