Politics
gregladen | March 21, 2014Aside from its tragic nature and its apparent media value as a mystery greater than who will be the Next American Idol, the apparent disappearance of flight 370 has another meaning, I think, that has been entirely missed as far as I can tell.
The other day I was having a conversation with some colleagues, which led to someone quoting Stallman, which in turn led to noting that Stallman refuses to use a smart phone (or any cell phone, perhaps, can't remember) because of the danger of being constantly tracked by the authorities. I note that my "smart phone" is dumb as a brick. Whenever I need…
oracknows | March 21, 2014
"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."
I know I've used that quote before several times over the 9+ years that I've been blogging. These days, I probably use it most frequently when it comes to the topic of Stanislaw Burzynski. Every time I think that I can give the topic a rest for a while (and, believe me, I do want to give it a rest), something invariably seems to happen to pull me back in. So it was yesterday when i was made aware of a new development so disappointing that I'm still wiping the dirt off my chin from my jaw dropping to the floor. Even more amazing is that…
jdupuis | March 17, 2014York University mathematician and civil rights activist Lee Lorch died February 28, 2014 at the age of 98.
A few years ago I posted on the 2007 Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans Lee Lorch where Lee was awarded the Yueh-Gin Gung and Charles Y. Hu Award for Distinguished Service to Mathematics.
The citation read:
Lee Lorch's mathematical research has been in the areas of analysis, differential equations, and special functions. His teaching positions have included the City College of New York, Pennsylvania State University, Fisk University, Philander Smith College, the University of…
gregladen | March 12, 2014Daphne Wysham and Daniel Weiss interviewed on Real News about the event of two nights ago.
oracknows | March 12, 2014I realize that some of my readers will chide me for saying this, but I usually expect better of Reason. Although I sometimes have a tendency to be a bit—shall we say?—Insolent about libertarians when they pass from a reasonable defense of civil liberties into an Ayn Rand-inspired fantasy world in which the market cures all, useless people keep the supermen (and women) down, and the government is virtually unnecessary, I've usually considered Reason.com to represent a fairly—if you'll excuse the word—reasonable variety of libertarianism. For instance, Ronald Bailey actually once presented…
oracknows | March 10, 2014I forgot if I ever mentioned that I have an article out in the current episode of Skeptical Inquirer about Stanislaw Burzynski. I call it a "primer for skeptics," because that's what it is. So, if you subscribe to SI (Skeptical Inquirer, not Sports Illustrated), read. If not, get thee to a newsstand before it's gone. Thus endeth the plug and beginneth the Insolence.
When last I discussed Stanislaw Burzynski, I noted that, among other things, the state of Texas appears far more interested in putting abortion providers out of business than it does in protecting its citizens suffering from…
gregladen | March 7, 2014Washington, DC - During a press conference today, Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), announced the members of a newly formed Senate Climate Action Task Force and discussed their plans to take action on climate change.
Click here to watch the video of today's press conference.
The members of the task force are listed below:
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD)
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)…
milhayser | March 6, 2014It's been a frigid winter in much of the United States, but Greg Laden notes that the country covers only 1.5% of the Earth's surface, and overall the planet just experienced the fourth-warmest January on record. Meanwhile global warming denialists are resorting to every rhetorical trick in the book, such as comparing their increasingly outnumbered position to that of Galileo. While it's tempting to recount the history of science as that of a few brilliant mavericks overthrowing established consensus, Greg writes "Science hardly ever gets Galileoed, and even Galileo did not Galileo science…
oracknows | March 6, 2014One of my favorite shows right now is True Detective, an HBO show in which two cops pursue a serial killer over the course of over 16 years. Starring Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, it's an amazingly creepy show, and McConaughey is amazing at playing his character, Rustin Cohle. I'm sad that the show will be ending this week.
Unfortunately, as much as I like Matthew McConaughey as an actor, he is in part responsible for re-inspiring a movement that has the potential to do profound harm to patients and cancer research. That's because his other big role over the last year has been in…
sa smith | March 5, 2014It is frustrating being a scientist in a political climate that is not supportive of science.
But what we have to put up with in the US pales in comparison with something happening right now in Egypt:
More from CNN:
Egyptian army's AIDS-cure claim gets harsh criticism
Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Abdel-Atti is apparently a total nutbar (many details here and more here-- its crazy, click the links!) who says hes cured HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C.
Well thats all fine and dandy-- I get dozens of spam comments every day from HIV Cure scams:
I was infected with HIV disease which cost me my relationship with…
drorzel | February 28, 2014I got book edits this week, gave an exam on Thursday, and pre-registration for our spring term classes is just beginning, so I have a parade of students begging to get into this course or that one to deal with. So I have no more time for detailed blogging, but will do a bit of tab-clearing to end the week.
This piece about bimodal exams resonated well with my experiences in intro classes. I see a lot of the same thing, though with less statistical power, given that our maximum class size is 18. But in general, the "well-prepared students are bored, poorly-prepared students hopelessly lost"…
drorzel | February 16, 2014The outrage of the moment in academic circles is this Nick Kristof column on how academics need to be more engaged with a broader public. And it's really impressive how he manages to take an idea that I basically agree with-- I regularly give talks on the need for scientists to do more outreach via social media-- and present it in a way that's faintly insulting.
This came to my attention via Chuck Pearson on Twitter, who also has a long blog response. There are also good responses from Edward Carr and Corey Robin, and the hashtag Chuck launched, #EngagedAcademics includes lots of counter-…
oracknows | February 15, 2014Regular readers know my frustration with the Texas Medical Board. Why is it, I've often wondered, that Stanislaw Burzynski can keep peddling his unproven cancer treatment with seeming impunity for nearly four decades, with every attempt of the TMB over the last four decades seemingly being utterly ineffective? It's not as though Burzynski is alone. There are many other doctors who should, in the opinion of many, have their licenses revoked but keep practicing in Texas. Even when there's a doctor who is clearly an immediate threat to patients, it's hard to get the TMB to do anything. Ditto…
drorzel | February 12, 2014Kevin Drum and Aaron Carroll report on a new study of the effect of new grocery stores opening in "food deserts" in poor neighborhood. The study is paywalled, so I can't speak to the whole thing, but both of them quote similar bits making the same point: no statistically significant effects on the BMI of people in the neighborhood, and very few signs of healthier eating in general.
This is one of those studies that probably belongs in the Journal of "Well, Yeah...", because it doesn't surprise me a bit. Not for reasons that can be addressed via policy measures-- Drum quotes the study saying "…
jdupuis | February 12, 2014Welcome to the rebooted science interview series here at Confessions of a Science Librarian! The previous incarnation mostly concentrated on people in the broadly defined scholarly communications community, like Mark Patterson of eLife, Peter Binfield and Jason Hoyt of PeerJ or author Michael Nielsen.
The series has been extremely irregular for the last few years so I thought my more recent involvement with Canadian science policy advocacy presented an interesting opportunity to start over. In particular, my participation in the recent iPolitics science policy series presented itself as a…
oracknows | February 11, 2014I don't know if it's a sign that I've arrived as being a bit more influential than just a blogger or just dumb luck when reporters start sending me things, but I'll take it. It's like blog fodder being served to me on the proverbial silver platter. Unfortunately, as a result of receiving a press release, FDA Denies Treatment to Two Terminally Ill Young Women, from two different sources, after yesterday's hilarious (if I do say so myself) bit of fun with a certain woman who fancies herself a "Thinker" when everything she writes shows that she is anything but, I find myself tackling a much more…
oracknows | February 7, 2014If there's one thing that I write that I don't feel I repeat too much (although some might disagree), it's that, unlike other centers and institutes at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), there is not, and never was, a compelling scientific justification for the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) to exist as a separate entity. There is nothing that NCCAM does that couldn't be done just as well in other parts of the NIH, with the exception of research into modalities with such low prior plausibility and such fantastical proposed mechanisms of working that…
oracknows | February 4, 2014I had originally planned on writing about a different topic today, but, as is so often the case in blogging, something came up that caught my attention, much as the errant thought of a squirrel distracts Dug the Dog. Well, actually, I had to go to an evening meeting for work last night and by the time I came home even the Plexiglass box of blinking lights didn't have enough of a charge left to deliver up fresh Insolence. Fortunately, there's some almost fresh Insolence from the other day that can be repurposed, something that seems imperative since one of the targets of today's Insolence is…
oracknows | January 30, 2014Believe it or not, I'm about to say the one and only good thing I will say about Stanislaw Burzynski in this post. After all, I was always taught to find the good in my opponents, no matter how vile I find them. Burzynski, for instance, has been peddling a cure for brain cancer (and other cancers) that he claims to have discovered in the blood and urine in the 1970s. Despite there being no convincing evidence of antitumor activity due to these peptides, which he dubbed antineoplastons, he has managed to win battle after battle with the FDA and the Texas Medical Board and to continue to prey…
jdupuis | January 29, 2014A couple of weeks ago I was approached by Rabble.ca to write a piece for them with some of my thoughts about the current controversy surrounding the government of Canada's closure of several Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries. I have a link compilation here.
I was happy to write up something and it appeared here. Rabble also allows authors to keep all rights to their work so we agreed that after a few days I would be able to repost it here on my blog. Which is what I've done below.
I will reiterate my thanks to Kaitlin McNabb for offering me this opportunity and for her very…