ximinez's shared items in Google Reader

Here you go...

2008-08-29T18:18:25Z

Original seen on charmed_art, but come on, if you're going to elect Palin, make sure you elect him in character!

Unhealthy health programs

2008-08-29T11:45:00Z

Dr. Leanne Barron, a Queensland doctor, again speaks out on behalf of children being harmed by “healthy eating” campaigns and today's childhood obesity interventions. Leanne Barron on obesity stigma While one would assume that the schools' "healthy eating" programme would have positive effects, increasing numbers of children and teenagers are presenting to eating disorders services in

Yankees will drag you out of the stadium if you try to go to the bathroom during "God Bless America"

2008-08-29T07:30:30Z

The Yankees are serious about their bizarre prohibition on going to the bathroom during the playing of "God Bless America" during the Seventh Inning Stretch: a man was dragged out of the stadium for daring to stand up and move around instead of singing a patriotic, religious song. I really like Tommy Smothers's formulation of the principle at work here: "America, where you're free to say anything you want, and you'd better not say what you're not supposed to!"

The NYCLU seems inclined to follow through with last year's promise to sue the Yankees over their policy of confining fans to their seats during the national anthem and "God Bless America," which is played during the seventh inning stretch. Yesterday Red Sox fan Bradford Campeau-Laurion, a Queens resident, told us about his rough ejection from Yankee stadium at the hands of the NYPD after he tried to go to the men's room during the seventh inning's moment of mandatory nationalism Monday night.

NYPD Defends Ejecting Sox Fan from Yankee Stadium During "God Bless America" (Thanks, Bill!)

Aquarium for your toilet

2008-08-29T19:56:06Z

Shared by ximinez
$300 for 2.2 gallons, noisy air pumps, and no heater? Maybe _after_ I win the lottery.

The Fish 'n Flush is an aquarium for your toilet. According to the manufacturer's site, "Fish 'n Flush... makes a fun-fashion statement for the homeowner who wants to have something unique in the bathroom. It's $299 and fits most standard tank/bowl configurations.
Toilet aquarium (Fish 'n Flush, via Dark Roasted Blend)

Previously on BB Gadgets:
• Tacky Glass Toilet Dioramas

Front Loading Washers Have A Love Affair With Mold [Appliances]

2008-08-28T18:34:30Z

Consumer Reports says that despite the fact that front-loading washers are more efficient than traditional top-loading washers, they do have one major drawback. Mold. And the problem is severe enough that there have been several class action lawsuits filed against LG, Whirlpool, and Sears, whose Kenmore front-loaders are made by Whirlpool.

So what should you do? CR says:

Our advice:

When washing, use warm or hot water unless a load requires cold.
Wipe the door gasket and glass dry once you’re done washing.
Clean the detergent dispenser and any attachments once or twice a month.
Run a dehumidifier if your laundry room is damp.

If you see mold buildup in a front-loading washer, call the manufacturer for service and save all paperwork related to the purchase and service of your machine. In the Maytag Neptune and Whirlpool Calypso settlements, plaintiffs eligible for restitution needed to document multiple authorized repair visits made during the warranty period and soon after the warranty expired.

In response to the many reader letters we've received, we're asking owners of front-loaders whether repairs they’ve had done to their washers relate to mold alone. We’ll report on the findings from the Annual Questionnaire, conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center, in future stories.

Does your front loading washer get moldy?

Mold can be a problem for some front-loading washers [Consumer Reports]

Yup

2008-08-27T17:03:50Z

From Patrick...

Judge orders woman to return two library books or go to jail

2008-08-28T20:33:26Z

Shared by ximinez
Rock on, Your Honor.

A judge has ordered JoAn Karkos of Lewiston, Maine to return two copies of It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health, which she checked out the Lewiston and Auburn public libraries last year.

In September, Karkos sent letters to the libraries, including checks to pay for the cost of the books. The letters said, in part, “I have been sufficiently horrified of the illustrations and sexually graphic, amoral, abnormal contents. I will not be returning the books.”

The judge has ordered Karkos, who is being held in contempt of court, to return the books and pay a $100 fine by Friday at 4pm. If she doesn't comply, she'll be arrested.

In 2007, NPR reported on the incident, providing several links, including a link to a letter Karkos wrote to the Sun Journal.

Lewiston Woman Facing Jail Over Book

DHS contractor threatens woman with arrest for wearing "lesbian.com" tee on federal property

2008-08-27T09:28:13Z

Security guards contracted by the DHS threw a woman out of a Social Security office in Van Nuys for wearing a t-shirt that read "lesbian.com." He claimed that "The Rules and Regulations Governing Conduct on Federal Property" gave him the right to throw her out for wearing a t-shirt with the word "lesbian" on it.

As she headed for a line to pick up a Social Security card for her son, Gilbert was stopped by a guard who said her T-shirt, naming an educational and resource Web site for gay women, was offensive.
She said the guard, who works for a private company hired by the Department of Homeland Security, demanded that she leave the building or face arrest.

T-shirt gets Van Nuys woman kicked out of federal building (via Neatorama)

(Image: Hans Gutknecht)

Home Science Under Attack In Massachusetts

2008-08-28T20:12:30Z

Shared by Ben
Incidentally, the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments has not been banned by libraries. Check it out! http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1157339&referer=brief_results

An anonymous reader tips a guest posting up on the MAKE Magazine blog by the author of the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments. It seems that authorities in Massachusetts have raided a home chemistry lab, apparently without a warrant, and made off with all of its contents. Here's the local article from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. "Victor Deeb, a retired chemist who lives in Marlboro, has finally been allowed to return to his Fremont Street home, after Massachusetts authorities spent three days ransacking his basement lab and making off with its contents. Deeb is not accused of making methamphetamine or other illegal drugs. He's not accused of aiding terrorists, synthesizing explosives, nor even of making illegal fireworks. Deeb fell afoul of the Massachusetts authorities for... doing experiments... Pamela Wilderman, the code enforcement officer for [the Massachusetts town of] Marlboro stated, 'I think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation.' Allow me to translate Ms. Wilderman's words into plain English: 'Mr. Deeb hasn't actually violated any law or regulation that I can find, but I don't like what he's doing because I'm ignorant and irrationally afraid of chemicals, so I'll abuse my power to steal his property and shut him down.'"

Trick or Treatment

2008-08-26T13:00:27Z

I’ve just finished reading Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst. I’d been looking forward to the publication of this book, and it exceeded my expectations.

Edzard Ernst, based at the University of Exeter in England, is the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, a post he has held for 15 years. An MD and a PhD, he also embraced alternative medicine and used to practice homeopathy. He has done extensive research and published widely. His stated objective is “to apply the principles of evidence-based medicine to the field of complementary medicine such that those treatments which demonstrably do generate more good than harm become part of conventional medicine and those which fail to meet this criterion become obsolete.” His most important accomplishment has been to “demonstrate that complementary medicine can be scientifically investigated which, in turn, brought about a change in attitude both in the way the medical establishment looks upon complementary medicine and in the way complementary medicine looks upon scientific investigation.”

Simon Singh is a science writer with a PhD in particle physics. As a team, he and Ernst are uniquely qualified to ferret out the truth about alternative medicine and explain it to the public.

The book is ironically dedicated to HRH The Prince of Wales, who is infamous for encouraging unproven treatments. Prince Charles has called for scientific studies of alternative medicine but has consistently disregarded the results of such studies.

The first chapter asks “how do you determine the truth?” and explains the scientific method. Four chapters address the scientific evidence for the 4 major alternative therapies: acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic, and herbal medicine (36 lesser therapies are covered in an appendix). The final chapter asks “does the truth matter?”

They give an example that beautifully illustrates the value of rigorous science. Dr. Bill Silverman was frustrated by seeing premature babies go blind with retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). He tried treating them with ACTH and had astounding success: only 2 out of 31 infants lost their sight. In another hospital where ACTH was not used, 6 out of 7 babies lost their sight. Most doctors would have simply continued using ACTH treatments and would have recommended them to everyone, but Silverman was a true scientist. He recognized that it might not be fair to compare babies in two different hospitals and that a proper randomized controlled trial was needed. When he did such a trial, 70% of the babies on ACTH recovered, but 80% of the untreated babies recovered, and more babies in the ACTH group died. A followup study confirmed these results. If Silverman had not had the integrity to question his own hypothesis, a useless and possibly harmful treatment might have become standard, and more babies might have ended up blind or dead.

Singh and Ernst provide many other memorable examples of good and not-so-good science, from Lind’s experiments on British sailors with scurvy to Benveniste’s discredited homeopathy study in Nature. They debunk many of the fallacies of alternative medicine: the “natural” fallacy, the “traditional” fallacy, the “holistic” fallacy, the “science can’t test alternative medicine” fallacy, the “science doesn’t understand alternative medicine” fallacy, and the “science is biased against alternative ideas” fallacy. They discuss placebos and explain why they don’t condone using them. They name ten classes of culprit in the promotion of unproven and disproven medicine, from the media to alternative gurus to the World Health Organization.

They discuss the role of prior plausibility in deciding directions for future research. They quote Carl Sagan:

It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas… [I]f you are open to the point of gullibility… then you cannot distinguish useful ideas from worthless ones. If all ideas have equal validity then you are lost, because then it seems to me, no ideas have any validity at all.

They review all the published evidence for alternative medicine, and their conclusions are not very favorable:

While there is tentative evidence that acupuncture might be effective for some forms of pain relief and nausea, it fails to deliver any medical benefit in any other situations and its underlying concepts are meaningless. With respect to homeopathy, the evidence points towards a bogus industry that offers patients nothing more than a fantasy. Chiropractors, on the other hand, might compete with physiotherapists in terms of treating some back problems, but all their other claims are beyond belief and can carry a range of significant risks. Herbal medicine undoubtedly offers some interesting remedies, but they are significantly outnumbered by the unproven, disproven and downright dangerous herbal medicines on the market.

These are strong words, and they have met with understandable hostility from the alternative community. Simon Singh has already been sued by the British Chiropractic Association for libel because of an article saying that chiropractors knowingly promoted bogus treatments for illnesses including asthma and ear infections.

Criticisms of Trick or Treatment reveal an appalling poverty of thought. No one can seriously question the facts and the reasoning in the book, so opponents resort to other tactics. A homeopathy website resorts to denying that science is a useful tool. It essentially calls evidence-based medicine quackery! Other critics simply criticize every defect of conventional science-based medicine, as if imperfections in applied science somehow proved that a nonscientific approach was better! They misrepresent what the book says and use ad hominem insults, ridiculously attacking Ernst as “desperate to find ANYTHING to discredit CAM.” I haven’t found any critics who have even tried to cogently address the points the book makes.

It’s easy to criticize with generalizations. Emily Rosa’s therapeutic touch study was accused of “poor design and methodology,” but as Singh and Ernst point out, “[her] protocol was simple and clear and her conclusion was hard to fault. Moreover, nobody has ever come up with an experiment that has overturned her findings.” If proponents of alternative medicine come up with good experiments that overturn the present findings, Singh and Ernst have made it clear that they will gladly accept them. In fact, Ernst has offered a prize of £10,000 to be given to the first person who can show homeopathy is better than a placebo in a scientifically controlled trial. No one has applied to take his money.

Trick or Treatment is well worth reading. I highly recommend it. It ought to have more credibility than other books critiquing alternative medicine, simply because it is harder to accuse Dr. Ernst of bias. He is an avowed supporter of everything in alternative medicine that can be shown to work. He has used homeopathic remedies himself. He accepts herbal medicine claims that many of us reject (for instance, Echinacea to prevent and treat the common cold). He has demonstrated his ability to change his mind and follow the evidence. He has no ax to grind; his only agenda is to find the truth.

I wonder if the tide is starting to turn. We’ve recently seen a number of books critiquing complementary and alternative medicine. Natural Causes, Snake Oil Science, Suckers, and now this. People are no longer trying to be “politically correct” but are freely calling most of CAM a scam and a sign of the “Endarkenment.” They are calling for a return to scientific medicine and to one standard for judging all treatments. Just as we are doing on this blog.

Singh and Ernst are not attacking alternative medicine; they are attacking overblown claims for unproven treatments. As Ernst says, “People must not confuse the perceived benefits of so-called alternative medicine with the medical facts.” Or as Daniel Patrick Moynihan put it, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

Taking a step back and thinking about the real story

2008-08-25T15:07:00Z

Compulsory medication and monitoring of diets and lifestyles by the State is now a reality for workers in Alabama who are older or have certain genetic physical characteristics. Despite efforts to paint this in rosy euphemisms, under a new plan just approved by Alabama’s State Employees’ Insurance Board, if workers don’t agree to be subjected to lifestyle and health screening and blood

Video of attendees at AT&T's "thank you for letting us spy on America" party at DNC

2008-08-26T10:27:58Z

Glenn Greenwald and friends crashed AT&T's lavish do at the DNC in Denver to see who got invited to the secretive party thrown to thank Democratic operators for getting AT&T off the hook on the charges it faced of abetting the Bush administration with its illegal warrantless bulk-surveillance program. None of the attendees would speak to them, but they're on video, so maybe we can identify them and figure out who AT&T owns in the Democratic party.

Armed with full-scale Convention press credentials issued by the DNC, I went -- along with Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher, John Amato, Stoller and others -- in order to cover the event, interview the attendees, and videotape the festivities. There was a wall of private security deployed around the building, and after asking where the press entrance was, we were told by the security officials, after they consulted with event organizers, that the press was barred from the event, and that only those with invitations could enter -- notwithstanding the fact that what was taking place in side was a meeting between one of the nation's largest corporations and the numerous members of the most influential elected faction in Congress. As a result, we stood in front of the entrance and began videotaping and trying to interview the parade of Blue Dog Representatives, AT&T executives, assorted lobbyists and delegates who pulled up in rented limousines, chauffeured cars, and SUVs in order to find out who was attending and why AT&T would be throwing such a lavish party for the Blue Dog members of Congress.
Amazingly, not a single one of the 25-30 people we tried to interview would speak to us about who they were, how they got invited, what the party's purpose was, why they were attending, etc. One attendee said he was with an "energy company," and the other confessed she was affiliated with a "trade association," but that was the full extent of their willingness to describe themselves or this event. It was as though they knew they're part of a filthy and deeply corrupt process and were ashamed of -- or at least eager to conceal -- their involvement in it. After just a few minutes, the private security teams demanded that we leave, and when we refused and continued to stand in front trying to interview the reticent attendees, the Denver Police forced us to move further and further away until finally we were unable to approach any more of the arriving guests.

AT&T thanks the Blue Dog Democrats with a lavish party (via David Isenberg)

TSA declares war on large breasts

2008-08-26T10:00:00Z

A large-breasted woman flying from Oakland to Boston was accosted by the TSA when the underwire in her bra set off the magnetometer. She was given a choice: allow her breasts to be fondled or give up on flying. Instead, she raised a stink:

Kates asked to see a supervisor and then the supervisor's supervisor. He told her that underwire bras were the leading item that set off the metal detectors, Kates said.
If that's the case, Kates said, the equipment must be overly sensitive. And if the TSA is engaging in extra brassiere scrutiny, then other women are suffering similar humiliation, Kates thought.
The Constitution bars unreasonable searches and seizures, Kates reminded the TSA supervisor, and scrutinizing a woman's brassiere is surely unreasonable, she said.
The supervisor told her she had the choice of submitting to a pat-down in a private room or not flying. Kates offered a third alternative, to take off her bra and try again, which the TSA accepted.

Arbitrary, no-exceptions "security" rules unduly punish innocents -- people with surgical pins in their bodies are now subject to discriminatory treatment when they fly, as are those whose names are similar to aliases used by suspected terrorists, and they're now joined by women with large breasts. Free societies shouldn't punish the innocent to get at the guilty. Delayed by her bra, air passenger is indignant (Thanks, Kevin!)

More about elitism

2008-08-26T14:00:47Z

Shared by ximinez
I like elitism, too.

I like elitism. I like the idea that there are people out there who are very, very good at what they do. I don’t want a doctor who doesn’t understand biology, I don’t want a plumber who can’t use a wrench, and I don’t want politicians who cannot think properly.

That last bit is the sticky one.

In this case, it’s the Bush Administration’s (typically idiotic and Orwellian) recent finagling with the Endangered Species Act: according to the plan, experts in environmentalism would no longer need to be sought out before policy is made. Want to make a dam that will threaten the ecology of a species? Go right ahead! Expert advice need not apply.

Professor Astronomy has some words on this, and the post is very good and well laid out (and needless to say, I agree with it). The Professor claims not to want to write about politics, but and I certainly hope (s)he continues to do so. We could use more elitists like that.

Kids can't "go out and play" anymore

2008-08-25T16:00:56Z

This LA Times story (by Rosa Brooks) about the erosion of free, unstructured outdoor play and movement for kids really hits the nail on the head: little kids are just not allowed to "go outside and play," and we treat big kids who do as potential threats to be moved along as quickly as possible:

But today, for most middle-class American children, "going out to play" has gone the way of the dodo, the typewriter and the eight-track tape. From 1981 to 1997, for instance, University of Michigan time-use studies show that 3- to 5-year-olds lost an average of 501 minutes of unstructured playtime each week; 6- to 8-year-olds lost an average of 228 minutes. (On the other hand, kids now do more organized activities and have more homework, the lucky devils!) And forget about walking to school alone. Today's kids don't walk much at all (adding to the childhood obesity problem).
Increasingly, American children are in a lose-lose situation. They're forced, prematurely, to do all the un-fun kinds of things adults do (Be over-scheduled! Have no downtime! Study! Work!). But they don't get any of the privileges of adult life: autonomy, the ability to make their own choices, use their own judgment, maybe even get interestingly lost now and then.

Remember 'go outside and play?' (via Wonderland)

The Crazy Rainbow Lady

2008-08-24T13:13:24Z

Last week on the SGU we discussed the YouTube video of a woman who thinks that the rainbow effect she can see in her sprinkler is a government conspiracy. We treated the story primarily as the ravings of a scientifically illiterate woman who went-off half-cocked and made a YouTube video arrogantly displaying her ignorance to the world. But at the time we also briefly raised two other possibilities: is this satire, or is this woman mentally ill?

Occasionally we run across satire that can easily be confused for the real thing - because there is so much legitimate nonsense out there that is difficult to impossible to satirize. But we agreed this was unlikely in this case - there was not tell.

My primary concern was that the “crazy rainbow lady” was actually crazy - that we were watching a schizophrenic who gained access to a video camera and a computer (or who had help). My personal policy is simply to ignore anyone who I deem is most likely in this category. There is nothing to gain by confronting them. At best they could be a psychiatric case study (and I mean that seriously).

In this case I erred on the side of discussing the video because it had gone “viral” and our inbox had been flooded with requests to discuss it. Since then we have received some follow up e-mail pointing us to the YouTube channel of dbootsthediva, which certainly seems to be the same person as the rainbow video. The voice is very similar, the setting is similar (same sirens in the background) and the style is spot on. After watching a number of her videos I have formed the opinion that we are indeed dealing with someone who is undermedicated.

The pattern that emerges from these videos is pretty clear. She marvels at everyday natural phenomena and interprets them all as a government conspiracy. For example, she has noticed, perhaps for the first time in her life, that there is earthshine - that light reflected off the earth back at the moon illuminates that portion of the moon that is not directly lit by the sun. This effect is most prominent during crescent moons. She does not understand this phenomenon and so assumes that something nefarious is going on, and if something nefarious is afoot it must be the big dark evil government.

In another video she shows the digital snow on her TV and thinks it is strange how the wave patterns in the snow kinda look like other wave patterns she has seen. She also shows a low-res video of the sides of her house with the horizontal lines in the siding causing a moire pattern. She then shows the words, “this is not a moire pattern.” She came to this conclusion because she found what she thinks are anomalies in how the moire pattern looks - so “logically” it cannot be a moire pattern. Therefore it is energy directed by the government.

She also shows us a video of her house in order to demonstrate how he house is moving. Since everything in the frame (even distant objects) are moving together it appears that the camera just has a loose connection to the tripod. But she thinks this is “sound waves, pressure wave, frequency waves, and gravity waves” directed by (you guessed it) the government at her house to use her and her mother as “human guinea pigs.”

This is textbook. She actually is probably quite bright, although uneducated. She has many science terms at her fingertips. She tries to defend her conclusions with logic. But in every case she leaps to a maximally paranoid and bizarre conclusion. In addition, there is a personal element - the government is directing these energies specifically at her and forcing her to live in that house. Generally bright with paranoia, bizarre ideation, and ideas of reference - textbook.

But here is the dilemma for skeptics - we deal with “crazy” claims on a daily basis. If we excluded everyone from out critical analysis who showed features of a delusional disorder our scope would be considerably narrowed. Further, mental “disorders” occur on a spectrum. There are those who cannot function outside of an institution. There are others that have subtle tendencies to explain their world in paranoid themes, but are otherwise completely functional. And there is everything in between.

I strongly suspect, although I have not seen objective data, that many of the unscientific and bizarre claims skeptics confront attract those who are on this “reality-challenged” spectrum. The hardcore UFO community is silly with them.

In this case, the crazy rainbow lady is a HAARPist - she believes that HAARP (the High Frequency Active Auroral Research program) in Alaska is the evil government organization doing all these energy experiments. The HAARP conspiracy is a large community, at least on the internet.

What this means is that when skeptics confront organized conspiracy-mongering belief systems they will by necessity also be confronting some mentally ill individuals who were attracted to these belief systems. One of the unintended side consequences of the internet is that people whose bizarre paranoia would previously only be known to their family and their psychiatrist can now display them on YouTube, and link up with others to synchronize their delusions or latch onto organized delusions already in existence on the web.

On a side note - I do think that occasionally such cases are useful as examples of disordered thinking. What the crazy rainbow lady offers is a naked and obvious example of logical fallacies that many others commit in more subtle form. Teaching physicians will often call students into an exam room to witness an extreme example of some pathology. It is, admittedly, partly just to marvel at something freakish (like the scientists who gawked at the “elephant man” out of pure “scientific curiosity”) but legitimately to help them understand the pathological process in question, so as to better recognize its more subtle manifestations.

In the rainbow lady we see anomaly hunting, hyperactive pattern recognition, failure to satisfy Occam’s Razor, the improper use of scientific jargon, the premature dismissal of more mundane explanations for trivial and trumped-up reasons, and the failure to consider existing scientific explanations (probably due to ignorance of them). These are all features of sloppy thinking ubiquitous among the promoters of unscientific claims and beliefs.

They are just easier to detect in this case because they are more raw, but they are no different than the sloppy thinking from the likes of Richard Hoagland, Neal Adams, or Ray Comfort.

Why Bondage Suits Were Banned from Casual Fridays

2008-08-22T21:00:00Z

(sound of whip cracking)
Next cubicle coworker: Ahh, my eye!

Mission Street
San Francisco, California

Overheard by: Ian

Alsome | Thumbs up | Thumbs down | wtf?
Link · Email · Quote this! · Del.icio.us · Posted 2008-08-22

Hey guys check out my new hat!

2008-08-22T18:09:35Z

Cat: Tater

Antivaxxers must be stopped! NOW.

2008-08-22T20:30:28Z

Antivaxxers are people who think vaccinations cause health problems, most notably autism. This is despite study after study showing them to be wrong; there simply is no link between vaccines and autism. While there can be isolated reactions to vaccines, they are very rare, and the overall health benefits of vaccines vastly — vastly — outweigh the negatives.

But these antiscience crusaders are starting to have an effect, and it’s a bad one: measles outbreaks in the U.S. are on the rise. In the first seven months of 2008 there have been seven outbreaks — a typical year has just one — with over 130 reports of measles infections, compared to just 42 last year in total. Of these cases, 122 children were either unvaccinated or have unknown vaccination status. That’s 93%.

As it happens, there have been no deaths from these outbreaks yet, though over a dozen kids were hospitalized.

The overall vaccination rate in the U.S. probably hasn’t dropped significantly, but these outbreaks are probably due to pockets of people not vaccinating their kids. Some are from home-schoolers, others due to religious reasons… but I will guarantee that a lot of this is due to the antivaxxers spread of lies, and smearing of the medical community. We’ve seen it before, and we’ll see it again.

This part of the article is telling:

The nation once routinely saw hundreds of thousands of measles cases each year, and hundreds of deaths. But immunization campaigns were credited with dramatically reducing the numbers. The last time health officials saw this many cases was 1997, when 138 were reported.

Vaccinations work, and they save lives. Don’t believe the lies. Do the research yourself. I did, and I’m convinced the antivaxxers are wrong. And in some cases, they’re dead wrong.

Help stop them. Educate yourself, and talk about this with people. If you have a friend who is considering not vaccinating their kids, send them here, or here, or especially here. Give them the facts. They need it, to fight the onslaught of antiscience they are likely to find elsewhere.

Fight. Literally, kids’ lives depend on it.

HOWTO trick your printer into using ALL its ink

2008-08-22T15:44:28Z

Slate's Farhad Manjoo has some great tips for outsmarting the greedy, lying sensor in your printer that wants you to change the super-expensive cartridge before the ink runs out:

This guy had also suspected that his Brother was lying to him, and he'd discovered a way to force it to fess up. Brother's toner cartridges have a sensor built into them; OppressedPrinterUser found that covering the sensor with a small piece of dark electrical tape tricked the printer into thinking he'd installed a new cartridge. I followed his instructions, and my printer began to work. At least eight months have passed. I've printed hundreds of pages since, and the text still hasn't begun to fade. On FixYourOwnPrinter.com, many Brother owners have written in to thank OppressedPrinterUser for his hack. One guy says that after covering the sensor, he printed 1,800 more pages before his toner finally ran out.

Take That, Stupid Printer! (Thanks, Matt!)