McCain knows nothing about HIV/AIDS

I used to like Senator McCain quite a bit. On the whole, he generally came off as someone who genuinely sought to do the right thing. I didn't agree with him on every issue (disagreed heartily on a few actually), but I did rsepect him. Of late however, leading up to his presidential bid, he's stumbled considerably, seemingly doing little more than pandering to his conervative base. Here it gets him in trouble, and makes him seem like quite the fool.

An excerpt of an interview from the New York Times:

Reporter: “Should U.S. taxpayer money go to places like Africa to fund contraception to prevent AIDS?”

Mr. McCain: “Well I think it’s a combination. The guy I really respect on this is Dr. Coburn. He believes – and I was just reading the thing he wrote– that you should do what you can to encourage abstinence where there is going to be sexual activity. Where that doesn’t succeed, than he thinks that we should employ contraceptives as well. But I agree with him that the first priority is on abstinence. I look to people like Dr. Coburn. I’m not very wise on it.”

(Mr. McCain turns to take a question on Iraq, but a moment later looks back to the reporter who asked him about AIDS.)

Mr. McCain: “I haven’t thought about it. Before I give you an answer, let me think about. Let me think about it a little bit because I never got a question about it before. I don’t know if I would use taxpayers’ money for it.”

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Whoops...

Exercise makes you smarter

Need more of an excuse to start working on your bod before the Summer rays hit? Apparently, according to a number of studies, exercise actually works to get your mind in shape as well as your body. Naturally, mental workouts (reading and the like) are also nessicary to truly harness your brain's potential, but the link between mental and physical health seems far more tangible now than was previously thought.

From Newsweek:

"Last week, in a landmark paper, researchers announced that they had coaxed the human brain into growing new nerve cells, a process that for decades had been thought impossible, simply by putting subjects on a three-month aerobic-workout regimen. Other scientists have found that vigorous exercise can cause older nerve cells to form dense, interconnected webs that make the brain run faster and more efficiently. And there are clues that physical activity can stave off the beginnings of Alzheimer's disease, ADHD and other cognitive disorders. No matter your age, it seems, a strong, active body is crucial for building a strong, active mind.

Scientists have always suspected as much, although they have not been able to prove it. The idea of the "scholar-athlete" isn't just a marketing ploy dreamed up by the NCAA; it goes back to the culture of ancient Greece, in which "fitness was almost as important as learning itself," says Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey. The Greeks, he adds, were clued into "the mind-body connection." And they probably intuited a basic principle that Western researchers also figured out long ago: aerobic exercise helps the heart pump more blood to the brain, along with the rest of the body. More blood means more oxygen, and thus better-nourished brain cells. For decades, that has been the only link between athletic and mental prowess that science has been able to demonstrate with any degree of certainty. "People have been slow to grasp that exercise can really affect cognition," says Hillman, "just as it affects muscles." "

So go out there, get on that treadmill, burn those calories, and raise that dwindling IQ!

"Greeted as liberators"

From Daily Kos:

'For obvious reasons, opinion polls aren't conducted very often in Iraq, but on the four year anniversary of the war, how are Iraqis feeling?

The number of Iraqis who say their own life is going well has dipped from 71 percent in November 2005 to 39 percent now.

About three-fourths of Iraqis report feelings of anger, depression and difficulty concentrating.

More than half of Iraqis have curtailed activities like going out of their homes, going to markets or other crowded places and traveling through police checkpoints.

Only 18 percent of Iraqis have confidence in U.S. and coalition troops, and 86 percent are concerned that someone in their household will be a victim of violence.

Slightly more than half of Iraqis 51 percent now say that violence against U.S. forces is acceptable _ up from 17 percent who felt that way in early 2004. More than nine in 10 Sunni Arabs in Iraq now feel this way.

While 63 percent said they felt very safe in their neighborhoods in late 2005, only 26 percent feel that way now."

Silly old Texas

If you knew that 40% of the population would contract a disease that is potentially life threatening, and you had a cheap vaccine that completely eliminates any problem, wouldn't you mandate its use? Basically the same thing as a Tetanus or Rubella shot right?

Those wacky Texans disagree, because in this case, the disease is HPV.

From The Dallas Morning News:

"AUSTIN – The House voted Tuesday to unravel Gov. Rick Perry's order that all sixth-grade girls be inoculated against the virus that can cause cervical cancer, giving overwhelming support to a bill that would allow only the Legislature to mandate the vaccine in the future.

After an emotional and confrontational three-hour fight over the issue, House members voted, 119-21, for a bill by Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, that says the vaccine for human papillomavirus cannot be required as a condition for school entry.

Once it's finally approved, which is expected today, the bill goes to the Senate, where it has strong support. The bill could still be vetoed, but if the chambers send it to the governor's desk by mid-May, there's plenty of time – and support – for the Legislature to override it. Mr. Perry has not said if he'll use his veto pen.

The arguments for and against the bill were heated, with lawmakers dipping into medical science, questions of encouraging or discouraging sexual activity, and arguments about women's health and parental rights. Mr. Perry's order has an opt-out clause in which parents can choose not to get their child vaccinated.

Rep. Jessica Farrar, D-Houston, called the bill a "knee-jerk political reaction" and said her colleagues had allowed "ideology and politics to triumph over public health."

"I see it as the ability to save a lot of women's lives and their quality of life," Ms. Farrar said. "

Of course Ms. Farrar is completely correct. I see this as an entirely foolish move. Were this disease contracted in any way other than sexual contact, do you really think there would be a problem with the inoculation? Of course not.

We don't play no games

Fantasy sports are a serious business, and are developing a surrounding culture that resembles anything but fantasy.

From Slate:

Fantasy sports are developing a real adjudication system. The sports are a hybrid of real player stats combined in fake teams. Several Web sites now offer to settle disputes over draft picks, trades, and other roster moves for real, through small, fees ($6 to $10). Rationales: 1) Fantasy sports have become a real, $1 billion business, with money at stake in its disputes. 2) It's supposed to mirror real sports, and real sports have legal arbitration. 3) Fantasy leagues have developed constitutions, so somebody has to be authorized to interpret them. 4) Participants have conflicts of interest, so it's better to authorize outsiders. 5) You don't have to get a real law degree to be a fantasy sports adjudicator—yet

Pretty neat stuff... I'd like to think that if there were any problems in my various leagues we could all be sane and mature enough to hash it out ourselves. That said, my leagues are generally made up of people I personally know. Were more money on the line, and were the participants all unknown to one another, I could certainly see how a 6 buck investment to get a fair hearing would make perfect sense.

All hail our Martian overlords!

A spacecraft orbiting Mars has scanned huge deposits of water ice at its south pole so plentiful they would blanket the planet in 36 feet of water if they were liquid, scientists said on Thursday.

The scientists used a joint NASA-Italian Space Agency radar instrument on the European Space Agency Mars Express spacecraft to gauge the thickness and volume of ice deposits at the Martian south pole covering an area larger than Texas.

The deposits, up to 2.3 miles thick, are under a polar cap of white frozen carbon dioxide and water, and appear to be composed of at least 90 percent frozen water, with dust mixed in, according to findings published in the journal Science.

What does this mean exactly? Well, water has long been thought to be a necessary pre-requisite for life (carbon based life at any rate). The potential existence of water on mars, be it on the surface some time ago, or sub-terranian currently, could very well point to alien life. Spiffy stuff!

Soon enough, google will own my life.


Google's chief executive in Spain and Portugal, Isabel Aguilera, confirmed this week that the company has been working on a mobile phone. As part of an interview with Spanish news site Noticias.com, Aguilera mentioned that "Some of our engineers' time is dedicated to the development of a mobile phone." She also reiterated that about 70 percent of Google's engineers' time is dedicated to developing the main products for the company, 20 percent of the time is to develop products that are somewhat related to the main business, and about 10 percent of engineering time is spent on projects that could be tangentially related to the business, indicating that the phone development was not necessarily an active project.

Big tech companies getting into the phone business seem to be the rumor du jour lately: first Apple, then rumor of the Zune phone, and, of course, Google. Google phone rumors have been picking up a bit lately, accelerated by a recent partnership between Google and Samsung to bundle mobile versions of Google apps on Samsung phones. This caused some to believe that Google might be working on a Samsung-powered phone. The Samsung-powered Google Phone is rumored to be a Blackberry-like device that would run VoIP services. Pictures of the alleged device, which appear to be very iPhone-like, have been floating around the web.

Please, please let this be true... as a rabid addict of all things Google (and a person in need of a new phone), this would really fit the bill. Not to mention, real competition for the impending awesome (though ludicrously expensive) iPhone can only mean good things for we the consumers. All hail gPhone!

Is your ISP tracking your internets?

From Ars Technica:

"David Cancel, the CTO of the web market research firm Compete Incorporated, raised eyebrows at the Open Data 2007 Conference in New York when he revealed that many Internet service providers sell the clickstream data of their users. Clickstream data includes every web site visited by each user and in which order they were clicked.

The data is not sold with accompanying user name or information, but merely as a numerical user value. However, it is still theoretically possible to tie this information to a specific ISP account. Cancel told Ars that his company licenses the data from ISPs for millions of dollars. He did not give a specific figure about what this broke down to in terms of dollars per ISP user, although someone in the audience estimated that it was in the range of 40¢ per user per month—this estimate was erroneously attributed to Cancel himself in some reports on the event. Cancel said that this clickstream data is "much more comprehensive" than data that is normally gleaned through analyzing search queries.

The revelation brings to mind the minor scandal that erupted when AOL was found to be giving away its search results to researchers—this was discovered only after a large sample of data was accidentally released to the public. Clickstream data is, as Cancel admitted, much more interesting to marketers than search engine data."

If this is accurate, it would pose a significant impedance to the use of the Internet as a truly free medium. Part of the power of the Internet is its (somewhat) inherent anonymity. True, you leave a trail of traceable data as you surf, but this data is spread accross dozens of unconnected, unaffiliated servers. The thought that your own ISP is tracking your habits, and worse still, selling that data, is certainly not heartening. Hopefully this revelation will stir enough descent to raise this issue among lawmakers. The Internet is worth protecting.

This is just a bad idea

Evidently I've been out of the bad-cartoon-turned-into-bad-action-movie loop, because the Wachowski brothers, responsible for the great Matrix and the terrible Matrix Sequels have evidently signed on to make a Speedracer movie.

For anyone not familiar with Speedracer, it's a really terribly animated Japanese show that was poorly dubbed and played ad-nauseum throughout the 80s. I'm not saying its a bad show, but it is what it is. And now apparently its to be a full length movie. Made by the Wachowski brothers...

Apparently now, High School Musical star Zac Efron is in talks to star as Speed in the Wachowski Brothers' adaptation.

I really think the success of Matrix must have given them some kind of stroke that made it impossible to differentiate a good idea from a bad one.

Some people simply don't receive enough credit for what they've done for others. Its wonderful and inspiring to come across someone so brave and selfless, finally given the credit she deserves. From the Boston Herald:

"Irena Sendler saved nearly 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis, organizing a ring of 20 Poles to smuggle them out of the Warsaw Ghetto in baskets and ambulances.

The Nazis arrested her, but she didn’t talk under torture. After she survived the war, she expressed regret - for doing too little.

Lawmakers in Poland’s Senate disagreed Wednesday, unanimously passing a resolution honoring her and the Polish underground’s Council for Assisting Jews, of which her ring of mostly Roman Catholics was a part."

Congradulations Ms. Sendler, and thank you.

Rocket powered drinks

Commemorating the past is all well and good, but some people go too far. Motoart is an excellent example.

These guys thought it was a great idea if they took old aircraft engine parts and throw them together into coffee tables. Sounds like a can't miss, right?

The result is a series of furnature that is admitably neat, but, at times, also hilariously ugly. Not to mention expensive.

They really don't make things like they used to. In this case however, that's likely a good thing.

George Lucas continues to destroy my childhood

When will the crazy bad man stop? For the love of Christ, haven't you already hurt the fine Star Wars name enough? Apparently not. Apparently you loved the crappy CG in your most recent abominations so much, you'd really like to see an entire TV show with them.

Ugh.

From I Watch Stuff:

"Despite the fact there won't be anything to stand in line in a costume for, many Star Wars fans are getting worked up for the new animated series planned to continue the Clone Wars saga. Starwars.com has released the first shot from the new show, which looks to combine the stylized look of Genndy Tartakovsky's Cartoon Network series with slightly more realistic 3D renderings. In short, Yoda is now a Pokemon."

I would say stop while you're ahead, but that was decades ago. "STOP NOW" will have to suffice.

You naughty, naughty man.

Wolfie NOOOOOOOO!

If you're anything like me (or just plain sane), you're likely a fan of the fine film Amadeus, which artfully chronicles the troubled life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A notable highlight of the film is the performance of Tom Hulce, in the lead role. He lends the part a very human quality and really serves to bring the film to life. Despite his character's many flaws, one really can't help but like the guy. He won the Oscar for best Actor that year, and deservedly so.

It's sad then that he's changed so dramatically over the past 15 years or so. What was once a youthful, cherubic and powerful actor has now gone without any major role for years, and has clearly aged poorly... I don't want to pick on the guy, it just makes me sad.

For anyone who hasn't seen Amadeus, do yourself a favour and give it a spin. See this guy at his best, you won't regret it.

Fire in the hole (1-18)

Courtesy of Dave Barry:

Every now and then somebody thinks up a new idea that is so totally revolutionary that it just totally revolutionizes everything.

For example, in 1905 Albert Einstein stunned the scientific community when he announced that ''e'' is equal to ''mc squared.'' Until that point, scientists had no idea what ''e'' was equal to. Oh, sure, they had known since the days of the ancient Egyptians that ''e'' came after ''i,'' except when both letters were preceded by a ''c.'' But nobody had ever even considered the possibility that ''e'' might have anything to do with ''m.'' We will never know what other amazing things would have been revealed about the alphabet if Einstein had lived longer. We do know that, just before he died, he told friends that he was working on ''something really big involving 'k.' ''

Albert is gone, but fortunately for humanity in general there are still great minds at work, coming up with breakthrough ideas that a normal person could never even imagine without ingesting fantastic quantities of gin. One such idea was brought to my attention recently by an alert reader named (really) Dwain Vanderhoof, who sent me a brochure for a new type of golf club, which I absolutely swear I am not making up, called the Ballistic Driver.

The Ballistic Driver is a ''swing-less'' golf club. You grip it as usual, and you position the head of the club next to the golf ball. But instead of swinging the club, you press an ''Activator Button'' on the grip; this detonates a small explosive charge inside the club head, which causes a metal plate to shoot out the side of the club a distance of 1.5 inches at a speed of 200 miles per hour. The plate hits the golf ball, which then, according to the brochure, goes ''250 yards, every time . . . down the middle, exactly where you aimed it, drive after drive.''

Is that a great idea, or what? Now you can play golf WITHOUT HAVING TO MANUALLY HIT THE BALL! Talk about a breakthrough! I mean, for me, the worst part of playing golf, by far, has always been hitting the ball. I love standing around on the golf course; I love driving the golf cart; I love saying the word ''bogey.'' But I hate swinging the club at the stupid ball, and, on those rare occasions when I actually hit the ball, I hate watching it take off in some totally random direction and disappear, usually forever, into a lake, or the woods, or the body of an innocent bystander.

So I called the company that makes the Ballistic Driver, GPower Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif. I spoke with one of the partners, Elizabeth Poggi, a serious person who confirmed that the Ballistic Driver is a serious product aimed at people who, for various reasons, cannot swing golf clubs, as well as for people like me who would simply prefer not to.

Poggi stressed that the Ballistic Driver, which will sell for around $800, has safety features that prevent it from going off accidentally, as well as (I am still not making this up) a silencer. These features are important: Just imagine what it would be like if golf clubs were randomly detonating with loud bangs on golf courses, not to mention in airports, hotel elevators, etc. It would be a lot of fun! But it would also be wrong, which is why I am urging everybody to remember this basic rule of golf: Always assume your club is loaded.

I think the Ballistic Driver could transform the game. Poggi told me that if the club were fitted with a titanium strike plate, ''it could theoretically propel the ball 500 yards.'' This means that a pathetic schlump like me could propel the ball farther than Tiger Woods Inc. hits it on those rare occasions when he is not filming American Express commercials.

And who knows what lies down the road? I mean, if we can make a club that can hit the ball 500 yards, why not 1,000? Why not 1,500? Why not a mile? We have the technology, darn it! Maybe we will see the day, in our lifetimes, when golfers using a descendant of the Ballistic Driver, perhaps powered by a small quantity of plutonium, are stepping up to the tee and driving the ball into another time zone . Of course, we'll need to develop a technologically advanced golf ball that contained some kind of transmitter, so it could radio its position back to the golfer (''YOUR TEE SHOT LANDED 18 YARDS FROM THE HOLE. IN PAKISTAN.'')

Wouldn't that be great? Of course, as with any technology, there's always the danger that it will fall into the wrong hands. You could have street gangs converting these clubs to Fully Automatic mode and driving in their low-rider carts to rival golf courses, where they'd spray out hundreds of balls per minute in vicious ''drive-by'' tee-offs. Or you could turn on the TV news one morning to see Saddam Hussein wearing lime-green pants and standing next to a golf club the size of the Washington Monument, threatening to hit a massive chemical and/or biological Golf Ball Of Doom smack into the fairway of middle America.

So there will be those who will try to ban the Ballistic Driver. To them I say: Forget it. The U.S. Constitution guarantees us -- not in so many words, but the intent is clear -- the right to keep and bear golf clubs. This precious right was fought for in the Revolutionary War by our courageous foreparents, the Minutepersons, who stood up for it on the green at Lexington. Although they did bogey that particular hole.

What Would George W. Bush Do?

Jack Bauer yells alot

Courtesy of Concept of Irony:

While watching ‘24’, which has been repeatedly praised for its realism, I found what could be viewed as a fatal flaw in Jack Bauer's interpersonal communication skills:

Jack(whispering): ‘this is jack. I need you to send a CTU unit.

Thirty seconds later.

Jack(SCREAMING) : BILL, THAT’S THE WRONG CALL TO MAKE. IF THEY WANTED HIM DEAD HE WOULD BE DEAD BY NOW.

Jack: (whispering)Pssst. Hey. Its jack. I can’t talk. I'm standing right behind a terrorist and if I talk too loud I will compromise my position.

Ten seconds later.

Jack(yelling): CHLOE THIS IS JACK, I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO I NEEED YOU TO GET THE ULTRA DELATA LIST FROM D.O.D, CHLOE I NEED YOU TO DO THIS NOW. LOOK I’VE GOT TO FOLLOW ANOTHER LEAD.

Three Seconds later.

Jack (Whispering): This is jack. My throat hurts.


When Jack yells it is most often, Zen Pearls of wisdom (If they wanted him dead he'd be dead.) When he whispers it is because he is being sneaky.

I have learned a valuable lesson, once again, from Jack.

Jack and I are both men of action. Being men of action we don't always have time to be subtle. But in the end, it doesn't matter if we find the exactly right tone of voice or best way to spell a word*.

WHAT MATTERS IS THAT WE ARE BOTH MEN OF ACTION WHO HAVE GIVEN OUR RESPECTIVE SELVES TO SOMETHING GREATER--IN HIS CASE,SAVING THE WORLD AND IN MY CASE WRITING A BLOG.

(whispering)and that is a very beautiful thing.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND.

The future is now!

You can get basically anything from a vending machine these days, from ipods to cellphones to fancy drinks, but this one really takes the cake.

Coming soon to a mall near you: Pizza vending machines. Wonderpizza vending machines provide you with a 9-inch pizza in 2 minutes. Presumably this is achieved either with a microwave inside that heats pre-frozen pizzas, or with a crack team of little people diligently assembling pie after pie. Either way, I'm not sure I want any.

Still, I could totally see this going over well in a college dorm. I know a couple of guys who would totally use this thing...