So I used to like Keith Olbermann. I thought he was funny but also fair in his analysis of news. Lately, though, he has neither been funny nor fair. Here is an example:
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Liberal Media Matters
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A Spider in an Online Mortgage Ad
I can’t remember where I saw this advertisement, but it was for the LowerMyBills.com place where they offer a “deal” on a refinanced mortgage. (This is probably legitimate, but I would not even consider this place for a mortgage based on this ad.)
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Shockwave traffic jam
Traffic that grinds to a halt and then restarts for no apparent reason is one of the biggest causes of frustration for drivers. Now a team of Japanese researchers has recreated the phenomenon on a test-track for the first time.
The mathematical theory behind these so-called “shockwave” jams was developed more than 15 years ago using models that show jams appear from nowhere on roads carrying their maximum capacity of free-flowing traffic – typically triggered by a single driver slowing down.
After that first vehicle brakes, the driver behind must also slow, and a shockwave jam of bunching cars appears, travelling backwards through the traffic.
The theory has frequently been modelled in computer simulations, and seems to fit with observations of real traffic, but has never been recreated experimentally until now.
Esthesioneuroblastoma
So Google Web History has a feature called Interesting Items. Google saves your search history (only when logged into your Gmail/Google account) and then analyzes it to determine the “recent top queries related to your searches.” I must have been doing a lot of searching for medications, diseases, and science-related stuff (explanation: medical school) because coming in at #4 in top queries related to my searches is esthesioneuroblastoma, an “uncommon malignant neoplasm of the nasal vault, believed to arise from the olfactory epithelium.” What an interesting and unusual thing to learn! Interesting video is also offered and a few months ago I was shown a video of cataract surgery.
Spammers have horrible grammar
Here’s a spam email that I just received:
Hi,
I see you are expressed interest in my item by bidding, i want to tell you that i have for sale, the winner of my auction didn’t respond to my emails. To purchase my item please reply me with the best offer for this item.
P.S. If you are interested i will wait your reply asap.
Thank you!
Wow! I would have thought this guy was an idiot even if it wasn’t marked as spam. It might have sounded better to type it in his own language and then use one of the free online translation services. However, the more likely thing is that he lacks the education to even know how horrible his grammar is. If I was trying to convince people to buy into my scam, I at least would have taken the time to make the email appear professional.
Homeopathy – Quackery Or A Key To The Future of Medicine?
Remember my post entitled “Diluting medicine: Homeopathy“? In it I linked to a number of videos refuting the practice of homeopathy. A few days ago I found a 2-hour video of a debate held at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. The debate alternates between both viewpoints. It can be watched fairly quickly because the video is cued up with a Powerpoint slide. Advancing the flash Powerpoint slide also advances the video. It’s quite interesting. The Canadian homeopathic doctor at the end makes the very radical point that the healthcare crisis would be completely solved if everyone switched over to homeopathy…ahh, yeah right. The moderator mentioned that more such debates would be happening in 2008. I wished the format is more of an actual debate. The video was just 4-5 different people talking with little discussion occurring. I feel the best part of the video could have been the question and answer session that occurred after the online webcast ended. Here’s hoping that the format will be different for their future debates.
Advertisement for the debate:
A Debate: Homeopathy – Quackery Or A Key To The Future of Medicine?
Donald Marcus M.D. (Baylor)An international forum to explore the facts around this controversial modality in an attempt to determine whether it has any place in medical care.
Participants to include Donald Marcus M.D. (Baylor), Iris Bell M.D., Ph.D. (University of Arizona), Rustum Roy Ph.D. (Penn State) and others.
You are invited to watch a debate between six internationally renowned experts as they examine the basic science as well as the clinical and epidemiological evidence around this 200 year old system of medicine.
Government’s New Minimalist Mission
IBDeditorials.com has a great article entitled, Government’s New Minimalist Mission: ‘Just Keep Us Safe And Leave Us Alone’, that discusses the need for small government. The funny thing is that the Left preaches the need for government help/intervention in everything. Yet, when showcasing a successful individual, rarely is government help mentioned as the reason for the success. It is always how the individual succeeded in a world stacked against him or her.
The quote below is only a snippet of the entire article. The bolding is mine.
The following set of minimalist guidelines may be useful.
1. The need for government in a society varies inversely to the sophistication and affluence of its people. Despite government’s recent depredations, America is for the most part still an educated, highly civilized and affluent society. At present, therefore, it needs little governance. If these qualities decline among the population (because of immigration or otherwise), more governance will be needed.
2. Government is a high-cost way of doing anything. The reason is it finances itself with taxes, which do more harm to the private economy than they yield in revenues for the government to spend. This damage occurs because taxes function like a pay cut, reducing the reward to work and investment and curtailing the supply of both.
3. The less government does, the better off we are. Because the tax revenues the government has available are always less than the cost of acquiring them, government should spend its resources solely on high-value projects that only it can perform. National defense is the best example.
4. Government cannot spend its way out of the economic hole dug by taxes. When government expands beyond its limited areas of competence and efficiency, the public benefit per dollar of additional spending drops and the marginal cost of more taxes to pay for bigger government rises.
5. Since we need so little and the cost is so high, why do we have so much government? Washington tells voters that a dollar of taxes costs only a dollar (even though experts agree that the cost is at least $2. It then insists that each dollar of spending produces much more than a dollar of public benefit (though the government’s own data show that the benefit is often less than a dollar). Washington also tells voters that the burden of taxes is borne mostly by the rich (though the damage done by taxes harms everyone, especially wage earners).
6. How to make and keep government small? There are three key steps: (a) tell the voters the truth about the high cost of taxes weighed against the often low benefit of spending; (b) force Congress to adhere to a cost-benefit budget procedure, conducted in the open with full public notice and voter participation; and (c) give everyone a “tax cut dividend” when spending reduction targets are met — and send them a bill for additional taxes when spending goes up. Government will shrink, the economy will grow and, with a large base of prosperity, America will always have plenty of money with which to meet any crisis.
Nature vs. nurture: Identical Twins Raised Apart
Here are some pretty incredible stories that I found in my clinical psychiatry book:
1) Jim L. and Jim S. were first reunited at age 39. They were genetically identical twins, reared apart since infancy by different adoptive families in Ohio and unaware of each other’s existence. As children, each twin had had a dog named Toy. Each bit his fingernails and, since age 18, had suffered from mixed headache syndrome, a combined tension and migraine headache. Each had been married twice, first to a Linda and then to a Betty. One twin had named his son James Alan, and the other, James Allen. Each had put a circular bench around a tree in his garden. Each had worked at a gas station and later part-time in law enforcement as a sheriff. Each chain-smoked Salems and preferred an occasional Miller Lite beer. Each scattered love notes to his wife around the house. Every summer, unbeknownst to the other, each had driven his family in a light blue Chevrolet from Ohio to the Pas-Grille Beach in St. Petersburg, Florida, for their summer vacation. They had similar voices, hand gestures, and mannerisms.
2) Jerry L. and Mark N., identical twins separated in infancy, were first reunited at age 30. Each was nearly bald and had a bushy mustache. Each was a volunteer firefighter and made his living installing safety equipment. Each wore aviator glasses, big belt buckles, and big key rings. Each drank Budweiser with his pinky hooked on the bottom of the can and crushed the can when he finished.
3) Jack Y. and Oskar S., identical twins born in Trinidad in 1933 and separated in infancy by their parents’ divorce, were first reunited at age 46. Oskar was raised by his Catholic mother and grandmother in Nazi-occupied Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia. Jack was raised by his Orthodox Jewish father in Trinidad and spent time on an Israeli kibbutz. Each wore aviator glasses and a blue sport shirt with shoulder plackets, had a trim mustache, liked sweet liqueurs, stored rubber bands on his wrists, read books and magazines from back to front, dipped buttered toast in his coffee, flushed the toilet before and after using it, enjoyed sneezing loudly in crowded elevators to frighten other passengers, and routinely fell asleep at night while watching television. Each was impatient, squeamish about germs, and gregarious.
4) Bessie and Jessie, identical twins separated at 8 months of age after their mother’s death, were first reunited at age 18. Each had had a bout of tuberculosis, and they had similar voices, energy levels, administrative talents, and decision-making styles. Each had had her hair cut short in early adolescence. Jessie had a college-level education, while Bessie had had only 4 years of formal education; yet Bessie scored 156 on intelligence quotient testing, while Jessie scored 153. Each read avidly, which may have compensated for Bessie’s sparse education; she created an environment compatible with her inherited potential.
Sources:
Kaplan & Sadock’s “Synopsis of Psychiatry.” Ninth Edition.
Segal NL. Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell Us about Human Behavior. Plume: New York; 1999:116-151.
Total Lunar Eclipse
I’ll be heading home early from studying to snap a few pictures of tonight’s total lunar eclipse. I guess it will be the last one seen in North America until December 2010. Unfortunately, I forgot my tripod at home so I’ll have to do it hand held. Expected temperature (without wind chill) for the eclipse in Southeast WI is supposed to be a balmy 3 degrees F. I’ll update this post with the photos once my camera warms back up from the cold.
EDIT: As promised, here is a photo of tonight’s eclipse. These photos were hand held and taken with a good lens but not great lens (Canon 28-135 f3.5-5.6 EF IS USM). Click the photo to be taken to the gallery.
As a comparison I also took a photo using my point & shoot Minolta G400. Despite being a quarter of the film speed (400 vs. 1600) and more than double the shutter speed, the shots look more like an outdated picture of Neptune than our Moon. Here one of those pictures is:
McCain’s econ brain
The big question is whether McCain’s radical agenda is simply designed to rally the Republican base, or would prove a blueprint for a McCain presidency. Given the Arizona Senator’s maverick record, voters have every reason to distrust the new McCain. He twice opposed the Bush tax cuts and keeps dropping disturbing lines like, “I don’t know as much about the economy as I should.”
But economic conservatives should take heart. McCain’s chief economic adviser – and perhaps his closest political friend – is the ultimate pure play in free market faith, former Texas Senator Phil Gramm. If McCain follows Gramm’s counsel, and most of his current positions are vintage Gramm indeed, his policies as president would represent not just a sharp departure from the Bush years, but an assault on government growth that Republicans have boasted about, but failed to achieve, for decades.
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Today, McCain is advocating a plan that’s radically different from those of Clinton and Barack Obama, and – if he goes all the way by following Gramm – could revolutionize America’s healthcare system. For McCain and Gramm, the problem with our healthcare system – and the reason why over 47 million Americans are uninsured – is that it’s excessively, scandalously expensive. The solution, they say, is to let Americans shop for healthcare with their own money. McCain advocates giving tax rebates of $2500 per individual or $5000 per family. With that money, families could purchase policies on their own. What’s truly radical about the plan is that it eliminates the tax exclusion for healthcare benefits offered by companies to their employees, and replaces it with the $2500 to $5000 rebates.
Consumers could then use that cash to buy their own insurance in what Gramm foresees as a vibrant, consumer-driven marketplace for healthcare packages.
By contrast, Clinton and Obama want to leave the employer-based system in place; Clinton would make big companies either fund gold-plated packages for workers, or pay a stiff tax to support a new Medicare-like system. The Democrats wouldn’t allow insurers to charge lower rates for young workers who cost far less than older Americans. McCain favors allowing insurers to charge rates based on actual cost. Gramm adamantly supports that policy allowing insurers to tailor their premiums, and their packages, to their customers. Says Gramm: “Most people without coverage are young and healthy. We shouldn’t penalize them by forcing them to pay for someone else’s coverage.”
Read the long version @: McCain’s econ brain
McCain sounds like just the man for the job. His ideas are much, much better than Clinton or Obama’s populist proposals. Taxing businesses is not the way to improve America. If anything, corporate taxes (which are among the highest in the world) should be lowered.