Month: September 2009

Art in the Time of Obama

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Iowahawk is open to grant proposals. Couldn’t our site use that generous slush fund – considering some of us may have lost money waiting for Ronnie Earle to give up (of course betting on that is probably sufficiently stupid so anyone who lost deserves it) and the Iowatrade on Delay to pay out?

Aren’t we up to a little performance art – say a couple of posts done in Art Deco with a ridiculous amount of capitalization – or perhaps an iconic figure (what one you ask – ah, obviously you haven’t been paying attention) in the middle of one of Jonathan’s wide blue horizons. And if we can’t think up lyrics for kindergarteners, well, we might check to see if we haven’t checked out. (Not that checking out is necessarily an inappropriate reaction to current events.)

Acorn Lawsuit Thread

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Acorn has filed suit against the young filmmakers, who took video of Acorn employees helping them with plans on setting up whorehouses for minors. They have also sued Breitbart for distributing the video.

There is a very intersting comment thread at Volokh for those interested in the legal aspects of this case.

I am just praying that this goes to discovery.

Quote of the Day

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One factor complicating a nuclear terrorist attack is the need for the aggressor to maintain command and control over their weapon at all times. Letting a nuke out of sight of a terrorist leadership cell is the supreme act of faith in the attacking cell. The nuke can be turned against them in a leadership struggle; diverted for sale or used to extort vast amounts of money. Fanatics can seize them to use against another faction. Much terrorist violence in the world is faction-on-faction. They can even be intercepted and made to blow up in their own faces. Unless used immediately nukes must be secured in a heavily guarded, hard to conceal place. If used immediately they cannot be stockpiled into a decisive amount. Missile delivery systems were ideal solutions to all the problems of command and control problem. That is why North Korea and Iran sought a missile capability immediately. Anti missiles defenses were therefore an immense discouragement against nuclear terrorism in their own right.
 
The most likely reason for Russia’s objections to US missile defense is not that it degrades their vast and unstoppable arsenal, which remains effective in any case, but it reduces the effectiveness of sock puppet proxies who threaten the US. Russia is not about to threaten the US directly. But wouldn’t it be convenient if others would? And wouldn’t it be even more convenient if the US could not defend against them.

–Richard Fernandez

Out of the Woodwork

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My friend Janiece seems to attract the whackos. This time it is the alternative medicine crowd glomming on to an old post – what is it with these people? Neither they nor Wagner can stand having a piece of criticism out on the Net, even an old one. Do they spend all day vanity Googling? I had completely forgotten about Janiece’s post until the crazies showed up again months later.

One of the crazies showed up with “data” from the Gerson Institute, and being the truth seeker that she is, Janiece responded:

I’m not a doctor, but I do understand the scientific method, and this is not a clinical trial or a well constructed study. What I will concede is that the information was interesting enough to me as a layman that I think further study by qualified professionals wouldn’t be uncalled for.

Janiece is quite kind in her willingness to be open minded. This is not a character flaw*, because she also wanted to test the hypothesis provided – this is precisely what internalizing and living the scientific method as an heir of the Enlightenment and citizen of the modern world entails. But then, Janiece is my friend for many reasons, and this is one of them.

I do have a little bit of experience with clinical trial design, however, although (let me be very clear, here) I am not an MD. There are, however, methodological flaws in the study that negate even the glimmer of interest that Janiece detected – ones that do not require a statistician or an MD to find, though I will concede that the layman will need some specialized bits of information to parse the full impact on the claims made by the alt-med whackos.

There are so many red flags for quackery in that article it is hard to know where to begin.

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