C2Comics Blog

So here’s my obligatory Google+ post. It’s gone through a couple versions:

Upon first hearing about Google+: “Sounds neat…but it’s invite-only…and a social network?  Sure, G-mail was invite only, but at least you could send e-mail to people who didn’t have G-mail.  And, Facebook was limited, but by college, you could be suggested someone you knew but hadn’t e-mailed.  I bet this will be really awesome, but few people will use it, Google will ignore suggestions despite it actively asking for them, and in less than a year it will cave.”

Upon getting Google+:

Week 1: “This *is* awesome!  The interface is great!  So much more intuitive than Facebook!  When I click ‘circles’, my circles show up!  On Facebook when I click ‘friends’, sometimes my friends show up, sometimes just people who want to be my friends show up….and sometimes it’s on the right, sometimes it’s on the left?  Google Plus is so much better!  I’m gonna send a bit of Feedback….feedbackfeedbackfeedback!”

Week 2: “Hm.  Gosh, hardly anyone’s on.  Better check facebook.  Doo doo doo.  Oh well, back to Google Plus, oh, so pretty!  Now back to G-mail.  Wait…why is my Google Plus name now my e-mail name?  Why is my Google Plus profile pick my G-mail pic?  Gross.  I don’t want my full name on my G-mail.  This sucks, I want to use my full name for Google Plus, but keeping that private for G-mail and shared documents is more important.  Gotta delete my full name from Google Plus.  Gonna send feedback about this, too….”

Week 3:  ”Google Plus is deleting accounts, without warning, of everyone who is not revealing their entire, full name?  And when Google Plus is deleted other Google accounts are sucked down the drain, too?  ….”

So, in summary, Google Plus is disappointing me the same (or more) as Wave.  It’s great.  It’s really fantastic – there’s a lot of room for improvement in the architecture, but the starting point is really sleek, smooth, and intuitive.  But hardly anyone’s on.  Furthermore Google’s mucking things up with idiotic name and universal linking policies.

Meh.  Later, Google Plus.

So I’d written a post on how obsessed I had recently become with Simon Amstell, and did a marathon session of Never Mind the Buzzcocks.  Amy Winehouse was in one of those episodes – she was quite funny and I for one think that, no, while her death by apparent overdose might not be a shock, it still is a disappointment.

Also want to chastise my newsfeed for blowing up about Amy Winehouse but not mentioning a word about Lucian Freud’s death, but I suppose it’s not apples and apples, and this post alone makes me guilty of the same thing.  Besides, death happens all the time. We can’t mention them all. Still.  Two artists gone from the world in one week.  RIP to both of you.

Lucian Freud Double Portrait 1985-86

PS Dinosaur Comic of the Week!

What – I ask – what is so incredibly hard about stating the facts as they are?  I came across an article on Science News today about high-ranking baboons being super-stressed.  They’re sooooo stressed!  Such an awful life!  Oooh, maybe we can apply this to humans and maybe being the boss is really secretly awful, oooh!

Well, filtering this article out doesn’t reveal that baboons “bosses” are always super-stressed.  Their stress levels only spike infrequently, when their rank is challenged – this should not be a surprise.  Hell, if a baboon started shrieking at me, my stress levels would skyrocket as well – and I’m not even thinking about losing mating rights.  Normally, however, outside this stress, the higher-males have stress levels below that of lower males.

This fact is not revealed until the end of the 8th of 11th paragraphs.  Everything before this implies that the top males are constantly under this high stress, with phrases like: “these primates pay a cost to be the boss” and “Baboon bosses are burdened by having to fight off rivals and guard fertile mates from others’ advances”.

This type of “reporting” always bothers me, of course but it recently freaked out a friend of mine.  She’s expecting her first baby in the next week or two.  Unfortunately she’s suffering from preeclampsia – which can be life-threatening – and it’s been recommended that she deliver her baby early.  Only by a week, which is good, but still, she has to come across the following article: Babies Born One Week Early at Risk of Serious Health Problems.

Once again, the sensation is in the headlines.  It seems to start all right, with the statement of “babies born at between 24 and 27 weeks were almost seven times more likely to need help at school than those delivered at 40 weeks.”  Okay that’s all well and good….but then it switches to:

“Babies born at 39 weeks – both naturally and by caesarean – were 9 per cent more likely to have special needs.”  Okay, here’s where I have an issue.  More likely than what?  One can *assume* they mean 9% more likely to have special needs *than those born at 40 weeks* but suddenly switching from “times” to “percent” makes this wording a) awkward, b) necessary to complete and c) not jiveable with the later statement of:

“Some 4.7 per cent of the babies born at 39 weeks had special needs, compared with 4.4 of those who went to term.”

Again, this doesn’t come in until the 15th paragraph(/sentence?) down, after much scare-mongering beforehand.  When those numbers are compared they don’t appear to be that different.  Now, an increase is an increase (of course, using the actual numbers given I get a 6.8% increase not 9%…so I still don’t know where the 9% is representing), but….”serious” risk?  *Really*?  And this is apparently to dissuade the whopping 7% of women who are electing to have cesareans a week early.  This potentially translates to, out of 5,000 babies born, 1 *more* will have some type of learning disability….which may be as severe as autism or as mild as “poor vision” (gosh – I wonder if my mom delivered early….)

As I said I would say about two months ago… people who spread false information should be put to death!

….okay, no, not really, but this confusing journalism is shameful.  It can’t even be called lying, because the truth is in there, somewhere….if you’re clever enough to find it.  News, however, shouldn’t be a treasure hunt, with only the cleverest being able to deduce the fact from the chaff.  Now, again, readers shouldn’t be complacent – when these things don’t jive (jive is my word of the day, apparently) – they should be able to figure things out – but sometimes it takes an extensive amount of work to realize that the newspaper got it wrong, work that shouldn’t have to be undertaken in the first place.

For example – and this is my favorite story about Scientific Literacy, I may have already written about it – I presented a class with a newspaper article from a paper, titled along the lines of, “Milk may cause cancer!”  The article presented a bunch of “facts” and, from the article alone, it looked legitimate.  However, digging a little bit deeper, cracks could be found.  The article pointed to a “carcinogenic” protein found in milk, but, looking at other articles (not referenced by the main article), that protein was not found at cancer-causing levels in raw milk.  So is it the milk itself that “causes cancer”?  Is it the process that milk goes through?  Is it the containers we put it in?  There’s not really a link to say that milk, itself, causes cancer.  After discussing all this with my class I say, “so, thoughts?”

“I think it’s really interesting that milk causes cancer!”

You can lead a horse to water…

Freaking Google.  I’ve been trying to write an obligatory Google+ post for like, two weeks.  Things keep changing.  So anyway, while I finish that, I decided to have….

Dinosaur comic of the week!

You may already know about Dinosaur comics – the hilarious webcomic by the hilarious Ryan North.  He publishes a new one each week day – whoa, that’s dedication.  Here was the best one this week!

And if you’re going, “well, technically that was from last week, cheater!” okay fine, here’s this week’s ferreals.  Rollover required.

Furtheremore, in non-dinosaur news, Jon Fratelli’s new album is dropping within the next two weeks!  So exciting!  I’m not much of a music-hound but I’m really liking his solo stuff so far.  His voice seems quite different from what I’ve heard from the Fratellis – more mature and gravelly, which can be nice, I guess?  I will get over this soon, I’m sure….

Okay, so, art?  I don’t get it.  Well, let me rephrase.  Modern art I don’t get.  Media art and abstract art.  Huh?  What?

So this guy, Kyle McDonald, decided to take pictures of people using computers and post them on the internet.  Apparently he is out to demonstrate the following concept:

“We have this expression on our face [when we use computers] that basically says that we’re not interacting with anybody, we’re interacting with the machine”

Holy cow.  This artist’s radical message of, essentially, “we don’t look like we’re interacting with people when we aren’t interacting with people” NEEDS to be heard!   Or, er, seen.  McDonald is in some hot water after rigging some computers to take screencamera shots of Apple store shoppers, using a program that automatically snaps a picture when a face is detected.  These photos were then uploaded online to his public tumblr account.  When Apple noticed their store computers had been tampered with the Secret Service was called and McDonald’s home was searched.

It is no secret that I don’t like Apple. However, I am quite surprised at all the flack that Apple‘s been getting.  Is calling the Secret Service an extreme measure?  Sure.  But when you tamper with store property with the express purpose of invading people’s privacy, there are several crimes in there.  Calling it “art” doesn’t make it any less a crime.  Does it?  Because I totally need to liberate a thousand dollars from Walmart’s tills….you know…for the sake of art.  It’s a passion project.

The subject's face has been blurred to protect the fact I don't know how to focus a camera.

Seriously, though, McDonald’s project has really gotten me thinking about the invasion of privacy it involves -mainly because the topic hasn’t really been brought up.   The main focus has mostly been on the tech side (is altering a store computer, open for use, really hacking?) and very little on the  invasion of privacy side.  It’s interesting how the right to privacy seems to lose its meaning as we move from hard formats to digital.

When I was in journalism class (does it surprise you to learn I’ve actually studied journalism?  I bet it does!) we had a segment on privacy and this very subject – posting people’s images and likenesses – came up.  The advice was, to publish someone’s photograph or likeness, there were three rules to adhere to.

1) is the person famous – is just having a picture of them enough to warrant a “story”?  Headline:  ”Angelina Jolie at Apple Store!”

2) if the person is not famous are they at a public, newsworthy event?  One at which journalism coverage would not be out of place?  Headline: “Apple Store Spontaneously Combusts!”

3) if rules 1 and 2 do not apply has signed, written permission to use their image in the specified form for use been acquired?  (Headline:  ”I Asked This Man I’ve Never Met If I Could Show His Face To All My Friends And He Said Yes!”)

If you didn’t have a “yes” to at least one of those rules, you didn’t use the photo.  Period.

Of course, I’m not a lawyer and those three rules are not binding themselves – but in the realm of privacy issues these would protect us from liability.  Anything less than this and we were leaving ourselves open to lawsuit.  It does not appear that McDonald followed ANY of these rules.  In most of the articles I’ve read on this, again, no one is even raising the issue of people’s right to privacy, however Mashable does flesh it out a bit deeper, reporting that McDonald had observed:

….at the Apple stores on West 14th Street and in Soho, when people looked at an Apple store machine, they saw a picture of themselves. Then they saw photos of other people staring at computers. Amazingly, nobody made a fuss.

When I walk into Target I see myself on the television screen above the door.  I assume this is for security purposes and will only be used for that.  Furthermore I do not expect my image to be sent to a website.  I don’t care if other people in the store can see me on the monitor because, well, they’re in the store and they can see me anyway, however, once we get into the realm of “outsiders” it is a different story.

Furthermore, simply displaying something that has multiple levels of expression (and dissemination) to it and taking any “lack of fuss” as informed consent is extremely flawed.  The following argument is just as flawed:

[McDonald] asked customers if he could take their photos (with a camera). Had they all said no, he says, he wouldn’t have proceeded… If someone sees themselves in his collection and wants to be removed, he will remove them.

This is still a violation of rule three.  Asking someone to take their photo with a camera, with no mention of what you plan to use it for, is quite different than asking someone if you can capture their image when they are unprepared and put it on a website indefinitely.  Furthermore, “had they ALL said no”?  This implies that some people did say no, and McDonald simply ignored them.  If I don’t want to be in his collection, but at the same time don’t want to waste my time trawling through his collection just in case I might be in there still doesn’t mean I’m giving consent for him to use my likeness.

Again, what intrigues me about this story is the gap between online regulations and in-print regulations.  I cannot remember who said it, but I heard very recently that the internet is taking on an “Old West” feel, where there really are no laws.  The abundance of outlets for expression is awesome – in the “great and somewhat terrifying” definition of the term.  It’s great that musicians and writers no longer have to wait for “mainstream” acceptance to get their career started and flourishing, and that other people can look for alternatives to just the mainstream entertainment.  At the same time, what’s disconcerting is the “mob rule”, or perhaps the “mob brainwashing”.   Dropping the p-word from “online publishing” has made blogging and tweeting sound cooler and newer, but it’s also allowed people to pretend they are exempt from the rules of paper publishing.  Someone would definitely have a case on their hands if their photo was put in the paper without permission and/or reason, so should the three rules above apply to the online world, if someone’s image is published to a tumblr without permission and/or reason?  Is the answer “no” simply because “everyone” uploads and publishes photos taken in public places “all the time”?  If so, what other laws should be completely disregarded online?

…’Cause I’m not joking about my thousand-dollar “art project”.

My son Adam is a wonderful, bright, and insightful 10-year-old.  He’s sooooo smart.  Smarter than his teachers, even!  He can turn the computer on and off!  He has been using e-mail for almost two years, to talk to his Grandparents!  It’s so much easier than picking up the phone!

Speaking of easier, he has Gmail!  And so do I!  So even if I’m sitting right next to him he knows not to bother me with verbal communication!  ”get me a coke!” pops up on my chat.  Oh, my little Adam!  You are so gifted!  I will get you that coke!  After all, you have more important things to do, like play minecraft and create dazzling powerpoints!  Adam’s favorite pasttimes include making powerpoints and writing e-mails to his Grandparents – this is one savvy kid!

Unfortunately Google hates him.  Google wrote him a letter saying they were going to sneak into Adam’s room and kill his dog.  This made Adam so sad he needed 8 freezer pops to feel better.

It all began when I joined Google+.  Now, Adam cannot join Facebook because of COPPA laws.  Those bastards assume that OUR ten-year-old is the same as every other ten-year-old out there!  He’s soooo not!  He’s a gem!  I swear, just because other parents have allowed their children on to social networking sites with no rules and regulations, leading to the children being abducted and killed or bullied to suicide they assume we’re the same!  So when Google+ came out we did the only natural thing – we invited him to Google+ in the hopes that he will be able to explore social networks with no rules and regulations!

Imagine our dismay when Google suddenly decided to adhere to the same Federal regulations as Facebook!  Seriously!  When Google found out our son was underage they closed his account, JUST because it would be illegal for them to keep it open – I mean, are these heartless bastards or what?!

Just because our child is 8 years younger than the age at which he is legally allowed to enter into a contract, and about 15 years younger than the age at which the human brain finally is able to grasp the consequences of his actions and is for all intents and purposes a child does not mean YOU need to treat him like a child!  I just don’t see the reasoning behind your clearly flawed logic!

Google+, you have irreparably damaged my child.  I will never, ever forgive you.

NEVAR EVARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!

Update 1: Comment closed because of horrible TROLLS who left such hurtful, horrible comments like, “why not register the account in *your* name and then officially transfer it when he’s 18?”, well, I don’t understand how you can sleep at night being such dreadful people!

Update 2:  Cross-posted all over the internet.  TROLLS: please do not go to those sites and say terrible things like, “Google is required to do this by law” STOP TROLLING

Update 3:  Cross-post comments closed.  Way to go TROLLS, with your hateful words like, “A ten-year-old probably shouldn’t be on the internet without some form of active parental involvement/supervision anyway”  We’ve explained the internet to our ten-year-old child, and, since he is OUR child there is no possible way he would ignore ANY of our advice and warnings!

Update 4:  OMG I’ve taken down the cross-post altogether. I don’t understand what is so hard about this – if you comment with ANYthing besides, “whoa, Google sucks!” you are a TROLL.  Learn some logics, TROLLS.

Alternate title:  But someone on the internet is wrong!

So every once in a while I come across something that makes me angry.  Wait – let me clarify that.  Every once in a while something makes me disproportionately angry in terms of the offense.  Today’s something?  This post.  Of course, I was already primed, having been redirected from a site that ridiculed women for not being feminist enough because they chose to eat frozen yogurt instead of guzzling wine (whut).

Natasha’s post is a little more baffling because it essentially ridicules women for liking birds.

That’s right.

Birds.

Now, I know a couple people who aren’t particularly fond of birds, in person and by reputation, but this post preys on my major weakness – attempting to shame people into disliking something based on a flawed understanding of…aw hell, let’s be honest and just say and entire lack of understanding of biology.  To quote Natasha:

Birds aren’t even mammals. They are cold, indifferent creatures. They are hatched, not born. They are like tiny raptors, eerily reptilian and unfeeling.  Look into the eyes of a bird and see if there is anything you remotely recognize in yourself.

First of all, where was I the day liking a non-mammal was outlawed?  Have the people who’ve dedicated their lives studying invertebrates (leading to advances in medicine, knowledge of muscle development, apoptosis, etc) been informed?  Seriously, they need to be alerted that if it ain’t a mammal, it ain’t worth it.

Sure, birds can be cold and indifferent, but compared to what?  The sparrow, which is particularly maligned in Natasha’s writings, is an incredibly social creature.  The male and female form a life-long monogamous bond and, while roosting, may even be assisted by other sparrows in the group.  The mother and father take turns sitting on the eggs then go even so far as to regurgitate food for their fledglings.  Yes, cold and indifferent for sure.  Certainly not as noble as the adorable chimp, who commits infanticide regularly out of jealousy or sometimes plain boredom….

Some mammals are hatched, not born, as well.  I wonder, then, if I’m a fan of the echidna, is that bullshit, too?  Where do kangaroos fall?  Are they not mammalian enough, as they are not born fully formed?

Looking into the eyes of a bird I see incredible evolution at work.  I see the animal that developed from an embryo inside membranes similar to the ones that I developed within but frogs, fish, and other vertebrates did not.  I see a class of animals that is wholly endothermic, unlike those that came before, and is able to compete with mammals for all areas of the world.  I see an animal that pumps blood (another Natashaism: “Pick [an animal] that bleeds”  …so everything from Annelida up is a go?) using a four-chambered heart, loaded with antibodies similar to our own.

Sigh, I dunno.  Again, it’s a disproportionate rage, I suppose, or maybe an annoyance at the underlying theme despite the glaring (GLARING GLAAAAAARING factual inaccuracies) “being delicate is horrible.”  Seriously.  Being a woman who embraces delicate birds is awful because you are giving into your weakness and allowing your males to overpower you.  Oh, and if you have a delicate male boyfriend who maybe like birds that is even worse.  You should pray to god that he will send you some baby-killing illiterate furry Neanderthal!  Get yourself a real man!  Cause god forbid we even attempt to move forward in evolution….

And smelling the flowers? FORGET THAT! Unless you want to be like a bird. PSHT.

But really, it seems the prevailing ideal is to be aggressive and busy.  If you’re not playing hard, you shouldn’t play at all!  If you don’t spend every waking hour go-getting, get out!  Ain’t no time to sit on a branch and sing.  Ain’t no time to study your environment and learn how to manipulate human structures.  Call me an intellectual, evolution is all about pros and cons – I couldn’t imagine slamming an entire class because of its perceived defects.  If something appears delicate and frail but is extant, well.  It must be tougher than it looks, in ways that aren’t clear upon first glance.  Maybe slowing down the pace and approaching our environment carefully, instead of with raw primate aggression, we can begin to understand and appreciate these alternate pathways through life.

Meh.  I dunno, I guess my point is, if you’re going to try to argue against something at least ATTEMPT to be factually accurate like….oh.  I dunno.  ”What’s the fascination with octopi recently?*  Octopi are so stupid because they taste things with their tentacles all at the same time and what is up with the females essentially sacrificing her life for her young?  So anti-feminist ladies?  And ug, at least choose an animal with hemoglobin in its blood, sheesh, the copper in hemocyanin is SUCH a weaker metal than iron GEEZ.” OR, just go in the complete opposite direction and just be all, “I don’t like birds, and, because of that, neither should you.”  Save people some reading, you know?

And for the record?

Both the animals above, the giant bird (left) and tiny mammal (right), are ADORABLE.

*Dude that was just an example.  Octopi are awesome.

Well, it’s official….Mars rover Spirit has been proclaimed dead.  Or, as John Callas of NASA said, “Spirit went into a deep sleep” – a deep sleep?  Sounds like that time he told us Phoenix had “gone to a farm” and was “happy chasing rabbits”.  Chasing rabbits?!  Phoenix was an immobile station!   Psht.

No disassemble!

Seriously though, Spirit and her still-functioning sister, Opportunity stand out as being sent up for 90-day missions….in January 2004.   It is hard to not anthropomorphize these plucky little machines when they were given 3-month missions but extended them to over 5-years, continuing to explore.  Spirit’s explorations supported the presence of water on Mars at one point, including what appeared to be lava rocks cooled by water and areas that appeared to have been suitable for microbial life.  There were ups and downs for the rover – one sandstorm seemed to have swept its solar panels clear of most debris, allowing it to continue its work while a later storm seems to have dropped sand onto the panels, decreasing the panels’ collection ability.

Spirit continued moving after breaking its wheel on a rock outcropping and the furrows its dragging “limb” caused allowed a look at yet another layer of Mars’ surface, yet it may have been this loss of mobility that led to it becoming entrenched in a sandtrap.

Although it stopped working last year search efforts continued for this machine and on-Earth experiments were done to simulate removing it from the sand-trap.  This is yet another testament to this machine’s important contributions – although Spirit had been given a “shelf-life” of 90 days and had already extended that over 20x scientists thought it may be capable of more. Recovery efforts continued until yesterday when NASA officially declared the rover dead.

Ah, well, it’s not like it really died.  It’s just a machine.

I thought I’d pause in spewing vileness to write about some of the vileness I take in – namely, medicine.

Yep, I take medicine, and lots of it – not for anything interesting or serious.  For a long time I didn’t think anything about downing dozens of pills, knowing nothing about what they did or where they came from.  Lately, however, I’ve been noticing….I am not sure if this is due to an increase in my own diligence or the giant labels they’ve been slapping on the pill bottles.  Far and away the best warning I’ve seen is:

“Avoid eating or drinking grapefruit products with this medication.” – BWUUUH?  Apparently grapefruit interactions are common with some medications but I have never heard of it before.  So apparently the chemical bergamottin in grapefruit inhibits the enzyme CYP3A4 which is needed to breakdown buspirone (the medicine I am taking).  I’ve only just started taking this drug and of course bought a bag of grapefruit….however I’m a bit of a sissy when it comes to drugs and am on a super-low dose.  Half a grapefruit every other day is a-ok for me.  It does make me wonder how they figure some of these things out….do they just throw foods at people and see if they seize up?  ”Okay…we’ve eliminated aspirin interactions…let’s try….cracker interactions!  ….then….cake interactions!”  ….okay, very likely they noticed a bunch of people experiencing liver/kidney failure and linked those cases to grapefruit consumption but my scenario is funnier and less morbid!  Other on-bottle side-effects of this drug: drowsiness and dizziness.

“Call doctor if you experience mood changes, such as sadness, depression, or fear” – it wasn’t until I started writing this that I noticed this is on TWO drugs, Singulair (for allergies) and Topiramate (for headaches).  I just think the “fear” is so odd.  Like…what level of fear is acceptable?  Are you supposed to be suddenly onset by a gripping sense of fear of …. something… or a heightened fear of…I dunno.  The end times?  Be more specific, prescription bottles!  Interestingly enough, topiramate increases CYP3A4 – I suppose if I balance this and the other drug I could eat grapefruit all day!  …if I wanted to.  Which I don’t.  Topiramate also may cause dizziness and drowsiness.

“Avoid prolonged exposure to direct or artificial sunlight” – this from amitriptyline (another headache med).  Anyone who has ever seen me would know this will NOT be a problem.  First of all it is hard to get my desktop set up outside and second of all I slather on SPF 40 when I am just sittin’ around.  No worries, label-making pharmacist!  This may also cause dizziness and drowsiness.

Now, rarely I will also take midrin (for headaches) which make cause dizziness and liver problems and compazine (for nausea from taking so many freakin medications) which can also cause dizziness and drowsiness.  That brings us to:

“May cause drowsiness” – why is this so notable when we’ve seen it before?  Because it is a warning of Rozerem, the drug I take to put me to sleep (at least, on a human-like sleep cycle).  Seriously – “may cause drowsiness”?  The only problem I have with that the “may” implies the drug will not  do what it is supposed to do!

There you go.  My crazy drugs!