Book review – Ubiquity by Mark Buchanan

Fawning reviewers of Ubiquity: The Science of History… or Why the World is Simpler Than We Think (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2000) included Niall Ferguson, Chris Lavers, John Gribbin, Edward Skidelsky.

My review:  disparate collection of facts and quotes masquerading as a theory of history. I want my money back.

If Buchanan didn’t have a PhD in physics and had not edited Nature and been involved in New Scientist, no responsible publisher would have touched this with a barge pole. Its absence from NYRB probably says enough.

Almost as bad as the crap, and they knew it to be so as 4Corners pointed out, which Bantam Press a division of Random House published as “1421: The year China Discovered the World” by Gavin Menzies.

Bad bad Oxford Centre for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language

The Scout Report recommended the Oxford Centre for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language. So naturally I clicked on it with interest.

What a disaster. Oxford University should be ashamed of itself.

Apart from being a dreadfully designed website (most pages have no internal links –  back to homepage or contact or whatever), its grammar based approach is a throwback to an era of bad language training.

Clicking on a sound actually downloads a tiny wave file of a single word (I kid you not). The page on writing radicals is clunky and doesn’t even  show the direction of the strokes (I kid you not).

There is no evidence of minimal pairs. Trying to learning a foreign language, especially a tonal one, without these is just dumb. Here’s how to do it: set up two sounds that the learner can’t distinguish. Teacher says each sound at random and student points to what they hear. When student gets it consistently right, they then speak the sounds and the teacher points to what they hear.

Very disappointed.

Wolf Totem Penguin translation

I was shocked by the rushed job Penguin allowed Howard Goldblatt to do on the translation of Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem from Chinese to English.

I’ve been an admirer of Goldblatt and he’s been generous in sharing material with me, but I was disappointed from his first page. There was simply not the effort to get it right. This is from the first page alone:

eg 1
可能就要提前天葬了
is translated: their sky burial would come early. Could, not would is needed.

eg 2
观察着狼群的包围圈
is translated: watching the wolf encirclement. Goldblatt needed to show the strength of 观察, so watching intently or something similar was needed. Just “watching” doesn’t convey the experience of the old man.

eg 3
不吱声
is translated: no response. Not a peep would be much better. “No response” doesn’t convey the meaning.

eg 4
不是闹着玩的
is translated: We’ll be in real trouble. Much better is “will be no joke” or “won’t be a party”.

eg 5
雪在他的掌心被捏成了一坨冰
is translated in the active: he squeezed into a ball of ice.  In fact the meaning is that the snow turned to ice in his grip and it was probably unconsciously.

That was the first page. Perhaps Penguin needs to appoint a checker for Howard in future.

Altmed in NSW Health

I sent the following to the NSW Department of Health in May 2008 and have had no response. It appears to be strong evidence of links between the alternative medicine industry and the NSW Department of Health:

Ms Deborah Picone

Director General

NSW Department of Health

Dear Ms Picone

This email is about 2 issues:

1. Links between the Department of Health and the Australasian College of Natural Therapies (ACNT)

2. Lack of DOH action on a matter of public health (promotion of homeopathy for reversing diabetes)

At about 3.35pm Friday 2 May I phoned NSW Health 9391 9000 with a complaint about homeopathy and was transferred to an outside agency, the Australasian College of Natural Therapies (ACNT) which promotes homeopathy. I was astounded and disturbed by this.

I phoned 9391 9000 again and asked to speak to you or your PA and was told by switch operator Susie neither of you was available.

The switch operators gave me the runaround. Susie (~3.37pm) transferred me to Rita (~3.39) who told me the that the College of Natural Therapies was often very helpful and offered to transfer me to them again. Rita said another switchboard operator had transferred me to the College earlier. Rita wouldn’t give me the name of that operator. She then said Mary Crum was the NSW Health officer normally dealing with natural therapies but she was on leave and her number was 9391 9000 and I could ring later. I asked Rita (3.42pm) to tell me the name of her supervisor. She wouldn’t and made me wait for about seven minutes. At 3.49 I was finally transferred to Bill Hiler (9391 9459) who said he was in Policy and part of his role was advising on the clinical aspects of homeopathy.

I explained to Mr Hiler that I had two issues now. First the fact that I was transferred out of the Department to ACNT. He said he couldn’t deal with that. I then outlined the first reason for my call – Tweed Shire Council advertising homeopathy. The Council newsletter, distributed to all letterboxes and available on the web, had just advertised talks at two local libraries by a homeopath Jenny Carlan. The ad on page 2 of the Tweed Link newsletter indicated homeopathy may reverse Type 2 diabetes and other illnesses.

http://www.tweed.nsw.gov.au/linkweb/TweedlinkDetail.aspx

Mr Hiler said he would do nothing about the second issue either and told me I had to make a complaint to the Department of Fair Trading. He said DOH had no power to intervene or suggest to the TSC that it cancel the proposed talk.

I asked Mr Hiler for Val Johnson’s phone number. He asked his assistant Rebecca for it but he wouldn’t give it to me. After another wait he then transferred me to Val.

I’d appreciate a call or written response from you on these 2 issues.

Kevin McCready

MAOA

Monoamine oxidase-A (MAOA) is a brain enzyme which helps mop up neurotransmitters after they’ve done their job.

If they don’ get mopped up, they slosh around in your wet matter and make you crazy.

The trouble (I’ll retract that in a minute) is that there are two types of mopper uppers, depending on your genetics. One type mops up pretty well, the other …. well, it seems you will be prone to violence, fear and probably conservative thinking.

If you have the violent MAOA gene that leaves too many neurotransmitters sloshing around and were abused as a child, your chances of developing anti-social or violent behaviour are a whopping 85%. If you have the gene that is good at mopping up and were also abused as a child, you are nine times less likely to be anti-social or violent. Our courts and jails should take account of this science. They don’t, yet.

Further details at an ABC Radio National talk I gave.

And now the retraction. It’s not “trouble.” It’s part of the wonderful biodiversity of humans. If we were all the same our species wouldn’t stand much of a chance in evolution. The science is still young and the above may prove to be too simplistic.  There are millions of biochemical and genetic interactions in our bodies and tracing the network could be impossible (my guess is that the network will be NP-Hard mathematically).

It could also be that the violent gene is closely related to the curiosity gene – Serotonin Reuptake Transporter Polymorphism (5HTTLPR)  – sorry I just had to get that in. We certainly need both copies of this gene in the human population. Too curious and you’re dead. Not curious enough and you site fearfully in the corner all day like a chiropractor or Ayn Rand devotee.

Oh, and the child rearing evidence cited above is a bloody good reason why the wimpish Kevin Rudd ALP government should fund parental leave and more parenting support services.

Kevin McCready

Short url for this post =

http://is.gd/vf25

Lazy Journalist’s Twitter Guide

So you’re going to write a story on Twitter?

Easy. Say Twitter is rubbish. Hunt around for a couple of examples of nutters tweeting rubbish and that will prove your case. Best are the altmed nutters and chiropractors trying to drum up business.

Don’t bother to find any good tweets. Don’t try to use the Advanced Search function to weed out the rubbish. Just write the story that you think will sell your stuff, usually for your dying paper based affair owned by Rupert Murdoch. After all that’s what the readers want, isn’t it?

Make sure you tell your readers Twitter is all unbalanced rubbish, just like your forebears told us the internet was, probably just like your forebears’ forebears said the Guttenberg press was. Don’t tell your readers there are ways to navigate twitter, that would be like pointing a child to the library catalogue.

But if you change your mind. Try this search for example on the H1N1 (swine flu) scare.

h1n1  -maps -map filter:links -USDA

or

swine -maps -map filter:links -USDA

That will give you results minus “map” and “maps”, since we’ve all seen the googlemap by now. And it will only give results which include a link (tweeters who want you to understand why they make the claim). And it will weed out all the pig lovers who want advice from the US Department of Agriculture.

You might also be surprised at the different results swine versus H1N1 gives. Maybe the H1N1 tweets are more accurate, maybe not.  You be the judge, that’s what you’re paid for.

Keep reading for a while and before long you might find tweets striving for accuracy, not like you do. Oh yes, and try following @CDCemergency, then tell your readers Twitter is crap. But don’t think too hard or you’ll spoil your story.

Kevin McCready

1401GMT

H1N1 (swine flu) Roundup

I could be wrong but evidence does not yet show we need to declare pandemic.

Good roundups on Australian TV (SBS, ABC 7.30 Report)

Twenty confirmed cases in US have not been shown to be the same as the Mexican variant. I haven’t had it confirmed by reliable sources but the alleged 81 deaths in Mexico might only be 22 attributable to the new variant. There is much misinformation (including in traditional media). The prize for the most disgusting goes to the Daily Telegraph, as usual. Its front page was wrong “Deadly Pig Virus Hits NSW.”

Both cases tested in Australia have proved negative (we are one of the four sites in the world with WHO labs to do final testing).  Stats should emerge shortly on rate of false alarms.

Best broad information is here which shows 6% mortality in Mexico and at US Centre for Disease Control (CDC), though I’ve blogged today about problems on their website.  World Health Organisation site is disappointing.

On Twitter there are pockets of good info, but as time goes on the wrong or badly sourced information is swamping the good info. The altmed nutters (chiropractors, wellness kooks etc who don’t understand evidence based medicine) are trying to bump up business from the uneducated, as are the click harvesters (get paid a few cents to get people to click on their silly links promoting whatever).

It was interesting to see the twitter community diverge. Better information was coming via #H1N1 rather than #swine. A fact that many critics overlooked. As a group mind like this evolves on emerging issues you may get people generating new tags to sort out better info. There was even discussion about the best hash tags. The maths of it will probably follow that of bird flocking and fish shoaling. Great stuff.

Depending on news tomorrow I’ll be riding my pushbike down the hill to go shopping, despite urging my wife not to today. Let’s keep our fingers crossed but be aware it could still get bad now or the next time around.

Kevin McCready

Googlemaps H1N1 WAS wrong

Updated

You’ve probably landed on this article via the Guardian story or a repost of it.

When I last checked, the googlemap by Henry Niman had been updated and was correct.

If you’ve got time, please look at my blog on why some of us are violent.

——————

For the record, this is what I wrote which the Guardian referred to:

Why is googlemaps H1N1 (swine flu) wrong?

It’s simple to confirm for yourself.

They are reporting a confirmed case in New Zealand. Find me a reliable source (not scum click harvesters or altmed nutters and chiropractors on Twitter) which says NZ has a confirmed case.

Googlemaps is also reporting suspect cases in Australia which have been confirmed NOT H1N1.

You can probably find other errors.

Pink markers = suspect

Purple markers = confirmed

Deaths have no dot in marker

Googlemaps have NO marker for confirmed NOT to be H1N1.

Kevin McCready a090531GMT (we should all use GMT)

CDC A/H1N1 Swine Flu

The US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) is at least better than the World Health Organisation (WHO) in providing info on A/H1N1 (swine flu). But there are problems with the CDC website.

Here are 5 examples, and a bouquet (sorry wordpress doesn’t automatically format url’s and I’m busy) .

Eg 1

From newswroom at

http://www.cdc.gov/media/

Clicking on swine flu box at top takes you to outdated

http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/investigation.htm

Eg 2

27 Apr 2009 0241GMT

http://www.cdc.gov/media/archives.htm

latest is April 23!

Eg 3

CDC asks you to register for chrissakes to get info

http://www.videonewswire.com/cdc/58393/reg.html

and there is no podcast on that page

Eg 4

A090249GMT

http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/whatsnew.htm

links to transcript of 23 April 2009

Eg 5

http://www2a.cdc.gov/podcasts

Don’t know diff between podcast and vidcast

Examples of good CDC practice

http://www.cdc.gov/media/pressrel/2009/a090426.htm

url states date and GMT

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/swine/investigation.htm.

CDC say this page will be updated daily at 3 p.m. ET until further notice.

Kevin McCready

I Have Found a Flaw

“I Have Found a Flaw.”

Not my words but those of Alan Greenspan quoted in an article by Nobel Prize Winner Joseph Stiglitz.

Greenspan was talking after the Global Financial Crisis about markets being self-regulating and the role of government minimal.

During hearings on Capitol Hill Alan Greenspan said, “I have found a flaw.”

Congressman Henry Waxman said, “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right; it was not working.”

“Absolutely, precisely,” Greenspan said.

If you haven’t read Stiglitz make it your business to do so.  Here are some highlights.

“In 1987 the Reagan administration decided to remove Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and appoint Alan Greenspan in his place. Volcker had done what central bankers are supposed to do. On his watch, inflation had been brought down from more than 11 percent to under 4 percent. In the world of central banking, that should have earned him a grade of A+++ and assured his re-appointment. But Volcker also understood that financial markets need to be regulated. Reagan wanted someone who did not believe any such thing, and he found him in a devotee of the objectivist philosopher and free-market zealot Ayn Rand.”

“In November 1999, Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act—the culmination of a $300 million lobbying effort by the banking and financial-services industries, and spearheaded in Congress by Senator Phil Gramm. Glass-Steagall had long separated commercial banks (which lend money) and investment banks (which organize the sale of bonds and equities); it had been enacted in the aftermath of the Great Depression and was meant to curb the excesses of that era, including grave conflicts of interest. For instance, without separation, if a company whose shares had been issued by an investment bank, with its strong endorsement, got into trouble, wouldn’t its commercial arm, if it had one, feel pressure to lend it money, perhaps unwisely?”

“Self-regulation is preposterous, as even Alan Greenspan now concedes”

On the Bush tax cuts for rich “The cut in the tax rate on capital gains contributed to the crisis in another way. It was a decision that turned on values: those who speculated (read: gambled) and won were taxed more lightly than wage earners who simply worked hard. But more than that, the decision encouraged leveraging, because interest was tax-deductible.”

On stock options as pay for executives “they provide incentives for bad accounting: top management has every incentive to provide distorted information in order to pump up share prices.”

“The incentive structure of the rating agencies also proved perverse. Agencies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s are paid by the very people they are supposed to grade. As a result, they’ve had every reason to give companies high ratings”

“The bailout package was like a massive transfusion to a patient suffering from internal bleeding”

Kevin McCready