square634
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Anti-Rants
in Rants
Today in medical school, we had a lecture on psychiatric disorders in women, and there is no corresponding lecture for men in the curriculum. I'm not saying that women are crazy, but science is definitely saying that women are crazy. It was quite a validating experience
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In real life, I would say "Objection, irrelevant."
And on Law and Order, the judge would totally allow it, because drama.
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This could also go into the terrible commercials thread, but I was listening to 105.7 last evening while driving home from New Jersey, and they kept repeating this one commercial that was really stupid (paraphrased based on what I remember):
"A few years back, my doctor told me to take Centrum Silver multivitamins. Then recently, I heard about a medical study of multivitamin use and long-term health in men over age 50. When I read more, I learned that the multivitamin used in that study was Centrum Silver! Wow, my doc sure is smart!"
Since the commercial conveniently failed to mention any results, I'm left to assume that multivitamin use didn't actually improve long-term health in men over 50. I wonder what brand of sugar was used in the placebo in that study. As a Baltimorean, I hope it was Domino! I hope this commercial is not actually effective, but I should know better given the deplorable state of science and math education in our country.
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Well, I just realized that I need to redo my entire day's work because people forget to use Track Changes in collaborative documentation efforts. Oh well, at least I have something constructive to do tomorrow.
Version control is so important in documentation.
Ugh, the horror stories of using TortoiseHg for a class-wide Python programming project. This stuff is annoying but definitely critical.
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Anti-Rants
in Rants
In honor of Veterans day, I'm also going to leave this clip here. I think these "pets greeting soldiers" clips must be the male equivalent of chick flicks, or else someone is slicing onions nearby...
[video=youtube;k0zMzfegs5s]
Thank you, veterans!
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I never thought much about this...until I had kids. And now I have to listen to my wife's friends tell me I should get on some sort of "alternative vaccine schedule" - which essentially means forgoing certain vaccines for reasons that aren't entirely clear. The support behind these claims are typically a combination of (a) poor/inaccurate interpretation of statistics and (b) some sort of hyperbolic conspiracy theory.
Update: I just took my bacteriology exam earlier this week. Approximately 40% of the clinical scenarios had lead-ins such as: "A 6-month-old immigrant from Eastern Europe with an unclear vaccination history..." or "a 65-year-old man who returned from Bangladesh 1 week ago..." because a lot of these presentations have been essentially eradicated from the U.S. and other highly developed countries.
The most vulnerable patients are usually those with weak immune systems, i.e. the very young and the very old. Infants probably don't have the wherewithal to read and analyze primary source documents, so they deserve a society that makes the effort to educate itself properly to protect those who cannot protect themselves.
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I'm terrible with e-i and i-e words. I usually just bbref or wiki really quick to double check, but I'll never approach even 80% accuracy with spelling his last name. I just accept it at this point.
Here's a simple rule that will always work for names of German origin. The sound corresponds to whichever vowel comes second. So an E sound (as in Wieters or Niekro) means it should be spelled 'ie', and an I sound (as in Schneider or Steinbrenner) means it should be spelled 'ei'.
Source: my last name starts "Sei" and is pronounced like "Sigh". My dad taught me this rule, and it has almost never steered me wrong (and in those cases I honestly believe it's because the family butchered the anglicized pronunciation of the name somewhere along the line).
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Yes, yes there are. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those celebrities are intimately involved with the lobbyist groups. Do you think the occasional politician who speaks out against vaccination comes up with that stuff on their own? (note: the real concern is not politicians so much as fooling the general population. Vaccines are effective primarily through herd immunity. If enough people start forgoing certain vaccines, the inoculation level in the population could decline passed a tipping point threshold and allow more widespread disease to spread in the population).
I don't think these advocates are necessarily crazy so much as having a poor grasp of cause and effect along with some misplaced anger. But when these people write books or articles on the Internet with some semblance of scientific language, it is relatively easy to convince certain impressionable laypeople.
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May I inquire why?
To put it delicately:
Because they are huge threats to public and global health. Because they are attempting to undermine some of the greatest advancements in the history of medicine. Because they weave a tapestry of lies, misinformation, and ignorance in a way that is impressionable to innocent people who don't know better. I highly doubt that these lobbyists have nefarious intentions (if so, they are some of the most evil people on the planet), but they literally endanger the lives of themselves and other people with their insistence on grasping to conspiracy theories.
I know from past conversations that you have your issues with modern medicine, but let me put it this way: it's really easy to rail against vaccines when no one you know is having children who suffer from small pox, or polio, or measles, or pertussis, or tetanus.
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I may have ranted about this before on this site, but I'm currently approaching the end of my immunology course... and anti-vaccine lobbyists/propagandists makin' me mad.
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Phew, nice play by Hunter there to snare that one.
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Two lineouts... seriously?
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I tried to be responsible and go to bed. I couldn't sleep. Let's do this.
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I didn't really formally meet anyone, but I was at the end of an aisle, so I awkwardly recognized a few people and read some nametags. I just wanted to generally commend the OH section's parenting as there were a fair number of kids representing our birds!
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On the flip side, the first time I came out to LA this summer, my first purchase attempt was a TAP card (kind of like the DC Metro SmarTrip cards) on their subway. The machine rejected my Wells Fargo credit card. I thought "Ah, shoot, I forgot to tell them I'd be traveling." Bought it using my debit card from a different bank, no problem. Stopped at 7-Eleven on the way to the hotel and bought some snacks, tried the credit card again, and it went through. Never got a call from the bank, no issues for the rest of the trip. I've since moved to LA and changed my billing address and haven't heard a thing from them. Conversely, my dad flew out with me to help me move and his card was rejected and frozen within an hour by Capital One, requiring a phone call. So it confuses me.
Online purchases from foreign companies have been the only thing that have gotten me a verification phone call from their fraud robot so far. Once it was a book I purchased from a seller in Spain, once a video download that apparently billed to Bavaria (I was asked to verify a charge from "Munching, Germany," good for a laugh). So unless my card is remotely stolen and used for a spending spree in Donetsk, Ukraine, I'm not too confident.
I took a bunch of AI classes as part of my undergraduate major, and we had some limited discussion of automated credit card fraud detection. In this case, there is so much data available that the learning algorithms can be extremely sensitive and precise. I think you should be pretty confident.
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I'll be at the OH section with my roommate. Go O's!
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It's amazing how banks can catch things like this. I had my card # stolen and a $30 purchase at a WaWa near Philly was declined.
Meanwhile, I visit Philly a lot and always use my card and my purchases have never been declined.
They're good.
A couple years ago, after a winter break in Baltimore, I went back up to Philly for spring semester of college. The first thing I did was charge $4.00 at Wawa for a 32 oz diet coke and a snack. Then I went to the bookstore to charge $355 of textbooks for the semester. The second purchase was declined. When I called the credit card company, the guy said, "Sir, are you aware that the number 1 pattern for suspicious activity is being in a new city, attempting a very small purchase to make sure the card works, and then immediately initiating a big transaction?"
No, I was not aware, but I guess I learned.
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My roommate and I have discussed going to a game next week, so I am going to try to jump on this deal once he gets back from classes.
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Can't decide which commercials I hate more: Luna or Antwerpen.
False, Nissan Summer Savings.
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I feel terrible for people who make a living working with databases. I have only been dealing with the combo of SAS and Excel for one week, and it makes me sad.
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I seriously never got this. As a point of reference I was never good at science but people always say the ball carries better in the hot, humid, weather. Isn't the humid air thicker and thus tougher for a ball to travel through?
That's what I always thought, but now that I'm googling it, I might be wrong. Since H2O has a lower molecular weight than O2 or N2 (the major constituents of air), water vapor is less dense than air. Therefore, high humidity implies low air density. (I still think the fact that it is actually raining right now may change the equation since there is additional volume of particles to collide with)
So my new short rant is: those darned kids who think they know stuff.
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Gary Thorne: "Well, with all the humidity with the rain, do you think the ball will be carrying out?"
Science fail
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Just saw the Just For Men: Autostop commercial for the first time. Just For Men commercials are generally annoying, but this one had a particularly stupid scene at the end when a man deserted on an island is airdropped a package of Just For Men and starts getting really excited. Seriously? It's a ridiculous scenario. I'm pretty sure no guy would give a crap about his hair color when there are no women around.
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This movie that's coming out soon seems like it could be alternatively titled "Short Rants: The Movie": http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/god_bless_america_2011/trailers/11163195/
It seems to have potential.
Anti-Rants
in Rants
Posted · Edited by square634
102 slides.
Here are some choice stats for you:
1-2 out of every 1,000 mothers go psychotic within 24-72 hours of giving birth, with dramatic, bizarre, and disorganized thinking, irritability, mood lability, and symptoms mimicking delirium. Now, perhaps you could argue that number is (relatively) low because it only counts the women who weren't psychotic before having a baby...
80% of women have at least mild premenstrual symptoms. 100% of women will bite your head off if you suggest that they are only being grumpy because it is their time of the month.