The Adventures of Tobasco da Gama

Us white folk didn’t have these until a thousand years later, and you expect me to believe those brown people figured it out on their own?

Haha, I kid! Blatant euro-centric racism is only half of the utter stupidity behind these idiots. The other half is a complete misunderstanding of the way that technology is invented and propagates.

There was one of those ancient astronaut shows on the History Channel last night. (As an aside: a while ago, I got a request on Flickr from the producers of an ancient astronaut show for permission to use my Antikythera Mechanism photo. I’m pretty sure this was the same show I got the request from.) Basically every argument in the show for how the Aztec pyramids or the Antikythera Mechanism or whatever else were built came down to, “Well, we’re not sure exactly how they got the idea for this, so clearly it was aliens. I mean, really, do you think those people were clever enough to invent this?” The latent racism was painfully, uncomfortably obvious.

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Hey! I think it’s time for a lyrics post, yeah?

One of the advantages of having an anarchist partner is that you learn about how awesome all of the Chumbawamba songs apart from “Tubthumping” are. Here’s an example:

Have a word with your Patron Saint
Cover up the cracks with a lick of paint
All The exit doors are all double-locked
Because St Sebastian sways but doesn’t rock

Here’s to you – you put up a fight
You’re the last to leave, now turn out the light
You danced to the Devil and the Feathery wife
Now the Ordnance Survey is mapping out your life

Look at the small print: it’s what we agreed -
Sign your name before we teach you how to read
This is the land, the Land of Do What You’re Told
The Land of the Free: if you don’t leave the fold
Smile a little wider as you’re waiting to be sold
This is the land, the Land of Do What You’re Told

I’m a celebrity – let me in here
One last jump from the end of the pier
We breached the wall, but I was too tired to run
My Get Up And Go got up and now it’s gone

Look at the small print: it’s what we agreed -
Sign your name before we teach you how to read
This is the land, the Land of Do What You’re Told
The Land of the Free: if you don’t leave the fold
Smile a little wider as you’re waiting to be sold
This is the land, the Land of Do What You’re Told

This is the land, the Land of Do What You’re Told
With a little lip service to breaking the mold
Smile a little wider as you’re waiting to be sold
This is the land, the Land of Do What You’re Told

(Repeat)
We’re going on strike for twelve percent
We’re not downhearted yet
They’re filming it all for a reality show
So twelve percent we’ll get

There are a couple of lines from Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary that occasionally find their way back into my brain, from time to time. This is one of them, shared here and now apropos of nothing:

I have no valid complaint against hustlers, no rational bitch, but the act of selling is repulsive to me. I harbor a secret urge to whack a salesman in the face, crack his teeth and put red bumps around his eyes.

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.

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.

‘What ho!’ I said.
‘What ho!’ said Motty.
‘What ho! What ho!’
‘What ho! What ho! What ho!’
After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.

Just for fun, here’s what I was drinking tonight.

• Angostura + orange bitters
• absinthe (I used Kübler)
• lemon wedge
• ice cube
• louche with soda water

Deliciousness! Enjoy!

So, those of you who follow me on Twitter might have noticed me referring to a trip to Washington DC and hinting at some crazy plan I wanted to enact when I got there. Well, today is the day I go out and do it, so rather than keep everybody in suspense until I get back to Boston and upload today’s photos, I’ll just reveal things now.

I’ve been a fan of the Fallout games since the very first one, and of course recently a brand-new game in the series, Fallout 3, was released by Bethesda, makers of the Elder Scrolls RPGs. Fallout 3 moved the action from a devastated, post-apocalyptic California to a devastated, post-apocalyptic DC known in-game as The Capital Wasteland. See where I’m going with this?

Fallout 3 uses a number of well-known DC landmarks as significant spots in the game. The Jefferson Memorial becomes Project Purity, the focus of the game’s main quest. The Washington Monument is home to Galaxy News Radio‘s (“This is Three Dog! Awoooo!”) broadcast relay. Other spots like Dupont Circle, the Willard Hotel (subject of several of my hints), and many of the DC Metro stations, have cameo appearances in the game.

So, what’s a nerd to do? Obviously, dress up as the game’s main character and wander the city asking random passerby to take pictures of him. Obviously.

I had the idea for all of this last Saturday, so I had to rush things. My pal James helped out with the jumpsuit, sewing on the yellow trim and the big 101 on the back. (The game’s advertising tends to use the Armored Jumpsuit, but we went for the plain Vault Jumpsuit instead.) He also loaned me a bit of Sculpey, which I used to mold a Pip-Boy 3000. I made a sleeve for the Pip-Boy from posterboard and some foam I had lying around, then I painted both.

For four days of work, I was pretty damned impressed with what I managed to pull off. A lot of the details are off from the game, but in broad strokes I think it looks awesome. (Again, muchos kudos to James for helping on the jumpsuit.) So here are the photos of it on Flickr! I’ll get photos from my actual DC trip up as soon as I can, which probably won’t be until Monday.

I report, you decide.