Links

Stuff I find around the web that interests or amuses me.

Ecstacy or meth?

by

Here’s one hell of an “oops” — a greatly publicized study detailing the harmful effects of popular drug Ecstasy has been retracted after the scientist realized that instead of Ecstasy, methamphetamine had been used in the experiments.

“We write to retract our report ‘Severe dopaminergic neurotoxicity in primates after a common recreational dose regimen of MDMA (Ecstasy)’ following our recent discovery that the drug used to treat all but one animal in that report came from a bottle that contained methamphetamine instead of the intended drug MDMA,” Ricaurte said in the retraction, to be published in the Sept. 8 issue of Science.

While I’m certainly not going to promote drug use in general, or Ecstasy in particular, that’s one hell of a mistake to make, especially for such a widely-distributed report. Truth to tell, I’ve always been a little suspect of studies on both sides of many drug issues — for every study that comes out that claims any given drug is fine, causes no problems, and should be de-regulated, another will come out claiming that said drug will cause major biological and psychological disorders for the user and their descendants for the next twenty generations, and often both studies will come from groups apparently equally well credentialed. So who do you trust?

You idiots can't drive

by

Jonas posted what to me is an absolutely fascinating post yesterday:

People often ask me, what – in my opinion – is the biggest of all differences between European and US-American societies. Most expect me to answer along the lines of crooked politicians (sorry, no difference, there), or the food, beer, and wine quality, but nawp. The most fundamental of them all, the mother-lode of differential lifestyles, the one thing that gives the deepest, most sincere, look into the respective societies, is the drivers test, and the DMV in general.

He then goes on to describe the amazingly different approach that Europe takes with people before letting them get behind the wheel of a car. To sum up:

  • A six- to nine-week class (minimum).
  • Actual in-car learning doesn’t start until around week three.
  • Mandatory test driving situations, “including night-drives, driving in bad weather, and the no-hold-barred-no-speed-limits-anywhere Autobahn.”
  • First-aid and roadside assistance training and testing is madatory.
  • Final driving tests with an approximately 20% failure rate.
  • A two-year probationary period after receiving your licence. Infractions within this time send you back to driving school.

That system is so much better than the ludicrously simple system we have here in the states. We get, what, a written test that a badly-trained monkey could pass, and a driving test that usually involves going around the block a few times? Then we’re allowed to get on the road, no holds barred. It’s really frightening when you stop to think about it — or when you get cut off at 65MpH on the highway.

Jonas sums it up quite nicely at the end of his post:

We expats get to hear a lot about the Second Amendment and its application back home. “They give guns to everyone?”, my friends ask. “Don’t mind it,” I usually reply, “they do much worse. They give cars to everyone.”

The blackboard jungle

by

Damien pointed to an absolutely wonderful article today: Failing at Living: It’s a blackboard jungle out there: It’s bad enough when the students don’t want to learn, but when they can’t even spell dirty words correctly, can a teacher really expect them to grasp Stephen Sondheim? It’s a rather sad commentary on the state of many inner-city summer schools, and the challenges teachers face in trying to teach those students at the bottom end of the curve. However, at the same time, it is absolutely beautifully written, and gave me quite a few laughs while reading it.

…I glanced around at my remaining students (the ones I hadn’t thrown out of class) as they scribbled away on their final. After five weeks of hearing them tell me that reading “sucked,” I’d finally followed the dean’s sage advice: Let them watch movies. Since he did not say: Let them watch movies they like, I’d made them watch Stephen Sondheim’s thorny Broadway musical “Into the Woods.”

“You are really, really going to hate this,” I’d warned them. “Stephen Sondheim is all about words and they go really fast, and he doesn’t believe in happily ever after. But please hate it silently and take copious notes so that you can pass your final exam.”

Early on in my innocent phase, I would have asked for the context clues that helped us to know what copious meant. But such is the way of innocent phases. “Now, if for some reason you don’t hate this,” I said, “I beg you to keep the news to yourself. Your peers will never stop punishing you.”

There’s also a discussion of this article on MetaFilter that has some interesting points to it.

Blogging from Afghanistan

by

Ben Hammersley, who’s generally a good read anyway, is currently working his way through Afghanistan. He’s been there for roughly a week now, and he’s been posting some really good stuff. Definitely worth adding to your list of reads. It’s a very, very different world from anything that I’m used to, that’s for sure. For instance…

Yesterday I moved from my hotel into the spare room of the house of the correspondent here for Radio France. Sebastian is trying to start a little side business by renting out rooms, drivers and LandCruiser he is about to buy, to visiting journos and documentary crews. His driver, Babrack, although probably not spelt that way, is an ex-Mujahadeen who credits Stallone’s performance in Rambo 3 for teaching him the correct technique for firing a rocket launcher and looking good at the same time.

Washington Post cribbing research from blogs?

by

RonK at the Daily Kos points out today that it appears the Washington Post’s Dana Millbank is doing a lot of research by reading weblogs.

Of late, our Dear Leader seems to have become Fair Game in the Big Media. And WaPo’s Dana Milbank seems to have been reading the blogs.

What’s the earlier blog reference you can find for each of the observations in Milbank’s 2003-08-26 column?

I can date two of the referenced items in the article (and did in Kos’ comment thread):

Flag desecration: July 25^th^, 2003 — I mentioned it here, via John via Kos via Wyeth.

Compassion: Aug. 20^th^, 2003 — I mentioned it here, via Atrios and Len via Kos via ‘K.Y.’.

I don’t mind at all if Millbank is discovering news items worth commenting on through the blog network — I certainly do it all the time — though I do wish that the sources for the individual items were sourced and given credit. I do my best to do that with each post that I pick up from someone else, it seems only fair for a real journalist to do the same.

Disney goes Goth (also: 'Bus Life' fan comments)

by

One of these days, this would be a blast to do:

For the fifth year in a row, Disneyland will be creeping with mobs of black-clad death-rocker types for what organizers officially bill as Bats Day in the Fun Park, but what most people just call Goth Day.

So why would a tribe of people largely typecast as gloomy, depressed, trench coat-wearing, Bauhaus-worshipping creatures of the night want to spend a day at the Happiest Place on Earth? The sheer irony of it all, for one thing. Plus the always welcome chance to make the eyes of non-Goths bug out: one year, Korda managed to get eight boats on the It’s a Small World ride and an entire Davy Crockett Explorer Canoe filled with Goths.

(via Wil)

Also: Thanks to the randomness of the ‘net and the first few comments that this post got, the comment thread has turned into a fun little conversation between the fans (and a few cast members, particularly Daniel Bickerdike and Ashley Jones) of a 2004 Disney (England) series of shorts called Bus Life. I found one episode of Bus Life on YouTube:

Time for that operation

by

The Gender Genie is a potentially cute little application that examines a block of text, and uses an algorithm to attempt to determine the sex of the author. According to the authors of the algorithm, it’s supposed to be correct roughly 80% of the time.

To give it a test, I copied the text of my ‘Oh, go ahead and point, it’s okay‘ post, hit ‘submit’…

…and discovered that I’m female.

Hrm.

I never knew.

(via 601am, via Anil)