Photoshop

A friend was defending the role in photoediting in photography:

My Little Moments Is This Photoshopped?  4 August 2014

The eye physically "sees" very little at any given moment (raw footage from the retina would be considered poor quality), and what we perceive as "vision" is actually the brain "Photoshopping" the incoming data. I would also argue that people adjusting ISO, shutter speed, filter, etc on their expensive camera is simply "Photoshopping" at the hardware level.

Apologise

BBC News US Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic leads school to apologise  21 March 2015

People are fine with reading the pledge in a different language each day, until it's in Arabic? Those who took offence do not deserve an apology. They themselves should apologise for taking offence. Arabic-speaking forces allied to the US far outnumber the likes of Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. Those who “lost family in Afghanistan” should realise that Arabic is not even an official language of Afghanistan. This level of sheer ignorance is analogous to conflating Americans with Nazis simply because both are Caucasian.

The perfect scam

New York State Office of the Attorney General A.G. Schneiderman Asks Major Retailers To Halt Sales Of Certain Herbal Supplements As DNA Tests Fail To Detect Plant Materials Listed On Majority Of Products Tested  3 February 2015

A recent New York Attorney General investigation found that almost 80% of herbal preparations contain no trace of the herbs advertised. The perfect scam: sell herbs with no effect so your customers will be none the wiser when you don't even add the herbs.

Levels of non-evidence

The Guardian Homeopathy not effective for treating any condition, Australian report finds  11 March 2015 Report by top medical research body says ‘people who choose homeopathy may put their health at risk if they reject or delay treatments’

In medicine, we often say "there is no evidence for treatment X." We should add further distinction between "we haven't done the research" versus "we did the research and found no effect."

Blurred Lines

The Guardian Blurred Lines 'copied Marvin Gaye'  11 March 2015 A jury in the US rules that the writers of Blurred Lines – one of the best selling singles of all time – copied a Marvin Gaye track from 1977.

The "feeling" of an entire decade cannot be copyrighted, and there are only a finite number of possible melodies and beats. This ruling is a good example of how current intellectual property law, contrary to its intended effect, stifles rather than encourages content creation.

The $7.3 million payout is also manifestly excessive, considering that Thicke could have just totally copied Gaye's song as a cover version for a mechanical licensing fee of (assuming 9.1 cents for 14.8 million units) around $1.3 million in royalties. "Noxiae" poena par esto.

Another vote of no confidence in the US tort system.

Food for thought

AnimalVisuals.org Number of Animals Killed to Produce One Million Calories in Eight Food Categories  12 October 2009

Davis estimates 15 animal deaths per hectare per year (d/ha/y) due for vegan agriculture, compared to 7.5 d/ha/y for meat production. Matheny points out Davis' error in failing to consider that meat requires 2-7 times the land to produce a given amount of usable protein.

While these numbers so far superficially appear to favour veganism, they fail to take into account that agricultural lands are not equal and that animals do not necessarily need to be fed with crops. A significant portion of meat production occurs on rangelands, which comprises the majority of land on Earth, unsuitable for crop production. Replacing rangeland meat production with vegan agriculture would require mass destruction of native habitats.

After the initial destruction, the estimated ongoing animal deaths of 7.5 d/ha/y was derived by assuming that “forage production requires fewer passages through the field with tractors and other farm equipment.” In practice, other forage options exist. A stockpiling and limit-feeding strategy on rangelands, for example, may require no tractors at all. To the extent that these methods reduce wild animal deaths to less than 2.1-7.5 d/ha/y, the argument in terms of ongoing animal deaths also shifts back in favour of omnivorism.

Hypercrisy (Wei’s Neologisms #0)

The Guardian What do doctors say to 'alternative therapists' when a patient dies? Nothing. We never talk  3 March 2015 Jess Ainscough’s tragic death is all too familiar for oncologists. We’ve all lost patients to the ‘secret powers’ of alternative therapy

I would be happy for "alternative therapists" to practice under the following conditions:

1. They face the same consequences as evidence-based practitioners do for giving poor advice, including potential manslaughter conviction (up to 20 years jail in Victoria).
2. If they, for example, fall ill with cancer themselves, they are only allowed to undergo the same treatments they advised to their customers.

Someone accused the medical community of false dichotomy (the "OR question"); that non-evidence-based therapy can be helpful in conjunction with evidence-based therapy (the "AND question").

WH: It is the "alternative therapy" advocates who make this an "OR question" when they promote their business as an "alternative" to evidence-based therapy, such as in the case of Jessica Ainscough.

Regarding the "AND question" of "complementary" (rather than "alternative") therapy, I am relatively happy for people to enjoy placebo effects that:

1. Do not interfere with evidence-based therapies (many evidence-free therapies actually do interfere with medications or are lacking in safety data).
2. Do not cause significant financial harm (people are charged significant prices for evidence-free therapies, while evidence-based therapies are generally free in the public health system).
Fraud is a crime. Fraud specifically targeting the most physically and psychologically vulnerable is an atrocity.

Someone asked for proposed solutions.

WH: Perhaps top-down regulatory reform and bottom-up education in critical thinking during secondary school.