The Good

1. Font conference - This is just kinda good geeky font-loving fun.
2. Popular boat names - Many boat names are imaginative. These are not.
3. Art to last 10,000 years - How do you make art that will last for a hundred centuries? it's not easy.
4. 1960s ad for rice - Mmmmm ... rice.
5. Seven Facts About Our Internal Body Clock | Newsweek... - Good to know.
6. Free Realms: Free Realms - The Best MMO At E3? - Keeping my eyes on this one for Kitten.
7. Radley Balko: A Few Questions for Barack Obama - As much as I am an Obama supporter, I think these questions are perfectly legit.
8. Obama on Firewalling Time to Think - On the other hand ... fatigue means mistakes, great and small. We can't afford that with a president.
9. Freakazoid on DVD -- yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes! - Yes!
10. A Safer Gmail With Https - Seriously considering this.
11. …because the apocalypse doesn’t have to be lonely. - Hearts! Brains!
12. PRELUDIUM: All I want for Christmas is two tablets... - I would so accept these as a gift.
13. The Sarah Jane Adventures DVD news: Announcement for... - I enjoyed the ones of these I watched, and I think Katherine would enjoy them, too. DVD set sounds like a fine idea.

The Bad

1. Respectful Insolence: Oh no! My cell phone's going... ... to kill you? No, really ... it's not.
2. The Hoax Photo Database - Always useful to know.
3. A Tale of Two Press Biases - This actually makes sense. Yes, the McCain camp is correct that Obama gets a lot more press coverage. Yes, the Obama camp is correct that McCain gets pass after pass on his gaffes and inconsistencies.
4. Fox TV news anchors enjoy plastic coffee - To go with their content-free news.

The Ugly

1. Elderly woman prohibited from photographing empty... - I feel safer knowing that elderly women photographing empty playgrounds are being forbidden from doing so because they may actually be pedophiles. Yup!
2. Don't Ask, Don't Tell - Of all the stupid policies whose time has come and gone ...
3. Brides demand breast-surgery for their bridesmaids - Mercifully, most bridesmaids are rejecting this particular insanity.
4. MPAA wants to randomly break your home theater depending... - Because I want Paramount and Sony deciding which pieces of my home theater should be able to interact with their content. Right.
5. Why is the TSA taking out nipple rings and pantsing... - Why? Because they can.
6. Report: Former Justice Department officials broke... and Report confirms politicization of the Justice Department. - It's not so much that there was at least some political bias in the selection of federal prosecutors and immigration judges. I mean, that sort of thing just tends to happen. My objection is that it was so shameless and blatant and stupid, with no pretense as to trying to do the right thing. 
7. John McCain tries very hard not to answer question... and McCain Caves To Right Wing On Gay Adoption, Says Orphans... - It's unclear in this coverage whether McCain is trying to maneuver away from an impolitic answer, is trying to pander to too many constituencies, or is just too confused about his own stand on the subject to be coherent. None of these is a good thing.

Filed under :: Big Business :: Elections 2008 :: Food & Drink :: Fourth Estate :: Gaming :: Gay Stuff :: Health - Science :: Homeland Security :: Love and Marriage :: Media - Art :: Media - Movies :: Media - TV :: Media - TV - Doctor Who :: Media Moguls :: My Computer :: My Mobile / PDA :: Politics & Law :: Potpourri :: Writing and Language
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When I was in high school, I had an expository speech I did at speech contests about the superiority of left-handers (ahem). It was more than a bit tongue-in-cheek, mind you, but it was fun and went over pretty well.

Amanda forwarded me this NPR article from this morning: In Sports, Southpaws Needn't Feel Left Out : NPR 

You see, while lefties moan that the world at large discriminates against them — even though in modern times we usually find ourselves ruled by them, i.e. southpaw Presidents Truman, Ford, Reagan, Bush the elder and Clinton (and yes, two guys named McCain and Obama) — our sinister brethren have all the advantages in sports whenever they directly face right-handers.

Now an engineering professor named David Peters has come up with some basic statistics, which show what we righties always knew anyway, that baseball in particular is a gauche paradise. And that ain't no left-handed compliment.

In particular, in person-on-person sports, left-handers tend to do statistically better.

Whereas only about 10 percent of the whole human population is lefty, Peters revealed that about 25 percent of major leaguers are the minority-handed sort of people. More significant, in the Hall of Fame, of the 70 pitchers, 15 were southpaw — more than twice the Homo sapiens average. And hitters: of the 138 in Cooperstown, 59 were lefty, and eight more half-lefty switch-hitters. That means that an incredible 46 percent of the best hitters ever swung at those appetizing right-handed slants.

This is not, in fact, a demonstration of left-handed superiority, though it pains me to say so. It's simply a matter of familiarity. If most major league players, for example, do things right-handedly -- which impacts pitching, batting, etc. -- that's how most major league players are going to get used to playing against. The lefties do it a bit different, and therefore are less easy to deal with and so are more successful. Ditto for the examples given in basketball, tennis, boxing, etc.

When you look at golf, it's the reverse.

The best proof that lefties have an advantage in man-to-man competition comes, conversely, from golf, where you're not playing your opponent, only that neutral little ball. In the whole history of the PGA, left-handers have won only 37 tournaments, and Phil Mickelson has personally accounted for more than half of them. Mickelson might have won even more if he didn't make so many ditzy decisions.

That's because (a) as noted, the competition is against the ball, not the player (though if lefties and righties have different hitting characteristics, one might expect a small advantage to lefties in course design). More importantly, (b) golf equipment is almost exclusively right-handed. A left-hander is 99% likely to learn to golf right-handedly, which puts them at something of a disadvantage. (That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.)

Hmmmm ... maybe there's a class action law suit in there somewhere ...

UPDATE: An article from last month on why lefties may be more successful than average at the presidential game.

Filed under :: Health - Science :: Media - Sports :: Politics & Law
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This and that, while it still hovers ovr 80 ...

1. PvPonline » Archive » Interlude: The Adventures of... - I have a love-hate relationship with the whole LOLmeme stuff ... but I found this pretty funny.
2. ACLU, others greet Bush FISA bill signing with new... - Enough to make me consider becoming a card-carrying member.
3. 4th Edition Core Rules PDFs - Spiffy D&D downloads. And the order name and number watermark is actually a clever idea to discourage piracy while still not interfering with use of the product. DRM that actually kinda works.
4. Why Most Sunscreens Don't Work | Newsweek To Your... - Great. Sun screen culture viz kids has changed dramatically since I grew up, and slathering the young-un with SPF 30 is SOP at home and at school. A pity, it seems, that's only blocking sunburn, not skin cancer ...
5. Fact or Fiction: Why Some People Are Mosquito Magnets... - Body chemistry, body heat, pregnancy ... all sorts of factors. I tend to be only moderately tasty -- but both Margie and Katherine are deeply concerned that the poor little skeeters of North Woods Wisconsin will go hungry now that they've returned home ...
6. Decades later, still asking: Would I pull that switch?... - I wish I felt confident about the answer for myself.

Filed under :: Gaming :: Health :: Health - Science :: Homeland Security :: Media - Comics :: Science
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Study: Keeping a diary of what you eat can reduce weight 

A major study has found that dieters who kept a food diary about what they ate lost twice as much weight as dieters who didn’t keep a log.

Kaiser Permanente monitored 1,700 people and put them on a low-fat diet rich in fruits and vegetables aimed at lowering hypertension and improving overall health. While the participants lost an average of 13 pounds during the six-month regimen, those who kept a diary lost an average of 18 pounds, and those who did not lost nine.

“It seems that the simple act of writing down what you eat encourages people to consume fewer calories,” lead author Jack Hollis, a Kaiser-Permanente researcher said.

The Geek Diet is/was my using BalanceLog software on my PC and PDA to track calories, logging everything I ate. And, yes, it actually worked. Not only did it give me a goal, but the need to recognize that I was eating (by writing down what I was nibbling on) gave me the awareness necessary to actually decide whether I wanted to be adding those calories or not.

It's good to see that there's some scientific backing of what's going on with me there.

Now ... I just need to get back to doing myself ...

Filed under :: Health - Science :: Weight
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I'm not nearly caught up with my blog reading from vacation and so forth, but this is about as good a pass as I can make with stuff snagged for the Google sidebar.

1. Fiscal responsibility - A nice little graph addressing the GOP's reputation for fiscal responsibility. Remember that this year.
2. Repeal the Second Amendment? - I don't know that I agree with everything that DOF writes here about gun control and the Second Amendment, but there's a hell of a lot here that I do agree with, and pretty much all of it deserves some attention.
3. After Impeaching Clinton, McCain Now Dismisses Idea... - Because, of course, impeachment is only a silly, distracting, in appropriate idea when it's not about a Democratic president who lied about boffing an intern.
4. Rove Rips NYT For Outing CIA Agent’s Identity And... - Pot. Kettle. Black. Chutzpah.
5. GI Bill Opponent President Bush Lauds GI Bill Opponent... - Bush and McCain both opposed -- in hyperbolic rhetoric -- the new GI Bill benefits in the defense spending bill. But once it was passed, Bush was pleased to share credit for it with his appointed successor.
6. More Stupid Voters - We must get Barrack Obama elected, if only to demonstrated that this yahoo is not, in fact, the face and voice of the American electorate.
7. FOX News Gets Ugly - I don't expect actually expect unbiased or non-ideological news and commentary from Fox News. But actual, verifiable, blatant altering of photographs as part of character assassination pieces? Wow, that's taking sleaze to a whole new level.
8. London Mayoral vote can't be verified due to e-voting... - Paper ballots have problems. E-ballots have problems. The problems with e-ballots could likely be largely solved ... except that it would cost the e-voting industry money, and cost their supporters in government credibility. So, instead, we get debacles like this. Expect more grand stuff like this as we head into the 2008 elections.
9. Court order on YouTube user data fans privacy fears... - I don't actually want Viacom -- or anyone else -- knowing what YouTube videos I've watched. Nor do I trust that they will only use the information for limited purposes. Yeesh.
10. Less Hyphen, More Burst for Walmart - Wal-Mart ... er, Walmart is changing it's logo (and its hyphenation). Now, are they offering immunization coverage for the children of their employees yet?
11. Wall-E is a copyright criminal - An analysis of how WALL-E breaks Canada's proposed DMCA-like copyright law left right and center ... doing things that nobody at the movie probably recognized as Evil Piracy of Precioussssss Intellectual Property Rights.
12. History Locked Up... Thanks To Copyright - This is what's called a "Chilling Effect." Not sure who holds the copyright on 100-plus-year-old photos? Well, you don't dare use them in any sort of history exhibit or book, for fear of getting your ass sued off. Yeah, that's really serving the public interest.
13. David Tennant is made of awesome - Yes. Yes he is. There's a lengthy scene in an episode of Doctor Who last season where her records a long message for Martha. During the episode, the volume is turned down, and we don't get to hear what he's saying. Now we know ...
14. Meet the Bread Man from Down Under - Another unfortunate logo change, but these things always have interesting stories. I'm a Panera man, myself.
15. Frontier going under the knife - The Denver Post - I was really hoping that Frontier would be who we could turn to as United continued its steady slide into Delta, American, Continental, and Aeroflot ... but a combo of skyrocketing jet fuel prices and competitive pressure from Southwest may spell an end to all that. And that's a damned shame.
16. I must be getting old. I still don’t understand what... - I'll confess that the whole big distinction in purpose and motivation between Facebook and MySpace and Twitter and ... just plain o' blogging ... too often escapes me. I'm sure some of it is my just being an ol' fogey -- and part of it is Big Promotion.
17. If you live in Texas and ask me to fix your computer,... - Hey, could I convince my family to move to Texas so that it would be illegal for me to help them with their computer problems? Nah, even that wouldn't justify such a fate for them.
18. Because some folks were at KOA... - Heh. Yeah, we got at least one of these "kitties" visiting us while we were away. To judge from the report of chewed-up crayons, and the upended cat food tub in the kitchen when I walked in ...
19. Tofu 'may raise risk of dementia' - See! Tomatoes and tofu are both evil! Evil!
20. Scientists: Watermelon yields Viagra-like effects - The bad news is, I really don't like watermelon. The good news is, I really don't need to rely upon it for, um, it's side effects.
21. Elite transportation - DOF writes at length on what to look for if you're buying a bicycle for actual bicycling use.
22. Hellboy on “Inside the Actor’s Studio.” - 'Nuff said.
23. Dave Hill, inventor of the world's greatest two-man... - Um ... not this Dave Hill, I'm afraid.
24. Itchy grossness - Yes, yes it is.
25. Spirit World: Father Damien cleared for sainthood... - I don't usually report on canonization efforts in the Catholic Church, except to note the unseemly hastiness of the canonization efforts for Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa. However, Father Damien has been dead for quite some time, he was a true martyr to his efforts to bring comfort to the lepers of Molokai, he's consider the "patron" of AIDS patients ... and I attended Damien High School for a year and a half, so he's of particular interest to me.
26. Religion and Its Role Are in Dispute at the Service... - The military academies of the United States are meant to train the best and brightest to lead the defense of this nation, and all of its people. That really has nothing to do with proselytizing conservative Christianity, and to do so is not only an insult to the citizenry who aren't of that particular persuasion, but a distraction from the mission, which, from a military aspect, is a bad thing.
27. one for the “now I feel safer” drawer - Thank goodness folks won't be allowed onto airplanes with guns. Or, gun-shaped jewelry.
28. Nelson Mandela finally taken off US terror list - Well, I, for one, will sleep much safer tonight knowing that Nelson Mandela is no longer a terrorist threat to myself or my family.

Filed under :: Big Business :: Blogging :: Elections 2008 :: Food & Drink :: Fourth Estate :: Health - Science :: Hi-Tech :: Homeland Security :: Media - Movies :: Media - TV - Doctor Who :: Media Moguls :: Pets :: Politics & Law :: Potpourri :: Religion :: Travel
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A few more items from the sidebar.

• Don't make me...hungry
  I definitely need to add "go to movies" to my post-vacation plans.
• We Have No Nuclear Terror Czar
  Because, of course, why should the President pay any attention to all those irksome laws from Congress that tell him what he should be doing regarding homeland security.
• Bank Of America: Bank Of America Treats Parking Meter...
  BofA claims now that using a credit card for parking meters -- or other "governmental or quasi-governmental agencies" is -- surprise! -- a cash advance, subject to an additional fee. I'm not sure if this is push-back from local governments (who otherwise would have to pay credit card transaction fees), but it's evidently coming as a surprise to all of BofA's customers who didn't get any notification of same.
• Comic Con = Cheapskates?
  I don't understand this article, given that during the Con every hotel room in San Diego seems to be occupied and the Gaslamp District is SRO at restaurants. Granted, most of the disposable souvenir spending is taking place at the Con itself, but ...
• GOOD Magazine | Goodmagazine - GOOD Guide: to the...
  The truth (yeah, right!) behind all those organizations that secretly rule the world.
• Human ovulation captured on video - being-human -...
  A fascinating mix of the wonderful and the prosaic. It looks so ordinary for something so amazing.
• US seizes Danish dress-shop's payment to Pakistan...
  I feel safer already!
• Bounty offered to anyone who can prove homeopathy...
  While homeopathy is one of the more harmless quack medical practices out there, it's anti-scientifically maddening. Let's see if anyone dares take them up on this.

Filed under :: Health - Science :: Homeland Security :: Media - Comics :: Media - Movies :: Politics & Law :: Potpourri :: Travel
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As Randy puts it, "Yikes."

Boy Dies Of Dry Drowning After Leaving Pool And Walking Home 

Johnny Jackson, a 10-year-old American boy from South Carolina, died at home on Sunday from "dry drowning" more than an hour after going swimming and walking home with his mother. The sad event highlights a little known danger that parents and child carers should be aware of, that drowning can kill hours after being submersed in water.

Not sure that the symptoms given are all that helpful:

Dr Daniel Rauch, pediatrician at New York University Langone Medical Center, who spoke to Meredith Vieira on the TODAY show, said there are three important signs that parents and carers should look out for: difficulty breathing, extreme tiredness, and changes in behaviour. All three symptoms result from the brain not getting enough oxygen because of water in the lungs.

I can imagine either a vigorous day at the beach or swimming pool would provoke both extreme tiredness and "changes in behavior." And since a certain percentage of these cases take place after time in the bathtub (!), if the kid goes to sleep immediately thereafter, there's no opportunity to observe anything of the sort.

In other words, it's possibly something worth bearing in mind, but -- Thrilling! Headlines! aside -- not something to spend a huge amoutn of time worrying about.

Filed under :: Health - Science :: Parenting
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Microfiber cloths clean things beautifully through mechanical action, without unleashing toxic fumes, polluting the water supply, or accelerating the evolution of resistant germs and bacteria. So why aren't they as popular in the US as they are in Europe?

We've been trained to look for bubbles, fumes, and guarantees of death to all bacteria.

Several lines of questioning, repeated over the course of two months, via approximately 100 phone calls and countless emails, uncovered several facts. First, large makers of household chemicals are very, very hard to reach and are unwilling to reveal their ingredients for fear of piracy. Second, they're hell-bent on convincing customers to disinfect their premises using the strongest chemicals possible to annihilate bacteria and viruses, evidenced not just by the kind of products they sell and the scare tactics by which they're marketed, but also by the corporate refrain I heard over and over: Okay, maybe microfiber can remove germs, but it does not kill them.

(To disinfect or sanitize, technically one must kill 99.999 percent of microorganisms in 30 seconds.)

Never mind that removing germs is likely to be enough for the average homeowner, assuming he or she takes the time to wash the microfiber cloth properly afterward. Never mind that new university research finds that "safe" household chemicals are proving unhealthy now that so many of them are building up and mixing together inside our hyper-sealed homes, then draining outdoors. Never mind that more scientists are predicting the rise of superbugs as over-disinfecting threatens to create invincible strains of bacteria and viruses.

Yeah, save a little elbow grease and KILL GERMS ON CONTACT! That's the American Way!

Filed under :: Big Business :: Health - Science
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It turns out the Popline kerfuffle was, in fact, an excellent example of the "chilling effect." That's what happens when a subject becomes forbidden by those in power to talk about -- all of a sudden, people restrain themselves even further than necessary just so that they don't accidentally cross the line of rhetorical doom. So, for example, if your dad sends you to your room if you talk about Uncle Fred's drinking, then maybe you avoid talking about drinking, Christmas dinner, or Uncle Fred altogether. Or if it's illegal to assert that someone isn't a good employee because they are a woman, you refrain from criticizing any women employees even if a particular one's actions are grossly incompetent, just so that you avoid any chance of the accusation.

In the case of Popline -- an academic reproductive health database that decided to ban the word "abortion" from its search terms -- it turns out that it wasn't on order from the Administration (Popline is funded via USAID, which is forbidden by executive order from anything that smacks of advocacy of abortions), but the database administrators being overly sensitive to the whole affair. 

Apparently, someone at USAID inquired about two articles in the database that actually seemed to be advocacy pieces in favor of abortion. The administrators not only removed the two documents from the database, but, just to play it safe, deleted the search term as well.

Publicity about the case brought it to the attention of the Dean of the John sHopkins School of Public Health, which runs the database. He's weighed in that the "solution" was improper.

USAID, which funds POPLINE, found two items in the database related to abortion that did not fit POPLINE criteria. The agency then made an inquiry to POPLINE administrators. Following this inquiry, the POPLINE administrators at the Center for Communication Programs made the decision to restrict abortion as a search term.

I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the POPLINE administrators restore "abortion" as a search term immediately. I will also launch an inquiry to determine why this change occurred.

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not its restriction.

And bravo for that. 

Still, it's telling that (a) USAID is busy ferreting out items that "don't fit POPLINE criteria" (since I suspect strongly that the "inquiry" was based on the ideological dictates of the Administration), and (b) the administrators of Popline were so concerned over their funding that they took this improper action, doubtless just to be "on the safe side."

USAID is unapologetic.

Sandra Jordan, director of communications in USAID's office of population and reproductive health, could not identify the documents that prompted her office's complaint, but said the publications were one-sided in favor of abortion rights.

"We are part of the Bush administration, so we have to make sure that all parts of the story are told," says Jordan. "The administration's policy is definitely anti-abortion, and the administration does not see abortion as a part of family planning policy."

Jordan says that the Johns Hopkins database administrators blocked the word "abortion" on their own, and had misunderstood USAID's request.

That's the chilling effect. And that's why making X illegal often has a greater consequence than its supporters (openly at least) will argue.

Filed under :: Health - Science :: Politics & Law :: ZT & PC
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Hey, don't the Chinese do this kind of thing related to "Tibet" and "Tiananmen Square"?

U.S. Funded Health Search Engine Blocks 'Abortion' | Threat Level from Wired.com 

A U.S. government-funded medical information site that bills itself as the world's largest database on reproductive health has quietly begun to block searches on the word "abortion," concealing nearly 25,000 search results.

Called Popline, the search site is run by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland. It's funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, the federal office in charge of providing foreign aid, including health care funding, to developing nations.

The massive database indexes a broad range of reproductive health literature, including titles like "Previous abortion and the risk of low birth weight and preterm births," and "Abortion in the United States: Incidence and access to services, 2005."

But on Thursday, a search on "abortion" was producing only the message "No records found by latest query."

The database manager says it's because of federal funding. USAID is forbidden, by executive order, from funding NGOs that perform abortions or "actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations."

"We recently made all abortion terms stop words," Dickson wrote in a note to Gloria Won, the UCSF medical center librarian making the inquiry. "As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now."

There was no notice of the change on the site.

Dickson suggested other kinds of more obscure search strategies and alternative words to get around the keyword blocking.

This isn't an advice line, or a political advocacy site. Popline touts itself as "Your connection to the world's reproductive health literature," and "the world's largest database on reproductive health, containing citations with abstracts to scientific articles, reports, books, and unpublished reports in the field of population, family planning, and related health issues. "

Except, of course, if you try to find them using the "A" word.

Whether this is an excellent example of the "chilling effect" (folks self-censoring for fear of breaking the rules), or of the Bush Administration once again demonstrating its desire to reframe scientific information only in acceptable ideological limits, it's outrageous.

Filed under :: Health - Science :: Politics & Law :: ZT & PC
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