The Blog of Harald

In a wonderful parody of art, an expert conman has disappeared with more than €5 million by persuading banks that he was a secret service agent investigating terrorist money-laundering:

Banks caught by €5m spy sting

October 2001 – “Scientific American : Drowning New Orleans”:http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=00060286-CB58-1315-8B5883414B7F0000

October, 2004 – “National Geographic : Gone With the Water”:http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/

September 1, 2005 – “George Bush says”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4204754.stm “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” (Worse, his bluff wasn’t called; see “mediamatters”:http://mediamatters.org/items/200509020001 for one dissection).

This one detail sums up the entire US Government’s response to the disaster; the same bold-faced lies that they’ve been spouting for years.

Of course, one wonders how Canada would react to an equivalent disaster… *sigh.

Since I mentioned it last week, I should also mention documentation *for* child restraint use. The news page references a recent paper proving that child booster seats are 59% safer than seatbelts alone…

Keeping kids safe during car crashes: every child a safe ride | Partners for Child Passenger Safety – Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

I guess as a parent the bottom line is: for $80, why take chances?

So it may not be as cut and dried as everyone thinks; car seats (over age 2) may not actually make any difference. Good luck finding a politician who is _against_ car seat and booster seat legislation, though; that would be political suicide. Proving once again that government often doesn’t work in our best interests? (There have been other examples of dumb gov’t safety laws recently, based on zero _real_ deaths or injuries; I’ll see if I can dig some of them out of my memory).

The Seat-Belt Solution – New York Times

bq. Perhaps the single most compelling statistic about car seats in the NHTSA manual was this one: ”They are 54 percent effective in reducing deaths for children ages 1 to 4 in passenger cars.”

bq. But 54 percent effective compared with what? The answer, it turns out, is this: Compared with a child’s riding completely unrestrained. There is another mode of restraint, meanwhile, that doesn’t cost $200 or require a four-day course to master: seat belts.

bq. Even a quick look at the FARS data reveals a striking result: among children 2 and older, the death rate is no lower for those traveling in any kind of car seat than for those wearing seat belts. There are many reasons, of course, that this raw data might be misleading. Perhaps kids in car seats are, on average, in worse wrecks. Or maybe their parents drive smaller cars, which might provide less protection.

bq. But no matter what you control for in the FARS data, the results don’t change. In recent crashes and old ones, in big vehicles and small, in one-car crashes and multiple-vehicle crashes, there is no evidence that car seats do a better job than seat belts in saving the lives of children older than 2. (In certain kinds of crashes — rear-enders, for instance — car seats actually perform worse.) The real answer to why child auto fatalities have been falling seems to be that more and more children are restrained in some way. Many of them happen to be restrained in car seats, since that is what the government mandates, but if the government instead mandated proper seat-belt use for children, they would likely do just as well / without the layers of expense, regulation and anxiety associated with car seats.

Followup material can be found at “Freakonomics”:http://freakonomics.com/times0710.php

I can tell, because we’re in another 10-day long heat wave, as Dennis pushes hot wet air out of the United States up into Southern Ontario. Or so the weather guys say. This is late August weather, not early July weather! And here I sit with a dead air-conditioner…

And then there’s Emily:

bq. Emily’s formation late Monday was the earliest date on record for five named storms to develop, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

funfunfun.

I know my priorities are messed up.

My biggest nagging worry about global climate change is that Americans are going to flee northwards. Into Canada. Bringing their ideology (and idiocy) with them.

Wouldn’t that keep *you* awake at night?

Today is the first snowfall of spring, a fine Canadian tradition….

Everyone else has blogged about this by now, but what the heck:

New Scientist 13 things that do not make sense – Features

My favourite:

bq. 1 The placebo effect

bq. DON’T try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.

bq. This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful. Except it’s not quite nothing. When Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shocking result? The pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared.

Who woulda thunk it? An interesting twist on the usual “mind over matter” explanation…

* “Christian creationists bully IMAX theaters over evolution”:http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/19/christian_creationis.html

* “Legislator wants cheerleaders to keep their routines clean”:http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/rssstory.mpl/metropolitan/3090937 – Bill would ban sexually suggestive performances at school events

* “Canadian blogger blocked from U.S.”:http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/business/11176472.htm – “His response was, ‘You can’t make a living from blogging. Stop lying and tell me why you’re really here.’ ”

* Baseball, steroids, and the U.S. Congress – where the heck did *that* one come from?

* “Terri Schiavo”:http://blog.sethgodin.silkblogs.com/My-story-is-better-than-your-story.3903.entry – isn’t it atually “illegal”:http://www.skyseastone.net/jvstin/unjvst/004515.html for the US government to make laws that apply to a single individual?

I knew it was bad over in Africa, but “this stunning graph”:http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/02/the_african_cli.html really drives it home. Check it out.

(via “Antipixel”:http://www.antipixel.com/blog/archives/2005/03/04/the_african_cliff.html)

So while I was in the shower today, I heard a report that three women are suing Koko the gorilla for “pressuring them to see their nipples”. My first thought was: what has the world come to when people are suing a _gorilla_?

Of course, sanity prevailed, and I checked Google. Turns out that the women are suing the Gorilla Foundation because the women were informed that failing to expose their nipples would cause their employment to “suffer”. When the women reported health and safety violations rodents in the food preparation areas, for example) they were dismissed.

The truth is entirely more reasonable than the radio report. Of course, the radio report was more sensational…

See “Google News”:http://news.google.com/news?q=koko+%22lawsuit%22 for more stories…

There’s a news story today about how antibiotic resistant bugs are on the rise again. Ah, but this time doctors are blaming patients; it seems we’re “demanding” antibiotics for all of our ailments.

Here’s the kicker: antibiotics are prescription drugs (up here in Canada). If you don’t think the patient needs them, *don’t prescribe them*! Passing the buck to patients is just plain irresponsible.

MSNBC – First Amendment no big deal, students say

bq. The way many high school students see it, government censorship of newspapers may not be a bad thing, and flag burning is hardly protected free speech.

bq. Yet, when told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes “too far” in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.

Wow.

bq. They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security. — Ben Franklin

or even better:

bq. I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it. — Voltaire

Scary statistics from the CIA world factbook. The 45% of the population is under 14; the median age is 17; the average life expectancy is 42.5. Why?

AIDS…

I’m going to (briefly) break a “long standing trend”:http://blog.cfrq.net/chk/archives/2003/01/16/blogging-politics/.

I find myself completely apathetic about the events of Tuesday. In fact, I didn’t even know what was going on until Wednesday morning when I arrived at work and my cow-orkers were chatting. But I know several people who are majorly bummed about the results. Is this simply part of my whole “If there’s nothing I can do, there’s no point getting worked up” philosophy, or am I missing something fundamental about what it means to have “W” back in power for another four years?

I think the coming crisis for the US (and therefore world) economies has little to do with which president is in power; it has more to do with greedy multinational corporations and lax regulation (which isn’t going to change anytime soon), and with the impending energy crisis; neither of which is going to be affected by any US president…

There was a “major accident on the 401”:http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2004/09/29/hwy_crash040929.html this morning. Two trucks collided, and one caught fire. The cleanup closed the express lanes in both direction through Yonge Street during the morning rush hour; traffic was backed up all over the city as a result. (The westbound collectors are under construction through that section, so the highway went from 5 lanes to only 1 through that stretch, if I remember correctly). Worse, the fire damaged the roadbed in the westbound lanes, which means it’ll be a while before they can re-open them. I suppose it’s possible that the fire damaged the underlying bridge structure, in which case we’re completely hosed…

Anyway, I don’t drive the 401 (although I cross over it every day; that was a bizarre sight). However, there was a huge traffic backup across the bottom of the city this morning too; the Gardiner Expressway / DVP were stop and go from about Gerrard all the way across to _Islington_. Apparently our traffic network is so overloaded that a 401 closure causes backups on the other side of the city…

Avoiding technology has it’s drawbacks:

Hurricane JEANNE

bq. WE ARE REMINDED THAT FROM SUNDOWN TONIGHT UNTIL SUNDOWN SATURDAY IS YOM KIPPUR…A SOLEMN JEWISH HOLIDAY. SOME OF YOUR JEWISH NEIGHBORS IN THE WATCH AND WARNING AREAS OBSERVING YOM KIPPUR WILL NOT BE LISTENING TO RADIOS OR WATCHING TV…AND MAY NOT BE AWARE OF THE HURRICANE SITUATION.

Jewish law does say that personal safety is more important than religious observance. So, for example, it should be ok to drive one’s car in order to evacuate from the hurricane watch zone. But the question remains: how many people will miss the warnings? Current predictions have the storm making landfall in Florida before sunset tomorrow…

Stay safe, everyone.

The commentary is the usual, but I loved Mr. Greenspun’s way of phrasing it:

bq. American labor is wonderful but it is a luxury that most American families can’t afford

(from Philip Greenspun’s Weblog:)

I’ve been paying a lot more attention to Hurricanes all of a sudden. I could claim it’s because of the upcoming Kitefest (we were worried about getting rained out, but it seems Ivan is going to stall in the Appalachians and leave us alone), but I think it’s simple fascination.

But for some reason, I’ve got a Tragically Hip song stuck in my head…

That’s the first time _ever_ I’ve had to remove my belt to get through the airport security checkpoint. My wife had to take her shoes off!

Keep in mind, when reading this, that I have travelled in Europe during their anti-terrorism crackdowns; there’s no comparison. The United States is more interested in the appearance of security. For example, I watched two separate TSA agents walk into the bathroom, look at an “abandoned” suitcase sitting there, and walk out again…

Anyway, we’re home, safe and sound. It’s too bad we didn’t get to see the VAB _before_ Frances punched great big holes in it…