For all of you book dorks who get a sick pleasure out of knowing what happens on Game of Thrones before the rest of us lazy TV watchers do, prepare to learn how the other half lives. During a talk at the Oxford Union, GoT show runners Dan Weiss and David Benioff confirmed that upcoming seasons of the show will depict scenes that have yet to be published in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series.
In 2003, researchers writing in the American Journal of Medicine discovered something that should change how you think about medical news. They looked at 101 studies published in top scientific journals between 1979 and 1983 that claimed a new therapy or medical technology was very promising. Only five, they found out, made it to market within a decade. Only one (ACE inhibitors, a pharmaceutical drug) was still extensively used at the time of their publication.
One.
But you'd never know that from reading the press. Take a recent miracle procedure for multiple sclerosis. MS is a degenerative disease with no cure. In sufferers, the immune system attacks the protective layer around the nerves, disturbing the communication between brain and body — and causing a cascade of devastating symptoms: unsteady and jerking movements; loss of vision, bladder and bowel control; and eventually, early death.
In 2009, a breakthrough: a charming Italian researcher, Dr. Paolo Zamboni, claimed to have cured his wife's MS by "unblocking" the veins in her neck. He theorized MS wasn't an autoimmune disorder but a vascular one. The research was counterintuitive, it gave people with the disease hope, and it had an appealing personal tale behind it, involving one man's quest to save his wife. It was catnip for health reporters, who hailed "liberation therapy" as a romance-fueled medical triumph.
Sadly, however, Zamboni's discovery was more hype than breakthrough. What didn't get as much attention as his romantic quest was the fact that his study was small and badly designed. Other researchers who attempted to replicate his findings failed. Soon, anecdotes of patient complications and relapses emerged.
This cycle recurs again and again. An initial study promises a miracle. News stories hype the miracle. Researchers eventually disprove the miracle.
"There's a big, big, difference between how the media think about news and how scientists think about news," Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard professor of the history of science, recently told me in an interview. "For you, what makes it news is that it's new — and that creates a bias in the media to look for brand new results. My view would be that brand new results would be the most likely to be wrong."
Most medical studies are wrong
It’s a fact that all studies are biased and flawed in their own unique ways. The truth usually lies somewhere in a flurry of research on the same question. This means real insights don't come by way of miraculous, one-off findings or divinely ordained eureka moments; they happen after a long, plodding process of vetting and repeating tests, and peer-to-peer discussion. The aim is to make sure findings are accurate and not the result of a quirk in one experiment or the biased crusade of a lone researcher.
As science is working itself out, we reporters and our audiences seize on "promising findings." It's exciting to hear about a brand new idea that maybe — just maybe — could revolutionize medicine and stop some scourge people suffer through. We're often prodded along by overhyping scientists like Zamboni, who are under their own pressure to attract research funding and publications.
We don't wait for scientific consensus; we report a little too early, and we lead patients and policymakers down wasteful, harmful, or redundant paths that end in dashed hope and failed medicine.
This tendency could be minimized if we could only remember that the overwhelming majority of studies in medicine fail.
Many of the experimental cancer therapies featured in the news seem to be the holy grail in cancer treatment, they're also the latest in a long line of seemingly "revolutionary" fixes. In fact, there have been more than 200 failures of supposed cancer breakthroughs in recent years.
A highly regarded service that vets new studies for clinicians finds — on average — only 3,000 of 50,000 new journal articles published each year are well-designed and relevant enough to inform patient care. That's 6 percent.
More often than not, single studies contradict one another — such as the research on foods that cause or prevent cancer. The truth can be found somewhere in the totality of the research, but we report on every study in isolation underneath flip-flopping headlines. (Red wine will add years to your life one week, and kill you quicker the next.)
For a study on whether everything we eat is associated with cancer, academics randomly selected 50 ingredients from recipes in The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. Most foods had studies behind them claiming both positive and negative results.
Researchers cannot always replicate the findings of other researchers, and for various reasons many don't even try. All told, an estimated 85 percent — or $200 billion — of annual global spending on research is wasted on badly designed or redundant studies.
This means early medical research will mostly be wrong until maybe eventually, if we're lucky, it's right. More tangibly, only a tiny fraction of new science will lead to anything that’s useful to humans.
There is no cure for our addiction to medical hype
We now live in an age of unprecedented scientific exploration. Through the internet, we have this world of knowledge at our fingertips. But more information means more bad information, and the need for skepticism has never been greater.
I often wonder whether there is any value in reporting very early research. Journals now publish their findings, and the public seizes on them, but this wasn't always the case: journals were meant for peer-to-peer discussion, not mass consumption.
Working in the current system, we reporters feed on press releases from journals and it's difficult to resist the siren call of flashy findings. We are incentivized to find novel things to write about, just as scientists and research institutions need to attract attention to their work. Patients, of course, want better medicines, better procedures — and hope.
But this cycle is hurting us, and it's obscuring the truths research has to offer. (Despite the very early and tenuous science behind liberation therapy, MS sufferers traveled the world seeking it out, and launched political movements calling for resources to fund the treatment.)
For my part, I've tried to report new studies in context, and use systematic reviews — meta-analyses of all the best studies on clinical questions — wherever possible. When scientists or other members of the media prematurely blow up a novel breakthrough, I've tried to convey the reality that it's probably not a breakthrough at all. The more I do this, the more I realize the truth in what Harvard's Oreskes, Stanford's John Ioannidis, and many other respected researchers have reiterated over the years: we need to look past the newest science to where knowledge has accumulated. There, we'll find insights that will help us have healthier lives and societies.
As we turn away from the magic pills and miracle treatments, I think we'll focus more on the things that actually matter to health — like education, equality, the environment.
It's not always easy, and the forces pushing us to the cutting edge are powerful. But I try to proceed cautiously, to remind myself that most of what I'm seeing today is hopelessly flawed, that there's value in looking back.
SXSW, the back-patting tech conference masquerading as a music festival, is wrapping up tonight down in Austin. In among the press conferences, there's been time for some actual bands to play — and for those of us unable to be there in person, the festival has released 8.42 gigabytes of DRM-free MP3s for your listening pleasure.
Take this bag coffee brewer anywhere to make fresh coffee on-the-go. Simply pour hot water into the pouch, seal the top, wait a few minutes, and pour through the spout. The special brewing system preserves coffee’s natural oils for a rich taste.
Overkill: Adds a fully voiced and animated playable female heister with good writing and practical design as dlc, portrayed by an actor of the same background and real accent as the character
Payday 2 Community: Thanks that was great! Could we have more female characters!
Overkill: Adds a new and original female mission contact (quest giver / not playable) with a good and practical character portrayed in live action by an accomplished actor of the ethnicity intended
Payday 2 Community: Wow, that was awesome! Thanks!
Overkill: Adds a new FREE fully voiced and animated playable female heister with good writing and practical design WITH A DIFFERENT BODY TYPE AND PRESENTATION FROM THE FIRST portrayed by an actor with the real background accent of the character
Payday 2 Community:
i love clover and bonnie and i really hope there are some nerdlords crying that they didn’t get some tity lady bombshell characters
Look, there's only so many years you can keep shooting innocent defenceless animals before the formula gets a little stale. Which might explain why the next Buck Hunter arcade game—Big Buck HD Wild—is full of zombies.
Revok is set to make his LA debut on April 10th at MAMA gallery space with his exhibition aptly titled "Revok: Los Angeles". His show already promises the vibrant, geometric forms that Revok has become known for, recently featured in the publication "Revok: Made in Detroit." On display will be 12 new paintings on assembled wood pieces, a sort of continuation of that series. Here, Revok explores new themes inspired by his newfound home in Los Angeles where he sources his materials.
FX’s animated series Archer has been a smash hit since it debuted back in 2009. Following the insane and often self-serving adventures of Sterling Archer, an agent of the International Secret Intelligence Service, the show is a seamless blend of spy-film parodies and off-color modern comedy. The show’s creator, Adam Reed, has previously described it as James Bond meets Arrested Development. After a season-long adventure into the world of large scale drug dealing, the entire gang is back to their old job, now working for the C.I.A. after their original positions at I.S.I.S. were phased out. [Editor’s Note: We wonder why… (news)] The newest season started back in January, and it seems this season has something more in store for fans who are willing to put the work in.
Over on Imgur, a user named shittititti discovered in the freeze frame from a recent episode shown above that they have displayed a hexadecimal code in with Conway Stern’s profile. Whether fueled by curiosity, boredom, or a superhuman sense for internet research, they went off to the net to discover what that code actually was…a code. What was discovered was the first of many hidden “tiny.cc” links that would lead to various other areas of the internet and down the rabbit hole of Archer’s Easter Egg Hunt. Through the use of spectograms to find codes inside of sound clips, deciphering fake Craig’s List ads, and some knowledge about the characters in the show, it seems the man behind the hunt is none other than Dr. Krieger. The hunt offers up some fun tid-bits like linking to the video for Rush’s “YYZ,” as well as Krieger’s own website full of pictures and other goodies for Archer fans.
The hunt is not over, thought, and you can head over to the actual Imgur page to see each step in the process so far. Keep your eyes peeled during the rest of the episodes this season and see if you can join in on the fun. Then head over to twitter, @MattDelhauer, and let me know what to do, because this definitely above my head.
Outed yesterday in a product description on the Xbox Games Store, Predator is officially confirmed as a DLC character for Mortal Kombat X, along with three others seen in this video. There are a bunch of other skins available, including Carl Weathers. Yes, really.
First up is Jason Vorhees, the uber-antagonist of the Friday the 13th slasher-flick series; then comes Tanya and Tremor, both of whom had limited appearances in the 2011 Mortal Kombat release (Tanya with a cameo only; Tremor on the PS Vita edition's Challenge Tower only.)
She's a woman in her mid 50s or early 60s and she's about 20 stories up, standing on the edge of her apartment balcony. It's a mid-January night in Toronto so it's absolutely freezing outside but she's not wearing a coat or mittens or a hat or even socks—probably because she's not planning to be outside long enough to get hypothermia, or even frostbite.
She has stage IV cancer. I don't catch the type or when she found out but I know it's terminal. And I know that the only way she wants to get off the balcony is the one where she passes 19 floors on the way down.
This isn't happening in front of me, mind you—I'm listening to it happen in real time, but even then, I don't hear the woman or the wicked gusts of wind that are blasting through the city that night or even the voices of the police officers that are trying to calm her down.
All I have is the back-and-forth between one officer and a dispatcher as he updates her on what's happening on the scene, their crackling voices coming through the police scanner and bouncing around the small room I'm confined to for eight hours a day, two or three times a week. Since September, I've been working at a newspaper, where, among other things, I used to listen to police and paramedic scanners for breaking news. The scanners picked up radio transmissions between officers or paramedics out in the field and their dispatchers—it's long given crime reporters, tow truck companies, and hobbyists an auditory backseat ride in almost every cruiser and paramedic vehicle in the city. Of course, I got to hear police and paramedics respond to the things that made the six o'clock news or the front page—the shootings, the stabbings, the home invasions, the 20-car pileups that cripple traffic for hours—but more often than not, I heard things that news editors decided a long time ago shouldn't be broadcast or printed.
Everyone knows that things like mental health calls, bar fights, domestic violence, and suicides happen. But it isn't until you listen to them get called in, day in and day out, that you really start to understand the frequency with which they happen and what first responders have to deal with every day.
The officer with the woman on the balcony faithfully reported back to dispatch about every 30 seconds until, suddenly, the frequency went silent.
Twenty minutes later, his voice resurfaced. He was at the hospital.
"We're, uh, notifying next of kin," he said, deadpan.
Listening to the scanners taught me a lot about the city I thought I already knew everything about.
Encrypting the Chatter But we scanner listeners are a dying breed. Peel and York Regional Police forces switched over to digital radios and encrypted their signals in 2014, meaning that for media, hobbyists, and post-crash cleaner crews, the scanners have gone silent. Both police forces cited officer safety and citizen privacy as reasons to block everyone else from listening in; York Regional Police's chief later admitted that several news programs broadcasting the final words of an officer fatally struck by a car, heard over the scanners, also contributed to York's decision. It's the latest in a growing wave of silence creeping on to the scanners—Hamilton police started encrypting in 2012; as Durham's did in 2000. Toronto police had said they would make the switch in May, but earlier this month, their frequencies went silent too.
Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash said the switch has been years in the making and is necessary to protect both police and public safety and to keep the sensitive information often included in transmissions private.
"Has it happened that the media got to scenes before police? Yes, absolutely, it happens with frequency," Pugash said. "If we're going to arrest someone, there's a considerable element of surprise. If there are TV broadcast vans there before we get there, there's an extremely high likelihood that the element of surprise will be lost."
"The media have been able to eavesdrop on this information because the technology didn't exist to prevent that. But this is very sensitive information," he added. "We are changing because there are dangers and risks involved in [transmissions] not being encrypted."
Cracking the Codes You have to get used to emergency service lingo when you start listening to scanners. Male, very HBD? A guy who's shitfaced (has been drinking). The police are transporting a body? Don't get too excited, because "body" in cop-speak means a prisoner. Paramedics are transporting a patient from the scene, CTAS1? Well, better get on that because the poor bastard is treading the fine line between life and death. CTAS3? They're mostly fine. And VSA? If it's a crime-related call, that's definitely making the blotter the next day because that means the patient's heart and lungs have stopped (vital signs absent, but remember, no one's officially dead until they've been pronounced—patients can be VSA and be brought back). It wouldn't be fair to let the letters have all the fun though: 10-2s is the verbal shortcut to mean police (as in, "10-2s are on scene"), and yes, they really do say 10-4 at the end of some transmissions.
After you crack the code and can start listening without having to constantly glance at a cheat sheet to decipher the short forms, a few things start jumping out at you.
Statistics IRL Did you know that in Toronto, there were four times more suicides than murders in 2009? The fact that suicides far outweigh murders as a cause of death isn't exactly a secret, but it's one thing to read a statistic and another to hear the sheer number of suicide attempt calls that police have to respond to every day. Editors and mental health experts have long cited fears of triggering copycat suicides to justify not reporting on them.
Another thing everyone's probably unconsciously aware of but doesn't really notice is the loose correlation between weather and crime. In general, a drop in temperatures usually equates to a drop in crime—when winter really hit Toronto and the city fell to below freezing, the radios went largely silent. The exact opposite holds true when it starts warming up.
"The hot days, you could guarantee the scanner was going to be busy," said Richard, a hobbyist who did not want his last name published and who started listening in on Toronto police transmissions in 1988. It's not just anecdotal—a 2013 study found that with temperature spikes come crime rate spikes too. "After midnight after the bars let out on a Friday or Saturday night, fights were and are still common," he added.
Most fights don't make the news. Neither do the muggings, domestic violence incidents, or thefts unless they occur under ridiculous circumstances. (I once overheard police responding to a man getting robbed of his cash, wallet, cellphone, and pants—that one made the crime blotter.)
And of course, crime seems to cluster in some areas.
It's not all doom and gloom, though—you occasionally get to hear a happy transmission, or at least one that makes you giggle. Lost kids get reunited with worried parents; the wandering elderly are brought back home. No one ever seems to swear on the radios, either, which means cops or paramedics sometimes update their dispatchers that they're leaving a scene because someone told them to "go self-fornicate." And I don't think the average citizen realizes how many times a month police officers have to chase down someone who decides to get naked and run around in the streets (hint: it's a lot).
One evening shift, I listened as paramedics sped to an address because a concerned friend had received a text message from the resident saying he needed help and stopped responding. Five minutes later, they cleared the scene. The resident had indeed needed help, but not of the medical kind—he just wanted to move his couch but couldn't do it alone. Another time, the police needed a unit to respond to a woman who had, among other things, "uncontrollable sexual urges."
As a scanner listener, you have the luxury of observing from a distance. There's a weird sort of disconnect: You know what you're hearing is playing out somewhere in the city but at the same time, it feels a little surreal.
"When you hear it on a radio, it's almost like it's not happening. It's desensitized," said Edward, another hobbyist who wanted his last name kept private, who first started playing around with scanners 25 years ago. He now runs a Twitter account, @TorontoStreets, that he occasionally uses to Tweet breaking news from.
"It's a theatre for the mind, what you're listening to. It's like a good book," he said. "I think that fact that it's live is the fascinating part of it."
First responders don't get that luxury, and it doesn't take long to see why paramedics and cops have some of the highest rates of PTSD in the population. For every emotionally unstable or violent person, there are at least two first responders who have to handle someone who's possibly a danger to themselves and to everyone around them. For every suicide attempt, there's an officer or paramedic who has to try and talk to person down. For every murder, there's an officer or paramedic who had to be first on scene and see the terrible things humans are capable of doing to each other. It takes a toll—you'd be surprised by level of exhaustion you can detect in a stranger's voice, even when it's coming through on a crackling radio.
One shift last year, the mostly quiet scanners suddenly exploded with activity. There had been a shooting out west, near a school, and then one downtown. I remember police dispatchers calmly and methodically sending units to the scenes while gathering information from officers on site. I remember officers panting heavily as they chased the suspects in the school shooting through a park, relaying descriptions and their positions back to dispatchers. I remember the dispatcher for the downtown shooting warning all officers in the area to be careful because two suspects had fled the scene. It was cacophony of voices saturated with adrenaline and authority.
But what I remember most clearly came through the paramedic scanner. An ambulance had picked up the downtown shooting victim and was rushing him to hospital. A female paramedic was reporting back to her dispatcher, and I heard something I haven't heard before or since—a paramedic yelling, her voice tinged with urgency bordering on defeat.
"One male with three shots to the chest and one to the back of the head," she relayed.
"VSA."
Three people died during my shift that day. Two of them were high school students in their teens. The third was a man in his early 20s.
I spent the rest of my day after the shift with a weird feeling that I've never quite been able to pin down.
Radio Silence The growing encryption trend has drawn the ire of journalists and hobbyists, who argue that not only do silent scanners make it harder to find breaking news, but also give police more power on what's reported—unless someone's lucky enough to stumble upon an active crime scene, the media who report on crimes are almost completely dependent on police telling them.
I remember the last big crime call I listened to before encryption kicked in. It was another relatively slow overnight shift (some non-fatal stabbings) when Edward sent me a message on Twitter telling me to tune into the 54 and 55 Division channel.
Reports of shots fired at a McDonald's.
Then, reports of someone lying on the ground.
An officer confirms someone's on the ground and that the person is not moving. Shortly after, another person is also found on the ground, not moving. They're both pronounced dead on scene. The McDonald's is cordoned off, and then the streets around it. There's a bit of confusion as to who the shooter is or where he went, but it doesn't take too long for police to figure out it was an armed security guard who apparently fired on two men after some sort of physical fight. The guard stayed on scene and cooperates with police. All the employees are accounted for and safe.
The last crime call I heard was on March 1—a police car chase and then foot-hunt for suspects in three armed robberies. No one was hurt, thankfully, but police did cordon off a few blocks and bring in a tactical and K9 unit to try and track down the suspects. One man ended up getting arrested; four or five got away.
The radios were encrypted by the time I came in for my next shift. Toronto paramedics spokesperson Kim McKinnon told me that, for now, the service does not plan on encrypting its transmissions, so I still have paramedic chatter to keep me company in the room at work. But the paramedic scanner was never nearly as active as the police scanners, and more often than not now, I find myself sitting in silence, sometimes for hours. It's the eeriest on the overnights when the newsroom is completely empty.
The police scanners still sit on a table beside the computer desk, though. Every time I go in, I crank the volume up all the way in the hope that somewhere, some radio in some squad car was missed in the switch. So far, no luck.
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Revok is set to make his LA debut on April 10th at MAMA gallery space with his exhibition aptly titled "Revok: Los Angeles". His show already promises the vibrant, geometric forms that Revok has become known for, recently featured in the publication "Revok: Made in Detroit." On display will be 12 new paintings on assembled wood pieces, a sort of continuation of that series. Here, Revok explores new themes inspired by his newfound home in Los Angeles where he sources his materials.
Revok is set to make his LA debut on April 10th at MAMA gallery space with his exhibition aptly titled "Revok: Los Angeles". His show already promises the vibrant, geometric forms that Revok has become known for, recently featured in the publication "Revok: Made in Detroit." On display will be 12 new paintings on assembled wood pieces, a sort of continuation of that series. Here, Revok explores new themes inspired by his newfound home in Los Angeles where he sources his materials.
Finally, the food mash-up we've been waiting for: a gigantic donut with a Pop Tart shoved inside of it. [ more › ]
[Image: Imgur]
[Image: Reddit]
Pac-Man has eaten up a Downtown intersection in what's either a new street art piece or some sort of guerilla marketing. [ more › ]
No, this isn’t a stoned dream you’re having. [ 
