Monthly Archives: February 2010

Jenny McCarthy still thinks vaccines cause autism | Bad Astronomy

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drjennymccarthy_250

The web is abuzz about an interview antivax activist and public health threat Jenny McCarthy did with Time magazine. A lot of folks seem to think that McCarthy is backtracking on her claims that vaccines cause autism.

Let me be very clear: that simply isn’t true. McCarthy is still making the same debunked, discredited, and dangerous claims:

Each of these theories [proposed by antivaxxers] has been thoroughly discredited by scientific research, but that has done nothing to silence McCarthy and her Generation Rescue colleagues. "Come and see our kids," says McCarthy. "Why won’t the CDC come and talk to the mothers, talk to the families? Then tell us there isn’t a link."

Sounds to me like she’s up to the same old health-hazard hijinks. So why are so many people saying she’s changed her mind? In some of the emails I’ve received and on a few websites, they’re claiming that McCarthy has admitted that her son never was autistic, and instead had Landau-Kleffner syndrome, a neurological disorder. But that’s wrong; she never admits that in the article — the author suggests that Evan’s symptoms are similar to Landau-Kleffner, but that’s it.

As recently as three weeks ago, McCarthy and her equally deluded boyfriend Jim Carrey both publicly defended Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced doctor credited for starting the modern movement claiming vaccines cause autism. You can find that statement on the Natural News website, run by the equally wrong Mike Adams, who couldn’t find reality with three sherpas and a GPS.

So why is this misinformation that McCarthy has changed her mind being spread so much? Part of the problem is an article in Hollywood Life, which obviously mischaracterizes the Time interview, saying:

And she is also reversing her initial position that the MMR shots caused Evan’s autism.

Nowhere in the Time interview does she reverse her position! Hollywood Life is wrong, plain and simple. In fact, the Time article author says plainly:

…[McCarthy] blames the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine for giving her son autism.

I don’t see how this could be any more clear.

[Note: the URL for the Hollywood life article is even a misstatement: "http://www.hollywoodlife.com/2010/02/26/jenny-mccarthy-says-her-son-evan-never-had-autism/"; McCarthy said no such thing in the interview.]

So she is still standing by her earlier claims. Mind you, she still says she "cured" her son of his disorder by putting him on a gluten-free diet, which, to be clear, is nonsense. In fact, a lot of people have wondered if her son was ever autistic, and is now simply doing better as he ages; many disorders mitigate with time.

Also, this is a person who claims we are injecting our kids with too many vaccines, but has no issue injecting herself with the most dangerous protein known to humanity, so clearly her viewpoint is somewhat skewed from reality.

I urge people to read the article from Time magazine in its entirety; the author is clear he thinks McCarthy is wrong, that all of science and reality are stacked against her, and he even states simply that she is "dangerous".

I agree. She is a terrible influence on people; her science is wrong, her medical advice is dangerous, and she gives people false hope.

There is hope for parents with autistic children, but that hope comes through understanding the situation, using real evidence and data, and in knowing that thousands upon thousands of doctors are trying to understand autism as well. If there’s hope, it’s through science.

I know that McCarthy loves her son, and I do think she’s trying to help. But I also know that her claims about vaccines and autism are completely wrong, and instead of helping she’s making things far worse — not just for kids with autism and their parents, but for the population as a whole because vaccinations rates have dropped and we’re seeing a resurgence of preventable diseases.

This misinformation being spread about her isn’t helping. Her stance has not changed, and she is still a force for antireality. People listening to her are not helping their own children, and if they don’t vaccinate their kids they are putting everyone else in danger as well.

[Update: Surly Amy at Skepchick has similar thoughts on this.]


Apple Reports Discovery of Child Workers In Their Factories [Apple]

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February has not been a good month for the Apple supply chain. After the assault, the arson, and the poisonings, now Apple's annual supplier report reveals that this year 11 minors were found working in factories that manufacture their products.

The 24-page report is full of bad news. The worst of it: three different factories Apple uses to manufacture parts employed 15 year old workers, 11 minors total, in countries that had a minimum working age of 16.

Other unsavory findings include over 50 factories keeping workers on the job for longer than the maximum 60 hour work week and at least 24 factories paying workers less than the minimum wage. Stuff that would be bad normally but doesn't seem quite as bad in light of the child labor: only 61% of the factories Apple uses were following correct safety regulations and only 57% had the necessary environmental permits for operation.

Apple didn't reveal which factories were culpable, or the nations in which these facilities were located—they contract independent factories in China, Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, the Czech Republic and the United States—but they are still using them to manufacture their products. Apple confirmed that the child laborers are no longer employed.

Apple's no stranger to supply chain controversy, and all of these details come right from their own supplier responsibility report. You'd imagine that at some point people would stop gawking at Apple's supply chain scandals and actually put pressure on them to make some significant changes in their manufacturing. Hopefully these latest discoveries are enough to start that process. [Telegraph and Bloomberg]

Update:
Many commenters have made some good points about Apple's report and how it should be received. To be fair, these discoveries did come from Apple's own audits of the factories it uses. I changed the title of the post to better reflect that. But the reason they're performing those audits in the first place is to rectify their image when it comes to overseas labor. It's great that Apple's putting more resources into finding these problems, and it's admirable that the company is making this process public. But with such a long running history of ugly supply chain incidents, it's discouraging that the audits found conditions to still be as unfavorable as they are.

We got an eye-opening look at Apple's attitude toward manufacturing when a tipster recently told us Steve Jobs' mantra circa 1996: "Apple will be the Nike of consumer electronics." I'm glad that the company's trying to clean up their act, but with a legacy like that, it's hard for me to applaud them for admitting they found underage workers.

Image credit gnta


Folding Massage Chair Makes It Easy to Hide Your Embarassing Folding Massage Chair [Furniture]

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Hammacher Schlemmer, purveyors of expensive, goofy gadgets, are now peddling the Foldaway Massage Chair, a shapeshifting piece of furniture that will keep your muscles relaxed, your apartment uncluttered, and your buyers remorse so potent you can almost taste it.

Picture a Transformer. But instead of being a really cool car that turns into an ass-kicking robot, it's a little red cooler that doesn't actually keep things cold that turns into a mediocre massage chair. That should help you capture the essence of the Foldaway Massage Chair. I can't attest to how well it massages, but if I had to guess, I'd say not very well.

The folding design makes it easy to stow away, though even if you manage to keep your friends and family from finding out you spent $800 on a folding massage chair from Hammacher Schlemmer, deep down you will always know that you did. And you will regret it. And regret you can't just fold away. [CrunchGear]


The Frightening Future of Augmented Shopping [Retail]

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Online retail is nothing new, but now brick and mortar stores want to get in on the high-tech action. The New York Times has a disquieting look at new technologies that will make you shop 'til your signal drops.

Take, for example, Norma Kamali's boutique in Manhattan, which recently implemented a system called ScanLife that allows shoppers to find more information on products from their smart phones. So far, so good. But ScanLife also lets shoppers buy those products from their phones, even when seen in passing in a display window, even when the store is closed. Impulse buying just got a whole lot more impulsive.

Sure, ScanLife will certainly make physical shopping more convenient, but you have to wonder if it's going to make shopping too convenient.

Whereas ScanLife could make it dangerously easy for you to spend your money, another system called Presence, developed by IBM, could make it downright annoying to do so. Presence tracks you as you walk through the store and reminds you of things you might have forgotten you wanted to buy. By way of example, the Times article describes a trip to the supermarket in which Presence beams coupons to your phone in real time as you walk through the aisles and suggests items that would go well with the one you just put in your cart.

Of course, shoppers will have the option of using these new systems; no one is going to force you to augment your shopping. But at the same time, the internet age has a way of sweeping people up into using new technologies, even when the headaches equal the benefits. Presence could let you pinpoint an item's location in an unfamiliar grocery store, but would this capability be worth it if it came at the price of shopping with an overbearing digital assistant?

The article mentions Crate & Barrel and Walmart specifically as companies who are interested in these types of systems, but you can be sure that all major retailers are considering software that let you use your gadgets to spend more money on their products. Still, I imagine that many people will be content keep on window shopping the old-school way, without their phones and without their credit cards. [New York Times]


Saturday’s Offering… Deceptively Easy

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UPDATE:  SOLVED at 1:37 CDT

I have some exciting news about the weekly riddles, and I’ll be getting that out either later this evening or tomorrow.  In the interim, here’s one to make you think a little.


Today’s riddle answer is an object.

It is thought of as one “thing”, although it is composed of many.

It was known to ancient man.

Beham, (Hans) Sebald (1500-1550) Hercules Slaying the Hydra 1545

It is well represented in literature.

We associate this object with the summer months.

Not generally considered an important “player” to the Greeks, this object has gained interest in modern times.

Of its type, this object is the “dimmest”.

What do you think?  Ready to tackle the riddle?  I’m in the comment section, so give it a go.

Sorry, Trudy!

The Rumors of My Fellowship Have Been Greatly Accurate | The Intersection

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So, yes, since everybody seems to want to know: I am a Templeton Cambridge journalism fellow for 2010, and details on the program are here. I didn’t know when the new fellowship recipients’ names were going to be announced, but I guess the answer is yesterday.

The fellowship is basically two months long, with three weeks in Cambridge and two at “home” (wherever that is, in my case), during which one reads and studies up on the subject of science and religion.

Past fellows include Sandra Blakeslee, Juliet Eilperin, Marc Kaufman, Rob Stein, William Saletan, John Horgan, George Johnson, Shankar Vedantam, and many other top science journalists. I’m honored to join their number, and am looking forward to seeing the new crew–which includes folks like Ron Rosenbaum from Slate and Peter Scoblic from The New Republic–alongside the river Cam.

And thanks, everyone, for the congrats that have come in so far.


Magnitude 8.8 earthquake off Chile coast | Bad Astronomy

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Last night at 06:34 UTC, a huge earthquake struck on the coast of Chile, with a reported magnitude of a numbing 8.8 — making it one of the largest earthquakes recorded on Earth since 1900.

A tsunami warning has been issued for the entire Pacific ocean. This is no joke; the tsunami gauges in the deep ocean have registered a wave spreading from the quake. I don’t know how big the amplitude is, but there have been confirmed reports of waves a meter high in Chile. That may not sound like much, but water weighs a ton per cubic meter/yard, so a wave that high has a lot of destructive power.

The tsunami should hit Hawaii around 11:05 local time, and it’s not clear at all how big it will be. In 1960, a larger earthquake happened off Chile and a tsunami hit Hilo, Hawaii causing quite a bit of damage. If you live anywhere near a Pacific coast, please check the local news and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Also, a live stream of news from Hawaii is on HawaiiTsunami.com. I’ve been listening and the coverage is pretty good.

If you live in Hawaii, now might be a good time to check out that higher ground you hear so much about. At the very least, stay away from the beaches! People are already starting to evacuate the coasts, so if you choose to get out, the earlier you get moving, the better. Traffic is bound to get snarled. Please please please don’t panic. Stay calm, and keep focused.

It’s unclear if this will be a big wave or not. But if you’re in Hawaii you should consider moving to higher ground.

Here is a map by the NOAA of the modeled energy wave expected from the earthquake:

noaa_2010_quakeenergy

It’s unclear to me just how big a wave this means in terms of real height (it’s a model, not an actual measurement), but it should bring home that you should take this seriously.

I’ll note that the magnitude scale doesn’t translate perfectly to energy released, but roughly speaking an 8.8 quake releases the energy equivalent of 20 billion tons of TNT, or 400 time the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated (Tsar Bomba, a 50 megaton test done by the USSR in 1961). If the measurement hold up, this will be the fifth or sixth strongest earthquake recorded since 1900. The strongest ever recorded, in 1977 1960, was magnitude 9.5, also in Chile — the one that caused the tsunami in Hilo.

Thanks to Sean Carroll for the link to the energy map. Note also, in this post I referred to the Richter scale, which is no longer used. I corrected that.


Politics, Religion, Sex, and Intelligence? | The Intersection

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Before another person emails me this article, yes I’ve seen it.

(CNN) — Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds.

Anyone who follows the blog should already know I’m highly skeptical about such stories and their purported findings (although I am confident they result in lots of traffic online at the url). I have not seen the primary source, but want to respond to the emails I’m receiving.

In short, the reason this troubles me very much is because–regardless of what the actual study says–the way it’s been written up as a ‘news‘ item is misleading (especially for those who don’t read past the headline). Of course many of the factors considered will show interesting correlations in a sample, but correlation does not equal causation. Each is extremely dependent on social mores, cultural norms, hormones, relationships, socieoeconomic status, and much, much, more. Still, I would be interested to see the data and read the methodology.

That said, I can’t help but wonder if this is a classic example of ‘The Science News Cycle‘.


New Pentagon Policy Lets Troops Overshare Like the Rest of Us [Socialmedia]

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Yesterday the Department of Defense released a memo outlining the government's first official policy for social media access by military personnel. Somewhat surprisingly, it gives them unrestricted access to blog, Tweet, poke and ping just like everyone else.

Effectively immediately, Department of Defense personnel across the board, including civilian employees and troops alike, have full access to popular new media sites including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the rest.

Before the new policy was announced, appropriate internet usage was determined individual commanders, many of whom barred those in their charge from posting on blogs or accessing social media networks.

Of course, there are still some measures in place to ensure that new media activity doesn't take up bandwidth when it's limited or compromise mission security—"cleaning my rifle on the john, lol!" is a good troop overshare; "cleaning my rifle before we storm this Taliban bunker in Marjah, lol!" is a bad troop overshare—but the Pentagon's new policy gives the OK for uses both personal and official.

It's always heartening when our government shows itself to be forward-thinking on matters of the internet, and allowing DoD employees to use the internet to its full, inane extent is definitely a step in the right direction. There's no word on the Pentagon's official Farmville policy at this time, however. [Defense.gov via BusinessWeek and Fast Company]


Gita Sahgal affair: Utter Hypocrisy of Amnesty International and Liberal Human Rights activists exposed

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by Eric Dondero

Throughout the Cold War, 1970s, '80s, the Right accused Amnesty International of being little more than a front group for leftwing causes. Their reluctance to criticize human rights abuses by Communist regimes, from Angola to Nicaraugua to Cambodia to the former Soviet Union, was legendary.

Now it appears AI has taken on a new ally on the Left - Islamo-Fascism.

News now breaking from across the Atlantic that worldwide human rights activist Gita Sahgal has been "suspended" from the Amnesty International governing board. Her crime? Criticizing AI's alliance with Islamic Terrorist sypmathizer and Taliban defender Moazzam Begg.

The Times On-line reported:

In an email sent to Amnesty’s top bosses, she suggests the charity has mistakenly allied itself with Begg and his “jihadi” group, Cageprisoners, out of fear of being branded racist and Islamophobic.

DNAIndia columnist Antara Dev Sin adds further details:

Sahgal has been protesting within the organisation for some time, in vain. Things may have come to a head last month, when Begg was part of Amnesty’s delegation that met British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, demanding that Guantanamo be shut down.

A week later she went public in an interview with the London Times.

From the UK Guardian Feb. 9:

Within hours of the article appearing she was suspended from her job by Amnesty as Gita says in her statement, "trying to do my job and staying faithful to Amnesty's mission to protect and defend human rights universally and impartially".

Michael Weiss in the Wall Street Journal adds this maddening detail to the story, Feb. 26:

Especially galling for Ms. Sahgal is the fact that she only accepted her job after insisting to Widney Brown, senior director of International Law and Policy at Amnesty, that she be allowed to address the Begg alliance.

"I told her, 'If you don't give me the power to clean up this Begg situation, I won't take on the gender affairs assignment. Widney encouraged me to write a memo on it and even came past my office late one night while I was writing to discuss it. There was no internal resistance against this. So I was promoted with full support. Then, when the Sunday Times story broke, everything I uncovered was deemed 'innuendo.'"

Now, Amnesty International has been caught engaged in an efffort of scrubbing their website of comments in support of Sahgal. Back to the UK Guardian:

for some hours yesterday, negative posts on Amnesty's website were being filtered out.

Few Liberals willing to defend Sahgal

What's been the reaction so far, from the liberal human rights community? Almost universal silence.

Noted author and free speech advocate Salman Rushdie has been virtualy the only exception. He has since come to her defense issuing this statement:

"Amnesty International has done its reputation incalculable damage by allying itself with Moazzam Begg and his group Cageprisoners, and holding them up as human rights advocates. It looks very much as if Amnesty's leadership is suffering from a kind of moral bankruptcy, and has lost the ability to distinguish right from wrong. It has greatly compounded its error by suspending the redoubtable Gita Sahgal for the crime of going public with her concerns. Gita Sahgal is a woman of immense integrity and distinction and I am personally grateful to her for the courageous stands she made at the time of the Khomeini fatwa against The Satanic Verses, as a leading member of the groups Southall Black Sisters and Women Against Fundamentalism. It is people like Gita Sahgal who are the true voices of the human rights movement; Amnesty and Begg have revealed, by their statements and actions, that they deserve our contempt."

Christopher Hitchens has strongly denounced Amnesty:

It’s now incumbent on any member who takes the original charter seriously to withdraw funding until Begg is cut loose to run his own beautiful organization and until Sahgal has been reinstated.

But besides Hitchens and Rushdie there has been little if any comment by the big players on the International Left, and nothing but deafening silence by American Liberals.

Besides the two quixotic writers, the only ones so far coming to Sahgal's defense are Human Rights advocates on the Right.

The Right consistently Pro-Human Rights

South London blogger Bob Brockley, who regularly rants against Jew-haters and Stalinists in the UK wrote:

Defend Gita Sahgal!

A courageous feminist sacked for blowing the whistle on Amnesty's relationship with the Moazzam Begg's Islamist front...

In the US, conservative columnist Mona Charen has written in World, "Rights group left its own out in cold":

Amnesty International has been a handmaiden of the left for as long as I can remember. Founded in 1961 to support prisoners of conscience, it has managed since then to ignore the most brutal regimes and to aim its fire at the West and particularly at the United States. This week, Amnesty has come in for some (much overdue) criticism — but not nearly so much as it deserves.

Amnesty has a great many celebrity supporters, particularly in Hollywood, and in the music industry. They include the likes of Bono, Sinead O'Connor, Al Pacino, Bruce Springsteen, Chevy Chase, Jennifer Lopez, Christina Aguillera, Joaquin Phoenix, Kate Bush, Michael Stipe, Nicolas Cage, John Cleese, Sting, and Yoko Ono.

To date, not a single one of them has issued any statements in support of Gita Sahgal.

Like another Euro-liberal turned libertarian human rights advocate Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sahgal may soon find that her real friends and allies both in the UK and USA, are on the libertarian and conservative Right.

Some Light Reading [Imagecache]

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No one likes getting stuck in traffic, but some roadblocks are better than others. A few of the best: an exceptionally cute string of ducklings; an ice cream truck with a flat tire; a stunning spread of 800 LED-equipped books.

Earlier this week, the books blocked traffic on Water Street in Brooklyn, New York. They were installed by the Spanish design team Luzinterruptus to promote reading, though I'd imagine in reality they just promoted a lot of confused gawking.

The designers explained:

we want literature to seize the streets and become the conqueror of public spaces, freely offering to those who walk by a space free of traffic which for a few hours of the night will succumb to the modest power of the written word.

The line between enticing people to read and forcing them to do so by physically impeding their travel is pretty thin here, but the idea is pretty spectacular nonetheless. [Designboom]


Shaundra Daily

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At 31 years old Shaundra Bryant Daily has already made an impact on the lives of young girls around the world. Born in Nashville, TN, Daily received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Florida State University (2001), a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Florida A&M (2003), S.M. in Media

How Much Will It Really Cost to Cancel Constellation?

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NASA's tough mission: Dismantling Constellation, Orlando Sentinel

"Many of the deals are called "undefinitized contracts," meaning that the terms, conditions -- and price -- had not been set before NASA ordered the work to start. That means the agency will need to negotiate a buyout with the contractor -- and that can be a long and painful process, according to government officials familiar with the cancellation process. "It can be messy, and it's going to take at least a year after the project is closed to get a final price tag assigned to many of these contracts," said one congressional investigator not authorized to talk publicly about his work."

NASA: Constellation Program Cost and Schedule Will Remain Uncertain Until a Sound Business Case Is Established , GAO, August 2009

"Undefinitized contract actions authorize contractors to begin work before reaching a final agreement on contract terms. By allowing undefinitized contract actions to continue for extended periods, NASA loses its ability to monitor contractor performance because the cost reports are not useful for evaluating the contractor's performance or for projecting the remaining cost of the work under contract. With a current, valid baseline, the reports would indicate when cost or schedule thresholds had been exceeded, and NASA could then require the contractor to explain the reasons for the variances and to identify and take appropriate corrective actions. Yet, NASA allowed high-value modifications to the Constellation contracts to remain undefinitized for extended periods, in one instance, more than 13 months."

Thin Latex Metamaterials Are the Noise Cancelling Tech of the Future [NoiseCanceling]

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If you want peace and quiet, current technologies require a compromise: settle for thick, unsightly foam or use thinner panels that don't block bass. A new technology developed in Hong Kong, however, is both super thin and super effective.

The researchers at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Kowloon have made their noise-canceling strides with the simplest of materials: latex and plastic.

The latex is stretched over a grid of plastic squares that's only 3mm thick, with a small piece of plastic in the middle of each square. Depending on the weight of that plastic button, the panel can be tuned to cancel out a different frequency. Five of these panels stacked together effectively canceled 70 to 550 hertz and was still only as thick as a ceramic tile.

Technological progress results in a lot of noise—think stereos, airplanes, trucks, and the rest—so it's good to hear that some researchers are hard at work developing technologies that offer an increasingly rare commodity: silence. [PopSci]