Radiation People
I just saw an anti-smoking advertisement that left me stunned -- Radiation People. A 20-something circus showman of some sort is hyping up an exhibit to a gathering crowd. He promises to show them people who have been exposed to "Plutonium 210"; the curtain rolls back and a bad mirror is displayed. The camera pans to an ash tray with smoldering cigarettes.
And in case the TV audience has an IQ of 40, the announcer takes no chances that the dots aren't connected and says, "You're the Radiation People, get it!"
A quick websearch indicates that the CDC agrees with the claim that there is indeed Plutonium 210 in cigarettes. But what in the world does that mean?
I suspect that Plutonium 210 -- to the extent that it truly exists in cigarettes -- also exists in my water, my air, the soil outside my house. Surely this sort of extreme hypism is counterproductive. If the cigarette companies really put Plutonium 210 in their cigarettes on purpose, then we have much bigger problems: I'd wonder if we just found Saddam's missing WMDs.
To top it all off, I didn't see who sponsored the ad, unfortunately, but I saw the word "Truth" used. Any technical truth in that advertisement is swamped by the grossly misleading impression that there is significant radiation exposure that occurs from smoking cigarettes.
Whatever happened to simple and defensible, "Smoking causes lung cancer?"
...
Watch out for the new STD prevention campaign. "Sleeping with someone exposes you to more radiation that if you sat outside a nuclear power plant! You're the Radiation People, get it?"
...
If anyone can actually find this ad on the web, please post in the comments section.
No, "No" Really does mean "No"
Armed Liberal over at the Winds of Change attempts to argue that we really can cut our energy needs by at least 25%. He is voicing this argument to circumvent Den Beste's argument that there is a physical limit to how far you can push energy extraction technologies.
The problem is that they aren't talking the same language, literally. Den Beste is referring to the fraction of potential energy that we capture; these are processes that are governed by the laws of physics. There is only so far they can be pushed, and it is easier to push up the beginning of the curve than it is to push up the end of it. He is talking about the limits of energy efficiency itself.
Armed Liberal's response concentrates on BTU per dollar of GDP statistics published by the DOE. His argument appears to be that because our energy consumption has grown by 24% since 1980 while our GDP has grown by 92% that we can surely cut our overall energy needs by 25%, or perhaps even 35%. Of course, he doesn't state it like this. By reporting BTU divided by GDP rather than just focusing on BTU, he can make a statement like we cut 35.1% out of our energy budget in 22 years and it doesn't sound like the nonsense that it really is.
It is also important to note that BTU/$ has improved for a variety of reasons, many of which are only tangentially related to actual energy efficiency. Perhaps the most important reason has been our shift away from a manufacturing economy and toward a service sector economy. To illustrate how this could occur, we could get 1,000 people to start paying Ryan $1,000,000 to maintain the Dead Parrots Society website. This would effectively add $1 billion to GDP without substantially increasing energy usage, thereby causing Armed Liberal to claim that we had become more energy efficient. It would also make Ryan very happy, and we could do all this with exactly the same technology in place that we have today. Well, maybe Ryan would have to invest in a server upgrade to handle all the traffic. But you get the idea: Armed Liberal's definition of energy efficiency hinges upon the relative value that we, as citizens, place on different goods and services in the economy.
Also notice how Armed Liberal's reliance on GDP effectively "outsources" our energy needs. We can appear to be more energy efficient simply by exporting the energy intensive industries overseas. South Korea's BTU/$ actually increased over this time period. So did Hong Kong's (barely), Indonesia, India, etc. Obviously this doesn't mean that we have effectively decreased our dependence on energy at all, however. All it means is that we are more dependent on South Korea's energy lack of independence. It's called a shell game for a reason.
In other words, in terms of the fundamentals of this debate -- can we become energy independent by becoming more energy efficient-- Armed Liberal's arguments are entirely nonresponsive, in my opinion.
When it comes to physics, "no" really does mean "no", and social science statistics don't always bring you closer to reality.
P.S. I love Winds of Change. I just went bonkers when I read this post and noted that nobody (as of early this afternoon) had mentioned these rather obvious caveats in their comments thread.
Amazon fact-check: Garden State soundtrack
This Dan Drezner post piqued my curiosity enough to make me go check out the the trailer for "Garden State," which opens this month. The movie looks intriguing, but that's not the point of this post.
While you're browsing the content, the "Garden State" trailer site automatically starts playing clips from songs on the soundtrack. I recognized a few of them, including "Such Great Heights" (mp3 here) by The Postal Service, whose "Give Up" is one of my favorite new albums I've listened to in quite a while. (Right behind "Final Straw" by Snow Patrol.) "Such Great Heights" plays behind the first half of the movie's regular trailer, as well, so good on The Postal Service. But that's not really the point of this post, either.
From the "Garden State" site, I clicked through to Amazon's sale page for the movie soundtrack, where I see that the "Such Great Heights" track is incorrectly credited to the band Iron and Wine. Now, Iron and Wine did cover "Such Great Heights" on Postal Service's Such Great Heights EP. It was a wonderful cover, actually: stripped down and slowed down, acoustically beautiful. But the clip that plays at the "Garden State" site is not that version; it's The Postal Service's original. So I have to think the Amazon page is wrong. (Not to mention the lyrics site that Dan Drezner also links to.)
And that's the point of this post. Just throwing this information into the ocean, and hoping it somehow washes up on Amazon's shores.
Update: Dan Drezner points out the answer to my question, in this blog post by actor/director Zach Braff. The Postal Service song is in the trailer, but he's using the Iron and Wine cover in the movie. Therefore it's the one on the soundtrack.
Putting the "F" back into Freedom
Is it possible to piss off Michael Moore, George Bush and Kim Jong Il, all at the same time?
The boys from South Park are evidently going to give it a shot.
Check out the trailer.
Memory cards pass a critical test
Digital Camera Shopper recently put some memory cards through the ringer, and found that they were virtually indestructible.
They were dipped into cola, put through a washing machine, dunked in coffee, trampled by a skateboard, run over by a child's toy car and given to a six-year-old boy to destroy.
Based on personal experience, that last one is enough for me. I'm buying.
» Click to finish reading "Memory cards pass a critical test"
Second verse same as the.....whatever
Haven't we been here before?
Remember, those who do not learn from history are ........ I can't finish, I'm laughing to damn hard.
Fun with outsourced dictation!
Andy Baio has launched a new web sport, of sorts. Call up iDictate, a pretty cool online service that lets you send in an mp3 file and get back a text transcript. As Andy describes it: "They split the audio into manageable chunks, distribute it to typists around the world, reassemble the text, and send it back." Very handy; I can easily see us using this at work.
But for the home game, you just want the free trial. Call up iDictate's phone service (1-877-342-8283) and hit the appropriate prompts, then hold your phone up to a speaker and play your favorite audio file. Then see what text they send back.
In Andy's post, the service pretty much nailed "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey. But I upped the ante: "Exquisite Dead Guy" by They Might Be Giants. Plenty of nonsense rhythm words, and a bizarre theme that doesn't give you much context to guess at words you're not sure about. Here's how they did:
» Click to finish reading "Fun with outsourced dictation!"
You'd think this guy would have been caught some time ago...
After all, isn't the nickname of the University sports teams the Gamecocks?
South Carolina Commissioner indicted for cockfighting
Francis Crick
In 1953 (just 51 years ago) Francis Crick and James Watson published one of the most influencial scientific papers ever describing the nature of DNA. Later, they described how they came to believe in the nature of DNA in the bestselling work The Double Helix (which, as it turned out, had a catty side as well. Taking time from the adventure of the DNA hunt they made sure to put down their co-worker Rosalind Franklin).
Nonetheless, this slim book is a must-read for anyone interested in the thrill of scientific discovery.
The science to come out of that paper is staggering. And without it, there would be no CSI--a guilty pleasure of both Vic and myself.
Crick passed away yesterday after a bout with cancer. It's fitting, I think, that among the many tributes to Crick around the world this week, the final one should come from the place where most people first learned of his work: Nature magazine.
This Land is not the Land we thought it was
Volokh reports that the Bush/Kerry Parody "This Land is Your Land" we've all been watching -- and laughing at -- has drawn a complaint from the owners of the copyright for Woody Guthrie's song. The Richmond Organization complains that the parody "puts a completely different spin" on the song, according to a company spokesperson.
What spin would that be? And why is it different from the "spin" nearly every performance, music book or recording of the song puts on "This Land" when they leave out the more controversial stanzas three through five of the song?
Guthrie was a radical in many ways. "Mean Talking Blues," a Guthrie song, is unabashedly pro-union, going so far as to portray the capitalist businessman in the persona of the Devil incarnate. We all sang as school kids this apparently very patriotic song extolling the virtues of "This Land." But when the mysteriously missing three stanzas are added, it becomes clear that "This Land" is itself a parody, a takeoff on the happy-go-lucky optimism of a man who sees only good in his country while he overlooks glaring problems and inequalities.
Face it, by our standards, the man was a radical.
Anyway, I'm no expert, but when I saw the JibJab piece, my first thought was, ol' Woody woulda liked this one. I wonder what he would have thought of some corporation going to court to make a buck off a song they didn't even write. In fact, Pete Seeger told the story of how Woody Guthrie used to mail out a small mimeographed songbook to people who heard him on the radio and wanted the words to his songs. On the bottom on one page was the following:
"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."
Posted by Michelle Davis, Victor's better half and in-house music historian.
How Conservatives dominate political language
Very interesting piece here with George Lakoff, a linguistics professor at Berkeley, who has formed the progressive Rockridge Institute.
One may or may not agree with his politics, but his insights into debate framing and defining the terms in political debate is fascinating.
It's a little dated (in political terms, nine months is a lifetime), but he seems dead-on with much of his critiques. Conservatives have always been more about keeping on-message than liberals, and moderates and progressives seem to forget that framing the messages is how you get your foot in the door, particularly in a political environment with low attention spans and extreme partisanship.
Taking Politics to the People
I think this is a brilliant idea!
The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations has been sponsering debates in bars, in an attempt to rejuvinate their organization by attracting younger folks.
That is exactly what the planners were hoping for when they hatched the concept of moving council events into the neighborhoods and bars. Like many venerable Chicago institutions facing aging memberships, the 82-year-old CCFR is clearly in the market for a new generation of patrons.
The program, which started last month and is scheduled to continue monthly through November, is called GOAt, a rough acronym for Globally Occupying the Attention of Chicago's Untapped Audience.
"The usual council audience is a lot of gray-beards like me and a couple of young people," noted Richard Longworth, the executive director for the Council's Global Chicago Center. "But tonight there were a couple of graybeards in the audience but mostly much younger people. It's great. We wanted a younger, more diverse crowd and one that might have been a little intimidated about going to meetings downtown. Schubas is a great place to do it."
I would love to see a version of this that addressed local, regional, national and international issues of all stripes here in Seattle. One need that immediately jumps to mind that begs to be addressed: our populist initiative process puts a tremendous amount of trust in the knowledge and opinion of our state's voters, yet I feel that often a voter's decision is driven by soundbites, prevailing ideology or the percieved impact on the voter's pocket book. Bringing speakers to debate initiatives (as well as many other things) to local venues would be a tremendous way to get down and dirty and hear to two sides present their arguments.
My first call is for Tim Eyman, our professional anti-tax initiative miester, to face off with one of many who despise his policies that degrade our tax base and usurp the responsiblity of our legislature. Perhaps one of our more liberal City Council members, Nick Licata, would be willing to take him on.
A man ahead of his time
Via Hei Lun and Chris Lawrence, I see that there are a couple of polls trying to determine just who is the worst-ever Volokh Conspiracy guest blogger. But take heart, Cori Dauber, Cathy Seipp and Clayton Cramer: They can't hate you if they're not reading you.
Some also may find it interesting that, through some strange twist of physics, Chris cast his vote eight months ago.
Spidey 2 for Xbox, and some nods to the geeks
Over at Begging to Differ, Greg references a scene in Spiderman 2 "put there to make Evil Dead fans smile." I'm not sure if Greg's a console gamer, but there's also a snippet in the Xbox game that's presumably aimed at the same crowd.
Several chapters in, you run into a fiery theater and meet the alien menace Mysterio (well, actually a hologram of him that stands several stories high). Anyway, as you rush around saving reporters from the flames, his mechanical minions take shots at you as Mysterio occasionally chants "Klaatu Verata Nicto." Raimi-riffic!
Even better, for me at least, were Mysterio's final words in the theater, as he's declaring war on humanity: "You have no chance to survive. Make your time." Nod to the geeks, indeed.
And by the way, the Xbox game is a lot of fun. The chapter-based linear plot provides a nice, loose structure, but just webslinging around Manhattan is the true blast. As is climbing several hundred feet to the top of a skyscraper, then flinging yourself into the void and trying to pull off as many acrobatic twists as you can before firing off a web line at the last second (and hoping there's something close enough to catch onto). The mini crime-fighting/rescue missions do get a bit repetitive, but Spidey has enough of those big-grin "whoa" moments that translate as "Fifty bucks well spent."
OK, maybe I suck
More proof that Chris Lawrence was onto something? Am I really just a misguided music snob? These questions and more, possibly answered at Seattle's Bumbershoot Arts Festival. The event generally gets a very cool music lineup; here are some of the headliners from this year's:
The Pixies, Built to Spill, The Marley Brothers, Toots and the Maytals, Nas, Public Enemy, Liz Phair, Five for Fighting, Ben Kweller, Nickelback, Puddle of Mudd, Seal, Nancy Sinatra, the Presidents, Death Cab for Cutie, Burning Spear.
Yep.
High-rollin' and DDR
Strangely fascinating story in The Pitch about the Dance Dance Revolution subculture from the Kansas City area. The story's hook is 20-year-old Wayne Giles, whose DDR habit (and fame) consumed him to the point where he started scamming the arcades where he worked.
Giles thought of himself as old school; he'd learned to play on early versions of DDR with dimly lit arrows, poor graphics and no speed modifiers, circa 2001. He called new players who sucked "nubs." He was certain he had groupies. "In every arcade, we have what's called a fan club," he says. "A group of girls, normally underage, that are just desperately, madly obsessed with us." ...
When he danced, he moved so fast his sneakers began to blur. Sweat beaded and fell from his brow like raindrops. Following the arrows, his feet accelerated in time, playing the commands like a musical score. To pass each level, he needed to nail 70 percent of the footwork. On the fastest speeds, he got 99.
By last summer, when he started working at Great Wolf, Giles was an industry wonk. He knew the dimensions and engraving of each arcade's tokens. He knew which arcades would accept Great Wolf tokens, and as his wealth grew, he began to hand out Great Wolf tokens at different venues.
"If a friend of mine was strapped on cash, I'd be like, here, have some fun," he recalls. "I'd give out small handfuls, usually five to seven bucks at a time. Someone goes, 'Hey can I get some tokens?' And I'd go, 'Ching! Here you go.'"
He'd gone from social outcast to high roller in a crowd funded by allowances and minimum-wage paychecks.
The story also gets to exactly why this subculture is so attractive to a specific type of kid. It's been a while since I've been in a high school, but it wouldn't surprise me if in a lot of places, the traditional cliques -- goths, geeks, jocks, etc. -- have been joined by a new one: DDR kids.
(via Ape Shall Not Kill Ape)
Well-deserved publicity
Congratulations to the good folks at BTD on their profile in the Charlotte Observer!
I fear I must point out, however, that this is another case in which Big Media was scooped by bloggers.
Newsday circulation overstatements
Glenn Reynolds has been blogging a bit about the circulation misrepresentation at Newsday/Hoy and the Chicago Sun-Times, calling it a "Media Enron" and wondering why it's not getting more attention. To his credit, he later mentions a reader who says it's overblown to call this story an "Enron." That was billions of dollars, and possible ramifications for the grid and the entire economy. Not to mention little old ladies getting [blanked] up the [blank], or whatever that transcript said.
Not that $35 million to deal with overstated figures is nothing, but comparing it to Enron is a little absurd. If it turns out that the problem isn't, in fact, limited to the Sun-Times and Newsday/Hoy, then clearly it gets worse. Still no Enron, but clearly worse.
I wanted to respond to a few of Glenn's points, though:
"[I]t's worth noting that this reporting problem goes way beyond Newsday." Actually probably not worth noting -- at least not in this way -- because this is not a factual statement. It doesn't accurately reflect, anyway, the E&P; story he ultimately links to. That story quotes a Merrill Lynch analyst who says that, in the wake of the Sun-Times and Newday disclosures, the audit numbers for the whole industry ought to be looked at. (More from Lauren Rich Fine in this story and this story, which characterizes her report as saying "it is unclear whether the overstatements are unique to those papers or point to deeper problems.")
Solid advice from someone speaking to investors, but nowhere does she, or anyone, say that more newspapers are actually overreporting. Now, it's possible that an industry-wide audit would turn up more cases, but we won't know until that happens. As it stands, Glenn's statement is speculation stated as fact. A correctable error, though.
The hypocrisy in coverage angle. At this point, the Newsday story is about a company that overstated figures to its customers, and is dealing with about $35 million in consequences. Here's a Google News cluster (for the latest story only). I can't think of an analagous "corporate misdeeds" story off the top of my head, but this strikes me as pretty reasonable coverage. Pretty much what I'd expect based on the parameters we're looking at.
The newspaper credibility angle. I don't doubt that for most readers, it's true that misreporting of circ numbers would call a newspaper's overall credibility into question. But in truth, there's a big wall between the editorial and the business side of any newspaper, and missteps made by one side don't have anything to do with the other side (other than their having to deal with the fallout). The reporting/editing engine has absolutely nothing to do with the calculation of circulation, and the way these numbers are presented to advertisers. Again, I don't expect most people to make this differentiation, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
Insert whatever potshot you like about reporting credibility here, but editorial trustworthiness really is a separate debate.
Those disagreements aside, though, I do like his call in this post for open traffic counters on media websites. (And I'd echo those who say Sitemeter tends to undercount traffic -- in the instances I've been able to compare Sitemeter figures with server-based traffic analysis, the Sitemeter figures are always low.)
Dick Cheney's pause for thought on gay marriage
This was The Daily Show's moment of zen last night, so I had to look it up. During the 2000 vice presidential candidate debate, Dick Cheney clearly expressed a preference for the federal government to stay out of gay marriage. From the transcript:
SHAW: [S]exual orientation. Should a male who loves a male and a female who loves a female have all -- all -- the constitutional rights enjoyed by every American citizen? ...
CHENEY: This is a tough one, Bernie. The fact of the matter is, we live in a free society and freedom means freedom for everybody. We don't get to choose, and shouldn't be able to choose, and say, "You get to live free, but you don't."
And I think that means that people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It's really no one else's business in terms of trying to regulate or prohibit behavior in that regard.
The next step then, of course, is the question you asked of whether or not there ought to be some kind of official sanction, if you will, of the relationship or if these relationships should be treated the same way a conventional marriage is. That's a tougher problem. That's not a slam dunk.
I think the fact of the matter, of course, is that matter is regulated by the states. I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions and that's appropriate. I don't think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area.
I try to be open-minded about it as much as I can and tolerant of those relationships.
This statement has been brought up previously, mostly in stories this year about Cheney coming out in support of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. (For whatever it's worth, his wife disagrees.)
And I'm really not a big fan of charting flips and flops, because I think there's often a perfectly good reason for changing your opinion on an issue. In many cases, not changing your opinion is the sign of true lunacy. But that's when you're confronted by new knowledge, or a situation that's changed greatly. (Hence all the dialogue on pre-9/11 thinking in a post-9/11 world.)
But the gay marriage issue, I don't think, meets that type of criteria. So I'm curious what -- other than purely political motivation -- might have caused Cheney to change his stance on this one. And not that terrorism ought to be the only thing we're concerned about these days, but in a post-9/11 world I find it a bit alarming that this is such an issue of federal concern. The states can handle themselves just fine.
Fish Story
Catching a 30 pound drum isn't anything special, but how often is it done by hand in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico with waves crashing all around you?
Okay, so we weren't in the middle of the Gulf (as can be seen by the presence of land in the background) and there weren't waves crashing all around (as can also be seen by the calm waters in the background), but the drum was caught by hand.
» Click to finish reading "Fish Story"
