Numerical idiocy, or What's 33% between friends?

Normally I respect Wired, but this is stupid.

In the article with the really long title, 2-Billion-Year-Old Fossils May Be Earliest Known Multicellular Life, Brandon Keim mentions Grypania spiralis, the oldest known "truly multicellular organism". Then he says that the newly discovered fossil organism lived at "roughly the same time". Apparently Brandon thinks that 1.4 billion years and 2.1 billion years are roughly the same. That makes Danny Devito roughly the same height as Yao Ming. How could he write that?

The world darkens: Martin Gardner is no more

Martin Gardner has died. Author of many books on topics as varied as non-Euclidean geometry and Alice in Wonderland, Gardner may be best-known for his 35-year(!) tenure as columnist at Scientific American.

To me, he's the writer of Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, a brilliant book which helped create the modern skeptical movement. I certainly liked a great many of his other works, but Fads and Fallacies changed not just my life, but many lives.

In Sagan's metaphor, science is a candle in the dark. With the end of Martin Gardner's life, the darkness curls closer to us all, as the candle dims. It's up to all of us to burn a bit brighter in his memory, to hold it at bay.

Andrew Wakefield: Vaccines and Autism in a Comic

I'm a fan of both comics and the truth. Thus, I'm automatically going to like a comic that tells the truth about Andrew Wakefield, who was instrumental in creating the nonsensical "vaccines cause autism" scare that continues to this day. As Daryl Cunningham documents, the seminal paper that claimed to demonstrate this link was at best worthless and at worst fraudulent.

It's also depressing how bad the reporting of the issue was, especially in England (though many US journalists also embarassed themselves).

Read the comic and make up your own mind.

An open letter to Research In Motion

Research In Motion (RIM) is the maker of BlackBerries.

I've been using a BlackBerry Curve smartphone for years now. On the whole I'm pretty happy with it, but three years old is pretty old for a mobile phone and I expect I'll need to replace it soon. If only for reasons of inertia, I'd like to stick to a BlackBerry. Right now it looks like I won't be able to.

I'm not a kid, so tiny screens are a problem for me. Also, I use the device much more as a web browser and for local applications than as an actual telephone. (I actually wrote an article about using it as a media player.) With my imperfect vision, I'd really like a big, bright screen, preferable wide enough to display text in 80 columns.

RIM makes none.

My ideal smartphone would have a "landscape" format screen, with a physical keyboard that can be pulled out. There are several phones that have this type of setup, such as the MyTouch 3G Slide from T-Mobile.


There are plenty of other phones with this form factor, such as the HTC TouchPro. I have no idea why RIM doesn't make a phone with this popular form factor. Or any really widescreen phone, for that matter. Strikes me as stupid.

Why am I writing this as an open letter? Because RIM goes to great lengths to avoid communicating with its end-users. This is the only (remote) chance I have to tell the people who make a line of phones I actually like, that unless they quickly make the phone I want they'll be losing my business.

There are rumors of a new BB with most of what I want ... exclusive to a carrier I won't use, Sprint. Great.

So, RIM, if you're listening: this year may be your last chance to keep me as a customer.

Deepak Chopra: multiple murderer?

Deepak Chopra, quack antiscience doctor, claims to have caused the recent Baja earthquake by meditating on destruction.

I think that he should be charged with witchcraft and murder, so he's forced to admit in court that he does not really have magical powers.

Thanks to Dr. Steven Novella for pointing out this story.