Category: Junk Science

This is Contemptible

No Comments

It turns that cops and medical examiners are conspiring to use Sickle Cell Trait to excuse police misconduct.

Sickle Cell Trait is the heterozygous form of Sickle Cell Anemia, and it has a limited effect on people.  It is almost universally asymptomatic.

Nevertheless, because it is almost exclusively associated with Black people, cops and their enablers use it as an an excuse for beating people to death:

When they carried the body of a 32-year-old Black man named Lamont Perry out of the woods in Wadesboro, N.C., there were no protests over his sudden death in police custody.

No reporters camped at the scene. No lawyers filed suit.

Instead, the final mark in the ledger of Mr. Perry’s life was made by a state medical examiner who attributed his death in large part to sickle cell trait, a genetic characteristic that overwhelmingly occurs in Black people. The official word was that he had died by accident.

But the examiner’s determination belied certain facts about that night in October 2016, public records and interviews show. Accused of violating probation in a misdemeanor assault case, Mr. Perry was chased by parole and local police officers through the dark into a stand of trees, where only they could witness what happened next.

He had swelling of the brain, and a forensic investigator reported that he had an open fracture of his right leg. He was covered in dirt, and residents of a nearby housing complex told his family that when the officers emerged from the woods, their shoes and the bottoms of their pants were spattered in blood.

Yes, clearly this is a case of Sickle Cell Trait causing a broken leg, closed head trauma, and massive bleeding.

Mr. Perry’s case underscores how willing some American pathologists have been to rule in-custody deaths of Black people accidents or natural occurrences caused by sickle cell trait, which is carried by one in 13 Black Americans and is almost always benign. Those with the trait have only one of the two genes required for full-blown sickle cell disease, a painful and sometimes life-threatening condition that can deform red blood cells into crescent shapes that stick together and block blood flow.

………

The New York Times has found at least 46 other instances over the past 25 years in which medical examiners, law enforcement officials or defenders of accused officers pointed to the trait as a cause or major factor in deaths of Black people in custody. Fifteen such deaths have occurred since 2015.

In roughly two-thirds of the cases, the person who died had been forcefully restrained by the authorities, pepper-sprayed or shocked with stun guns. Scattered across 22 states and Puerto Rico, in big cities and small towns, the determinations on sickle cell trait often created enough doubt for officers to avert criminal or civil penalties, The Times found.

………

“You can’t put the blame on sickle cell trait when there is a knee on the neck or when there is a chokehold or the person is hogtied,” said Dr. Roger A. Mitchell Jr., the former chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia and now chairman of pathology at the Howard University College of Medicine. “You can’t say, ‘Well, he’s fragile.’ No, that becomes a homicide.”

I guess that we need to add, “Living while Black,” to, “Driving while Black,” to the list of offenses that the authorities find worthy of the death penalty.

About Bloody Time

No Comments

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has finally bowed to reality and admitted that it can be transmitted as an aerosol, as opposed to just the larger droplets.

This has been obvious for months, but public health authorities have been steadfast in their opposition to this mode of transmission since the beginning of the pandemic.

It makes dealing effectively with the virus more difficult, but more effective than ignoring reality:

Federal health officials on Friday updated public guidance about how the coronavirus spreads, emphasizing that transmission occurs by inhaling very fine respiratory droplets and aerosolized particles, as well as through contact with sprayed droplets or touching contaminated hands to one’s mouth, nose or eyes.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now states explicitly — in large, bold lettering — that airborne virus can be inhaled even when one is more than six feet away from an infected individual. The new language, posted online, is a change from the agency’s previous position that most infections were acquired through “close contact, not airborne transmission.”

As the pandemic unfolded last year, infectious disease experts warned for months that both the C.D.C. and the World Health Organization were overlooking research that strongly suggested the coronavirus traveled aloft in small, airborne particles. Several scientists on Friday welcomed the agency’s scrapping of the term “close contact,” which they criticized as vague and said did not necessarily capture the nuances of aerosol transmission.

………

The new focus underscores the need for the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration to issue standards for employers to address potential hazards in the workplace, some experts said.

This is probably one reason that both WHO and the CDC have been loath to support airborne transmission: It requires more extensive, and more costly measures to deal with the problem.

………

The new information has significant implications for indoor environments, and workplaces in particular, Dr. Michaels said. Virus-laden particles “maintain their airborne properties for hours, and they accumulate in a room that doesn’t have good ventilation.”

Yet more cost and disruption, particularly for things like reopening schools.

Aggressive action, and not reopening too soon, are required to deal with this even with vaccine rates well above 50%, and it’s going to be inconvenient as hell.

Sanity Wins in California

No Comments

California, in response to a measles outbreak in California, the state legislature passed , and now Governor Jerry Brown has singed into law, what is one of the most aggressive vaccine mandates in the nation:

Adopting one of the most far-reaching vaccination laws in the nation, California on Tuesday barred religious and other personal-belief exemptions for schoolchildren, a move that could affect tens of thousands of students and sets up a potential court battle with opponents of immunization.

California’s weakened public health defenses against measles and other preventable diseases led to the adoption of the measure, signed Tuesday by Gov. Jerry Brown, intended to stem the rising number of parents who opt not to inoculate their children.

Public health officials said a proliferation of waivers, many sought because of unfounded concerns about the safety of vaccines, helped fuel a measles outbreak that started at Disneyland in December and quickly spread across the West, infecting 150 people.

………

California joins Mississippi and West Virginia as the only states to ban vaccination waivers based on religion. All 50 states require immunization of children starting school, although about 20 allow exemptions based on personal beliefs.

Beginning with the 2016 school year, the new law could affect more than 80,000 California students who annually claim personal belief exemptions.

Only medical exceptions will be allowed for those entering day care and kindergarten. Children with physician-certified allergies and immune-system deficiencies, for example, will be exempted.

I will mix my victory toast with the tears of anti-vaxxers.

These anti-science ratf%$#s have a lot of blood on their hands.

Run Away from These People

No Comments

On a web site dedicated to people who do consumer electrical work, someone posits that Tesla’s new home battery packs will force homes to go voltage DC current. This is absolutely and completely wrong, because fails to get even a single fact right, as would be clear to anyone who knew the most basic physics:

CE pros might be sitting in the proverbial catbird seat when it comes to the future of wiring homes.

 With the solar revolution seemingly in full swing all across the nation, consumers are enamored with “going off the grid.” And many homeowners are counting on home batteries to be the next phase of their off-the-grid plans. Companies likes Tesla and RoseWater Energy Group are leading the way in the development of these new power storage devices for homes.

 But if the battery power trend takes off, it must lead to a new paradigm in which homes will be powered more with low voltage wiring than line voltage electrical, according to a blog by CE veteran Paul Self on Buildz.com.

Indeed, will the pure science limitations of AC/DC conversion eventually force a gigantic sea change from builders, electricians and the National Electric Code itself in the way homes are constructed and wired? The answer is “Yes” that might have to happen, says Self.

Here is Self’s logic: [Or more accurately, here are his completely incoherent thoughts]

“An underlying issue with solar power and the Tesla battery is the fact that they run on DC while the power infrastructure in buildings is AC. Stepping power up and down from AC to DC and vice-versa wastes energy, about 20 percent is lost in the conversion. Some converters do a better job than others, but resolving this 20 percent loss is very important when working on a battery stored energy supply.

Ummmm. No. Inverters operate at efficiencies of about 95% at their design points, and if you are connected to the grid, as Tesla envisions, you will only use the inverter .

Many devices in a home could run on DC. Almost all non-incandescent light bulbs can run on DC and require a transformer to step the 110 VAC down to a 12 – 5 VDC signal for the bulb.

No. The a fluorescent light ballast operates as follows: It uses a transformer to jump UP the voltage (not down), then rectifies it to DC, and then uses an inverter (square wave, because unlike motors, that is fine for gas tubes) to hop the frequency from 60hz in the wall, to 1+ Khz to eliminate flicker.  (For incandescents, it’s not an issue, because even as the AC current goes through them they hot.  CFLs are generating lights from individual sparks).

Other devices like computers, TVs, cable boxes, and cell phone chargers all operate similarly.

No again. They cannot use line current, they need to condition the power, and it is easier to do this with AC current.

Appliances like electric ovens, electric water heaters, and air conditioners will require 110VAC, but most of the house is on DC.
Let me paint you a picture.

They reacquire 110VAC because they are high power, and at low voltage, the amperage, and wire size go through the roof. (Details follow)

  • Sun generates 12VDC via the solar panel

Yes, a panel will generate relative low voltage DC, but if arranged in series, you can generate 100s of volts, and have smaller and cheaper wiring with less transmission losses.

  • Solar panels push power to a battery

Again, note arranging in series. In their cars, for example, Tesla battery packs operate at DC voltages between 250V and 425V.

  • The battery or the solar panel push 12VDC to a DC to AC converter (20% loss of power).

From an info page for an inverter for solar vendor

Again. Inverters are around 95% efficient these days.

  • AC is distributed throughout the house

  • Many devices then convert the power BACK to DC (20% loss of power)

Again, the efficiencies of rectifiers is about 95%, not 80%, and the devices that have to convert it back to DC would have to do so anyway, because power from the batteries is not as uniform as their electronics requires.

  • This all seems pretty silly to lose this much power. I am sure it is less than a cumulative loss of 40 percent power, but when your trying to free yourself of the power company, this really adds up.

Also note that he knows no math.  Two devices operating at a 20% loss (80% efficiency) would give us losses of 80% x 80% = 64%; 100% -64% = 36%.

This guy cannot even do basic multiplication.

You know what also “really ads up”?

Copper.

Let’s take a 40 W light bulb.

Power is Voltage x Current = V x I, so for a 120V source, the current is ⅓ amp. For his 12 Volt DC system, the current would be 3⅓ amps, 10 times more current.

You can also express power in terms of current and resistance, P=I2R, so losses in transmission would go through the roof.

Well, they would, except if you look up the charts, it turns out for a typical (I chose 50 feet) length, the DC wiring has much lower resistance, because it is much thicker.

How much thicker? Well the table for wiring for 12VDC gives us 6 Ga wire, and the worksheet for 120VAC gives us 14 Ga wire, and the wire gauge size table gives us conductor diameters of 0.17″ and 0.064″ respectively.

That is a lot of copper you end up paying for, and for many applications.

He also ignores the fact that DC Motors (the kind with brushes) are less efficient, run hotter, and wear out more quickly.

The motor on your furnace, and dryer, and washing machine, are typically induction motors, that operate directly off of  your house current, and with a DC house you would need inverters for the motors.  (So called “Brushless DC motors” contain their own power circuitry linked to an induction motor).

If you see this guy, do not let him near your electronics.  He will kill himself, or kill you, or set your house on fire.

Note that I am NOT an electrical engineer, though I got the basics in school, but this is so ignorant, and so wrong, that I felt compelled to Fisk this bit of  bovine scatology.

H/T /.

      Sorry to Harsh Your Warp Drive Buzz ………*

      1 Comment

      The reports of the EM Drive appear to be greatly exaggerated:

      ………

       Perhaps we should take a long cool drink at this point. Let’s start with the “NASA validates” part. NASA is a huge agency, with more than 18,000 employees. The testing was done by five NASA employees in a lab devoted to exploring unorthodox propulsion ideas. The team leader is a researcher named Harold “Sonny” White, himself a proponent of ideas about faster-than-light warp drives that most of his colleagues have classified as physically impossible. The lead author is one of White’s Eagleworks teammates, David A. Brady. Calling this group “NASA”—as almost every popular news story has done—is a gross oversimplification.
      till, science is science: What matters are data, not motivations or semantics. Did White et al actually validate Fetta’s version of the EmDrive? The abstract of their paper, which was presented at a propulsion conference in Cleveland, is freely available online. Reading it raises a number of red flags. The methodology description makes it unclear how much of the testing took place in a vacuum—essential for measuring a subtle thrust effect. The total amount of energy consumed seems to have been far more than the amount of measured thrust, meaning there was plenty of extra energy bouncing around that could have been a source of error.

      Worst of all is this statement from the paper: “Thrust was observed on both test articles, even though one of the test articles was designed with the expectation that it would not produce thrust.” In other words, the Cannae Drive worked when it was set up correctly—but it worked just as well when it was intentionally
      disabledset up incorrectly. Somehow the NASA researchers report this as a validation, rather than invalidation, of the device.

       Did I say that was worst of all? I may have  take that back. In the paper by White et al, they also write that the Cannae Drive “is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and therefore is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma.” That last bit stopped me. What’s a quantum vacuum virtual plasma? I’d never heard the term, so I dropped a note to Sean Carroll, a Caltech physicist whose work dives deeply into speculative realms of cosmology and quantum theory.

       Carroll wrote back immediately, with a pointed message: “There is no such thing as a ‘quantum vacuum virtual plasma,’ so that should be a tip-off right there. There is a quantum vacuum, but it is nothing like a plasma. In particular, it does not have a rest frame, so there is nothing to push against, so you can’t use it for propulsion. The whole thing is just nonsense. They claim to measure an incredibly tiny effect that could very easily be just noise.” There is no theory to support the result, and there is no verified result to begin with.

       ………

       That’s part of why this space-drive story bothers me so much. Abandoning known science when it feels good to do so is a dangerous proposition. As Carroll later tweeted, “The eagerness with which folks embrace sketchy claims about impossible space drives would make astrology fans blush.” I am personally a huge space enthusiast; I would love to see a new type of propulsion that would make it easier to explore the universe. But having your heart in the right place is no excuse to walk away from normal critical thinking. It is not materially different than the approach of people who reject science when they don’t like what it says about climate change, vaccines, or genetically modified organisms.

      (Emphasis Mine)

      Let’s be clear here:  The tests are dubious, the detected “thrust” being, “Between 30-and-50 microNewtons, where the limit of the measuring device is 10-to-15 microNewtons,” which makes the setup vulnerable to subtle errors and confirmation bias.

      I am not saying that it’s true, but I am saying that we don’t have even the vaguest model to describe this phenomenon, and the scientific method requires skepticism, and this sounds like the Pons and  Fleischmann cold fusion fiasco of the late 1980s.

      There needs to be a lot more testing, and some theories that could actually reliably predict the results, before we should start buying Star Trek uniforms.†

      *Actually, I do want to harsh your buzz. Seriously. This appears to be complete bullsh%$, or at least irresponsibly immature, and I can feel virtuous by shooting it down.
      †On my part, I will not be buying a Star Trek uniform. As an engineer, I would be wearing a red shirt. I do not like those odds.

      First Measels, and now Mumps, Thanks Jenny

      No Comments

      A mumps outbreak in Idaho has spread to Washington state:

      An outbreak of mumps that started at an Idaho university and infected 21 people across the state has now spread to neighboring Washington state, health officials said on Monday.

      The spread of mumps, a highly contagious virus that leads to painful swelling of the salivary glands, comes as a wider measles outbreak has infected more than 100 people in California and over a dozen more in 19 other U.S. states and Mexico since December.

      The mumps outbreak began in September at the University of Idaho campus in Moscow, near the border with Washington state, and later spread to the capital, Boise, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare said.

      Mumps, which leads to painful swelling of the salivary glands, spreads easily from sharing saliva through kissing, shared eating utensils or water bottles, public health officials said.

      So far, there have been 21 confirmed and probable cases, including six around Boise, the state’s most populous city, a statement said. Then on Friday, two infections were reported in Washington state, the statement added.

      Public health officials were urging students on the Moscow campus and anyone who might have come into close contact with an infected person to ensure their vaccinations are up to date. Mumps and measles can be prevented through a single vaccine, the MMR vaccine that also covers rubella, health officials said.

      I would note that mumps can also cause sterility in adults and adolescents, as well as meningitis, pancreatitis,  encephalitis, deafness, and the occasional death.

      It’s less lethal than measles, but it’s still dangerous and avoidable.

      Let me send a big f%$# you to Jenny McCarthy, Andrew Wakefield, and the fraudsters, liars and stupid people who are endangering the rest of society.

      One Can only Hope that California will foll of the Example of ……… Mississippi

      No Comments

      H/t Neo at Stellar Parthenon for the Pic

      In California, a state with one of the highest rates of unvaccinated children in the nation, multiple schools have been sending non-inoculated children home in the wake of the Measles outbreak:

      A California high school barred dozens of non-vaccinated students from school on Wednesday over concern that a classmate may have contracted measles in a rare outbreak of the highly contagious disease that began at a Disneyland resort last month.

       The order, which affects 66 students at Palm Desert High School near the resort community of Palm Springs, marks at least the second time a California school has prohibited non-vaccinated students from classes since the outbreak began.

       Earlier this month, a school in the Los Angeles suburb of Huntington Beach ordered non-vaccinated children to stay home until this Thursday. And in nearby Arizona, officials in Maricopa County asked non-vaccinated students who were potentially exposed to the disease to stay home.

       “We are simply responding, being very careful and making sure we’re taking the best care of students and staff,” said Mary Perry, a spokeswoman for the Desert Sands Unified School District, which overseas Palm Desert High. She said the non-vaccinated students have been ordered to stay home until Feb. 9.

      All the while, Mississippi has the best child vaccination rate in the nation:

      It’s tough being a child in Mississippi. The state has the nation’s worst rates for infant mortality and low-weight newborns. Its childhood poverty rate ranks as the nation’s second worst. Overall, the residents of Mississippi are the unhealthiest in the country.

       But there is one notable exception to these dour health stats: Mississippi has the highest vaccination rate for school-age children. It’s not even close. Last year, 99.7 percent of the state’s kindergartners were fully vaccinated. Just 140 students in Mississippi entered school without all of their required shots.

       Compare that with California, epicenter of the ongoing Disney measles outbreak, where last year almost 8 percent of kindergartners — totaling 41,000 children — failed to get the required immunizations against mumps, measles and rubella. In Oregon, that number was 6.8 percent. In Pennsylvania, it was nearly 15 percent, or 22,700 kindergartners. And each of these states has suffered measles outbreaks in the last two years.

       “It’s nice not having measles in Mississippi,” said Mary Currier, Mississippi state health officer.

       The secret of Mississippi’s success stems from a strong public health program and — most importantly — a strict mandatory vaccination law that lacks the loopholes found in almost every other state.

      I am not quite sure just why Mississippi has the best policy in the nation, no exemption except for real medical issues, things like compromised immune systems.

      The antivaxxers endanger all the rest of us on the basis of myths promulgated by a doctor who was paid off by lawyers who wanted a ready pool of rubes plaintiffs.

      The final word of the day has to come from Nigerian writer and lawyer Elnathan John:

      Our thoughts are also with the measles-ravaged country America. I hope we are screening them before they come to Africa.
      — Elnathan John (@elnathan) February 1, 2015

      Another Day, Another Study Proving Antivaxxers full of It

      No Comments

      Parents worried about getting young children vaccinated against infectious diseases have fresh cause for reassurance, researchers say.

      A new review of existing scientific evidence has concluded that childhood vaccines are safe and don’t cause serious health problems such as autism or leukemia.

      “Our findings support that vaccines are very safe for children, and add to a substantial body of evidence that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the very low risks,” said senior author Dr. Courtney Gidengil, an associate physician scientist at RAND Corporation and an instructor at Harvard Medical School. “Hopefully, this will engage hesitant parents in discussions with their health care providers.”

      The review found strong evidence that the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine is not associated with autism, which is consistent with previous reviews of this rumored link.

      Some parents have chosen not to have their children vaccinated because of a now-debunked and retracted study published in 1998 that suggested that the MMR vaccine might cause autism. It was later reported that the study’s author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, had altered some of the study’s results.

      The researchers behind the new study also found no link between childhood leukemia and vaccines for MMR, DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis), tetanus, influenza and hepatitis B.

      Overall, vaccines given to children 6 or younger are safe, causing few side effects, the review concluded. The findings are published in the July 1 online edition and the August print issue of the journal Pediatrics.

      The fact that Andrew Wakefield is still a free man, when the death toll of his fraud numbers in the thousands, dishonors both the justice system and the scientific community.

      Good

      No Comments

      Jenny McCarthy has been has been dropped from a cancer fundraiser because of her anti-vaccine bullsh%$:

      The Ottawa Cancer Foundation has reversed its decision to hire actress and model Jenny McCarthy to headline its one-day fitness fundraiser Bust A Move.

      In a statement released late Friday afternoon, the foundation said McCarthy would be replaced by Canadian celebrity fitness instructor and former CFL player Tommy Europe.

      The statement said that since the announcement of McCarthy’s appearance, “…attention has shifted away from breast cancer awareness and fundraising.”

      On Tuesday, McCarthy was revealed as Bust A Move’s guest fitness instructor, which caused many to question why an organization supporting cancer research would invite someone with a history of promoting erroneous ideas about health and disease.

      Despite reams of scientific research to the contrary, McCarthy writes and speaks publicly about the supposed link between child vaccination and autism. The former Playboy Playmate also blames her son’s autism on vaccinations.

      Word of McCarthy’s appearance at a charity cancer event sparked a #dropjenny hashtag on Twitter, which generated many comments about whether the actress was a credible choice. Similar online debate occurred on Bust A Move’s Facebook page.

      I’m not saying that Jenny McCarthy should not be able to work because of her beliefs, but allowing her to be a spokesperson for anything remotely medical is like having António Egas Moniz (the inventor of the prefrontal lobotomy) as a spokesman for psychological counseling.

      Stem Cell Funding Injunction Rescinded

      No Comments

      I’m kind of surprised that the court did not tell Judge Lamberth to stop smoking pot.

      But they have now permanently lifted the injunction against funding the research:

      An appeals court has permanently lifted an injunction imposed by a federal judge, thereby allowing federally funded embryonic stem-cell research to continue while the Obama administration appeals the judge’s original ruling against use of public funds in such research.

      Considering the Obama administration’s generally weak support for reproductive rights, I would have figured that they would have slow walked this, but I was wrong.

      Background here.

      What the Hairieriest Saroff Said

      5 Comments

      On my brother’s all too infrequently updated blog, Stephen pointed out two articles that indicate why economics is called the “dismal science.”

      He points to a Wall Street Journal article (get it through Google news, or you just get the first 2 ‘graphs) titled Hindenburg Omen Flashes Dread, where an obscure mathematical formula has somewhat dubious predictive powers:

      The Omen was present at every market crash since 1987, but has also occurred many other times without an ensuing significant downturn. Market analysts said only about 25% of Omen appearances have led to stock-market declines that can be considered crashes.

      So this doomsday equation has predicted something like 20 of the last 5 crashes.

      The problem here is not one of economics, but rather of poor journalism.

      The story is not “Astonishingly accurate algorithm predicts end of the world,” but rather, “Movers and shakers in financial markets spooked by bullsh%$ that is less accurate that checking chicken entrails.”

      The second article, also from the WSJ notes that as interest rates hit record lows, companies are making record bond issues, particularly of the junk variety.

      Of course if another crash is heading in, those junk bonds will be a bad investment, though if it doesn’t implode, an 8+% premium on government debt is a winner:

      First Data Corp. sold $510 million of 10-year notes this week, at 9.125%, to pay down bank debt due in 2014. Peabody Energy sold $650 million of 6.5%, 10-year notes to pay off the same amount of higher-priced debt due in three years. MultiPlan Inc., a health-care cost-management provider, sold $675 million of notes this week, at 9.875%, to help fund a buyout of the company. Cott Corp., a maker of store-branded soft drinks, sold $375 million of debt at 8.125% to fund its purchase of another company, Cliffstar Corp.

      But again, this is really not about economics, it’s about finance, greed, and human foibles.

      To the degree that economics apply to finance, it is behavioral economics that applies: In order to understand markets, one needs to understand how they are irrational, which is in the rather quixotic juxtaposition of economics and psychology.

      This is Not The Onion

      No Comments
      E=mc2: Could it be ………… Satan?

      Andy Schlafley, daughter of noted wingnut Phyllis, has declared that Einstein’s theory of relativity is a liberal conspiracy:

      The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.

      ……

      See, e.g., historian Paul Johnson’s book about the 20th century, and the article written by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe as allegedly assisted by Barack Obama. Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible, a book that outsells New York Times bestsellers by a hundred-fold

      Seriously, you cannot make this sh$# up.

      Idiocracy Was a Documentary

      No Comments

      Idiocracy writ small

      Yes, this an actual campaign ad in which a candidate is lambasted for believing in the independently observed fact that is evolution.

      It’s actually a little more complex, because it’s an ad for a Republican primary, and intelligence and fact count for very little in that world.

      Additionally, it may be the Alabama Education Association, the state branch of the NEA union, that is running the ad.

      The AEA has had a number of long running battles with the candidate, Bradley Byrne, most prominently over his attempts to ban community college employees from holding public office.

      Whether or not it’s the AEA funding this, the point is that they (probably correctly) see a person who understands the scientific method and proof as being vulnerable if this is exposed to the Republican party base.

      It’s probably true, and it’s very sad.

      Rom Houben Is In a Persistent Vegitative State

      No Comments

      You’ve doubtless heard about the miracle in Belgium, where a man has been determined to have functioning intellect.

      I’m with Michael Shermer on this, this is Ouija board style “facilitated communication type hoax:

      It’s a hoax, folks. Sorry to be the spoiler of a feel good story—that of Rom Houben, the Belgian man who allegedly “woke up” from a 23-year long coma—but the hard truth must win out over hopeful emotions. Houben’s “communications,” his “statements” about how he’s been aware all along of his condition, his “talking” to reporters (all descriptive terms used by hardened journalists softened into bleeding heart jelly) is nothing more than the “ideomotor” effect, where the brain subtly and subconsciously guides the hands and fingers over a keyboard, or a Ouija board, or directs the movements of dowsing rods in search of underground water……

      …. Houben is just sitting there in a chair looking like he’s in a coma, with the facilitator standing next to him, his hand firmly gripped by hers, guiding his hand over the keyboard. ….

      A simple test to prove my claim: show a picture of an object (say, a cat) to the facilitator and show a different picture of an object (say, a dog) to Huben. Don’t let either one see the other photographs. Then see what gets typed: cat or dog? As a control, show them both the same picture and see what gets typed. Prediction: Whatever the facilitator sees is what will get typed. Would someone there please run this simple test?

      Such a test was already done in the 1990s when something called “Facilitated Communication” (FC) was all the rage with autistic children who, just like the Coma Man, “suddenly awoke” from their long sleep and began talking up a storm and sounding all the world like perfectly normal bright children, some even returning to school to take classes. Only they weren’t. Normal. Or talking. A facilitator stood next to a child, held his or her hand firmly in a grip with the index finger pointing down over a keyboard, then typed. In controlled tests by experimental psychologists, a photograph of an object was shown to the facilitator and a photograph of an object was shown to the child. Neither one saw what the other one saw. Sometimes the pictures were of the same objects, sometimes they were different. Result: whatever the facilitator saw is what got typed, 100% of the time, and never (0%) did what the child see get typed unless it was also what the facilitator saw. ….

      Prediction: if the Coma Man story is not thoroughly debunked now, within a short time the families of people in comas will be snapping up these plastic keyboards and facilitating the communication of their loved ones locked up in a broken brain. Only they will be doing no such thing. They will be wasting their time, money, energy, and worst of all their emotions, setting themselves up for being crushed when awareness dawns on them that FC doesn’t work. Please, would someone in the Houben family put an end to this charade before it spreads through the coma community and wreaks emotional havoc.

      (emphasis mine)

      No happy endings here. We are merely seeing the ability of human beings to delude themselves, nothing more, nothing less.

      Devastating Takedown of Super Freakonomics

      1 Comment
      Click for full size


      Not really such a big patch of territory.

       You don’t have to go far for help

      I think that the book is an exercise in muddy headed contrarianism: The idea here is if you come to conclusions that are counter intuitive, particularly if they are favor conservatives, you get air time and book sales, and thus academic integrity be damned.

      In any case, Professor Raymond T. Pierrehumbert takes a look at the chapter on Superfreakonomics where the authors claim that solar panels will contribute to global warming, and shows that anyone who can add 2 and 2 should never have put out this tripe.

      First, he Googles world electric consumption, 16.83 trillion KWH, and figures back to wattage, which gives about 2 trillion (1.921T actually) watts.

      Well, with 200w/m for an average area (he used 250 W on the assumption that you place solar cells in sunnier climes), and the current commercial efficiency of 15% that means that one would need about an area equal to 2×1012/(.15 X 250)=5.333×1010 m2=53,000 square kilometers, or a square about 231 kilometers to a side. (top picture).

      Wiki has Earth’s surface area as 510,072,000 km2, so this is 0.0105% of the earth’s surface.

      Now, you actually have to double this, since you need to account for the fact that at any given moment, half the earth’s surface is in darkness, so it rises to a whopping 0.0210% of the Earth’s surface area.

      This is a worst case scenario, particularly since the albedo (reflectivity) of a solar cell is frequently the same as the roof that they are placed on (yes, this is an argument for white roofs in warm climates), but let’s ignore that, and go to his numbers:

      So, let’s say that sand has a 50% albedo. [note the albedo of the earth is 0.39, I learned that from the Greek composer Vangelis] That means that each square meter of black solar cell absorbs an extra 125 Watts that otherwise would have been reflected by the sand (i.e. 50% of the 250 Watts per square meter of sunlight). Multiplying by the area of solar cell, we get 6.66 trillion Watts

      That 6.66 trillion Watts is the “waste heat” that is a byproduct of generating electricity by using solar cells. All means of generating electricity involve waste heat, and fossil fuels are not an exception. A typical coal-fired power plant only is around 33% efficient, so you would need to release 6 trillion Watts of heat to burn the coal to make our 2 trillion Watts of electricity. That makes the waste heat of solar cells vs. coal basically a wash, and we could stop right there, but let’s continue our exercise in thinking with numbers anyway.

      Of course, the problem is not the heat produced by coal production, it’s a trivial part of the equation, it’s the heat trapped by the emissions that are the concern, and it is (go to article) at least two orders of magnitude greater than waste heat.

      His conclusion:

      A more substantive (though in the end almost equally trivial) issue is the carbon emitted in the course of manufacturing solar cells, but that is not the matter at hand here. The point here is that really simple arithmetic, which you could not be bothered to do, would have been enough to tell you that the claim that the blackness of solar cells makes solar energy pointless is complete and utter nonsense. I don’t think you would have accepted such laziness and sloppiness in a term paper from one of your students, so why do you accept it from yourself? What does the failure to do such basic thinking with numbers say about the extent to which anything you write can be trusted? How do you think it reflects on the profession of economics when a member of that profession — somebody who that profession seems to esteem highly — publicly and noisily shows that he cannot be bothered to do simple arithmetic and elementary background reading? Not even for a subject of such paramount importance as global warming.

      (emphasis mine)

      He then finishes with a Google map (bottom pic) showing that it is a ½ mile walk to the Hinds Geophysical Laboratory on his own campus in order to confirm these numbers.

      It would be even shorter if he cut through campus and the Administration building, though considering that the ethics office is likely located there, he probably wants to take the long way.

      (on edit)
      I updated the pictures to go with the popup format that I now use.

      Given Michael Kinsley’s most recent exercise in mindless contrarianism, where he came out against journalism, I feel compelled to note that this behavior (Michael Kinsley disease) becomes even more toxic and has less intellectual integrity when juxtaposed with Chicago School economic delusions.