[this fine afternoon there is a mysterious sign hanging on the door of Muraki's office]
( if you look at it from a distance... )
... funny.
It's been a momentous 12 months here at LiveJournal. We crossed a capital T at Ten years young. And, like most precocious pubescents, we celebrated turning double digits by publishing our first book! Needless to say, we've experienced some major changes, both inside and out. Before we recap, we'd like to thank you for bearing with us as we've struggled through ungainly growth spurts, identity pangs, and, yes, the occasional blemish. We hope you'll continue to stand by us: We're gaining wisdom with maturity.
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lj_turns10. In December (less than a year later!), we officially announced the publication of Live Journal: The First Decade. Featuring an inspired collection of writing, photographs, and artwork from the pages of LiveJournal history, the book has been selected by Blurb.com as a top staff pick! We are proud to have played host to so much talent over the years, and we thank our contributors for sharing their extraordinary work.paidmembers or check out the FAQ.
As we plunge headfirst into the next decade, we want to take a moment to look back and thank all of our employees, both past and present, who have worked so hard to create our unique and magical universe. We couldn't have made it this far without you: Your contributions brighten our path everyday. We also want to extend our heartfelt appreciation to each and every one of you. Whether you've been around for ten days or ten years, your humor, intelligence, talent, and creativity are what makes this the most vibrant global community on the Internet (the best place on the Web, in our humble opinion). Here's hoping that 2010 will be the greatest year yet! We thank you for joining us as we embark upon another glorious decade of LiveJournal history!
In the headlong rush to "fix" security after the Underwear Bomber's unsuccessful Christmas Day attack, there's far too little discussion about what worked and what didn't, and what will and will not make us safer in the future.
The security checkpoints worked. Because we screen for obvious bombs, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab -- or, more precisely, whoever built the bomb -- had to construct a far less reliable bomb than he would have otherwise. Instead of using a timer or a plunger or a reliable detonation mechanism, as would any commercial user of PETN, he had to resort to an ad hoc and much more inefficient homebrew mechanism: one involving a syringe and 20 minutes in the lavatory and we don't know exactly what else. And it didn't work.
Yes, the Amsterdam screeners allowed Abdulmutallab onto the plane with PETN sewn into his underwear, but that's not a failure either. There is no security checkpoint, run by any government anywhere in the world, designed to catch this. It isn't a new threat; it's more than a decade old. Nor is it unexpected; anyone who says otherwise simply isn't paying attention. But PETN is hard to explode, as we saw on Christmas Day.
Additionally, the passengers on the airplane worked. For years I've said that exactly two things have made us safer since 9/11: reinforcing the cockpit door and convincing passengers that they need to fight back. It was the second of these that, on Christmas Day, quickly subdued Abdulmutallab after he set his pants on fire.
To the extent security failed, it failed before Abdulmutallab even got to the airport. Why was he issued an American visa? Why didn't anyone follow up on his father's tip? While I'm sure there are things to be improved and fixed, remember that everything is obvious in hindsight. After the fact, it's easy to point to the bits of evidence and claim that someone should have "connected the dots." But before the fact, when there millions of dots -- some important but the vast majority unimportant -- uncovering plots is a lot harder.
Despite this, the proposed fixes focus on the details of the plot rather than the broad threat. We're going to install full-body scanners, even though there are lots of ways to hide PETN -- stuff it in a body cavity, spread it thin on a garment -- from the machines. We're going to profile people traveling from 14 countries, even though it's easy for a terrorist to travel from a different country. Seating requirements for the last hour of flight were the most ridiculous example.
The problem with all these measures is that they're only effective if we guess the plot correctly. Defending against a particular tactic or target makes sense if tactics and targets are few. But there are hundreds of tactics and millions of targets, so all these measures will do is force the terrorists to make a minor modification to their plot.
It's magical thinking: If we defend against what the terrorists did last time, we'll somehow defend against what they do one time. Of course this doesn't work. We take away guns and bombs, so the terrorists use box cutters. We take away box cutters and corkscrews, and the terrorists hide explosives in their shoes. We screen shoes, they use liquids. We limit liquids, they sew PETN into their underwear. We implement full-body scanners, and they're going to do something else. This is a stupid game; we should stop playing it.
But we can't help it. As a species we're hardwired to fear specific stories -- terrorists with PETN underwear, terrorists on subways, terrorists with crop dusters -- and we want to feel secure against those stories. So we implement security theater against the stories, while ignoring the broad threats.
What we need is security that's effective even if we can't guess the next plot: intelligence, investigation and emergency response. Our foiling of the liquid bombers demonstrates this. They were arrested in London, before they got to the airport. It didn't matter if they were using liquids -- which they chose precisely because we weren't screening for them -- or solids or powders. It didn't matter if they were targeting airplanes or shopping malls or crowded movie theaters. They were arrested, and the plot was foiled. That's effective security.
Finally, we need to be indomitable. The real security failure on Christmas Day was in our reaction. We're reacting out of fear, wasting money on the story rather than securing ourselves against the threat. Abdulmutallab succeeded in causing terror even though his attack failed.
If we refuse to be terrorized, if we refuse to implement security theater and remember that we can never completely eliminate the risk of terrorism, then the terrorists fail even if their attacks succeed.
This essay previously appeared on Sphere, the AOL.com news site.
Chelation therapy is a legitimate FDA approved therapy for heavy metal poisoning. It uses either oral or intravenous drugs (EDTA – Ethylene-diamine-tetra-acetate) that bind to heavy metals and make them easier to excrete. The treatment is FDA approved for lead poisoning, hypercalcemia, and digitalis toxicity.
However, as discussed in a recent Forbes article, chelation therapy also leads a double life, and at the fringes of established medicine it has been used off label for decades to treat a long list of diseases and disorders. The first target of fringe chelation therapists, such as Dr. H. Ray Evers who was an early proponent, was cardiovascular disease. Dr. Evers won a court ruling in 1978 validating his right as a physician to prescribe off-label medication. However, of interest Dr. Evers in 1986 had his license to practice medicine revoked for gross malpractice.
The claim for chelation and heart disease is that heavy metals cause the build up of plaque on artery walls, and this plaque can be melted away by leaching off those metals with chelation. “Bypass bypass” has been the slogan of proponents of this idea. It would certainly be nice if physicians could perform a lucrative procedure in their office and improve their patient’s health, and even avoid risky and more expensive interventions. Medical doctors (if not heart surgeons) have every incentive to accept and promote the claims of the chelation therapists – except that it doesn’t work.
What we have is a situation in which a small minority of physicians are promoting a therapy for decades without doing proper trials to demonstrate that it is effective for the indications for which they are using it (such as cardiovascular disease). Small preliminary studies show mixed results, and the well-designed studies are negative. Meanwhile, our basic science understanding of cardiovascular disease goes against the presumed mechanisms of benefit from chelation in heart disease. The science, in other words, relentlessly moves against the claims of chelation therapists.
So, having lost the science, they resort to political means to defend and promote their treatment. They formed the American College for Advancement in Medicine – which is really for the advancement of the unscientific uses of chelation. They fight for the right to practice unscientific medicine, and unfortunately they have been successful enough to keep practicing. They call for more research, as if they will change their practice based upon more research, when they haven’t despite decades of science going against them.
In fact, at this point further research into chelation for cardiovascular disease would be unethical, in my opinion and that of many others. That has not stopped the NIH from conducting just such a study (the TACT study) – a decision that was very controversial. We will see what happens when the study is complete. If the study shows a beneficial effect, that would certainly be a surprise and would force a rethinking of the potential for chelation therapy – although by itself would not wipe away all the existing evidence that chelation does not work. It would upgrade the issue to truly controversial, and then more research would be needed to settle the debate.
If it is negative, given the low plausibility and existing negative evidence, that should be the final nail in the coffin of chelation for cardiovascular disease. Practitioners should accept the results (as some promise) and abandon their claims and practice for chelation and cardiovascular disease. Critics predict that this will not happen, however. Believers will find some excuse to dismiss the results – once you abandon science-based medicine, and embrace the dark side of pseudoscience, forever will it control your destiny.
In fact, chelation proponents have been expanding the list of diseases they believe chelation can treat – a common trend. Again – once you abandon a reasonable scientific approach to medicine, you can subjectively validate any claim, and so there is a clear phenomenon of “indication creep” for scientifically dubious treatments. Further, indication creep equates to an expanding market.
The most significant addition to the chelation therapy claim is autism. Alternative practitioners, based upon the failed hypothesis that autism is linked to mercury toxicity, in vaccines or in the environment, have chelated thousands of autistic children. There is no plausibility and no credible evidence to support its use. The NIH has also considered doing a large trial of chelation in autism, but this study was canceled due to criticism. The difference between the cardiovascular study and the autism study, which were equally criticized, is that the autism study would have involved children who cannot consent for themselves. That seemed to tip the balance against the study.
Anti-vaccine alternative practitioners have also expanded the use of chelation therapy for any and all perceived “vaccine injuries”. The most famous such case is that of Desiree Jennings, who was treated by Dr. Buttar for her “dystonia” which he claimed was an acute mercury toxicity from the flu vaccine. The rapidity of her response only served to reinforce the clinical impression that her symptoms were psychogenic, and not due to any neurotoxicity.
Conclusion
The history of the misuse of chelation therapy reflects the broader issue of science in medicine. If you believe that the best science should be used to determine which therapies are safe and effective for which conditions, and that health care providers should be held to at least a minimal standard of care, then you should also be outraged by the story of chelation therapy. It represents a complete failure to protect the public from useless therapies and for the various mechanisms of regulation to provide for a minimal safety net of science-based practice.
What the history tells us is that it is too easy for dedicated proponents to exploit the weaknesses in the system to practice grossly unscientific medicine out in the open.
Slate is hosting an airport security suggestions contest: ideas "for making airport security more effective, more efficient, or more pleasant." Deadline is midday Friday.
I had already submitted a suggestion before I was asked to be a judge. Since I'm no longer eligible, here's what I sent them:
Reduce the TSA's budget, and spend the money on:1. Intelligence. Security measures that focus on specific tactics or targets are a waste of money unless we guess the next attack correctly. Security measures that just forces the terrorists to make a minor change in their tactic or target is not money well spent.
2. Investigation. Since the terrorists deliberately choose plots that we're not looking for, the best security is to stop plots before they get to the airport. Remember the arrest of the London liquid bombers.
3. Emergency response. Terrorism's harm depends more on our reactions to attacks than the attacks themselves. We're naturally resilient, but how we respond in those first hours and days is critical.
And as an added bonus, all of these measures protect us against non-airplane terrorism as well. All we have to do is stop focusing on specific movie plots, and start thinking about the overall threat.
Probably not what they were looking for, and certainly not anything the government is even going to remotely consider -- but the smart solution all the same.
As 2009 ended and 2010 began, I made a vow to myself to try to diversify the topics covered on this blog. Part of that vow was to try to avoid writing about vaccines and the anti-vaccine movement for more than a couple of days in a row. Unfortunately, even in the middle its very first full week, 2010 has already conspired to make a mockery of any "plans" I thought I might have for the blog, with a flurry of vaccine-related news items relevant to the pseudoscience that is the anti-vaccine movement coming fast and furious. Oh, well. I might as well just go with the flow and do what I do best--at least for now.
When I wrote the other day about the libel suit brought by the grand dame of the anti-vaccine movement, Barbara Loe Fisher, against the man whom they view as the Dark Lord of Vaccination or even Satan himself, Dr. Paul Offit, I mentioned that lawsuits against prominent defenders of vaccines could be a strategy to intimidate them into silence. Including the reporter who quoted Dr. Offit (Amy Wallace) and the publisher of the magazine in which the article appeared (Condé Nast, publisher of WIRED) also struck me as a rather transparent attempt to discourage reporters and publishers from writing about the anti-vaccine movement.
The reason I made this latter conclusion is that 2009 was in general a great year for the media's waking up and examining the anti-vaccine movement in a much less positive light. Whether it was Amy Wallace's article that provoked Barbara Loe Fisher's lawsuit, Brian Deer's expose of Andrew Wakefield's scientific fraud, or Trine Tsouderos' expose of Mark and David Geier, Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, and the autism/a> biomed movement, 2009 marked the year that the mainstream press started to realize that the harm the anti-vaccine movement is doing to public health is actually the story, not scorned parents bucking the system in a Lorenzo's Oil frenzy of crushing existing paradigms no matter what science and medicine think about the issue of whether vaccines cause autism. This is a very good thing indeed.
And the anti-vaccine movement does not like it at all.
Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...Fuck. I can't believe this...
Just when did my life become so aimless?!
((ooc: need a nap \o/))
We all saw it coming. If you could have a bomb under your balls, why not a bomb in your honey pot?
Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...Retail theft by employees has always been a problem, but gift cards make it easier:
At the Saks flagship store in Manhattan, a 23-year-old sales clerk was caught recently ringing up $130,000 in false merchandise returns and siphoning the money onto a gift card.[...]
Many of the gift card crimes are straightforward, frequently involving young sales clerks and smaller amounts than the Saks theft. Among the variations of such crimes, cashiers often do fake refunds of merchandise and then, with the amount refunded, use their registers to electronically fill gift cards, which they take. Or sometimes when shoppers buy gift cards, cashiers give them blank cards and then divert the shoppers' money onto cards for themselves.
That last tactic is particularly Grinch-like.
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ithiliana: Fandom: The Academic Kiss of Death, OR My Ongoing Meta on OTW - I'm interested in the ongoing surfacing of the anti-academic rants to smear the Organization of Transformative Works. -executrix: Fandom Meta: Opening the Books on This Thing of Ours - When I have my lawyer hat on, I find it incredibly frustrating to try to reach *any* conclusions about the legal status of derivative works, under US law because of the paucity of case law. -frolicndetour: "Creative" "Process" - So here's a weird question for you, sort of spinning off of concrit debate 100,011 going on right now but not really having much to do with concrit: do you find that certain views of characters or canon bother you more when they're implicit in creative works (ie fic and vids) than they would if they were directly stated in a meta post? -rositamia: canon - I loooove seeing someone be in love. It's not enough to just tell me so-and-so is in love, they have to show me to make me believe it. -With 2009 now safely in the history books, it's time to look back on the year and "honor" some of the most egregious offenders against science and reason. Fortunately for us, Skeptico has presented his second annual Golden Woo Awards.
I was disappointed to see yet again that surgeon who has led me time and time again to want to put a paper bag over my head or even forge a Doctor Doom mask to hide my face in the shame that he brings upon the honorable profession of surgery. Yes, I'm talking about everybody's favorite creationist neurosurgeon, Dr. Michael Egnor, who, through the principle of crank magnetism and the "vindication of all kooks" principle, has now revealed himself to be an anthropogenic global warming denialist as well--and not just an AGW denialist, but a particularly dim AGW denialist.
I also like that our old friend Bill Maher figured prominently.
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