Since we were kids, we've been taught that a boa constrictor wraps itself around its prey and suffocate it. A new study suggests that's incorrect. Read the rest
Ben Goldacre has once again produced some excellent writing on scientific data — he has written an article on data analysis and deworming trials, and it’s both interesting and important. I’ll be using it in my classes, because I do try to hammer home to my students the importance of an appropriate understanding of statistics.
The main point, though, is that science has a problem. In a discipline dependent on the free exchange of information, huge amounts of data are hidden away and locked up as ‘proprietary information’, and all that gets published are basically synopses and interpretations.
Two years ago I published a book on problems in medicine. Front and center in this howl was “publication bias,” the problem of clinical trial results being routinely and legally withheld from doctors, researchers, and patients. The best available evidence — from dozens of studies chasing results for completed trials — shows that around half of all clinical trials fail to report their results. The same is true of industry trials, and academic trials. What’s more, trials with positive results are about twice as likely to post results, so we see a biased half of the literature.
This is a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine. When half the evidence is withheld, doctors and patients cannot make informed decisions about which treatment is best. When I wrote about this, various people from the pharmaceutical industry cropped up to claim that the problem was all in the past. So I befriended some campaigners, we assembled a group of senior academics, and started the AllTrials.net campaign with one clear message: “All trials must be registered, with their full methods and results reported.”
A 16-year-old boy has caused a stir after releasing a video showing himself being denied the right to film a checkpoint pat-down — something the TSA officially allows.
YouTube user Apple Lucas claims that he was denied the right to film while being patted down by a TSA supervisor at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. He then tried to film his father getting patted down, only to have the TSA agent call a police officer to the scene.
“I explained to him that it clearly states on the TSA website that you are allowed to film the TSA agents as long as you don’t film their monitors and are not interfering with their process,” Apple Lucas writes.
According to builder Karwik, this type of Polish Television truck was the first such vehicle to be designed and built in then-Communist Poland, and helped facilitate the first color TV broadcast in Poland in 1971: a program of Communist Party government proceedings.
Karwik has done a stellar job adding details on this model, from the myriad cables and wires that always accompany broadcast trucks to building nifty minifig-scale cameras. My favorites are the tiny stepstools by the truck doors.
There’s a new Patreon level, in case anyone else wants to join in supporting the comic financially. For pledges of $15 or more, you get a signed copy of Kenan Malik’s monumental “The Quest for a Moral Compass: A global history of ethics”. Only five available!
I’ve been reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. It’s powerful — I woke up in the middle of the night last night, and had to read a bit more, and then I had a tough time getting back to sleep afterwards. There’s this bit where he’s talking about the terror he felt on being pulled over by the police in PG County, and the dread he felt at the arbitrary abuse by police of black people at traffic stops, and his friend who was gunned down by a policeman, and I am marveling at this strange world I’ve never had to experience. When I’ve been pulled over, what I feel is annoyance, and a bit of self-blaming, and concern that I might get a ticket, nothing more. Driving while white is easy.
She was pulled over for failing to signal during a lane change. When he walks up to the window to give her a warning, he asks her what’s wrong — I presume she looked annoyed — and she is blunt and tells him why. Then he tells her to put out her cigarette, and she refuses. And for that, he arrests her, manhandles out of her car, and roughs her up offscreen.
She’s put in jail, and is dead three days later, they say because she hanged herself.
This is unbelievable. Three days in jail and dead, for failing to signal a lane change? By what right is that policeman telling her she can’t smoke in her own car? What was he arresting her for? For being uppity? What was the cause for threatening to tase her, for handcuffing her, for putting her in jail?
There’s nothing in the video to show that Bland was in the wrong. She was angry but calm until the cop decided that a civilian disagreeing with him was cause to open the door and physically drag her out and arrest her. If you watch through the whole thing, the cop spends a fair amount of time justifying his actions to the camera: he was just trying to “calm her down”, and that she was “resisting arrest”. It was all her fault! She was assaulting him!
It was chilling to listen to him rationalize the event immediately after the fact — and nothing he said made his actions OK. This is a man who does not question his power to do great harm to the people he’s supposed to protect.
Coates is right. Read his book. It’ll change how you see the world.
This comic was originally posted on Everyday Feminism.
I encounter fairly frequently men who are under the misconception that feminism is solely concerned with promoting the interests of women over everyone else.
The truth is, the gender essentialism and gender dichotomy that is upheld by patriarchy is harmful to every gender. While men may benefit as individuals on items such as the wage gap, as a whole they are far more damaged than benefited by sexism. The construction of women as mothers and housekeepers and men as breadwinners perpetuates the ‘dumb dad’ stereotype. Constructions of women as weak and men as strong create societies that fail to recognize men who experience sexual assault or partner violence.
And gosh, emotions – gender stereotypes make emotions a minefield for every gender. Men can’t cry, women can’t get angry. Men shouldn’t be too passive, women shouldn’t be too assertive. The emotions of trans people are closely scrutinized for expressions that betray them as their ‘real’ gender. And the intersections of race, poverty, disability… the truth is, we’re told over and over again from birth how we should be able to express how we’re feeling. And it’s killing us.
This is the work of feminism – gender equality is not some straw man of the ultimate global superiority of women. Gender equality is the ability for every individual to express themselves honestly, without the social straightjacket of gendered prescriptivism holding them back.
When I was a kid I HOARDED every girl hair and kept them separate in my room because I could make batgirl or a cowgirl or or… anything i wanted! It let you do whatever you want! My parents got me a mega blocks girly dollhouse lego knock off for christmas, and it was mostly used as a secret base for spies masquerading as a normal family.
“As for “Write what you know,” I was regularly told this as a beginner. I think it’s a very good rule and have always obeyed it. I write about imaginary countries, alien societies on other planets, dragons, wizards, the Napa Valley in 22002. I know these things. I know them better than anybody else possibly could, so it’s my duty to testify about them.”
Canadian artist Guillaume Lachapelle explores the infinite in this series of mysterious 3D printed dioramas titled Visions. Sitting atop pedestals in a darkened gallery, the eerie “rooms” rely on lights and mirrors to create the illusion of vast spaces that seem to reflect into much larger open spaces. These pieces were on view last year as part of a solo show at Art Mur in Québec, and you can see more of them up close over on Artsy.
Women scientists made up 25% of the Pluto fly-by New Horizon team. Make sure you share this, because erasing women’s achievements in science and history is a tradition. Happens every day.
Here’s an awesome little device that doesn’t simply tell you what the weather is going to be like, it shows you. It’s called the Tempescope and it downloads weather forecast information from the internet and simulates upcoming weather conditions inside a translucent box. Designed by Japanese software engineer and inventor Ken Kawamoto, the Tempescope can replicate sunshine, clouds, rain, and lightning.
Kawamoto has released the code and schematics for his ingenious device as an open-source project called OpenTempescope so that other makers can build their own Tempescope. For those of us who’d rather just purchase one, he’s planning to launch a Kickstarter campaign later this year.
I wish more foods were named in the same vein as “I Can’t Believe Its Not Butter!”
You’ve Got To Be Pulling My Leg, THIS Is Ranch?!
Shut The Fuck Up, Are You Telling Me This Shit Is Ketchup??
I Firmly Believe This Is Not Mustard And I Am Horribly Wrong
I Refused To Believe That This Condiment Was Barbecue Sauce, And I Have Been Summarily Flayed For My Apostasy
I Assigned Negligible Probability To This Being Chili Sauce And Have Since Updated
In Which Your Humble Narrator Assumed That The Substance Within This Container Was Not Worchestershire Sauce Only To Be Rudely Awakened From This Delusion By Mysterious Circumstances
I Declared That This Couldn’t Possibly Be Soy Sauce, And I Was Wrong. I Regret The Error.
Because we disagree. I am not going to convince you, you are not going to convince me. I also have no problem with you believing the way you do. The problem I have is when that belief (which is an opinion, because no one will ever be able to factually say when an embryo becomes a person) is used to control other people’s lives. Beliefs are for controlling our own lives, not the lives of others.
This morning, the World Surf League event at J-Bay in South Africa saw one of the most incredible things to ever happen during a live pro surfing broadcast: finalist Mick Fanning encountering what appeared to be at least one very large shark.
The video is incredible, as you can see Mick turn just as the shark’s dorsal fin breaks the water inches behind him. He falls off his board and gets pulled underwater just as a wave goes by and blocks the view of him from the camera. When it passes, he’s swimming hard away from the shark. He turns and waves off his competitor, Jules Wilson, who had started swimming toward him to help. The rescue boats quickly swoop in and pick him up, where he finally holds up his broken leash to have a look.
In an interview back on shore, he’s trembling with adrenaline and says he thinks he may have punched the shark in the back as it thrashed beneath him. He’s clearly out of it, and just thankful to have escaped completely unscathed.
I can’t stop watching the footage, in part because I surf now. I’m not in South Africa, but I am in Northern California in a place known for its high density of adult Great Whites. Every time I get in the water, I know I’m in there with a bunch of apex predators I can’t see.
I do it anyway, because I love surfing and I love the wildlife. I haven’t spotted a shark yet (for sure – there was one time a woman called me in to shore because she swore there was one just behind me), but I have surfed with many birds, seals, sea lions, dolphins, and porpoises, and it’s been one of the most awe-inspiring experiences of my life.
I know that there’s a chance I may be bitten at some point, but I know that chance is outrageously small. Shark bites are rare, even here, and deaths are even rarer. There have only been 35 deaths due to sharks in the United States…since 1580 (until 2014).
Humans aren’t sharks’ preferred meal. We’re bony and stringy, not at all like nice plump seals. Of course, mistakes happen, especially when the human is looking particularly nonhuman, like with a wetsuit on and sitting on top of a surfboard.
There are many tales of surfers getting away from sharks with a nip taken out of them or out of their surfboard. But what’s particularly interesting in the case of Fanning is that he was completely unscathed. Not even his board was damaged. The only damage was a snapped leash (the rope that attaches a surfboard to the surfer’s ankle). That’s astonishing considering that the shark appeared to be right on top of him.
And that’s why I’m bristling a bit at the headlines proclaiming that Fanning was attacked by a shark. I can understand if he walks away feeling that way — after all, having an enormous set of teeth that close to you without your permission can feel like an attack no matter what they’re doing.
But it seems more likely to me, in my completely amateur opinion, that this shark wasn’t trying to “attack” at all — he may have been just curious, cruising in a wave and checking out what Fanning was up to, when he got tangled in the unseen leash and panicked. That would explain how all that thrashing around happened without Fanning or his board being bitten in any way.
So yes, it’s an absolutely jaw-dropping moment in surfing history, and both Fanning and Wilson, as well as the safety team, should be commended for keeping their cool and getting everyone out of the water safely. But let’s not jump to the conclusion that this was a shark that hunted down and attacked Fanning. That’s the kind of language that leads to more fear and misunderstanding of a fascinating creature, and that fear and misunderstanding is what leads to misguided efforts to keep humans safe, like murdering as many sharks as possible. Let’s not.
Super Opinionated.
danah boyd nails it: "We blame technology, rather than work, to understand why children engage with screens in the first place."
Read the rest
