A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.

Tag Archives: news

Dec 13 2011
Mark Twain, probably

How a collapsing scientific hypothesis led to a lawsuit and arrest

How a collapsing scientific hypothesis led to a lawsuit and arrest

John Timmer for Ars Technica:

In 2006, scientists announced a provocative finding: a retrovirus called XMRV, closely related to a known virus from mice, was associated with cases of prostate cancer. But other labs, using different sets of patients, found no evidence of a viral infection. Before the controversy could be sorted out, another research group published a 2009 paper containing an even more intriguing claim. XMRV, it said, was associated with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), a disorder that some had claimed was purely psychosomatic.

Reaction came quickly. The CFS community, viewing a viral cause as a validation of their malady, embraced the finding. One author of the XMRV/CFS paper, Judy Mikovits, landed a position as research director of a private foundation dedicated to CFS. A company associated with the foundation started offering tests for infections.

Then the story took a strange turn. A long chain of events led not only to the collapse of the XMRV hypothesis, but it landed Mikovits in jail—and brought death threats upon some of the researchers who debunked her ideas.

What follows is a long and fascinating story that shows (1) yes, scientists can falsify data and otherwise act unethically, and (2) despite this, the scientific system still works.

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Dec 10 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Vatican University Hosts Unusual Tattoo Conference

Vatican University Hosts Unusual Tattoo Conference

The AP:

Tattooed mummies in ancient Egypt, Crusaders who branded their foreheads with crosses, and New Zealand’s inked Maori warriors were fodder for an unusual conference at a Vatican university Tuesday on the role of tattoos in shaping identity.

“Into the Skin: identity, symbols and history of permanent body marks” was the brainchild of a Christian arts association and Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See, an unlikely expert in the field given Judaism’s prohibition of tattooing and the painful role that tattooed serial numbers played in the Holocaust.

No commentary, this is just neat. The rest of the article is actually pretty informative.

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Dec 08 2011
Mark Twain, probably

‘Mythbusters’ cannonball hits Dublin, CA home, minivan

‘Mythbusters’ cannonball hits Dublin, CA home, minivan

Demian Bulwa & Henry K. Lee for the San Francisco Chronicle:

One of the zany experiments staged by the “Mythbusters” television show nearly turned into a suburban tragedy Tuesday afternoon in Dublin when the crew fired a homemade cannon toward huge containers of water at the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department bomb disposal range.

The cantaloupe-sized cannonball missed the water, tore through a cinder-block wall, skipped off a hillside and flew some 700 yards east, right into the Tassajara Creek neighborhood, where children were returning home from school at 4:15 p.m., authorities said.

There, the 6-inch projectile bounced in front of a home on quiet Cassata Place, ripped through the front door, raced up the stairs and blasted through a bedroom, where a man, woman and child slept through it all – only awakening because of plaster dust.

And it did more damage after that. Unbelievably, no one was hurt.

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Dec 07 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Town of liquor foe Carry Nation OKs Sunday sales

Town of liquor foe Carry Nation OKs Sunday sales

Maria Sudekum Fisher, AP:

Turn-of-the-century teetotaler Carry A. Nation began her campaign against drinking by busting up saloons in Kansas, which to this day has some of the strictest liquor laws in the country. But even in the town where her legacy is enshrined, the influence of the hatchet-wielding crusader is waning.

Residents in Medicine Lodge, where Nation lived for about a decade in the late 1800s and early 1900s and the site of the Carry Nation Home Museum, approved a measure this week to allow Sunday liquor sales for the first time at least since Prohibition.

The vote, which the county certified Friday, allows the sale of beer and liquor on all Sundays except Easter. In November 2010, voters in Barber County, where Medicine Lodge is located, also voted to legalize liquor by the drink in bars and restaurants.

Wikipedia has a good rundown on Kansas’s alcohol laws, which are pretty strict as far as the procurement of booze in the U.S. goes.

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Dec 02 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Sirhan lawyers: Bullet was switched and he was hypnotized before Robert Kennedy assassination

Sirhan lawyers: Bullet was switched and he was hypnotized before Robert Kennedy assassination

The AP:

Lawyers representing convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan argue in newly filed court documents that a bullet was switched in evidence at his trial and new forensic details show he is innocent of the 1968 killing of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

In the latest of many appeals filed on behalf of Sirhan, the attorneys are seeking to overturn his conviction. They repeated a previous assertion and presented reports from experts who said Sirhan was programmed through hypnosis to fire shots as a diversion for the real killer.

I love the defense here.

“The prosecution tampered with evidence.

“Also a wizard made me do it.”

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Nov 26 2011
Mark Twain, probably

At DC DMV: Driver’s license, tag renewal, HIV test

At DC DMV: Driver’s license, tag renewal, HIV test

Jessica Gresko, AP:

At one Department of Motor Vehicles’ office in the nation’s capital, motorists can get a driver’s license, temporary tags and something wholly unrelated to the road: a free HIV test.

In a city with one of the highest percentages of residents living with HIV or AIDS, health officials have spent the last year test-driving the HIV screening program. Since the program began last October, more than 5,000 people have been tested at the DMV site and gotten results while they waited.

…

The testing project isn’t run by the DMV but by a nonprofit group, Family and Medical Counseling Service Inc., which uses an office inside the site. To ensure confidentiality, residents get tested and receive results in the private office, out of earshot of those going about their usual DMV business. The nonprofit got a $250,000 grant to do the testing and secured the support of the city’s Health Department and the DMV. Now a second, similar grant is funding expansion.

This is a super cool idea.

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Nov 25 2011
Mark Twain, probably

FBI arrests 7 in Amish haircut attacks in Ohio

FBI arrests 7 in Amish haircut attacks in Ohio

AP report:

The leader of a breakaway Amish group allowed the beatings of those who disobeyed him, made some members sleep in a chicken coop and had sexual relations with married women to “cleanse them,” federal authorities said Wednesday as they charged him and six others with hate crimes in hair-cutting attacks against other Amish.

…

Several members of the group carried out the attacks in September, October and November by forcibly cutting the beards and hair of Amish men and women and then taking photos of them, authorities said.

Cutting the hair is a highly offensive act to the Amish, who believe the Bible instructs women to let their hair grow long and men to grow beards and stop shaving once they marry. One victim told the FBI he would rather have been “beaten black and blue than to suffer the disfigurement and humiliation of having his hair removed,” according to court papers.

The whole story is actually kind of terrifying.

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Nov 24 2011
Mark Twain, probably

South Korean MP lets off teargas in parliament

South Korean MP lets off teargas in parliament

How not to spend your Thanksgiving, by Haroon Siddique for The Guardian:

An opposition MP set off a teargas canister in the South Korean parliament in a failed attempt to prevent the ruling party passing a free trade deal with the US.

…

Members of the ruling Grand National party were greeted with shouts and screams as they occupied the national assembly’s main hall to railroad the deal. Opposition MPs tried to physically block them, leading to scuffles and Democratic party’s Kim Sun-dong set off teargas.

He shouted: “Let me go, bastards. No FTA”, as he was been taken out of the chamber by security guards.

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Nov 17 2011
Mark Twain, probably

A Chinese Peace Prize Names This Year’s Winner. Ummm, Vladimir Putin?

A Chinese Peace Prize Names This Year’s Winner. Ummm, Vladimir Putin?

Hanna Beech for Time’s Global Spin blog:

In September, an obscure Chinese cultural organization revealed the finalists for the second annual Confucius Peace Prize, an award that suddenly popped out of nowhere last year after imprisoned Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. The first Confucius Peace Prize, which was ridiculed as a clumsy attempt to divert attention from the fact that the world’s most famous peace prize had just gone to a jailed Chinese dissident, went to Lien Chan, a veteran Taiwan politician. Taiwan’s former Vice President didn’t even know he had won, and in a very curious ceremony a couple days later, a confused-looking little girl picked up the award in his stead.

And the story gets even more bizarre from that point.

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Nov 14 2011
Mark Twain, probably

ATLAS SHRUGGED Inadvertently Releases Collector’s Item

ATLAS SHRUGGED Inadvertently Releases Collector’s Item

Press release from the folks behind the Atlas Shrugged film adaptation:

Atlas Productions LLC announced today its plan to replace more than 100,000 title sheets appearing on the Atlas Shrugged Part 1 DVD and Blu-ray versions sold through major retail outlets. These retail versions were packaged with an inaccurate synopsis of Atlas Shrugged. Not affected were the “Special Edition” versions sold online at AtlasShruggedMovie.com.

The 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, is known in philosophical and political circles for presenting a cogent argument advocating a society driven by rational self-interest. On the back of the film’s retail DVD and Blu-ray however, the movie’s synopsis contradictorily states “AYN RAND’s timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice comes to life…”

Whoops!

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