denialism | August 22, 2012Everyone has heard about Akin's comments about "legitimate rape" and the push now coming from the GOP to get him out of the race. But is this really fair or ideal? The problem with removing Akin from the race over this is that his gaffe was not just one exposing his scientific ignorance, but because it was a Kinsley gaffe. That is, it's a gaffe because it unintentionally revealed the truth.
I'm not saying that his medieval medical hypothesis has any scientific validity, he is after all just parroting pro-life misinformation spread to attack scientific data about the frequency of pregnancy…
choofnagle | August 20, 2012Earnest reporting or catty criticism? Fareed Zakaria, according to the Times, is on the short list of Lynda Resnick's dinner parties, along with "Queen Noor of Jordan, George Soros, the financier, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California."
Is the Times' Christine Haughney critiquing Zakaria or not? Resnick is well known for being a marketing personality, one that makes broad, unsubstantiated health claims about "POM," her silly juice that you should not waste your money on. Nor should you ever buy anything from her former business, the Franklin Mint, or Fiji, her overpriced…
choofnagle | August 16, 2012Have you heard of App.net? If not, check it out. The basic premise is to create a social media platform that is aligned with users' interest. And so, gasp, it costs money! The CEO, Dalton Caldwell, has a neat video explaining the inception of the project and the philosophy of the venture. Critics have said Caldwell's proposal is misunderstood, and that users are projecting their own ideals onto the platform. They have said that there are too many men on App.net. They have said that it's just another gated community, and segmenting away users is a bad thing.
I joined and still think it…
choofnagle | August 16, 2012In his non-book-review of Garret Keizer's new book, Privacy, "Reason" Magazine correspondent includes this ill-informed quip on privacy:
With regard to modern commerce, Mr. Keizer grumps: "We would do well to ask if the capitalist economy and its obsessions with smart marketing and technological innovation cannot become as intrusive as any authoritarian state." Actually, no. If consumers become sufficiently annoyed with mercantile snooping and excessive marketing, they can take their business to competitors who are more respectful of privacy. Not so with the citizens of an intrusive state.…
choofnagle | August 3, 2012BNA reports on the formation of the Internet Association, a new trade group that will represent Google, Facebook, eBay, and Amazon. The group introduces itself as, "the unified voice of the Internet economy, representing the interests of America's leading Internet companies and their global community of users. The Internet Association is dedicated to advancing public policy solutions to strengthen and protect an open, innovative and free Internet. "
I do not know what the Internet Association will do nor do I discuss its merits here (as it has no track record yet). I wish to use this as an…
choofnagle | July 31, 2012When one spouts disinformation about disinformation, does it make it information? No, it's L. Gordon Crovitz's "Information Age," the weekly poorly informed and poorly reasoned blather about information policy in the Wall Street Journal.
Recall that Crovitz recently wrote about the invention of the Internet and online privacy. I wrote about these last two columns, and this week in the Journal Crovitz tries to backpedal, with the standard trope that his "Who Really Invented the Internet?" article was controversial—"It [became] for a time the most read, emailed and commented upon article on…
choofnagle | July 29, 2012Imagine a newspaper oped with half a dozen fallacies. Such a thing could appear in any newspaper in the US. But now imagine that the author is a Rhodes Scholar and you’re left with the Wall Street Journal’s L. Gordon Crovitz.
For years I’ve followed the bizarre arguments of L. Gordon Crovitz, who has a weekly column on information policy in the Wall Street Journal. It’s part of my daily routine of reading the Journal, which is great for business news but something else for everything else.
Last week, Crovitz wrote a real howler, arguing that the Internet was really created by Xerox, not…
choofnagle | July 3, 2012As an educator, I realize that much of education is...well...a scam. And some scams are much bigger than others. We've all read about the graduates with six-figure debt loads from obscure colleges. But the for-profit college world operates on another level. Gawker has had excellent commentary on the issue, and has pointed out that the only way the people at the Washington Post make money anymore is through Kaplan "education."
But in a setback for justice in this arena, a judge recently invalidated some regulations of the for-profit field. This gave the Association of Private Sector Colleges…
denialism | June 29, 2012Atul Gawande, thoughtful as always, writes about the "wicked problem" of healthcare reform and the historical similarity between this battle and previous battles to expand fairness to all of our citizens. Opening with the kind of experiences all physicians have had with tragically-uninsured patients, he emphasizes why this was a needed change:
A few days ago, while awaiting the Supreme Court ruling on the Obama health-care law, I called a few doctor friends around the country. I asked them if they could tell me about current patients whose health had been affected by a lack of insurance.
“…
denialism | June 28, 2012It's good news that the Supreme Court split 5-4 with Roberts (and not Kennedy?!?) as the deciding vote, to uphold the affordable care act. It's interesting that this was controversial, and certainly Roberts led the court to a very safe middle ground making the issue about taxation and saying the commerce clause could not apply. If anything, I wonder if this weakens the previous commerce powers of Congress as defined by Wickard v. Filburn, I'd love to hear what a lawyer thinks.
What does this mean?
Well in the short term not a whole lot, this healthcare bill requires a very slow roll-out…
denialism | June 7, 2012 Chris and I have met with our new National Geographic overlords here in DC, and we had a productive and interesting meeting. It was a great chance to put names to some faces and hear about where Nat Geo wants to take Scienceblogs. If any of the other sciblings can wrangle it I can highly recommend it. Also, to those who have commented on the migration to wordpress, the new look etc., they clearly are monitoring your opinions about the change and working to first make the system fully functional, then hopefully we can improve some stylistic elements of the site. In particular I think people…
denialism | May 25, 2012Today I read about two individuals who decided on political defections over perceived anti-science amongst their former political allies- one due to climate change, the other for anti-GMO. From the right, we have Michael Fumento, who in Salon describes his break with the right, spurred by Heartland's campaign comparing those who believe in climate change with the Unabomber, as well as a general atmosphere of conspiratorial crankery and incivility. And from the left, we have Stephen Sumpter of Latent Existence leaving the Greens over their support for the misguided anti-scientific campaign of…
denialism | May 24, 2012Right Wing Watch is a great site to follow to track the latest conspiratorial craziness coming from the right. It seems every single day there is some new bizarre claim about homosexuals trying to enslave America and institute sharia law (that makes sense right?), or how Obama is a muslim, yada yada. But today I they've got a real zinger and I can't pass it by. Apparently at age 11 Obama decided to become president of the US to destroy the Shiites, Israel, and America itself. Here come the insanity, from Avi Lipkin:
Lipkin: Obama was made a Muslim man in Indonesia by age 11. He said, ‘I’ve…
denialism | May 23, 2012I can't take any credit for it. Nat Geo has transitioned us to wordpress. Please let me know in the comments if there are any problems with the new format or with commenting and I'll see what I can do to get things up to snuff.
denialism | May 17, 2012Many of the climate change denialist sites have been up in arms by comparisons of climate change denial to holocaust denial. In particular Marc Morano at climate depot has had multiple articles attacking and expressing hysterical outrage at these comparisons.
We know they don't like the comparison, but the question is, is it apt?
One article in particular from Micha Tomkiewicz, who is himself a holocaust survivor, has earned the ire of climate denialists around the web because in addition to the comparison of the tactics of global warming denialists and holocaust deniers, he additionally…
denialism | May 7, 2012The New York Times has the results from when they posed the question, "is it ethical to eat meat?" The finalists, with one or two exceptions, are quite interesting. Certainly, when it comes to opinions about food, everyone has one, and the judges emphasized the variety of the opinions, and interestingly, the near unanimous belief that CAFOs are unethical (I'm with Pollan on that one). The only other topic at the NYT which seems to generate as much diversity of opinion, and frankly insane commentary, is child-rearing. But what I liked most about these finalists were the three writers who…
denialism | May 5, 2012In a brilliant parody of the HSUS shelter ads, humane watch has put sad looking lawyers in cages to emphasize that donations to HSUS do not fund shelters.
HSUS is like PETA but with deodorant and suits. Hah! I love it. HSUS is PETA.
It's upsetting that this fake charity has co-opted the reputation of our local humane societies, used ads depicting suffering animals in cages, then taken in millions of dollars from well meaning people to lobby for animal rights causes. Every time I see their ads I get furious. Less than 1% of their take goes to shelters. HSUS is not a humane society at…
denialism | April 13, 2012But you'd never know that reading AEI's highly dubious contribution to the literature in this week's Health Affairs (lay Reuters article here). Consistent with their free-market solves everything and can do no wrong (cover ears and yell "nananananananana") attitude towards the broken US healthcare system, they have managed to contaminate the literature with a paper that suggests our higher expenditures on cancer are generating significant returns in patient survival. Except that it doesn't show this, and to her great credit, Reuter's Sharon Begley nails it:
Cancer patients in the United…
denialism | April 12, 2012In it's increasingly bizarre need to inflict it's animal rights morality on everybody, PETA's Ingrid Newkirk has criticized Jennifer Lawrence for scenes in Winter's Bone and the Hunger Games, which show her hunting and eating animals.
The actress was dubbed "the coolest chick in Hollywood" by Rolling Stone, and in the magazine's latest issue she recounts her on-screen squirrel-skinning scene in the 2010 movie "Winter's Bone."
"I should say it wasn't real, for PETA. But screw PETA," she told the magazine.
In response to the actress's comment, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk told Gothamist, "[…
choofnagle | April 7, 2012Thomas Kinkade, painter of pablum and our nation's most collected living artist, died on Good Friday. Hmmmm.