Dec 2015
- Dec 1
- Adobe Deprecates Flash
I've hated Flash for a long time.
· Read more… - Dec 1
- Enterprise vs. The Millenium Falcon
NdGT's reasoning for why he prefers the Enterprise over the Millenium Falcon is different than I expected, but I would've said it's because the warp drive (AKA the Alcubierre Drive) is actually being worked on, whereas we really have no idea whether hyperspace actually exists (although String Theory necessitates its existence) and opening controllable wormholes permanently linked to places in the Universe that we can specify seems even more unlikely than generating a warp field.
· Read more… - Dec 2
- Honey
I did get my flu shot more than a month ago, but obvioiusly that doesn't make you immune to any of the other respiratory viruses circulating around this time of year.
· Read more… - Dec 2
- Mass Shootings
Up to three dudes have decided to shoot up a facility that helps the developmentally disability.
· Read more… - Dec 3
- Miscellany
It's been almost three years since Sandy Hook and here we are at square one again after 14 people have been murdered and 21 people wounded in San Bernardino.
· Read more… - Dec 4
- Terrorism or Not, We Still Need Sensible Gun Laws
Tashfeen Malik, one of the shooters in the San Bernardino tragedy two days ago and wife of the other shooter, Syed Farook, apparently expressed admiration of an ISIS leader before carrying out the attack.
· Read more… - Dec 4
- The Solution to Dangerous People with Guns is More Dangerous People with Guns
I was just joking about it when I said it, but I never really thought that Congress would seriously protect the rights of people on terrorist watch lists to purchase guns without difficulty.
· Read more… - Dec 5
- Radicalization
Probably because of my exposure to postcolonial, anti-imperialist, and neo-Marxist literature, the theory that economic inequality in the Middle East is making terrorism popular seems thoroughly plausible. Add to that the fact that the West typically supports autocratic totalitarian regimes in the region often against the will of the people these regimes rule, and it's no wonder that radicals are having an easy time recruiting the disenfranchised. #blowback
· Read more… - Dec 7
- Political Correctness, Mass Shootings, Terrorist Attacks
So some people are blaming "political correctness" for the San Bernardino attacks because people weren't reporting suspicious activity for fear of "appearing racist". So does that mean we should be reporting "pro-lifers" like Robert Lewis Dear or neo-Confederates like Dylann Roof, or does this just apply to Muslim Americans?
· Read more… - Dec 7
- Freedom of Movement
It is not uncommon to see people argue that the right to bear arms is actually more guaranteed than the basic human right of freedom of movement, as there is an amendment protecting the right to bear arms but no specific text protecting the freedom of movement.
· Read more… - Dec 7
- No Right to Bear an Assault Rifle
Even this SCOTUS does not think the Second Amendment is totally unlimited. You do not have a constitutionally-protected right to bear assault rifles.
· Read more… - Dec 7
- Legislating Morality
One of the more disingenuous arguments against gun regulation is that laws don't prevent crime, therefore they are useless.
· Read more… - Dec 7
- The Second Amendment is a Control Mechanism
What better way for a tyrannical government and its autocratic oligarchs to keep its citizens under control, by allowing some of its citizens to keep the rest of the populace under constant fear of extrajudicial arbitrary killing, and letting citizens slaughter each other without due process, all the while as these citizens believe that they are upholding freedom.
· Read more… - Dec 9
- Japanese American Internment and Muslim Immigrant Bans
If not for the gravity of his xenophobic policies and the fact that so many people in the U.S. take him seriously, it's absurd and hilarious that Donald Trump is citing the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII as justification for banning Muslim immigrants.
· Read more… - Dec 9
- Fewer Gun Deaths, Same Number of GSWs
Despite the constant media spotlight on mass shootings, it's true that gun deaths have decreased in the U.S., tracking the decrease in violent crime.
· Read more… - Dec 15
- Benedict Anderson
I just learned from L. that Benedict Anderson, the author of Imagined Communities died two days ago.
· Read more… - Dec 15
- Strive to Make Things Better for Others
I'm not a huge believer in the idea that if I endured some kind of hardship, then it should be OK for others to endure the same kind of hardship.
· Read more… - Dec 16
- San Bernardino and the Media
So I'm keeping my #ConspiracyTheories in abeyance, but at the very least, the #MSM fucked this up.
· Read more… - Dec 16
- Antibiotic Arms Race against S. aureus
A and I were listening to the Radiolab episode from November 2nd last night about S. aureus' evolution against antibiotics and how a microbiologist and a historian re-created an anti-bacterial remedy from the 10th century.
· Read more… - Dec 16
- Dogs and Foxes
Researchers used mtDNA and nuclear DNA analysis to pinpoint the origin of dogs to south East Asia (the northern part of Southeast Asia? It's confusing.)
· Read more… - Dec 16
- Shkreli at It Again
Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals who jacked up the price of Daraprim (pyrimethamine), wants to do the same thing to benznidazole, one of two medications known to be effective in treating Chagas disease.
· Read more… - Dec 16
- Driverless Cars
I was listening to a brief snippet of a radio talk show and the topic was driverless cars. As far as the guest was concerned, driverless cars are inevitable (one of the things they touched upon is that since they're safer, insurance companies are probably going start charging higher prices for cars that require a driver.)
· Read more… - Dec 17
- Star Wars and Dune
I never noticed until people started posting about "Star Wars" non-stop that Owen Lars claimed that Anakin Skywalker was a "spice freighter navigator".
· Read more… - Dec 17
- Martin Shkreli Charged with Federal Crimes
Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, best known for trying to gouge patients with toxoplasmosis and Chagas disease as well as buying a Wu-Tang Clan album for $2 million, has been charged with securities fraud.
· Read more… - Dec 17
- Influenza and AGE
Hmm. While it's true that most cases of viral acute gastroenteritis are caused by rotavirus, norovirus, enteric adenovirus, and astrovirus, influenza can totally cause GI symptoms.
· Read more… - Dec 18
- Medical Grade Wearables and Skepticism of the Quantified Self
Everything in my medical training has taught me that trying to min-max your vital signs and lab values is absurd and insane if you don't have any medical problems, but people are going to do it anyway, so I guess I might as well get used to it.
· Read more… - Dec 19
- Franz von Suppé
- Dec 21
- Hermione Granger as a person of color
Given the postmodernist/postcolonial filter through which I was exposed to English literature, I've always been wary of taking authorial intent as the end-all/be-all of textual interpretation and deconstruction, but it's also true that Hermione Granger's skin color was never mentioned in the text, as pointed out by the author herself.
· Read more… - Dec 21
- How to Stop Hiccups
In case you don't happen to have Thorazine or Haldol lying around, you can always use a finger up the butt to stop intractable hiccups.
· Read more… - Dec 21
- The Jedi and Tchaikovsky
I was certain that I had blogged about this before or at least posted on Friendfeed but given all the "Star Wars" hoopla, I have the Jedi leitmotif/Force theme stuck in my head.
· Read more… - Dec 22
- Fight Club
So I had this weird dream that I was at work. But instead of my usual office, it looked like the Whitefeather law firm from "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" and it was a combination internal medicine-pediatrics clinic and dental office.
· Read more… - Dec 22
- health care in the U.S. is expensive
According to this meme going around Facebook, the average hip replacement in the U.S. costs $40,364 while in Spain it costs $7,371
· Read more… - Dec 22
- The Myth of Pharmaceutical Innovation
Despite the passage of the ACA and despite reams and reams of analysis papers, the task of containing costs still seems wildly out of reach.
· Read more… - Dec 22
- Wolf Pack
This picture of a wolf pack walking single file through the snow has been making the rounds on Facebook lately.
· Read more… - Dec 24
- The iPod is Dead! Long live the iPod!
I am still on my retrospective crawl through my blog. I've finally gotten back to Oct 2006
· Read more… - Dec 26
- No Shit, Sherlock
The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.
· Read more… - Dec 29
- Driving on Snot and Ice
This is essentially how the Jatravartids on Viltvodle VI celebrate their Winter Solstice #GloryToTheGreatGreenArkleseizure #BlessYou #TheGreatWhiteHandkerchiefWillComeAgainInGloryToJudgeTheLivingAndTheDead #HHGttG
· Read more… - Dec 29
- Negative Reviews for Star Wars
There are spoilers ahead. You have been warned.
· Read more… - Dec 30
- Space Taoism
Given the fact that the Dark Side of the Force (as the Sith, the Empire, or the First Order) always build a planet-destroying weapon that has a single point of failure and the Light Side of the Force (as the Jedi Council, the Rebel Alliance, or the Resistance) always manages to destroy it, I've started to see "Star Wars" as a version of the myth of Sisyphus.
· Read more… - Dec 30
- Jodorowsky's Star Wars
The Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics implies that in some alternate timeline, Jodorowsky managed to release "Dune" before "Star Wars", making subsequent science fiction movies look nothing at all like the ones we have in our own timeline.
· Read more… - Dec 30
- LotR's Expanded Universe
(Inspired by a post comparing the mythology of Middle Earth with the Star Wars Expanded Universe)
· Read more… - Dec 31
- The Pursuit of Meaning
On one hand, telling people to just "suck it up" and to simply endure unrelenting injustice while doing absolutely nothing to ameliorate conditions merely telegraphs your privilege.
· Read more…