Archive for December, 2008


Links For Brains: 12/2/2008

December 2nd, 2008 by Oskar Kennedy

I’m getting back on the horse, people. Let’s hope it’s only mostly dead.

  • AC Grayling questions the supposed biological origin for belief in a supreme being. (I have evidence for an innate belief in a Supreme Taco, but it’s mostly anecdotal.)
  • Health economists argue that funding for the fight against HIV/AIDS is overshadowing more immediate health crises. (Note to deniers; nowhere in this debate is there any question as to the cause of AIDS. Not that this will stop their spin.)
  • New Humanist kicks off its advent podcast series, featuring alternative figureheads for your winter celebration. (Putting some actual reason into the season, for once.)
  • President Bush tries to pad his legacy by butchering federal environmental protections, and making it harder to regulate workplace exposure to toxic chemicals. (It won’t matter that the air’s not fit to breath, because you’ll have to carry your own canister on your motorized wheelchair. Unless you’ve had a cushy office job for the last eight years.)
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Jenny McCarthy Causes Autism

December 2nd, 2008 by Oskar Kennedy

I’ve uncovered the dark secret that the anti-vaxxers don’t want you to know. I have discovered the true cause of increased diagnosis of autism in children. Autism isn’t caused by a long-disused preservative with no significant toxicity, or a conspiracy to slowly poison generations of children with surreptitious injections of harmful chemicals.

Autism is caused by exposure to Jenny McCarthy.

If you’re skeptical, it’s important to keep one thing in mind. The evidence supporting the conclusion that autism is caused by Jenny McCarthy is just as strong as the evidence linking autism to vaccines. Let’s start with some basic statistics.

Studies in the United States and the UK show that the rate of autism diagnosis has increased as much as 20% per year since the early 90s. They conclude that this is most likely caused by a combination of increased awareness, and reclassification of symptoms that had previously been seen as indicators of other conditions.

But here’s something that the investigators missed. Jenny McCarthy’s entertainment career began in 1993, when she landed a cover shoot in Playboy. Since then, she’s managed to sustain herself as a C-list celebrity, actress and, most recently, author of parenting books.

During the time that Jenny McCarthy has captured some fraction of the public’s attention, rates of autism diagnosis have continued to climb. Despite millions of dollars and thousands of hours of research, more and more parents every year are faced with the sad news that their child has been diagnosed with this dreaded, and incurable, developmental disorder.

Parents of children who have been diagnosed with autism are confused, frightened and overwhelmed. They can’t understand what is happening, and why it is happening to their families. McCarthy has worked hard to convince these desperate, vulnerable parents that there is a simple explanation for an otherwise inscrutable illness.

McCarthy’s determined activism is unsurprising. What better way could there be to shift attention from her own terrible secret than making impassioned accusations about dangerous vaccine conspiracies? And to continue to doggedly reiterate the same claims, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?

Science has consistently shown that McCarthy’s claims about the dangers of vaccines are incorrect, and based on misinformation and misunderstanding about the manufacture, application and composition of vaccines. The claims that she makes are provably false, yet she clings to them with the resolve of a small child, determined to cast blame for breaking the family cookie jar on an absent sibling.

The most obvious evidence? McCarthy’s son is himself autistic! Who, aside from Jim Carrey, has had more sustained, intimate contact with McCarthy than the son whose diagnosis is the basis for her passionate autism advocacy? Her rate of giving birth to autistic children is, to date, 100%. Clearly, McCarthy has something to hide, and she’s attempting to conceal it in plain sight by loudly blaming modern medicine for something that she is powerless to control.

But she couldn’t suppress the truth forever. As her claims about vaccines become less and less supportable, the pattern becomes more obvious, until the conclusion is inescapable. A generation of parents has been exposed to McCarthy’s television shows, movies and books. Now, their children are paying the price.

Although the exact mechanism is unclear, there can be no doubt that increased exposure of the population to Jenny McCarthy has corresponded with a sharp rise in the diagnosis of autism. For the good of the children and their families, Ms. McCarthy, it’s time to retire from the public eye. Or, alternatively, come up with some evidence, any evidence, showing that vaccines are more likely to cause autism than you are. When you find it, I’m sure Oprah will be waiting to broadcast it.

EDIT: See the excellent new site Stop Jenny McCarthy for more on Jenny McCarthy and her persistent campaign of disinformation.

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Links For Brains: 12/3/2008

December 3rd, 2008 by Oskar Kennedy
  • Phil Plait stops talking about his book long enough to go all weepy during a visit to the Mt. Wilson Observatory. (Srsly pretty moving, and required reading for folks who think you can’t have awe and wonder without believing in an invisible sky grandpa.)
  • More Bushenanigans: administration proposes rule allowing healthcare providers to impose their beliefs on patients. (In other news, I am now searching for a Rastafarian doctor, who refuses to prescribe anything but the kindest bud.)
  • Johann Hari discusses the back-of-the-closet origins of the rampant homophobia in hip-hop. (Who knew that rappers and republicans had so much in common?)
  • Andy Rooney fears the future. (Via Ectoplasmosis, one of the most interesting blogs you’ve never heard of.
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Science Debunks the “Voiceprint”

December 4th, 2008 by Oskar Kennedy

In this era of forensic science procedural dramas, we’ve all seen some variation on this scene. The Peanut Butter Killer has struck again. Bodies are showing up all over the greater Metroville area; the victims are suffocated, their mouths filled with cheap, store brand peanut butter.

Rod Beardly is a grizzled detective, a 17-year veteran of the Metroville PD. He is convinced that the killer is Johnny Broomwielder, the impossibly charismatic janitor at Metroville High. Detectives interrogate Broomwielder on tape for hours, and he answers question after question in his low, growly baritone. The PBK is clever, however, and the DA says that lack of forensic evidence at the scene makes an indictment impossible.

After several months, there is a huge break in the case. A pretty blond woman, Lisa Loveinterest, is attacked by the PBK. Lisa is allergic to peanut butter; her wild coughing and flailing spooks the killer, and Lisa is able to escape. Detective Beardly and his partner, Stu Sidekick, interview Lisa in the hospital. Lisa is understandably upset. Although she did not get a clear look at her attacker’s face, she vividly remembers his high, squeaky voice.

The detectives leave dissatisfied. Lisa’s description of the attacker’s voice seems to clearly rule out their prime suspect. A few days later, they’re casting about for new leads when Lisa calls. It turns out that she had just called home to leave a message for herself when she was attacked. Her phone was still active, and her answering machine has recorded the voice of the killer.

Cut to a dimly lit room, with shiny, stainless steel surfaces, huge computer screens, and vaguely scientific looking equipment. On one of the screens, there are two brightly colored squiggles. The detectives are talking to Larry Labtech, who explains (in a very expositionary tone) that the green squiggle is a digitized picture of Johnny Broomwielder’s sexy snarl, while the red squiggle represents the killer’s childlike squealing. Labtech taps a couple of random keys, and the squiggles merge together. They overlap perfectly. This voiceprint proves that Johnny Broomweilder is the Peanut Butter Killer.

The detectives charge over to Metroville High, where they interrupt Broomweilder in the act of stuffing peanut butter into the mouth of an unconscious vice principal. Stu is wounded in the struggle, but they manage to bring Broomweilder down. Lisa and Beardly later fall in love and get married, and their kids always get baloney sandwiches in their school lunches.

It’s a satisfying story. Sadly, as with so much in Hollywood, it’s largely fantasy.

As portrayed in popular entertainment, voiceprinting is on the order of DNA. Every individual has a unique pattern buried in the sound of their voice. No matter how hard the speaker tries to disguise his voice, the computer will, to mix sensory metaphors, sniff it out.

As Discovery News is reporting, this turns out to be a drastic overstatement of the evidentiary value of computerized voice analysis. Each voice isn’t unique in the same way that fingerprints are. The sounds that speech is composed of overlap in individuals. In addition, physiological effects, such as fatigue or illness, and environmental factors like ambient noise or recording quality can all change the voice significantly.

Certain components of speech, like the pronunciation of some consonants, can be isolated and identified, but this isn’t enough to single out an individual. At best, it’s useful for eliminating suspects who don’t exhibit certain hard to disguise speech habits.

So put voiceprinting, along with crystal clear enhanced photos and instantaneous DNA matches, on the list of investigatory tools that don’t quite live up to their Hollywood hype. And remember that, to solve a serious (fictional) crime in under an hour, you’ll have to take some license with real world forensic tech.

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Waldorf’s Week-in-Review

December 6th, 2008 by Waldorf Van Buren

For the week of November 30th, 2008.  Not to be confused with Waldorf’s Weekly World News. . .

(+ +) To PROGRESS! A company has adopted a new technology enabling them to crank out photovoltaic cells cheaper and faster, putting them on track to be competitive with fossil-fuels for generating electricity by 2010. 2010? That’s 13 months away at the earliest!

(+ + +) Another reason to move to Hawaii, as if the lure of fresh tropical fruit, whales aplenty, and fantastically gorgeous weather weren’t enough. (I’d brave tsunami’s and volcanic eruptions and dengue fever for that!) Hawaii has been selected as a spot to test out electric cars and recharging stations. I say hell yes to that – get the petrol off the islands! Sure, to recharge the batteries the cars are plugged into a grid fueled by coal or oil, but this is surely a positive step!

(+ +) To PROGRESS! Walter Fiers is working on a universal flu vaccine that targets a specific protein that remains unchanged no matter the mutant variant of the virus. Let’s do this. If anything, I fear Stephen King’s vision coming true, mainly because the three options he lays out, a) Las Vegas, b) Colorado, or c) gagging on your own snot while infected with Captain Tripps, are not appealing in the least. Why, yes, I would be a “germophobe,” if the fear wasn’t irrational.

(EVEN) To the Dept. of Justice. It’s nice to see that these schmoes are not above the law. However, while you’re criminalizing these employees of Blackwater USA, why not take a look into the policies of Blackwater, as well as other “contractors” paid for “security” operations by the US government?

I’ve been trying to keep my week-in-review as positive as possible — there is a reason I didn’t discuss the economy, any bailouts, Bush, etc. . .

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