The Adventures of Tobasco da Gama

The fundamental premise of evolutionary psychology assumes that human evolution completely stopped with the appearance of Homo sapiens sapiens 200,000 years ago. Discuss.

Rep. John Boehner is so opposed to this fictitious “government takeover” of health insurance.

I wonder why.

(Live feed with donation statistics via Sunlight Foundation.)

I’m still as skeptical as ever, and I still think skepticism is just as important as it ever was, but I’m having a really hard time getting interested in fighting the good fight any more. The fact is, it’s boring as fuck. Pick your woo, whether it be climate denialism, anti-vax, ghost hunting, creationism, UFOs, birthers, Bigfoot, or whatever, and it’s the same fallacies and arguments over and over again. Some days, I wonder whether the believers aren’t using some madlibs variant where they drop in they just fill in the nouns as appropriate.

Worse still, it seems like such a one-way conversation. I don’t consider arguing with a dinner table to be a productive use of my time, but that’s how it is. No matter how many times you explain to a homeopath that, scientific implausibility notwithstanding, no well-designed clinical trial has demonstrated an effect for homeopathy beyond placebo, they’ll never actually address that point. They just jump straight to the special pleading. So I don’t see why I should bother even trying to have the conversation.

Especially when I could be ranting about shitty journalism instead.

How do you deal with it?

Look, science journalists. Getting shit right is not hard. It usually doesn’t take that much longer than whatever you’re doing now. Honest! For instance, I read this Reuters report on fMRI and vegetative states, then spent like five minutes reading abstracts on PubMed to learn that the research has been misrepresented.

The fact is, the researcher quoted in the article doesn’t think he’s communicating with people in vegetative states. I’m pretty sure this is the specific article being referenced, although since journalists can’t be bothered with things like “article titles” or “names of journals”, I can’t be sure. Quoth the abstract:

One of the major challenges in the clinical evaluation of brain injury survivors is to comprehensively assess the level of preserved cognitive function in order to inform diagnostic decisions and suggest appropriate rehabilitation strategies. However, the limited (if any) capacity for producing behavior in some of these patients often limits the extent to which cognitive functions can be explored via standard bedside methods.

I.e., the point of the study was to evaluate whether “standard bedside methods” (behavioural asessment) are truly effective in determining the level of cognitive function the patient possesses. Quoth another article by the same researcher quoted by Reuters:

A diagnosis of vegetative or minimally conscious state is made on the basis of the patient’s clinical history and detailed behavioral examinations, which rely upon the patient being able to move or speak in order to demonstrate residual cognitive function. … However, it remains possible that a subgroup of these patients may retain some level of awareness, but lack the ability to produce any motor output and are therefore mistakenly diagnosed as vegetative.

I.e., the hypothesis is misdiagnosis. The new fMRI technique is aimed at uncovering these individuals who aren’t actually vegetative but appear so due to severely impaired motor function — and, yes, allowing them to communicate.

This took five minutes on PubMed and basic critical reading skills to figure out. I didn’t need any special foreknowledge of the medical literature. Hell, for all I know, the author of the Reuters story interviewed Dr. Adrian Owen and learned this from him, but either didn’t understand it or thought that “VEGETATIVE PATIENTS CAN COMMUNICATE ZOMG TERRI SCHIAVO” made a sexier story. Which is especially crass, since the technique was only demonstrated to work on patients with traumatic brain injury, not oxygen starvation like Terri Schiavo. So, yeah: fuck you for that pointless, ghoulish re-dredging up of that poor woman’s suffering, you ghoulish hack.

P.s.: Steven Novella has also written about this.

Let’s have fun with this. I’ll write down my thoughts about the State of the Union as it happens, but I don’t really see the value in literally live-blogging this sort of thing. Anyway:

Read the rest of this entry »

First thing’s first. “Assault” is not the right term for this, but only because it carries a specific legal meaning that requires physical contact. But that doesn’t justify waving away the situation I’m about to discuss as no big deal, because it is.

The Escapist has a news post entitled “Female Gamer ‘Sexually Assaulted’ While Playing PS3“. According to the original posting on the Playstation forum, a female player (the poster’s roommate) was harassed by another, male player, who insisted on following her avatar around and crouching behind her, as if staring at her ass. He didn’t stop after being asked to stop or after the female player (and others present) threatened to report him, which she and several others eventually did.

Read the rest of this entry »

While the Boston Globe dropped the ball with its coverage of the education bill passing through the state House of Representatives, The Somerville Journal picked it up and ran with it. I’m not asking for anything impossible, here, if a local newspaper can pull off what a big, lumbering dinosaur like the Globe apparently finds difficult.

I noticed an article in the Boston Globe, a copy of which was lying in a common area at work, about an education bill that had just passed through the Massachusetts House of Representatives. So I read the whole thing, which was a lot of quotes of people saying that they liked charter schools and descriptions of the marathon length of the midnight session and whatnot.

And then I realised that, having read the article, not once did it mention the number or even title of the bill, nor did it describe in concrete terms what the effects are. The bill apparently increases the number of charter schools the state will permit to exist, but doesn’t specify how many charter schools will be permitted if the bill passes the State Senate. It also “aims to overhaul the state’s worst schools”, but doesn’t say how.

Granted, the article does mention that “members plowed through about 150 amendments to the bill”, which is an interesting piece of information, and maybe does excuse a somewhat sketchily-detailed article. However, that doesn’t excuse the lack of any detail whatsoever. This follow-up, which appears to be a web-only article, and therefore one which won’t get as many views, reveals that the so-called “overhaul” of failing schools is actually just a conversion of those schools into charter schools. I’m not saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it strikes me as something that’s pretty important when it comes to informing the public’s view of a bill’s effects.

Maybe this is just an indictment of one of the limitations of print journalism. With the pressure on to file a report on a big, breaking story like this in time for the presses to churn out enough copies for the morning edition, details necessarily fall through the cracks. And that’s ignoring situations like the infamous Dewey Defeats Truman headline, where the pressure to make it to press led to the printing of a blatantly counterfactual article before all the details came in.

The increasing prominence of blogging is a double-edged sword in these cases. You don’t face deadline pressure, but then you also have a sense of immediacy that leads to kicking out first impressions that end up becoming a final draft. Tesla knows I’ve fallen prey to that trap, but at least I’m just a lonely little fourth stringer who nobody looks to for advice. I’d be interested to know how many people read blogs via RSS versus going directly to webpages. Either way, though, it seems to me that the “time shift” effect encourages getting the story right over getting the story first, since you can’t count on your audience reading your post before someone else’s, even if you post first.

I think I’m gonna switch off the Twitter digests. They’re a bit messy on the site because Twitter Tools doesn’t let me auto-insert a More tag, and they distract from the actual content, on the rare occasions that I actually post something. I’ll keep the Twitter sidebar, and of course anybody who’s actually interested in reading my Twitter updates can follow me directly on the site. I do intend to start posting more soon (although I’m toying with the idea of a spin-off site for more professional-ish, content-y blogging, while I keep this one for rants and raves and random personal/creative stuff), and I’d like that to be what people see when they come to the site, as opposed to my wacky Twitter hijinks.

That is all. Dismissed.

• Shiny things! #
• A HORROR HORDE OF CRAWL-AND-CRUSH GIANTS CLAWING OUT OF THE EARTH FROM MILE-DEEP CATACOMBS! #movienight #
• I cannot stress this enough: I really, really love the movie Them! Completely unironically. It's just an awesome movie. #
• So apparently Leonard Nimoy had a brief appearance in Them! as an Army sergeant. Not sure which scene he was in, though. #
• Anyway: Thank you, ants. Thants: http://bit.ly/5Jel0N #
• Yes. Yes, he is. RT @omgterras: William Gibson is kind of a terrible author. #
• One of Neko Case's picks for her guest programmer night on TCM is THE THIRD MAN. <3 #
• However much you hate your job, at least you don't work for this guy: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/A-Bit-Off-Kilter.aspx #
• Also, these are awesome: http://kotaku.com/5404792/if-you-dont-have-a-holiday-card-list-make-one #
• So Bank of America apparently changed my credit card account number for no reason and now I'm getting declined everywhere. Fuck you, BoA. #
• My card doesn't expire for another year, and I always pay on time. Dicks. #
• In other incompetent bureaucratic assfuck news, my company STILL is sending my paystubs to my old address, six months after I moved. #
• What I'm saying is, let's burn it all to the fucking ground and start over with a primitive barter system. #
• Carrying 12 goats to trade for 3 bales of hay couldn't be any more inconvenient than this bullshit. #
• AAAAAAAAAHHHHH I CAN'T GO AAAAAAAAHHHHH RT @sarahborges: SBBS Live at the Lizard Lounge – Jan 1 & 2: http://bit.ly/8Obk3Y #
• Also, my throat is sore. Today sucks. #
• Oh, so Greg Epstein thinks Rick Warren is a pretty cool dude? That makes him a shitbag by association, in my book. http://bit.ly/5wVtUB #
• Aw, I just realised our cable package doesn't have TCM, so I can't watch Neko Case's movie picks. =( #
• I love Ace of Cakes, because it's basically a show about a bunch of people who get along making other people happy by delivering cakes. #
• Basically, Ace of Cakes is like if Mister Rogers were a baker. #
• Me, too! RT @porlob: I <3 @amandamarcotte so much! http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/sexism_and_atheist_baiting_all_rolled_into_one/ #
• You know, Ellen Fox on The Rotten Tomatoes Show is twice as funny as Olivia Munn from Attack of the Show thinks she is. #
• Pretty cool-looking. Probably a malfunctioning missile. RT @fortyseven: Whoa — What in the hell is THIS? – http://is.gd/5gWRn #
• Oh, HuffPo, you so crazy! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-kaufman/google-books-and-kindles_b_380536.html #
• Out-of-context quote: "Picture Casablanca as a video game." http://kotaku.com/5411145/treading-the-boards-game-characters-vs-movie-actors #
• Buy, buy, buy! RT @sarahborges: SBBS Online Store – Now Open for Business http://bit.ly/5EVhm2 #
• Once again, THIS is why we need net neutrality. Carriers don't want infrastructure improvements, they want throttling: http://bit.ly/7VGbsO #
• "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…" http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=30945 #
• TF2 fans… SHIT JUST GOT REAL: http://www.teamfortress.com/war/administrator/ #
• Atheist holiday traditions: http://thephoenix.com/Boston/Life/94366-Atheist-holiday-traditions/ #
• Point/Counterpoint: The Norwegian Spiral in the Sky http://bit.ly/5u7lWr #
• Science says: No-strings-attached friends-with-benefits sex is 100% A-OK. SCIENCE. http://bit.ly/7gS9zA #
• "… Gore appeared on MSNBC, where Andrea Mitchell read from Sarah Palin’s Facebook page to ask the former vice president questions …" #
• One of the first things you learn from working in IT is just how shockingly NON-deterministic computers can be. #
• RT @theisb: Bella's favorite color is brown. Which is ironic, since this is the whitest book since Mein Kampf. #chrisvstwilight #
• RT @corymcabee: Get STINGRAY SAM episode 2: THE FORBIDDEN CHROMOSOME for FREE @ http://www.corymcabee.com. Featuring the FREDWARD song. #
• Hoist by their own petard.© RT @bclevinger: http://is.gd/5jGI9 This is beautiful. #
• Fellow cyclists: do not be a MASSIVE DICK like this guy. http://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/mis/1505299149.html #
• http://gizmodo.com/photogallery/timetravelmart/1000840166 — Come back yesterday. #
• It's really kind of a miracle that Mike Rowe has all his limbs and digits intact, isn't it? #
• One of the many things that I love about Guitar Wolf is the fact that they're so blasé about turning "missile" into a verb. #guitarwolf #
• One wonders what the Pirahá would make of Numberwang. #
• Hello, everyone! It's time for Numberwang, the maths quiz show that's taking Twitter by storm! @Cynraven, start us off. #numberwang #
• #numberwang @Cynraven That's numberwang! @rebeccawatson? #
• Fascinating! RT @jjuliano: Well, @tobascodagama, there have been 44 US Presidents and yet only 18 of them were Numberwang! #numberwang #
• Back to more Numberwang! @surlyamy? #numberwang #
• #numberwang @jjuliano Twice was, coincidentally, just the Numberwang we were looking for! Too bad you're not playing. #
• That's it for tonight, everybody, but join us next time for more Numberwang! In the meantime, stay Numberwang! #
• http://www.teamfortress.com/crafting/ — TF2 adds crafting. I may never play any other game ever again. #

Powered by Twitter Tools