Nitpicking: the blog

Cancer Institute Brags About Therapy That Doesn't Actually Exist Yet

2012-01-25T00:11:00.004-05:00

The Roswell Park Cancer Institute recently issued this.

Wow, that press release overpromises. They claim "The new ... vaccine is expected to show great promise in patients with bladder, brain, breast, esophageal, gastrointestinal, hepatocellular, kidney, lung, melanoma, ovarian, prostate, sarcoma and uterine tumors."

Notice that they're claiming its effectiveness against many utterly dissimilar tumor types ... and note the key phrase "is expected to show great promise ..." It doesn't even show promise yet, it's just expected to eventually be promising. Did they just press-release the start of a research program, before a single experiment is even conducted?

I'm especially interested in the use of a one person anecdote, the story of Christine Sable. Ms. Sable didn't even receive the vaccine this release is touting, but the "story" implies that her not experiencing recurrence of her cancer demonstrates its effectiveness. The unstated premise is that all cancer vaccines are the same, but if I state it baldly like that, it's obviously stupid. In any case, by the release's own testimony she had about a 25% chance of no recurrence. With a sample size of one (given) the result is literally of no value in determining the effectiveness of the treatment.

They call it a "story" on their web page, either meaning to imply that it's coverage by an outside news source, or offering it as a "drop-in" story for cheap newspapers/magazines/web sites to use without making it clear it's a press release.

In the opinion of the author, the whole exercise is misleading and unethical and RPCI should be embarrassed.

What Makes My Spare Time Cool

2011-12-08T23:27:00.002-05:00

So one reason this blog doesn't get updated so much: I work for I-CON. By now most people have heard of "cons". However, people may mistake all cons for something like San Diego ComicCon, or its New York equivalent, or Dragoncon in Atlanta.

All of those are fine events that bring many people great pleasure, but they're different from I-CON because they're for-profit businesses. We're a 100% volunteer organization. We have never paid anyone a salary in our 30+ year history. We do it because we find it satisfying and worthwhile.

Others may associate us with medium-specific or genre-specific things like Anime Next or Wicked Faire. Again, these are very cool events and I'm by no means criticizing them, but we're different. We are not specific. I-CON 31 will include:

Media (TV and movies)
Authors (written fiction and non-fiction)
Comics
Gaming
Science and technology
Anime
Medieval and other historical recreations
Anthropomorphics
Performances
More

This isn't adding a single game room to a traditional SF convention like Philcon, either. Our gaming, anime, or authors content would make small to medium-sized conventions by themselves.

(Again, no criticism of Philcon meant. I have been a speaker there several times and really enjoyed it.)

What I-CON gives, you, more than any other volunteer-run convention I'm aware of, is variety. You can find something for almost anyone. It's the perfect convention for families, in a way. One person can talk to famous scientists while another gets an autograph from the seventh Doctor , a third is playing poker, and the fourth watches anime music videos, and that's just the first couple of hours.

You can follow I-CON at the web site above (where you can join our non-spammy mailing list), or:

http://iconsf.posterous.com
http://iconsf.tumblr.com/
iconscifi on Facebook
I_ConSF on Twitter

One unique thing our crack Marketing team has put together: an online newspaper http://paper.li/I_ConSF/1312115140

I hope to see you at I-CON!

Carl Fink
I-CON 31 Assistant Event Chair

Pushing the limits of nitpicking

2011-11-07T21:33:00.004-05:00

So, I was reading the quite funny Engineering Trivia page at the RF Cafe. At this writing, one item there reads, "If a passenger car with a stationary weight of 1000 kg (220 lbs) is accelerated from rest to 60 km per hour (40 mph), it gains something like the weight of a pinhead in the process. If the car could be made to travel at 100 times the velocity of sound (100 X 1200 km per hour) it would become about 100 kg heavier, and at 250,000 km per hour its weigh would be doubled. Traveling at 0.999% of the velocity of light, the car would weigh 2,000 times its stationary weight, and would plough deep furrows in the surface of the road."

And I immediately wrote to the owner of the RF Cafe, pointing out that this is totally wrong. In particular, at 250,000 km/hr (69 km/sec), the car's mass would actually increase by only a fraction of 1%, not double. The equation for mass increase with velocity is:

Where "C" is the speed of light in a vacuum, approximately 300,000 km/sec; V is the velocity of the mass, M1 is its rest mass, and M2 its relativistically adjusted mass.

So, in a sort of pinnacle of the nitpicking arts ... I just nitpicked relativistic calculations.

OK, clearly the original writer meant to say "250,000 km/SECOND", not hour, but that's why it's nitpicking.

Viper: how sharper than a ...

2011-10-30T20:20:00.004-04:00

I recently bought a Viper remote start/keyless entry system for my car. I have problems with it, so I thought I'd contact Viper to see if they have solutions.

Here is their contact page :

(click to expand)

Notice what's missing? There is no way to contact them on their "Contact Us" page. So that thing in the mission statement about "receive a level of support that exceeds your expectations" apparently means "You should expect less than no support from us."

I strongly do not recommend Viper systems just on this basis. Maybe later I'll do another entry on the terrible design of their key fob.

Robots in marketing

2011-09-21T21:31:00.002-04:00

So I just reserved a room for Albacon. I won't be staying at the con hotel. Instead I chose to save $30/night by staying at the Days Inn next door. I booked OK, and then a "chat" window appeared, with "Teresa" (if I remember right) offering to tell me how I could get money if I typed "Hi" into the window.

I typed "Hi" and then "So you're a chatbot" into the window which immediately closed. Apparently Days Inn (Wyndham Hotel Group) is using chatbots for marketing and doesn't like it when you figure that out.

Does anyone else find that creepy and off-putting?

User Interface Design: Remember the User!

2011-07-08T23:12:00.003-04:00

Lately, as Google forgets their motto and does evil, I've been looking for alternatives, so just now I tried using the Rand McNally map site. I wanted to find out where Valley Stream, New York is in relation to me by looking at it on a map.
Rand won't let me. I must enter a full address in order to get a map.

To the Rand McCally "designers", this question: why?

Does nobody TEST these sites?

2011-06-02T20:07:00.003-04:00

So today an image search led me to a Canadian (Prince Edward Island) educational web site. I was looking for a good public domain image of a hydroelectric plant and dam.

This is aimed at fairly young kids, so there's a photo of a reservoir, a little animated clip art GIF of a dam ... then the third image is of a wind turbine. The page is, I must emphasize, supposed to be about water power. It's also a really, really bad picture.

That's followed by a 3D model of what I guess is a generator, and then, with the label "End result/diagram of how a dam works." we find ... a diagram of a nuclear power plant. Specifically, a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR).

So was this site created for the educational system of PIE and never actually used, or are their teachers so incompetent they didn't notice these incredibly obvious mistakes, or so timid they didn't report them?

At the top of the page are a set of fairly standard navigational links: "KISH>Grassroots>Electricity". I wanted to find a "Contact Us" page so I could report this nonsense, so I clicked "Grassroots" to move up a level. No luck because the link is to this: "file:///G:/kish/grassroots/grassroots1.htm". Yes, that's right, this navigation link which appears on every page of this whole branch of an official government educational web site links to a local drive mapped on some person's Windows PC.

And nobody noticed either of these mistakes. Does PIE even have schools? Is this all just a bluff?

Fruits de Mer

2011-06-02T01:38:00.006-04:00

At my day job, I was looking to buy some Nova DVDs for a program we're running. I noticed this banner on the Shop PBS site:
Yes, let's "plum" the ocean floor. Throwing stone fruit into the sea is an important part of the scientific process.

Maybe it's especially funny to me because of PBS's and Nova's educational mission.

Ambition vs. Action: Java and Me

2011-05-22T22:43:00.003-04:00

So I have this ambition to learn Java programming.

I've invested some serious money in Java books, but honestly I've never gotten past Chapter 2 of any of the above. Some of them are so old they don't apply to current versions of Java. I have been failing to make the necessary effort for quite a few years now.

I just finished a Java tutorial, and I'm going to dive in again. I pulled out my odd library of unfinished books ... but the newest of them is only 11 years old. Now I have to do research to figure out if it's so obsolete I'm better off ignoring it.

Oh well.

Getting carded

2011-05-01T17:45:00.002-04:00

Maybe it's just me, but I find this stuff hilarious:

Seen at K-Mart: the "MasterCard Card".

Money makes a difference?! Shocking!

2011-04-03T23:30:00.002-04:00

A rare two posts in one day for me.

The Associated Press excitedly reports that if current trends continue, it's possible that people with more money will actually get better medical care than those with less money!

In other news, people in Florida get more sun than people who live in caves.

Weird but not perfect

2011-04-03T23:25:00.002-04:00

I'm a big fan and regular reader of Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird. However, that doesn't mean I can't nitpick it.

In today's column, Chuck writes, "Gen. Than Shwe of Myanmar, leader of Asia's most authoritarian regime ..." Really? Myanmar (Burma) is more authoritarian than North Korea? The Burmese Generals have certainly been brutal rulers, but they haven't starved millions of their own citizens to death that I'm aware of.

This is mostly in the way of an excuse to recommend NOTW, of course. Give it a look.

Everyone makes mistakes, even Snopes

2011-03-19T00:12:00.001-04:00

I just sent this email to the proprietors of snopes.com:

Good evening.

I must admit to being surprised by your recent article on the medical value of honey (http://www.snopes.com/medical/homecure/honey.asp). It's surprisingly credulous for the authors of such a critical-thinking minded site.

You mention "folklore and traditional medicine" as if these somehow convey real value. Do you also favor other traditional remedies like burying people in swamps and bloodletting?

I was interested in the claims for "Antioxidant effects" since recent actual medicine indicates that dietary antioxidants can be harmful rather than helpful (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=38).

My favorite, though, is the following: "Energy-Enhancing Effects. Honey is an excellent source of readily available carbohydrate, a chief source of quick energy." Your source just claimed that it's healthy because it contains lots of sugar!

You or they also seem to inexplicably think that pollen and royal jelly are honey. That is simply not the case.

You may wish to publish a correction.

Carl Fink

The Nonsense Network: Oprah goes cable

2010-12-24T15:27:00.002-05:00

A letter sent to PBS's On the Media:

I listened with interest to your piece on Oprah Winfrey in the Dec. 17 show. I found myself growing increasingly distressed, though. You spend the entire segment analyzing the business case for her new network and her history of financial success. This is a valid topic, but it's hardly the most important one.

Shouldn't On the Media be considering Ms. Winfrey's habit of promoting the most arrant and dangerous nonsense, pseudoscience likely to literally cause the deaths of her viewers? And isn't that topic highly relevant when she's founding a "wellness" cable network?

Some examples:
- She is giving anti-vaccination activist Jenny McCarthy her own health show. See http://www.jennymccarthybodycount.org and many other sources for information on the damage Ms. McCarthy has already done.

- She promoted the Kim Tinkham's use of "alternative" (read: non-working) therapies for her cancer, almost certainly resulting in Ms. Tinkham's death and probably the deaths of other patients encouraged to skip real medicine for wishful thinking. (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=8745)

- Most ridiculously and frighteningly, she has tacitly endorsed "The Secret", which says that wishful thinking is all you need, that wanting something enough can make that thing happen, via its "Law of Attraction". (http://www.oprah.com/spirit/_75) This is beyond being pseudo-scientific. It is quite literally anti-reality.

So while you do a funny piece on Oprah's finances ... you ignore the fact that she promotes the most arrant of nonsense? Surely that's a valid topic for OTM? She is replacing a SCIENCE NETWORK with her balderdash, and all you can do is joke about shrinking cable audiences?

Respectfully,
Carl Fink
Long Island, NY

Me on stage

2010-11-05T21:37:00.001-04:00

I have been invited to be a Program Participant at Philcon (Cherry Hill, NJ, Nov. 19-21). Come see me on stage, and come say "Hi" a the I-CON party Saturday night.

Questionable Content: The nagging (and other) questions

2010-09-13T22:23:00.004-04:00

I'm a huge fan of the webcomic Questionable Content. There's something irresistible about the combination of soap opera, sometimes raunchy situational humor, weirdness, SF references, puns, and impenetrable music references.

One thing creator Jeph Jacques is famous for is dropping any aspects of the story he doesn't feel like writing about any more. Like all fans, I have my own list of stuff I'd like to see again, and since blogging is all about lists of stuff I personally feel like talking about, I present The Stuff Carl Wishes Would Come Back To Questionable Content:

Deathmole

Marten formed a band with a couple of minor characters (a friend's girlfriend's roommate and her boyfriend) and later added my favorite character, Hannelore. I really wanted to see Hannelore, who has severe social anxiety, go on stage, but when Jeph wrote Natasha out of the comic, Deathmole disappeared. I impatiently await their return.

Faye's Sculpture

Faye dropped out of college before getting her sculpture degree. When she was in a funk, Dora commissioned a sculpture, and Faye produced a small espresso-pooping dinosaur, and was immediately commissioned to create a replica. She was also to be paid $2000. Then the sculpture and money and commission disappeared from the comic. It has only been a few days in-comic, so I still have hopes this story will be continued. If nothing else, Jeph likes to write stories about people spending windfalls.

Dr. Corinne

Faye's and Hannelore's therapist has drifted out of the strip lately, perhaps because both are acting way less crazy. I'd be curious to see her reaction to Hannelore hugging someone and not freaking out.

Lydia

Sven's intern was a perfect foil for him, but she seems to have evaporated. She's a contemporary of Tai's, it would at least be entertaining for them to hook up without realizing the connection.

There are also themes in the story that haven't actually disappeared, but which I like and would love to see more of.

Underpants jokes

Really. I don't know if Jeph realizes how many of his comics deal with monkey underpants, the Underwear Ninja, Dora not wearing underpants, Hanners flashing her underwear, Dora in a thong, Faye's panties with alligators, and Angus' He-Man drawers. It's kind of doubly funny for me since I noticed the trend.

Emergency something at Coffee of Doom

For some reason, Dora has elaborately prepared her coffee shop for all possible contingencies, what with the emergency booze, emergency ice cream, emergency skirt, and so forth.

Weirdness

I miss the over-the-top weirdness the strip used to have, like deathbots threatening the protagonists, or martial arts monks taking Marten hostage. When was the last time they even mentioned Pizza Girl?

One other thing I randomly felt like writing about: there's a theme in QC of odd parents.

Marten

Mom a dominatrix and ex-fetish model, dad gay (engaged to a man) and a nightclub owner.

Dora

Father is world-adventuring photographer.

Faye

Father shot himself in front of her.

Hannelore

Father is a mad scientist, mother an evil industrialist. (Is Hannelore related to the Green family from CRFH!?)

Raven

Parents are both (non-mad) scientists.

Natasha and Wil

Parents are rich. It seems like that Angus' parents are doing OK considering they sent him to a special rich kid prep school.

I'm curious about Marigold's and Penelope's parents. Considering precedent, at least one will be Kim Jong-Il's mistress.

I don't normally psychoanalyze writers, but I do wonder: Jeph makes no secret of being adopted. Does this have something to do with his characters having such a wide variety of interesting parents?

I invite any other QC fans to add to the lists above.

Restaurant Reviews: The New Frontier

2010-08-22T19:07:00.003-04:00

On a recent business trip, I ate in two restaurants and had experiences I thought were worth writing about.

A friend took me to eat at Simeon's in Ithaca, New York. They describe themselves as "an upscale American Bistro" and I think that's accurate. The decor is just what you'd expect from that description: lots of stained wood, found objects on the walls for decor, seating both inside and outdoors on the Ithaca Commons. One thing I liked is that it isn't as dark indoors as some trying-to-be-fancy restaurants. You can actually see your friends, read the menu, and even identify your food by its appearance.

I had the "Red curry seafood" special. It included scallops, oysters, mussels, clams and shrimp in a spicy sauce over basmati rice, with carrots, broccoli, and zucchini. I thought it one of the best restaurant dishes I've had in years. Each form of shellfish was perfectly cooked--the scallops in particular were just on the edge of falling apart on the fork, removed from the pan at the exact moment when they were cooked and before they started to toughen. The sauce was not an authentic Indian one, but it was flavorful without overpowering the tastes of the individual components of the dish, and had heat without tasting of nothing but heat.

If I were searching for something to complain about, I might say that the rice was a bit undercooked, but in reality I really enjoyed the dish. However, I don't know why it was called "red" curry, since the sauce was white.

My friend had the linguine, which he said was a bit bland.

Portions were large, but for about $20 an entree you'd expect that.

Simeon's brags about its selection of alcoholic beverages, but since neither of us drinks I can't comment on that except that the bar looked well-stocked.

Driving back, I stopped for the night in South Abington Township, Pennsylvania and ate at Charlie's Pub and Eatery. (Restaurant appears not to have its own web page, link is to Google's page on it.) It was right next door to the Comfort Inn I stayed at, and the clerk described it as "aspiring to being Friday's." I wish it was.

It seems to be aspiring to being a gastro-pub. Prices are surprisingly high, e.g. $7 for a bowl of soup. I made the mistake of ordering an appetizer and also an entree. Now, I'm not a traditionalist on most matters, but I take the meanings of words seriously. An "appetizer" is by definition something you eat to whet your appetite. A chicken wing appetizer should not include (no kidding) 12 pieces of chicken weighting at least half a pound. That does not make one more hungry. Worse, the buffalo chicken wings were not that good. Two of them seemed to me to have been cooked twice--they were very, very chewy, as if they had sat through two cycles in the fry-o-lator. None of them were "crispy" as advertized, and the sauce was hot rather than spicy. They did include a nice selection of fresh carrots and celery along with it--but the quantity was so large it could have been a crudites appetizer by itself!

My entree also came with a bowl of chicken noodle soup. The broth was flavorful, but the chicken was clearly left over from the previous day's menu and dropped into the soup, being remarkably tough. It also was in two very large chunks, both over an inch long. In my opinion this is too large for a soup, especially when the meat is tough. The dish could have been substantially improved simply by cutting the chicken into smaller pieces.

For a main course I had fish and chips. Again in my opinion, the breading for fish and chips should be thin and crispy. This was thick, soggy, and almost doughy. (The problem may have been exacerbated by the chef's terrible timing, sending my main dish only about three minutes after my enormous appetizer. Fried food shouldn't sit for 10 minutes on the customer's table while he rushes through the previous course.)

The french fries were also uncrispy and in some cases not fully cooked.

I would suggest that Charlie's reposition itself as a less-fancy restaurant and cut both prices and portion sizes. They're located in the middle of a bunch of discount motels, two doors down from the Krispy Kreme and four from the Waffle House. I don't think "mustard-glazed pork chops" and such are the dishes people stopping from the road for the night are looking for.

If you're ever in Ithaca, I strongly recommend Simeon's. I wish I could say the same about Charlies, but in fact I should have eaten at the Waffle House.

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

2010-07-03T00:21:00.004-04:00

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

2010-05-23T22:49:00.002-04:00

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

2010-05-22T21:59:00.003-04:00

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

2010-05-07T22:49:00.003-04:00

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?

2010-04-08T23:23:00.003-04:00

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.

Why I bought this domain

2010-04-02T23:54:00.008-04:00

So why am I nitpicking.com? Because I can't help noticing stupid mistakes when I drive past them--or am stuck in traffic behind them, like this one:

I especially like the fact that they can't spell "Granite", combined with the inability to make the adjective "all" match the number of the noun "kind". Note that "Bathrooms & Kitchens Remodeling" is also wrong.

Nearly up to this standard is a banner seen on an auto-repair shop:

In a shorter message, they only had room for two mistakes, but I also feel they were hurt by having only spelling errors, with no grammar problems.

I'm baaaaack!

2010-03-07T21:34:00.001-05:00

After a long absence, I return to the newstands with an article on Flex programming in the April 2010 Linux Journal.

The rays, redux

2010-01-17T18:41:00.002-05:00

Back in May, 2008 I wrote about some Texans wanting compensation for the "damage" done to them by invisible rays.

The rays are real, mind you. They're also known as "microwaves". They're utterly harmless, but they do exist.

Now some South Africans are demanding monetary recompense for their agony, caused by rays from a nearby microwave tower. As Boing Boing reports, they still want money, even though turning the tower off didn't help their symptoms at all.

What do you do when someone's brain is impervious to facts, anyway?

I'm religious, so I get to kill your children

2010-01-01T20:58:00.003-05:00

Gothamist reports on a family who want their child admitted to a Catholic preschool, but who on religious grounds refuse to vaccinate her.

Let's be clear: if you don't vaccinate your child, it risks her life and health. What makes the school's policy totally correct is, unvaccinated children (and adults) also risk the lives of other people. The thing is, vaccines are not 100% effective. Say a particular flu vaccine is 80% effective in preventing recipients from getting the disease. If 95% of people get the vaccine, the virus cannot spread, because 0.95 x 0.8 = 76% of those exposed are immune[1]. If only 80% get vaccinated, only 64% of the population are immunized and the virus can spread--and kill people, even vaccinated people who fall into the unlucky 20%. Especially vulnerable are the very young and very old--such as the students at St. Margaret School.

Don't vaccinate, kill your neighbors. How very Christian of you, anonymous litigious parents.

[1]The math is somewhat more complicated because survivors of most diseases are immune, and also because flu viruses in particular mutate over time, so a particular vaccine becomes less effective. This is a reasonable overview, however.

Human uniqueness takes another hit

2009-12-15T02:39:00.003-05:00

Remember when humans were the only tool-using animal? I'm old enough that I do. Then we found out that chimps use tools. Oh, and seagulls. And crows.

Well, now we have amazing video of a mollusc using tools. What makes this even more impressive is that Amphioctopus individuals only live for up to 5 years. The individual seen is probably no more than two years old.

I think the only thing stopping the octopods from being the dominant animals on this planet is that parents never meet their offspring (dying after reproduction), which prevents the evolution of culture (in a non-social group like these).

Calf marked with the sign of the cross

2009-12-13T14:04:00.003-05:00

A farmer in Connecticut sees the white cross-shaped marking on his young cow's head as "... maybe a message from up above. I'm not sure. We're still trying to figure that out." I wonder if he's maybe trying to avoid saying something really stupid like "God marked a cross on my cow's head," while still keeping options open to sell the cow for a lot of money to religious nutcases.

The WFSB coverage contains this mysterious paragraph:

Megan Johnson of Sterling said, "Well I wasn't surprised. I wasn't surprised at all because the dairy industry has needed a miracle for a long time and this is it. I think it's divine intervention, personally. I'm in the breeding business and I know about reproduction and genetics and I don't think this could happen again in a million cows."

It's mysterious to me because, who the heck is Megan Johnson and why are you quoting him? The article doesn't say.

Well, I did graduate work in zoology, and this is not all that complex to explain. A somatic mutation in one stem cell during embryonic growth could do it, Mr. Johnson. And surely God could draw a neater, less fingerpaint-looking cross if He wanted to?

Why can't the rest of the media be as smart as the film reviewer?

2009-12-05T02:26:00.002-05:00

This one particular reviewer, anyway.

Roger Ebert, eloquently and with ineluctable logic and iridescent language, eviscerates the New Age and the Old Ways.

2012: the sum of the IQ's of the makers?

2009-11-09T20:14:00.004-05:00

There's a new film opening to capitalize on the current 2012 hysteria. In brief, a specific long period in the Maya (and other Mesoamerican) calendar will end in December, 2012, and ignorant people have decided that this means the end of the world for various stupid reasons.

Think I'm being too condemnatory? One seriously-stated reason: the Earth's poles will suddenly flip. Why? Because, that's why.

What I'm mocking now, though, is the publicity campaign for the movie. One of the official taglines and a major image in the trailer reads: "Mankind's earliest civilization warned us this day would come..." Really? The Sumerians? Perhaps you mean the Egyptians or Chinese? Is anyone really that ignorant? Well, clearly this movie's makers are either stunningly ill-educated or they think their audience is.

A Biblical curse on their houses.

Bad Journalism meets Stupidity

2009-11-07T19:27:00.004-05:00

I have written before about the death of good journalism. I've also written about the mysterious appearance of Mary on an inappropriate surface. Oh, and Jesus on an even less appropriate one.

Now these two themes combine, as a reporter credulously reports the appearance of Jesus on a truck window. Now, this is bad journalism because it couldn't be more obvious that this image was faked. I mean, look at the image! It's visibly painted onto the window!

That isn't pareidolia, it's a lame fake. I don't think Mr. Stevens faked it, either. I can't be sure, but it looks like a ridiculous prank on Stevens that's being taken utterly, straight-faced seriously by this inane, embarassing parody of journalism.

Feh.

Doctor Dunce on call at Car Talk

2009-10-17T18:22:00.002-04:00

I really like the radio show Car Talk. I've been listening since it was a segment on Morning Edition (yes, I'm that old), and since the newspaper column went online I've read that, too. Oddly, I don't actually like or care about cars. So why do I like it? Because the hosts, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, are smart and funny and worth listening to.

In this column, a doctor writes to them, saying he had read their previous column mentioning that ethylene glycol is poisonous to animals, and wonders if that makes the GoLytely he gives patients before a colonoscopy (polyethylene glycol) toxic.

WHAT?!

Forgive me, but I sure hope "Dan" is not really a doctor.

First of all, how can a physician not know that ethylene glycol is toxic? Did he skip toxicology in med school?

Second, how can anyone who's ever taken a chem class in high school not know that "poly-" means a polymer? Or that polymers don't have the same properties as their monomers? Does he think that proteins all have the same properties as amino acids? That cellulose is identical to glucose? This guy is a DOCTOR?

He needs to give up his practice and go into something less dangerous to others, such as hermiting.

If you read the Car Talk column, note that the Magliozzi brothers get it completely right. Not shocking. Ray was a science teacher once (as I was) and Tom, as mentioned there, was once a chemical engineer. And they didn't sleep through their classes like Dan, aka "Doctor Dunce".

Vaccination: one journalist gets it right

2009-10-12T16:35:00.003-04:00

I and a lot of other critical thinkers have deplored the magical thinking that leads people to fear vaccination more than disease. This has become the leading cause of scientific physicians lately, as evidenced by Science-Based Medicine. The press has an unfortunate habit of treating the antivaxers, the promoters of fear, as authority figures, and taking the ludicrous conspiracy theories of the fringers as equally valid with actual facts and logic.

I would therefore like to give Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times credit for his column of October 12, 2009, in which he makes sense and tells the truth. It's refreshing and encouraging to see a journalist who actually does his job well. Thanks, Neil.

Deathbed unconversions

2009-09-28T16:07:00.002-04:00

In "Laughing at the angel of death" I wrote about the stupid slander levelled at so many rationalists, that when in fear of death we suddenly believe in the afterlife and any god that promises salvation. This nonsensical statement has been made about many famously nonreligious people, notably Charles Darwin.

It turns out that this offensive lie isn't limited to the West. Basava Premanand, published of Indian Skeptic, is dying of cancer. God-peddlers there have been circulating the atrocious falsehood that on his deathbed, he has suddenly become religious, forcing a man too weak to sign his name to take the effort to issue a declaration that:

I do not believe in any supernatural power. All the powers that we encounter are in the realm of nature and nothing exists beyond that.
I do not believe in the existence of the soul or rebirth.
I have not turned to any religion, god, or any sort of spiritual pursuits.

It's funny, but I don't recall rationalists claiming that on his deathbed, Pope John Paul II suddenly became an atheist. Why do the religious feel this strange need to lie about unbelievers?

Bill Maher = Ben Stein?

2009-09-23T23:49:00.002-04:00

Last year I blogged very briefly about Ben Stein's travesty of a documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. As a science type and a skeptic, I'm offended by many aspects of this movie: the lies about science, the implication that Darwin caused the Holocaust, and the deliberate distortion of historical truth to support the film's position. As a person and occasional journalist, I'm disgusted by the tactics of the film's makers, namely lying to their interview subjects about the type of film they were making, including giving them a false company name and false title. Then they edited their interviews in a misleading way to make the interview subjects look stupid or evil.

As an agnostic, I was inclined to be a fan of Bill Maher's Religulous. After all, it's a pop culture vehicle to support my own beliefs, right? But then I discovered that Maher is not a philosophical skeptic or a scientific thinker: he's a promoter of pseudomedical nonsense. And today I found out that when making Religulous, he and his producers, um, lied to their interview subjects about the type of film they were making (including giving them a false title), and deliberately concealed Maher's involvement to get interviews which they then edited in a misleading way to make the interview subjects look stupid or evil.

So I hereby declare Bill Maher to be the exact mirror image of Ben Stein. Both professional entertainers who tried to influence the public discourse by lying and deceiving. A pox on both their houses.

Cultural Relativism, or, I find it strange what people find strange

2009-09-22T12:31:00.004-04:00

I see an occasional story classified as "Weird News" that isn't weird to me. Here's one: Nepal's capital suffers festival goat shortage. Here's another: Camel Sacrifice at Istanbul's Ataturk International Airport Gets Turkish Airlines Worker Fired.

What's weird to me is, this is not weird. In every region of the world, religious practice for millennia included animal sacrifice. The Jewish holy writings often consist of rules for animal sacrifice, or accounts of various people performing the ritual. (This is just a small sampling.) For all you Christians, there is a quote in one of the Gospels of Jesus ordering a follower to perform (or rather pay for) the ritual sacrifices: Luke 5:14.

So why is it so strange to someone who theoretically believes the Bible to be a historical account, and the rules there to be divinely mandated, when people in another part of the world practice animal sacrifice? I mean, is it really not taught in school in the USA that Muslims still sacrifice animals as God commanded?

What I find interesting is more subtle questions. For instance, in India Hindus have mostly stopped sacrificing animals and now often deny that they ever did (despite the clear words of the Rig Veda), while in Nepal the older custom continues. It's a nice parallel to the fact that modern Jews no longer perform the sacrifices, while our cousins and fellow Hebrews the Samaritans still obey the Lord's orders and kill animals on the mountaintop altar.

How to get good tech support

2009-06-29T01:01:00.002-04:00

This one is for everyone who has ever done tech support under any name. People who will appreciate this might officially be system administrators or salesperson for a high-tech product, or actually have the job of "technical support" (I've been in all three jobs), but we have all come to hate this question in its myriad forms:

It isn't working.

It might be phrased as "My gronkulator doesn't work." It might be slightly more sophisticated and read "My FooBar Software won't take my password." Do you non-supporters see what those have in common?

There's NO USEFUL INFORMATION FOR THE SUPPORT PERSON! What would be helpful might be "The gronkulator is making horrible vibrating noises and the circuit breaker keeps tripping." Also useful would be "When I enter my password, FooBar says I've activated too many times in a short period."

Without those useful details, all I or any other supporter can do is try to ask probing questions. This is bad for us, in that it's frustrating and wastes our time. It's also bad for you, because especially if we're supporting you by email, you get your help hours and maybe days later than you could have, if you just gave useful information in the first place.

Want some tips on how to make things easier for both of us? Don't be any of these people. And ask Smart Questions.

On Switching a VM from VMWare to VirtualBox

2009-04-29T16:49:00.005-04:00

So I recently switched my main tower PC from Debian GNU/Linux to Ubuntu. As part of this move, I decided to move my Windows XP virtual machine (required for work software) from VMWare Player to a VirtualBox instance. I've experimented with a lot of virtualization software, including the above two, Microsoft's Virtual PC, and QEMU, and come to like VirtualBox best, and it's already packaged for Ubuntu 9.

VirtualBox can read VMWare-style virtual hard disks (vmdk files), so the move should have been transparent. Well ... not quite.

It turns out that while VMWare can handle virtual AGP hardware, VirtualBox can't. So when I started the XP session in VirtualBox, it froze. Starting it again in Safe Mode still froze, but told me that the problem was a file called gagp30kx.sys. Google told me that this was a known problem with the current VB, and all I had to do was rename the file to fix the problem.

Except I couldn't boot Windows, so I couldn't rename the file that way. There is a script to mount vmdk files in Linux, but it's only available as part of VMWare Server. I didn't want to spend the time and create a new account at VMWare's web site to install the Server just to run one script, once, then delete it again.

So I had a brainstorm: I downloaded DamnSmallLinux and mounted the ISO file as the virtual machine's CD drive. The VM booted Linux successfully. I mounted the virtual hard disk, located the file, and ... couldn't rename it. It turns out that DSL will only mount NTFS partitions read only.

Brainstorm 2: the Ubuntu install CD is also a LiveCD. I put the CD in my physical CD drive, told VirtualBox to attach that to the virtual session, and rebooted. Now the VM booted into Ubuntu Linux, which can modify a Windows drive. Renamed the file, rebooted, and there's Windows in VirtualBox. Mission accomplished!

Almost. Turns out I had no network access.

Well, duh, I thought to myself. All the virtualizers have helper apps that you install in the virtual PC to handle networking, mouse control, etc. VMWare calls them "VMWare Tools" and VirtualBox "Guest Additions". Obviously I had to uninstall the VMWare Tools and install the VirtualBox Guest Additions.

You can't. The VMWare Tools won't uninstall unless you run the VM within VMWare. Yes, you can't remove the VMWare tools without using VMWare itself. Frustrating.

Even worse, the VMWare virtual AMD network driver can't be uninstalled, which means the default network driver for VirtualBox won't install. You can set VirtualBox to use the Intel PRO/1000 series virtual network card, but the driver for that isn't installed by default in Windows XP. And of course, I had no way to get it into the Windows session, because shared drives depend on networking ...

I could have rebooted into Ubuntu using the same trick as above and downloaded the driver that way, but to save time I downloaded the driver in my "real" OS, then used genisoimage to make a tiny CD image of it and mount that on the VM. Once the driver was installed, networking worked flawlessly.

So not a transparent change, but not incredibly difficult. Given the bizarre "use our software to remove our software" policy of VMWare, I'm not likely to switch back from VirtualBox any time soon.

Stay out of British Columbia

2009-04-18T13:44:00.002-04:00

The Canadian province of British Columbia has just given naturopaths the legal right to prescribe drugs. Let's be clear: naturopath" means someone who is not a doctor and does not practice medicine. Naturopaths recommend nonsense like boosting your immune system and acupuncture and "straight" chiropractic.

So, especially if you are ill or have kids, stay out of British Columbia. If you're sick or injured, or someone you love is, you do NOT want to be treated by a crackpot herbalist/manipulator/superstition-monger.

Maybe not EVERY Picture, but I hope this one

2009-04-02T20:53:00.005-04:00

I created this image for work:I like to think it tells a short story.

I'll be at I-CON 28 all weekend. If you'd like to say "Hi" stop by the Marriott hotel.

Delta Airlines: also not perfect

2009-01-04T23:13:00.003-05:00

So I criticized United a while back for a bit of dumb design in their online reservations system. It's only fair that I also mock Delta.

This is pretty straightforward. I'm trying to fly out of MacArthur Airport on Long Island, code ISP. Note that Delta's system is saying that there is no exact match for "ISP", but its best guess is in fact "ISP". Selecting this doesn't work, it just takes me back to this same page. I think the real problem is that there are no flights out of ISP to my destination, but this is quite simply broken behavior.

Disappointing.

Joyous Newtonmas to you all

2008-12-24T08:45:00.002-05:00

So, on Newtonmas Eve I thought I'd wish any readers a happy season, or whatever the traditional Newtonmas greeting is. (Newton himself was something that sounds weird in the 21'st Century: a fanatical Christian Unitarian. He'd hate my appropriating his birthday of 25 December to replace the Christian festival. Good.)

Over on Skepchick I read about a secular seasonal festival held in England, and now I bitterly regret not being able to go. Any group where Richard Dawkins literally gets louder applause than a rock star is a group I want to belong to.

Tell the truth, lose your job

2008-12-17T00:31:00.002-05:00

A teacher in England has been "... barred from working at the Blackshaw Lane Primary in Royton, Oldham and a complaint has been lodged with her agency."

Her crime? She told children that Santa Claus isn't real and their parents leave presents for them.

See Rochdale Online for details.

Apparently this is such a serious matter that the teacher's name is not being published!

So, in at least one school, not lying to your students can result in being dismissed.

I fear for the West.

Why? A story of I-CON

2008-11-03T21:38:00.003-05:00

I have been a member of the I-CON convention committee for over a decade now. One thing I did for six years was run Science and Technology programming. There's a favorite guest of mine, from back when I did that job. She isn't especially famous, but she's very smart, extremely easy to work with, and I always enjoy talking to her. I guess I've known her 11 years now.

Most years, Liza brings her children to the convention. This year, I had a chance to chat with her and her son, Philip. Philip is a very, very energetic kid. I mean, he has enough energy for three adults. He's currently a huge super-hero fan. He bought a super-hero action figure in our Dealers Room, and when I sat with him and his mom in the Green Room, he was telling me in great detail about this guy, his arch-enemy, Spider-Man's abilities and storyline, and so forth.

At the Awards Banquet, I had the great privilege of introducing Philip to Dwayne McDuffie, who was at the time writing both Fantastic Four and Justice League of America, and who has written for the Justice League cartoon and many others. Dwayne's a great guy, and made a real effort to be friendly and charming to Liza and Philip.

If you work for a con, people will often ask you, "It seems like that's a lot of work. Why do it? What do you get out of it?" The look on Philip's face is why we do it. That little boy, getting to meet the person who tells those wonderful stories, was so awestruck, and so moved, that all by himself he justified the full year of work I put into I-CON 27.

Thanks, Dwayne. And thanks, Philip. You made the event a lot more fun for me.

Dark-clad religious gangs attack women over their clothes

2008-10-05T21:32:00.002-04:00

And they're in a country that the United States subsidizes and strongly supports. Sound familiar?

It's Israel.

I am repulsed by my cousins' actions. I have written to the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, explaining that neither world Jewry nor Americans will tolerate this. Unless these Haredi gangs are caught and punished as what they are—religious terrorists—they risk their nation being considered a theocratic backwater that is not part of, or of interest to, the West.

Creationist wins a round in court. In Turkey.

2008-09-20T09:25:00.003-04:00

Secular country or no, Muslim Creationist Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar) has managed to get Richard Dawkins's web site banned throughout Turkey, because Dawkins insulted him.

Note to the Turkish government: Otkar is a loon or a liar. There are no other possibilities. If you don't like the truth, feel free to ban Blogger and nitpicking.com as well, but understand that you are explicitly saying, "The truth is not acceptable in Turkey."

Read the story at the Guardian web site.

Back in Print! Creating a Multi-Camera Web Page

2008-09-13T23:47:00.002-04:00

My article, Creating a Multi-Camera Web Page, is featured on the cover of the October Smart Computing magazine. I got the bottom banner!

Genius

2008-09-12T09:03:00.002-04:00

I wish I had thought of this.

Holy Moth-er

2008-08-28T23:35:00.003-04:00

I've written before about the Virgin Mary appearing in a stupid place, namely road rash.

Now, Jesus, bored with appearing on tortillas, tree trunks, bathroom doors, and water stains, has decided to send his holy image to the back of a nocturnal insect.

What makes this story unusual, really, is the reaction of a local preacher.

Brother James Jordan thinks the patterns do resemble Jesus better in person than in these blown-up pictures.
But he adds, that's all it is.

"I don't want to bow down to it. It's not Jesus, it's just an image on something God created."

It's refreshing to find a religious leader who can tell the difference between pareidolia and a miracle. Kudos to Brother Jordan.

You think you know your own brain, but ....

2008-06-25T21:36:00.002-04:00

I'll bet you think you can hear a song and get the words by decoding the sounds, right?

Visit Skepchick and play the video, then come back. I'll wait.

OK, for any literate person reading this: was it possible to hear the real words of the song while reading the captions? I've known those words for literally 30 years and I heard what the captions said. It's amazing.

Why it's dangerous to believe in magic

2008-06-20T07:56:00.002-04:00

"Unfortunately for Colleen and her family she lives in a world where people still believe in magic. They are the victim of a chain of gullbility - people who should have known better victimizing her out of pure stupidity." I couldn't have said it better, so I'll quote Dr. Steven Novella.

To summarize, a psychic told a teacher's assistant that someone whose name starts with the letter "V" was being sexually abused. So the assistant reported that one of her students, Victoria, was being abused. The school board inexplicably called in Children's Aid.

To their credit, Children's Aid promptly found no evidence that anything bad had happened, but everyone in the chain before them behaved badly, from the despicable fraud--sorry, the "psychic"--to the teacher's assistant to the school board. Well, except for poor Victoria and her family, who did nothing wrong.

Cool T-Mobile Feature

2008-06-07T15:22:00.003-04:00

I use a BlackBerry Curve on T-Mobile's wireless network. My plan isn't incredibly cheap: 1000 minutes plus unlimited data (including BlackBerry email, which I actually don't use much) for $80/month. I find it worthwhile, because I like the phone, and that includes using the phone as an EDGE modem (ISDN speed) whenever I'm in an area where I don't have Internet access.

About a week ago, I noticed a feature of my phone and plan that I hadn't realized I had: if I'm in an area with WiFi (802.11 wireless networking) set up, the phone switches to "UMA" mode. That's Unlicensed Mobile Access, a confusing acronym that refers to the sending of voice calls over the Internet rather than the cellular carrier's separate network. It's a species of VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol).

What does this actually mean? It means that if I'm at home, anywhere that has public WiFi, or the I-CON office, my calls travel over the WiFi network and then the Internet instead of T-Mobile's network. I get higher sound quality, and also coverage in places that the cell network doesn't reach well, such as basements and many buildings with steel structures.

And there's no additional cost. The calls do come out of my monthly minutes pool, but I never come close to using that up.

So this whole blog post is just a "thank you" to T-Mobile for letting me use this excellent service.

Journalism is dead

2008-06-07T13:14:00.003-04:00

Remember when reporters used to do things like ask questions and think?

Actually neither do I, but I remember when that was the ideal.

Jacksonville's firstcoastnews.com reports that Mr. Anthony Brown is close to having his car run on water. Brown explains that he splits "... the water from the oxygen from the hydrogen ..."

This is gibberish. Water IS hydrogen and oxygen. And yes, you can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, but you will ALWAYS use more energy to do so than you get back by burning the hydrogen. Second law of thermodynamics.

What gets me isn't Mr. Brown's being either a charlatan or self-deluded (the only two choices), it's that the reporter, Angela Williams, didn't bother to so much as wake up before writing it. A real journalist would have covered, for instance, a charlatan's looking for "investors" (suckers), but Ms. Williams is either utterly incompetent or simply very lazy.

(I'm compulsively fair: it's also possible that Ms. Williams' editor is looking for meaningless puff "human interest" pieces, which makes him the person deserving the abuse, not her.)

It's distressing.

It's rays! The rays are hurting me!

2008-05-26T18:01:00.002-04:00

According to KOB TV in New Mexico, a group in Santa Fe are suing the town under the Americans With Disabilities Act, charging discrimination because of their medical condition?

Their condition? They have health problems caused by WiFi, and the city is using it in public buildings.

Microwaves don't do that. They just don't. Even if they did, why pick on 802.11 networking? Why not also try to eliminate every other device that uses the same frequencies? Maybe because eliminating cordless phones, microwave ovens, and Bluetooth headsets would be, um, impossible? Or maybe the "electro-sensitive" people are just too ignorant to realize they all use the same frequency?

I do not believe the ADA protects people with their real condition, delusional hypochondria.

My thanks to the Obstreperous Curmudgeon for pointing this article out.

Expelled: Intelligence, um, excluded?

2008-05-11T12:18:00.002-04:00

Q. Readers want to know if the Movie Answer Man is too PC to review "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed"?

Ruddy Spencer, Tucson, Ariz.

A. The last I heard, it is not considered Politically Correct to agree with Darwin. I think it is more like, oh, intelligent.

From Roger Ebert's Answer Man column.

Journalistic standards

2008-05-10T16:53:00.002-04:00

Ms. Sheyla Hershey has breast implants. In an uncredited (?) story from Fox 29 in Philadelphia, the anonymous author writes, "Sheyla's implants are filled with a thousand CCs or two quarts of silicone."

I'm pretty sure my readership is literate. So you know that 1000 cc = 1 liter = 1.06 quarts. In fact, the abbreviation "cc" has been obsolete for decades in science and engineering (though I have no idea if that's equally true in medicine).

There was a day when people in journalism had at least the minimal education needed to recognize common units used in supermarkets. Has the unnamed reporter never bought a 2 liter bottle of soda? Compared it to a quart bottle of, say, ketchup?

Mary needs to schedule appearances in better venues

2008-05-10T16:36:00.003-04:00

Mr. Marc Lipton of Monterey, CA, has found another image of the Virgin Mary. You've all heard about her and her son appearing on potatoes, grilled cheese sandwiches, and tree trunks. Now she has manifested herself in road rash.

To those less insistent about supernatural intrusions into the physical world, this is a classic example of pareidolia. In a rational culture this example would be used in psychology classes.

Also making appearances in weird places: Homer Simpson.

Your tax dollars spent on voodoo

2008-04-27T21:56:00.002-04:00

Not literally, but: the US Army is distributing handheld polygraphs to our soldiers in Afghanistan. Polygraphs simply do not work.

I'm totally in favor of doing this, if the soldiers are properly briefed.

The thing is, the Talibani and their supporters will believe the polygraphs work, and they'll be an effective bluff, like the famous cop-and-colander story.

Speaking of how Creationists are wrong

2008-04-26T17:45:00.002-04:00

You know how evolution deniers always claim that we never see evolution happening, so it's just imaginary, made up to deny the non-materialistic answer? It's a stupid argument ("We can't see gravity, so it's just something antireligious people made up to deny that angels move the planets around") but not only is it illogical, it's contrafactual.

As reported in the National Geographic online, scientists transplanted some Italian lizards to an island off the coast of Croatia in 1971. Now, in 2008, their descendants have radically evolved, from insectivores to herbivores, developing "cecal valves" that let them digest cellulose, along with changes in head anatomy that let them consume tough plant matter.

Major anatomical changes in about 30 generations. Ben? Ben Stein? Do you want to do a crockumentary about that, or will you ignore it to make irrelevant Holocaust accusations?

Of course, to actual biologists this is a very interesting experiment in terms of MacArthur's and Wilson's work in island biogeography. I look forward to future reports.

Boomers can recite this whole scene

2008-04-24T11:11:00.004-04:00

I don't know if it's true, but it seems to me that everyone (male) I went to school with can recite great chunks of Monty Python dialogue, decades later.

Here's a sketch that's still vivid in our memories even now.

I hates them

2008-04-23T22:03:00.004-04:00

I hate Creationists. Not because they're wrong. Everyone is wrong about stuff at some time, I've been wrong that I know of plenty of times.

I hate them because they're either lying or crazy. Every one of them.

For an example of the lying kind, see Expelled. This Ben Stein-hosted documentary purports to show that "intelligent design" (Creationism pretending to be science) is excluded from the halls of academe because Big Science doesn't want to hear any dissent. Oh, and Darwin caused the Holocaust.

It's just plain lies. What isn't outright lying is mere distortion. They lied to their interview subjects, repeatedly. The movie itself is a string of lies. It's the antithesis of science, which depends on honesty. (I'm not claiming that all scientists are totally honest, but nothing angers a real scientist more than dishonest reporting of results.)

And when you think about it, lying to make a point sure sounds like false witness.

Putting a bad face on your business

2008-04-13T22:06:00.008-04:00

Advertisements are your attempt to show new customers who you are and why they should buy from you. Therefore, you should probably proofread them.

For instance, while literacy is not necessarily the skill I mostly look for in a manicurist or hairstylist, frankly I don't want them too stupid. If their boss can't tell "formally" from "formerly" or "has" from "have", I don't want them working on me. Of course, only a true nitpicker would bother to point out the incorrect ellipses (always three full stops) used incorrectly.

Also, I don't want anyone who claims to have a doctorate but who can't spell "digital" working on my hearing aid. (Ironically, he spells it right one line later.)

The first seen on Motor Parkway in Hauppauge, the second on a shopping cart in Glen Cove, NY.

Aaah ... I haven't actually lived up to my domain name for months.

When Design Fails: United Flunks The Test

2008-04-08T23:14:00.004-04:00

I'm going to Worldcon this year. Their official airline is United, so I tried to book at their site.

It's clear that nobody actually designed their reservation system. I would bet that they copied bits of it from other people's systems without ever having someone sit down and test it or even think it through.

Let me show you one reason I think so:

I live in the New York area. I can conveniently fly from any of four airports: Islip, LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark. Naturally I would like to check all those airports for the best price. For no good reason, United decided to force me to pick only one airport at a time to check rates. (Note the round "radio buttons" for each airport, which limit you to a single choice.)

A well-thought-out system would let me pick any number of airports and check them all in a single operation. That's what computers are good at, right? Doing repetitive work so us humans don't have to?

I tried to suggest this to United directly, but their web site has no way to send feedback.

After I gave up and tried to check one airport at a time, I discovered that the Select button didn't actually work (on Mozilla Firefox). Another stupid interface problem: to select cities whose names start with "I" one must click on a one pixel wide sans-serif letter. One pixel.

Thanks, United, for making me resent the very idea of buying tickets from you.

If any United employee reads this, I'd be grateful if you'd report this problem to your management, since they seemingly have a corporate policy of ignoring their customers.

I'm a media star, again!

2008-04-01T08:40:00.003-04:00

I'll be appearing on The Computer Mechanics (Rogers television, Canada) Wednesday 9 April, and again 16 April.

Not treating sick babies: your tax dollars at work

2008-04-01T08:37:00.002-04:00

Dr. David Gorski points out today that (US) federal money is being spent to test homeopathic (that is, useless) remedies on poor sick children.

Yes, my bucks are taken out of my wallet and sent to practitioners of nonsense to refuse to actually help dying babies.

Expelled from Expelled

2008-03-21T08:33:00.001-04:00

PZ Meyers of Pharyngula is really, really dangerous.

Read this post all the way to the end.

Laughing at the angel of death

2008-03-09T00:33:00.003-05:00

I'm very lazy. Not pathologically so, but enough that I don't accomplish nearly as much as I probably (okay, definitely) should. I mean, I can't even manage to post a blog entry once a week.

One thing I do instead of post is read Cold Fusion Video, Nathan Shumate's movie and book review site. Aside from my ergophobia, I read it because it's great. Nathan's one of two or three writers I actually laugh aloud at, and the other writers at his site are also really good.

Last week (as I write this) there was no update. Nathan never has unannounced absences. I was curious.

This week, I find out that he had a stroke.

This is a guy who works a day job, and maintains one of the best entertainment sites on the 'net in his spare time, while raising two children. And the net effect of a brain stem stroke on his productivity: he missed one week's updates and suspended his second movie-review column.

And he literally mocked the angel of death in another blog he posts to. It isn't as if it was me doing it, since Nathan is actually religious and presumably believes in a literal angel of death.

So thanks, Nathan: your cerebrovascular accident has served to make one guy feel guilty. Maybe I'll even blog twice a month now.

Owning the printing press

2008-02-26T08:44:00.002-05:00

ISP Netcetera has closed down Quackometer, on the basis of a frivolous lawsuit threat.

I call upon anyone who cares about free speech to boycott Netcetera, and move any sites they may host for you to another service.

I'm not the only blogger to think this way.

The blind leading ...

2008-02-04T21:47:00.000-05:00

A Texas woman is asking for state accreditation as an acupuncturist, despite her blindness. During her training she has already treated over 500 patients. She argues that she can place needles just as effectively as a sighted person.

It's a horrible article. First of all, how can Mary Ann Roser not even mention that medical doctors are often licensed despite blindness? Does the Texas State Board of Acupuncture Examiners think being an acupuncturist is more demanding?

Of course, the real scandal is that such a Board exists. Because acupuncture doesn't work. Yeah, yeah, millions of people believe in it. When it's studied carefully there's nothing there. There's some good evidence that sticking people with needles and calling it "therapy" makes them feel better--even when the needles are fake and don't penetrate the skin. There's zero evidence for "chi" or "meridians" or the rest of acupuncture's ancient, basis-free foundation.

The equally bad scandal is that Ms. Roser never even thought to question the idea of licensing professional acupuncturists, so they can then fail to help anyone.

Feh.

Astrology demonstrated

2008-02-01T21:00:00.000-05:00

A fine example of how astrologers make money

Snake Oil

2008-01-31T23:27:00.000-05:00

This is a speech I gave at Toastmasters a few years ago.

Come one! Come all! Step right up and see the miracle cure, the guaranteed, in-arguable, un-beatable medicament, and cure-all. It reduces swelling, soothes arth-ritis, and grows new hair on the bald. It relieves indigestion, cools fever, and smoothes out pimples. And this marvel, this balm and universal comforter, can be YOURS for the low price of one dollar -- that's only ONE dollar for this six-ounce bottle, good for a full YEAR of treatment.

Sounds silly, doesn't it? But if I used scientific-sounding words, instead of carnival-barker talk, there are millions -- billions -- of people who'd believe it.

We want to be healthy. Actually it's stronger than that: we're all afraid to be sick, and that fear can motivate people to do totally unreasonable things, things that make no sense, in order to at least have the HOPE of health.

What I'm going to do today is describe a couple of the enormous number of useless remedies that are being used right now, in this country, by perfectly intelligent people. For each, I'll describe what it is, then why it's silly, and why people continue to use it. Then it'll be time to discuss the important question: what can we do about it?

If anyone listening has used one of these treatments, I hope you won't be offended. As I said, millions of people have at least tried each of these.

I'll begin with something that even sounds silly. "Ear Candling". It's just what it sounds like, too. You put a candle in your ear and light it. Actually, an assistant does the work while you lie on your side.

What's the benefit of this? Well, it's a special cone-shaped hollow candle, and the idea is that the heat of the flame warms the ear, and the wicking effect of the candle draws excess ear wax out. A list of only some of the things it's supposed to cure include: TMJ (temporo-mandibular joint syndrome), tinnitus (ringing in the ears), relieving sinus pressure, earache, and much vaguer things like "relieve tension" and "purify the blood".

That's one characteristic of snake-oil medicine, by the way: making lots of claims, some of them very vague and hard to pin down.

Why is it snake oil? Because, for one thing, careful experiments have shown that the candles don't remove any wax from the ear. The idea that the candle somehow sucks anything out of the sinuses is naive. The ear drum blocks the ear canal off from all other structures inside the head. Bottom line: there is NO evidence that ear candles work.

So why believe it? Well, it's cheap to do -- the candles cost as little as two dollars. It has a nice "New Age" sound to it -- talk of things like "energy" and "stress reduction" on the package. And it doesn't seem very risky. Mostly, though, I think people just don't think about it. If you see the product in a health food store, it must be healthy.

Well, okay, you're thinking. Ear candling is OBVIOUSLY stupid. It doesn't even sound scientific! Well "Homeopathy" sure does. A very, very popular school of "alternative medicine" right now, homeopathy is based on two principles. One says that you cure a disease by giving the patient a substance that would, in larger quantities, CAUSE the same symptoms. The other says that the LESS of the medication you give, the GREATER the effect. Homeopathic remedies are almost all completely harmless, even if they give something toxic like mercury, because they're really, really diluted. Sometimes they're so diluted they're GONE. A common homeopathic remedy for the common cold, oscillococcinium (duck liver and heart) is diluted 100:1 200 times. Ask any chemist -- that dilution mean that NOT ONE MOLECULE of the duck remains in the actual product people are taking. It's chemically pure sugar, which has touched water that has touched water that once touched a molecule of the original duck liver.

Okay, it sounds silly, but experimental evidence is always the deciding factor. As you might expect when I'm discussing it here, many, many experiments over decades of research have found no evidence that a homeopathic remedy works better than plain water or sugar -- which is, after all, what it is. Oscillococcinium is literally a sugar pill.

Some people believe it on the evidence that it's old -- "If it were false, why would people still believe it?" Well, because people don't always decide based on the evidence. And it sounds scientific, if you don't know science -- it uses Latin words like "similas", practitioners write prescriptions.

Actually, that leads to my next point: people who think critically always saw the flaws in homeopathy. I have read a lecture by the famous judge Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1842, in which he points out the flaws.

So, my proposed solution to the problem of quack medical treatments is better thinking. That is, to use a relevant expression, easy to prescribe but hard to administer. How can we make people think?

We can't. But we can encourage them.

I used to be a schoolteacher. What with teaching to standardized tests, short class periods, short school years, and all the other problems you all know about, it's very hard to teach anything but memorization -- if the kid can't recite back the required standard answers on standard tests, your school loses funding. We can change that.

Another thing that can be done is fixing the FDA. Currently the FDA can't properly regulate in these matters. Their budget is too small, and Congress keeps restricting their powers. They HAVE made ear candles illegal, but they can't enforce that. Again, if people want this fixed, it's up to our representatives and eventually, it's up to us.

And in the end, that's my answer. It's up to us -- to think carefully, to educate OURSELVES before we believe the line about a "balm and universal comforter", and to spread the message to others.

As I hope I've done today. Thank you.

An Error Message Lives Up To Its Name

2008-01-28T22:22:00.000-05:00

I've written before about my love for the late, very much lamented Interface Hall of Shame.

Brian Hayes would have loved this one.

I got the above message by highlighting several files in the Windows Vista Explorer and right-clicking on them. That's right, this is a message that Windows displayed warning me about its own option menu! Note that the title is "Internet Explorer". The message was actually produced by Windows Explorer, not Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer wasn't even running!

Leave aside that the message was produced in the wrong situation by the wrong program. What good is a message that talks about "unspecified potential security risk"? This message is for the end-user, who on average knows nothing about computer security. What good does this message do for him or her? Are we supposed to call Microsoft each time it appears? What sub-room-temperature IQ thought this would be helpful to anyone?

When Irony Attacks Astrologers

2008-01-25T20:56:00.000-05:00

The Astrological Magazine announces:

"We regret to announce that due to unforeseen circumstances beyond our control, the publication of the Astrological Magazine will cease with the December 2007 issue."

Yet the subscribers will remain astrology believers.

I was NOT expecting that!

2008-01-20T22:00:00.000-05:00

No, this isn't about Johnny Carson.

Back in August I wrote a mini-tribute to Perry DeAngelis of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast. One of his colleagues on that show, Rebecca Watson, has created a pilot for a public radio show, Curiosity, Aroused. One segment of the show has Rebecca visiting a psychic fair, showing several mediums and psychics a picture of Perry, and asking what they can tell her about her friend.

They say things like "He will have a financial success in the first half of next year." They suggest general good fortune for Perry. Not one psychic said, "He's dead," or even "He's watching you from the other side."

It reminds me of a quote I saw in a signature: "I've gone to hundreds of fortune-tellers' parlors, and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her."--a New York City police detective as quoted by Greg "Dr. Elmo" Morrow.

Rebecca's show is, in my opinion, wonderful. Several NPR stations have already signed up to play it on the air (including my local WNYC) but you can hear it right now. Give it a listen.

Skepticism

2007-12-22T23:49:00.000-05:00

So I wrote a tribute to Perry DeAngelis a few months ago. I also mentioned that the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe was my favorite podcast. A clever person might suspect that I therefore am myself skeptical.

In fact I'm a longtime member of both the Skeptics Society and the James Randi Educational Foundation.

Why? Because nothing frustrates me more than people believing in things without evidence, or with really stupid, easily-dismissed evidence. The things that annoy or anger me range from medium John Edward to, well, God. No good evidence for either one.

So why haven't I blogged about skepticism more? Because despite my incredible arrogance and superciliousness most of the time, I'm intimidated by real skeptical bloggers like skepchick Rebecca Watson and the aforementioned Skeptic's Guide crew. They do such a good job, and they post 20 times as often as I do. I didn't want to try to compete with them.

Note past tense. I've decided to just go ahead and try it anyway. Prepare for carefully explained disbelief in 2008.

Some of my favorite Internet skepticism, besides the stuff linked above:

Podcasts
Quackcast
Logically Critical

Web sites
The Museum of Hoaxes
Snopes

I have of course been a subscriber to Skeptic magazine for years.

More to come.

A happy Newtonmas and a fine new year to you all.

Why England should require a procreation license

2007-11-25T13:23:00.000-05:00

From News of the Weird:

In November, Britain's new weather-themed Cool Cash lottery game was canceled after one day because too many players failed to understand the rules. Each card had a visible temperature and a temperature to be scratched off, and the purchaser would win if the scratched-off temperature was "lower" than the visible one. Officials said they had received "dozens" of complaints from players who could not understand why, for example, minus-5 is not a lower temperature than minus-6. [Manchester Evening News, 11-3-07]

People who had a reasonable chance at school and don't know that should be fixed.

Philcon 2007

2007-11-09T11:03:00.000-05:00

I'll be at Philcon, 16-18 November. Come by the I-CON party on Saturday and say hello.

He noticed me!

2007-11-02T20:07:00.000-04:00

Roger Ebert answers my question in the current Answer Man column.

People who need me

2007-10-01T21:54:00.000-04:00

Another nitpicking post here. The undoubtedly nice folks at Genstar Pix probably spent a significant amount to have their graphic artist produce this logo:

Aside from the fact that a web site splash page is always a bad idea (this is all that's on their front page), if they had asked me, I would have suggested that paying for a logo with a misspelling in it is a mistake. (This isn't nitpicking any more, but: does that logo or slogan say "surveillance equipment" to you? It sure seems random to me.)

El Goonish Shive

2007-09-16T19:15:00.000-04:00

Ever engage in an archive binge? I recently became a big fan of El Goonish Shive, a very weird little webcomic by one Daniel Shive. It's fun, well-done, and worth your time if you aren't offended by gender-bending, violence, soap opera, or pop culture references.

I liked it so much I did something I haven't done in years: fanwriting. (Not fanfic.) I actually put an EGS page up, which you can find here.

As with any webcomic not done by Bill Holbrook, the biggest problem is the frequent missing of dates. After gorging yourself on the archives you're going to experience serious withdrawal symptoms at the current two-strip-a-week pace. But it's worth it.

Check out the comic, and once you're caught up, come back for the EGS page at nitpicking.com. You'll notice that my page has no decorations and only the most minimal formatting. That's deliberate. I'm seeing whether, even in 2007 (as I write this), a page can actually draw interest based on its content, as part of a long-running argument with a friend.

Am I the only one who finds this funny?

2007-09-03T22:29:00.000-04:00

I was in Circuit City on Saturday. On an endcap advertising DVD box sets of TV series was a sign reading "Commerical Free".

I seem to have been the only person in the entire country to notice it or be amused. I fear for our nation, especially in light of the Citibank debacle already chronicled.

Atheists and Foxholes

2007-08-27T22:52:00.000-04:00

NPR's On The Media did a bit last week on media coverage of atheists. One point made was that the irreligious hate the expression "There are no atheists in foxholes," because it implies that we don't really mean what we say, that in the end we're hypocritical cowards who will kowtow to the Great Sky Father for the tiniest chance at Life Eternal.

And also because it's bullshit. My father was an atheist in literal foxholes in World War Two, and was never moved to belief in the supernatural.

Another rationalist just died.

This little mini-essay was inspired by the death of Perry DeAngelis. I never met Perry, but I listened to his voice every week on The Skeptic's Guide To The Universe, the weekly rationalist podcast of the New England Skeptical Society. Perry was a founder of both the NESS and the SGU. He wasn't the host of the podcast, but I think he really helped set the tone. That is: he was uncomprisingly critical of bad thinking, of uncritical thinking and false logic and deception. At the same time, he was the very opposite of humorlessness--in fact, he was the quickest with a quip of the assembled skeptics. He also avoided a pitfall I've certainly plummetted into at times: he never, once, in all the podcasts I listened to, implied that he or any other skeptic was innately a better person than the Believers and the victims. His point was always how easy it is for someone to fall into a logical trap, not how cool he was for avoiding them all.

He had spent the last few weeks in the hospital, but even as he lay dying he refused to be intimidated or cowed. His last two appearances on the show were both brilliantly funny.

I never met Perry DeAngelis, but it's clear that he remained an atheist even in this metaphorical foxhole. The world is better for his having lived in it, and that's the highest compliment I know how to pay to anyone.

My condolences to Perry's friends and family

Let's Roll

2007-07-05T22:29:00.000-04:00

The State of the Union.

Mister Abstract

2007-06-24T00:09:00.000-04:00

I am a terrible artist, but sometimes my computer skills compensate and I can create a useful diagram.

However, despite my lack of design sense or talent, I think this picture is heavily influenced by Scott McCloud:

I'm trying to explain why interframe compression in video saves so much space (or bandwidth) for an upcoming article.

I loved Scott's Understanding Comics. I was less thrilled by Reinventing Comics, and haven't yet read Making Comics. However, to anyone reading this who isn't too visually impaired, I strongly recommend the first volume. It's a tremendous tour-de-force, a volume of literary criticism that was spellbinding and exciting to read.

If you're curious, you could always support your local blog:

Understanding Comics

Reinventing Comics

Making Comics

When major corporations look silly

2007-06-22T01:47:00.000-04:00

My buddy Mitch Wagner works at Information Week. I read a lot of stuff there. (I work in the software business, after all.) Today I was greatly amused when I loaded up their home page.

Citibank is running an ad. This is one frame of the animated GIF:

Lightening fast?

Yes, there's a reason I own nitpicking.com

Hear My Words!

2007-06-13T23:11:00.000-04:00

I'm scheduled to appear on Computer America, a syndicated radio show, on Thursday 21 June.

When major companies screw up

2007-05-22T10:39:00.000-04:00

Part of my job is writing copy for my company's web page. A Sony product page just made me feel really good about my skills.

Notice the title of this page (displayed in the windows Title Bar): "DCR-SR42 30 GB Hard Disk Drive Camera". Well, no, actually this is the page for the DCR-SR42A, a different camera in the same line.

Now, look a little lower. "Enjoy 60GB of storage with this Sony Style exclusive." So is it a 30 GB or 60 GB drive?

Well, down in the specs it says, "Recording Media: 100GB Hard Disk Drive". So either this camera has three hard drives, or someone at Sony is a very, very bad proofreader.

I'm far from perfect, but that's just plain embarrassing. I invite any Sony employees reading this to comment.

My Name In Ink!

2007-04-26T16:47:00.000-04:00

The June issue of Smart Computing has, I'm informed, been published. It includes my article, "Create Video and DVDs". This is my first publication in a national magazine and I'm pretty excited about it.

Buy a copy. Tell the editor I'm great.

(Has this become a brag-blog? I need to post something besides these announcements.)

More pixels!

2007-04-11T21:54:00.000-04:00

And now I have an article at Presentations.com!

My Name In Lights. Or at least Pixels.

2007-04-06T19:32:00.000-04:00

I just got published!

Okay, it's only on a web site, but it's still cool. My article, "Lights! Camera! Learning!" is now up at the American Society for Training and Development"'s Learning Circuits online magazine.

Ironically, my first publication by the ASTD happens two years after I leave the training profession.

I'm still pretty proud. And next month, more good news.

Planet Karen

2007-03-01T23:46:00.000-05:00

Ever read something, and think "I like this person!"?

I really like Karen of Planet Karen. I don't just mean that I like the art and writing, but I like the person hiding behind—or dancing in front of—the webcomic.

Despite being a Goth, she never falls into the pitfall that can make Goths seem silly to us Older Generation people: she never takes herself too seriously. Actually that can make anyone seem silly.

I especially like #s 104 and 119, but the whole series is worth reading.

So read it.

The New Yorker: Pretentious, Yet Fact-Free

2007-01-20T20:52:00.000-05:00

I've enjoyed two books by Malcolm Gladwell (while recognizing their deficiencies), so when I saw that he had written an article "The Enron Enigma" for The New Yorker I bought the 7 January issue to read on a recent train ride.

Wow, it isn't what I want to read.

The Enron article can be boiled down to this: "The financial mischief at the heart of the Enron scandal was so complicated, nobody except an expert can understand it. Therefore we can't be sure it was criminal." This is so fatuous and excusatory it's offensive.

What I found astonishingly irritating was Milan Kundera's article "Die Weltliteratur" (not online). Kundera's points are that national literatures differ depending on whether their nation is powerful or weak, and the idea of national literature is and always was foolish and impossible. The thing is, I come from a science background. Kundera supports his arguments with at most two examples of writers from each nation in question. (Exception: more than two French writers are mentioned.) That is, to use the literary device of litotes, a very small statistical sample and just vitiates his whole argument. Also, as a student of history, I'd have liked to see an analysis of a nation's literature changing as its role in the world did, for instance Prussia going from minor to world power, or France degenerating from Napoleon's Europe-spanning empire to its present second-rate power status. Never seems to have occurred to Kundera.

One passage stands out as indicating Kundera's almost bizarrely elitist stance. Referring to the Icelandic sagas, he says, "I don't mean to say that the sagas have been forgotten—after centuries of indifference they are now being studied in universities throughout the world—but they belong to the 'archeology of letters,' they do not influence living literature." I have personally read over one dozen novels written in the past five years influenced by the Icelandic sagas. What Kundera means, without even knowing it, is "do not influence the type of literature Milan Kundera reads." "Living" literature is much more the sort of genre fiction he disdains than his own work, but of course admitting that would be ego-fatal.

It's all like that. David Denby's "Big Pictures" analyzes the problems of Hollywood in remarkably trite and obvious ways. I never go to the movies and don't care much, but even I know that DVDs represent a challenge to theaters, that funding anything innovative is hard because the studios are owned by large companies that want guaranteed return, and that targeted marketing is ending the era of movies for everyone, in favor of movies aimed at under-30 males, or married couples, or whatever. There isn't a single new thing in the entire very long essay. And again, Denby tries to support huge points by interviewing one person and citing no facts.

Exception: the article by Joan Acocella on Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart's best-known librettist, was fascinating even though I hate opera. Factual, well-researched, and without huge doses of Acocella's own opinions. I enjoyed it.

But in general, I don't recommend The New Yorker.

Arisia

2007-01-08T11:45:00.000-05:00

I'll be at Arisia, 12-14 January. Come by the I-CON party and say "Hi".

How to lose my eyeballs

2007-01-04T18:01:00.000-05:00

Hey, advertisers! You know how the conventional wisdom is, your ad has to flash, buzz, move around, and generally be as obstreperous and distracting as a toddler on speed?

If your ad does that, I will see it once. And I'll never see another one of your ads, ever again. You see, I use a FireFox extension called Adblock. If I find an ad irritating, I block not only the ad itself, but all ads from that server.

Don't even think about Adobe Flash-based ads, either. I use Flashblock. I used to be a Flash developer myself, but unstoppable dancing, mutating ads still irritate me mightily—so I never see them.

So here's the rule if you want my eyeballs to ever focus on your ads: simple, static, restrained. Like Google ads, for instance. Ever notice how much money Google makes on ads?

Yesterday's Dreams

2006-12-11T20:56:00.001-05:00

Ever wonder if you have integrity? I just had to.

I'm a real reviewer these days. I have made eighty-three cents from this blog! And just recently I got my first review copy. That's right, I got a free book, just so I could review it.

59426354X:Product Link on Barnes & Noble.com.

Of course, I'd like to encourage that. So I'm highly motivated to give the book a positive review.

And I can't. Apparently I have integrity.

I really wanted to like the book. I've even briefly spoken to Ms. Ackley-McPhail at Philcon. She seemed nice, and she's a friend of my friend Dave. But it just isn't a good book.

I guess my criticism could be boiled down to "Not the work of a professional novelist." It's a short book, only 256 pages (and part of that devoted to a glossary!), yet it has at least five viewpoint characters. Two would have been better. Every storyteller wants to grab your attention in the first few pages, but Yesterday's Dreams fails to do that, twice. There's a prologue full of action and terror that seems specifically designed to immediately rivet us, but it concerns two guys who are not in the least sympathetic, and who we will never meet again or know anything about. Chapter 1 then literally starts with the heroine lying motionless in her bed. For four pages. Thinking.

It's possible to have a great opening with the heroine lying motionless. For instance, she could be afraid to move because of the monster under the bed. (This would work better if the heroine is a small girl.) She could be unmoving because she's desperately trying to remember the name of the man lying next to her. (This would work really badly if the heroine is a small girl.) However, in this case she's lying in bed feeling sorry for herself because she's poor. I'm afraid that just didn't arouse my interest or sympathy so much.

In fact, one thing that greatly slows the pace of Yesterday's Dreams is the tendency of all her characters to walk on stage and then stand, sit, or lie around and muse on things. The elf, the dad, the street thug, and the Big Villain—they appear, and then just stop and reminisce.

When I started reading I had the distinct impression that the book had never been professionally edited. Then I became sure. Encountering a strange old woman in Greenwich Village, our heroine, Kara thinks, "... the woman must be a bit touched in the head to leave offerings to the faeries in a New York alley. If there were any place less magical than Faeryland, Kara would have a hard time naming it." In that fragment are four errors. One, "faeries" should be capitalized if "Faeryland" is. Second, it screws up the meaning of those words. The land is called "Faerie". The people that live there are the "Fay", not "faeries". Kara has accidentally thought of Faery as the least magical place that can be named. (I think Ackley-McPhail meant to write "New York".) And of course, why is this woman raised in Twentieth Century New York using the anachronistic "a bit touched in the head"? No professional editor would have let that sentence pass.

I don't want to make this a sort of vicious attack, so I'll just end by saying that this book is really only the first draft of a finished novel. Too many characters introduced too fast, strange pacing, characters who largely speak in a literate faux-Victorian manner even when they're street criminals in New York…there's actually a story under all that, but it's a real struggle to find it.

As with all but one of my reviews, I hope that the author isn't offended by this criticism, but like I wrote above, apparently I have integrity (and feel an obligation to my readers, few though they may be).

Cheshire Crossing

2006-11-26T18:57:00.000-05:00

This is way fun.

My only complaint is that the art is so simplified, every female character has the same face. Even moreso than John Byrne's art.

Personal Appearance

2006-10-22T00:40:00.000-04:00

I'll be at PhilCon starting 17 November. If anyone's curious to meet some occasional-review-spouting blogger, post a comment and we'll meet up.

Danse Macabre, by Laurell K. Hamilton

2006-10-01T00:02:00.000-04:00

I used to really like Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake books. The first few were about a hardened, hard-nosed private eye, living in a world where supernatural monsters were as common as bikers or adulterers. As a sideline, when the law required it Anita would hunt down vampires and destroy them.

Hamilton mixed the tropes of horror and Mike Hammer-style detectives very effectively. The books weren't great, but they were fun entertainment.

I won't speculate about why the changes happened, but over the years Anita changed from a woman who was mocked for being too chaste into a woman who, in one book, literally bedded several men every single day, and adopted a few kinky S&M practices as well. I described that period of Blake books in this very blog as basically pornography.

Now it has gotten worse, at least for this reader. I looked at her Danse Macabre in a library. It isn't porn any more. Now it's exaggerated chick lit.

No kidding: throughout Danse Macabre, she introduces new characters just to have them talk about their relationships, then marches them off-screen. This book is the ultimate in what-men-hate-about-some-women's-conversations. It's nothing but relationship talk, and not even about plausible or interesting relationships. Hamilton goes to a lot of effort to make all the newly-introduced characters unique, and have them speak and act unlike existing ones, but she introduces so many, and gives each such little space, that none of them are actually compelling. You don't get the feeling you know any of them. And after they describe their relationships they just disappear ... which leads into my next complaint.

To state my bias openly, I'm very much a plot-driven reader. No Anita Blake story finishes plots any more. One major plot development does get resolved in this issue, but there are still danglers going back 10 books or more that Hamilton shows no sign of even remembering. She's lost interest in story, in favor of dialogue and very broad, sketchy characterization. It's symptomatic that these books only cover one or two days now. They're just collections of conversations, broken up by occasional fights or sex.

It's a shame. There was real talent there, but apparently this stuff appeals to her audience, and she has no reason to go back to the style I used to enjoy.

Danse Macabre

Danse Macabre

Gregory Benford: Galactic Center

2006-09-14T23:56:00.000-04:00

Gregory Benford's Galactic Center novels: In The Ocean Of Night, Across The Sea of Suns, Great Sky River, Tides of Light, Furious Gulf, and Sailing Bright Eternity.

I won't review the series, plot-point-by-plot-point and character-by-character. I'm just going to state my overall opinion of the series.

It suffers from what us fen might call "Riverworld Disease". That is, it starts out with a very good novel, but succeeding ones become increasingly dilatory and pedantic. Sailing Bright Eternity in particular becomes a series of physics lectures at one point.

I'm fascinated by physics (majored in it for three years) but not when it's lectures in the middle of a novel.

An even worse flaw is the huge bloating of the series. The last three novels (none of which are short) could have been combined into one much better one without losing a single essential incident. Mind you, incidents would be lost -- but none are actually important.

But the ending would still be terrible. I boil it down to "But then the good guys are saved for reasons the writer defines as inexplicable." Annoying.

It's so disappointing mostly because I enjoyed the first couple of books.

Has anyone else read the series? I'd be delighted to get other opinions.

In the Ocean of Night

Across the Sea of Suns

Great Sky River

Tides of Light

Furious Gulf

Sailing Bright Eternity

A titan pauses

2006-08-16T22:24:00.000-04:00

Ken, High Priest of Jabootu, is going on hiatus. It's too bad, I enjoy his stuff a lot and I'll miss him, but everyone's entitled to a bit of burnout.

Read the stuff already posted on his site, though, it's hilarious. And there are about ten sentences of mine!