Ted Kennedy - couple words

Say what you might about his personal life (and there is much to say, not much of it positive), the man was great.

Listen, he lost not one, not two, but ALL THREE of brothers under extraordinarily difficult circumstances - he was the youngest of them all. To carry on the family name in the glare of the national spotlight was not easy. To have accomplished what he did in the senate was truly great. He fought for liberal ideals, and we're all better for it. Right from the nuclear freeze, to the Anti-apartheid act, to funding Americorps to funding for women's sports to Immigration reform. But most importantly, he was a champion of health rights. COBRA, AIDS funding, SCHIP... the little things (or big things, depending on your situation) that we take for granted, many of them can be traced back to legislation introuced by or fought for by Ted Kennedy. It's amazing that he had the strength to fight the good fight over so many years, despite having being undercut so often by Republican colleagues and administrations.

You might say that his rough experiences do not excuse his alcoholism or his philandering or Chappaquiddick, and I would agree to some extent; but there have been so many who have had much less happen to them, and have frittered away entire lives and fortunes.

Truly a man who fought for the less fortunate in society all through his life. We'll miss him.

Now if only those assholes in congress can get their shit together and pass meaningful health reform...

Favre welcomed to the Metrodome

UNFORTUNATE PHOTO (OR *VERY* WARM WELCOME BACK)

OK, first of all, I never was a big Favre fan. Listen, I get why some people in the frigid North might be. There's nothing to do in the godforsaken place except park your ass in front of a TV set and watch a bunch of people play ball. I get it. So I would see why you would worship your QB if he's stuck around for a bit and has brought home a superbowl after a drought of several decades.

But this whole Brett Favre Saga has just gotten out of hand. First, he retires, then unretires, then retires, then promises he's done, then unretires and joins another team, then retires, then unretires, then promises he's really done, goes plays ball with some kids, then unretires and joins the arch rivals of the team that he was with for almost two decades.

Oh, and don't forget the tears each time. Yeah, so screw you Favre. You're a selfish, self-centered dickhead. So when you played like a high school quarterback last night, it made me think you're going to have a torrid year ahead. You went 1 of 4 for a mighty 4 yards. And that sack you took from Corey Mays? Sweet.

Although when I saw the pic today on SI, I must say, it does look like Corey is REALLY glad to have you back at QB. Cough, cough. That's either a very unfortunate photograph or one hell of a welcome back.

Groundwater Tables in India - a dire situation indeed

Did you read about this? The ground water is falling DRAMATICALLY in India. I mean, I knew that India's water resources are under some serious strain, but FIFTY FOUR CUBIC KILOMETERS LOST EVERY YEAR?????? ARE YOU KIDDING ME????

You can read Richard Kerr's article about it here ; the Original article is by VM Tiwari et. al., but I can't link to it right now. It includes some very cool satellite imaging that records very small localized changes in Earths gravity, and uses it to track water content at or below the surface.

Here is the money chart.



Green is OK; means the water tables are more or less stable. Not bad for most of central India and some of the west (which gets poured on every monsoon season). The blues indicate some trouble; unsurprisingly, Tamil Nadu in the south east is shaded blue; the state is always just that bit short on water (the North east monsoons yield less that far south; Bangladesh gets dumped on during that cycle).

But you see that GIANT swathe of dark blues, purples, and hot pinks?

Yeah, those people are FUCKED.

When you have 600 million or so people living in the plains of the Ganges and drawing on groundwater for irrigation to feed themselves, you're bound to run into problems. But 10 or more centimeters a year????

Oh Jeez. Oh Jeez. This is not going to end well.

Update: Reader Pzau points out that the states currently worst-hit by drought are in Central India, and therefore should be darker pink. Not quite. This graph shows you the rate of water table decline, which is independent of the current water table levels in any particular area. In fact, it is quite likely that areas that are already arid would have a small drop (if any) in the water table because the levels are already so low, they can't go any lower, either because the aquifiers have dried up, or because the satellite can no longer pick up changes in signals.

Why Operation Rescue is a Terrorist Organization

Take a look at my previous post on this subject, and the comment. Astute. While I have been pro-choice all this while, it's only now that I've started reading a bit about the dark world of the fringe "anti-abortion at ALL costs" groups. I was reading about the killing (which is bad enough as it is), and what is emerging is that the murder of Dr. Tiller was but one flash point in the chillingly well-planned terror campaign on a woman's right to choose. Yes, terror campaign. Yes, Terrorist Organization.

What do you call an organization that has a well-planned and unapologetic program of violent rhetoric and assassination of high profile opponents to instill fear in people in order to achieve their goal?

You call it a terrorist organization.

In this the case the terrorist organization is "Operation Rescue" (Scott Roeder, who is charged with killing Dr Tiller was but a pawn the organization), and their target is women who, for whatever reason, choose to terminate their pregnancy. (Read this moving diary from DKos about a woman who exemplifies exactly the kind of life story that pretty much IMO renders the whole debate moot). They kept egging people on - calling Dr Tiller a baby killer, calling him a Nazi, accusing him of being a mass murderer of 60,000 fetuses, until some fool went and actually killed him. Oh, they knew. They KNEW that there would be someone who would take it upon themselves to "do the right thing, and kill the devil". You can't spew hatred for decades, bomb clinics, harass nurses and doctors, defile their names, and then pretend you didn't do a thing. Manson didn't kill anybody personally, did he? Nope. Was he responsible for the deaths of people? Yep.

Oh sure, now they're backing away, (Here Media Matters NAILS Bill O'Reilly. Nice try, BillO, but YOU called him Baby Killer too) but make no mistake; these people have one agenda, and one agenda ONLY.

They aim to terrorize women by any means possible and take away any control that women have over their own bodies. And they will not stop unless we are honest, call them for what they are, and then do something about it.

The Handshake vs. Hug conundrum

I went to a graduation ceremony the other day, and it was all very nice, very solemn, inspirational speech by some distinguished old dude, all the bells and whistles. (Though I have to say, that "pomp and circumstance" music does grate after a while. Why don't people do something else? I heard that at Brandeis, they had Jai Ho (pussycat dolls version) to start things off, and the faculty arrived to a techno rendition of Hava Nagila. (Here is a pretty zany rendition, complete with sax in the background)

Everything was going according to plan with the hooding ceremony; bright young things would walk up, get hooded, shake hands with the preceptor, walk over, get their degree from the dean, and keep walking. One or two brought a baby, a couple waved timidly to the audience as they walked off stage. Ho hum.

And then came the brother. He had won some award, and was clearly a favorite of the faculty. And this dude was a sharp looking brother, dreads and all. Lady killer. And then the hooder did something that screwed up everything afterward. He gave him a brother hug. Which is like a handshake (fingers over wrist, not under) followed by a chest bump with the other arm draped over the shoulder.

the dude went his way, and so did the hooder. Up came the next pair. And then the mayhem started. The graduand went for a handshake; the woman hooding him went for a hug. Midway they tried to correct and went the other way round. And then corrected again. End result: woman having one arm around the guy's neck and the other holding his wrist as he held her waist and karate chopped her in the boob. And that happened ALL NIGHT. I mean, over and over and over. It was incredibly awkward. Plus the added confusion of "Do I go over to the right as I hug? Or left?" which is much more dangerous because if you get that wrong, you'd be locking lips with your thesis advisor in front of a thousand of your colleagues.

It was terrible. Fortunately there were a few who made it absolutely clear from the start; they'd walk up to get hooded with open arms, and you just can't shake hands then. Or they'd walk in with their one arm outstretched and (with the exception of a couple really determined members of the faculty) get a warm handshake.

Which brings me to my idea. You can either be blunt and walk up like those folks, which in my opinion is a little awkward because you don't do the hug/shake thing until AFTER you get hooded, or you need to have a secret sign - a little shrug of the shoulders and bat your eyelids means you want to be hugged. Or a little fist bump against your own chest means you get a brother hug. A tug of your gown means you want the occasion to be formal and not all warm and fuzzy.

That, trust me will save you and your advisor some embarassment. Though it will rob the event of some humor...

ps: Here is an AWESOME metal version of Hava Nagila

pps: Nicole Scherzinger (lead singer of PussyCat Dolls) is hhaaaaaaatttt.... Can't believe she isn't Indian... take a look at her in the Jai Ho video above. The dude who sings the "Jai Ho" is AR Rahman btw, the music director - won the academy award for SlumDog. Comes from my state :)

Balancier. Posted with a small comment

So I was putzing around on the Interwebs today, and I came across this diary on DailyKos.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/5/16/732319/-Balance.

Its a reasonably good diary, somewhat fellatiory to Obama - but hey, this is DKos, so I'm not entirely surprised. But anyway, the title of the diary is "Balance", and it includes this moderately well known picture.



OK, I do see the balance in the pic. I get it. But you know what I really think the picture (unwittingly or otherwise) says about men and women?

Women have to do all the heavy lifting in a family. The dude basically lays on top, clings to the woman for all the warmth that she can offer, and lays his head comfortably on her bottom. And what does the woman get? A dead weight and balls in her face.

A little thing about humor...

You know they all say the most important thing about humor is timing? Sure, that may indeed be the case, but you know something that a lot of people don't talk about, which IS really important to be funny?

You need to know what the lifetime of a joke is.

And you'd be surprised how elusive this little bit of knowledge is. Think about it - how many times have you heard someone say something, then realize that it's moderately funny because people around titter politely, and then MAKE THE SAME DAMN JOKE OVER AND OVER AND OVER? Yeah, it's pretty fucking irritating, isn't it? Like the dude who does the appu accent in your presence. Constantly. Yeah, knock it of dude. It was funny the first seventeen times, and then not really funny. And that's just the one example. I constantly have to deal with people who aren't funny but think they are (these are few; most of the people I work with are sane, and fortunately moderately funny)

So I ask you, pushupreaders: What do you tell someone to make them stop?

throwing hats into the ring, uh, rink...

So I was watching the Capitals beat the Penguins today in the playoffs, and Ovechkin (who is the big star in DC, if you didn't know) scored a hat trick, three goals in one game. And then the cap shower started. See, I get it, OK? Hat trick. So lets throw our hats onto the ice. Cute.

but this was ridiculous on multiple counts.

1. It holds up play for a while, and we get to sit with our thumbs up our asses as the crew cleans up.
2. Where were all these fans when the Capitals were the Crapitals? Huh? Huhh??? NOW y'all want to be fans when the tea is winning... we know fair weather fans when we see them. Fair weather fans thrown their stupid new hats onto the ice at the uh, drop of a hat...
3. Do you know how much those hats cost??? I hope that someone collected all those caps and put them in a giant trash can so people could fish them back out. Otherwise, that's a solid 25 bucks that you just threw away. In addition to the $60 tickets and $40 beer.

Here's a little embed to show you what happens, from an old game. It's just a little shot at the end. But this was NOTHING compared to today - there were a couple hundred hats on the ice...

Destroyed in Seconds - rapidfire thoughts (mostly those of annoyance)

I'm sure you've seen this show on Discovery, where things of various sizes, shapes, and colors, and usually traveling at some speed get obliterated. Or just broken up less spectacularly. The few transient but mostly deep thoughts that flashed through my mind immediately, I present to you in list form:

5. There is no end to the stupidity of people who try stunts. I just saw a guy who tried to jump a steamboat on an ATV. The guy had a 30 foot ramp, and was going at about 40 mph. He needed 80 feet and 70mph to clear the boat. He clipped the top and got tossed a good 70 feet (so he *did* clear the boat, but the landing left much to be desired...). Not to be cowed down by epic failure, he went at it again, this time presumably consulting someone who had passed high school physics. To be safe, they had the boat safely tucked under the ramp, so all he really had to do was stick the landing. For some reason, three-quarters of the way, after having crossed the boat, but still in mid-air, our resident hero decides to let go of his footrests and the handlebars. Gravity is not kind to stupidity. I forget exactly what he broke, but he isn't riding anything again.

4. What about the poor cameraman? This one was about a BASE jumper who floats into a 300ft waterfall and gets his ass savaged by 12,000 gallons of water a minute. You should've heard the guy doing the voice-over talk about the jackass. BASE jumping legend, daredevil, all that stuff. But I kept thinking: what about the other dude who also jumped with this guy? In my opinion, he's the real hero. I mean, you've got a damn camera strapped to your helmet so you look like a jackass, and you've to keep looking at the jumper to make sure that all of it (success or painful failure) gets captured. And you still have to make the damn jump! And yet, the other dude gets all the glory. That's just wrong. Well, to be fair, the dude probably *did* make some money by selling tape to Destroyed in Seconds...

3. I thought Discovery was supposed to be about, you know, DISCOVERY. We've got environmental issues we can talk about, scientific inventions, docmentaries about the Earth and Space, so much other cool stuff. Why the hell are you reducing yourself to playing tape of things getting blown up and boob jobs? (Not all is bad - Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs are truly enjoyable) Still, I feel it's been watered down recently. I guess talking about environmental problems gets you labeled as a dirty hippie channel...

2. Ron Pitts, you have one lousy agent. I feel bad for this guy, have you seen him? To be fair, it's not like he's a superstar; I think he had a below-average football career for a few years and they sent him packing. Point is, you see him only twice during the show; at the start where he says "Welcome to Destroyed in Seconds, where you see stuff getting destroyed in seconds" or some crap like that, and then winds down the show with "This has been Destroyed in Seconds, see you next time." That sucks balls. I mean, that's as bad as Pamela Anderson and Debbe Dunning on Home Improvement ("What time is it? Tool Time!!!"), except that Stills, unlike Ms. Anderson, got those boobs by benching 350 and then stopping 5 years back...

1. Why do we love watching things getting destroyed? I don't get it, I really don't. For 30 minutes, no matter what, we're all reduced to grunting and puntuating explosions on TV with "Aw Jeez" or "What the F**K!!??" or "did you SEE THAT?!?!" even though we're all alone in front of the TV. Well, being male and drinking beer exacerbates this, but being male and drinking beer exacerbates a lot of things, so that might not be a factor. So why do we find something so inane, so vacuous, so breathtakingly POINTLESS, entertaining? Does this say something about our race? About society? About today's media and how it has conditioned us?

I don't know. You tell me.

Stuart Scott's eye

You know, I know that this isn't your fault, you're born with it, but can't they correct this with surgery these days? I was watching Stu today, and his eye, man, I tell you, it isn't just lazy. It's sitting-in-your-mum's-basement-eating-cheetos-on-the-couch-wearing-a-wifebeater-watching-football-all-day-long-when-you-should-be-finding-a-job-because-you're-thirty comatose. Actually his whole visage was swimming a bit because I was a little drunk, but that's beside the point. At one point I wanted to duck because he looked away (well, one eye did) and the other one swung in place to stare at me. It felt like a tank turret had just swung around and I was staring down the barrel of its 120mm gun.

I like the guy though. He's a solid sportscaster, and he's battling cancer. Or at least he had a brush with it in late 2007, and was fortunate enough to get it treated at the right time. Its just his wandering eyeball that distracts me a bit, that's all.

Unfortunate names (in science and elsewhere)

Just the other day, my friend was talking about how Chinese names were a big pain when it came to scientific publications. If you want to look up a publication by someone with a common name, youre likely to get hit by a huge number of results (Zhang W retrieves 8180 results). Some enterprising and less-than-honest people have apparently also tried bulking up their CVs by citing others' publications as theirs (Hey, that Zhang W is really me). Worse, sometimes you can get repeats, like this, which really screws you up (once you look past the Li Y, Li H, Li L and Li X):

Detection of HPV types and neutralizing antibodies in Gansu province, China.
Wu X, Zhang C, Feng S, Liu C, Li Y, Yang Y, Gao J, Li H, Meng S, Li L, Zhang Y, Hu X, Wu X, Lin L, Li X, Wang Y.
J Med Virol. 2009 Feb 23;81(4):693-702

We'll see if solutions like UAIN actually get implemented some day.

But anyways, I happened to mention this to pushupdad, and he responded saying it wasn't as bad as being stuck with a name like Thanjavoor Sivaramakrishnan. Or Govindarajan Ananthanarayanan. Turns out though that South Indians aren't the only ones stuck with lousy names. There is a little passage in Freakonomics where they talk about kids being named Shithead (pron. Shuh-teed) and Orangeade by incredibly short-sighted, I would go so far as to say vengeful, parents. Now, pushupdad being who he is, went on to search for, and forward to me his list of top unfortunate names from the UK:

Stan Still,
Helen Back,
Terry Bull,
Tim Burr, ,
Barry Cade,
Mary Christmas,
Chris Cross,
Ray Gunn,
Jo King (and his brother Lee King),
Justin Case,

And my favorite duo: Will Power (and the other half of the superhero team, Max Power)

Speaking of all this stuff, I came across another delightful little tidbit (h/t pushupdad):

Q: What do you call a Jamaican Proctologist?
A:Pokey-mon

Update: As reader Ampa points out, Brad Pitt's sister Cess. Very funny. But not as funny as this guy (WHO I KNOW) who's name is Hung Rong...

Bobby Jindal, you are a complete idiot

AAAAAAGGHHHHH!!!! Why did Bobby Jindal (or as we call him in my work place, Babu Gental) have to be Indian!?!?!? Its bad enough that I have to constantly remind people I am not his brother (all Indians look alike, you see). Now, on top of being an anti-science jerk, he has also proved to be completely inept at intelligent conversation. I mean, if ALL FOUR panelists at Fox news, FOX NEWS, have nothing good to say about your speech, dude, you suck.

More HOW CAN SHE SLAP ME?!?!?? - what it teaches us about Indian men

All I've been doing is watch this video OVER and OVER and OVER. And OVER. YOU HAVE TO SEE THE VIDEO TO GET THIS ESSAY (you can scroll down for the embed). This is one of the gems on the Internet that keeps giving. But one thing that struck me today, and I'm going to share this with you because I think it's important, is how the video reveals the four different character types of Indian men:

1. The wannabe-alpha-but-really-wimpy-ass male: The protagonist. He's alpha enough to say something snide to the woman, and get mad when he gets slapped, but that's about it. All his machismo ends with the return slap. The rest is downhill. Watching him get his ass whupped is especially enjoyable given how his masculinity, on full display when he hit the woman, simply evaporates into thin air. What we're left with is a bruised and battered (both body and ego) whimpering fifth grader who has to get led out of the studio so he can change out of his soiled pants. This is he kind of guy who will take you out to an expensive restaurant, wine and dine you, promise you the earth and skies, and then will go completely limp in bed. Most likely to go to sleep in a fetal position, with you comforting him and shushing him quietly to sleep as you sip warm chocolate and bemoan your lousy choice for a date.

2. The angry young man: Epitomized by Amitabh Bachchan in the '70s, this would be the co-host of the show, who, miffed that his hair-trigger lady co-host got bitch-slapped by an even more hair-triggered wannabe-alpha-but-really-wimpy-ass male, gets into the act. Under the guise of defending the honor of the above-mentioned lady, all that pent-up anger resulting from his miserable love life, unhappy and impoverished childhood, and retard agent who put him on this dumb-ass show in the first place, gets poured onto the weaker and soon-to-be-sorry ass #1 character-type dude. The quick transition from broken TV English to the choicest of Indian cuss words reveals how quickly the thin veneer of bollywood polish can be stripped away under appropriate circumstances to expose raw testosterone. This is also the guy who will take your clothes off, whether you want it or not, two minutes after you've gone back to your home with him after the date, and then will rough you up while telling you that you wanted it this way. You will most likely have to head into work for the next week with a couple extra layers of make-up to hide the bruises.

3. The beta-and-a-half: You may have missed this, but look at the video again. Now spot the guy with the pink shirt and brown shorts. See what he does? Runs right in and kicks type 1 in the nuts when he's on the floor. And in the face. And in the ribs. Then he runs away, just in case, you know, the guy who's getting mauled by #2 types might get up, run after him, and whup his ass. And then he comes back (because you know, his transferred anger at the co-hosts robbed honor comes in waves), and when #2 is totally down, punches him again and then again beats a hasty retreat. Happy that he's gotten to actually beat someone up, he can now run back to his boys and spin tall tales about how he destroyed a goon with his bare hands to protect the honor of a fair maiden who was being harassed by above said goon. This is the guy that will constantly snipe at you and watch other men watch you throughout the night, occasionally beating them up when he's had enough to drink. And then blame you for it. This is also the kind of guy who will have a vasectomy and wait until you get pregnant before he tells you about it.

4. The thoroughly beta male: The second contestant who didn't get bitch-slapped. You see what happened to him? Yep, watch the epitome of virility and manliness slink out of the frame at about 0:20. A true survivor. You know, when Matthew talks about the meek inheriting the Earth? This is the guy first in line. His bravery and presence of mind give me goose-bumps. Oh, there are way more men than you think who fit this bill. Except you'll never know because you never see them, unless you have the misfortune of getting arranged to one of them. In which case good luck, because he's going to jizz in his pants when you touch his hand. But even if you aren't married to them, and even if you can't see them, know this: they're watching you. And imagining you naked.

********************************************************************************

BONUS: (yes, today was a light work day)

1. Check out the short but well-done Millie Remix.

2. The surprisingly entertaining Techno Remix.

3. The Indian TV Remix that delves deeper into the incident and involves other players.

And the ultimate overkill mix, the How can she slap me Insane Edition.

Update: OK, response to the comments:

1. You asked about the foul-mouthed woman. I am in no way defending her actions. I think she was totally out of line. It was bad enough that she yelled at the dude for no reason (really, the F-word on TV? In response to someone saying he didn't want to talk to you? I don't know yo... I have women tell me they don't want to talk to me, all the time. I don't go around telling them to f-off...), but then to actually bitch-slap the dude? m-m-mm. Bad form. Totally tasteless. But then again, you get slapped by a woman, you walk off, or you restrain her or something. (When I get slapped, I turn around an take a bow for the audience. And then make a hasty exit stage left) But to slap her like that? (notice his shoulder, hip, everything went into that pimp-slap). That is not kosher at all...

2. What category do I fit into... Ah, that would be the rarest of rare, one-in-a-million, diamond-in-the-rough, hidden category #5. Example, the producer of the show. In the midst of all this ruckus, this is the dude in the Hawaiian shirt behind the camera with his rum and coke and Cuban cigar, watching this whole thing unfold with a giant smirk on his face. He is also the guy making a bunch of money off of this sordid show. And is also probably banging bitchslap woman for all she's worth.

I'm that guy. Of course, minus the money, shirt, alcohol, nicotine. And bitchslap woman.

Scientists boycott Louisiana

Wow, nice to see scientists showing some spine. Now as you may know, the governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, is a thoroughly misguided, anti-evolution republican (what else?) politician. (Both his voting against the stimulus and the legislation that he signed into law that will allow for "supplemental materials" that "provoke debate" in science classes are topics that deserve their own detailed post, but that comes later).

But now, The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology has decided to back out of their annual conference, which was slated to be held in New Orleans, as a result of this legislation. That's a lot of money that the city and the state can ill-afford to lose. Though the city is taking the punishment for some pretty backward political thinking (you should read the comments section in the nola article to see how people in the area think. It's illuminating), the protest is great, in my opinion. Not that science should be political - it shouldn't - but when we are up against a systematic program to undermine a very basic tenet of Biology for no real reason other that religious bigotry, the least we can do is let our voices be heard.

"HOW CAN SHE SLAP?!?!?!" must watch, must go viral video

{{Bonus: After detailed analysis, I have come up with a list of 4 Indian male character types that are revealed in this video. For the complete character analysis, click here. But only AFTER you see the video}}

I hope this video of a TV host bitch-slapping a contestant and getting pimp-slapped in return goes viral. I really do. I don't quite understand the premise though - its some retard game show where the host, dressed like some dominatrix (even though there the whip and all the accoutrements are obviously for show only), gives these guys a rough time. I don't know who's brainchild it is, but it must help with all the suppressed sexuality that young Indian men have to live with.

Anyway, watch what happens when the dominatrix goes, oh well, somewhere, and everybody ends up regretting the move.



Its a sorry, sorry episode. Says a lot about Indian TV and Indian men. Not very good things. (before you pounce on me; I didn't choose the title of the youtube video). Although the beating and thoroughly Indian cursing is thoroughly enjoyable.

Update: And of course, some genius came up with this. Gottalove it.



Update 2: Remarkably, the TV show actually went on!!! Wow...

More Stupidity from the "Vaccines cause Autism" folks

You may have already heard about the landmark ruling by a special court, where judges given the quaint title "Special Master", ruled that vaccines indeed, do NOT cause autism. This is something that we knew for a while in the scientific community, but we have had respectable scientists have their lives turned into a living nightmare by a small but vociferous group that somehow tapped into public sentiment and insisted that vaccination indeed caused autism. For those of you who don't know, THIS ENTIRE CONTROVERSY WAS KICK-STARTED ALMOST SINGLE HANDEDLY BY A NOW THOROUGHLY DISCREDITED SCIENTIFIC PAPER BY ONE MAN - ANDREW WAKEFIELD. (Seriously, follow the link for a thorough debunking of the paper).

Now, I understand why parents of autistic kids would want to know what causes their child's symptoms - I understand that they may want to search for something to pin blame on. But this was more than just calling into question the efficacy of vaccines. This campaign by the anti-vaccine group has immunologists and epidemiologists genuinely concerned. Why? Because it makes a whole generation now susceptible to diseases that we should have eradicated long back. The crucial concept to understand here is "herd immunity"; basically, when a significant fraction of a population (herd) is vaccinated, it is more difficult for a bug to be transmitted from one individual to the next, and it eventually runs out of people it can infect, leading to its eradication. And when the crazies convince people not to vaccinate their kids, shit like this happens (yep. Measles - endemic again). Or this.

And then there was a gem from the spokeswoman of this group (and I can't find the link now for the life of me), AFTER the ruling - I'm paraphrasing: "... until we know what causes autism we cannot definitively say what cannot cause autism."

So while we don't know what caused the plane crash at Buffalo, we can't say that my peanut butter jelly sandwich lunch yesterday didn't cause it?

Mumbai terror masterminds arrested in Pakistan

Hmm.... I'm not "quite" sure what to make of this. Holbrooke makes his first trip to Pakistan, and lo and behold, the Pakistani government, which till now seemed to have been dragging its feet, all of a sudden has gone and arrested the alleged plotters behind the Mumbai attacks a few months earlier, which claimed some 173 lives.

On the one hand, great. Now I hope they call a couple of hard pipe-hitting ni****s to go to work on these homes here with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch and figure out exactly what happened, and then hopefully actually root out the LeT. The fact is that most mainstream Pakistanis are equally fed up with the crazies as everyone else, and I think we'll all be happier if they're stomped out.

On the other hand, I have to wonder, what arm wringing has been going on in the background, and what has been promised in exchange for this? This is no small deal. A government is actually owning up to the fact that a terrorist organization has fluorished within its borders and has plotted and carried out a terror attack on a neighboring country. This is big. So for Pakistan to own up to this, I wonder what has been promised in return.

My guess is "anti-terror" arms and technology form the US. Now ostensibly, this will be used on the Afghen border to root out those crazies. But this whole thing of arming a weak government in order to quell an uprising has been tried so many times before (to many to link to), and most often, has failed spectacularly. Plus who knows how the equation will change with regards to Kashmir, even though/especially since India has lobbied strongly (and successfully) to ensure that Kashmir will not be on Holbrooke's mandate...

Phew, I don't know what's really happening... and I'd wager a bunch of money that no one does... what do you think is happening?

Joaquin Phoenix at Letterman last night

Did you see this? I mean, WHAT IS THIS GUY SMOKING??? Dude, I've heard your hip hop music/rap or whatever bullshit shtick you're trying to pull, and it SUCKS BALLS, ok? I thought it was one big long documentary that you were making, and you'll eventually tell everyone it was a big joke and you were poking fun at the hypocrisy of hollywood (honestly, a small part of me still hopes it is, because you're a good actor and surely, you know better than to throw it all away).

But now you're either persisting in playing everyone (in which case, please stop, it's gotten tiresome), or you are genuinely completely screwed up, decided that you aren't going to do something that you're good at, and do something that you're fucking god-awful at (in which case, back to the top, WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING???).

I usually don't give a crap about self-absorbed, directionless, completely vain and vapid Hollywood types; but then again, they usually don't come on Letterman completely stoned and end up looking this pathetic.

Watch it - it's painful, but watch it.

Bonus video (h/t anon. reader): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/10/jon-stewart-rips-bill-ore_n_165506.html
Jon Stewart hands BillO his ass on a platter. Sweet.

The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women - my heroes

You may or may not have heard of this, but there is this ultraconservative Hindu group called the "Shri Ram Sena" (the army of Ram - an Indian god, who is probably turning over in his celestial grave at the sight of his name being used by a group like this). They call them the Hindu Taleban, with some good reason.

These guys have decided to wage war on Valentine's day, because you know, it's SUCH a western concept, and destroys the chastity of demure young Indian women. Apparently the sight of young people actually falling in love and holding hands (gasp!) without their parents giving them off in marriage to someone they haven't met before is sending the old farts into conniptions. This attitude alone deserves a separate rant on this blog, and will probably get it soon.

But for today, here's saluting the The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women, a Facebook group that's urging women to stand up to these thugs, and go ahead and have that drink at a pub. They're also planning to send a bunch of these pink knickers to the Sena, which I think is a great way to neutralize these blue-balled sex-starved neandrathals (btw, chaddi - rhymes with cruddy with a real hard d - in Hindi means underwear. That's also a dig at another right wing group called the RSS, but we'll get into that later). I can just imagine their heads exploding (lousy but appropriate pun I think) at the sight/small/touch of these lovely undergarments...

Up yours, sexist pigs.

Numbering and lettering your socks is NOT O.C.D.

A friend of mine noticed recently that my socks had little numbers and letters on them (under the toes). He asked me what it was, and I told him, quite simply, that I number AND letter my socks. He looked at me with a certain amount of amusement and/or disgust and/or pity and told me that it was OCD.

Now I know what Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is - its when you can't stop washing your hands, or you keep fretting about whether you turned the oven off before you left home, or looking at all your baseball cards before you go to bed every night. Let me tell you why numbering and lettering my socks is not OCD, aided as always with a little schematic. The numbers enumerate the socks obviously, and the lettering is L (left) or R (right).

Case 1 (top) is optimal: I am wearing the "L" of the "nth" sock on my left foot, and the "R" of the "nth" sock on my right foot. All is good, and the flowers smell great.

Case 2 is a common mistake made by slobs who don't care about how each sock looks. No, I am not just talking about pairing a brown sock with a black sock (in which case you are probably single, live in your mother's basement and masturbate excessively. Or you have an IQ of 150 and are working on quantum physics. Either way, no excuse. You are beyond saving, and I am not wasting breath on you). I am talking about multiple pairs of socks that, when brand new, looked identical. Here is a pairing of an "nth" L sock with an "mth" R. There is no cause for physical discomfort, except that you may have worn the "nth" pair with your new brown shoes on a sweaty day, causing a mild brown coloration on this pair, while the "mth" pair may have no such discoloration. This causes pseudo-asymmetry, which is a no-no; further, if the socks have gone through variable wash cycles, you will now be wearing socks that are variably stretched and/or worn out, and if you can't feel variably stretched and/or worn out socks on your feet, you have the hide of an elephant.

Note: I do not have baby pink socks. For that matter I don't have powder blue socks. These are for the purpose of illustration only.

Case 3: By far the most important reason I do this. Note that I have switched the letters, so now I am wearing an "R" sock on my left foot and vice versa. Obviously this does not matter the very first time you buy the socks because they are symmetrical. But with time, what happens is that your big toe stretches out the sock on side only - the right side of the left sock, and vice versa, as you look down at your feet. And so out of the blue, if you wear your "R" sock on your left foot (as illustrated here), what happens is that: a. Your big toe is now constricted in the little bit of fabric that was originally meant to hold the little toe, and b. Your little toe now has a ginormous cavity it has no hope of filling (yeah, I know there's an R rated joke here), and so what
happens is that the extra fabric folds over, jams in between toes, or tries to hide in the crease under your little toe (bleaurgh. It hurts to even write this). Again, if you have a buffalo's sensitivity in the foot region, good for you. I however have sensitive feet, and this extra floppy fabric is extraordinarily vomitous. It makes me go limp waist down and makes me want to feed my feet to a mad hungry pitbull. It has all the pleasantness of a long sloppy wet foot sex session for someone who doesn't have a foot fetish.

Incidentally, the same goes for socks that have been interchangeably worn so that they are now symmetrical (having been assaulted by both feet) because now they are symmetrically loose, with symmetrically floppy fabric that wants to hide in the creases under your toes. The very thought makes my toes curl, although to be fair, I only have vague memories of this feeling of discomfort, sometime before puberty. I think I had a tough time getting my mum to agree that a little marker ink that had bled from my socks to the other clothes in the load was only a minor inconvenience...

Anyway, so that's the reason I do this. As you can see, perfectly reasonable. You should try it too, if you don't do it already (in which case we should have a beer and yell at all the cubes around us).