Mirror | rorriM

And the Smartest Site on the Internet Is… – Technology…

Ξ December 23rd, 2010 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Science |

 

The Value Of Being Aloof: Or, How Not To Get Absorbed In Som

Ξ August 6th, 2010 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Science |

 

Digital economy bill rushed through wash-up in late night

Ξ May 9th, 2010 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Science |

 

Crap Detection

Ξ September 10th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Science |

Shermer's Boundary Detection Kit



1. How reliable is the source of the claim?
   
2. Has the source often made similar claims?
   
3. Have the claims been verified by another source?
   
4. How does this fit with what we know about the world and how it works?
   
5. Has anyone, including and especially the claimant, gone out of the way to disprove the claim, or has only confirmatory evidence been sought?
   
6. In the absence of clearly defined proof, does the preponderance of evidence converge to the claimant's conclusion, or a different one?
   
7. Is the claimant employing the accepted rules of reason and tools of research, or have those been abandoned in favour of others that lead to the desired conclusion?
   
8. Has the claimant provided a different explanation for the observed phenomena, or is it strictly a process of denying the existing explanation?
   
9. If the claimant has proferred a new explanation, does it account for as many phenomena as the old explanation?
   
10. Do the claimant's personal beliefs and biases drive the conclusion, or vice versa?
    

(via)

 

Living In A Reversed World

Ξ July 22nd, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Science |

How Ceiling Cat Came to Be.
The Untold Story.

 

NHS Choices – Health News – Index

Ξ May 28th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Science |

Mental health care for the media, from the NHS.

Behind the Headlines provides an unbiased and evidence-based analysis of health stories that make the news.

The service is intended for both the public and health professionals and endeavours to:

* explain the facts behind the headlines and give a better understanding of the science that makes the news,
* provide an authoritative resource for GPs which they can rely on when talking to patients, and
* become a trusted resource for journalists and others involved in the dissemination of health news.

Behind the Headlines is the brainchild of Sir Muir Gray, chief knowledge officer of the NHS and a lifelong advocate of patient empowerment.

"Scientists hate disease and want see it conquered," said Sir Muir. "But this can lead to them taking an overly optimistic view of their discoveries which is often reflected in newspaper headlines.

"Our service has more time to examine the science behind the stories. Independent experts check the findings and assess the research methods to provide a more considered view."

 

RATTRADERS (rattraders)

Ξ May 12th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Science |

Our program is a professional service to the financial industry; rats are being trained to become superior traders in the financial markets. Using our own methodology in accordance with well-established animal training techniques, our subjects learn to recognize pattens in historical stock and futures data as well as generating trading signals. We provide solutions for tick based trading data and day based data. RATTRADERS rats can be trained exclusively for any financial market segment. They outperform most human traders and represent a much more economic solution for your trading desk.

 

Matthias Rath – steal this chapter – Bad Science

Ξ April 9th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Science |

This is not the story of a serial killer, this is the story of a massively parallel killer: Matthias Rath.

The answer to the AIDS epidemic is here,' he proclaimed. Anti-retroviral drugs were poisonous, and a conspiracy to kill patients and make money. `Stop AIDS Genocide by the drugs Cartel' said one headline. `Why should South Africans continue to be poisoned with AZT? There is a natural answer to AIDS.' The answer came in the form of vitamin pills. `Multivitamin treatment is more effective than any toxic AIDS drug.' `Multivitamins cut the risk of developing AIDS in half.'

Rath's company ran clinics reflecting these ideas, and in 2005 he decided to run a trial of his vitamins in a township near Cape Town called Khayelitsha, giving his own formulation, VitaCell, to people with advanced AIDS. In 2008 this trial was declared illegal by the Cape High Court of South Africa. Although Rath says that none of his participants had been on anti-retroviral drugs, some relatives have given statements saying that they were, and were actively told to stop using them.

Tragically, Matthias Rath had taken these ideas to exactly the right place. Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa at the time, was well known as an `AIDS dissident', and to international horror, while people died at the rate of one very two minutes in his country, he gave credence and support to the claims of a small band of campaigners who variously claim that AIDS does not exist, that it is not caused by HIV, that anti-retroviral medication does more harm than good, and so on. At various times during the peak of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa their government argued that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, and that anti-retroviral drugs are not useful for patients. They refused to roll out proper treatment programmes, they refused to accept free donations of drugs, and they refused to accept grant money from the Global Fund to buy drugs. One study estimates that if the South African national government had used anti-retroviral drugs for prevention and treatment at the same rate as the Western Cape province (which defied national policy on the issue), around 171,000 new HIV infections and 343,000 deaths could have been prevented between 1999 and 2007. Another study estimates that between 2000 and 2005 there were 330,000 unnecessary deaths, 2.2 million person years lost, and 35,000 babies unnecessarily born with HIV because of the failure to implement a cheap and simple mother-to-child-transmission prevention program. Between one and three doses of an ARV drug can reduce transmission dramatically.

The cost is negligible.

It was not available.

 

McKinsey: What Matters: Time to end the multigenerational Ponzi scheme

Ξ March 15th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Science |

By Kim Stanley Robinson

Does the word postcapitalism look odd to you? It should, because you hardly ever see it. We have a blank spot in our vision of the future. Perhaps we think that history has somehow gone away. In fact, history is with us now more than ever, because we are at a crux in the human story. Choosing not to study a successor system to capitalism is an example of another kind of denial, an ostrich failure on the part of the field of economics and of business schools, I think, but it's really all of us together, a social aporia or fear. We have persistently ignored and devalued the future's if our actions are not creating that future for our children, as if things never change. But everything evolves. With a catastrophe bearing down on us, we need to evolve at nearly revolutionary speed. So some study of what could improve and replace our society's current structure and systems is in order. If we don't take such steps, the consequences will be intolerable. On the other hand, successfully dealing with this situation could lead to a sustainable civilization that would be truly exciting in its human potential.

 

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B000I1X6PM/ref=cm_cr_pr_link_1

Ξ June 23rd, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Science |

Many people have posted here who appear not to understand the science behind Denon's cabling and its superior hyperphasal multibit inductive ultraconductance technologies. They assume that there is no way to improve upon the transmissive properties of copper cabling (mainly because they don't understand the properties of alloying megacopper), or to create a better-than-normal digital signal (BTND coding). I would give this cable eleventy million stars if I could, and once you understand, so will you.

In order to clear things up for the scitards, let me quote to you from the original Denon research literature by Quick & Salwen:

"Work has been proceeding in order to bring perfection to the crudely conceived idea of a new cable technology that will not only supply inverse reactive current for use in unilateral phase detractors, but will also be capable of automatically synchronizing cardinal grammeters. Despite the claims of some critics, such a cable is possible. We call it the Turbo-encable-ator.

The cabling system has a base-plate connector of prefabulated amulite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two spurving bearings are in a direct line with the pentametric fan. The main cable winding is of the normal lotus-o-delta type placed in panendermic semi-boloid slots in the stator, every seventh conductor being connected by a nonreversible tremble pipe to the differential girdlespring on the 'up' end of the grammeters.

Forty-one manestically spaced grouting brushes are arranged to feed into the pulse phasing slipstream a mixture of high S-value phenylhydrobenzamine and 5% reminative tetryliodohexamine. Both of these liquids have specific pericosities given by P = 2.5C.n^6-7 where n is the diathetical evolute of retrograde temperature phase disposition and C is Cholmondeley's annular grillage coefficient. Initially, n was measured with the aid of a metapolar refractive pilfrometer, but up to the present date nothing has been found to equal the transcendental hopper dadoscope. It is clear from this that intrapolarphasal preteslence is now empraxified, correlating with an increase in conductive hyperplatitization.

Electrical engineers will appreciate the difficulty of nubbing together a regurgitative purwell and a supramitive wennelsprock. Indeed, this proved to be a stumbling block to further development until, in 1992, it was found that the use of anhydrous nangling pins enabled a kryptonastic boiling shim to the tankered. Spooling of the reframublant diaphanator became possible, allowing for cromulence.

Our early attempts to construct a sufficiently robust spiral decommutator failed, potentially dooming the project, largely because of a lack of appreciation of the large quasi-piestic stresses in the gremlin strands; the latter were specially designed to hold the roffit windings to the spamshaft. When, however, it was discovered that wending could be prevented by a simple addition to the living sockets, almost perfect running was secured. With this problem overcome, we were able to initiate googolpolar preferatory unbinding.

The operating point is maintained as near as possible to the h.f. rem peak by constantly fromaging the bitumogenous spandrels. This is a distinct advance on the standard nivel-sheave in that no dramcock gel is required after the phase detractors have been remissed. Such advances allow for non-holoxified, doubly-flexocorrigent operation.

Undoubtedly, the Turbo-encable-ator has now reached a very high level of technical development. It has been successfully used for generating nofer trunnions. In addition, whenever a barescent skor signal is required, the cable connector may be employed in conjunction with a drawn reciprocating dingle arm to reduce sinusoidal depleneration."