An open letter to Facebook phisherpersons

To all those who create pictures that say stuff on them as a way of phishing for information and generating traffic for your Facebook page:

Yes, I do love my mother/husband/country. But I'm still not sharing your pic. I have the ability to answer your inane question. But I'm hardly going to put that answer in the comments with the other 32,765 people who can. While we're at it, God hears my prayers and Jesus loves me, whether I like a cheesy graphic that says as much and respond with 'Amen' in the comments or not. No major public figure or entity is tracking people's interaction with your pic to pay for someone's operation or give me a free anything. Agreeing with your political or social views will not entice me to share with you - a random stranger - that I do or do not, along with anything else about me that is none of your business. And sharing a pic with a guilt-request to increase awareness about [insert random cause/illness here] will achieve only one thing: increasing your awareness of who the people are on Facebook that you might target for future marketing. No thanks.

Please, folks, do yourself a favor: stop sharing, liking, or commenting on phishing pics. Especially from groups with names like "Fun pix for u 2 share". But, if you must, stick to cat pictures. I (almost) always like those.

Can you still call it water?

I was pretty excited about the new Pur flavor options feature on the on-the-tap filter system. I was… until I read the ingredients on the flavors: the 2nd ingredient is propylene glycol? At concentrations as high as 22%? Yikes! Check out the material safety data on propylene glycol:

Potential Health Effects
Eye:
Causes mild eye irritation. Contact may cause irritation, tearing,
and burning pain.
Skin:
Causes moderate skin irritation. Contact with the skin may cause
erythema, dryness, and defatting.
Ingestion:
May cause gastrointestinal irritation with nausea, vomiting and
diarrhea. Low hazard for usual industrial handling. May cause
hemoglobinuric nephrosis. May cause changes in surface EEG.
Inhalation:
Low hazard for usual industrial handling. May cause respiratory
tract irritation.
Chronic:
May cause reproductive and fetal effects. Laboratory experiments
have resulted in mutagenic effects. Exposure to large doses may cause
central nervous system depression. Chronic ingestion may cause lactic
acidosis and possible seizures.

How did this ever get approved as a water additive meant to get people drinking more water and, consequently, more propylene glycol? Obscene!

Nearly double the risk = not significant?

Reading an abstract which contains the following statement:
"Among the low risk group of women, i.e., those who had never undergone radiation therapy and who had never had a goiter, a history of one or more pregnancies was also associated with a small increase in the risk of thyrold cancer (relative risk = 1.8, 95% confidence interval, 1.1–3.1)." Read the rest of the abstract; that risk number of 1.8 is 1.8 times the risk of the control group.

Now, check out the conclusion drawn:
"While pregnancy and use of exogenous estrogens have an impact on the production of thyrold-stimulating hormone, their effect on the incidence of thyrold carcinoma, if present at all, appears to be small." Excuse me? Nearly double the risk (in the case of pregnancy, at least) is considered to be evidence of a small effect? Good grief! What would a large effect look like?

Compare that with a study on the increased risk of lung cancer brought on by second-hand smoke exposure from living with a smoker. The increase was about 25%. What is that, 1.25 times the risk (put in similar language to the thyroid cancer study)? Maybe I'm misinterpreting the stats (correct me if I'm wrong). We take second-hand smoke as a risk factor for lung cancer for granted while seem to be willfully ignoring the detrimental effects of hormonally active birth control… or even, as this study seems to suggest, pregnancy. Does that seem right to you?

With all due respect

"The CBC depicts a group of adolescents helping to administer what the Catholic Church believes to be "in essence" the body of Jesus Christ.

It presents them as sneering at these sacred things, as using them as poker chips, as infecting them with drugs to poison the faithful people who receive them, and finally as conducting a criminal activity from the sanctuary of the church.

However, spokesperson Keay assures us, by doing all this the CBC "intends no disrespect" towards the church.

You have to wonder, what else could they possibly do if they did intend disrespect?" - Calgary Sun, Ted Byfield, May 20, 2007

challenges to global warming theory

"Since carbon dioxide inhibits the escape of heat from the Earth, maybe the most environmentally friendly thing you could do would be to start each day by driving your SUV around the block four or five times to bolster carbon dioxide emissions and thus retard the Earth's heat loss.

The second goal was far more devastating. It came with a book just published by Henrik Svensmark, director of the Centre for Sun Climate Research at the National Space Centre in Copenhagen. He calls it The Chilling Stars: A New Theory on Climate Change.

Like Patterson and the Russians, Svensmark contends the sun is a major factor in climate change, but he has been working for eight years to back this up with experimental proof.

He has established a laboratory in which the sun's rays and Earth's atmosphere have been set up in model, and the cosmic effects on the Earth thereby observed.

The results, detailed in the current issue of Discovery, the highly respected magazine of science, are startling. They show solar activity affects cloud formations on Earth, which in turn determine the Earth's climate. Paradoxically, it seems meteorological conditions do not determine the cloud formations; rather, cloud formations determine meteorological conditions.

Since this gravely challenges the significance to the climate of man-made carbon dioxide, Svensmark found himself being assailed and deplored by his fellow-scientists, who accused him of being financed by "oil money."

Almost all his funding, Sevnsmark retorted, comes from Denmark's Carlsberg Foundation, which is funded by Carlsberg brewery, which sells beer, not oil.

If anything, Carlsberg would surely have a vested interest in global warming. It's on the hot days that we drink the most beer." - Calgary Sun, Ted Byfield, June 24, 2007

ways to check up on your doc

[courtesy of The Week magazine]
Reference from the Federation of State Medical Boards and free hospital ratings from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

After birth

"A woman in Las Vegas is suing the hospital where she gave birth to her child because the hospital is refusing to release her placenta to her, and she had been planning to ingest it for its nutrients. Anne Swanson, 30, is an earthy mama who google searches reveal is an advocate for natural hypnobirth, and before the April birth of her second child by emergency C-section, she had planned to have her placenta dried, ground into powder and placed into capsules for the treatment of post-partum depression. The theory behind this non-traditional practice is that excess hormones build up in the placenta during pregnancy, and new mothers can take the pills and replenish depleted hormones and control PPD." - Parent Dish, May 10, 2007

That actually sounds pretty smart to me. Hey, if you can store your own blood for later use (or eat your own boogers, for that matter), you should be able to take home your placenta and dispose of it as you will.

Wikipedia alternatives

Citizendium, Scholarpedia, and Conservapedia: have to check them out sometime.

Tolerance

"53 percent of its sample of 1,200 college and university faculty members said they have "unfavorable" feelings toward evangelical Christians.

Tobin asked professors at all kinds of colleges -- public and private, secular and religious, two-year and four-year -- to rate their feelings toward various religious groups, from very warm or favorable to very cool or unfavorable. He said he designed the question primarily to gauge anti-Semitism but found that professors expressed positive feelings toward Jews, Buddhists, Roman Catholics and most other religious groups.

The only groups that elicited highly negative responses were evangelical Christians and Mormons." - story by Alan Cooperman, Washington Post, May 5, 2007

More tuition = better?

"'For over a decade I particpated in university meetings aimed at determining annual tuition increases," said Peter Wood, an anthropolgist at Boston University. "The only real question was, "How much can we get away with?"'" - page 11, THE WEEK, May 18, 2007

Michael Crichton

I was fascinated by his book State of Fear. His website contains more on his views on environmentalism as religion.

Remember to check

http://vote.wa.gov/Elections/general/Turnout.aspx

Preparing to vote

United States Senator

Mike McGavick - "I believe that the choice should exist and therefore do not support a constitutional ban on the practice. However,[we should] work to change the hearts and minds of those who would seek an abortion - to show them that there are other options available. I support parental notifications, a ban on partial birth abortion, and a restriction on federal spending for abortion related services. The fact remains that this deeply personal issue needs to remain personal and the choice should exist." - from http://www.issues2000.org/social/Mike_McGavick_Abortion.htm

All of the others are openly pro-choice, just flat out.

United States Representative

Larry W. Ishmael - "Mr. Ishmael believes that there are two instances where abortion is acceptable and those are: 1) when the pregnancy resulted from incest or rape, (2) when the health of the mother if at stake. He has had personal experience with the latter and it took a heavy emotional toll on he and his wife, but the circumstances dictated it. The exceptions Mr. Ishmael draws are because only in those instances does the woman not have control over the decision to become pregnant." - from http://www.vote-smart.org/npat.php?can_id=MWA78412#0

WA state Senator

Toby Nixon

Getting less exciting at this point. My "dummy litmus" issue is making the decision way too easy. Will post the rest if something exciting happens or if real introspection is required.

http://www.wanaral.org/politicalupdates/voteprochoice.shtml - a great place to see who NOT to vote for.