Posts from — December 2007

The BBC looks at a study of Conventional Medical Wisdom:

THE SEVEN MEDICAL BELIEFS

• Drink at least eight glasses of water a day
• We use only 10% of our brains
• Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death
• Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight
• Shaving causes hair to grow back faster or coarser
• Mobile phones are dangerous in hospitals
• Eating turkey makes people especially drowsy

There is no evidence that any of these beliefs is valid, and a good deal of evidence that they are total garbage. The water drinking, depending on your weight, could potentially be harmful because there is water in almost everything you eat as well as what you drink.

When I was in the military I spent a lot of time on bases that belonged to the Strategic Air Command, the guys with the bombers and missiles with the nuclear warheads. When you entered the base there was always a sign indicating the base was part of SAC and the bottom was the command motto: “Peace Is Our Profession”. The general response from those of us not in SAC was “War Is Just A Hobby”.

That’s the way I reacted to the picture accompanying this CNN article on a prisoner at Guantanamo. The picture shows a sign attached to a chain-link fence topped by barbed wire and a coil of razor wire that says:

Camp Delta 2
Camp Delta 3
Maximum Security
[graphics]
“Honor Bound To Defend Freedom”

Guys, it’s a prison. You are keeping people inside. You don’t “defend freedom” with a prison.

I realize that SAC would not have approved of “Raining Death From The Sky”, and the Marines would reject “Abandon Hope All Who Enter Here”, but they really should try harder.

Josh White of the Washington Post reports that Flaws may ground older F-15s indefinitely

Air Force inspectors have discovered major structural flaws in eight older-model F-15 fighters, sparking a new round of examinations that could ground all of the older jets into January or beyond, senior Air Force and defense officials said.

The Air Force’s 442 F-15A through F-15D planes, the mainstay of the nation’s air-to-air combat force for 30 years, have been grounded since November, shortly after one of the airplanes broke into large chunks and crashed in rural Missouri. Since then, Air Force officials have found cracks in the main support beams behind the cockpits of eight other F-15s, and they fear that similar problems could exist in others.
…

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At 12:08AM CST the winter solstice occurred marking the longest night of the year. If everyone has been good, the days start getting longer tomorrow. Locally, the sun will rise at 6:39AM and set at 4:49PM for a total of 10 hours and 10 minutes of daylight, but tomorrow will be a whole second longer.

This also marks HogWatch, so don’t forget to put out the turnips.

Echidne covers another “water is wet” study on The Cost Of Not Having Health Insurance. The short version is if you don’t have insurance and get sick you will die. I think most people have figured that out.

In some ways the need is made even more obvious by the story of Nataline Sarkisyan, who had insurance through Cigna HealthCare and died today. The Associated Press is now reporting that the Family is suing Cigna, but that won’t stop the company’s denial management specialists from refusing to cover treatment for other policy holders.

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I’m bald, I have no interest in nor use for laser hair removal systems.

I do not care that your порно is бесплатное, I have no use for two pages of links to it in my comments database.

I delete this crap. You aren’t going to receive a link, and I resent having to make the effort to click on the delete button.

Sending this multiple times to a post about a computerized guitar is not going to avoid the checks in place. Go bother Repubs, they may need your products.

[Note: any reference to the subject matter of this post will get your comment dumped in the spam bin rather than appearing as normal. They are filtered for now.]

Xan at Corrente refers to it as the shipstone from Robert Heinlein’s novel, Friday, but this is a philosopher’s stone for renewable power generation. Stanford University researchers are on track to produce a new Lithium-ion battery with ten times the capacity of current batteries.

The problem with electrical power generation has never been producing the electricity – there are multiple ways of doing that – it has been storing it in sufficient quantities. You can rig photo-voltaic cells to produce electricity, but you need to store that power for the nights and cloudy days. Windmills work well, but you need to store the power for calm days.

The standard lead-acid battery has too many drawbacks, and a new storage system has been holding up really useful electric vehicles, off-the-grid power systems, even an all-day laptop.

If this breakthrough can be put into production, a lot of things will change. This is very good news.

The Struggle Continues

scritch…scritch…scritch

[Editor: In solidarity with the striking WGA members, Zipster demonstrates his technique for dealing with blood-sucking parasites.]

Friday Ark

In Memoriam

Randy.

Kevin Drum covers some of the backstory in Bitter Confrontation of Paul Krugman’s unease with Barack Obama over comity in Washington. Krugman doesn’t think Obama understands the true situation, the real environment in Washington, and Obama’s strategy to bring all parties together to achieve a consensus will not work because of the very polarized environment.

Kevin notes that Jon Alter has written in Obama’s defense and cited earlier examples of compromises, but Kevin remembers what conditions were like, and doesn’t accept Alter’s underlying premise.

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I found these supposedly geek gift ideas on Krugman’s sidebar. I’m a geek, but I can’t imagine buying these things for anyone I know. This is what happens when businesses transfer most of their R&D budget to marketing – you get the same stuff re-packaged, but nothing really new and useful. This is another way of milking a cash cow by changing the container and saying it’s “new and improved”.

Someone in blogtopia™ made the point that the US is in trouble because we no longer make the things that people need, but try to convince people that they need what we make. This affects and distorts the market, because consumers don’t have a real choice if all of their buying decisions are based on determining which is the least bad product.

So, I went to the store this afternoon and saw my first political signage of the campaign. I saw yard signs [big and small] and many different bumper stickers – all for Ron Paul.

Did I mention that this is a very military area, active-duty and retired? I don’t understand this phenomenon at all. This might be the libertarians showing their presence. It’s a little spooky when the locals start doing things this out of character.

If you didn’t know, McClatchy has a Editorial Cartoon Gallery at its site. I am especially fond of the selection from the Miami Herald by Jim Morin, but then I’m a nasty person.

Chet Scoville at Shakesville has a question for liberal-minded people: Do you believe in a utopia?

I’m just not ruthless enough to stamp out all of the Republicans, so there is no way of establishing a utopia. When you have Repubs weaseling their way into power, there’s always an increase in poor people, so that problem will be with us forever.

If you are a liberal, you believe in people making their own choices, and too many people choose to be greedy and ignorant. Utopias aren’t possible until people learn to share, and accept that “all men are created equal.”

I’m going out on a limb and predict that John Edwards and Mike Huckabee will win in Iowa and South Carolina. If anyone, like the reporters who are covering the elections, don’t understand why the races are theirs to lose, it’s time to do your homework.

These two men appeal to the committed voters in their parties in these two states, and these two states have been consistent in their choices for a very long time. This is of course why these states should not be given the over-emphasis that they receive from the media.

On the Democratic side people seem to have forgotten that Edwards came in second to Kerry in Iowa in 2004 and has expanded on that experienced team, while Bill Clinton and his team didn’t even contest Iowa in 1992, so the Clintons and others don’t have the Iowa-specific team that Edwards has.