CNN projects what Obama will look like in eight years. It does seem that we age our Presidents something fierce. That’s what comes from being a little tin god.
Fun exercise: assuming Obama is re-elected, come back to this page in 2016 and see how accurate it is.
A great post on why people are backing away from life-saving vaccines:
Why would parents refuse to vaccinate their children against dangerous diseases? Many are skeptical of modern science and medicine in general. (And it is true that most vaccines carry exceedingly tiny—but real—risks of serious illness or even death.) But I think most are responding to the widespread belief that vaccines are linked to autism. Recent studies have soundly disspelled that notion. And a simple glance at health statistics shows that autism cases continued to rise even after thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative widely blamed for the supposed autism link, was largely phased out of U.S. vaccines by 2001.
Nevertheless, these unsubstantiated fears have led some people to say that getting vaccinated should be a matter of individual choice: If you want to be protected, just get yourself and your children vaccinated.
Only it’s not that easy. While the measles vaccine protects virtually everyone who is inoculated, not all vaccines have the same rate of success. But even if a vaccine is effective for only 70, 80 or 90 percent of those who take it, the other 30, 20 or 10 percent who don’t get the full benefit of the vaccine are usually still not at risk. That’s because most of the people around the partially protected are immune, so the disease can’t sustain transmission long enough to spread.
But when people decide to forgo vaccination, they threaten the entire system. They increase their own risk and the risk of those in the community, including babies too young to be vaccinated and people with immune systems impaired by disease or chemotherapy. They are also free-riding on the willingness of others to get vaccinated, which makes a decision to avoid vaccines out of fear or personal belief a lot safer.
Of course it is the very success of modern vaccines that makes this complacency possible. In previous generations, when epidemic disease swept through schools and neighborhoods, it was easy to persuade parents that the small risks associated with vaccination were worth it. When those epidemics stopped—because of widespread vaccinations—it became easy to forget that we still live in a dangerous world. It happens all the time: University of Tennessee law professor Gregory Stein examined the relation between building codes and accidents since the infamous 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in New York and discovered a pattern: accident followed by a period of tightened regulations, followed by a gradual slackening of oversight until the next accident. It often takes a dramatic event to focus our minds.
The problem is that modern society requires constant, not episodic, attention to keep it running. In his book The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death 1700–2100 Nobel Prize–winning historian Robert Fogel notes the incredible improvement in the lives of ordinary people since 1700 as a result of modern sanitation, agriculture and public health. It takes steady work to keep water clean, prevent the spread of contagious disease and ensure an adequate food supply. As long as things go well, there’s a tendency to take these conditions for granted and treat them as a given. But they’re not: As Fogel notes, they represent a dramatic departure from the normal state of human existence over history, in which people typically lived nasty, sickly and short lives.
This departure didn’t happen on its own, and things don’t stay better on their own. Keeping a society functioning requires a lot of behind-the-scenes work by people who don’t usually get a lot of attention—sanitation engineers, utility linemen, public health nurses, farmers, agricultural chemists and so on. Because the efforts of these workers are often undramatic, they are underappreciated and frequently underfunded. Politicians like to cut ribbons on new bridges or schools, but there’s no fanfare for the everyday maintenance that keeps the bridges standing and the schools working. As a result, critical parts of society are quietly decaying, victims of complacency or of active neglect. (See PM’s special report on the nation’s infrastructure, “Rebuilding America”) It’s not just vaccinations or bridges, either. A few years ago, I attended an Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board meeting, and the water-treatment discussion was enough to make me think about switching to beer.
Human civilization is like an iceberg. 90% of what keeps us afloat isn’t seen. It just happens in the daily lives of the hundreds of millions of people doing their best.
If there is any system of college football championship more stupid than the one we have now, it’s the so-called “+1” system several people are currently flogging. The idea would be that after the bowls, we play one extra game using our new information to better pick out the two best teams in the nation.
Uh-huh. So who are the two teams? One will be the winner of the Florida-Oklahoma game. Who’s the other? Undefeated Utah, who just whomped ‘Bama? Texas? USC? All this will do is mean that our championship game matches up three over-hyped teams as opposed to two.
Here’s how you do a playoff properly. You take eight conference champs — six from the major conference and then two from the other conference (or Notre Dame, if they are rated high enough). You play them off in the Rose, Fiesta, Orange and Sugar Bowls on January 1 maintaing traditional slots rather than seeding (i.e, Rose Bowl is Pac-10 vs. Big 10 no matter what the rankings). You have two more games on January 8, one more on January 15. Net result — one week and two games more than we have now. No controversy but a legitimate champion.
The critical factor in this is taking only conference champs. That way you avoid controversy. Imagine if we used the current system. We would take six BCS champs and two at-large teams. Who are the at-large teams? Texas? Ohio State? ‘Bama? Utah? Boise State? It will be determined by the same ignorant writers who insisted last year that South Florida was a great team. You can expect mid-majors to be shut out.
But the mid-majors are too weak? Prove it on the field, not with your mouth. Oh, I’m sorry. Attempts to prove the weakness of the mid-major champs have ended in victory of the mid-major champs. Oops.
If you take only conference champs, then everything is settled on the field. You want to win a national title? Win your damned conference. The motto of the playoff could be: “No Second Chances”.
Of course, this will mean the writers’ votes are a sideshow and have no relevance to determining the national champ. We can’t have that, can we?
Watching the Fiesta Bowl right now. The announcer claims that the Texas defense has “no answer” to Ohio state RB Wells. Um, guys? Texas hasn’t had an answer on defense all year long. Had you not been so busy hyping teams that run up huge scores on pathetic defenses (i.e., the entire Big 12), you might have noticed that.
I guess it’s time for my obligatory prediction post for 2009. I did OK last year. I predicted Obama would win the election, although I said it more out of hope than insight. The year was better in movies, although the finances were worse. I did get a job in astronomy and TV continued to suck. But I erred on oil prices. They both got worse and better.
All in all, 2008 was an interesting year for me. I was only partially funded for the first half, but found a job and moved across the country. I read a lot of good books but didn’t write nearly enough. My baby became a little girl and I lost one of my best buds when Huxley went to the Big Pile of Papers To Be Graded In The Sky.
And 2008 was an even more interesting year for the world. An astonishing election, a recession, wars, olympics and particle colliders created a world that was still better than ever, but full of foreboding.
Anyway, here’s my 2009 predictions, for what it’s worth:
That’s it. I expect 2009 to be a slightly better version of 2008. Things will slowly improve but we will still have many concerns that could blow up at any moment. As for Obama, I really believe those predictions above. I keep the getting the feeling that his reign will be less like Clinton or Carter and more like Eisenhower. We’ll get a nice boring four years of competent government.
Of course, we’ll see what happens when the rubber hits the road in 18 days. If Obama does strike out a radical and stupid course, you’ll be hearing about it.
This is usually the purview of the other Michael Siegel, but I thought I’d tackle it as well.
Some people have their boxers in bunch over third-hand smoke:
Need another reason to add “Quit Smoking” to your New Year’s resolutions list? How about the fact that even if you choose to smoke outside of your home or only smoke in your home when your children are not there – thinking that you’re keeping them away from second-hand smoke – you’re still exposing them to toxins? In the January issue of Pediatrics, researchers at MassGeneral Hospital for Children (MGHfC) and colleagues across the country describe how tobacco smoke contamination lingers even after a cigarette is extinguished – a phenomenon they define as “third-hand” smoke.
What they’re talking about is the smell of smoke that lingers in your clothes after you’ve smoked or been in a bar. It’s unpleasant but I highly doubt that it is dangerous. There evidence that second hand smoke is dangerous is tenuous at best.
Keep in mind: there is no science in anything you are about to read. Only panic-mongering. Their “study” consists of asking people if they think third-hand smoke is dangerous. By that standard, I could do a survey of kids and conclude that we need to establish strict laws against the boogeyman.
Particulate matter from tobacco smoke has been proven toxic. According to the National Toxicology Program, these 250 poisonous gases, chemicals, and metals include hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide, butane, ammonia, toluene (found in paint thinners), arsenic, lead, chromium (used to make steel), cadmium (used to make batteries), and polonium-210 (highly radioactive carcinogen). Eleven of the compounds are classified as Group 1 carcinogens, the most dangerous.
This sounds scary but it’s garbage. They have no statement of how prevalent these things are. You can find trace amounts of dangerous chemicals in almost anything. Lima beans have traces of cyanogen; potatoes contain arsenic and celery contains psoralen. They mostly drag this stuff out of the ground, which is how this stuff gets into tobacco and hence, smoke. But that doesn’t mean it’s killing people or causing neurological damage.
Even if something is a carcinogen, low levels are not necessarily dangerous. Selenium is an important mineral to human health. In large amounts, it is extremely toxic.
Are we through yet? What’s the next thing we’re supposed to panic about?
Presented for your consideration:
Team A: 12-1, lost one game on the road to a ranked team. Allowed less than 8 points a game during the regular season, racking up a 450-93 score over the regular season. They didn’t do this against patsies either. They dominated a conference that went 5-0 in the bowls, went on the road to crush a 5-7 ACC team, smashed an independent team that went on to run wild in a bowl, and convincingly beat the top two teams in the Big Ten.
Hypothetical Team B: 13-1. Lost one game on a neutral site to a top-five team. Played all other ranked teams at home. Scored an incredible 702 points during the regular season but gave up 319 (25 per game). Their conference is 3-1 in bowls so far. Their non-conference schedule included a horrible AA team, an 11-2 Big East team, a Pac 10 team that didn’t win a single game and an 11-2 Mountain West team. The good teams in that list were played at home.
Can you make the case that Team B is clearly better than Team A? Because the Sports Media Twerps certainly think so. If Oklahoma wins the BCS Bowl, they will become a national champion while Team A (USC) will probably not be ranked any higher than they are now.
The SMTs also rank Texas two slots about USC and claim that the Longhorns deserved a shot at the title. If Texas wins, they will be ranked higher than USC in the final poll. This is a Texas team that lost its only road game to a ranked team, had a laughable non-conference schedule and outscored opponents 527-223, an unimpressive ratio given their pathetic schedule.
I don’t know if USC is better than Oklahoma. I would love to find out. I am pretty convinced that they are better than Texas. I would love to see them prove it. They should clearly, at the very least, be ranked #2 or #3 at season’s end. They won’t be unless Alabama and Texas both lose because the SMTs don’t think about their votes. Their ranking considers three factors: 1) number of losses; 2) amount of hype; 3) how they ranked last week. Texas was more hyped as a title contender than USC. Therefore Texas must be better. Ignore those facts behind the curtain. You are getting sleepy. Very very sleepy.
Yeah, a playoff would be so much worse than this.
What does it say when an 18% drop in home prices returns them all the way back to … March 2004? That we were in a bubble. No one seems to comprehend this basic truth.
Skepchick has her top ten jackasses for 2008. I can’t really disagree, although I think Palin’s fundamentalism is more inferred from her church rather than explicitly drawn from her words.
Caveat: She slams Oprah and that always gets on my good side.
I’m exhausted from the move, but thought I’d highlight two stories close to my heart. Jim Webb is seeking prison reform while Craig Watkins delivers justice in Texas. Being a law and order type, as I am, means you want the right people punished.
Those are the highways I followed from home to Memphis, where we’re staying with friends before continuing on. It occurred to me today that I have seen much of the US — although not as much as I’d like. Here are the states I have been to, sorted by importance.
States I have lived in, not including denial (8): Illinois, Mississippi, Georgia, Minnesota, Virginia, Maryland, Texas, Pennsylvania (pending)
State I have visited, by which I mean spent a night and seen the sights (20): Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Washington
States I have changed planes in or driven through (8): West Virginia, Delaware, Connecticut, Ohio, Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, Nevada
That leaves 14 states I need to visit at some point.
Unfortunately, my record on countries isn’t as good. Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Canada is kind of pathetic for a supposed man of the world.