Bizarre feats of technology

The photo at the left is of a perfectly ordinary, generic, 2 gig USB drive, purchased a couple of years ago, and these days, probably worth about a dollar and a half. What's remarkable about it, you ask? Just that it went through the wash and the dryer in the pocket of my shirt and still functions as always. Strange.

Let's not forget the little guys

So as this week's election demonstrated, eventually appallingly bad leadership gets you sacked. Not soon enough, usually, but eventually, it does.

But in the afterglow of Obama's well-deserved victory, let's all pause to remember that our political system isn't just divided into Democrats and Republicans. America has a number of other parties, many of which, over the years, have fielded third-party candidates. For example, there's Ralph Nader who, for a self-serving, cynical, arrogant little prat, isn't, um, well, a quitter, I guess is what you can say about him. Ross Perot, the man who proved to the world that being rich and the head of a large corporation doesn't mean you know squat about leadership, domestic affairs, or foreign ones, ran as a third-party candidate. And of course, there was George Wallace, who ran for President on the American Independent Party ticket(AIP, pronounced just like it looks).

Of course, we shouldn't forget (although we'd like to) such mavericks as Ron Paul (an Ayn Rand fan and member of the Foreign Affairs committee of the House, despite believing that the US has no place in the UN or NATO) who is currently a Republican, but has run in the past as a Libertarian -- although strangely, his views on Liberty don't extend to reproductive choice.

Reaching further back, Teddy Roosevelt formed the Bull Moose party (or Progressive Party, as it preferred to be called), when he didn't get the 1912 GOP nomination. Its platform, in an uncanny foreshadowing, was titled "A Contract With the People," and had so many contradictions and anomalies that ... people loved it, enough to split the republican vote and give the election to the even-more-Progressive Democrats, Woodrow Wilson, in particular. (And we all know how well that worked out.)

And it goes on and on -- Wikipedia has a nice list of semi-organized wackos ... I mean, third parties, including such interesting groupings as:

The Modern Whig Party, a group so centrist that I couldn't really tell what it stands for, in the 30 or 40 seconds worth of research I was prepared to devote to it.

The Prohibition Party, which is exactly what you think it is. Apparently divided into two factions, the "pro-Dodge" and "anti-Dodge" groups. I selected one at random for the link, and frankly, I forget which one it is. If you figure it out, let me know, and explain what the one side has against Chrysler.

The Alaskan Independence Party, again, just what it sounds like (and a great idea, in my opinion.)

So the next time some Joe-the-Plumber, Joe Six-Pack, or (to steal a phrase from a friend of mine) Joe Bag-a-Donuts bellies up to the bar next to you and starts going on about how the damn two-party system is ruining the country, remember the wild and crazy guys and gals of our great third parties, and thank your ancestors none of 'em got elected.

A plug for a good outfit

If you're at all a folkie, consider giving Loomis House Press a bit of your hard earned. They're putting out the old authoritative Child Ballads in a new edition, one volume at a time. It appears to be all they do.

I have volumes 1 to 3, just ordered #4, and will be on board when they get the final volume out. These are books for the truly obsessed, I admit, but I love having this sort of thing around.

What is this ad telling me?

I really don't get this one. Quattro technology helps me when I'm driving over birds, clutching a bar of soap, exercising my grip, and preparing to throw a stone at a pedestrian? Or is it some kind of play on "a bird in the hand ...?"

Vorsprung durch Technik, by the way, translates to Projection/lead by technology. A better tag line might be, "Wir benötigen eine neue Anzeigenagentur," or "We need a new ad agency."

Veterinary Homeopathy

Here's a cheerful note from the Feedback section of the October 18th New Scientist. I'm just going to quote it -- you can draw your own conclusions.

AN EMAIL from Andrew Rankine raises concerns about Dr Frank's Pet Pain Spray, a homeopathic treatment for cats and dogs suffering from arthritis. It set us ferreting around, and we soon found a discussion of the spray on James Randi's quack-busting website. Here we came across a notion that hadn't previously occurred to us, despite it being so obvious. Perhaps homeopathic treatments for animals are said to "work" not because the animals report feeling better - how could they? - but because their owners and the homeopaths who treat them report that they are better. It's the placebo effect again, but the effect is vicarious, working on the owners and homeopathic veterinarians, not the animals.

By way of an anecdotal example, a link on the Randi site takes us to a case report on the website of the wonderfully named British Veterinary Voodoo Society. Here "a veterinary surgeon from East Sussex" reports on a client who brought in a dog with a skin problem, but who refused to allow the vet to do the requisite tests. Instead, he announced he was "off to see the local homeopath". A couple of months later he returned with the dog, saying: "I just wanted to let you see what a brilliant job the homeopath did when you were completely useless."

The vet comments: "What could I say? The dog stood there, to my eyes actually slightly worse than it had been on the day I'd last seen it. Frankly, it looked just awful. But in the owner's eyes there had been a massive improvement. I think this is how homoeopathy 'works' in quite a lot of cases. Somebody wants to believe the animal is better, so it is better."

There is, however, a further possibility which is raised by one of the contributors to the Randi discussion. If the owner is happy because they believe a homeopathic treatment has made their dog better, then perhaps their happiness will make the dog feel happier too - and as the vicarious placebo effects bounce back and forth, perhaps all this happiness will assist the dog's recovery from the condition it is being treated for. So perhaps homeopathy for pets can sometimes "work" after all.

Or not. What would "work" would be criminal charges against the owner, in my opinion, same as we do when dietary extremists let their children starve to death.

Disappointing

I was doing my usual thing on airplanes, sitting quietly with my eyes closed, wishing the flight crew would shut up about tampering with the smoke detectors, when a neologism came to me: we have architects (people who design buildings) and starkitects ("...architects whose celebrity and critical acclaim have transformed them into idols of the architecture world and may even have given them some degree of fame amongst the general public." says Wikipedia). How about architects who deliberately design inconvenient or ugly buildings because they're pissed off about something: snarkitects.

Unfortunately, you google it and you get 173 hits already. Missed the boat again. But I'm going to put it on Urban Dictionary, anyway.

A great headline

An otherwise not especially interesting article, but with a great headline. Would have been better if they'd been talking about pharmaceuticals.

That's a new one

I've heard a lot of excuses from airlines about delays, but this was a first. Coming back from DC, we boarded the plane, then sat for 15 minutes longer than usual -- I was just thinking, "Wonder what's holding things up." when the pilot came on and said, "Sorry folks, we're experiencing a bit of delay ... we're shipping some military dogs to the Philippines, and the ground crew is having a bit of, um, uncertainty about how many of them there are."

After a few more minutes, we got underway. Sure enough, after we landed in Detroit, there was audible barking from the baggage hatch.

Poor guys -- I've flown from Detroit to Manila, and it wasn't fun, even in the cabin, let alone in a crate in the baggage. Come to think of it, maybe it would have been better in baggage ...

Local boy makes good

With the successful defense of his thesis, a fellow named Pat becomes Dr. Patrick Russell McConnell. Feel free to send congratulations to p.r.mcconnell@gmail.com.

More books from the fringes

Books that haven't made it even into the Daedalus Catalog yet. Thanks to Greasy Jimmy for the link.