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Are Health, Technology and Science Spending Effective as Short-Term Stimulus?

Health-infrastructure, information technology, and science research spending are clearly related to the success of our economy. They represent investments into intellectual property and human capital that increase productivity and create long-term growth. For this reason, I don't object to the government spending money on them as a matter of policy. But Gary Becker makes an interesting point with respect to the economic stimulus package. While such spending may be important for long-term growth, it's effectiveness as a short-term growth measure may be limited: The stimulus package's plans…

Pycnogenol brand pine bark extract for ADHD: hope or hype?

Get ready to be barraged by news of a proprietary pine bark extract exhibiting efficacy against attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Today's report by the French company that manufactures a maritime pine bark extract seems to be associated (see press release below fold) with Dr Steven Lamm, a clinical assistant professor at NYU Medical School, and based on results published in the journal, European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. I don't believe this is actually "news" as stories such as this one appeared about a month ago. Hence, I fear that today's press release and satellite hook…

Who knew? Mike Adams and I share a problem

Forgive me if I'm feeling a little schadenfreude right now. My current blog location has been criticized in the past for a variety of things, including, most recently, Pepsigate. One of the things that we've been criticized for is our on-again off-again use of Google Adsense, where the content of the page dictates which ads pop up. For skeptical blogs, this sometimes has some rather embarrassing consequences. For instance, when I write about vaccines, sometimes the ad server would serve up ads for chelation therapy or anti-vaccine quack nostrums. Ditto when I wrote about homeopathy, which…

Gratuitous Gripes

Warning: as the title suggests, this is just one long whine. It probably shouldn’t be read by anyone. For my own sake, I’m putting it out there, anyways. Proceed with caution! So much for posting something every day. When I promised that, it sounded feasible. Then again, when I called my remodel "almost done", I think I was mistaking it for "done." This seems to be a new habit of mine... setting my expectations too high. Or maybe it is an old habit, resurfacing. Whatever the case, I had planned to have my life back to (what could pass for) normal by the end of last week. Instead, I still…

Non-science entry

Just an update for those who know me. This past week has been a little crazy. We just bought our first car (my wife needs it for her new job). Having lived close to 10 years in Manhattan and then downtown Boston, we never really needed a car and probably saved quite a bit by never owning one. But I guess it was inevitable. So what did we buy? At first we checked out Craig's List. You can find superb deals there, however the condition and state of the car + reliability of the seller is always in doubt. A friend of mine went through the car listings on Craig's List, only to find out that many…

Hedge Fund Fraud

I find the epic Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff morbidly fascinating. He managed to lose 50 billion dollars, which can't be easy: A busy stock-trading operation occupied the 19th floor, and the computers and paperwork of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities filled the 18th floor. But the 17th floor was Bernie Madoff's sanctum, occupied by fewer than two dozen staff members and rarely visited by other employees. It was called the "hedge fund" floor, but federal prosecutors now say the work Mr. Madoff did there was actually a fraud scheme whose losses Mr. Madoff himself estimates at $50…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: the Edwards blogger dust-up

The far right smear machine against John Edwards has moved into territory close to home: attacking Edwards by attacking his newly hired bloggers, Amanda Marcotte (of Pandagon fame) and Melissa McEwan (from the equally eminent Shakespeare's Sister). The big media (cable news of all stripes, AP and New York Times) are reporting it just as it comes off the far right tickertape, as usual. It's not an accident that Amanda and Melissa are noted and notable progressive feminist bloggers. Not an accident unless you believe in the tooth fairy, anyway. Why is in the Sermonette? Because the thin end of…

What Can Dolphins Tell Us About The Evolution of Friendship?

Scientists thought they had a pretty good handle on the social interactions of bottlenose dophins (Tursiops). They've used the term fission-fusion dynamics to describe dolphin (and non-human primate) society and so far it has served researchers well. Fission-fusion societies among dolphins are characterized by two levels of social hierarchy: groups of two or three related males ("first-order alliances") which work together to guard one or more females from other males, and larger teams comprised of multiple related first-order alliances ("second-order alliances") which cooperate to "steal"…

Eyjafjallajökull eruption update for 4/17/2010

The eruptive plume from Eyjafjallajökull taken Holsvelli webcam. Image courtesy of Mattias Larsson. Sorry to disappoint everyone visiting to blog while they sit at any number of airports around the world, but the eruption at Eyjafjallajökull appears to still be going strong. The Icelandic Met Office is heading up to the volcano to conduct a survey of the crater area to find out (1) what it looks like and (2) how much new water (i.e., ice) is there available for the erupting magma. More water is likely to mean more explosive eruptions in this phreatoplinian style - however, like I…

Bloggers vs. Journalists Redux, part N

Some guy named Mulshine, who is apparently an ancient journalist (remember: generation is mindset, not age), penned one of those idiotic pieces for Wall Street Journal, willingly exposing his out-datedness and blindness to the world - read it yourself and chuckle: All I Wanted for Christmas Was a Newspaper: This highlights the real flaw in the thinking of those who herald the era of citizen journalism. They assume newspapers are going out of business because we aren't doing what we in fact do amazingly well, which is to quickly analyze and report on complex public issues. The real reason they…

On the Media - your weekend reading (instead of the hardcopy NYT you are not subscribed to anyway)

Actually, Journalists do take some of the blame for the death of newspapers: But why is the business model dying? Competition is a factor, and blogs are obviously part of that mix. But again, if I'd started a business and someone else opened up down the street and offered a more appealing product, and I lost customers, would it be fair to blame the other guy alone for my problems? In a free market, we have competition. Yes, it can suck when you're not on the winning side. But there's nothing saying that you can't start a new business, or reform your existing one to compete. Newspapers remain…

Pink, pink everywhere. Let's get past breast cancer awareness to prevention

First it was the balloon at the grocery store in the shape of a pink ribbon, and the front page of the newspaper printed on pink paper. Then it was the specially-designed package of pink lipstick, and the NFL players decked out with shocking pink shoes, socks, and sweat towel. It's "Breast Cancer Awareness Month," and it’s pink, pink everywhere. Others have been writing this month about pink-washing. That’s the phrase describing firms and organizations which sell products and host events to make the public think they are contributing in a meaningful way to the breast-cancer cause. (This week’…

Medical professionalism, or WE ARE YOUR GODS, BOW BEFORE US

One of our sciblings, Dr. Signout, is learning the ropes as she struggles (and presumably excels) through her medical residency. As her writing has picked back up, she has brought up some important questions about medical education and medical professionalism. I'm a little further along in my career than she, and I have some thoughts that may flesh out her experiences, and shed some light on the medical profession as a whole. Her latest posts brought up two particularly important issues, one about how doctors are treated "without the white coat" and the other on what it means to put…

Big Tobacco's Tactics in Nigeria

Four Nigerian states are suing British American Tobacco and Philip Morris to recover costs of treating smoking-related diseases. The plaintiffs charge that the companies aimed to recruit more smokers by targeting minors, using sponsorship of concerts and sporting events and free cigarette giveaways. Tosin Sulaiman in The Times (UK) reports: The biggest increase in smoking in Nigeria has been among young people. The number of young women smokers grew tenfold between 1990 and 2001, according to the World Health Organisation.   A large part of the plaintiffsâ evidence will come from the…

Walmart Goes Gay

Walmart has decided to join the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, in an obvious attempt to sell products to a group of people with significant disposable income. The result, predictably, is a major freakout by the religious right. Now I know, we hear from conservatives all the time about free markets and capitalism, but you don't think they actualy mean it, do you? Also predictably, the Worldnutdaily is leading the chorus of outrage. This article contains lots of ridiculous statements, but it begins by describing what's going on: "It is correct that we have a dialogue with the (…

New Star Wars Film: The Recompense

Bounty hunter Jahdo Kyn intends to start a new life, but in order to leave his troubled past behind he has to buy himself a new future. He has a plan, but as his plan develops he discovers a dilemma, one that requires him to make choices he is not well-prepared to make. This is what happens when you have the kind of past Jahdo Kyn has made for himself. The Recompense concept art: Analiese Miller as Aisha Lefu. The beautiful and deadly Aisha Lefu is part of that past. And she’s not the only individual that will make Jahdo Kyn wish he hadn’t gotten out of bed that one morning, a long time…

Ah, Carbon Capture; we hardly knew ye

Jim Hansen wants to see all coal-fired plants shut down by 2030. Except for any plants that employ carbon-capture and sequestration. Al Gore wants to see the United States generate all its electricity from renewable sources by 2018, which means shutting down all the coal-fired plants. Except for any plants that employ carbon-capture and sequestration. Princeton University's Pacala and Socolow of the "wedge" strategy make CCS an integral part of their future clean energy portfolio. Everybody who's crunched the emissions numbers pretty much agrees that coal has got to go. Unless we can capture…

Summary Judgment in the California Creationist Case: The Lawyers for the Creationists Argue Like Creationists (Part 2 of 3)

(This is Part 2 of a three part post on Friday's summary judgment ruling in the ACSI v. Stearns creationism lawsuit. Part 1 is here; Part 3 will be up later today.) If you read Judge Otero's ruling on the summary judgment motions in the California Creationist Case, you'll see that he discovered something that most of us already know: if you're looking for dubious argument tactics, you'll almost always find them when you're reading things written by professional creationists. In the case of the California lawsuit, the Christian schools are being represented by the law firm of Wendell Bird.…

The Delicate Sensibilities of Teenage Girls

How do you effectively encourage young girls to stick with their math, science, and computer studies in high school? How do you effectively encourage them to consider careers in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics? There's no one perfect approach; you need a full toolkit that allows you to mend all the malfunctions and rip down all the roadblocks that gender roles, peer pressures, familial or societal expectations, and poor or misguided teachers can throw at a girl. The editors of and contributors to She's Such A Geek! thought one good tool to have in the arsenal would be an…

Mayors, Governors, Scary Gay People and ... what? Threesomes????

Sometimes the items falling into my in-box are totally random and unconnected. Sometimes they fit together very nicely. Then, there are the times they fit together in a random and unconnected sort of way. I moved to Boston, from Upstate New York, when the Governor was a King. I only vaguely remember who the mayor was, but there was another King running for that office ... Mel King, an African American activist and against him, Ray Flynn, a home boy Irish politician. Sorry about the Ethnic Labels, but this is, after all Saint Patrick's day, and by the time I'm done with this post you'll see…

Simon Singh appeals Judge Eady's bogus libel ruling

Back in May many of us in the skeptical blogosphere were alarmed to learn of what British law blogger Jack of Kent termed "an astonishingly illiberal ruling" by Sir David Eady against science writer Simon Singh. Eady was the judge presiding over another bit of legal thuggery by practitioners whose feelings were hurt when Simon Singh called them out in print for their 'promotion of chiropractic to treat all sorts of conditions for which it is utterly useless, referring to the British Chiropractic Association as promoting "bogus" remedies. When I wrote about this case nearly a month ago, I…

If you think it's just about mercury when it comes to vaccines, you're wrong

Vacation time! While Orac is off in London recharging his circuits and contemplating the linguistic tricks of limericks and jokes or the glory of black holes, he's rerunning some old stuff from his original Blogspot blog. This particular post first appeared on July 20, 2005. This one seems downright prescient as I read it again. Enjoy! Today in Washington, there will be a march, called (with unintentional irony) the Power of Truth march. Its organizers claim that it will be to "protest the use of mercury in vaccines" (never mind that the mercury was taken out of nearly all vaccines in the U.S…

10,000 B.C.: To MST3000 or Not to MST3000

One of the guilty pleasures of my sabbatical from the dark halls of Pharma-dur is the freedom to take in a movie on a weekday afternoon. There's just something special about sitting in a theater of the local googolplex with maybe three to ten other people and watching a new release on the big silver screen. It's like my own semi-private showing, and I can make believe that I am a dowdy suburban semi-literate version of the late Pauline Kael. Among the flicks I've taken in as afternoon delights: No Country for Old Men (saw it twice - I'm a combined Cormac McCarthy/Coen Brothers fan), There…

Nisbet to Myers, Dawkins: "Shut yer traps!"

Where there's one, there's the other. The pair behind the infamous "framing" concept are back, and this time they're telling scientists to shut up, perhaps taking up the axiom of "Wouldn't it be nice if everyone were nice?" More specifically, in a recent blog post Matt Nisbet admonished PZ and Richard Dawkins for their particular views about the conflict between science & religion as they appear in the creationist propaganda piece Expelled. Quote Nisbet; As long as Dawkins and PZ continue to be the representative voices from the pro-science side in this debate, it is really bad for those…

Energy and charging an electric motorcycle

I just realized that something has been bothering me. It is this KillaCycle - the electric zoom-fast motorcycle that I posted about previously. It clearly is super fast. However there are two claims that seem iffy. It can be recharged in 4 minutes. It is recharged by wind power. It may be possible that these individually could be true - but could it be recharged in 4 minutes by the wind? I am not sure. Let me do some estimations to see if this is possible. What am I starting with: From the review on gas2.org, uses cordless drill batteries. Uses 1200 batteries Produces 500 bhp - not…

In Oakland, Who Pays the Shipping Costs?

By Liz Borkowski  In the latest issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Joseph Plaster explores how the system for trucking imported goods from the Port of Oakland keeps both truckers and residents struggling. Truckers scrape by on meager earnings and can only afford the oldest, most polluting vehicles; pollution from hundreds of dirty trucks idling for hours each day spells health problems for truckers and those living nearby. A coalition of labor, environmental, and community groups has proposed changes that would improve truckersâ situation and clear the air. The companies who contract…

Where do you want scientists to learn ethics?

Because I am engaged in a struggle with mass quantities of grading, I'm reviving a post from the vault to tide you over. I have added some new details in square brackets, and as always, I welcome your insight here. I just got back [in Octiber of 2005] from talking with an outside evaluator about the federally funded training grant project at my university that tries to get more of our students to graduate school in science. The evaluator is here not at the behest of the funding agency, but rather at the request of the science professor here who oversees the program. Because, you know, he…

Thinker. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

After yesterday's detailed analysis of a study that's being touted far and wide as "evidence" that vitamin C cures cancer, I thought I deserved a bit of a break. No, that doesn't mean I'm going to take the day off from blogging. (Obviously, as you're reading this now.) It does mean that I plan on doing a bit of slumming, though, and what better place to slum than on some of the antivaccine crank blogs? Besides, it's almost as though they want me to apply a heapin' helpin' of not-so-Respectful Insolence to their material, given that they've put up posts that provide such ready insight into how…

The American Academy of Pediatrics versus antivaccinationist hypocrisy

Three weeks ago, I wrote about some truly irresponsible antivaccination propaganda masquerading as entertainment that aired in the form of a television show called Eli Stone. This show, which portrayed its hero taking on the case of an autistic boy whose mother blamed his autism on thimerosal (going under the fictional name "mercuritol") in vaccines and scoring a $5.2 million settlement in the process. One consequence of this show was that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) was shaken out of its inaction enough to draft a letter protesting the show and urging its cancellation of the…

Just in time for Christmas: a virgin birth!

Her name is Flora and she is a single parent. Born in Miami, Flora moved to Chester, UK, as a toddler. Now, she's almost 8 years old and starting a family, all on her own. Literally. Four eggs have hatched and another eight are ready to go. Yet, Flora has never gotten cozy with another male dragon. How did Flora accomplish this feat and how do we know that she's not just good at keeping secrets? Flora's not the only one Parthenogenesis -- reproduction without the need for fertilization by a male -- has been observed before in about 70 vertebrate species, including snakes and monitor…

That School Prayer Banner in Cranston

By now I'm sure we are all familiar with the Jessica Ahlquist case in Cranston, RI. The New York Times provides a helpful summary: She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years. A federal judge ruled this month that the prayer's presence at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional, concluding…

A Discovery That Will Change Everything (!!!) ... Or Not

Late last week I received a rather curious e-mail. It read; WORLD RENOWNED SCIENTISTS REVEAL A REVOLUTIONARY SCIENTIFIC FIND THAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING Ground-Breaking Global Announcement What: An international press conference to unveil a major historic scientific find. After two years of research a team of world-renowned scientists will announce their findings, which address a long-standing scientific puzzle. The find is lauded as the most significant scientific discovery of recent times. History brings this momentous find to America and will follow with the premiere of a major television…

The Moral Mind - NY Times Comment

Some people have asked me why I haven't written anything about Richard Dawkins' new book. To be honest, it's just another manuscript arguing that religions preach ignorance and can promote other societal evils. We've all heard this before. On the other hand, Marc Hauser's book, Moral Minds, is a trully original book, discussing the latest ideas from cognitive science. Just as Chomsky argued that we are endowed with a language instinct, Hauser proposes that we all have a morality instinct. In today's NY Times there is an article on his book: The proposal, [that people are born with a moral…

A new flavour of Global Warming denial

The IPA is the Australian version of the CEI, so you don't have to read an article they publish on global warming to know what the conclusions will be. But you do have to read it to find out what pretext will be used to dismiss concerns about warming. In the latest issue of IPA review we find an article by two economists (Sinclair Davidson and Alex Robson) that attempts to spread confusion about the IPCC fourth assessment report. The article is not online, but most of it is available here. They start off by taking a leaf from Michael Crichton's book -- they change the vertical scale on the…

Unification for Your Eyes and Ears

Image courtesy of the Cajal’s Butterflies of the Soul gallery at The Beautiful Brain. Noah Hutton is founding editor of The Beautiful Brain, an online magazine that explores recent neuroscience findings through monthly podcasts, essays, reviews, and galleries, with particular attention to the dialogue between the arts and sciences. Some of our greatest triumphs as a species have come from those who saw little difference between being a scientist and being a humanist. From Leonardo’s visionary notebooks to Herschel’s lunar poetry, science has provided a necessary resource for some great art;…

Why I am not a primatologist

One of the things I love about the blogosphere is the give and take, the ability of people to comment on each others' work, and the diversity of topics. The conversations that take place in the blogosphere have real value (a value which is so far under-recognized and under-utilized). Without the blogosphere, I would never be exposed to many of the things I read online, such as basic research in neuroanatomy and drug abuse, physiology, and primatology. Interest in primatology is sort of like love of chocolate---I suspect most of us are born with it. As the Bare Naked Ladies sang, "Haven't…

If these mice could speak

Nick Wade in The New York Times reports on new research where they inserted human FOXP2 genes into the mouse genome. Here are some of the findings: Despite the mammalian body's dependence on having its two FOXP2 genes work just right, Dr. Enard's team found that the human version of FOXP2 seemed to substitute perfectly for the mouse version in all the mouse's tissues except for the brain. In a region of the brain called the basal ganglia, known in people to be involved in language, the humanized mice grew nerve cells that had a more complex structure and produced less dopamine, a chemical…

Is Bisphenol A Responsible for Obesity?

According to the Boston Globe, bisphenol A levels lower than those found in 93% of people led to obesity in mice: Thousands of chemicals have come on the market in the past 30 years, and some of them are showing up in people's bodies in low levels. Scientists studying obesity are focusing on endocrine disrupters - which have already been linked to reproductive problems in animals and humans - because they have become so common in the environment and are known to affect fat cells. ...A recent US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found that about 93 percent of the US population…

Scientia Pro Publica Has Been Published!

Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux). Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power) -- Sir Francis Bacon. Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) was just published at Mauka to Makai. This edition is entitled Scientia Pro Publica 17: The EPIC Edition. The current host, Kelsey, author of Mauka to Makai, deserves our gratitude and appreciation for her super efforts to publish this edition despite the fact that she only had one submission on the Friday before the carnival was published -- due to the malfunctioning online blog carnival submission form. Scientia Pro…

Cannabis Helps MS?! What Are You, High?

While perusing press releases for this week's online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, I came across one with some unintentionally humorous phrasing. The press release details how University of Washington/Albert Einstein College of Medicine researchers using a mouse model of multiple sclerosis (MS) appear to have discovered that the disease inhibits the brain's production of neuroprotective endocannabinoids, which results in greater brain damage. Then, to my great joy, the press release twists itself into a pretzel to avoid saying that smoking pot actually…

Harvard bookstore says its prices are intellectual property

The Harvard Cooperative ("The Coop," pronounced like the coop in chicken coop) is a venerable institution whose main branch in Harvard Square is the principal retail outlet for textbooks to Harvard students. Generations have bought their texts and other books there. Like many college bookstores the old co-operative was bought out by a modern chain and the Harvard Coop is now a Barnes and Noble College Bookstore. The subsumption by a book retail giant some years ago was only one sign of a change in the book business, however. Now we have the internet which gives the modern cost conscious…

Marburg virus, bird flu and the bats out of hell

Pandemic influenza gets its share of headlines but there are other viruses out there that also are good tabloid fodder, most notably Ebola virus which causes Ebola hemorrhagic fever, whose gruesome effects were depicted in Richard Preston's book, The Hot Zone. Ebola has some close relatives in the filovirus family, among them Marburg virus. Like Ebola it can cause a gruesome demise. Marburg has cause several outbreaks in Africa, one of the largest in Angola at the end of 2004, early 2005 (see the Wikipedia article on Marburg for more details). One of the enduring mysteries is where the virus…

Long Cooked Vegetables

Lesley Porcelli has an article in this month's _Saveur_, "The Soft Approach" that raises an issue that I've been thinking about for a long time - that perhaps we've gone overboard in our resistance to long-cooking vegetables. Don't get me wrong - I grew up with grey, mushy broccoli and am grateful that those days are over. Ever since I read a Christopher Kimball recipe for beef stew, however, that had you adding the vegetables after most of the cooking is over so that the stew wouldn't have "overcooked" vegetables, however, I've wondered - is there any place for look cooked produce? I don…

Labor Secretary announces regulatory priorities for worker health and safety

Last week Labor Secretary Solis released in the Federal Register on April 26, 2010, her Spring 2010 regulatory agenda for the Department, including her rulemaking priorities for MSHA and OSHA. As required by the Regulatory Flexibility Act it was published on time in April, in contrast to her Fall 2009 agenda which was six weeks late. This document is described by the Secretary as a: "...listing of all the regulations it expects to have under active consideration for promulgation, proposal, or review during the coming 1-year period. The focus of all departmental regulatory activity will be…

Flawed Study Gets Congressional Hearing

Tomorrow, the House Small Business Committee will convene a hearing based on a study that is so flawed it could be used to teach students how not to do survey research. Last month, we wrote about this âsurvey,â conducted by the US Chamber of Commerce, purporting to show that compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley rules would be enormously burdensome to small business. It is difficult to believe anyone who reads the actual study would reach the same conclusion. The Chamber tried to identify small businesses that might be impacted by the law and asked almost 5,000 to complete a simple on-line survey…

Harry Potter and the Magical Kiss

tags: Harry Potter, kiss, Harry Potter and the Magical Kiss, online poll, fun Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) kissed by Maggie Smith (Professor McGonagall) World Premiere of Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince at the Empire Leicester Square cinema, London, England. Image: WENN.com Kiss kiss, kiss: it seems that everyone is thinking about kissy-face (snogging as the Brits say) -- and Harry Potter. In fact, after reading all those skanky tabloids, I've learned that Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) is an excellent kisser while Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) could use some further instruction in…

Kos screwed up

Everyone's talking about Kos, so in one sense he's done something smart, and he's going to rake in some more ad dollars over all this attention — but in another Kos has blown it, big time. He has dismissed the death threats against Kathy Sierra as a) same old story that he sees all the time, b) nothing to worry about, and c) reason to suggest that the victim ought to give up blogging, which, of course, is music to the ears of the "psycho losers" who carry out that kind of attempted intimidation. Is Kos really so tone-deaf that he doesn't realize he has just sided with people who threatened to…

Tech Note: Handheld File Transfer Woes

For the past two years I've been packing a soap-sized handheld computer named the Qtek 9100. It's a version of a design named the HTC Wizard, sporting a slide-out qwerty keyboard and running Windows Mobile. The machine's been good to me, though is has a few annoying quirks & glitches, and I would never go back to carrying anything with lesser capabilities. As I am phasing out Windows XP for Ubuntu Linux on my machines, one of the 9100's shortcomings has become an acute problem. It will only let you transfer files by cable using a glitchy piece of Microsoftware named ActiveSync, and this…

Saturday Amusements

Yesterday myself & Junior met up with Paddy K. Sr. & Jr. and went to Cybertown, a laser-game place in central Stockholm. Here we paid SEK 60 ($11) per head and donned vests with laser sensors and attached laser guns, forming Team Blue. Teams Red and Yellow each consisted of five ten-year-olds, and Team Green was a dad and his daughter. Then we entered a blacklit dry-ice-smoking dark labyrinth and spent 20 adrenaline-soaked minutes happily sniping at teams Red, Yellow and Green. We won! Not very surprising, given that our team was the only one with two dads. Individually, though, Green…

Swedish Skeptics 25 years

Today, the Swedish Skeptics Society celebrated its 25th anniversary with an afternoon seminar in Stockholm. I've been a member since 1997, a co-editor of the society's journal Folkvett since 2002 and a board member since 2004. The >2000-member society is Sweden's nearest equivalent of CSI (formerly CSICOP), but it has certain unusual traits. For one thing, its Swedish name, Föreningen Vetenskap och Folkbildning, says nothing about either skepticism nor the paranormal. It simply means "The Society for Science and Popular Enlightenment". (Folkbildning, a word first documented in 1805, is…