Inside the Asylum

Believe it or not, but it looks like a third of all dinosaurs face imminent doom. Is it a meteorite? No, it's paleontologists:

John "Jack" Horner of the Museum of the Rockies at Montana State University in Bozeman... suggests that one-third of all named dinosaur species may never have existed, but are merely different stages in the growth of other known dinosaurs.

Hey, my kid is a monkey, and I'm not the only one who feels that way about small children. Many teenagers aren't sapient enough to be called Homo Sapiens.

There's a sort-of photographic essay entitled From sanctuary to snake pit: the rise and fall of asylums. Should we Inside the Asylum feel insulted? Worried? And is being a snake-pit necessarily a bad thing? So what's it all really about?

Christopher Payne visited and photographed 70 such institutions across the US for his book Asylum: Inside the closed world of state mental hospitals, which documents how their fall from grace reflects changing attitudes to mental illness

Mental illness? Hah. Now I am insulted.

Scientists got people to play Doom, and then tried to get them to dream about playing Doom, and found out that dreaming about playing Doom made you better at playing Doom. I kid you not.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has ruled that aliens (from other planets) are not "human" and therefore have no standing in court, as only a "human being" or "corporation" may bring an action. Specifically, a Martian has no standing in court, and therefore cannot sue another party. Wow. Now would be a very bad time for us to make first contact. Close down SETI, and whatever you do, don't tell the Vulcans! (Via Instapundit)

These guys loved him ... with 73% supporting him at the election. Why? I don't know. It should have been obvious even then that he wasn't their friend. I guess it was a case of "ask not what you can do for your country, ask what you can do for Obama". Anyway, now Obama's popularity is down to 57% which I still find pretty astounding. Why would anybody on Wall Street like him? Anyone care to bet how long it will take for the number to fall below 50%?

For all you perverts out there who were titillated by my recent post about the Tease and Wash topless car wash in Singapore, I found a video clip of a similar service. Enjoy.

OK, OK, perverts, this time it's for real. Apparently it's legal in the state of New York to go topless. There's even an annual event to make some sort of statement about going topless. The guy reporting on the story concludes,

"So what was accomplished here? Ummm. Something? Anyway, it was the best assignment I've ever had."

Follow the link to look at the letter. The first letter on each line, when read from top to bottom says "f*** you". Most Californian politicians certainly deserves it just as much as the national level pack of weasels.

"My goodness. What a coincidence," said Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear.

The particular individual who got the letter was San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who recently yelled out "you lie!" and worse to Arnie. Of course, it was inappropriate and terrible when a Republican did it to Obama, but just good clean fun when a Democrat did worse to a Republican governor.

Of the eight Ammiano bills sent to the governor's desk this year, Schwarzenegger vetoed six -- five of them after the Oct. 7 heckling incident. Mecke, Ammiano's spokesman, said the lawmaker wants to move on.

I'll bet he does. Now if only Arnie were a better governor.

This shouldn't come as a surprise, but sadly all the developmental trends in both society and in education are working in the opposite direction. A study in Australia concludes that:

An increased reluctance to let children take risks while playing is blocking their development of a wide range of skills.

It should be one of those "well, duh!" things, but it isn't. Give children a bunch of junk, and let them make their own fun.

LET loose with buckets, hay bales, car tyres and cardboard boxes, and the primary school children became significantly more active, social, creative and resilient.

So what's the problem?

a study of five- to seven-year olds also found that teachers worried more about being sued by ''blame-seeking parents'', even though the play items did not cause any increase in injuries

The interesting thing is that despite the so-called "risky" play, there wasn't any increase in injuries.

Professor Bundy said children were missing out on opportunities for physical, intellectual and social development because ''over-zealous risk reduction'' had resulted in boring playgrounds.

Too right. When I was a kid, my primary school had this fantastic playground thing ... it was a big wooden structure, going up three stories high in places. It had a fire-man's pole, lots of places to crawl in and out of, and it was just plain fun. I'd even occasionally go back and climb on it in later years just for nostalgia value until the safety-Nazis knocked it down. A girl fell of it and was badly injured, and that was the end of that. One girl in 20 or more years of childhood fun. Oh, but think of the children! The poor little girl! Well, how about thinking of the thousands of other children. Risk is a necessary thing in childhood development. Yes, very occasionally increased risk does lead to injuries, but does that mean we shouldn't let kids attempt to walk just because they might fall down? I wonder how many injuries are suffered by and to people who suffer developmental problems because they weren't allowed to properly play when they were growing up. Damn safety-Nazis. I still feel sad every time I think about the destruction of the coolest playground I've ever seen.
[Update] I couldn't find a picture of anything comparable to my childhood playground, but this picture gives a sense of it. It was basically made of two of these things, one on edge and one on its side, only slightly larger, with ladders and steps and platforms attached to it. It was so cool.

Apparently "Nubian monkey" is a highly offensive racist slur. Or so lawyers are claiming in their suit in Egypt against Lebanese singer Haifa Wehbe.

The song ‘Baba feen’ – which translates to ‘where is dad’ – was found to be extremely offensive, said the lawyers in their petition. So much so that Nubian children have stopped attending their classes at school because their classmates would mock them as ‘Nubian monkey’s’, said the lawyers.

I think the following is the song, but since I don't know the language, I can't guarantee it. It's actually pretty cute, and the clip can easily be understood by any parent with small children who keep getting up in the night. I presume that at some point that kid's momma calls him a "Nubian monkey" for waking her up. Maybe? Heck, I call my kid "monkey" all the time. I had no idea I was being so racist (against monkeys?) Oh, and Haifa Wehbe is seriously hot.

It's the latest in consumer services in Singapore, called Tease and Wash:

Allow yourselves to be "teased and titilated" while your vehicle gets a good rub down.

Basically, you sit in your car while girls clean it, eventually ending up in nothing but bikini bottoms and heels (the girls, not the car).

It's caused a bit of a stink. Apparently a 19 year old girl from China participated, and her school recognized her in the online promotion, and expelled her just short of graduation. For reasons I can't imagine, this story has attracted a lot of attention, being reported as far away as India.

Honestly, I was just trying to get my car washed.

[Update] More details here, including, *cough* images. But they're censored, so there are no naughty bits in sight, you perverts. I have to say that the blog owner doesn't seem to respect his vehicle, with a comment like this:

They wash car Clean anot?? DOES IT REALLY MATTERS?!!! DOES IT??!!!! KAKAKA!!!!

It's one of those memes of global catastrophe that everyone seems to have heard of. The poor bees are all dying. At last we have some common sense on the subject in the New Scientist magazine. The short version: bees have declined in some regions, but have significantly increased in others, and anyway, even if bees went extinct it wouldn't cause a global meltdown of agriculture. It's time to stop worrying and learn to love the bomb. Or something.

The Asylum was unavailable for about a day because of problems with Blogsome. I think a disk died or something, and it took them a while to get things up and running again off back-ups. At least we don't seem to have lost anything except the records of readership and the like. Anyway, we're back again, and hopefully it won't happen again, though that's in Blogsome's hands.

The LA Times can't spend all its time covering for ACORN, so now it's doing what it can to cover for Obama's indecision on Afghanistan. In the Sunday edition, they ran (amongst other thing) a cartoon obviously meant to support a decision to not send extra troops, despite the fact that both the commander-in-chief ("listen to the generals!") and NATO allies ("don't be so unilateral!") think more troops are needed.

[Digression: The Europeans have known this all along, but (as usual) they were hoping to get out of actually doing anything about it, expecting the US to pick up the security bill ... but now that Obama is looking so weak at the knees they're trying to nudge Obama in the right direction by finally announcing they'll send extra troops.]

Anyway, the cartoon shows the skeletal remains of Alexander the Great, the British, the Russians, and finally a still living but unhappy Uncle Sam, caught in a spider's web that is Afghanistan. The British skeleton says to Uncle Sam, "more troops? Why didn't we think of that? Oh wait, we did." The message is clear. A shame the history doesn't align with the political message.

Let's take them one by one: Alexander the Great. A single campaign, which encountered many difficulties, nevertheless succeeded in planting Greek colonies in the region that would achieve independence and rule a successful kingdom in the region that lasted until about 125BC. The cartoon is wrong on two fronts: there was no issue of "extra troops" and the implied failure doesn't exist. The lesson of Alexander the Great is that you can go into the region and reshape it in your own image. Scratch one for the LA Times.

Then the British. Mostly, they didn't give a damn about Afghanistan, except to make sure the Russians couldn't use it to threaten their Indian Empire. Most British movements into the region were along the lines of "march in, kick heads, march out". I'm not exactly sure why the cartoonist thought it would be appropriate to have the words coming out of the mouth of the British skeleton. The times the British suffered real troubles in the region, it was mostly because of incompetent leadership. Again, this is a lesson Uncle Sam needs to learn, but the problem in this case doesn't seem to be with the generals and troops, but with the commander in chief in Washington. I'm reminded of the obituary of Brigadier Ted Hughes that appeared in the Daily Telegraph when he died aged 89, in 1987. He took part in the Third Afghan War, and wrote a memoir that was scathing of the British commanders. He wrote, "The Higher Command acted on the excellent principle that if you can't surprise the enemy it is better to surprise your own side than no one at all." Well, that certainly seems to describe the Obama Regime's approach to its own commanders (25 minutes on Air Force One for the general in command, with Obama doing most of the talking). After capturing Spin Baldak, the British forces improved its defenses and water supply, then marched off again leaving it back in the hands of their enemies. Again, that sure sounds like what Obama would like to do ... spend lots of time and effort to improve the infrastructure etc., so US troops can withdraw. As I said ... some good historical lessons, but not any that let Obama off the hook that justify not sending more troops.

Then the Russians. They were doing quite well until a certain power started arming the locals with things like stinger missiles. Without massive American assistance, the anti-Russian resistance would not have been nearly so successful. The Russian lesson is not that more troops won't solve the problem, but rather that you had better make sure that outside forces aren't providing massive aid for your enemies. A good lesson for the current situation, but not the one the cartoon seeks to make.

So even in a cartoon, the LA Times manages to continues its policy of being a) politically motivated b) factually incorrect and c) not worth the trouble of using it for more than scrap newsprint.

Selenium is interesting stuff. It's toxic in large quantities, but seems to be essential for cellular life (which means all life.) Too much and you die, too little and life can't exist. It's most closely related to sulfur, and with an atomic number of 34, it's higher on the periodic table than iron, copper, nickle, zinc, etc. Europeans tend to get less of it in their diets than do Americans, because the main source in human diets is grain, which picks it up from the soil. Since there's less in European dirt than in the American variety, there's less selenium in the grains Europeans consume. (I'm not sure about other regions, since the study read only compared America and Europe. I wonder if this might be due to the fact that European soil has been intensively farmed for a far longer period than in North America? If this is the case, you'd expect Asians to suffer a similar shortage, while Australians would be even better off. I've no idea if it's true or not.)

As with vitamin D, it's also one of those things that the more you study it, the more you realize that it plays a really important role in human health. A recent study concludes that selenium plays an important role in prevent bowel cancer, and (I suspect) pretty much all cancers, because

one function [of selenium] is enhancing the triggering of "apoptosis" - a vital process that allows cells to kill themselves if they detect an error. "When a cell realises that something has gone wrong it can trigger its own death so the cell doesn't become a problem," said Prof Young, head of the Flinders Centre for Cancer Prevention and Control at Adelaide's Flinders University. "What the selenium does is just make the cell better at perceiving that it has to kill itself."

There is a major down-side though. If you take too much:

"your hair falls our, your nails fall out, you get kidney problems and you can potentially get problems with glucose and insulin control too."

Still the study seems to indicate that an increase in the recommended daily dose is warranted, from the current 50 micrograms to about 150 micrograms. What's the best way to get it? Eat four brazil nuts a day. With Christmas coming up, there's never been a better excuse to stock up on nuts. I'm not into health fads, but next time I'm in the supermarket I'm going to buy a bag.

[Update] I did some digging on selenium levels, and New Zealand has a particular deficiency. That kills stone dead my speculation that it might be to do with intensity of farming, as NZ didn't even have people until (perhaps) a thousand years ago, and intensive farming only in the last couple of centuries. Australian soil is also deficient.

[Further update]. Oh great ... maybe I'll have to hold off on the brazil nuts. Another study has linked the incidence of diabetes to high levels of selenium. They're still recommending people in selenium deficient countries take supplements, but people in the US should just maintain a regular healthy diet. Oh well ... I'm sure cashew nuts must be healthy. I'll have them instead.

I'm not exactly sure what century it is in Saudi Arabia ... but this certainly doesn't belong in the 21st.

A Saudi lawyer says a female journalist has been sentenced to 60 lashes for her involvement in a TV show in which a Saudi man publicly talked about sex... The charges against her included involvement in the preparation of the program and advertising the segment on the Internet. The same court sentenced the man to five years in jail and 1,000 lashes.

1000 lashes? Wouldn't that be lethal?

There's a new book out by Don Watson, the author of The Dictionary of Weasel Words. It's called Bendable Learnings. It's about government spin and the language of saying ... well, nothing much using big words.

The Tasmanian government defines outcomes as:". . .the benefits or other long-term changes that are sought from undertaking the project. They are achieved from the utilisation of the project outputs. Outcomes are linked with objectives, in that if the outcomes are achieved then the projects objective(s) have been met."

Edith Cowan University writes about student priorities policy as ". . .issues arising from the contributing feedback processes and are generally underlying causal issues being different from specific issues identified and addressed within the contributing feedback process".

I think the whole point of this kind of thing is either to a) make the obvious sound complicated, or b) to make obviously wrong things sound so complex that (they hope) no one will notice.

Gulf news reports on a new comic book featuing 99 Islamic Superheroes. Shown below we have

Dana Ebrahim (Noora the Light), HOME COUNTRY: UAE, POWERS: Allow her to create realistic holograms, see the good and evil inside of people and even levitate!

But they left off her most impressive power: the ability to appear in public in Islamic countries wearing pants with her hair uncovered. Truly, she must be a formidable superhero. Oddly, another superhero called Samda The Invulnerable can't be all that invulnerable, because she does have to wear a headscarf. As for superhero Widad from the Philippines (also with hair revealed), they don't quite spell out what her power is, but she's called Widad the Loving...

This seems to summarize the Obama Regime pretty well:

"This should not be a partisan issue," Obama said, urging bipartisan answers on a day largely devoted to raising campaign money for fellow Democrats. "The closer we get, the harder the opposition will fight."

Earlier in the story, there are some other priceless and almost cliche Obamantics:

President Barack Obama said Friday that opponents of his energy bill are disputing the evidence of global warming in a cynical ploy to undermine efforts to curb pollution and steer the nation to greener energy sources. Obama said some opponents "make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change — claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary."

Firstly there are those vague nay-saying "opponents" ... he loves to use straw-men and nameless critics who he can then attack ... even if they don't actually exist. This time he's even more transparent than normal. Let's have the look at his straw-man position: opponents love pollution and hate things that are good for the environment. They oppose him because they are cynical, and they want to oppose necessary change. Oh, and don't forget the "scientific evidence" ... that is overwhelming despite the fact there hasn't been any global warming for a decade. Yes, I can feel the urge to go out and hug a chimney on a coal fired power plant, I want to swim in polluted waters, I want to dance in noxious gas clouds ... I love pollution because I'm cynical. I get off on opposing necessary changes. What other reason could I have for opposing the Dear Leader?