eyeballs

Posted by on November 11, 2009 No comments

[recreading]

Naturalnews.com is misleading to further their anti-vaccine agenda

Posted by on October 17, 2009 3 comments

Someone recently pointed me to an article on Naturalnews.com.  It’s idiocy blew my mind.

I probably shouldn’t even dignify it with a rebuttal, but I can’t help myself.

#1) Where are the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies proving flu vaccines are both safe and effective?
Answer: There aren’t any.

The CDC would like to disagree.  Even if there weren’t such studies, we have to make decisions based upon the best available evidence and every study that has been done points to the flu vaccine being effective and safe.

#2) Where, then, is the so-called “science” backing the idea that flu vaccines work at all?
Answer: Other than “cohort studies,” there isn’t any. And the cohort studies have been thoroughly debunked. Scientifically speaking, there isn’t a scrap of honest evidence showing flu vaccines work at all.

See the previous question.  Studies of flu vaccine effectiveness have not been “thoroughly debunked”.  If this was so how come the scientific consensus still supports the use of the flu vaccine?

#3) How can methyl mercury (Thimerosal, a preservative used in flu vaccines) be safe for injecting into the human body when mercury is an extremely toxic heavy metal?
Answer: It isn’t safe at all. Methyl mercury is a poison. Along with vaccine adjuvants, it explains why so many people suffer autism or other debilitating neurological side effects after being vaccinated.

Point number one, thimerosal is ethyl mercury, not methyl mercury which is a critical difference as ethyl mercury doesn’t accumulate in the body like methyl mercury.  Regardless of that, almost all evidence points to no ill effects from thimerosal in vaccines.

As Wikipedia says:

Most conclusively, eight major studies (as of 2008) examined the effect of reductions or removal of thiomersal from vaccines. All eight demonstrated that autism rates failed to decline despite removal of thiomersal, arguing strongly against a causative role.

On to their next point…

#4) Why do reports keep surfacing of children and teens suffering debilitating neurological disorders, brain swelling, seizures and even death following flu vaccines or HPV vaccines?
Answer: Because vaccines are dangerous. The vaccine industry routinely dismisses all such accounts — no matter how many are reported — as “coincidence.”

I don’t even understand how this is an actual argument.

Correlation is not the same thing as causation.  I’m sure hundreds of people have got in car accidents after getting a flu vaccine as well.  Is that the flu vaccine’s fault?

#5) Why don’t doctors recommend vitamin D for flu protection, especially when vitamin D activates the immune response far better than a vaccine? (http://www.naturalnews.com/027231_V…)
Answer: Because vitamin D can’t be patented and sold as “medicine.” You can make it yourself. If you want more vitamin D, you don’t even need a doctor, and doctors tend not to recommend things that put them out of business

Oh gosh, a conspiracy theory.  Why didn’t I see that coming?  It’s not an either/or situation.  Vitamin D does strengthen the immune system.  However, a strong immune system doesn’t keep you from getting the flu.

I’ll finish up with my rebuttal in my next post.

Why Windows Home Server is awesome…

Posted by on October 16, 2009 No comments

I forget I even have it.

I don’t think there can be any better recommendation for a backup solution.  My computers are all backed up daily, and I don’t even know it happens.

On top of that, there’s so much more that can be done with WHS.  A list of some things I use my WHS for:

  • Storage. I keep smallish hard drives in my PC’s (most of them are around whs_places250GB) and then put big honkin hard drives in my WHS.  Each of the indicated places in the screen shot on the right (take from Explorer in Windows 7) points to storage on my server.
  • Reliability.  You can selectively enable folders on the WHS to be “duplicated”.  What this means is that every file in that folder is stored two times…on seperate hard drives.  This is done transparently to the end user so you don’t have to worry about knowing which copy is the newest.  The benefit is that if a hard drive dies (it will), your important data is not lost.
  • Reliability, Part Deux. In addition to the safety of data stored on the server, the safety of each of my computers is important as well.  If your hard drive in one of your PCs dies, or you royally screw up your system messing around, or some sort of malware just totally infests you, WHS makes it easy to restore your system.  You just pop in the restore cd and reboot your computer.  As long as your BIOS is set to boot from CD (if not, it’s an easy thing to turn on), the restore cd will take over and let you pick a backup from your WHS to restore.  By default, WHS keeps one backup for each of the previous 3 days, one for each of the previous 3 weeks, and one for each of the previous 3 months.  I set it to keep a just-fresh-from-a-new-OS-install backup so it’s easy to go back to that point.
  • Development. I do a bit of hobbyist programming.  Because many of the things I write depend upon a MySQL database, I installed MySQL on my WHS.  This allows me to test my scripts on my local LAN.

We don’t understand ourselves, or, how psychologists see themselves

Posted by on October 6, 2009 No comments

As Tyler Cowen points out this is quite an interesting time waster:

The email edition of the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest has reached the milestone of its 150th issue. That’s over 900 quality, peer-reviewed psychology journal articles digested since 2003. To mark the occasion, the Digest editor has invited some of the world’s leading psychologists to look inwards and share, in 150 words, one nagging thing they still don’t understand about themselves. Their responses are by turns candid, witty and thought-provoking. Here’s what they had to say…

Here’s one of the answers submitted by Chris McManus, Professor of Psychology and Medical Education at UCL:

Chris McManus: Beauty

What is this thing I call beauty? Not “art” as a social phenomenon based on status or display, or beautiful faces seen merely as biological fitness markers. Rather, the sheer, drawing-in-of-breath beauty of a Handel aria, a Rothko painting, TS Eliot’s poems, or those everyday moments of sun shining through wet, autumn leaves, or even a Powerpoint layout seeming just right. Content itself doesn’t matter – Cezanne’s paintings of apples are not beautiful because one likes apples, and there are beautiful photographs of horrible things. Somewhere there must be something formal, structural, compositional, involving the arrangement of light and shade, of sounds, of words best ordered to say old ideas in new ways. When I see beauty I know it, and others must also see it, or they wouldn’t make the paintings I like or have them hung in galleries. But why then doesn’t everyone see it in the same way?

Get more answers here.

MySQL and Python 2.6 on Windows, Redux

Posted by on September 18, 2009 8 comments

As I noted before, getting a version of MySQLdb that works for Python 2.6 on Windows is an exercise in frustration.  Until now.

An anonymous commenter on the previous post pointed to a web page with instructions for compiling MySQLdb with Visual Studio.  This was quite the salvation to me as I have no experience with Visual Studio or really any sort of compiling on Windows at all.

The only thing lacking in those instructions is the bit about “vsvars32.bat”.  It says:

make sure “vsvars32.bat” exists in “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\Tools”

That’s the last mention of that file.  The problem is that you have to actually run that batch file prior to compiling.

The only other adjustments I had to make were to account for the fact that I’m using Visual Studio 2008 which has a different path than Visual Studio 2005.

All that resulted in my own Windows installer for MySQLdb for Python 2.6.  This was compiled on Windows 7 64-bit, I’m not sure how it’ll work on other operating systems, but if it doesn’t work for you make a comment and I’ll see if I can compile a version for your environment.

Download it here.

Hubble Deep Field 3D. Quite breathtaking.

Posted by on August 12, 2009 No comments

A fascinating visualization of the famous Hubble Deep Field image. By taking the redshift of all the galaxies seen in the image, it’s possible to reconstruct how far they are from Earth. This information allows a computer to construct a 3D model. It’s quite breathtaking. Be sure you watch the HD version.  Again, here it is on Youtube.

Details from the HDF illustrate the wide varie...

Image via Wikipedia

The base rate fallacy

Posted by on July 27, 2009 No comments

Amongst my favorite fallacies lies the base rate fallacy.

Here’s a great introduction to this fallacy on the BBC’s website.

Imagine you’ve invented a machine to detect terrorists. It’s good, about 90% accurate. You sit back with pride and think of the terrorists trembling.

…

You’re in the Houses of Parliament demonstrating the device to MPs when you receive urgent information from MI5 that a potential attacker is in the building. Security teams seal every exit and all 3,000 people inside are rounded up to be tested.

The first 30 pass. Then, dramatically, a man in a mac fails. Police pounce, guns point.

How sure are you that this person is a terrorist?
A. 90%
B. 10%
C. 0.3%

What is your brain lying to you about?

Posted by on July 15, 2009 No comments

There are ways for your brain to lie to you, which pretty much guarantee you’ll never know it. Even if someone points out the exact way in which you’re being lied to, you probably won’t accept it. Even if a being that is proven to be smarter and more right than any human being who has ever lived tells you, the chances are good you won’t believe it.

As Yudkowsky says:

I find it disturbing that the brain has such a simple macro for absolute denial that it can be invoked as a side effect of paralysis. That a single whack on the brain can both disable a left-side motor function, and disable our ability to recognize or accept the disability. Other forms of brain damage also seem to both cause insanity and disallow recognition of that insanity – for example, when people insist that their friends have been replaced by exact duplicates after damage to face-recognizing areas.

The very idea is frightening.

These videos will make you smarter

Posted by on July 9, 2009 No comments

Check out SixtySymbols. A collection of videos from smart people who explain the purpose and ideas behind different scientific symbols. Very interesting!

A random sample:

Contrary actions to the Twelve Virtues – Curiosity

Posted by on June 23, 2009 No comments

Yudkowsky writes of the first virtue:

The first virtue is curiosity. A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth. To feel the burning itch of curiosity requires both that you be ignorant, and that you desire to relinquish your ignorance. If in your heart you believe you already know, or if in your heart you do not wish to know, then your questioning will be purposeless and your skills without direction. Curiosity seeks to annihilate itself; there is no curiosity that does not want an answer. The glory of glorious mystery is to be solved, after which it ceases to be mystery. Be wary of those who speak of being open-minded and modestly confess their ignorance. There is a time to confess your ignorance and a time to relinquish your ignorance.

It’s easy to pay homage to the virtue of the curious, without actually being curious yourself.  What don’t you know that you want to know?  Or…more importantly…what don’t you know that you should want to know?

Do you dump your retirement savings into instruments you don’t understand?  Do you accept at face value what the salesman tells you about the TV you’re looking at?  Do you seek The Answer, and then stop at the first reasonable explanation you come upon?