Fastest-Growing Cities

The median price for a single-family home in Gilbert is around $220,000, compared with more than $387,000 in Boston and $641,000 in San Francisco.


--CNN

And I thought Worcester was pricey! Gilbert, AZ is apparently the fastest growing city in the nation. AZ has two cities in the top ten, as does Florida, but California has three.

Gay Marriage Legalizations in the News

Earlier this week, Canada legalized gay marriage (CBC.ca, BBC, becoming the third country to do so after Belgium and the Netherlands. Interestingly to me, US media did not report this.

Today, Spain became the fourth country to do so (CNN, BBC). Even more interestingly, CNN did report this, but called it only the third country to do so. Now, I know the Netherlands is a made-up country, and Canada doesn't count, so shouldn't that make Spain the second country after Belgium?

Cause and Effect: Mecury-based Vaccines and Autism?

Look at all the cases in which a vaccine containing mercury was followed by a child developing autism!

Her (Sykes') son was a normal, active baby. A photo shows Wesley clutching an Elmo doll, his blue eyes shining and aware. But in a later photo, taken after autism had set in, Wesley stares vacantly next to his smiling brother...

During pregnancy, Sykes had been given a shot to prevent problems from occurring because she and her baby had a mismatched blood factor. Now, she learned that the drug contained thimerosal, which is half mercury. The additive was also in most childhood vaccines, and had been used since the 1930s to prevent bacterial contamination, especially in multidose vials.

...

The afternoon after Kelly Kerns' 2-month-old daughter Kaylee got several vaccines was "living hell," with the child screaming and arching her back, her mother said...

When Kaylee was 18 months old, her white-blonde hair began falling out and she stopped talking. Meanwhile, Kerns had twin boys -- Andrew and Daniel. When they were 15 months old, they received three vaccines. A week later, they stopped talking. All three children have since been diagnosed as autistic.


--CNN

Man, that sounds convincing doesn't it? A pregnant mother or baby gets a vaccine or a treatment with mercury, and BAM! the baby develops autism! Right? Wrong.

There are scientific tests of causation: the problem appears soon after the exposure; the link makes sense biologically; the risk rises as the dose rises; the link is strong and consistent rather than weak or occasional; the problem doesn't occur without the exposure (a test rarely met). [emphasis added]

...

There's a 3 percent to 8 percent recurrence rate of autism in families and the disorder is four times more common in boys -- more suggestion of a genetic link.

Take a look at the bolded stuff. That means in order to prove that vaccines are causing it, we have to check that kids who don't get vaccines don't get autism. Well, we can't really do that in the US. So we have to check if as kids have more vaccines more of them get autism. This study hasn't been done. Nothing is proven. Not only have they NOT proven mercury's it, there's a more plausable explanation available - genetic factors - so we shouldn't resort to something we haven't yet tested.

Here's an example: say that every time you eat coconut cookies you get the runs. What's the reason? If you said coconut, you're wrong: it could also be flour, or sugar, or any of a number of other ingredients. It could be that you always eat them with milk and you're actually lactose intollerant. There's a lot of things that have to be tested before you can say anything conclusively. That's why everything in science is just a "theory," from evolution to gravity.

Woo-HOO!

OTTAWA, Ontario (Reuters) -- Canada's Parliament was set Tuesday to approve legislation that will allow same-sex marriages across the country, despite fierce opposition from conservative legislators and religious groups.

A majority of parliamentarians support the legislation, which would make Canada only the third country after Belgium and the Netherlands to allow gay marriages.

--CNN

My parents once asked me why I was so strongly in support of gay marriage when I myself am straight. I replied because of them. Specifically, their marriage. Mom is Chinese while Dad is Jewish. Different races. I believe they were married in 1965 (maybe 1968 at the latest), while miscegenation was struck down in 1967. Interpretted most broadly, miscegenation laws could have prevented their marriage.

Of course, conservatives would argue that the two are not the same thing. Gay marriage is against God, and straight marriage is for the purpose of having children. Well, they used to say interracial marriage was against God too, and I don't know about your parents, but mine never took a pregnancy or fertility test before they got married. Heck, they didn't even have me until some 10-13 years after marriage. They did not marry with the purpose of having kids. And if marriage's main purpose is to have kids, why not let the gay couples adopt all the children that weren't aborted?

Hm, I wonder if Christian conservatives would also consider it a sin for single parents to adopt.

Psychiatry Pseudo-science?

I may feel psychiatry is a soft-science (primarily due to the qualitative nature), but not even I go so far as to call it a pseudo-science. Tom Cruise, however, uses his pseudo-religion to justify it.

"Before I was a Scientologist, I never agreed with psychiatry," Cruise said. "And when I started studying the history of psychiatry, I understood more and more why I didn't believe in psychology. ... And I know that psychiatry is a pseudo science."

Disputing the effectiveness of antidepressants generally, Cruise said, "all it does is mask the problem." He added, "There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance."

--CNN

Pregnant cancer mother kept alive

Interestingly, I support this case. I find myself dissecting my own feelings. A 26-year-old pregnant woman had terminal cancer, which caused a brain hemmorage in the last few days. She was 17 weeks pregnant, and the child must be carried to 25 weeks for the potential preemie to have a good chance to survive.

The woman, Susan Torres, is brain dead, and is only being kept alive by a ventilator. To me, she is dead. Seventeen weeks of pregnancy is around 4 months, and the embryo is not yet able to sustain itself outside the womb, even with an incubator. To me, the baby is not yet alive.

And yet...

Husband Jason Torres, 26, decided to keep his wife, with whom he has a two-year-old son, on life-support after doctors determined that she would not recover.

He said it is what his wife would have wanted. "We definitely didn't talk about this situation," he told local media.

"I just know that Susan would walk through hell and back to save her child, and give her child a chance."

-- BBC

Hubble does it again

A picture of Fomalhaut's dust ring shows that it's off center by half the size of our solar system. Such a large offset means there's something else massive in the system, while anything as big as a brown dwarf or bigger would be visible to the HST. Therefore, it's a planet!

Man, I'm going to miss Hubble when she dies. We all are. We can only hope that the JWST honors her memory well.

Mainstreaming Webcomics?

The Washington Post recently ran an article on webcomics!

His firm (Keenspot) grossed more than $285,000 last year, Crosby said, up from $188,475 in 2003. More than half came from advertising last year and the rest from merchandise, print comic sales and an ad-free premium version of the site. The company shares half its net revenue with artists, allocating it based on how many readers viewed their work. Crosby said the company has been profitable for several years, though it is not yet paying its four co-owners what he called a "livable wage."

--The Washington Post

So they made $285k, gave half to the artists, leaving $142.5 for operating costs and salary to the four co-owners. Doesn't seem unreasonable to me that they might have $100k for the salaries, or $25k each. Since when is that not a livable wage in South Dakota? Heck, as a grad student I lived on $14k in Massachusetts, and some international students were feeding their whole family on that. Frickin' whiners.

Solar Sails a Reality!

The Planetary Society, a non-profit club with the mission statement to explore other planets, is sponsoring the first ever solar sail, and it's launching tomorrow! Much like a normal sail uses the push of the air to propel a boat, a solar sail uses the push of photons (light particles) to propel the payload (spaceship). I haven't yet heard proposals of "tacking against the solar wind"; I think the light pressure is too low to allow this, but perhaps in the future we'll figure out how. In other words, it's a one-way trip away from our sun. The payload has to be superlight, so the ship will not be carrying any fuel to return--we don't yet know how to get such ships back!

Update!
Apparently some amount of "tacking against the sun" is possible. I think the plan is to keep Cosmos 1 in orbit around the Earth, and use tacking to alter its orbit occasionally as a proof-of-concept.


BBC

Rest in Peace?

TAMPA, Florida (AP) -- The cremated remains of Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman who died after her feeding tube was removed in March, were buried Monday in a Clearwater cemetery.

A marker says Terri Schiavo "departed this Earth" February 25, 1990, and that she was was "at peace" March 31, 2005.
--CNN

The Schindlers are of course pissed because they didn't get an invitation to the funeral. At least they're not bitching about her being cremated b/c they wanted a second opinion on the autopsy. Perhaps they're just using the report?

Military Recruiting and NCLB

Among all the other fervor and complaints over No Child Left Behind, one that's been overlooked until now is that schools are required to give students' information to military recruiting agents.

A provision of President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act requires school districts to provide military recruiters with student phone numbers and addresses or risk losing millions in federal education funding. Parents or students 18 and over can "opt out" by submitting a written request to keep the information private.
--CNN

The main objections are regarding the aggressive and sometimes deceitful recruiting practices of the military, and the probability that recruiters will target people of color and low income districts as said students are less likely to attend college after high school. The ACLU is suing the Albuquerque (NM) public schools for not informing the parents of the opt-out.

My concern is regarding privacy, and more specifically, how do the schools confirm the identity of the recruiter before releasing the students' sensitive identifying information? What if a serial pedophile decided to try some more flavors and dropped by an army surplus store on his way to an area high school? Or what if an identity thief wanted to open some new credit card accounts? If I had kids, I'd opt them out and grill the principal on how s/he releases the information on top of that!

Evangelicals Gone Wild!!!

It intrigues me that we don't report this in the American media, but the BBC does.

Apparently there is strong religious intolerance, bullying and discrimination at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado being performed by Evangelicals against people of ANY other religion or denomination.

Mr Weinstein said 117 people had given him examples of abuse. Only eight of them were Jewish, he said - the rest were Catholics, Baptist, Lutheran, Episcopal, Presbyterian and Methodist.
--BBC

"Ted Haggard, president of the 30-million-member National Association of Evangelicals," whose headquarters is practically across the street from the Academy, counters that the Evangelicals are just expressing their freedom of speech. I'm sure if Jehova's Witnesses started knocking on his door every day he'd be picking different words to describe it.

Spanish Civil Marriage Laws Revamped

MPs in Spain have drawn up a marriage contract for use in civil ceremonies which obliges men to share household chores and the care of children and elderly family members.
--BBC

Unfortunately, I think the BBC's usually good, in-depth, reporting has been somewhat marred by this one. What they missed is the opportunity to comment on the fact that this law only affects CIVIL marriages. Spain is a predominantly Catholic country--80%, according to Wikipedia--meaning that I expect at least 80% of the marriages in the country to be religious ceremonies, and therefore not bound by a civil marriage contract. 93.4% follow some religion, leaving only some 6.6% likely to have civil marriages.

Two other comments: I hope that standing civil marriages are grandfathered in, because some people might have chosen NOT to marry if that were the requirement. And I wonder if the law obliges women to take 50% of the house chores? That'd be a bummer for me. :-P

Skeptical Science?

And here's another article about her (Schiavo's) skeptical parents. I can't help but apply the criteria of science to their claims, the one of choice being falsafiability: they need to identify a condition under which they'd realize they were wrong. I guess they never orginally agreed to accept the autopsy report, so at least they haven't blatently changed their minds.

Denial of Science

The collective brain of Americans is rapidly atrophying, much as Terri Schiavo's did after her collapse circa 1990.

An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband’s contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind, the medical examiner’s office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused.

Regardless of the autopsy findings, the Schindlers continue to believe their daughter was not in a persistent vegetative state, their lawyer, David Gibbs III, said after Thogmartin’s report was issued. He said they plan to discuss the autopsy with other medical experts and may take some unspecified legal action.

--MSNBC (pointed out to me by Unofischal)

Might as well believe the Earth is 6,000 years old while you're at it. I understand her parents' grief may lead to denial for a period of time, but it's been 15 years. Next thing you know they'll be saying that God made it appear that her brain had shrunk to test unbelievers.

Half a Mind

I find it fascinating that with a brain mass half that of a normal adult human, Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegitative state and blind. My pet cockatiel, Peeper, has a brain way less than one tenth the size of a human, and yet she has decent vision, definitely responds to stimuli (though more often with a yell than a smile), and can feed herself (as long as I provide the food or she finds it on the floor), though I wouldn't say she can improve any with therapy. Humans supposedly only use one tenth of their brain capability, and yet reducing the size to half the norm renders us incapable of function. This probably means that the "tenth" we use is evenly distributed throughout the brain, and it's not that we can isolate the parts that are useful.

This is all, of course, no evidence either way whether cessation of life support was justified. The parents' (the Schindlers') main argument that she responded to them and could improve with treatment is definitely undermined, but the science behind Schiavo's atrophied brain says nothing about morality--science is not equipped to make value judgements.

I read in a BBC article quite some time ago about the feeding tube. While I usually think of it as being something that snakes down the patient's throat (nasal or nasogastric feeding tube--it actually goes in through the nose), in Schiavo's case they actually poked a hole into her stomach and "fed" her directly like that.

Pope John Paul II had a nasal feeding tube inserted three days prior to his death (NPR timeline). The Roman Catholic church's stance is that food is a basic right that should not be denied to anyone. Refusing to feed someone (Terri Schiavo) is murder. Refusing food for yourself is suicide.

An NPR article I heard (I can't find the link, but these two are related:NPR1 and NPR2) argued that the "food" inserted into feeding tubes is a carefully formulated blend that has more in common with medicine than things "normal" people eat.

Interesting, it appears that the church's stance on medicine is different than that on food. Medicine is a mercy, but not a requirement. If you don't administer medicine, you're cruel and evil, but not a murderer. If you refuse medicine for yourself, it is not suicide, just refusal of extraordinary measures which could very well be against the will of God anyway. Also on NPR (can't find a reference for it--let me know if you have one), I heard that prior to his death Pope John Paul II refused kidney dialysis treatment. I do have a reference for the fact that two days before his death, when running a high fever, he "was neither rushed to the hospital, nor offered life support, apparently in accordance with his wishes to die in the Vatican" (BBC).

Ponder that for a while.

Chances are...

Someone needs to explain to the Pennsylvania Lottery that this woman's chance of winning the lottery the first time also depended upon how many tickets she bought in a year, and not just the second time.

31-year-old poses as teenager

Bourdin was jailed in the US in 1997 for posing as a couple's long-lost son.

The Texas couple's 14-year-old blue-eyed son had disappeared three years earlier and they travelled to the US embassy in Spain to meet "Nicholas Barclay".

Bourdin convinced them that he was their son, despite his brown eyes and strong French accent.
--CNN

Is Bourdin just that good, or are Texans just that stupid? You decide!

US Army News

It's intriguing what makes news in the US (via CNN) vs in Britain (via the BBC). A frontpage CNN article today talked about the horror of not making recruiting goals. Yesterday, the BBC ran an article that not only covered that in detail, but more importantly pointed out the rising divorce rate among army officers especially.

I was tempted to comment on the BBC article yesterday, but CNN ignoring that fact cinched the deal. Interesting that the conservatives are up in arms about how Massachusetts gays are going to destabilize marriage, while their own actions are doing a fine job of it on their own--WITH the statistics to back me up, which they don't have about gay marriage.

In the year to September 2002, 1.9% of percent of married Army officers got divorced, along with 3.1% of married enlisted soldiers, according to Pentagon figures cited by Reuters.

In 2003, when the Iraq war began, the figure for officers rose to 3.3% while for enlisted soldiers it fell to 2.8%.

The following year, the figures were 6% and 3.5% respectively.

The military said time spent away from a family, the strains of warfare, and problems readjusting to home life were all factors in the marriage break-ups.
--BBC

It's raining body parts!

The totally blase attitude of the cops, airline, and woman whose back yard the arm fell into are what makes this article so eerie.

More human remains were found in the aircraft's wheel-well, which is not heated or pressurised, so chances of surviving a long flight are negligible...

It appears the body was crushed by the wheel mechanism as it opened its gears...

SAA say the return flight to Dakar and Johannesburg has been delayed in order to repair the minor damage to the aircraft.

Supersize Me!

McDonald's is giving Ronnie a make-over. He's actually being put on a diet, believe it or not. The BBC article also has a nice related slideshow "McDonald's at 50."

And in case you don't get the title of this post, even after viewing the BBC slideshow, check out the movie's IMDB listing and then go rent it. It's pretty freaky.

Murderer Enters US with Bloody Chainsaw

Well, technically he hasn't gone to trial yet, so he's still just a suspect.

On April 25, Gregory Despres arrived at the U.S.-Canadian border crossing at Calais, Maine, carrying a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chain saw stained with what appeared to be blood...

The following day, a gruesome scene was discovered in Despres' hometown of Minto, New Brunswick: The decapitated body of a 74-year-old country musician named Frederick Fulton was found on Fulton's kitchen floor. His head was in a pillowcase under a kitchen table. His common-law wife was discovered stabbed to death in a bedroom.

Despres, 22, immediately became a suspect because of a history of violence between him and his neighbors, and he was arrested April 27 after police in Massachusetts saw him wandering down a highway in a sweat shirt with red and brown stains. He is now in jail in Massachusetts on murder charges, awaiting an extradition hearing next month.

He claims to work for NASA, too.

Life

Why is it ok to tamper with God's will when He doesn't want people to have children, but not ok when He does?

Stephanie Yarber, 25, gave birth Monday night to a 7 pound, 15 ounce girl named Anna, said her sister, Melanie Morgan. It was the sister who donated the ovarian tissue that made Yarber fertile.

"It's a wonderful thing," Morgan said Tuesday, characterizing the successful procedure as a "partnership with God, my sister and me."

--CNN

Maybe in both cases the person is ignoring God's will, but abortion is worse because it's ending a life, "thou shalt not murder," and all that.

Bush and Kerry's College Grades

Although CNN tells us the GPAs of both Bush and Kerry while contemporaries at Yale University, and describes in detail how the grading system changed after Kerry graduated, between Bush's junior and senior years, the article neglects to mention what their majors were. At Alfred, it was a cliche that the validictorians and salutatorians always came from one of two majors: Ceramic Engieers (because they worked their asses off to get perfect 4.0s), or Business students (because the courses were just that easy).

I'd really like to compare the full transcripts of both Bush and Kerry, as well as receiving letters of reference and a statement of their philosophy of politics. --oh wait... this isn't the faculty search committee I'm currently on...

Death Row Scholarship

CNN reports that the brother of a child rape/murder victim has received a five thousand dollar college scholarship from Catholic fund-raising death row inmates. The student, Zach Osborne, plans to become a police officer, has forgiven his sister's rapist/killer, and thinks that the death penalty is a just punishment for him.

Among the others who have received a scholarship is Brandon Biggs, whose father was hit by a car in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2001. His father was stuck in the windshield, and left to die despite his pleas for help.

How bizzare...

Dolphins learn to use tools

Anyone remember what the name of the organization was in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series that advocated for intelligent creatures that don't have hands?

A group of dolphins living off the coast of Australia apparently teach their offspring to protect their snouts with sponges while foraging for food in the sea floor. ...
"Cultural evolution, including tool use, is not only found in humans and our closest relatives, the primates, but also in animals that are evolutionally quite distant from us. This convergent evolution is what is so fascinating," said ... Michael Kruetzen, lead author of a report on the dolphins in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

I don't know if I'm more impressed at the tool-use, or the teaching.

Indulging Your Fantasies

Indulging your fantasies can be dangerous. Many would say that S&M is one of those fantasies. However, the BDSM (bondage & discipline / dominance & submission / sadism & masochism) community would argue that for a well-trained and respectful pair, the worst threat is interference from the cops.

(German) Police stopped the car after a concerned caller told them he had seen a woman locking someone in the trunk. However, on opening it, they were greeted by the sight of the 39-year-old man wearing nothing but a leather thong and a collar. ...

Deciding the rear of the car was not safe for the man, officers told him to sit inside the car and sent the pair on their way.

Man, German cops're so much more progressive than their American counterparts. Keep in mind, that Germany is also where a man took out an online ad and successfully found another man to chop off his penis, cook, and eat it, and the defense's argument that the "victim" was in his right mind so it was legal assisted suicide resulted in a verdict of only manslaughter. They're planning to appeal.