Hello, it is Monday!
You should have some links:
Anne of Green Gables Had Herpes (And You Probably Do Too!) from Boingboing.
If You Think You’re Good At Multitasking, You Probably Aren’t, by Nancy Shute. I think most multitaskers think they are better than everyone else at most things (regardless of how much self-esteem they appear to have); I think this because I have a tendency to multitask. Researchers at the University of Utah found that the kind of people willing to multitask tend to be classifiable as “impulsive risk takers.” Multitasking doesn’t make you more productive, but many of the job openings I’ve seen list it as a requirement.
Dan Savage’s 2006 editorial on how silly it is to insist that marriage is only for hetero people because only heterosexual couples reproduce:
If heterosexual instability and the link between heterosexual sex and human reproduction are the best arguments opponents of same-sex marriage can muster, I can’t help but feel that our side must be winning. Insulting heterosexuals and discriminating against children with same-sex parents may score the other side a few runs, but these strategies won’t win the game.
The lawyers arguing against gay marriage before the Supreme Court RIGHT NOW are using the argument that marriage should only be for hetero couples because they are the only ones who can accidentally produce children. John Scalzi points out that that “polyamorous bisexuals in same-sex open marriages might wish to dispute this line of ‘reasoning.’” Well, yes, that is certainly one flaw. I know everyone usually points to child-free couples, but I appreciate Scalzi’s inclusiveness!
Speaking of flawed, John Ioannidis argued in 2005 that biomedical research is inherently so because of their designs, bias, and analyses. Researchers test more false hypotheses than true ones and
if researchers test many more false hypotheses than true ones, it’s inevitable that most significant results will be wrong. That’s because 5 per cent of a very large number is always going to be bigger than 80 per cent of a very small one.
(Covered by Technology Review.) Leah Jager at the US Naval Academy and Jeffrey Leek at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health created a mathematical model to estimate the number of false positives likely to be included in their giant sample of 77,430 papers published in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet. They use the expectation-maximum algorithm to reckon that the number of false positives is 14%- better than Ioannidis’ claim, but worse than 5%, the “industry standard” p-value. (For more information on p-values in research study analysis.)
Other analyses disagree: for example, Bayer reported in Nature in 2011 that they were unable to replicate the majority of their results on drug targets in in-house trials; if you’re unfamiliar with “drug targets,” it’s the technical term for the receptor in your body whose behavior is modified by a drug compound, e.g. thyroid hormone receptors and Synthroid.
An upside to Greece’s economic woes: cleaner air. Air pollution has been steadily decreasing in Greece since 2002, but it really picked up between 2008 and 2011, correlating with lower fossil fuel consumption, industrial activity, and financial crisis. One soon-to-be-measured downside: dirtier air. The cost of oil for heat rises, as does illegal logging so that Greeks can stay warm.
And last but not least (in case you missed it somehow), Jonathan Coulton covered and re-arranged Baby Got Back years ago. Glee got ahold of it, covered it on the show (appearing to use his actual instrument tracks), and didn’t credit Coulton, who is understandably upset. In response, he “covered” their cover of his cover- which is to say he is re-releasing his original cover- for supporters to purchase on iTunes.
