Tag Archives: michigan

Has Israel Given Up On Democrats?

by DamianAmes Posted on March 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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Israel is doing its best to spy on the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West. No surprise there. But the Obama administration believes they’ve taken things too far:

The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal, current and former U.S. officials said….The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and former officials said.

….“People feel personally sold out,” a senior administration official said. “That’s where the Israelis really better be careful because a lot of these people will not only be around for this administration but possibly the next one as well.”

The upshot of all this is that support for Israel is rapidly becoming a partisan issue. “If you’re wondering whether something serious has shifted here, the answer is yes,” a senior U.S. official said. “These things leave scars.” This is not likely to be good for Israel in the long term.

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Has Israel Given Up On Democrats?

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Television Is a Vast Disease-Laden Wasteland

by RobtEleanor Posted on March 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jason Millman writes:

Maybe you’ve noticed that prescription drug ads are everywhere these days — more so than usual. You wouldn’t be wrong.

Oh yes, I’ve noticed. It’s one reason I watch less TV than I might otherwise—especially shows that are pitched to, um, mature demographics. I feel like I’m simply bombarded with ads about terrible diseases and all the terrible side effects that the advertised drugs might cause. Maybe I’m just having a harder time tuning out this stuff than usual, but I find it immensely depressing to be surrounded by reminders of disease every time I turn on the TV. Anyone else feel the same way?

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Television Is a Vast Disease-Laden Wasteland

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Beware the Hype of New Medical Studies

by UlrikeDelong Posted on March 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Julia Belluz thinks the democratization of medical research may have gone too far:

I often wonder whether there is any value in reporting very early research. Journals now publish their findings, and the public seizes on them, but this wasn’t always the case: journals were meant for peer-to-peer discussion, not mass consumption.

Working in the current system, we reporters feed on press releases from journals and it’s difficult to resist the siren call of flashy findings. We are incentivized to find novel things to write about, just as scientists and research institutions need to attract attention to their work. Patients, of course, want better medicines, better procedures — and hope.

But this cycle is hurting us, and it’s obscuring the truths research has to offer.

The truth, Belluz says, is that virtually all initial studies of promising new therapies fail to pan out. Only 6 percent of new journal articles each year are well-designed and relevant enough to inform patient care. Of these, only a fraction end up in a product that successfully makes it to market.

Dr. Oz may be the face of bad medical advice, but the fact is that it’s all around us. We’re all desperate for cures—I’d certainly like to see one for multiple myeloma—but most of them just don’t go anywhere. Belluz has more about the siren call of new miracle cures at the link.

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Beware the Hype of New Medical Studies

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Why Is Closed Captioning So Bad?

by BridgetYGFX Posted on March 22, 2015

Mother Jones

Over at Marginal Revolution, commenter Jan A. asks:

Why is the (global) state of subtitling and closed captioning so bad?

a/ Subtitling and closed captioning are extremely efficient ways of learning new languages, for example for immigrants wanting to learn the language of their new country.

b/ Furthermore video is now offered on phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, televisions… but very frequently these videos cannot be played with sound on (a phone on public transport, a laptop in public places, televisions in busy places like bars or shops,…).

c/ And most importantly of all, it is crucial for the deaf and hard of hearing.

So why is it so disappointingly bad? Is it just the price (lots of manual work still, despite assistive speech-to-text technologies)? Or don’t producers care?

I use closed captioning all the time even though I’m not really hard of hearing. I just have a hard time picking out dialog when there’s a lot of ambient noise in the soundtrack—which is pretty routine these days. So I have a vested interest in higher quality closed captioning. My beef, however, isn’t so much with the text itself, which is usually pretty close to the dialog, but with the fact that there are multiple closed captioning standards and sometimes none of them work properly, with the captions either being way out of sync with the dialog or else only partially available. (That is, about one sentence out of three actually gets captioned.)

Given the (a) technical simplicity and low bandwidth required for proper closed captions, and (b) the rather large audience of viewers with hearing difficulties, it surprises me that these problems are so common. I don’t suppose that captioning problems cost TV stations a ton of viewers, but they surely cost them a few here and there. Why is it so hard to get right?

POSTSCRIPT: Note that I’m not talking here about real-time captioning, as in live news and sports programming. I understand why it’s difficult to do that well.

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Why Is Closed Captioning So Bad?

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Friday Cat Blogging – 20 March 2015

by LavadaGrattan Posted on March 20, 2015

Mother Jones

Appearances to the contrary, I might be getting better this morning. Cross your fingers, and we’ll see how things go tomorrow.

Our hummingbird babies are fully mobile! I took some pictures of them this morning, and when I carefully edged in for a slightly closer angle they took off like a shot. This was plainly not their maiden voyage. They’re all grown up now. Sniff.

In other news, longtime readers will remember that I once blogged about Louis the cathedral cat after a visit to Wells Cathedral in 2008. He was very friendly. However, in one of those inevitable town-gown controversies, Louis is now being accused of attacking dogs in the nearby area. But it might just be a case of mistaken identity: “I’ve heard there is another ginger cat around at the moment,” said one witness, “and it’s quite possible that it’s him attacking dogs. We don’t know for sure whether or not Louis was involved. Louis had definitely been in the shop just before the incident happened outside, but it could have been a different cat.”

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Friday Cat Blogging – 20 March 2015

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Thursday Hummingbird Blogging – 19 March 2015

by LakeshaDQZ Posted on March 19, 2015

Mother Jones

Sorry for the lack of blogging yet again. In the meantime, here’s the latest pic of our baby hummingbirds. They look perilously close to flapping their wings and leaving the nest.

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Thursday Hummingbird Blogging – 19 March 2015

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The Government Is Finally Doing Something to End the Rape-Kit Backlog

by AudreaMoralez Posted on March 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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Across the country, an estimated 400,000 rape kits—the DNA swabs, hair, photographs, and detailed information gathered from victims of sexual assault and used as evidence for the prosecution to convict rapists—have never been tested. Testing kits can be expensive, and in many jurisdictions, a lack of funds has resulted in kits being consigned to dusty shelves, stored in abandoned police warehouses, or stowed away in forensic labs—sometimes for years. As a result, survivors may never see their rapists prosecuted, and repeat offenders continue to commit crimes.

But now a new, $41 million Department of Justice program could finally help localities end this backlog. The money from Congress “goes a long way towards solving the problem,” says Linda Fairstein, a former sex crimes prosecutor who serves on the board of the Joyful Heart Foundation, a nonprofit established by Law and Order:SVU actress Mariska Harigtay that does research and advocacy work on the rape-kit backlog.

Last week, the Department of Justice began accepting applications from states, counties, and municipalities that want to use the federal dollars to tackle their rape kit backlogs. Officials in Baltimore, Milwaukee, Detroit, Memphis, Cleveland, and Houston tell Mother Jones that they’re planning on applying for some of the funds. “The grant shows an investment on all levels, national to local,” says Doug McGowen, a coordinator in the sexual assault response unit in Memphis, Tennessee.

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The Government Is Finally Doing Something to End the Rape-Kit Backlog

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So What’s Next For Israel and Palestine?

by SophiaGalvez Posted on March 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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I thought all along that Benjamin Netanyahu was going to win this week’s election in Israel. I never wrote about it, but Mark Kleiman is my witness. My reasoning was simplistic: the polls were pretty close, and Netanyahu is a survivor. In a close race, he’d somehow figure out a way to pull out a win.

But yikes! I know Israeli politics is tough stuff, but I sure wasn’t prepared for the sheer ugliness of Netanyahu’s closing run. His speech before Congress turned out to be just a wan little warmup act. When things got down to the wire he flatly promised to keep the West Bank an occupied territory forever, and followed that up with dire warnings of Arabs “coming out in droves” to the polls. Even by Israeli standards this is sordid stuff.

I don’t follow Israeli-Palestinian politics closely anymore, having long since given up hope that either side is willing to make the compromises necessary for peace. But even to my unpracticed eye, this election seems to change things. Sure, no one ever believed Netanyahu was truly dedicated to a two-state solution in the first place, but at least it hung out there as a possibility. Now it’s gone. This will almost certainly strengthen Hamas and other hardline elements within the Palestinian movement, which in turn will justify ever tighter crackdowns by Israel. Is there any way this doesn’t end badly?

I just don’t see the endgame here for either side. Can someone enlighten me?

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So What’s Next For Israel and Palestine?

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My Day

by RogerToftfsj Posted on March 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Heart test. Check. EKG. Check. Chest X-ray. Check. Complete spinal X-ray. Check. 20 vials of blood drawn. Check. All that’s left is a lung test tomorrow and dropping off a stool sample. Then I get a week off before I visit City of Hope for an orientation and further instructions in preparation for the stem cell transplant in April. Progress!

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My Day

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Ides of March Catblogging – 15 March 2015

by DanieleMcGowen Posted on March 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Et tu, Hopper? A few days ago I featured Hilbert draped over my sister, so I figured that turnabout is fair play: here’s Hopper draped over me to make up for the lack of normal Friday catblogging. Hopper is a Daddy’s girl, and will sit on no one’s lap but mine. Nor will she even do that very often. But once or twice a day she suddenly gets in the mood and plonks herself into the crook of my arm for an hour or so, purring loudly the whole time. Unlike the tubby Hilbert, Hopper weighs a svelte 11 pounds (up from nine when we first got her), so she’s no trouble at all to handle. A relaxing time is had by all.

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Ides of March Catblogging – 15 March 2015

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