Dearest Hitch,

Get well (don't worry, I won't pray for you).

Prohibition Era

(h/t Sully)

Autism and Bio-Fraud

This New Scientist article considering public reactions to autism diagnoses is one of the best overviews I've yet read. It focuses briefly on the dissonance of Anti-Vaxer parents, who blame vaccines and pharmaceutical companies for their child's autism, having seemingly little reservation about injecting their children with dangerous chelation chemicals:

The GFCF diet appears positively benign, however, beside some of the other biomed options on offer. Perhaps the most infamous is chelation therapy, promoted by those who say autism is caused by mercury from vaccines, or sometimes other heavy metals, such as lead from the environment. Chelation involves injecting a drug such as dimercaptosuccinic acid, or DMSA, which flushes heavy metals from the body - it is usually used only to treat heavy metal poisoning. Side effects can include temporary damage to the liver and bone marrow.

A parent wondering whether to try this drastic treatment may struggle to separate fact from fiction. Doctor's Data, a private lab based in St. Charles, Illinois, sells a test that parents can use to measure the levels of heavy metals in their child's urine. But an investigation by the medical website Quackwatch found that the Doctor's Data test gave results that were misleadingly high. Doctor's Data did not reply to a request from New Scientist for comment.

Another risky therapy is Lupron, a drug that lowers testosterone levels in men and oestrogen in women, and is sometimes used to delay puberty in children if it starts very early. The use of Lupron in autism is promoted by Mark Geier and David Geier, a father-and-son doctor team based in Rockville, Maryland, who say that the hormonal changes induced by the drug help protect the body against the toxic effects of mercury. Most doctors say there is no science to back up this claim, and that in older children the treatment may undesirably delay the onset of puberty.

Read the full article.

The Trees - Philip Larkin

Pakistani Freedom of Expression, or Not

Compare the Crazy

God will have to do it if the Dutch can't... the Dutch, who are "known for dykes and cleaning up water:"

Weddings and Beheadings

bravo

Pacific Star II from Colin Rich on Vimeo.
"This is the second trip of my home made high altitude weather balloon photography project, Pacific Star.  The balloon was launched at 5:37pm (PST) from Oxnard, CA and reached an altitude of 125,000 feet snapping photos and recording video along the way.  The balloon burst, the parachute deployed, and the payload floated down for 35 minutes, landing near an old olive orchard Northeast of Santa Paula."

Dvorak - New World Symphony

  4th Movement, Herbert Von Karajan

Seconded

Clive Crook over at the Atlantic, puts similar thoughts to words far more mildly than I would:

The British media are mightily offended over what they see as anti-British rhetoric in the administration's attacks on BP. My feeling is that the specifically anti-UK element in the U.S. reaction to the oil spill has so far been impressively slight--and far smaller than would be the anti-US reaction in Britain if the case were reversed. Americans seem no angrier with BP than they would be with one of their own oil companies. I don't think they care one way or the other that the firm is British.

Even if this counterfactual didn't happen off of the British coast, but rather involved an American oil company spilling oil on American shores, you can imagine the mood on BBC News: "American oil company destroys environment, spill due to lax regulations, bad corporate management, when will they learn?"

Of course, I can't prove the hypothetical, but in the first weeks of the spill I noticed how muted British news had been over the BP-spill matter (yes, I watch it often).  So I am furious - yes, let me repeat that- furious when I see the British media canting obscenely about the victimization of a UK company.  An outrage, made more corrosive by the fact that the American mood has been so mature (in this case) regarding where to lay blame for the gusher (it's not really a 'spill' anymore, is it?). 

They should stop whining.  Now.  People will get mad, closest ally or not.

Ludovico Einaudi

On Luddism... Stop it.

Steven Pinker on those who decry modern technology - NYTimes:

such panics often fail basic reality checks. When comic books were accused of turning juveniles into delinquents in the 1950s, crime was falling to record lows, just as the denunciations of video games in the 1990s coincided with the great American crime decline. The decades of television, transistor radios and rock videos were also decades in which I.Q. scores rose continuously.

For a reality check today, take the state of science, which demands high levels of brainwork and is measured by clear benchmarks of discovery. These days scientists are never far from their e-mail, rarely touch paper and cannot lecture without PowerPoint. If electronic media were hazardous to intelligence, the quality of science would be plummeting. Yet discoveries are multiplying like fruit flies, and progress is dizzying. Other activities in the life of the mind, like philosophy, history and cultural criticism, are likewise flourishing, as anyone who has lost a morning of work to the Web site Arts & Letters Daily can attest.

Life Is Beautiful

From National Geographic:  Baobab Trees, Tanzania.

BP HQ

Catholiculous

Ed Brayton dismembers the latest Catholic nonsense.  The way I read it, if heterosexual couples have sex outside of marriage they should also be fired from their jobs.

Conciousness, Complex Cognition, and Language

A great panel video from Lawrence Krauss' Origins Initiative, including Roger Bingham, Steven Pinker, Patricia Churchland, Robert Seyfarth, Jerrold Seigel, and Terrence Sejnowski.

Stephen Hawking at World Science Festival

When Sawyer asked if there was a way to reconcile religion and science, Hawking said, "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works." -ABC News


(h/t D.J. Grothe)

Second the Motion

Beinart seconds:

The second thing I like about Haber’s proposal is that it would put the anti-blockade activists to the test. Their empathy for the people of Gaza is commendable. I wish it would rub off on the Israeli government’s American defenders, who blithely declare that the people of Gaza are not starving, as if they would for one day tolerate the collective punishment of a population of Jews, no matter who those Jews had voted for. What is less clear, however, is the activists’ empathy for the people of Israel. Were activists in Ireland and Malaysia and Turkey to take up Shalit’s cause, it would embarrass Hamas to no end. Hamas would likely reply that it cannot release Shalit unless Israel releases the Palestinians prisoners it holds, and perhaps Israel should release some of them. But the activists could answer that there is no justification for deliberately harming the innocent. That, after all, is what they say about Israel’s blockade. If you are for ending the collective punishment of Gaza (which is not the same as trying to prevent Hamas from acquiring weapons) regardless of whether Shalit is released, as I am, you should also be for releasing Shalit, regardless of whether the blockade ends or Palestinian prisoners are freed. 

Decreasing Room For Civil Dissent?

 "We are trying to express our solidarity with the activists and with the people of Gaza by maintaining a presence at the port," said Inna Michaeli, one of about 100 left-wing Israeli activists and coordinator with the Coalition of Women for Peace, on Monday. "But we are being stopped by the police and by the army. They have turned our country into a military zone."

Which Brain Goes To Heaven?

Rama, I could hug you.

Full Talk Here (Recommended)

On the Tactics of Yahoos

Max Blumenthal exposes a pernicious Israeli accusation.

On Being Informed of McCain's VP Pick

Oh, thank you BuzzFeed.  Subtitles Anyone?  (h/t MR)

Beinart On Blockade

    "the guilt lies with the Israeli leaders who oversee the Gaza embargo, and with Israel’s American supporters, who have averted their eyes. Yesterday’s events are the most dramatic example yet of why the epidemic of not watching must end.   
    The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations greeted news of the flotilla disaster by repeating a common “pro-Israel” talking point: that Israel only blockades Gaza to prevent Hamas from building rockets that might kill Israeli citizens. If only that were true. In reality, the embargo has a broader and more sinister purpose: to impoverish the people of Gaza, and thus turn them against Hamas. As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported, the Israeli officials in charge of the embargo adhere to what they call a policy of “no prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis.” In other words, the embargo must be tight enough to keep the people of Gaza miserable, but not so tight that they starve.
    This explains why Israel prevents Gazans from importing, among other things, cilantro, sage, jam, chocolate, French fries, dried fruit, fabrics, notebooks, empty flowerpots and toys, none of which are particularly useful in building Kassam rockets. It’s why Israel bans virtually all exports from Gaza, a policy that has helped to destroy the Strip’s agriculture, contributed to the closing of some 95 percent of its factories, and left more 80 percent of its population dependent on food aid. It’s why Gaza’s fishermen are not allowed to travel more than three miles from the coast, which dramatically reduces their catch. And it’s why Israel prevents Gazan students from studying in the West Bank, a policy recently denounced by 10 winners of the prestigious Israel Prize. There’s a name for all this: collective punishment.
     Israel does not deserve all the blame for Gaza’s impoverishment. Gaza’s other neighbor, Egypt, imposes an embargo of its own, though less effectively. And Hamas has been known to confiscate goods meant for Gaza’s poor. But none of that excuses Israel’s role in keeping Gaza destitute."  More From Peter Beinart at the Daily Beast.

Your Daily Bread... Or Not

The following is a bit of graphic insight into the realities of the Israeli blockade on Gaza.  Photo from the Economist:

This has little to do with the entry of weapons, and much more to do with 'Fuck You.'

It's about inflicting pain on all residents of Gaza for the misfortune of being ruled by Hamas.  What does this kind of ridiculous deprivation get Hamas?  More support.  And I suspect that may be how Bibi's government wants it (for the moment at least).  (h/t Andrew Sullivan)