Notwithstanding the aircraft carrier-sized plot holes (not the least of which is the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling being inside St. Peter’s Basilica), the science that seems to have been invented by a screenwriter for maximum gibberish factor, and the general feel of “disaster porn,” The Boy convinced me to see the latest Roland Emmerich explodafest.
As I was summarizing the flick to The Woman, I was impressed with the sheer number of coincidences to move the plot in anything like a coherent direction. The failed writer just so happens to know a Russian mafioso with connections to the ark project, but just so happens to need a copilot, and the writer’s ex’s boyfriend just so happens to be an amateur pilot, etc.
And the characterizations… Well, there are a couple ways to approach an “end of the world” movie. You could look at the human drama of man’s inhumanity to man, with deep introspection and evaluation of the hard decisions needed to perpetuate the human species. Or, you could just slam an aircraft carrier into the White House. Since this is a Roland Emmerich film, you know which way he went.
Still, it’s not like anyone going to see “2012” expects anything other than what it delivers, and it delivers in spades. The Boy said it was the best movie he’d ever seen, and even though he says that about every movie we watch, and even though he seemed to forget that 6.89 billion people die in the film, he’s probably right. This is possibly the best disaster porn explodafest you’ll ever see.
And so it begins continues….
My lovely bride and I have completed our first year of wedded bliss. It’s been a great year. Well, the getting laid off and burning through all our savings and putting off home improvement projects for 10 months and the car accident and the repairs we didn’t expect on the truck…not so much great there. But, we muddled through all the minutiae and trivial nonsense everyone deals with in life, together.
Some people continue to claim that our lack of major disagreements and complete lack of yelling and fighting means that we are repressing something vitally important. We contend that we just get along well. It helps that we both have the same basic view of the universe and how important some things are and how unimportant most other things are.
We’ll see how outside forces conspire to deflect our plans, but hopefully we’ll actually stay on track to our great goals of vacationing out of state, getting the hot tub installed, painting the house a less-putrid shade, and saving up for an eventual move out of West Texas. Even if things don’t work out as we plan, we’re still happy and that’s something no outside force is going to change.
Love you, pumpkin.
Kat here! Halloween will be our first anniversary. Yep- Last year on October 31st we were married in the courthouse, walked across the street and voted for Obama, and then had an amazing lunch at Peasant Village. I tell people that if I hadn’t married Gary, he would have been my best friend and I would have been secretly in love with him. I lucked out and became Mrs. Bunker.
There is a great cohesion between us. Our former marriages had similar lengths and our foolish pride kept us hanging in way beyond our former unions’ expiration dates. So we had the same wounds, the same concerns and the same longings. I’m not saying it is formulaic, but I believe it helped that we stood on the same ground when we met. Still no arguments, name-calling, raised voices or passive aggressive actions… just loads of affection, great conversation and always, always- missing each other terribly when we are apart. In our future are vacation plans to California, another cruise and moving in the next couple of years (possibly out of state!). We rock! Love rocks! Go Bearcat!
Remember that adapid fossil from back in May? Turns out, all that breathless excitement over this “missing link” was premature and erroneous. Of course, most scientists would have told you the same thing in May, since the research was published on the Discovery Channel before it was peer-reviewed, the adapid line is actually not considered an ancestral family from humans, and a few other reasons too no doubt.
This is exactly why I dislike the automatic “missing link” verbiage that gets attached to any story about any prehistoric primate or ape. First of all, it’s ridiculously misleading to think of evolution as a series of links in some sort of chain. And, secondly, when your missing link turns out to have been on a different tree branch, the less-informed just use it as another bludgeon to hit the “ain’t no monkeys in my family tree” drum. Darwinius Masillae remains an interesting fossil and a remarkably well-preserved 45 million-year old find, but it’s not a human ancestor. Take that, premature publication!
On the other hand, this is a great example of why science needs to be better respected in this country. Unlike any other method of dealing with the world throughout history, science is willing (sometimes eager) to admit mistakes, and is always self-correcting. Every scientist wants to make a name for him or herself; proving your peers are wrong in a big way is a great way to do that. That it also advances human knowledge is a great thing for those of us not in the research world. Where would any of us be if previous generations had decided that any evidence contrary to “electricity is magic” was heretical and would be ignored? I’m rather glad to have this here electronic typewritery thingy.
I was very heartened to see, when I went to the local grocery store yesterday, a massive crowd blocking my way to the frozen food. While normally I’d be much happier to see a virtually empty store, because people slow down my shopping, this week is different. The path to the freezers goes through the pharmacy. I’m happy to see so many people (mostly elderly from my quick glance, who are after all at greatest risk along with small children) lining up for their flu shots. Apparently, even here in the heart of wingnuttery, people still realize that vaccines have a long history of saving lives. Of course, it’s possible that the elderly are more likely to take vaccines because they remember the days before many of them were available. Telling someone whose elementary school was decimated by polio that vaccines are a hoax probably won’t fly. A person who is far too familiar with the iron lung won’t be swayed by some nutball hypothesis about ill-defined toxins and conspiracy theories surrounding doctors and pharmaceutical companies and government organizations.
Yay for common sense and actual facts.
I hate the breathless and somewhat hyperbole-laden reporting of every new fossil find. This month, it’s Ardipithecus Ramidus, which the press is calling the “oldest pre-human” fossil. Um, wouldn’t the oldest pre-human fossil be the oldest fossil? This obsession with a “missing link” between humanity and the rest of the animal kingdom is a bit tiresome. There are jillions of links, and there are undoubtedly going to be jillions more found in the future. Every time someone finds something from the primate branch, the media goes into a veritable frenzy.
Of course, we find anything which casts any light on our own branch of the tree much more interesting than the spectacular specimens of pre-whale fossils back in February. But to claim that this Ardipithecus shows that we didn’t evolve from chimps is ridiculous. Nobody claims we did. Some biologists and anthropologists may use the shorthand of saying we evolved from something that looked something like a modern chimp, but nobody ever said that we evolved and chimps stopped. Evolution doesn’t work that way. Everything is just as “highly evolved” as everything else. Each species occupies a niche for which it has become adapted over eons. That doesn’t in any way mean that humans are the most evolved form of life – we’re just the only ones who write about it.
Oh, and scientists have been writing about Ardipithecus since at least 1999, and even pointed out that it was a hominid but not a common ancestor with modern chimps back in 2001.
On August 25th, four hundred years ago, Galileo Galilei showed his telescopes to the Venetian lawmakers. With the Galileoscope the Boy and I assembled this weekend, we observed the four satellites of Jupiter that are called today the Galilean moons: Ganymede, Io, Europa and Callisto. Then the clouds covered them up again.
Although a bit later in the year than I’d hoped we have received our two Galileoscopes (no, I don’t know why I bought two of them, other than they were cheap so why not?), and they’re very spiffy. We’re using the basic 25x magnification right now, although we may put together the 50x eyepiece to peer at Jupiter more closely tomorrow. We should be able to see the Great Red Spot about 10:30pm this week. Not sure about how that will go. The Boy can’t seem to avoid bumping the scope, making massive changes in view far too common. The Woman, of course, was much better and caused no problems when she looked at Jupiter and its four moons. Very cool night.
Somehow, the Boy convinced me to get up at 6am on a non-work day, so we could peer at Venus and Mars. I’ll let you know how that goes.
Although my Galileoscopes (ordered in February) stubbornly refuse to arrive, I’m still digging the International Year of Astronomy 2009. Here’s a really amazing set of images – artistic, not photographic – of the planets. Consider it a graphic version of the Holst piece.
This is an artist’s concept of a cyclonic vortex on Venus. Much higher resolution available at the site.
Click for 1280x800
KFC’s new sandwich seems like a joke you’d find on This is Why You’re Fat.
They’re actually selling this in some markets right now – a sandwich made of breaded chicken, bacon, and cheese. I can feel my arteries hardening just looking at it.
The intro to the original Battlestar Galactica said, “There are those who believe that life here began out there…”
OK, so this discovery is not in any way going to support the rather outre hypothesis of panspermia, but it’s interesting nonetheless, to see that perhaps amino acid creation is not as rare as some would have us believe. Unless, of course, this comet was once part of our planet, and then somehow achieved escape velocity without destroying all the delicate biological bits stuck in it? I’ll take Occam’s Razor for $1000, Alex.
Science is cool.
Supermajority doesn’t mean they can accomplish anything. http://tinyurl.com/qg2kbo Still not an organized party. Surprised?
We’re spending a long weekend in Corpus Christi, concentrating on kayaking activities, but doing other touristy things as well. This morning was our introduction to kayak surfing, in an area known for relatively low surf because we’re big wimps. As I’m paddling out to hit some nice swells after a half hour or so, Kat yells, “FIN!” I turned to see a nice fin surfacing about 20 yards away. Fortunately, we recognized the fin as a dolphin relatively quickly (the constant diving and surfacing was another indicator), and then we watched and hoped there were other pod members nearby to entertain us, but to no avail.
This afternoon we watched some other dolphins at the aquarium, but even though we were quite amused by the near-constant pooing those critters were doing, they were not anywhere as memorable as the close encounter in the ocean off Padre Island.
Tomorrow is a paddling trail excursion at Port Aransas; wish us luck – there is a common recomendation to take a waterproof GPS with you. 🙂
RIP John Hughes.
To prevent anyone from thinking that I focus only on things to be pissed off about, here’s a piece of good news from the journal Science. Some fisheries are beginning to recover from overfishing, due to more stringent regulation from governments and more public interest in fishing practices. I’ve been a big proponent of sustainable fishing for as long as I’ve known the term (thanks, MBARI), so it’s nice to see that there’s some good news out there. Of course, there’s a bit of bad news as well – Europe, for all its vaunted “better than America” rhetoric, is demonstrably worse in managing their fisheries. We’ve had Alaska as an example for decades, with their seemingly neurotic obsession with sustainability, and we’ve been expanding that down the coast now. It looks like Europeans aren’t learning from the mistakes of the past, and they’re gonna kill off the bluefin tuna population if they aren’t careful.
Check out the map with the NPR article – all of the North American fisheries are either healthy or recovering; none are declining. We’ve got something to be proud of there. Regulations can be good.
The other day, I was watching the news when a clip from Fred Thompson’s radio show was played. The person talking to Thompson was Betsy McCaughey, a constitutional scholar and former Lt. Governor for New York, claimed that the health care plan being promoted in the House would mandate that all elderly people get counseling on how to end their lives sooner. This meme has been promulgated far and wide, and a video was next on the news, with the President being asked by an audience member at a town hall meeting whether the rumors were true that his hoped-for health care public option would encourage the elderly to die.
My son, all of nine years old, was able to see how ridiculous this was, and said there’s no way that anyone in the government would try to kill off their own citizens. He didn’t have any sophisticated analysis of this, of course, but even he has enough of a BS detector at his age to wonder why anyone would believe such ridiculous statements.
It’s a sad state of affairs when seemindly sane adult human beings can actually believe that their government wants to kill them (hard to get votes that way) and that the President is a foreigner (Snopes, people!). Evidence be damned, we will continue to believe ludicrous things because they reinforce what we want to believe. And the pundits who encourage this behavior? Yay for the First Amendment, you can say and believe any fool thing you want, but this is just shameful behavior. Fanning flames of anger and fear (always fear – talk to any winger and you’ll hear the words afraid or scared frequently) just to get ratings or get political points…disgusting.
Run any statement any politician or pundit says past a nine year-old; if he says it’s ludicrous, assume it is.
(Note: this is an edited version of the infamous article on chiropractic that got Simon Singh sued. It is being reposted all over the web today by multiple blogs and online magazines. Why edited? English libel laws make Singh at risk if the full article were published even in the USA.)
Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results – and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh.
You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.
In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.
You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying – even though there is not a jot of evidence.
I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.
But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.
In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.
More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.
Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.
Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.”
This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.
If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.
Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.
The soldiers I see have Camelbaks, but someone is still big on the old canteen. Shinier and Pricier! http://www.uscanteen.com/
Mom must be so proud – http://bit.ly/oDOdE
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