Facebook of the Dead

When, if ever, will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than of living ones?

Emily Dunham

Either the 2060s or the 2130s.

There are not a lot of dead people on Facebook. The main reasons for this is that Facebook—and its users—are young. The average Facebook user has gotten older over the last few years, but the site is still used at a much higher rate by the young than by the old.[1]There are a zillion surveys confirming this, such as this one from eMarketer.

The Past:

Based on the site's growth rate, and the age breakdown of their users over time,[2]You can get user counts for each age group from Facebook's create-an-ad tool, although you may want to try to account for the fact that Facebook's age limits cause some people to lie about their ages. there are probably 10 to 20 million people who created Facebook profiles who have since died.

These people are, at the moment, spread out pretty evenly across the age spectrum. Young people have a much lower death rate than people in their sixties or seventies, but they make up a substantial share of the dead on Facebook simply because there have been so many of them using it.

The Future:

About 290,000 US Facebook users will die (or have died) in 2013. The worldwide total for 2013 is likely several million.[3]Note: In some of these projections, I used US age/usage data extrapolated to the Facebook userbase as a whole, because it's easier to find US census and actuarial numbers than to assemble the country-by-country for the whole Facebook-using world. The US isn't a perfect model of the world, but the basic dynamics—young people's Facebook adoption determines the site's success or failure while population growth continues for a while and then levels off—will probably hold approximately true. If we assume a rapid Facebook saturation in the developing world, which currently has a faster-growing and younger population, it shifts many of the landmarks by a handful of years, but doesn't change the overall picture as much as you might expect. In just seven years, this death rate will double, and in seven more years it will double again.

Even if Facebook closes registration tomorrow, the number of deaths per year will continue to grow for many decades, as the generation who was in college between 2000 and 2020 grows old.

The deciding factor in when the dead will outnumber the living is whether Facebook adds new living users—ideally, young ones—fast enough to outrun this tide of death for a while.

Facebook 2100:

This brings us to the question of Facebook's future.

We don't have enough experience with social networks to say with any kind of certainty how long Facebook will last. Most websites have flared up and then gradually declined in popularity, so it's reasonable to assume Facebook will follow that pattern.[4]I'm assuming, in these cases, that no data is ever deleted. So far, that's been a reasonable assumption; if you've made a Facebook profile, that data probably still exists, and most people who stop using a service don't bother to delete their profile. If that behavior changes, or if Facebook performs a mass purging of their archives, the balance could change rapidly and unpredictably.

In that scenario, where Facebook starts losing market share later this decade and never recovers, Facebook's crossover date—the date when the dead outnumber the living—will come sometime around 2065.

But maybe it won't. Maybe it will take on a role like the TCP protocol, where it becomes a piece of infrastructure on which other things are built, and has the inertia of consensus.

If Facebook is with us for generations, then the crossover date could be as late as the mid-2100s.

That seems unlikely. Nothing lasts forever, and rapid change has been the norm for anything built on computer technology. The ground is littered with the bones of websites and technologies that seemed like permanent institutions ten years ago.

It's possible the reality could be somewhere in between.[5]Of course, if there's a sudden rapid increase in the death rate of Facebook users—possibly one that includes humans in general—the crossover could happen tomorrow. We'll just have to wait and find out.

The fate of our accounts:

Facebook can afford to keep all our pages and data indefinitely. Living users will always generate more data than dead ones, and the accounts for active users are the ones that will need to be easily accessible. Even if accounts for dead (or inactive) people make up a majority of their users, it will probably never add up to a large part of their overall infrastructure budget.

More important will be our decisions. What do we want for those pages? Unless we demand that Facebook deletes them, they will presumably, by default, keep copies of everything forever. Even if they don't, other data-vacuuming organizations will.

Right now, next-of-kin can convert a dead person's Facebook profile into a memorial page. But there are a lot of questions surrounding passwords and access to private data that we haven't yet developed social norms for. Should accounts remain accessible? What should be made private? Should next-of-kin have the right to access email? Should memorial pages have comments? How do we handle trolling and vandalism? Should people be allowed to interact with dead user accounts? What lists of friends should they show up on?

These are issues that we're currently in the process of sorting out by trial and error. Death has always been a big, difficult, and emotionally charged subject, and every society finds different ways to handle it.

The basic pieces that make up a human life don't change. We've always eaten, learned, grown, fallen in love, fought, and died. In every place, culture, and technological landscape, we develop a different set of behaviors around these same activites.

Like every group that came before us, we're learning how to play those same games on our particular playing field. We're developing, through sometimes messy trial and error, a new set of social norms for dating, arguing, learning, and growing on the internet. Sooner or later, we'll figure out how to mourn.

Happy Halloween!

Denne bloggposten skulle egentlig handle om noe annet. Den skulle handle om hvor vanskelig det er å diskutere voldtekt. Men mens jeg skrev oppdaget jeg av det finnes et viktigere poeng her. Heller enn å diskutere og kverulere rundt hvordan voldtekt oppfattes og debatteres av kvinner og menn, begynte jeg å skrive om hvordan jeg som mann aktivt unngår å bli en voldtektsforbryter selv.

Jepp. Det går nemlig an ser du. Mange tusen norske menn feiler hvert år, men med noen enkle grep kan man holde seg på matta.

Jeg var tidligere en særdeles usikker gutt og mann når det kom til kvinner og sex. Jeg debuterte seksuelt først da jeg var 20 år gammel, og hadde ikke hatt kjæreste, kysset eller tatt på en pupp før jeg gikk inn i to lange monogame forhold bare avbrutt av en liten singelpause. Jeg følte meg derfor ganske uerfaren, på tross av min alder. Og jeg syntes synd på meg selv.

Først da jeg ble singel igjen i en alder av 34 år begynte jeg å finne ut av meg selv og min seksualitet. I løpet av de rundt 20 kjønnsmodne år før dette hadde jeg mange mislykkede forsøk på å finne fysisk nærhet hos kvinner. Jeg gjorde ting jeg slettes ikke er stolt av. Aldri noe i nærheten av en voldtekt, men håpløse tilnærmelser og «tafsing» jeg aldri ville gjort i dag.

Hvorfor gjorde jeg noe så tåpelig og potensielt sårende og skremmende? Fordi jeg var usikker. Fordi jeg var redd. Fordi jeg desperat ønsket å føle den fysiske nærhet og det begjær jeg følte at andre opplevde rundt meg hele tiden. Jeg ville også være en del av dette. Og så prøvde jeg meg frem. På mitt eget fomlende og urutinerte vis. Jeg ville også smake den frukt jeg følte alle andre slafset i seg.

Kanskje jeg den gang hadde hatt godt av å bli minnet på et par viktige konsepter når det gjelder sex. Derfor skriver jeg denne bloggposten som en foreløpig oppsummering av hva jeg har lært rundt dette temaet. Hvis du blir provosert av at jeg skriver en bloggpost som kun er basert på synsing og følelser, så kan du slutte å lese her. Det nye Asterix-bladet skal visstnok være gøy. Stikk og les det heller. For alle andre som tåler at jeg lirer av meg litt synsing og personlige erfaringer, er det bare å lese videre. Asterix kan vente.

Ingen har rett på sex

Først og fremst må vi ha et poeng krystallklart: Ingen har rett på sex.

Uansett hva du har gjort, uansett hva dama har gjort, uansett hva noen har sagt eller hintet om, uansett hva du trodde eller håpet, uansett hva alle andre enn deg opplever, så har du ikke rett på sex med dama med mindre hun gir sin aksept.

Så enkelt er det. I tilfelle det ikke sank helt inn skal jeg gjenta meg selv, og nå peker jeg på deg: Du har ikke rett på sex. Selvmedlidenhet og en følelse av urettferdighet er ikke gyldige grunner til å tafse eller trenge deg på kvinner. Dine personlige problemer gir deg ingen seksuelle rettigheter.

Men hva om man misforstår? Hva om man tolker signaler feil? Hva om hun først ga sin aksept, men senere var usikker? Vel, vet du hva? Det finnes en enkel måte å unngå dette problemet på: Spør henne, og vent på et tydelig svar.

Det er ikke så vanskelig. Jeg gjør det hele tiden når jeg er med en ny kvinne.

«Går det bra at jeg tar på deg slik?»
«Har du det fint?»
«Er du sikker på at du ønsker dette?»
«Føler du deg komfortabel med det vi gjør?»

Det er mulig å forsikre seg om at hun vil, uten å ødelegge stemningen hvis man bare bruker hodet og sier ting på riktig tidspunkt og på riktig måte. Og hvis du likevel ødelegger stemningen ved å være overforsiktig? Vel, det er hvertfall bedre å gå glipp av et knull enn å knulle noen som ikke ønsker det. Enig?

Men for å kunne gi sitt samtykke må man være ved sine fulle fem. Det vil si at man ikke bør være beruset. Jeg har en veldig grei leveregel når det kommer til sex: Ikke ha sex med berusede kvinner.

Atter en gang: Svært enkelt i prinsippet, men du må gjøre noen valg i ditt liv for å oppnå dette målet. Det kan være vanskelig for mange, men for å løse et samfunnsproblem må man starte med seg selv.

To tommelfingerregler

La meg nå oppsummere min livsvisdom rundt sex:

1) Spør kvinnen om at hun virkelig ønsker å gå videre med sex.
2) Ikke ha sex med berusede kvinner.

Hvis alle menn hadde holdt seg til disse to reglene, hadde en vesentlig del av alle voldtekter vært eliminert. Mange mennesker hadde hatt færre emosjonelle arr. Mange mennesker hadde i dag levd lykkeligere liv enn de gjør. Noen som ikke lever i dag hadde levd.

Men vent, jeg nevner alkohol i samme åndedrag som voldtekt. Forsøker jeg meg på «victim-blaming» her? Å antyde at kvinnen selv er skyld i voldtekten ved at hun har drukket? Nei. Jeg snakker her hele tiden om at det er mannens ansvar å ikke ha sex med en kvinne som ikke kan gi sitt samtykke.

For en eventuell voldtekt sin del er det irrelevant om dama er beruset eller ikke, fordi ansvaret for handlingen ligger fullt og helt på mannen. Hvis hennes berusede tilstand gjør at du er i det minste tvil om at hun vet hva hun gjør, så stopper du.

Det er bedre å gå glipp av et knull enn å knulle noen som ikke ønsker det.

Det høres så plumpt ut, men jeg tror det gjemmer seg litt visdom i den setningen.

Hold deg edru

Et større problem er selvsagt at mannen som regel også er beruset i slike tilfeller, og i denne tilstand glemmer han kanskje mine to huskeregler. Han blir mer skjødesløs, mer pågående, og fanger ikke opp de signaler han ville gjort i edru tilstand. Hvordan løser man det problemet?

Vel, i mitt tilfelle er løsningen å ikke drikke. Jeg har ikke vært full på flere år, fordi da vet jeg at jeg ikke gjør noe idiotisk overfor en kvinne. Hvis jeg havner til sengs med ei jeg liker, så er opplevelsen ekstremt mye bedre når man også er edru. Selv har jeg knapt noensinne hatt sex i beruset tilstand, og jeg må si jeg synes synd på de som stort sett har hatt sine seksuelle opplevelser med promille involvert. Det er et sykdomstegn.

Når du er edru kan du først og fremst gi kvinnen en mye bedre opplevelse, fordi du er tilstede og lytter til hennes signaler, lærer kroppen hennes å kjenne, har finmotorikken i orden, kan kommunisere verbalt og intelligent, og kan dermed tilfredsstille henne på flere plan – noe som krever at du er oppvakt og ikke sløvet av rusmidler. I tillegg vil du ha en bedre opplevelse selv, noe du har gleden av å ta med deg i hukommelsen – uten at den er sløvet av rusmidler.

Vi skammer oss over den naturlige seksualitet

Dette er noe jeg skrev i min ganske lite aktive Tumblr-blogg for et par år siden:

Sex på Big Brother. Sex på Paradise Hotel. Sex på avisforsidene. Vi tror vi er liberale, men er dødsens redde for den naturlige seksualitet. Vi raver rundt fulle på byen hver helg for å ha en unnskyldning til å innrømme lyst. Vi er fulle av skam. Og det er en skam.

Vi velter over hverandre under blinkende lyskastere i rus og et evig ønske om å bli begjært og tilfredsstilt. Men vi tør ikke være seksuelle vesener. Vi må maskere lysten med utilregnelighet.

Og så skjer det 16 000 voldtekter hvert år.

Det ligger en eller annen sannhet i skjæringspunktet der et sted…

Jeg er sjelden ute i byen i helgene, men de få gangene jeg har måttet rusle gjennom Oslo sentrum en lørdagskveld, får jeg lyst til å gråte. Å se så mange mennesker rave rundt i fylla i det som i all hovedsak er en desperat søken etter nærhet, er tragisk. Å se så mange unge kvinner drikke seg fulle fordi det er lettere å si at «Jeg var så full så jeg endte opp med å ha sex med han kjekke fyren fra Nordstrand», enn å innrømme at man som jente er kåt og har lyst på sex, er deprimerende.

Kvinners sexlyst er fortsatt ganske tabu, i det Herrens år 2013. En kvinne skal ikke uttrykke en sterk seksualitet, fordi da er hun løs på tråden. Menn liker ikke kvinner som utfordrer dem seksuelt. Kvinner med en seksuell sult. Kvinner som, Gud forby, kanskje har hatt sex med mange, mange menn før deg.

Selv elsker jeg kvinner med en sterk seksualitet. Jeg elsker kvinner som tør snakke åpent om sex, om sex de har hatt og sex de har lyst på. Det har aldri virket truende på meg. Tvert i mot finner jeg det ekstremt tiltrekkende. Likevel registrerer jeg at mange menn synes slike kvinner er skumle. Og det er et handicap for kvinner. De henges ut og trakasseres fordi de har en seksualitet og tør å vise det.

Da er det lettere å drikke. Være «uskyldig» i at man endte opp med sex den kvelden. Skylde på utilregnelighet heller enn kåthet, når man på mandagen forteller venninner om helgens fangst. Det er en oppskrift på katastrofe, og den katastrofen ser vi i de tragiske høye voldtektstallene.

Og igjen: Dette er ikke «victim-blaming». Jeg sier ikke at kvinnen er skyld i å bli voldtatt ved å drikke. Ansvaret ligger igjen fullt og helt på mannen. Kvinnen har all rett til å være dritings om hun vil, uten at menn skal anse det som en mulighet for litt ukomplisert mus. Men den trenden som gjør at rus er blitt en så sentral del av mange menneskers jakt på nærhet, er definitivt en medvirkende faktor til at overgrep skjer.

Konklusjon

Min bønn til andre menn er derfor følgende: Vis hensyn. Du har ikke rett på sex. Men om du oppfører deg hensynsfullt, så har du mye større sjanse for at en kvinne vil ligge med deg. Tro meg, jeg vet.

Du burde ikke drikke for å finne motet, og hvis du «scorer» i fylla, så imponerer du neppe dama noe særlig uansett. I tillegg er det vesentlig høyere risiko for at du tråkker over en grense og på den måten ender opp med å skade kvinnen. Ja, kanskje blir du den voldtektsforbryteren du aldri selv trodde du kunne være.

Det er ditt ansvar, min gode mann. Ene og alene. Det er du som må stå ansvarlig for at du velger å drikke, velger å være pågående, velger å ikke lytte, og velger å kreve noe du ikke har krav på. Om kvinnen var full, ga utydelige signaler, hintet om noe du tolket som et ja, eller du følte at du fortjente det etter alle de drinkene du betalte for henne, er fullstendig irrelevant.

Det er ditt ansvar å få et ja. Det er ditt ansvar å spørre henne. Det er ditt ansvar å stoppe i tide.

Sånn, nå kan du også gå og lese Asterix.

---

Ja, jeg er klar over at også menn voldtas av både kvinner og andre menn, og at også kvinner voldtar kvinner. Men for å ikke komplisere teksten har jeg holdt meg til det som er det vanligste, og det som er relevant for mine egne erfaringer som heterofil mann, nemlig menn som voldtar kvinner.

A new study by gender researcher, Laurel Westbrook, explores attitudes toward gender determination in various contexts. The issue of gender is interesting partly because it is one of those topics that at first seems fairly straightforward when in fact it is quite complex, not only biologically, but ethically.

By now many people are familiar with the distinction between sex and gender, sex referring to biological characteristic relative to male and female, and gender being a social construct relative to masculine and feminine. In both cases the first thing we must realize is to avoid the false dichotomy as sex and gender occur along a spectrum, and are not binary.

Sex

Biological sex in humans is determined by several factors. Developmentally there are two main factors, genetics and hormonal environment. The system is binary in that there appears to be a female developmental pathway and a male developmental pathway, and most individuals do end up unambiguously toward one end or the other of this axis.

However, this developmental scheme can be altered in every conceivable way. The XX (female) and XY (male) chromosomal makeups are not the only possibilities. There are individuals with XXX, X, XXY and other permutations.

Even with typical XX and XY chromosomes, sexual development is highly dependent on the relative concentrations of masculinizing (such as testosterone) and feminizing (estrogen) hormones in the womb and in the body as development occurs. There are not only genetic, but epigenetic, and maternal factors that can affect this. There are also specific conditions, such as adrenal hyperplasia, that can result in an increase in masculinizing hormones, resulting in ambiguous genitalia.

Biologically there are three aspects of sex – primary sexual characteristics (genitalia and reproductive organs) secondary sexual characteristics (distribution of hair and body fat), and sexual orientation. While these properties tend to segregate together, they also occur in every possible permutation.

Sexual orientation is a bit socially controversial, but there is not much scientific debate about the fact that biological factors on the brain have a strong influence on sexual orientation. People, in other words, do not just choose to be heterosexual, homosexual, or somewhere in between, they appear to be born with their orientation. This is not to say that culture and society do not affect behavior, but the evidence suggests that basic sexual desires are hardwired into our brains, and can even be considered a secondary sexual characteristic.

The notion that biological sex is complicated should not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with biology, and would not be controversial were it not for the social implications of these facts.

One last point on sex – given that diversity is ubiquitous in nature, it does seem reasonable to consider the various spectrums of sexual characteristics in terms of typical with variations rather than the loaded concepts of normal and abnormal.

Gender

As complicated as the biology of sex can be, gender is even more complex, in my opinion, because we are dealing with more abstract constructs rather than measurable biological properties.  Gender refers to the purely social construct of feminine and masculine. How to dress, behave, adorn oneself, and one’s role in the family and in society are all socially determined, with tremendous variations across different societies and over historical time.

Essentially most people self-identify as either a man or a woman, and tend to follow the social norms for that gender. As with sex, however, this is a false dichotomy in that there are transgender individuals who do not adhere to this simple scheme.

One thing I find interesting is that different societies tend to tolerate different degrees of bending gender roles. In Western society, at least in the last generation or so, we tend to be more progressive in our attitudes toward gender and gender roles. Men can be “metrosexual” and women can wear business suits and take on traditional male roles in society.

However, if you bend these traditional roles too far, then people start to become uncomfortable.

Societal attitudes toward transgender individuals is the subject of Westbrook’s study. She finds that attitude depend greatly on context. I think this reflects genuine ethical dilemmas.

In progressive societies, we tend to value individual freedom. In this context there is increasing comfort with the notion that everyone should be free to self identify where along the gender spectrum they feel comfortable. Everyone can decide for themselves what their own gender is, and that should be respected. If you value progressive ideals, it’s hard to argue with that.

However, there are certain spaces in our society in which the sexes are segregated – public bathrooms and competitive sports, for example. When you ask people about gender freedom in these contexts, suddenly their progressive ideals become challenged and they become more parochial.

Westbrook explains:

“In our analysis, we find that these moments, which we term ‘gender panics,’ are the result of a clash between two competing cultural ideas about gender identity: a belief that gender is determined by biology versus a belief that a person’s self-identity in terms of gender should be validated. These gender panics frequently result in a reshaping of the language of such policies so that they require extensive bodily changes before transgender individuals have access to particular rights.”

In general people are OK with gender self-identity, but when we talk about public bathrooms and sports, suddenly they want biological determinism. They want women to have woman parts, and men to have man parts.

I don’t think there is any objective resolution to this ethical dilemma. Some would argue for an absolute validation of gender self-identity, and I understand the reasoning here, but it is dismissive of other concerns.

For example, should a person who is, by every biological measure, male but who self-identifies as gender female be allowed to compete in athletic competitions as a woman? I think this is a sticking point for a lot of people. We don’t want to challenge someone’s gender self-identity, but sports segregation is more about sex than gender, and so it doesn’t seem fair.

Westbrook points out that gender panics occur more in the context of men invading female spaces than the other way around. With regard to sports, this makes sense. One might argue that the point of women’s sports is to provide a space where women can compete against each other without the unfair advantages that testosterone provides to men. If a woman can compete in a male sport, then good for her. But if a man competes against women and a woman’s sport, that seems unfair.

Ethical dilemmas are created when a situation puts us at cross-purposes. We cannot simultaneously fulfill all of our ethical goals, and so we have to prioritize and choose. Different people will have different priorities and will therefore make different choices. Somewhere in the middle is a reasonable compromise (identified by a choice that makes everyone equally unhappy).

Earlier this month the World Congress of Quantum Medicine was held in Hawaii. You may be wondering what quantum medicine is. Here is a quick description from the congress website:

Quantum Medicine uses the principles of quantum physics such as non-locality, tangled hierarchy, and discontinuous leap in consciousness to better understand medicine.

How will attendees benefit?

If you could increase your knowledge and skills in just four exciting days… if you could learn new strategies for developing a true mind/body system of healing… if you could bring that knowledge back to your practice where you’ll get better results with your clients while increasing your income, then the benefits are incalculable.

Some of the talks are available on the website, so you can get a good idea of the content. The top video on the conference page is a panel discussion that opens with a discussion of Angelina Jolie’s decision to have a bilateral prophylactic mastectomy because of her genetic risk for breast cancer.

The first panelist made the point that her decision was a failure of “materialistic” medicine, and that all she needed to do was change her thinking. A positive attitude would have saved her from cancer.

The next panelist engages in what David Gorski has correctly called “genetic denialism.” He goes into a long discussion of epigenetics, and the regulation of gene expression to deny the predictive value of specific gene mutations on the risk of developing a particular disease.

There is no doubt that the regulation of gene expression is an important factor in normal biological function, disease, and health. However, the speaker is merely using the fact, greatly exaggerated, to argue that your mental attitude can upregulate or downregulate your gene expression to avoid cancer or achieve whatever health effect you need.

The third panelist is a physicist featured on What the Bleep do we Know, Dr. Amit Goswami. He wraps the nonsense from the first two speakers with a nice quantum bow, which is the apparent purpose of the conference. Ironically he states, “Ignorance is the worst thing that can happen to a society.” That is probably the one thing on which we agree.

In this brief sample of the conference we get a very clear picture of what is going on. Quantum medicine is just the same old pre-scientific, superstition-based, magical healing claims with an added layer of post-hoc pseudoscientific rationalization.

The core claims are no different than any vitalistic philosophy of healing. The notion is that your mind can control “energy” (never defined) to promote self-healing. This is just new-age faith healing – your thoughts can result in healing. However,  ”thoughts” are described as “information and energy” that can “change the momentum of quantum physics.”

The “materialistic” approach to medicine is criticized relentlessly. Materialistic medicine, of course, is medicine based on actual science and evidence – on reality. The promoters of magical vitalistic medicine, however, do not like the notion that they are not based on reality. The purpose of “quantum medicine,” therefore, seems to be  to provide a patina of scientific rationalization to the magic that the gurus are selling.

This is an old strategy. When electromagnetism was first being described by scientists and was entering the public consciousness, the gurus of that time wrapped their snake oil in the terms of the new science. Mesmer, for example, called his hypnotism parlor medicine “animal magnetism.”

When X-rays were discovered around the turn of the 19th to 20th century, then radiation-based snake oil became popular. X-rays were a mysterious new energy of science, and energy = healing, according to the gurus.

In the middle of the 20th century healing with radio waves became popular. Radiowaves became the new healing energy.

Interestingly, all of these modes survive to today, except for radioactive tonics. You might think this is because of the threat of nuclear war, and this probably did have an impact, but radioactive tonics did not go away until they were expressly banned by the FDA.

Quantum physics is just the new radio wave medicine, radioactive tonic, electromagnetism. It is a mysterious aspect of physics not understood by most of the public, but it sounds cutting edge and sexy.

The fact that there is nothing in quantum mechanics which in any way supports the claims of the energy-medicine gurus is irrelevant to its use as a marketing strategy. Despite all the weirdness of non-locality and quantum entanglement, so far in experiments these effects cannot be used to transfer information or to violate the laws of physics (by, for example transmitting information at greater than the speed of light).

There is also absolutely no reason to suspect that these weird quantum effects are relevant outside the context of very carefully designed experiments. There is good reason, in fact, to conclude that they are not relevant at the level of the macroscopic world – of living organisms.

What “quantum medicine” also lacks is any paper-trail of research that establishes any of their claims or core principles. It is just science terminology grafted onto centuries-old vitalistic superstition.

The degree to which the gurus have wrapped themselves in the trappings of legitimate science and academia, however, is disturbing. They go to great pains to promote the credentials of the meeting, of the participants, in a desperate grab for the appearance of legitimacy.

If they were legitimate, however, they could just do quality research to establish that their ideas and claims are valid. That never seems to happen, however.

Psychologists have documented a human tendency to pick a belief and then defend it at all costs. We all do this to varying degrees, and the more emotionally invested we are in a belief, the more extreme we are in our defense.

In fact, a skeptical world-view is largely about avoiding this mental trap by tentatively accepting or rejecting claims based upon available evidence, and modifying our beliefs as new arguments and evidence come to light. Skepticism values the process over any individual belief.

Since reality is complicated, if one follows an objective process it will often be true that any controversial issue will have valid points on both or all sides. This is not always true (creationists are completely wrong in their denial of evolution, making this a false controversy), but it often is. For this reason, one of my skeptical “red flags” to alert me to the probability that someone is an ideologue rather than an honest broker of information and analysis is whether or not their opinions point entirely in one direction on a genuinely controversial topic.

In other words, if they believe that one side of a controversy is completely wrong all the time on every detail, then it seems more likely that they are biased rather than the facts favoring them 100%.

Looked at from the other direction, if someone can acknowledge a valid point on the other side, I tend to value their analysis more. It means they can recognize complexity, they can take a nuanced approach to an issue, they have a reasonable amount of comfort with uncertainty, and they are probably more interested in the truth than in defending “their side.” This does not mean they are free from bias, but at least you can have a meaningful conversation with them.

For many controversies I find that there are often touchstone issues – questions that seem very useful in separating ideologues from honest brokers. Even if you are against compulsory vaccination, you must acknowledge that vaccines work, and that the germ-theory of disease is valid. If not then you are likely an anti-vaccine ideologue who is only comfortable if every single relevant fact is anti-vaccine, and you do not have to deal with the complexity of a nuanced position.

Recently the issue of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has been a hot topic in skeptical circles. This is a good issue for skeptics because there are some genuine controversies, and there are valid points on both sides. There is also a great deal of misinformation, propaganda, and ideology, and separating all this out challenges one’s skeptic-fu.

For example, even if you are generally pro-GMO, you have to acknowledge, in my opinion, the problems of monoculture. This issue – over-reliance on very few cultivars – is not new or unique to GMO, but is encouraged by it. I believe this is a looming issue for world agriculture that we have to deal with.

If you are anti-GMO then I think the best current touchstone issue is golden rice – rice with genes inserted for the production of beta-carotene, a vitamin A precursor. Let me explain why.

Vitamin A deficiency is a world-wide problem, but especially in poor and third-world countries. The WHO reports:

The available evidence suggests that nearly 800,000 deaths worldwide can be attributed to vitamin A deficiency among women and children. Approximately 20–24% of child mortality from measles, diarrhoea and malaria and 20% of all-cause maternal mortality can be attributed to this preventable condition. Africa and South-East Asia have the highest burden of disease.

In addition 250,000 to 500,000 children become blind every year due to vitamin A deficiency. This is a massive cause of preventable morbidity and mortality in children.

Rice is a staple food, especially in those parts of the world where vitamin A deficiency is a problem. Adding vitamin A to rice is like adding iodine to salt, or calcium to milk – putting a deficient nutrient into a food staple to have the broadest impact on the population. It’s a no-brainer, and it would work.

Implementation of golden rice, however, has been held up for years by anti-GMO activists and fear of “frankenfood”.

The reason this is such a good touchstone issue is that all the usual objections to GMO are not relevant here. Golden rice would not increase the use of a pesticide or herbicide. It is not introducing a novel protein to human consumption. The genes come from other plants, already present in food consumed by humans. There is no risk of spreading resistance or unwanted properties to wild plants.

Golden rice is the golden child of GMO, with the potential to save millions of poor children from premature death and blindness. Being against golden rice is really a hard sell for anti-GMO activists.

Here is what they say:

Promoters of golden rice have not proven that it will work. First, the concept here is so simple that not much proof is necessary. When a fortuitous mutation created the first orange carrots in Europe (orange from beta-carotene) orange carrots became an important staple, dramatically reducing vitamin A deficiency. African farmers have bred a variety of sweet potatoes (which already have beta-carotene) with increased beta-carotene, and this has increased vitamin A levels in populations fed this sweet potato. Increased intake of vitamin A treats vitamin A deficiency.

In addition, there are studies that show that golden rice leads to increased vitamin A levels in those that consume it, sufficient to prevent blindness. However, anti-GMO activists have dismissed this study over ethical controversies – there is some controversy over whether parents were given sufficient information that their children would be eating GMO food. This controversy has nothing to do with the results of the study, however.

Another objection is that there are other methods to fight Vitamin A deficiency – supplements and introducing other vitamin A rich foods. These methods can help, but there are already programs in place and they are having little impact. The problem is that the very locations where vitamin A deficiency is rampant are poor and lack the infrastructure to effectively implement such programs. Whereas swapping out existing rice with golden rice does not require any new distribution infrastructure.

Greenpeace International opposes golden rice. They give three reasons: They cite the reason I discussed above, that the money would be better spent on traditional nutritional programs. This is a false dichotomy, we can and should do it all. (Plus the money has already been spent on the development of golden rice, so it’s not even relevant.)

They also argue that contamination from GE rice to non-GE rice would compromise the market for those who are anti-GM. This is circular reasoning, however.  Finally they argue that some populations have expressed resistance to golden rice. This is more circular reasoning – we should be against golden rice because some people are against golden rice.

They go on to list their reasons for generic opposition to GM. They also make the vacuous argument that golden rice does not address the underlying problem – poverty. Sure, you fix world poverty, meanwhile let’s let millions of poor children die or go blind. This is the same logic as CAM advocates who deride treating symptoms rather than the “underlying” cause of an illness. This is a false choice, and while we are searching for cures, I’m sure people would like to have their pain and other symptoms managed.

Conclusion

Golden rice is an excellent example, in my opinion, of the difference between reason and ideology. GMO technology is a complex topic – it’s a powerful tool that can cause both harm and good. We need to be cautious about this new technology, but not frightened children or luddites. If used carefully and with proper regulation, GMO technology can be a useful contribution to global agriculture.

Further, each GMO crop needs to be evaluated on its own merits. Those who make sweeping statements about all GMO are likely acting out of ideology, not logic and evidence. Some GMO crops can be harmful, others can be useless, while still others can save millions of children from death or blindness. We should be focused on individual crops, not the technology itself.

Golden rice has become the poster child for GMO advocates, for good reason. This one GMO crop seems to be a fairly solid case for the potential benefits of GMO. Opposition to golden rice, from what I can tell, is not based upon any solid reasoning or evidence concerning golden rice itself, but ideological opposition to all GMO.

Ideology can be a powerful and harmful force. It can even lead an organization that believes it is dedicated to humanitarian efforts to oppose a technology which could save millions of poor children. This has led UK environmental secretary Owen Paterson to declare such opposition “wicked.” This is political hyperbole, but I agree that the result (if not the intent) is wicked.

Ideology can lead good people with good intentions to do wicked things.

Free energy is to physics what creationism is to evolutionary biology. Both offer a teaching moment when you try to explain why proponents are so horribly wrong.

Free energy proponents have been abusing the laws of thermodynamics (come to think of it, so have creationists), and more recently quantum effects a la zero-point-energy. Now they are distorting a new principle of physics to justify their claims – the Casimir effect. Apparently this was a hot topic at the Breakthrough Energy Conference earlier this month.

Before I get into the specifics, I do want to address the general conspiratorial tones of the free-energy movement. I wonder if anyone influential in the free-energy subculture realizes that their conspiracy-mongering over free energy is perhaps the greatest barrier to their being taken seriously. There is also the fact that they get the science wrong, but if they think they are doing cutting edge science (rather than crank science), then convince us with science and ditch the conspiracy nonsense.

Here is the opening paragraph from a recent blog pushing the Casimir effect as a source of free energy:

Who is benefiting from suppressing scientific research? Whose power and wealth is threatened by access to clean and free energy? Who has the desire to create a system where so few have so much, and so many have so little?

OK – you lost me right there. This is a naive child’s view of the world, where “the adults” form a monolithic inscrutable force controlling the world. When you actually become an adult you may realize that no one has total control. No one and no institution is that competent, powerful, and pervasive. It would take an obviously totalitarian state to exert that much control.

If free energy were real, someone would be making it happen. Ironically the very existence of the free-energy movement proves their own conspiracy theories wrong. If a company could produce a genuine free-energy machine, they would, and they would become the wealthiest company in the world. Further, free energy would improve everyone’s quality of life. No matter who you are, your life would become better with free energy.

Free energy proponents, apparently, would rather believe the world is run by megalomaniacs who are simultaneously brilliant (in executing their conspiracy) and idiotic (in wanting to execute their conspiracy) rather than entertain the possibility that they have the science wrong.

The Casimir Effect

Scientific American has a good quick discussion of what the Casimir effect is. The Casimir effect is related to zero point energy, which refers to the fact that a perfect vacuum in space still contains energy in quantum fluctuations. This is sometimes referred to as the quantum foam, out of which virtual particles are created and destroyed.

This quantum vacuum energy exists as various wavelengths – in fact, infinite wavelengths. When you place two mirrors facing each other in a vacuum, some of these waves will fit in the space between and some will not. This creates a situation in which there is more energy in the vacuum outside the mirrors than between them, which in turn results in a tiny force attracting the two mirrors together.

This effect was predicted by Dutch physicist Hendrick Casimir in 1948, and later confirmed by experimentation. I must emphasize that this force is extremely tiny.

Here is where the free-energy gurus, however, have their fun. Our current understanding of quantum effects predicts that there is an infinite amount of this zero-point energy in the vacuum. Imagine if we could somehow tap into that energy – infinite free energy. You can see why this is an exciting idea.

There are two problems with zero-point energy as a source of free energy, however. The first is that there almost certainly is not an infinite amount of zero-point energy in the vacuum. If there were, then relativity predicts that space-time would be infinitely curved in on itself by this energy, which it obviously isn’t. In another article for Scientific American, physicist Matt Visser explains:

Observation indicates that in our universe the grand total vacuum energy is extremely small and quite possibly exactly zero. Many theorists suspect that the total vacuum energy is exactly zero.

Visser also explains that the total quantum energy in the vacuum is a property of the universe known as the cosmological constant. He explains:

From a particle physics point of view, however, these limits are extremely stringent: the cosmological constant is more than 10^(-123) times smaller than one would naively estimate from particle physics equations. The cosmological constant could quite plausibly be exactly zero. (Physicists are still arguing on this point.) Even if the cosmological constant is not zero it is certainly small on a particle-physics scale, small on a human-engineering scale, and too tiny to be any plausible source of energy for human needs–not that we have any good ideas on how to accomplish large-scale manipulations of the cosmological constant anyway.

The total amount of zero-point energy therefore ranges from exceedingly tiny to precisely zero. It is clearly not infinite, and it is not even a usable amount.

The second problem is that it is impossible to tap into this zero-point energy as a source of usable energy. This is because, by definition, zero point energy is the minimum energy state. Again from SA:

“The zero-point energy cannot be harnessed in the traditional sense. The idea of zero-point energy is that there is a finite, minimum amount of motion (more accurately, kinetic energy) in all matter, even at absolute zero. For example, chemical bonds continue to vibrate in predictable ways. But releasing the energy of this motion is impossible, because then the molecule would be left with less than the minimum amount that the laws of quantum physics require it to have.”

So, if zero point energy is a real thing rather than just a convenient mathematical artifact, the amount of energy it represents is too small to be of any use, and we could never tap into that small amount of energy anyway because by definition it is the lowest energy state that can exist.

None of this stops free energy enthusiasts from thinking that the Casimir effect proves that zero-point energy is real and a potential source of free energy. Again from the blog linked to above:

The implications of this are far reaching and have been written about extensively within theoretical physics by researchers all over the world. Today, we are beginning to see that these concepts are not just theoretical, but instead very practical and simply very suppressed.

Suppressed? You can Google it and find all the information you could ever want. How is this information suppressed?

Conclusion

To summarize, it seems that zero-point energy gurus are only looking at a small slice of the physics. They see the equations for zero-point energy as it relates to electromagnetic fields, for example, and get all excited when the equations show infinite energy. However, physicists understand the full picture – when you look at all the stuff in the universe, these mathematical artifacts all average out to zero. Maybe there is a tiny residue of minimum energy left over, but you could never tap into it anyway.

There is no conspiracy – just a willful misunderstanding of complex physics.

People generally worry too much and about the wrong things. The media exploits dramatic risks for sensational headlines and exciting narratives, but rarely put risks into a useful context.

Meanwhile, there are some real things to be worried about out there. One thing that has long been on my short list is the coming post-antibiotic era.

Antibiotics have dramatically improved human life and life-expectancy. I know many people who would likely be dead without them. The are one of modern medicines greatest success stories. But they have a critical weakness – evolution.

The antibiotic era started an evolutionary arms race with the pathogenic bacteria they kill or inhibit – and the bacteria are winning. Antibiotics work through a number of mechanisms that interfere with the cellular function of prokaryotes, but not eukaryotes, so bacteria are affected while host cells are unharmed.

These antibiotics create selective pressure, however, and because bacteria reproduce so quickly, there are lots of opportunities for beneficial mutations to arise. In addition bacteria often have part of the genetic code in the form of plasmids – self-contained DNA strands that can be shared between different species of bacteria.

This means that if one strain of bacteria evolves resistance to a specific antibiotic, it can share that resistance to other strains and even other species through plasmids. Resistance can therefore spread, and does not have to re-evolve in each strain.

Plasmids can even contain mutations for resistance to multiple different antibiotics, the use of any one of which can result in the spread of multi-drug resistance.

We already are dealing with highly resistant strains of bacteria, which is an increasingly difficult problem. There are several partial solutions to limit resistance – avoid overuse of antibiotics, avoid broad-spectrum antibiotics, and complete courses of antibiotics when taken. It may also become necessary at some point to retire specific antibiotics for a number of years to allow resistance to wane over time.

Developing new antibiotics that work through entirely new mechanisms would also be welcome, but then it is only a matter of time before resistance develops to those new antibiotics. What is really needed is entirely new approaches to bacterial infection.

One emerging technology may be a significant new weapon is our war against bacteria – PPMOs, or Peptide phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomers. PPMOs are synthetic DNA strands that bind to cRNA because they have the complementary, or antisense, pattern of base-pairs. They are therefore like a lock and key, and will specifically bind together.

PPMOs can be created to match RNA strands of specific bacterial genes – so they can be very specific, not just to bacteria, or even a specific species of bacteria, but to a specific gene. Once they bind they block the functioning of that RNA by blocking access to the cells machinery, called stearic hindrance. In this way they block the expression of the targeted gene. Turn off the right gene, and you can stop the bacteria’s life cycle.

This technology is still developing, but already there are animal studies showing that PPMOs have activity against bacteria and enhance survival from bacterial infections. They still need to be tested in humans.

PPMOs are also useful for more than bacterial infections. They can be targeted against genetic diseases, where the mutant gene produces an abnormal protein that causes or worsens the disease. The expression of the abnormal gene can be blocked by a targeted PPMO.

Unfortunately, there is already evidence that bacteria can develop resistance to PPMOs by evolving mutations. However, with PPMOs we can simply adjust the PPMO sequence to match the mutation.

It remains to be seen how powerful PPMOs will be in our ongoing fight against pathogenic bacteria. It does look like they have the potential to be a significant new weapon. There is not likely to be a single solution to the problem of bacterial resistance. Rather we will likely need as many different strategies as possible to keep one step ahead of rapidly evolving bacteria.

Japan er jo ganske kult.


Man kan fiske.


Og mixe ølen sin med kirsebær.


Men Korea har de morsomme skilt.


Og barskap.


Og sneilekrem.



Og nesten Norsk frokost.


Men de har hunder på bordet.

Og å alt for bratte trapper.



Jeg brukte mye tid på å se bra ut ved bassenget.


Kjøpe trønderbartpinns.


Og drikke soju.




Men aller mest poserte jeg.


Noen ganger som ninja.

-Espen

by nb

Portal: Survive! is a live-action short film based on the hit game Portal, and the tie-in comic “Portal 2: Lab Rat.”

[ColinandConnor | Via LS]

I am not a fan of herbal supplements for many reasons. In short, herbs are drugs. Herbal products on the market are simply poorly regulated drugs that probably don’t work, have variable doses, often have contaminants, and may be incorrectly labeled. So, they are terrible drugs.

These disturbing facts are “greenwashed” by marketers of herbal products with the hype that such products are “natural.” That doesn’t change the fact that they are still dirty, poorly regulated drugs.

A recent study adds to the growing body of evidence that supports my summary above. A study published in BMC Medicine concluded:

Most of the herbal products tested were of poor quality, including considerable product substitution, contamination and use of fillers.

Specifically:

Most (59%) of the products tested contained DNA barcodes from plant species not listed on the labels. Although we were able to authenticate almost half (48%) of the products, one-third of these also contained contaminants and or fillers not listed on the label. Product substitution occurred in 30/44 of the products tested and only 2/12 companies had products without any substitution, contamination or fillers. Some of the contaminants we found pose serious health risks to consumers.

Product substitution means that, while it says “gingko biloba” on the label, the pills contained alfalfa. They found that 32% of the products did not contain the main ingredient, but did contain another species not on the label. In addition, 20% contained contaminants and 21% contained fillers not on the label. Overall only 41% of the products tested were accurately labeled, which means consumers were most likely to either not be getting the herbal product they paid for, and/or to be getting plant species that were not on the label.

The latter is the bigger problem, as some of the contaminant or substituted species could pose toxicity, allergy, or drug-drug interactions. For example, a St. John’s Wart product contained senna, which can cause diarrhea if used regularly. Some products contained wheat, and so look gluten-free on the label but aren’t.

This isn’t the first study to find that herbal products are often incorrectly labeled or contaminated. A 2004 study by Saper found that 20% of Ayurvedic supplements found in local Boston stores were contaminated with potentially toxic levels of heavy metals.

As an aside, there is a humorous criticism of the Saper study by an Indian Ayurvedic proponent, essentially claiming that 20% is not that bad, and the study is flawed and racist because the products studied were not real Ayurvedic medicine. The criticism does not include references to independent studies showing that the alleged high quality Indian herbal products are superior in any way. In any case, it misses the point, which was not to bash India (which is what the author thinks) but to show that what consumers are buying is frequently contaminated.

The author did not cite other research, probably because other research confirms the 20% figure. For example, a 2008 study published in JAMA found overall a 20% rate of heavy metal contamination in Ayurvedic herbal products purchased over the internet, whether they were manufactured in the US or India.

Systematic reviews also show that herbal products can have side effect and drug-drug interactions, although there is overall very poor data on such reactions.

Good manufacturing processes and regulations can solve many of these problems, although it would be difficult. The current study authors point out that many of the manufacturers of adulterated or substituted products seemed genuinely unaware of the problem, which might suggest that the problem is happening upstream, from the suppliers of the raw material. So any regulation would have to involve the entire production chain, with monitoring of the end products.

In his latest book, Paul Offit tells the story of attempting to regulate herbal product use in his hospital. Eventually he settled for one criterion, that the manufacturers provide documentation of what is actually in the products. They refused to do this. One has to wonder why.

Proper regulation of herbal products would be desirable – no one wants users of herbal products to suffer side effects from contaminants. However, such regulations would carry an unintended downside – it would make more respectable products that would still have a major problem. They generally don’t work. 

As a perpetual student and frequent teacher, I am very interested in the science and technology of learning itself. In medical school, for example, we have to transfer an incredible amount of information to students over a relatively short period  of time. The trick is to get students to maintain their attention, focus on the important bits of information, and understand and remember that information.

This is very challenging. Simply lecturing is not very effective. There are different figures as to what the average “attention span” is, depending on exactly how it is measured, but the figures are generally less than 20 minutes, and as low as 5 minutes. Of course, this depends on attention to what. I can pay attention to a 3 hour movie without difficulty, if it’s Lord of the Rings or similar quality. Try listening to a 3 hour lecture on a dry technical topic, and effectively process the information presented the whole time.

So how do we get students to spend the day in lectures and actually learn a significant portion of the material?

There are many answers to this question, but a recent study perhaps adds another technique to improve lecture efficiency. Robert Collins conducted a multi-year study in which he used video during his lectures, but for the first year the video had captions turned off, and for the second year he had captions turned on. He found that during the second year class discussion improved, and grades significantly improved.

While interesting, this should be considered a preliminary study. It was not well controlled, which means the simple introduction of a change – any change – might be responsible for the effect observed, rather than the specific variable of captions. Better controlled follow up studies are needed to see what effect the caption variable has specifically.

But if we take the results at face value, they are plausible and largely consistent with other research. One way to look at it is this – what demands are we making on the cognitive resources of students during a lecture? It takes mental energy to pay attention, to know where to focus your attention, and to process the information being presented. You can really only do one thing at a time, so while you are thinking about the information just given, you may miss the next bit of information. Further, while you are trying to make sense of a graphic or animation in a video, you may not fully process what the narrator is saying.

A good lecture, like a good movie, does not just impart information, it manages the experience of the student. That means drawing their attention to the important bits, without making them waste mental energy finding the important bits on their own. You want all of their mental energy going to perceiving, understanding, and remembering the critical information – not trying to find it or separate it from the less-than-critical information.

Captions to videos is one small technique, but can make it easier for students to get the information. Sometimes auditory processing can be resource intensive – that’s why you should not talk on the phone while driving. Adding captions might make it easier to understand what is being said, especially if new and unfamiliar terms are being used. Even seeing how a word is spelled can enhance comprehension.

I have found this myself, while watching science programs discussing species names, or chemical names, or other technical information, I find myself wanting to see the words in writing. Just hearing them is very unsatisfactory.  Seeing the name reinforces what I just heard, and adds new information (word roots, etc.) that enhance the information. Good science documentaries also know when to have graphics that grab your attention and present the critical bits of information in an easy to read manner or an infographic-type display that enhances comprehension.

Conclusion

Effectively transferring large amounts of complex information is extremely challenging, but it is a science and a skill worth developing. I do think that a good overall approach is to think about managing the experience of the student, rather than just imparting information.

I do think there is a good analogy to be made with movies, something with which most of us have experience. What is the difference between an awesome movie, and average movie, and a terrible B-move? Well, lots of things, but perhaps most important is the difference between just telling a story, and giving the audience a cinematic experience.

Brilliant directors manage that experience in tiny detail – to where you are looking on the screen, to how expectations are created and then fulfilled, giving the audience time to absorb one development before moving onto the next, and a hundred other ways that you are likely not consciously aware of but which dramatically affect your experience of the movie.

A good lecture is similar. There are many variables to consider, and no one magic solution to making a great lecture. I do think that knowing when to caption audio is an important detail, and this new study (while preliminary) supports that.

"That's a natural twenty," Eric said, leering at his coworkers over his Dungeon Master's screen. "Tim, the kobold decapitates your Elven Ranger." The players groaned, and Tim could only mutter in protest. This was only their first adventure, and his character was already dead? Eric smiled. Tim and Alanna would soon learn that suffering abrupt decaptitation in their weekly Dungeons and Dragons game was much-needed preparation for their new jobs at ScriptCloud.

Eric had only joined the company a few months prior, as their first in-house developer. "They" were ScriptCloud Actionware, a local startup dedicated to reinventing the world of mobile app development. With the hindsight that only half a year of nonsense can bring, glimpses of ScriptCloud's deep-seated WTFitude were there right from the beginning. The interview process had gone slowly, not because of stiff competition or a monolithic HR department, but because ScriptCloud had chosen to post the job opening right before their entire staff went on summer vacation. The staff meeting on Eric's eventual first day was somewhat unnerving, ending as it did with the CEO swearing at the creative director after a twenty-minute argument about a single screen of the app's user interface. The app in question was ScriptCloud's first, a game with about the same complexity as Angry Birds (if none of the success). It was built by Costly European Consultants, and it would be Eric's job to support it.

White Plume Mountain

The Costly European Consultants didn't feature it on their website, but they were experts in Front-Ahead Design. They had thrown the game (let's call it Cranky Cockatoos) together in two weeks and deployed directly to Production. The ActionScript library contained no semblance of organization: twenty-seven scenes, each helpfully named "Scene 1", "Scene 2", etc., were ordered randomly. A hellish first week of debugging commentless code led Eric to the problem: a null pointer somewhere was silently bringing the app to a halt. The consultants, who didn't quite understand the concepts of class variables, scoping, weak references, or garbage collection, were instantiating objects without actually assigning them to anything, like this:

new Tween(target, "y", 0, 100, 2, true);

Which left them eligible for immediate garbage collection. The consultants' response to the problem was, naturally, to stuff all the Tweens into global variables.

It would prove a temporary solution.

Expedition to the Barrier Peaks

Soon after "fixing" the Tween issue, a new requirement appeared: Cranky Cockatoos should run on iOS as well. That meant the Flash version had to go, because iOS doesn't have a native Flash player. Given the current state of the app, Eric was happy to start over, and excited to develop a native version for each platform, with an asset pipeline shared between each. Of course, that's not what they did.

Instead, the consultants produced another steaming pile of Flash that vaguely replicated the old game's functionality. To bridge the iOS gap, they used Swiffy, a plugin from Google that would let the Flash app be published as HTML5. But Swiffy (at the time) required them to fall back to ActionScript 2, which lacked modern luxuries like an IDE or a working debugger. Of its many terrible non-features, the best part of Swiffy by far was the 1 MB size limit on the .SWF to be converted to HTML. Eric's second project at ScriptCloud became "get Cranky Cockatoos working... again." It took two months of digging around in the ActionScript 2 API, Google, and StackOverflow, but he split the app into multiple scenes and imposed some sensible design principles onto the carnage. In the midst of that debacle, ScriptCloud's CTO revealed a cunning plan.

Descent Into The Depths

The CTO only worked for the startup part-time (among his other responsibilities, he sat on the board of directors for The Costly European Consultants). He seemed harmless enough, until the day he announced The Omega Project. The all-day meeting boiled down to this: ScriptCloud would make their flagship game into a customizable platform for making any game without writing code. A library of assets could be dragged-and-dropped into the app, and it would be split into scenes through which you could navigate. In other words, Eric realized, they wanted to use Flash to make... Flash. A non-programmable subset of Flash. The whole day could have been replaced by the CTO just writing Inner-Platform Effect on the whiteboard.

Fortunately for Eric, the consultants would work on The Omega Project, not him. He was too busy trying to keep Cranky Cockatoos below the 1 MB limit. Glorious was the day he stumbled into the Adobe Integrated Runtime, which let him export to the web or iOS from one codebase and work in ActionScript 3, a language with actual dev tools. By the end of the week Eric had a working prototype and a mandate to ship the Cockatoos, stat. Even better, two more new graduates were hired to help him, and they soon had a well-designed game ready for the web and the App Store. Best of all, Tim and Alanna were fellow gamers and would provide a tasty snack for Eric's ravenous kobold hordes.

"Hah! That fireball hits all six kobolds! Burn!" Alanna whooped as she knocked over each of the little plastic figurines. Tim, his Elven Ranger's cardboard stand-up lying in state near the edge of the table, whistled. "Nice. Looks like you got a little too cocky, Eric!"

But Eric was looking at his phone. "Funny you should mention that," he said. "We just got some bad news."

He handed them the phone, an email from the CEO displayed like the grim incantation that had brought their adventurers into the kobolds' lair.

"He wants us to come in as early as possible tomorrow, because he's just promised a big new client some new features. Due by close-of-business."

The blood drained from the developers' faces. "I didn't even know we had clients," Alanna said.

They did now. And this big client was very interested in a custom version of Cranky Cockatoos, one which they could license, build new level packs for, and rake in the In-App Purchase money, all of which was music to the CEO's ears. Thus a classic Death Spiral began: upon seeing the latest build, their client would request a flurry of changes. The CEO would promise to deliver by the next business day—even if it was, at that point, already four in the afternoon—and Eric and his cohorts would find themselves at their desks past 10 PM several nights a week. Despite upper management's promises that the overtime was temporary, it was looking like their adventures were cut short ere they truly began.

The Temple of Elemental Evil

Having passed the six-month mark, Eric was already considering a change of employment when the CTO called an all-day meeting to reveal that the Costly European Consultants had finished The Omega Project, and that all future dev work would be done using it. Despite having had months to work on it, the consultants repeatedly defended their prototype as having been made in two weeks. They had promised to use the new platform to completely replicate Cranky Cockatoos, but their demo's animations stuttered, the text rendered in an unreadable 8-point font, and there was no sound.

"I think you were wrong about this being a bad version of Flash built inside Flash, Eric," Tim whispered.

"Yeah," Alanna said, "looks like they somehow made a bad version of Flash inside Drupal."

Eric's team quickly had a new name for The Omega Project: The Rube Goldberg Machine. There was indeed no programming involved: to add an asset, you had to upload the image to a separate server, copy the URL into a MovieClip wrapper and drag it into the scene. The background had to be added first because there was no way to reorder layers. Or to reuse assets, or to edit text. Eric's favorite part of the user interface was a lone checkbox simply labeled "Yes".

The Tomb of Horrors

Unsure how the CTO's "rewrite everything in this broken, impossible mess" directive could coexist with the CEO's "implement these new features before you go home" directive, the developers decided to bring their concerns to the attention of management. Each of them went to a different person, and each of them received a different answer. That Friday, having been able to leave the office at a generous 8 PM, they assembled around Eric's kitchen table to continue their latest adventure and compare notes.

"The Creative Director said the Rube Goldberg Machine is the way forward," Tim told them, "or he might have said 'Way of the Future'. Though he admitted we'll go back to Flash as a last resort if it doesn't work out."

"If, huh?" Alanna said. "More like when. The CEO said Flash is our Plan B. So it sounds like sanity hasn't been totally ruled out."

Eric scoffed. The CTO, he told them, had made it clear that Flash was neither Plan B, Plan Z, nor anything in between. Soon after, an offer came to join a Java shop for more money, a shorter commute, and sensible working hours. Eric gave his two weeks' notice and leveled-up into the world of code reviews, automated unit testing, and issue-tracking software. While he bid goodbye to Alanna and Tim, they agreed to keep up their game nights for as long as they could.

Their fellowship was doomed, however. Shortly after losing their most-experienced developer, ScriptCloud realized they'd need to do something drastic. They hired a COO, bringing the total number of C-level executives higher than the number of programmers. The new operations head initiated a bold strategy of mandatory overtime, and Eric's adventurers were consumed as thoroughly as they would have been by the gelatinous cube he'd planned to trap them with in his next dungeon. Eric hoped they would soon learn the lesson that year had taught him: sometimes the only way out of a dungeon is to drop your sword and flee into the night.

For en liten uke siden møtte jeg rektor ved Norsk Akademi for Naturmedisin (NAN), Andreas N. Bjørndal, til debatt i Dagsnytt atten. Jeg har diskutert med Bjørndal i sosiale medier før, og vet at det sjelden tar lang tid før konspirasjonsideene rundt foreningen Skepsis hagler. Han klarte heller ikke styre unna dette i NRK-debatten hvor han hevdet at skepsisforeningen hadde manipulert og infiltrert britiske myndigheter for å skade homeopati og motarbeide forskning på dette. Ganske fascinerende.

Etter debatten satte Bjørndal og jeg oss ned og pratet i nesten en time. Det var en interessant diskusjon, og vi hadde en fin tone. Det første som møter meg dagen etterpå er likevel en posting fra Bjørndal på Facebooksidene til NAN:

Skuffende. Etter vår samtale kvelden før hadde jeg ikke forventet et slikt personangrep fra hans kant, spesielt når hans hovedpoeng synes å være nettopp at vi skeptikere driver med «latterliggjøring» heller enn saklig debatt. Sannheten er ganske åpenbart motsatt. Jeg har debattert Bjørndal flere ganger på fullstendig saklig plan, med grundige gjennomganger av forskningen han viser til. Hans taktikk er likevel atter et angrep på skeptikere.

(Jeg får selv ikke skrevet i kommentartråden da Bjørndal selvsagt stengte meg ute fra siden for et par år siden da jeg våget å påpeke at han faktisk gjenga forskning om virus i oppdrettslaks fullstendig feil.)

Pengestyrt angrep på homeopati?

Merk spesielt det siste han skriver:

Det mange ikke vet er at det sitter 3-4 sentrale personer i skepsis miljøet som får store summer fra anonyme givere for å motarbeide alternativ medisin og særlig homeopati.

Så kan man jo spørre seg hvem som tjener på dette?

«Follow the money»

Dette er en grov beskyldning som man må anta at Bjørndal har god dokumentasjon for. Ellers ville han vel aldri skrevet det?

Mange skeptikere ble nysgjerrige på hva han mente om dette, og han ble utfordret i kommentarfeltet under statusmeldingen. Etter en ganske lang debatt kom det aldri noe som en gang lignet på dokumentasjon for den drøye beskyldningen.

Bjørndal sitt første svar i kommentartråden er dette:

Så la oss ta en kikk på lenken han poster. Det er en artikkel skrevet av Tim Bolen som innledes slik:

I have written a series of article on who and what the «skeptics» (pseudo-skeptics) actually are. The articles are not flattering, for there is nothing good about the skeptic organization. Hence, there is nothing good about individual skeptics.

Nothing at all. They are all about «hate.»

OK. Så hva mener Bolen, og dermed implisitt Andreas N. Bjørndal, at skeptikere egentlig er? La oss se hva han skriver:

The so-called «skeptics» are a misinformation campaign run by angry male homosexuals masquerading as atheists whose management has a significant interest in pedophilia, its promotion and protection.

[…]

Skeptic work is little more than employment of young homosexual men whose anger, self-loathing, and bitterness at the Judeo/Christian world and its handling of homosexuality issues normally makes them virtually unemployable in society. So, they have available time – and a computer. They are taught to use that time to focus their self-loathing outward, Using anonymity, lashing out viciously at those targets they are organized to attack, by «Skeptic Central» on the internet.

Resten av artikkelen er rare beskyldninger om det ene og det andre mot eldre mer eller mindre profilerte aktører i den amerikanske skepsisbevegelsen for 20 år siden. Dette er det rektor, akupunktør og homeopat Andreas N. Bjørndal bruker som dokumentasjon på at den norske skepsisbevegelsen er «korrupte». Nettsiden til en person som er så tvilsom at selv andre tvilsomme kilder frastår fra å lenke til ham. Antivaksine-nettstedet «Age of Autism» har blant annet advart mot Bolen. Det sier mye.

Etter flere kommentarer fra Bjørndal og enkelte av hans meningsfeller, som utelukkende er negative personkarakteristikker av amerikanske skeptikere, beskyldninger om pedofili, korrupsjon og løgner, så serverer Bjørndal oss dette:

Latterliggjøring og undergraving av fakta speiler at man ser på lyttere (3. part) som mindre fornuftig. Den gjennomgående manglende respekt og fraværet av interesse for å forstå, er så langt fra en vitenskapelig diskurs som det er mulig å komme.

Skepsis fremmer derfor i minimal grad vitenskapelighet, seriøs undersøkende virksomhet eller ett oppriktig ønske om å avdekke, undersøke eller fremme et kunnskapsgrunnlag.
Svaret et gitt, holdningene er meget forutsigbare og dere står på samme sted som da jeg var medlem for over ca. 25 år siden.

Dette er interessant, fordi jeg har ikke gjort annet enn å nettopp gå vitenskapelig til verks i alle mine bloggposter om homeopati. Jeg har gravd i studier og vurdert data for å forsøke å finne noen svar. Og hva er responsen til Bjørndal? Beskyldninger om økonomisk snusk og det som verre er.

Forklaringen på at skeptikernes holdninger rundt homeopati har stått på stedet hvil i 25 år er ganske enkel: Det har ikke dukket opp noen nye data i løpet av de siste tiår som kan påvirke konklusjonen om at homeopati ikke virker. Dette er ikke for å være vrange eller kjedelige, men som skeptikere må vi følge dataene. Når studie etter studie underbygger samme konklusjon, så kan vi ikke endre standpunkt. Det ville vært vitenskapelig uredelig.

Follow the money!

Bjørndals «Follow the money!» er også interessant, for hvem i denne debatten er det som har økonomiske interesser i spørsmålet om homeopati? Kun Bjørndal selv. De andre skeptikerne i tråden er alle frivillige vitenskapsnerder som ikke taper en krone om homeopati skulle overtatt det norske helsevesen i morgen. Min inntekt er også helt uavhengig av hva forskningen på alternativ medisin måtte vise.

Den eneste som har noe å tape, er Bjørndal selv. Han lever av å selge homeopatisk behandling. Han lever av å lære opp nye homeopater. Han lever av å drive en skole basert på at folk har tillit til alternativ medisin. Dermed svir det sikkert litt når han opplever at sånne slemme skeptikere som oss peker på hva vitenskapelig forskning viser om homeopati, fordi det kan gjøre at han taper kunder, pasienter og elever. Nettopp derfor mister han også sitt objektive gangsyn, fordi for ham handler dette om levebrødet. Han har ikke råd til å tape denne debatten.

Tråden fortsetter med at Bjørndal blir spurt gang på gang om å dokumentere påstanden om at sentrale skeptikere mottar store økonomiske midler for å motarbeide alternativ medisin, men finner hele veien nye måter å unngå å svare på dette. Det hele oppsummeres egentlig best av følgende to kommentarer:

James Randi

Homeopatrektoren er også nesten sykelig opptatt av den amerikanske tryllekunstner og «poster boy» for skepsisbevegelsen, James Randi. I Bjørndals hode styrer Randi alt som skjer, og er vårt store forbilde og inspirasjon. Vel, i så fall er det nok bare Bjørndal som ikke har kommet seg videre på 25 år. For min egen del kan jeg si at jeg synes Randi har vært kjedelig i omtrent 15 år.

Jeg leste et par av hans bøker midt på 90-tallet, og som ung skeptiker var de inspirerende og åpnet mine øyne for en del ting. Det var også stort da jeg møtte Randi første gang på The Amazing Meeting i Las Vegas i 2006, fordi han er tross alt en ganske betydelig mediepersonlighet – en internasjonal kjendis. Men utover det har han i svært liten grad påvirket det jeg driver med.

Randi har stort sett fortalt de samme historiene i 30 år. Han er, som mange andre amerikanske skeptikere, kanskje litt for dogmatisk, etter mitt syn. Dette er også noe jeg skriver om helt i slutten av boken min, «Placebodefekten». Han har også et politisk syn som ikke er helt i tråd med det jeg selv står for, så Randi kan definitivt ikke sies å være noe forbilde i enhver sak.

Randi anses heller ikke som noen ufeilbarlig guru i skeptikermiljøet, slik Bjørndal synes å tro. Han har fått sin andel kritikk, blant annet da han for noen år siden uttrykte at han var usikker på menneskeskapt global oppvarming. Da fikk han massiv motbør for å ha brukt tvilsomme kilder. Randi måtte beklage, og endret etter dette syn på saken etter å ha lest seg mer opp på temaet.

James Randi har gjort mye bra for skepsissaken internasjonalt, men han er ingen guru, og hvis det er en ting som forener oss skeptikere, så er det at ingen er beskyttet mot kritikk. Selv om Bjørndal omtaler meg som «skeptiker guru og sjefsblogger», så får jeg kritikk av andre norske skeptikere hele tiden. Og det er bra. De peker ut feil og svakheter i det jeg skriver, slik at jeg kan korrigere dette og bli bedre. Noen er dypt uenige i formen på det jeg skriver, i budskapet på en del av det jeg skriver, eller i andre aspekter ved det jeg driver med. Det får jeg til stadighet høre. Det finnes ingen guruer i skeptikermiljøene. Ingen er unntatt fra kritikk.

Jeg blokkerer heller ikke noen som er uenige med meg. I motsetning til hva Bjørndal gjør, han som har stengt ganske så mange skeptikere ute fra sine debattråder. Den eneste som søker å opprettholde en status som «ufeilbarlig guru» synes altså å være Bjørndal selv.

Ekstremt tvilsomme kilder

Litt senere i debatten, hele 5 dager etter at han la ut beskyldningene om økonomisk snusk i skepsisforeningen, finner Bjørndal endelig ut at han har tid til å underbygge dette med kilder. Og for noen kilder han legger frem.

Folkens, husk at dette er rektor ved en skole. Dette er ikke en hvilken som helst skrulling som skråler i vei om sitt syn på verden, men en mann som utdanner folk som skal behandle syke mennesker. En mann som hele veien mener at skeptikere er så dårlige på kildekritikk. En mann som først lirer av seg en hel rekke svært grove beskyldninger om både enkeltpersoner og organisasjoner, og først fem dager senere klarer å google frem «dokumentasjon» som synes å underbygge dette. Dokumentasjon han strengt tatt burde ha på plass før han slenger ut beskyldningene.

Det er ganske ironisk når han selv skriver følgende om akademiet sitt:

Hos oss kreves det kunnskapsbehandling på ett høyere nivå enn “trening i å finne frem svar som ønskes”.

[…]

Og om du velger å starte på studiet vil du få god hjelp til å trene de ferdigheter som er nødvendige for å lære deg høyere kunnskapsbehandling.

Er det overfladisk googling han mener med sin «høyere kunnskapsbehandling»? Om man skal tro på det han gjør heller enn det han sier, så virker det slik.

Så la oss se hva han legger frem som dokumentasjon. Han lenker blant annet til rense.com, en nettside av talk-show radioverten Jeff Rense.

Rense er rett og slett en gal konspirasjonsteoretiker, og hans påstander kan oppsummeres bl.a. slik:

Among his many topics (the conspiracies are generally endorsed) are 9/11 conspiracy theories, UFOs, Holocaust denial, Jewish conspiracy theories (a British fellow chimes in here), Big Pharma conspiracies, AIDS denial, and the Illuminati, but you’ll find plenty of food for pretty much every other conceivable conspiracy theory on his sites.

Den tidligere omtalte nettsiden om skeptikere på bolenreport.com bruker for øvrig nettstedet whale.to som kilde for å vise at James Randi er pedofil. Whale.to er en favoritt blant konspirasjonsteoretikere og vaksinemotstandere. Her er en beskrivelse av dette nettstedet:

It is a notorious dumping ground for all things pseudoscientific… as well as a few other things. Like the complete text of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, documentations of Illuminati mind control plots, and articles about the Catholic world conspiracy. It contains every (and we do mean every) half-baked pseudoscientific theory ever concocted.

Å lenke til whale.to som kilde anses i vitenskapelige kretser som så tvilsomt at det har fått en egen lov, Scopie’s Law:

In any discussion involving science or medicine, citing Whale.to as a credible source loses you the argument immediately …and gets you laughed out of the room.

Bjørndal ser likevel ut til å akseptere dette som kilde hos sin egen kilde.

Bjørndal lenker selvsagt også til NaturalNews.com som kilde. Atter et nettsted ingen med det aller minste ønske om å fremstå som vitenskapelig troverdige ville brukt som kilde om de så hadde en pistol mot tinningen:

The site promotes almost every sort of medical woo known to human history, though it specializes in vaccine denialism, AIDS/HIV denial, quack cancer medicine and conspiracy theories about modern medicine. Even other quacks think it’s a quack site. The site has recently broadened to include extreme environmentalism and conspiracy theorizing about Obama and gun control.

Kanskje verst av alt er det at han lenker til nettstedet Big-Lies.org. Dette nettstedet tar skrullete konspirasjonsideer til et helt nytt nivå. De mener nemlig at atomvåpen ikke finnes, og at angrepene på Nagasaki og Hiroshima i 1945 er en løgn. Iblandet de vanlige antisemittiske konspirasjonsteoriene, selvsagt.

I tillegg til disse ganske så groteske kildevalgene Bjørndal gjør, så krydrer han også med noen YouTube-videoer og personlige artikler skrevet av ulike folk som for eksempel synes at et TED-foredrag av James Randi var kjedelig. Det er tung dokumentasjon, folkens. Og Bjørndal innrømmer selv at han egentlig ikke har lest det meste av det han lenker til. Han har bare funnet en hel drøss ting som er kritisk til James Randi, og slengt ut lenkene uten å sjekke dem noe videre. Pinlig.

Det som gjør dette så ekstra ille er altså at våset og personangrepene serveres ene og alene fra rektor og eier av Norsk Akademi for Naturmedisin. I full offentlighet. Det er smertefullt å se på for oss skeptikere, og det må verke i lommeboken til de som har betalt denne mannen for en flerårig tulleutdannelse.

NOKUT-fadesen

Er det bare vi skeptikere som reagerer på dette? Nei. Bjørndal har forsøkt å få en bachelorutdannelse ved NAN akkreditert av Nasjonalt organ for kvalitet i utdanningen (NOKUT), uten å lykkes. Hvorfor vil de ikke godkjenne NAN? Vel, Bjørndals kildebruk er nettopp et av problemene også de peker på.

Korrespondansen rundt denne søknaden fra NAN finnes offentlig tilgjengelig, og her kan vi blant annet lese at NOKUT skriver (min utheving):

Et bachelorstudium må vises til ny forskning i undervisningen, og formidle kritisk tenkning rundt vitenskapeligstatus for eget fag. Det er ikke vist godt nok hvordan dette er integrert i studieretningsfagene i fagplanen. Videre framstår ønsket om kritisk analyse av litteratur og forskning som lite troverdig. Det er særlig problematisk at akademiet henviser til at det foreligger et meget stort antall forskningsstudier innen fordypningsfagene. Det er hevet over enhver tvil at de aller fleste av disse studiene ikke har noen vitenskapelig verdi ut over å kunne være hypotesegenererende. Søkers henvisning til disse studiene styrker inntrykket av at akademiet ikke har en reflektert vitenskapelig holdning til forskning.

Au.

Bjørndal karakteriserer seg visst selv som «hovedaktør innen den homeopatiske forskningen ved NAN», men NOKUT bemerker at de ikke finner en eneste publisert studie av Bjørndal.

Au.

Og til slutt:

Videre er kommiteen av den oppfatning at kunnskapsgrunnlaget for er dårlig i studieretningsfaget homeopati, og at den vitenskapelige kvaliteten er bekymringsfull.

Au. Au. Au.

Studie-juks fra Bjørndal

I tillegg til at vi nå har sett Bjørndal bruke de mest groteske kilder til å underbygge sine personangrep mot sentrale skeptikere, så viser han også sitt sanne jeg på et annet punkt.

I NRK-debatten hevdet han blant annet at det fantes god dokumentasjon på at homeopati var svært effektivt mot ADHD. I diskusjonstråden på Facebook, som nå har vart i en uke, har han blitt spurt om denne dokumentasjonen mange ganger. Han har ennå ikke klart å legge frem en slik studie.

Heldigvis kan man jo alltids gjøre jobben for Bjørndal, og det er gjort en Cochrane-analyse på bruk av homeopati ved ADHD. Her er konklusjonen:

The forms of homeopathy evaluated to date do not suggest significant treatment effects for the global symptoms, core symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity or impulsivity, or related outcomes such as anxiety in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

Bjørndal trekker selv frem Cochrane-reviews i mange sammenhenger, så han kan vanskelig avvise at denne review representerer det vi per i dag vet om effekten av homeopati på ADHD. Lite tyder på at det virker, og Bjørndals påstand i NRK-debatten var derfor løgn.

Dette er Bjørndals taktikk i media og i debatter. Han lirer av seg påstander om studie etter studie som skal bekrefte hvor utmerket homeopati virker, fordi de færreste lyttere har kompetanse til å forstå at dette er direkte løgn. Ingen andre enn de mest engasjerte skeptikere gidder heller å sjekke påstanden. Det er en svært uredelig taktikk. Han lyver bevisst til lytterne fordi han vet at han kan slippe unna med det i de korte debattformatene han deltar i. Der hvor ingen kan sjekke hans påstander på sparket.

Bjørndal er her tatt i atter en slik løgn, en av flere han altså lirte av seg i NRK-debatten. Det er direkte skammelig. Og husk igjen: Denne mannen er rektor ved en norsk utdanningsinstitusjon og klager på at meningsmotstanderne er vitenskapelig uredelige – helt uten å kunne dokumentere dette.

Pedofilibeskyldninger

Bjørndal går heller ikke av veien for å bruke det mest kjente trikset i homeopati-bibelen: Hvis du ikke kan vinne debatten ved å vise til god forskning, erklær snarest motstanderen for pedofil!

Gang på gang i debatten hevder Bjørndal at James Randi kan være pedofil. Han skriver blant annet:

Det er så mange spørsmål rundt Randi og det han står for som er preget av løgn og lureri, alt fra falskt navn, samboer som er illegalt importert, anklager om pedofili osv. Men så er han jo skolert forfalsker som har lagt ut på sin misjonsferd i verden og etablert skeptikere.

Som vi har sett mener han å dokumentere dette ved å vise til Bolen-nettsiden som også hevder at flere sentrale ledere i den amerikanske (!) skepsisorganisasjonen er pedofile.

Når Bjørndal senere utfordres på dette svarer han:

Jeg har ikke undersøkt pedofili anklagene, jeg har heller ikke giddet å høre på de opptak som ligger på nettet om dette. Og det er ikke det som er det jeg ønsker å fokusere på. Det bare føyer seg inn i rekken av indikasjoner på ting som ikke er helt optimalt.

Hva!?! Er det faktisk slik at rektor Bjørndal går ut offentlig og kaller meningsmotstandere for pedofile, og når han blir avkrevd dokumentasjon for dette, så innrømmer han at han egentlig aldri har sjekket om det stemmer?

Hvor lavt er det mulig å synke? Hvordan kan noen ville betale titusener av kroner for å la seg undervise av en slik klovn? En mann som gladelig lenker til konspiratoriske nettsider med Holocaustbenektelse, antisemittisme, HIV/AIDS-fornektelse, atombombefornektelse, grunnløse pedofilibeskyldninger, homohets – for å bare rispe i overflaten av galskapen hans kilder fremmer.

Hadde disse ytringene kommet fra en rektor ved en norsk videregående skole, hadde han sannsynligvis fått fyken på dagen. Men Bjørndal opererer i en alternativ virkelighet hvor ingen dokumentasjon er nødvendig for noe som helst – så lenge han selv har noe å vinne på det. Det gjelder både behandlingsmetodene han underviser i, såvel som de grove beskyldningene mot de som våger å kritisere hans religion: homeopatien.

(For de som er interesserte, så kan man lese mer om pedofilibeskyldningene mot Randi blant annet her og her og her.)

På et tidspunkt i debatten lenker også Bjørndal til en norsk blogg fra en ekstremalternativ og vaksinemotstander som blant annet beskylder meg for å være «pro-pedofili». Denne fjernet han etter en stund da en annen homeopatitilhenger påpekte at det kanskje ikke var den mest troverdig kilden å trekke frem. Det er likevel interessant å merke seg at når Bjørndal presses på sak, så velger han igjen å angripe med pedofilianklager. Det er et alvorlig overtramp.

Konklusjon

Jeg skal gi meg her. Dette er langt nok allerede. Jeg tror likevel folk forstår poenget. Bjørndal er en mann som uten skam lyver på radio og TV for å nå sine mål. Han eier ingen begrep om kildekritikk, og lenker gladelig til de ekleste sidene på internett, samtidig som han kritiserer blant annet meg for dårlig kildekritikk. Han skyr ikke det å kalle meningsmotstandere for pedofile, men innrømmer at han egentlig ikke har noe grunnlag for å påstå dette. Han karakteriserer skeptikere som «unge homofile med sinneproblemer», og viser dermed at han lever i en fortid hvor «homofil» fortsatt bet som skjellsord.

I alternativdebatten blir det til stadighet påpekt at vi må skille seriøse aktører fra de useriøse. Men om noen skal anses som en seriøs aktør må det vel være nettopp rektor ved homeopatenes fremste utdanningsinstitusjon i landet. Det er etter mitt syn derfor en skandale at den kanskje fremste forkjemper og representant for homeopati i landet kan lire av seg så alvorlige anklager mot meningsmotstandere og direkte løgner rundt forskningen på homeopati.

Skal man tolke regnskapstallene til NAN, som viser en halvering i omsetning de siste 5 år, så tyder mye på at skolen får stadig færre elever. Det er i så fall bra, fordi Bjørndals har en særdeles villedende retorikk og unnvikende holdning til alt som handler om kvalitet i utdanningen. Dette kan du lese mer om i Annabelle Tully sin bloggpost om Bjørndal og NAN. Hvis man leser den debatten og fortsatt tror man kan lære noe nyttig på skolen hans, så fortjener man vel egentlig den svindel man får servert fra mannen.

Ta også en kikk på den ferskere bloggposten av Jo Åse om samme debatt som jeg har gjennomgått her.

Kanskje viktigst av alt: Selv etter alle de kommentarer og tusenvis av ord Bjørndal har skrevet i debattråden på Facebook, så har han ennå ikke underbygget den opprinnelige påstandene om at «det sitter 3-4 sentrale personer i skepsis miljøet som får store summer fra anonyme givere for å motarbeide alternativ medisin og særlig homeopati». Det må altså anses som fri diktning fra rektor Andreas N. Bjørndal som et ledd i å sverte sine meningsmotstandere. En taktikk vi har sett så alt for mange ganger før fra den kanten.

---

Takk til mange saklige og dyktige debattanter i NAN-tråden som jeg altså selv ikke får delta i. En spesiell kudos går til Henning Tveit som fullstendig avkler Bjørndal på hans egen Facebookside.

Hanging around this tumblr (and loving it) even though I’m a developer. (HT Mags)

[Source: Giraffe Childcare and Early Learning]

Despite having written code for twenty years before he'd even turned thirty, Jim couldn't help feeling like a bit of an impostor. He wasn't suffering from the Capgras delusion, though. He felt the way many of us feel when presented with a new job using new technology - in this case, the .NET framework and C# - that surely he couldn't be good enough at this to keep the job for very long. Surely his peers would find him wanting. While Jim struggled with his own self-worth, one thing he didn't struggle with was choice of IDE: Visual Studio. Intellisense, one-click refactoring, and a host of other features allowed him to fake it till he could make it. As far as Jim could tell, there was no reason to use anything else when developing a .NET solution.

Jim's first assignment was to work on a codebase created by Biff. Biff was a Something-Something-Level 3, so Jim was ready to learn a few new things when he fired up Visual Studio and opened Biff's solution. And learn he did. For example, he learned that VS marks syntax errors with a red, squiggly underline, much like Microsoft Word does with spelling and grammar mistakes. Biff's code lit up like a first-grader's essay about summer vacation, loaded as it was with misspelled identifiers, missing semicolons, and AWOL closing braces. Jim would have wondered if Biff had ever tried to compile the mess, but he was too busy wondering if the senior developer made a habit of typing with his eyes closed, since Visual Studio would have helpfully pointed out these sorts of mistakes as he made them.

Not wanting to scream "WTF?!" at a senior colleague he'd just met, Jim drafted the most diplomatic email he could, requesting that Biff provide input on the worst bits before Jim started making changes. After all, he explained, he didn't want to change something Biff intended to be there.

Biff made some changes, and when he emailed them back (Jim hadn't heard mention of source control since his job interview) Jim noticed two things right away: first, every class was declared in a single file, contravening the extremely common .NET convention. Second, and what prompted Jim to pick up the phone, the file's extension was .docx.

"Yeah, Biff? Jim here. I just got these updates you sent, but I think something's wrong with the attachment. Says it's a Word doc."

"Oh yeah," Biff chuckled. "I use Word to write all my code."

Jim tried to think of something, anything, to say in response. "You... what?"

"Word is where it's at! Way more control over formatting than that Visual Studio. I mean, what's with that fixed-width font? And in Word you can highlight things. This is Microsoft's best kept secret in software development, Jimbo. Swing by sometime and I'll show you what you're missing."

Jim hung up the phone and stared at his monitor, looking back and forth between his co-worker's IDE of choice and his own. It was clear that feeling underqualified was going to be the least of his problems.

Image from this prank application.

Twitter Timeline Height

If our Twitter timelines (tweets by the people we follow) actually extended off the screen in both directions, how tall would they be?

Anonymous

This is a surprisingly tricky question. The answer involves German tanks, human extinction, and the most disputed statistics problem on the internet.

But first, Twitter.

Lots of tweets

The answer obviously depends who you follow. Some people tweet a lot more than others.

@JephJacques, the author of Questionable Content, tweets a lot. His contribution to your timeline will be 36,000 tweets and rising. On the other hand, if you follow people who don't tweet very much, it's possible your timeline to date could fit on a single screen.

According to an analysis by Diego Basch, as of last year the "average" Twitter account had tweeted 307 times and was following 51 people.[1]Diego Basch, Some Fresh Twitter Stats (as of July 2012, Dataset Included) (Dataset not included.) But averages can be deceptive;[2]If Larry Ellison, who made $96 million last year, moves into a typical town of 3,000 people, the average income in that town will double overnight. most Twitter accounts had never even tweeted at all, or have only one follower.

To get an idea of the typical timeline, I asked some friends to take a snapshot of their Twitter homepages and count the rate of tweets at that particular moment. The results covered a wide range—some were seeing 20 tweets per minute, some 20 tweets per month.

Correcting[3]Multiplying by a random number between 0.5 and 1 for the time of day and extrapolating[4]Filling a spreadsheet with numbers until I ran out of columns backward based on Twitter's growth rate, this suggested some timelines currently contain hundreds of tweets and some contain millions.

On my computer's monitor, the average tweet is about 2.4 centimeters high.[5]Citation: I just measured. You can measure, too, but you'll have to use your computer instead of mine. I'm using mine now to type this, so I need to be able to see the screen. This suggests that Jeph Jacques' tweet tower is 900 meters tall—taller than the tallest building—and still growing.

However, Jeph has nothing on @YOUGAKUDAN_00, who tweets many times per minute—usually binary, but sometimes actual words. @YOUGAKUDAN_00 has accumulated 37 million tweets, enough to reach into low Earth orbit.

Combining Diego's July 2012 estimate with the current rate of tweets per day suggests there have been a total of about 345 billion tweets as of October 2013. That means that if you followed every Twitter user, your timeline would be eight million kilometers high. For comparison, here's the Earth, with your Twitter timeline next to it:

Of course ... that's just the part of the timeline below the screen. What about the whole timeline?

Someday, the last person you follow will tweet for the last time. When will that be?

The future

Our timelines aren't really as tall as skyscrapers—even virtually–because Twitter limits the number of past tweets you can see by scrolling. But can we estimate how tall our timelines will eventually be?

Based on human lifespans, it seems likely that most of the accounts you follow will stop tweeting within a century. On the other hand, accounts like @big_ben_clock could keep going for millennia.

But will Twitter last that long?

It's obviously impossible to predict for sure, but there's a strange tool from statistics that might help.[6]Predict the end of Twitter with this 1 weird old tip!

Or might not. It depends who you talk to.

German tank problem

Suppose you're transported to an alternate universe. You open IMDb and load a random page, and the movie that comes up is The Land Before Time XXVII.[7]27

Based only on the title, how many Land Before Time movies do you think there are in this universe? Clearly there are at least 27, and probably more.

Allied troops faced a version of this problem in World War II.[8](A flood of Axis-produced Land Before Time sequels.) German tank parts had serial numbers, many of which were sequential (1, 2 ... N). Suppose they captured a random tank. If they determined it was Tank #27, then they can be sure that the Germans had made at least 27 tanks. It also told them there probably weren't millions of tanks; if there were, they would have been unlikely to get a two-digit serial number.

Of course, the enemy can foil this plan by giving their tanks random large serial numbers. The US actually did that in 1981—the Navy named its elite counterterrorism unit "Seal Team Six" to confuse Soviet spies into thinking there must be at least five other teams out there.[9]Pfarrer, Chuck. "Team Jedi." In SEAL target Geronimo: the inside story of the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2011. Loc 594/3898.

Assuming the numbers are sequential, using clever Bayesian math, you can guess the actual number from a sample of tanks pretty reliably.[10]In addition to the Wikipedia article, there are good discussions of the solution on Statistics Blog and Event Horizon

If you have only a few samples, the math gets a little trickier.[11]The problem is that you're forced to select a "prior"—an initial hypothesis about how likely each number of tanks is. Usually, people just assume there's an equal chance of every number of tanks. But mathematically, this assumption plays fast and loose with the math. The idea of having "an equal chance of getting every number from 1 to infinity" doesn't work in probability; technically speaking, it violates Kolmogorov's Second Axiom. With one sample—as in our Land Before Time problem—the best strategy is probably to take the number you've seen and double it. This suggests that there are probably about 54 Land Before Time Movies.

The idea is that you're likely to be somewhere in the middle of the range—there's only a small chance that you're looking at one of the first or one of the last movies.

Things get weird

If we apply the German tank problem to humans, we can argue that our species will go extinct by the year 2807.

Here's the argument:

Humans will go extinct someday. Suppose that, after this happens, aliens somehow revive all humans who have ever lived. They line us up in order of birth and number us from 1 to N. Then they divide us divide them into three groups—the first 5%, the middle 90%, and the last 5%:

Now imagine the aliens ask each human (who doesn't know how many people lived after their time), "Which group do you think you're in?"

Most of them probably wouldn't speak English, and those who did would probably have an awful lot of questions of their own. But if for some reason every human answered "I'm in the middle group", 90% of them will (obviously) be right. This is true no matter how big N is.

Therefore, the argument goes, we should assume we're in the middle 90% of humans. Given that there have been a little over 100 billion humans so far, we should be able to assume with 95% probability that N is less than 2.2 trillion humans. If it's not, it means we're assuming we're in 5% of humans—and if all humans made that assumption, most of them would be wrong.

To put it more simply: Out of all people who will ever live, we should probably assume we're somewhere in the middle; after all, most people are.

If our population levels out around 9 billion, this suggests humans will probably go extinct in about 800 years, and not more than 16,000.

This is the Doomsday Argument.

Yeah, but that's stupid

Almost everyone who hears this argument immediately sees something wrong with it.

The problem is, everyone thinks it's wrong for a different reason. And the more they study it, the more they tend to change their minds about what that reason is.

Since it was proposed in 1983, it's been the subject of tons of papers refuting it, and tons of papers refuting those papers.[14]Nick Bostrom, A Primer on the Doomsday Argument There's no consensus about the answer; it's like the airplane on a treadmill problem, but worse.

What does this mean for Twitter?

Let's assume the Doomsday argument is valid and apply this reasoning to Twitter. Since there have been 345 billion tweets so far, then the best guess about Twitter's total lifetime is that there will be 690 billion tweets.

At the current rate of 400 million tweets per day, this argument says Twitter has about five years left. And it suggests that there's a 95% chance Twitter will disappear within 45 years.

This certainly sounds reasonable—given the rate of technological change, there's no reason to expect an internet service to stay popular for more than 10 or 20 years.

But ... is the Doomsday argument valid?

If we see Twitter activity winding down in 2018, then will that be evidence in favor of the Doomsday argument? And if so, does it suggest that humanity has only two centuries left?

Probably not. But it depends which statisticians you ask.

On the plus side, they seem to have stopped making The Land Before Time sequels in 2007, so at least we stand a good chance of avoiding that particular scenario.

[Source: Dorkly]

Cosplayer Tarah-Rex sent me those pics featuring herself costumed as Captain Scarlett from Borderlands 2 earlier this week, and since today is Talk like a Pirate day, I thought this was just the perfect day to post these! Photos by Shaylene Herbert.

I recently completed and wore my Captain Scarlett Cosplay to Dragon*Con and I’m sending some photos of it your way in case you are interested. The character is Captain Scarlett from the Borderlands 2 DLC, “Captain Scarlett and her Pirate’s Booty”. I took some creative license with the character and added designs on all her medallions and pins etc. I also hand made all the pins, medallions and spikes from Polymer Clay. The whole costume and all the props were made by me with the exception of the modified boot.

Model and Costume: Tarah-Rex
Photographer: Shaylene Herbert

Thanks Tarah-Rex!

When the help desk guy calls me at midnight because his printer is empty

When the developer tells me, “I built my own auditing tool.”

devopsreactions: Some hosting companies on availability

image by BL