Hosted by the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Blog Note
[THIS POST WILL STAY AT THE TOP UNTIL THE TECH ISSUES ARE RESOLVED. NEW POSTS ARE BELOW. PLEASE CLICK ON POST TITLES TO GET TO DISQUS COMMENTS.]
As you may have noticed, our author pix and commenting just disappeared. I have no idea why; I haven't touched the template. I've also got no idea how to fix it, and our tech guru, Space Cowboy, is currently unavailable.
So, um, yeah. I guess just use Blogger commenting, accessible from directly beneath the post title, for the time being. UPDATE: Actually, it looks like Disqus is still accessible via the individual post pages. So click on the post title to get to the post page, and then you'll be able to read and leave comments.
Sorry for the inconvenience!
UPDATE 2: Just FYI, we are working on a temporary fix, so that we can at least access comments again from the main page. Again, my apologies.
A Topical Scene, with Deeky and Liss
Deeky: I was just looking at that photo of Steve Jobs with his iPad.
Liss: I totes don't want an iPad. I'm holding out for the Max-iPad.
Deeky: LOLOLOLOL!!! Here's what the iPad reminds me of:
Liss: Here's what it reminds me of:
Fin.
Random YouTubery: Faraday on Punk
THE LOST-A-THON CONTINUES!
For Iain, whose hatred of Daniel Faraday is so strong he declared upon seeing this advert, "Subaru is dead to me. On the list of people for whom I have an irrational hatred pehaps only Regis Philbin is ranked higher than Jeremy Davies."
Jeremy Davies explains why the Subaru is "like punk rock."
(Just FYI, he's wrong. The Subaru is nothing at all like punk rock.)
[Cross-posted.]
TV News Item Korner
Hey Shakers, it's Kenny Blogginz, and I'm back with another one of my classic TV news items! According to Ain't it Cool News, David Spade is partnering with TBS to create an animated JOE DIRT series! This is the best news I've heard all day!
Everyone who's anyone remembers the smash hit 2001 comedy blockbuster Joe Dirt starring David Spade and Kid Rock. David Spade's performance was hailed by Ebert and Roeper as "the Brando of Generation Tween." No-one could tell whether he was making fun of Joe Dirts or endorsing them! It was a philosophical masterpiece.
I think we can all agree that America is heading down a dark path, what with all the Scary Health Care and Evil Socialist Take-Overs. But if anyone can save our fair country, my friends, it's DAVID SPADE. Now my day-time tv-viewing needs shall ALL be met!
Yes Dear
King of Queens
Everybody Loves Raymond
Joe Dirt: The Animated Series in 1080 HD and 3D where available
Friends
TBS: Very Funny indeed! You know what would REALLY blow my shit out the water? If Larry the Cable Guy could have a few cameo appearances! This show could be the Fake/Real/Fake(?) Redneck Comedy that America DESERVES!
News from Shakes Manor
There is but one food on the planet that Iain won't eat: Brussels sprouts. He hates them with a red hot fiery passion.
I, on the other hand, love them. I only recently tried Brussels sprouts for the first time, as neither of my parents are crazy about them, so we never had them for dinner when I was growing up, and I always heard how they were like the WORST! FOOD! EVARARR! The culinary equivalent of the proverbial root canal. And their being the only food Iain won't eat made me even more reluctant.
But I try everything at least once.
So I had them at a restaurant not long ago, and I loved the tasty little buggers!
Now Brussels sprouts and I are totes BFFs. I just had like a million of them for lunch. But before I dug in, I took a picture and texted it to Iain.
Liss: Yummy! Brussels sprouts for lunch!
Iain: Thanks. I just projectile vomited all over my desk.
Liss: Nom nom nom. I'm so gonna have the big time fartz.
Iain: Don't tell me you actually enjoyed it?
Liss: OMG delish! (I even ate one raw & liked it.) I steamed them and then sauteed them with some mushrooms & a little bit of bacon. Amazing.
Iain: It's like you're talking about how you like to go to graveyards at night and gnaw at the bones of the fresh corpses.
Something tells me I am not going to make Iain a convert.
Dishonest, Irresponsible, and With Callous Disregard
Those were the findings against Dr. Andrew Wakefield & his research methods by the General Medical Council:
The doctor who first suggested a link between MMR vaccinations and autism acted unethically, the official medical regulator has found.Two of Wakefield's former colleagues who helped assist in the research were also ruled as acting unethically.
Dr Andrew Wakefield's 1998 Lancet study caused vaccination rates to plummet, resulting in a rise in measles - but the findings were later discredited.
The General Medical Council ruled he had acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in doing his research.
Afterwards, Dr Wakefield said the claims were "unfounded and unjust".
[...]
The verdict, read out by panel chairman Dr Surendra Kumar, criticised Dr Wakefield for the invasive tests, such as spinal taps, that were carried out on children and which were found to be against their best clinical interests.
The panel said Dr Wakefield, who was working at London's Royal Free Hospital as a gastroenterologist at the time, did not have the ethical approval or relevant qualifications for such tests.
The GMC also took exception with the way he gathered blood samples. Dr Wakefield paid children £5 for the samples at his son's birthday party.
Dr Kumar said he had acted with "callous disregard for the distress and pain the children might suffer".
He also said Dr Wakefield should have disclosed the fact that he had been paid to advise solicitors acting for parents who believed their children had been harmed by the MMR.
The only thing surprising about this ruling is that it took two and a half years to come to it, really, given the circumstances of his research.
More on who Wakefield is, what he has done because of this research, and some details of the research that led to this ruling below..
From a 2009 eSkeptic article:
In 1998 a British doctor named Andrew Wakefield published an article in the respected medical journal The Lancet. He did intestinal biopsies via colonoscopy on 12 children with intestinal symptoms and developmental disorders, 10 of whom were autistic, and found a pattern of intestinal inflammation. The parents of 8 of the autistic children thought they had developed their autistic symptoms right after they got the MMR vaccine. The published paper stated clearly: “We did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described. Virological studies are underway that may help to resolve this issue.”(emphasis mine)
Despite this disclaimer, Wakefield immediately held a press conference to say the MMR vaccine probably caused autism and to recommend stopping MMR injections. Instead, he recommended giving the 3 individual components separately at intervals of a year or more.[...]
Wakefield’s data was later discredited (more about that later) but even if it had been right, it wouldn’t have been good science. To show that intestinal inflammation is linked to autism, you would have to compare the rate in autistic children to the rate in non-autistic children. Wakefield used no controls. To implicate the MMR vaccine, you would have to show that the rate of autism was greater in children who got the vaccine and verify that autism developed after the shot. Wakefield made no attempt to do that.
His thinking was fanciful and full of assumptions. He hypothesized that measles virus damaged the intestinal wall, that the bowel then leaked some unidentified protein, and that said protein went to the brain and somehow caused autism. There was no good rationale for separating and delaying the components, because if measles was the culprit, wouldn’t one expect it to cause the same harm when given individually? As one of his critics pointed out: “Single vaccines, spaced a year apart, clearly expose children to greater risk of infection, as well as additional distress and expense, and no evidence had been produced upon which to adopt such a policy.”
Wakefield had been involved in questionable research before. He published a study in 1993 where he allegedly found measles RNA in intestinal biopsies from patients with Crohn’s disease (an inflammatory bowel disease). He claimed that natural measles infections and measles vaccines were the cause of that disease. Others tried to replicate his findings and couldn’t. No one else could find measles RNA in Crohn’s patients; they determined that Crohn’s patients were no more likely to have had measles than other patients, and people who had had MMR vaccines were no more likely to develop Crohn’s. Wakefield had to admit he was wrong, and in 1998 he published another paper entitled “Measles RNA Is Not Detected in Inflammatory Bowel Disease.” In a related incident, at a national meeting he stated that Crohn’s patients had higher levels of measles antibody in their blood. An audience member said that was not true — he knew because he was the one who had personally done the blood tests Wakefield was referring to. Wakefield was forced to back down.
In 2002, Wakefield published another paper showing that measles RNA had been detected in intestinal biopsies of patients with bowel disease and developmental disorders. The tests were done at Unigenetics lab. Actually, Wakefield’s own lab had looked for measles RNA in the patients in the 1998 study. His research assistant, Nicholas Chadwick, later testified that he had been present in the operating room when intestinal biopsies and spinal fluid samples were obtained and had personally tested all the samples for RNA with a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. The results were all negative, and he testified that Wakefield knew the results were negative when he submitted his paper to The Lancet. Chadwick had asked that his name be taken off the paper. So the statement in the paper that “virologic studies were underway” was misleading. Virologic studies had already been done in Wakefield’s own lab and were negative. Wakefield was dissatisfied with those results and went to Unigenetics hoping for a different answer.
Soon Wakefield’s credibility started to dissolve. The Lancet retracted his paper. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, described the original paper as “fatally flawed” and apologized for publishing it. [...]
Attempts to replicate Wakefield’s study all failed. Other studies showed that the detection of measles virus was no greater in autistics, that the rate of intestinal disease was no greater in autistics, that there was no correlation between MMR and autism onset, and that there was no correlation between MMR and autism, period.
In 2001 the Royal Free Hospital asked Wakefield to resign. In 2003, Brian Deer began an extensive investigation6 leading to an exposé in the The Sunday Times and on British television. In 2005 the General Medical Council (the British equivalent of state medical licensing boards in the U.S.) charged Wakefield with several counts of professional misconduct.
One disturbing revelation followed another. They discovered that two years before his study was published, Wakefield had been approached by a lawyer representing several families with autistic children. The lawyer specifically hired Wakefield to do research to find justification for a class action suit against MMR manufacturers. The children of the lawyer’s clients were referred to Wakefield for the study, and 11 of his 12 subjects were eventually litigants. Wakefield failed to disclose this conflict of interest. He also failed to disclose how the subjects were recruited for his study.
Wakefield was paid a total of nearly half a million pounds plus expenses by the lawyer. The payments were billed through a company of Wakefield’s wife. He never declared his source of funding until it was revealed by Brian Deer. Originally he had denied being paid at all. Even after he admitted it, he lied about the amount he was paid. Before the study was published, Wakefield had filed patents for his own separate measles vaccine, as well as other autism-related products. He failed to disclose this significant conflict of interest. Human research must be approved by the hospital’s ethics committee. Wakefield’s study was not approved. When confronted, Wakefield first claimed that it was approved, then claimed he didn’t need approval. Wakefield bought blood samples for his research from children (as young as 4) attending his son’s birthday party. He callously joked in public about them crying, fainting and vomiting. He paid the kids £5 each.
The General Medical Council accused him of ordering invasive and potentially harmful studies (colonoscopies and spinal taps) without proper approval and contrary to the children’s clinical interests, when these diagnostic tests were not indicated by the children’s symptoms or medical history. One child suffered multiple bowel perforations during the colonoscopy. Several had problems with the anesthetic. Children were subjected to sedation for other non-indicated tests like MRIs. Brian Deer was able to access the medical records of Wakefield’s subjects. He found that several of them had evidence of autistic symptoms documented in their medical records before they got the MMR vaccine. The intestinal biopsies were originally reported as normal by hospital pathologists. They were reviewed, re-interpreted, and reported as abnormal in Wakefield’s paper.
[...]
While the post is about Dr. Wakefield & the ruling against him (& his colleagues), it's inevitable that the conversation in comments will also include the topic of vaccinations in-general. Thus, we have some commenting guidelines on this one: We realize there are varying views on vaccines among Shakers, and no opinion is off-limits in the discussion, but we request that people make sure they are using "I" language to express those opinions and not making sweeping generalizations. Let's keep this a civil conversation, please.
The Lost-a-Thon Continues: Check Dis Shit Out
Hey, Shakers, it's Kenny Blogginz! Even NEWBORN BABIES know that I'm a huge LOST fan! (Thanks, Liss!) Anyway, I thought my fellow Lost-ites would appreciate this easter egg that Cory Doctorow* just shared with me (we're totally BFFs):
[It is the information for a flight leaving Sydney at 2:55pm and arriving in Los Angeles at 8:03am, at a cost of $4839, on Oceanic Airlines.]
------------------
* Actually BoingBoing guestblogger Jessamyn West. I just like using every opportunity I can to claim that Cory Doctorow and I are BFFs.
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
Strips One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104. In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman and a biracial queerbait telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.
RIP Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn, historian, author, educator, and activist, has died at age 87.
Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as "A People's History of the United States," inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died [yesterday] in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling. ... His daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn of Lexington, said he suffered a heart attack.
...For Dr. Zinn, activism was a natural extension of the revisionist brand of history he taught. "A People’s History of the United States" (1980), his best-known book, had for its heroes not the Founding Fathers -- many of them slaveholders and deeply attached to the status quo, as Dr. Zinn was quick to point out -- but rather the farmers of Shays' Rebellion and union organizers of the 1930s.
As he wrote in his autobiography, "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train" (1994), "From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than 'objectivity'; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble."
...In addition to his daughter, Dr. Zinn leaves a son, Jeff of Wellfleet; three granddaughters; and two grandsons.
Lost Facts!
Top five fake-ass wigs on Lost (in descending order):Breaking News
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, professional fat-hater, is a superdouche: Whole Foods has a new program in which it "will offer steeper employee discounts to people with lower BMIs." Charming.
[Click to embiggen.]
If you can't see the image, it's a letter from Mackey explaining the program, and it might as well be a picture of a steaming load of actual bullshit for all its value and sensitivity. With my apologies to bullshit.
[H/Ts to Shakers Lena and MistressSparkleToes.]
Watch Your Mouth - Part 2: Reappropriation and Cooption
(See Part 1 for Context)
I find idiomatic speech and shared lexicon endlessly fascinating -- never more so than when I study a sub-culture of which I am a proud member: The Gay.
I can't tell you the number of times I've stumbled on some online conversation where homophobes are moaning about how we nasty Queers have "hijacked" a perfectly nice word that used to mean "happy, merry" (happy, Mary?), and "why can't they just be called what they are -- homosexuals!".
Which is very amusing to me, because the term "homosexual" was coined in the late 1800s, and first used in an English text in 1897 -- at around the same time that queers were reclaiming the word "gay" in reference to themselves ("gay" was originally used idiomatically to indicate anything "immoral", but especially in terms of sexuality and promiscuity -- for example: a "gay house" was a brothel). Gay was used commonly within the community of self-identified homosexuals by the 1920s, and there's evidence that it was used as early as the late 1860s.
So which came first, Teh Homo or Teh Gay?
Doesn't matter, AFAIC -- what matters to me is how people being identified with a word want to be identified. Me? I prefer "queer" as a general term for the community I consider myself a part of, but I've had friends and lovers who hated this term -- they preferred "gay", or "LGBTQ" as a descriptor. My very best friend (my Beloved), doesn't like any of them, and doesn't want her sexuality labeled at all.
*Ahem* I shall henceforth trot myself back over to the focus of this post.
I think it's clear that by now, the word Gay has been reclaimed successfully by the queer community -- so much so, in fact, that it's unlikely that an author writing in English would use it without being aware that various layers of meaning might be read into it.
On the downside, it's been so successfully claimed that it can once again be used as a pejorative by virtue of being associated with queers ("That's so gay.") *sigh*
"Dyke" is another word that's been reclaimed (see Dyke, sub-category Portly), as is "queer", although the re-appropriation of these terms carries a certain level of controversy that is similar to (but, perhaps, milder than) the split in feminist communities over the word "bitch".
I know a number of lesbians who would be absolutely offended if I called them a dyke -- even in private, or in the exclusive company of other lesbians. I also know lesbians who would be offended if I referred to them as "gay women", and gay women who would be put off if I called them lesbians.
So what's a dyke to do?
Well, for one thing, comprehend and respect this fact: It is vitally important that oppressed persons retain the agency to identify themselves.
Labeling a minority, or any oppressed class, is big tool in the oppressor's tool-kit. That's why there is such a vast array of slurs applied to people who are disenfranchised based on their sex, gender, color, race, creed, orientation, disability, national origin, etc..
When a member of a privileged class uses these terms, they are saying, in essence: "I own the culture, and I get to define you." It is an attempt to exercise power, whether conscious or unconscious.
When a member of a non-privileged class re-appropriates the term, they are saying: "No, you do not define me."
Tends to piss them right off (the privileged label-makers, that is).
Here's a true-story example: I was walking down the street holding hands with my girlfriend, and the guy we'd just passed said (just loud enough for us to hear): "Fucking dykes."
I turned around and said, in my cheeriest voice: "Congratulations, Sir! -- you have correctly identified the dykes -- but I will have to remove points from you for mis-identifying our current activity."
He was absolutely aghast.
I had not only refused to passively accept his right to label me pejoratively -- I had had the audacity to actually confront him for attempting to "power-over" me.
In his mind, the way this was supposed to work was that I would get scared, or drop my girlfriend's hand, or feel ashamed, or Maude knows what -- however he thought it was going to play out, clearly it did not include me engaging him directly and proudly claiming the term he sought to denigrate me with.
So, what does all this have to do with Part 1 of this series?
Let's say a person of privilege uses a term or idiom (perhaps with no intent to offend at all) and a member of the non-privileged class says that it is offensive to them, and the privileged speaker responds with something like: "That term has come into common use and isn't offensive anymore".
I believe that they are enforcing their privilege.
I believe that they are reiterating the following message (usually, completely unconsciously):
"I have the power. I own the language. Your experience does not count, and the fact that you are offended is of no consequence, because you have no power."
Which is fine, if you aspire to be a privilege-wielding butt-hole.
Reproductive Coercion
[Trigger warning.]
Anti-rape and domestic violence advocates have long known that a significant feature of many abusive straight relationships is unwanted pregnancy as the result of male sabotage of birth control—or, in some cases, disallowing their partners to use birth control altogether. Our culture is rife with narratives about women who "trap" men by "getting themselves pregnant," but rarely discussed are the stories of abusive men who poke holes in condoms, flush their partners' birth control pills down the toilet, monitor their partners' periods to ensure they're not using birth control, and in other ways try to control their partners' reproduction, because a child will keep them connected for life.
But earlier this month, Elizabeth Miller (whose name may be familiar), an assistant professor of pediatrics at University of California, Davis, published a new study in the journal Contraception addressing "reproductive coercion."
[Reproductive coercion] is when the male partner pressures the other, through verbal threats, physical aggression, or birth-control sabotage, to become pregnant. According to Miller's research, about a third of women reporting partner violence experienced reproductive coercion, as did 15 percent of women who had never reported violence.Younger women are also, of course, less likely to be making a living wage on which they can support themselves, particularly if they have already become pregnant. Abusive partners aren't seeking to create a baby; they're seeking to create a dependency in their partners.
Overall, rates of reproductive coercion among family-planning-clinic patients are surprisingly high: about one in five women report their partner having attempted to coerce them into pregnancy. "What we're seeing is that, in the larger scheme of violence against women and girls, it is another way to maintain control," says Miller, who studied 1,300 female patients culled from five family-planning clinics in Northern California. "You have guys telling their partners, 'I can do this because I'm in control' or 'I want to know that I can have you forever.' " This may help explain previous findings of higher rates of unintended pregnancies in relationships with partner violence.
The women in Miller's study were between 16 to 29; Miller will publish a study later in 2010 that finds similar numbers in demographics of older women. That said, younger women may have a more difficult time dealing with reproductive coercion: they have less experience in relationships, and, if they are minors, less access to doctors' appointments and emergency contraception. Particularly for teenagers in relationships with older men, the age difference "may have profound implications for perceived and actual reproductive choices for young adult women," Miller wrote in a 2007 paper on the same subject. "Such factors may also lead to fewer adolescents reporting such reproductive control as abusive, forced, or coercive." Put another way, teenage girls are at greater risk of not recognizing reproductive coercion as problematic, and allowing it to continue.
Which is why there exists a "men's reproductive rights movement" that seeks to wrest control of reproductive decisions from women.
It is also almost certainly, in part, why murder is the leading cause of death for pregnant women in America, many of whom are actively trying to leave the men who murder them when they are slain.
[H/T to Shaker Broce.]
SOTU Open Thread
Here's an open thread to discuss last night's State of the Union address (full text here; and the Republican response can be found here), in case anyone missed the Virtual Pub.
My overall assessment in a word: Meh.
Lots of proposals, many of which I didn't like (tax credits), and some I did (repealing DADT), but none of it means shit without the kind of action—and leadership—that Obama hasn't really shown himself to have so far. And, indeed, he spent way too much of the address IMO talking about partisan divisions and exhorting the GOP to engage in good faith, which they are simply never going to do. It was tiresome to watch.
Obama still doesn't seem to have realized that you can't simultaneously pander to your opponent and rally your troops. He missed a big rallying opportunity last night. And I fear it's really going to cost him.
Neo-Con Bullshit Is Still With Us
Self-referential paper is self-referential.
If the reports are to be believed, Women's Studies programs are disappearing at many Canadian universities. Forgive us for being skeptical. We would wave good-bye without shedding a tear, but we are pretty sure these angry, divisive and dubious programs are simply being renamed to make them appear less controversial.Also, pestilential, inconsequential, sewer-sedimential.
(CC's note: I have condensed the middle several paragraphs, to save your eyes* some strain:
MRA BULLSHIT, MRA BULLSHIT, MRA BULLSHIT; ALSO, BTW, MRA BULLSHIT, DID YOU KNOW? AND THEN MRA BULLSHIT. NO, REALLY. ALSO, WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ? NO, REALLY!)
While we'd like to cheer and say "Good riddance," we're certain such celebration would be premature.
It occurred to me while writing this that simply taking the article and search-and-replacing every occurrence of "Women's Studies departments" with "neo-con birdcage liner", and "(radical) feminism" with "morally bankrupt neofascist marketworship" would turn it into a pretty good piece, although the latter cries out for a good hearty acronymming.
Tip of the CaitieCap to Shaker Sara.
* My apologies for this. I'm leaving it in because I don't like erasing my mistakes, and as an example of how even those of us who do this on the public stage get it wrong sometimes, but I shouldn't have said this. It would be better as:
"...to save you some time."
Why? Because I othered visually-impaired people there. Not everyone peruses Shakesville with their eyes. Some probably use readers, or other assistive tech, to get their daily dose.
So, my apologies to those Shakers whom I othered, and I'll try to do better in future.
