November 16, 2009
Category: Birthers • Cranks • Health Care • Medical Education
So who here has actually read the health care bill?. I've been devoting a bit of time each week to peruse more and more of it, and while there are endless obstacles to a complete understanding of it (including legalese and the annoying tendency of legislation to contain edits to other bills without including the text of the other bills being edited) it is telling that opponents of the bill are having some difficulty coming up with real criticisms of it. For example, the now infamous death panel fiasco was a willful misunderstanding of a completely wholesome concept, the idea that physicians should be compensated for having end-of-life discussions with patients. It makes sense on multiple levels to reward such discussions. For one, they are hard conversations to have, and without a motivating factor, they are avoided by many physicians. The result is a situation in which many patients fail to communicate their desires for the end of their lives, they fall in the default pathway of over-utilization of resources at the end-of-life, with invasive and often pointless interventions that have no benefit and burden and overwhelm the health-care system. The ideologues who sank that language in the bill should truly rot in hell, because they destroyed a good thing just to create a bogus political argument.
And speaking of the death panel conspiracy theory, has anyone been checking out Arthur Goldwag's coverage of Sarah Palin's conspiratorial beliefs? How sad is it that we still have candidates for national office that believe things that fail the snopes.com test? Palin gives me the creeps, she represents my worst nightmare, a crank candidate with inroads towards a national campaign. Goldwag's writing on the birther movement is also excellent and I'm glad to see these crackpots are being laughed out of court for the fools they are. In particular I liked the text of Judge Carter's decision describing what it's like to deal with cranks in court:
The hearings have been interesting to say the least. Plaintiffs' arguments through Taitz have generally failed to aid the Court. Instead, Plaintiffs' counsel has favored rhetoric seeking to arouse the emotions and prejudices of her followers rather than the language of a lawyer seeking to present arguments through cogent legal reasoning. While the Court has no desire to chill Plaintiffs' enthusiastic presentation, Taitz's argument often hampered the efforts of her co-counsel Gary Kreep ("Kreep"), counsel for Plaintiffs Drake and Robinson, to bring serious issues before the Court. The Court has attempted to give Plaintiffs a voice and a chance to be heard by respecting their choice of counsel and by making every effort to discern the legal arguments of Plaintiffs' counsel amongst the rhetoric.
This Court exercised extreme patience when Taitz endangered this case being heard at all by failing to properly file and serve the complaint upon Defendants and held multiple hearings to ensure that the case would not be dismissed on the technicality of failure to effect service. While the original complaint in this matter was filed on January 20, 2009, Defendants were not properly served until August 25, 2009. Taitz successfully served Defendants only after the Court intervened on several occasions and requested that defense counsel make significant accommodations for her to effect service. Taitz also continually refused to comply with court rules and procedure. Taitz even asked this Court to recuse Magistrate Judge Arthur Nakazato on the basis that he required her to comply with the Local Rules. See Order Denying Pls.' Mot. For Modification of Mag. J. Nakazato's Aug. 6, 2009, Order; Denying Pls.' Mot. to Recuse Mag. J. Nakazato; and Granting Ex Parte App. for Order Vacating Voluntary Dismissal (Sep. 8, 2009). Taitz also attempted to dismiss two of her clients against their wishes because she did not want to work with their new counsel. See id. Taitz encouraged her supporters to contact this Court, both via letters and phone calls. It was improper and unethical for her as an attorney to encourage her supporters to attempt to influence this Court's decision. Despite these attempts to manipulate this Court, the Court has not considered any outside pleas to influence the Court's decision.
Additionally, the Court has received several sworn affidavits that Taitz asked potential witnesses that she planned to call before this Court to perjure themselves. This Court is deeply concerned that Taitz may have suborned perjury through witnesses she intended to bring before this Court. While the Court seeks to ensure that all interested parties have had the opportunity to be heard, the Court cannot condone the conduct of Plaintiffs' counsel in her efforts to influence this Court.
...
Plaintiffs have encouraged the Court to ignore these mandates of the Constitution; to
disregard the limits on its power put in place by the Constitution; and to effectively overthrow a sitting president who was popularly elected by "We the People"-over sixty-nine million of the people. Plaintiffs have attacked the judiciary, including every prior court that has dismissed their claim, as unpatriotic and even treasonous for refusing to grant their requests and for adhering to the terms of the Constitution which set forth its jurisdiction. Respecting the constitutional role and jurisdiction of this Court is not unpatriotic. Quite the contrary, this Courtconsiders commitment to that constitutional role to be the ultimate reflection of patriotism.
Therefore, for the reasons stated above, Defendants' Motion to Dismiss is GRANTED.
You can just taste the crankery. The complete looseness with the truth as long as it conforms to the warped worldview of these crackpots is part and parcel of cranks the world over. Reading the follow-up of this case from right wing sites like Free Republic, and Storm Front, it's impossible to tell the difference between the conservative ideologues and the unrepentant racists. All the appeals to patriotism and the constitution are such weak cover for the fact these cranks are angry we have a black president.
I continue to work the long hours of a surgical intern and must say, it's a lot of drudgery. Internship is much more about paying your dues than about learning a whole lot, although my daily routine is occasionally punctuated by moments of extreme excitement. For instance, I will not forget the first time I placed a chest tube in a patient in the bedside, the blood that poured out of the guys chest that was keeping him from breathing, or the time I walked into a room to discover a patient in the midst of having a heart attack. Luckily, the training sets in, and we have a lot of supervision, so even when things get crazy I've always got someone with me who has seen it all before.
I also am increasingly motivated to write more as I feel less plugged-in than ever to the outside world since writing at least forced me to read tons of diverse information on lots of different topics. Cranks and crankery are all around us and I'm constantly reminded of the problems they create. It seems every time I see some topical show, and the commentators pause to reflect for a moment on the problem they're all facing, it seems like they all know what the problem is but just don't have a good name for it. The problem is that lies can be equally effective as the truth, and denialism creates very real problems for us and our democracy every single day. Denialism works, and cranks run amok throughout our country and the world. We have to keep writing about it until rather being on the tip of everyone's tongue, people are willing to come out and call out denialism for what it is, and shout it down when it rears its ugly head.
Posted by MarkH at 7:00 AM • 5 Comments
November 14, 2009
Category: Anti-Vax Denialism
The Viking and I ventured out early this morning to get the H1N1 vaccine and found long lines in the tony neighborhoods. SF Gate reports that the Marin public vaccination clinic was swamped. (The irony!--Marin is a hotbed of the anti-vaccination movement.) So where can you get the vaccine quickly? Downtown! We were in and out in less than an hour! There's almost no one there.
Posted by Chris H at 11:23 PM • 1 Comments
November 13, 2009
Category: Wasting your time
Exhibit 1001, on our great college and university campuses, this wretch can complain of coyote ugly. The nerve. Nice hat, BTW. Do you have a matching jersey? Ladies, imagine waking up with this puffy misogynist! Via Gawker.
Exhibit 1002, Southern Football's Dating Game in Today's WSJ.
Posted by Chris H at 1:03 PM • 6 Comments
Category: Ayn Rand Deprogrammer
The Bitch is Back, by Andrew Corsello: "2009's most influential author is a mirthless Russian-American who loves money, hates God, and swings a gigantic dick. She died in 1982, but her spawn soldier on. And the Great Recession is all their fault..."
Posted by Chris H at 11:24 AM • 5 Comments
November 8, 2009
Category:
All this excitement about Levi Johnston in Playgirl Magazine is pretty interesting. We have the forthcoming tell-all book about Sarah Palin and fam, and the author posing naked.
And who reads Playgirl anyway? It occurred to me this morning that we could get some idea from looking at the magazine's datacard, which at least would tell us something about subscribers.
So, not that many subscribers. Not much of a surprise. And over 30% male...not much of a surprise. And only 230 from Canada! Could you imagine having a dinner party for the Canadian subscribers to Playgirl magazine? That might be an interesting crowd.
Posted by Chris H at 4:54 PM • 1 Comments
October 31, 2009
Category: Politics • Privacy
Consumers who have asked me whether they should give their zip code at the register have been getting bad advice! I was under the misimpression that zip-level data was only being collected for demographic research purposes (to determine where stores should be located, and advertising directed, on a mass scale) and thus said that no harm came from revealing the zip. No longer. Here's a summary of data practices at William Sonoma, according to a recent California case (Pineda v. Williams-Sonoma Stores Inc., Cal. Ct. App., 4th Dist., No. D054355). Giving the zip code allows the store to "enhance" the information they already have about your (your name from the credit card) and determine your home address:
Jessica Pineda visited a store in California owned by Williams-Sonoma Stores, Inc. (the Store) and selected an item to purchase. She then went to the cashier to pay for the item with her credit card. The cashier asked for her zip code, but did not tell her the consequences if she declined to provide the information. Believing that she was required to provide her zip code to complete the transaction, Pineda provided the information. The cashier recorded it into the electronic cash register and then completed the transaction. At the end of the transaction, the Store had Pineda's credit card number, name and zip code recorded in its databases.
After acquiring this information, the Store used customized computer software to perform reverse searches from databases that contain millions of names, e-mail addresses, residential telephone numbers and residential addresses, and are indexed in a manner that resembles a reverse telephone book. The Store's software then matched Pineda's now-known name, zip code or other personal information with her previously unknown address, thereby giving the Store access to her name and address.
So, when they ask for your zip code, say no, or to have fun, give them the zip code of the White House: 20500.
Posted by Chris H at 11:46 AM • 25 Comments
October 21, 2009
Category: Privacy
For some time, I've been trying to better understand Google's worldview on privacy issues. The culture of companies fosters different privacy values and sensitivities, and the signals sent by those at the top shape how the organization itself conceives of and addresses privacy issues. In wrestling with this, I read every article discussing Google and privacy in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, resulting in a paper titled, Beyond Google and Evil, How policy makers, journalists and consumers should talk differently about Google and privacy.
In last week's New Yorker, which is doing the rounds, Ken Auletta writes (subscribers only) about the growing pains the company has. But it also includes this strange discussion of privacy. Auletta writes:
At the same time, Brin and Page can seem indifferent to users' anxieties. In 2007, at Google's annual Zeitgeist conference, a gathering of Google business partners, public intellectuals, traditional-media executives, and technologists, Brin declared that "the No. 1 privacy issue we deal with is that there is some information about someone on the Web . . . sometimes it's not true and people just publish stuff." The No. 2 privacy issue, he said, was "various things where people get their machine hijacked or somebody . . . breaks into various accounts of theirs." Concern about the information collected on cookies he dismissed as "sort of Big Brother-type fears"--in other words, paranoia. Page agreed: "Sergey is just saying there are practical privacy issues that are different from the ones debated."
If the corporate culture is shaped by how principals frame and discuss issues, how reassured should we be about Google's privacy worldview? Why do we trust this company with our documents, communications, etc, if concerns about massive data collection are conceived of as mere paranoia?
Let me put this a different way: if it were your job to design privacy into Google products and policy, how much support would you feel that you had from the top? What priorities are expressed by that statement, and how would it shape your response?
Posted by Chris H at 9:27 PM • 17 Comments
October 16, 2009
Category: Wasting your time
Alex Pareene has given voice to what many longtime Post readers believe: Fred Hiatt needs to be axed.
Under editor Fred Hiatt, the Post op-ed page has gone completely off the rails. They picked up Bill Kristol after the Times dumped him for being not just wrong but boring and lazy. They openly allow George Will to lie, to straight-up lie, without fact-checking or corrections, because we all know reality is open to different "interpretations" and if a prominent columnist writes something patently untrue the best response is to then publish a "true" column by someone else as a counterpoint, because that doesn't just represent everything misleading and terrible about the moden political press. They still publish Richard Cohen. The regular columnists are, for the most part, interchangeable ancient "moderate" liberals who haven't written or thought anything vaguely interesting since 1974. Anne Applebaum was allowed to publish a blog post in support of Roman Polanski without disclosing that her husband is Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who opposes extradition. Richard Cohen, again.
Ouch!
Posted by Chris H at 3:14 PM • 1 Comments
October 6, 2009
Category: Wasting your time
Bloggers, under new guidelines issued by the Federal Trade Commission, you must disclose gifts or payments for products that you review! Also your endorsements cannot be false or misleading!
The FTC's release advises:
The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that "material connections" (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers - connections that consumers would not expect - must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other "word-of-mouth" marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Likewise, if a company refers in an advertisement to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the advertisement must disclose the connection between the advertiser and the research organization. And a paid endorsement - like any other advertisement - is deceptive if it makes false or misleading claims.
Also, the FTC is tightening the screws on weight loss products. It's no longer okay to just say, "results not typical." Instead they must present information about consumers may generally expect from the product (nothing!).
...advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. In contrast to the 1980 version of the Guides - which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as "results not typical" - the revised Guides no longer contain this safe harbor.
Posted by Chris H at 12:14 PM • 11 Comments
October 5, 2009
Category: Wasting your time
I'm a fan of Jason Nelson's I made this. You play this. We are enemies. He's just released his newest game, Evidence of Everything Exploding, described as:
...Using documents, both historical and little-known from B. Gates, NASA, James Joyce, Dadaism, Neil Gaiman, Fidel Castro, the Pizza Box Patent and many others, the game explores those strange moments where history turns or doesn't, where unusual forces collide to create or topple storylines, possible futures. Complete with matchbook death rewards, strange marked up text and curious prophecies, The madness of the pages meets the madness of the game.
Enjoy!
Posted by Chris H at 9:31 PM • 1 Comments
Mark Hoofnagle has a MD and PhD in physiology from the University of Virginia, and is now a general surgery resident. His interest in denialism concerns the use of denialist tactics to confuse public understanding of scientific knowledge.
