choofnagle | November 8, 2008I have a love-hate relationship with credit and charge cards. They're incredibly convenient, but my few puritan instincts tell me that they're the spawn of satan.
And the fees! The fees! No, not the ones for paying your bill late, or for paying your bill on time over the phone, balance transfer fees, application fees, balance transfer fees, overlimit fees, or even annual fees. (Did you know that banks make more money from fees now than from investments?) I'm talking about the fees that the card networks charge to merchants. Jane Birnbaum explains in Thursday's Times:
A typical merchant…
choofnagle | November 8, 2008I am enjoying the news post election, because what was once news media "liberal bias" about Sarah Palin is now simply common sense.
Even more fun is the frank conversation about the conservative movement. Today's Journal has a must read by Mark Lilla on how the very conservatives who valued intellectualism and elites were corrupted by "populist chic." Lilla recalls Jane Mayer's recent article on Palin, noting how conservative intellectuals chose Palin as a candidate that was appealing to the masses. But in so doing, conservative intellectuals mirrored their liberal rivals. Lilla explains…
denialism | November 7, 2008I would beg everyone who reads the scienceblogs and cares about science to contact the transition team in the Obama administration as Orac has requested.
It should be clear by now to readers of this blog that pseudoscience is not a problem of just the right. The left wing areas of pseudoscience are just as cranky, just as wrong-headed about science, just as likely to use the tactics of denialism to advance a non-scientific agenda. We have been dealing with the denialism of the right more because they've been in control. Now is the time to nip the denialism of the left in the bud so it…
denialism | November 7, 2008It's that time of year, 4th year medical students (like me - kind of) are choosing their future careers and starting to interview all over the country in their residency programs of choice. I've been notably quiet - subsumed in work, study and applications - but I am catching up on writing about the clerkships I've done in the meantime (Pediatrics, Psych, OB/Gyn and Family Medicine). But since I'm applying for residency now (MD/PhDs have an abbreviated 4th year) I figured now would be a good time to tell people about what this is like, and in the coming months what cities I'm going to be in…
choofnagle | November 6, 2008A group in San Francisco managed to get a measure on the city ballot that would rename our Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to the "George W. Bush Sewage Plant."
I thought this a supremely bad idea. Such a move (like protesting the Marine Core in Berkeley) would invite a conservative reaction, possibly stripping the city of federal funds.
And as a local public utilities supervisor pointed out, our waste station is progressive, like much of the city: "The potential irony here is that this is a modern facility that protects the ocean and the environment every day," [Tony] Winnicker said…
denialism | November 6, 2008I've been busy, as you might imagine, with work, study, and applying for medical residency. However, I thought it was about time to get people up to date with some of the clerkships I've finished in the meantime before letting you guys in on some of the decision-making processes involved in choosing a residency.
So, time to talk about pediatrics. Pediatrics, despite a reputation for warmth and fuzziness, is a challenging field. Kids aren't just little adults, and the treatment and diseases of infants are different than those of toddlers, which are different from pre-adolescents, which…
choofnagle | November 5, 2008Here in California, the Mormons poured millions into an initiative constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, after the California Supreme Court found a right to marry in the State's Constitution.
Proposition 8 looks like it has passed. Currently, it's 52-48 in favor, with 95% of the vote counted.
I'm really just posting this in order to share this anti-Proposition 8 commercial that was running in California. It might be the most offensive political ad ever. Check it out:
choofnagle | November 4, 2008The Times' Amanda Schaffer covers a retrospective of public health posters on display at the National Academies until December 19th, 2008. The catalog (pdf) is online.
My favorite:
It reads:
"No home remedy or quack doctor ever cured syphilis or gonorrhea. See your doctor or local health officer."
You could replace "syphilis or gonorrhea" with just about anything! Perhaps we should reissue this poster to deal with the modern quacks!
choofnagle | November 3, 2008The Journal reports the obvious under the headlines "Tainting of Milk Is Open Secret in China" and "Milk Routinely Spiked in China:"
Before melamine-laced milk killed and sickened Chinese babies and led to recalls around the world, the routine spiking of milk with illicit substances was an open secret in China's dairy regions, according to the accounts of farmers and others with knowledge of the industry.
Farmers here in Hebei province say in interviews that "protein powder" of often-uncertain origin has been employed for years as a cheap way to help the milk of undernourished cows fool…
choofnagle | October 31, 2008Jezebel proclaims: Dov Charney May Be More of a Scumbag than Anyone Realized, and I agree if the reporting on a sexual harassment case, Mary Nelson v. American Apparel, rings true (the opinion is unpublished, and I haven't obtained a copy yet). Charney is the founder of American Apparel, and has been the focus of several sexual harassment suits over the years for allegedly maintaining a sexually-charged work atmosphere.
Over at Conde Nast, Karen Donovan reports:
Female employees have filed three sexual harassment lawsuits against Charney. The last active suit was settled earlier this year,…
choofnagle | October 30, 2008In the last days of the Bush Administration, expect it to engage in lots of rulemaking. Many businesses will seek new rules for their industries now, fearing that less favorable outcomes will occur if they chance it with the Obama Administration. This business-initiated regulation will seek "ceiling preemption," meaning that the federal rules will supersede and cap strong state regulations.
Preemption has a profound effect on consumer protection, because frankly speaking, Congress rarely takes the time to pass consumer protection laws. It has other important business, and there is a horde…
choofnagle | October 25, 2008I keep on hearing that the political polls are inaccurate because pollsters do not call wireless phones.
I commission polls at UC Berkeley and we call wireless phones. Seems like a no brainer to me. So, I've never quite understood why professional polling firms wouldn't call cell phones. (I'm an expert in telemarketing laws; survey firms can call cell phones legally so long as it is not a front for marketing.)
Today, I poked around at some prominent pollster's sites to see whether they call cell phone users:
Gallup: Yes, when it is a "national telephone Gallup Poll" survey.
Zogby: No.…
choofnagle | October 24, 2008In reading a law review last week, I saw a footnote to a booked called Cyberselfish, A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High-Tech. Intrigued, I purchased it immediately and have been reading it the law few nights. The author, Paulina Borsook, wrote for Wired and yet was shocked by some of the socioretardation in the Silicon Valley tech community. She published this book in 2000; it's a significant expansion of her 1996 Mother Jones article on the same topic, which concludes:
...Just as 19th-century timber and cattle and mining robber barons made their fortunes from…
choofnagle | October 22, 2008Libertarians hold dear the idea of the uberman consumer, the hyperrational, fully formed autonomous being that springs from the womb to take good decisions in the marketplace. But when one reads marketing literature, a different consumer is encountered. Often this consumer is an object to be manipulated; one who holds totally irrational ideas that must be shaped or corrected; one that has to be acclimated to changes, and managed to prevent revolt.
One also encounters shockingly frank discussions of consumers' lack of sophistication in the literature. This brings me to an article in Monday'…
choofnagle | October 21, 2008In years as working as a privacy advocate, I developed the theme that the private sector, particularly marketing companies, was an equal threat to information privacy as the government. After all, the largest providers of personal information to the government now are big marketing companies, like Acxiom and Choicepoint.
At a more base level, I thought privacy may be instrumental in fostering autonomy and shielding individuals from (what I believe to be) the indignities that marketing perpetuates on our culture (think billboards, for instance). This is a very difficult argument to make.…
choofnagle | October 21, 2008There are many problems with political spam email. Perhaps the most well known one is that Congress, in passing the CAN-SPAM Act, decided to exempt political messages from any forms of legal accountability. And so the only practical limit on political spam is the public's willingness to shame candidates. Here's an example worth shaming, sent on to me by a colleague.
If you get political spam from McCain, and want to opt out, here are your options.
Notice that all of them imply that you support or have supported McCain! They are:
-I am a McCain Supporter but don't wish to be contacted…
denialism | October 18, 2008This will be Orac's new favorite show, perhaps the best reality show ever made.
Meet Shirley Ghostman. The UK's premier psychic who is mounting a search for the UK's next psychic superstar.
Watch his students cry as he channels Lady Di!
Watch as he brings forth a evil serial killer in the presence of his students:
Shirley even takes on the skeptics!
This guy is a genius, I just about plotzed, and the narration by Patrick Stewart is awesome. I also love it in terms of what denialism blog has always talked about. The problem with the people who believe this stuff is that they simply have…
choofnagle | October 17, 2008So, here it is. Titled "Berkeley's Big People," it is installed along I-80, so those of you driving north of San Francisco will probably see it, as it is 30 feet tall and visible from a mile away.
Given the landscape of "free speech," it would have been much more appropriate to have erected a large Don Quixote, fending off autism-causing vaccines, and tilting at a windmill atop a stolen shopping basket full of junk but missing it because he was high. And then declaring victory.
Updates: my Berkeley friends respond! All of these responses are incredibly valuable, so you are to be subjected…
choofnagle | October 16, 2008We have not played with the Denialists' Deck of Cards for some time! Let's pick them up again, because the economic downturn gives all sorts of businesses the opportunity to play the "Bear Market" card.
Stephen Power brings it in today's Wall Street Journal:
"We know something needs to be done [to cut emissions], but we've got to get the economy on its feet before we do something economically irrational," said Mike Morris, chief executive of American Electric Power Co. of Columbus, Ohio. Mr. Morris and other executives fear lawmakers will use revenue from pollution permits to pay down the…
choofnagle | October 11, 2008It seems as though officials have been arguing forever about whether to erect an anti-suicide net along the Golden Gate Bridge. On Friday, the bridge directors voted 14-1 in favor of creating such a net:
...the stainless-steel net system, which would be placed 20 feet below the deck, and would collapse around anyone who jumped into it, making it difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to leap to their death...
This has been a fairly divisive issue in San Francisco. Anti-netters argue that that the net will just cause people to kill themselves elsewhere (perhaps by jumping from a building…