04/27/2015 archive

The Worst Doctor in Scrubs

Once a well respected and brilliant cardiac surgeon with a worldwide reputation, Dr. Mehmet Oz has taken quite a fall since a study in  British Medical Journal that less than 50% of his television advice could be backed by actual science and his appearance before a Senate subcommittee on consumer protection where he caught a harsh scolding about his diet product ads.

Last June, John Oliver, host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” took on Dr. Oz in an epic segment that outlined what was problematic with him and the nutrition supplement industry. Then this month a group of ten prominent physicians sent a letter to Dr. Lee Goldman, Columbia’s Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine calling for Dr. Oz’s ouster from the hospital’s faculty, citing, among other reasons, his “egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain.”

The good doctor has been doing damage control with interviews in TIME magazine, televised news media and on his show.

Once again, at the beginning of his show, John Oliver blasted him, calling him “the worst person in scrubs who has ever been on television” and included an amusing reference to actress Katherine Heigl who played a doctor on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.”

“No. You are scientifically wrong about that as you are about so many things. Let’s be clear: The First Amendment protects Americans against government censorship, and that’s it. It does not guarantee you to simultaneously hold a faculty position at a prestigious private university and make misleading claims on a TV show. It absolutely protects you to say whatever you like on it, just as it protects my right to say what I think about you on mine, which is this: You are the worst person in scrubs who has ever been on television-and I’m including Katherine Heigl in that. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to be worse than Katherine Heigl? You are also the admittedly handsome ringmaster of a middling mid-afternoon snake-oil dispensary and it says something that even when you do a show with seven fake models of human feces, the biggest piece of shit on the stage has his name in the title.”

(h/t The Daily Beast)

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

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Robert Kuttner: Obama’s Trade Deals: A Test for Hillary Clinton

Opposition to the Administration’s proposed major trade deals is getting firmer among Democrats in Congress. Both chambers must approve trade promotion authority, better known as fast-track, in order for the deals to move forward.

One Democrat who has avoided taking a position is Hillary Clinton. In the past, she has supported deals like the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but lately she has tried to give herself some wiggle room without opposing fast-track, saying last Tuesday that any agreement has to create jobs, as well as increase prosperity, and improve security. That’s pretty amorphous.

Clinton, of course, does not get to vote on the measure because she is no longer a senator. But pressure is increasing from the party base to take a stand. [..]

Hillary Clinton is between a rock and a hard place. She was President Obama’s secretary of state, and she is counting on him to provide tacit support for her candidacy. They share many of the same top advisers and Wall Street supporters.

At the same time, Clinton needs to distance herself from Obama, and is under pressure from party activists to demonstrate that her embrace of Elizabeth Warren style populist rhetoric is more than window-dressing. Nothing would make this clearer than strong opposition by Clinton to the trade deals. On trade policy, Clinton now finds herself to the right of Mr. Wall Street Democrat, Chuck Schumer.

And this is only the first of countless tests of where Clinton really stands — tests that will keep coming up between now and primary season. If she is presenting herself as a forceful leader, it ill-becomes Clinton to duck.

Robert Reich: Why So Many Americans Feel So Powerless

A security guard recently told me he didn’t know how much he’d be earning from week to week because his firm kept changing his schedule and his pay. “They just don’t care,” he said.

A traveler I met in the Dallas Fort-Worth Airport last week said she’d been there eight hours but the airline responsible for her trip wouldn’t help her find another flight leaving that evening. “They don’t give a hoot,” she said.

Someone I met in North Carolina a few weeks ago told me he had stopped voting because elected officials don’t respond to what average people like him think or want. “They don’t listen,” he said.

What connects these dots? As I travel around America, I’m struck by how utterly powerless most people feel.

Kevin Gosztola: Obama Administration’s Announcement About US Drone Strike Shows It Doesn’t Know Who Drones Are Killing

President Barack Obama’s administration announced that a US drone strike, which targeted an “al Qaeda-associated compound” in January, killed two hostages in Pakistan. One of the hostages was an American contractor named Dr. Warren Weinstein, the other an Italian named Giovani Lo Porto. Weinstein was a USAID contractor and Lo Porto was an aid worker.

It is a tragedy that once again raises questions about the mostly secret criteria for launching drone strikes. If the government did not know that two hostages were being held in this compound, how much did the government really know about alleged al Qaeda militants the government claims to have killed? [..]

Obama laughably contended, “One of the things that sets America apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional is our willingness to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.”

The caveat is that what the world sees as “imperfections,” inconsistencies or criminal acts the administration often defends as features of a carefully calibrated counter-terrorism program.

John Nichols: No Joke, Cheney Was the Worst President

(O)nce in a great while a great moment occurs.

President Obama had one Saturday night, when he ruminated momentarily on the crude excesses of a certain former vice president.

“A few weeks ago Dick Cheney said he thinks I’m the worst president of his lifetime, which is interesting, because I think Dick Cheney is the worst president of my lifetime,” mused Obama.

Cheney, whose own presidential ambitions were dashed in the mid-1990s by disinterest and distrust on the part of his fellow Republicans, had to engineer his selection as George W. Bush’s vice president in order to secure the power he craved. But, once he had wedded his ambitions to the hapless “legacy” president, the second-in-command did indeed pull so many strings that he was understood by savvy Washingtonians as a virtual commander in chief. [..]

What did come as something of a surprise-and a delightful one at that-was Obama’s decision to parry the former vice president’s thrust with a devastating one-liner that had the advantage of being true.

Ari Berman: Will the Courts Finally Block Texas’ Worst-in-the-Nation Voter-ID Law?

The 2014 election in Texas illuminated the burdens of voter-ID laws. Because of the law-the strictest in the country-many longtime voters were turned away from the polls and unable to vote.

The Texas voter ID law is once again before a court on Tuesday, when the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will consider whether to uphold a lower-court decision striking down the law as an “unconstitutional poll tax.” [..]

The three-judge panel hearing the voter ID appeal on Tuesday includes an Obama and Clinton appointee, increasing the chances that the law will be struck down. But any decision can be appealed to the full Fifth Circuit, which is dominated by conservative Bush and Reagan appointees. Whatever the Fifth Circuit decides, the case is likely headed to the Supreme Court.

When it stuck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act in June 2013, the Court’s majority claimed the remaining provisions of the VRA would sufficiently protect voters from discriminatory voter suppression efforts. Texas will provide the ultimate test of whether that’s true.

Moustafa Bayoumi: US Needs to Stop Fomenting Violence in Yemen

The United States response to the civil war in Yemen should be the opposite of what it’s doing.

Since late January, Yemen-the poorest Arab country-has been embroiled in a bloody civil war that is escalating in brutality. A Saudi-led air campaign against the rebel movement has repeatedly hit factories, schools, water systems and residential neighborhoods, degrading the civilian infrastructure and killing hundreds of civilians. At least 150,000 people have fled their homes due to the fighting. [..]

The only sensible action for the United States is to change its course entirely. Washington’s assistance to Saudi Arabia will escalate this conflict and further inflame a volatile region. The Obama administration must choose diplomatic over military solutions for Yemen. It should demand an immediate and unconditional cease-fire from all parties involved, which would let the dire humanitarian needs be addressed and allow the people of Yemen the opportunity to find a path to reconciliation.

The last thing anyone-Yemeni or otherwise-needs is another war persisting in the Middle East.

Dazzle

At first glance, dazzle seems an unlikely form of camouflage, drawing attention to the ship rather than hiding it, but this technique was developed after Allied navies were unable to develop effective means to hide ships in all weather conditions.

The British zoologist John Graham Kerr, who first applied dazzle camouflage to British warships in WWI, outlined the principle in a letter to Winston Churchill in 1914 explaining that disruptive camouflage sought to confuse, not to conceal, “It is essential to break up the regularity of outline and this can be easily effected by strongly contrasting shades … a giraffe or zebra or jaguar looks extraordinarily conspicuous in a museum but in nature, especially when moving, is wonderfully difficult to pick up.”

The anti-surveillance state: Clothes and gadgets block face recognition technology and make you digitally invisible

Janet Burns, AlterNet

26 Apr 2015 at 18:52 ET

CV Dazzle designs for hair and makeup obscure the eyes, bridge of the nose and shape of the head, as well as creating skin tone contrasts and asymmetries. Facial-recognition algorithms function by identifying the layout of facial features and supplying missing info based on assumed facial symmetry. The project demonstrates that a styled “anti-face” can both conceal a person’s identity from facial recognition software (be it the FBI’s or Facebook’s) and cause the software to doubt the presence of a human face, period.

Harvey’s work is focused on accessibility in addition to privacy. “Most of the projects I’ve worked on are analog solutions to digital challenges,” he said. His hair and makeup style tips – a veritable how-to guide for how to create “privacy reclaiming” looks at home – are “deliberately low-cost.” His current project – software to “automatically generate camouflage…that can be applied to faces” – will allow a user to “create [their] own look and guide the design towards [their] personal style preferences.”

Other low-tech protections against widespread surveillance have been gaining ground, too. Though initially designed as a tongue-in-cheek solution to prying eyes and cameras, Becky Stern’s Laptop Compubody Sock offers a portable, peek-free zone to laptop users, while the CHBL Jammer Coat and sold-out Phonekerchief use metal-infused fabrics to make personal gadgets unreachable, blocking texts, calls and radio waves. For people willing to sport a bit more hardware in the name of privacy, the Sentient City Survival Kit offers underwear that notifies wearers about real-life phishing and tracking attempts, and its LED umbrella lets users “flirt with object tracking algorithms used in advanced surveillance systems” and even “train these systems to recognize nonhuman shapes.”



Earlier this year, antivirus software leaders AVG revealed a pair of invisibility glasses developed by its Innovation Labs division. The casual looking specs use embedded infrared lights “to create noise around the nose and eyes” and retro-reflective frame coating to interfere with camera flashes, “allowing [the wearer] to avoid facial recognition.” In early 2013, Japan’s National Institute of Informatics revealed a bulky pair of goggles it had developed for the same purpose.

A spokesperson for Innovation Labs claims its glasses represent “an important step in the prevention against mass surveillance…whether through the cell phone camera of a passerby, a CCTV camera in a bar, or a drone flying over your head in the street.” Innovation Labs says that, with a person’s picture, facial recognition software “coupled with data from social networking sites can provide instant access to the private information of complete strangers. This can pose a serious threat to our privacy.” Though AVG’s glasses are not scheduled for commercial release, Innovation Labs said that individuals can take a number of steps to prevent their images from being “harvested”:

“First and foremost, make sure you’re not allowing private corporations to create biometrics profiles about you. When using social networks like Facebook, be aware that they are using facial recognition to give you tag suggestions. Facebook’s DeepFace was already tested and trained on the largest facial dataset to-date (an identity labeled dataset of more than 4 million facial images belonging to thousands of identities).”

TBC: Morning Musing 4.27.15

I have 3 articles for you this morning!

First up, this needs to happen:

The Sun Must Go Down on the Patriot Act

Predictably, the Patriot Act has been at the root of many of the most serious abuses of government spying powers. It was the Patriot Act the FBI relied on to vastly expand its use of “national security letters,” which the FBI now issues thousands of times every year to obtain information about innocent Americans who have no connection to terrorism. It was the Patriot Act the government relied on to conduct clandestine searches in investigations having nothing to do with terrorism. It was the Patriot Act the government invoked to permit the FBI to disregard the Fourth Amendment’s usual requirements – criminal probable cause, a particularized warrant – in ordinary law enforcement investigations. And it’s the Patriot Act the government is now using to justify the NSA’s call-records program.

Jump!

On This Day In History April 27

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

April 27 is the 117th day of the year (118th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 248 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1805, Naval Agent to the Barbary States, William Eaton, the former consul to Tunis, led an small expeditionary force of Marines, commanded by First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon, and Berber mercenaries from Alexandria, across 500 miles to the port of Derna in Tripoli. Supported by US Naval gunfire, the port was captured by the end of the day, overthrowing Yusuf Karamanli, the ruling pasha of Tripoli, who had seized power from his brother, Hamet Karamanli, a pasha who was sympathetic to the United States.

Lt. O’Bannon raised the US flag over the port, the first time the US flag had flown over a foreign battlefield. He had performed so valiantly that newly restored Pasha Hamet Karamanli presented him with an elaborately designed sword that now serves as the pattern for the swords carried by Marine officers. The words “To the shores of Tripoli” in the Marine Corps official song commemorate the battle.

Sources:

Wikipedia

About.com

 

Sunday Train: Variable Renewables and Dispatchable Demand

Much of the focus on the Sunday Train is on electrification of transport, ranging from 2,000 mile hauls of electrified freight through to hopping on an e-bike to pick up some groceries. And spending this school year mostly living and working in Beijing brings many of the possibilities to life … from riding the subway to get to the Sanlitun district for Texas BBQ, to seeing an electric freight train passing on a line overhead as the bus we were riding for our school spring outing last Saturday was bogged down in Beijing traffic, to seeing the electric delivery tricycle used by the pizza delivery from Woudaokou for the neighbor down the haul who seems to live in delivered pizza and Indian food.

But the efficiency gains of electric traction are only half of the story for sustainable transport, since its not fully sustainable unless that electricity is generated in a sustainable way.

And when following online discussion of renewable energy at the Energy Collective, which attracts both advocates for and detractors of investment in renewable energy resources, a perennial source of ammunition for attacks on renewable energy are the challenges of meeting demand for electricity with the harvest of a variable source of energy that is available on its own schedule, and not ours.

This is a topic I have touched on before (cf , ), Inspired by the article at the Energy Collective: Will Natural Gas Peaker Plants Become Obsolete?, I am coming back to today. What I want to focus on today is the opportunities offered by dispatchable demand for better integration of variable renewable energy. And I would be happy if you would join me to discuss this topic (or any other topic involving sustainable transport), below the fold.