Self-Defeating

You know how commercials sometimes blast you out of your chair when they come on the air because they're so loud compared to the show you're watching? Don't you think this is rather foolish on the part of whoever is running the show at the various networks? Ked and I are watching a movie on FX (cable) right now, and the volume change is almost unbelievable. The thing is, though, it's really quite self-defeating. The advertisers want to get our attention, but they grab it so hard that we scramble immediately for the remote control to get to the blessed mute button. If the ads came on at a humanly tolerable decibel level we might just let them roll over us without bothering to silence them, thus allowing them to seep in subliminally at least, even if we didn't pay active attention, but as it is we can't push mute quickly enough. We don't listen a nanosecond longer than we have to. Seems like somebody needs to rethink this plan.

Shades Of Gattaca

Remember the movie Gattaca? Ethan Hawke played a non-genetically modified human in the midst of an entire society of genetically enhanced over-achievers. His parents made the dire mistake of letting God decide who their child would be, rather than laboratory eugenics, and Vincent (Hawke's character) payed the price for that indiscretion. His genetically tweaked younger brother was taller, smarter, healthier and much more socially acceptable in a world where a DNA sequencing served as a job interview, and human potential was just a line on a bar graph. Vincent, limited by his poor vision and weak heart, as well as his otherwise unacceptable DNA, became the dregs of society, an "invalid," a man whose only value to the people around him was as a janitor, allowed by their benevolence to earn his keep by picking up their trash, as was fitting a "God-child" in their world of scientific perfection.

The movie's plot centers around Vincent's attempts to buck the system and overcome his genetic limitations, fulfilling his dream of becoming an astronaut and travelling to another world--all the while pretending to be someone with the right genetic profile for the job. The challenge for Vincent is not only overcoming his physical limitations, but fooling all the perfected humanity around him into thinking he is one of their own. Of course, in the end, the movie is about the triumph of the human spirit and Vincent's victory over the cold, hard world around him--an offering of comfort to all of us living here on the edge of our own scientific hurdle into this "brave new world."

This is just a movie, though, right? We aren't really all that close to choosing how smart, or how tall our kids will be, are we? Well, let's see how far off the mark this particular piece of science fiction is, shall we? We all know that genetic tests for Down Syndrome are routine in pregnancies where the mother is over thirty-five, and fetuses are regularly aborted for that genetic abnormality. There are also many people in countries such as India and China who are already pre-selecting for gender, aborting their girl babies in favor of boys, leading to an imbalance in gender ratios, and an increase in social aberrations like wife-sharing (via Futurismic.) So, we can see that we already select, in some cases, for intelligence, health and gender. Alarmingly, James D. Miller writes at TCS Daily that we are just not all that far from moving on to selecting for these and other traits on a much larger scale. Want to raise a baby Einstein? Science may soon give you much better odds than God and nature ever did:

By some predictions, within five years the cost of sequencing DNA will be "affordable enough that personal genomics will be integrated into routine clinical care." Once millions of people have their DNA sequenced researchers may quickly determine which combination of genes gives people the best chance of having a high IQ. Parents using embryo selection could, therefore, screen their embryos and pick the one with the greatest intellectual potential.

A recent advance in gathering eggs from women will make it much easier for choosey moms to give birth to geniuses. Two British fertility clinics have found a way of safely obtaining thousands of eggs from a woman. Fertility clinics, therefore, will soon be able to give a couple thousands of embryos to pick from. So let's say that a certain couple's genes mean that normally they have only a 1% chance of conceiving a child with the genetic potential to reach a genius IQ. With the ability to select among thousands of embryos, however, this couple could now almost guarantee that their offspring has the genetic potential of a genius.

Some people might look at this as a wonderful breakthrough, a boon to the future of humanity. Who wouldn't benefit from having a world full of Smart People? However, I am not nearly so sanguine about the prospects. Setting aside for now the embryos that will be created simply so someone can pick their favorite, putting babies on the level of shoes in a department store (except that the unwanted shoes, unlike the embryos, don't get destroyed when a particular shopper decides they aren't the right style), what happens when an ambitious nation decides that part of their future military and expansionist plans include raising swarms of state-controlled super-smarties, capable of shifting the balance of power in the world, simply by virtue of their superior intellects and numbers? Miller presents a China scenario that doesn't give me much comfort:

Embryo selection gets even more interesting when we consider how a nation such as China might use it. Imagine that in ten years China forces all its college students to get genetic tests. Students with intelligence genes in the top 1% of the top 1% of humankind are then forced to donate sperm or eggs. China then uses the sperm and eggs to create a billion embryos each year. The genetic intellectual potential of all these embryos is checked. Those in the top 10,000 are implanted into women. Each of these embryos has the intellectual potential to be in the top one-billionth of humankind. Now because of environmental factors many of these embryos won't turn into intellectual titans. But let's say that one in ten does. This means that each year 1,000 people with the scientific ability of Einstein will be born. By 2035 they will become adults and start doing scientific research. I imagine these Einsteins will be rather helpful to China's economy and military.

I'd love to cling to the message of Gattaca, the triumph of the human spirit over adversity, physical and mental limitations and all that--Stephen Hawking is a shimmering, glowing star in the mental firmament, after all--but the whole notion of mankind genetically manipulating our potential sends up red flags all over the place for me. I acknowledge that every parent on the planet would want to give birth to healthy babies, and that, even if I would not do the same, many of them would think that genetic profiling was a reasonable way to achieve that end for their child, but in a non-personal, non-specific-individual way, many of our potential problems in the world are held in check by the fact that lots of people who have evil plans simply can't carry them out yet. I do not like the notion of an entire generation of enhanced nuclear scientists growing up in Iran, for example, or a crop of bio-weapons experts-in-the-making springing up in Pakistan. Equally repugnant is the notion of a whole generation of Islamic women bred to be subservient by nature (or in this case design), or a slave-class enhanced for their endurance. Don't tell me that there aren't societies in the world that would pursue these goals. Sudan, Myanmar, North Korea, Nazi Germany, and even today's China, among others, put the lie to such thinking.

These are not desirable outcomes to scientific "advancement" if you ask me, and yet, is there really any way to prevent the undesirable in the quest for the arguably desirable--healthier, smarter children? As seemingly heartless as it is to want to limit parents' abilities to produce the best children possible, this is one area of "progress" I would rather see slowed, hindered, and even halted altogether than continue on to an unavoidably negative end. However, is there anything that will prevent this science from its inexorable march into the future, with both the good and bad it holds in its hands? I can't see a way to separate them, nor can I see the scientific community having the wisdom to refrain from following this particular yellow brick road. The technology will continue to advance, unless God himself chooses to halt the momentum.

I love science. I really do, and I'm thrilled as can be with the giant leaps that science has made in medicine, agriculture, bio-pharming, environmental protection, tech toys, space travel--you name it, but I really don't like to see the world presented in Gattaca coming to pass. Give me a whole world full of God-children. He is a designer who is not out to fulfill some selfish need, or evil scheme of His own, and the beauty of a Stephen Hawking comes not from any form of perfection, but from the understanding we gain from his example that our struggles define us just as much as our giftings. Our character comes, in part, from the effort we have to put into overcoming life's challenges. A person is not made more precious by virtue of more "perfect" DNA. I have no profound thoughts to offer here, and no answers to help mankind pursue its own improvement while avoiding the pitfalls that are inherent to high-tech eugenics, just a warning that, unless a way can be found to separate the good from the bad, this is an area best left alone. Designer people won't make the world a better place. They'll only fill the world with more potential for human abuses.

Hat tip: Instapundit

Gutter Rants

Rant to follow, but first a look at this week in Meowville. I'm working up the energy to start another day of manual labor. Ked and I have been hard at it for days, doing much needed home repairs in preparation for the rains to come. Last year, some of you will remember, we jumped through the hoops demanded by the City of Portland to pass inspection on our new garage. Well, now we're trying to catch up on all the work we neglected while doing the City's bidding. Ked's taken the week off, and we have been going like gangbusters. Sunday we jacked up both our front and side porches and replaced the rotting pillars. Monday and Tuesday we replaced the gutters.

You may be saying to yourself, "Wow, gutters aren't that hard. Why'd it take them two whole days to get them done? Ked and Kat must be incompetent!" Without arguing the finer points of the incompetence question, allow me to offer a small bit of self defense. Although we live in quite a small house--only about thirty feet square--it has a hip roof, which means that the gutters go all the way around, with twists and turns for the porches to boot. We have almost one hundred and sixty feet of gutters, and a dozen corners to turn!! We are quite thrilled that the project went so smoothly and that we will no longer have to put out buckets to catch the water pouring from the leaking gutters to prevent it from soaking our basement bedroom. (NEVER install plastic gutters. They are nearly worthless.) Anyway, today we're heading out to paint the chimney and trim that didn't get finished last year in the height of City appeasement season. The happy thing for us is that after all the work is done, once we can face the coming winter weather with equanimity, we're going to head to the coast for a couple of days of camping and resting. That thought will keep us going for today. That and caffeine. Praise God for caffeine.

Anyway, I'm sure you didn't check in here for an update on Meow home improvement, so I'll toss you a little something from the "Good Grief, Save Me From The Nanny State" files. Looks like Los Angeles lawmakers are looking for ways to keep other people from packing on the pounds. No, they're not sponsoring fitness walks and heart-health awareness lectures. They're not giving tax breaks to fitness centers, or even signing "good example" pledges, where they promise that they will forgo dessert in favor of an after-dinner walk in hopes that where they lead Los Angelenos will follow. No, they have a much more "we know better than you" approach, compounded with a little "do as I say, not as I do" for good measure. According to The Center for Consumer Freedom:

Yesterday, with that unique blend of condescension and stupidity all too common among nanny staters, Los Angeles lawmakers unveiled plans to “fight” obesity by prohibiting fast food restaurants from building new outlets in one of the city’s poorest districts. The bill’s sponsors claim that fast food restaurants are crowding out “healthier” outfits in low-income communities, leaving poor Los Angelenos with exclusively high-fat, high-calorie food options.

Wow, they're only planning to stop the building of fast food places in poor neighborhoods, so that "healthier" restaurants will stop being "crowded out." Like there's simply not room for them with all those fast food restaurants forcing people to patronize their establishments. Do these people not realize that stopping the installation of a McDonald's is not going to drive the poor hapless ignorant masses to Tofu Heaven? Do they think that, just by virtue of having less money, poor people somehow have less of an understanding than the well-to-do that a Whopper is going to have more calories than a side salad with fat-free dressing? People eat what they want to eat! McDonald's and Wendy's and Burger King all offer salads and fruit and milk and other "healthy" choices. If people don't order them, it's because they don't want to. Some of them want triple burger combo meals with fries and a milkshake, and no amount of salad options is going to distract them from their culinary goal. They don't want salad! Is the solution to make the choice for them, and deny them them options they do want? Maybe in "we know better than you do" world, but not in anyplace that I want to live, and not in anyplace realistic either.

Hint to legislators: People find ways to get what they want--even poor people. Some of them might even hop on the bus to head to the restaurant in your area that offers the food they actually want to eat. Worse, some of them might get in their cars to do it, burning fossil fuels and cash to get to the thing that is okay for you, but not for them! Take away the burger joints in their neighborhoods, and you're still going to have poor fat people running around offending your sensibilities, but they'll be doing it in your neighborhood. Now, who's going to legislate a solution for that one?

Okay, rant over. Have a lovely day!

Sanity Wins!!

Remember the recent "bad ideas" post about judge who was suing a dry cleaner over the supposed loss of his pants--to the tune of $54 million? This judge had a pretty high notion of what a sign saying "Satisfaction Guaranteed" meant for him as a customer. Well, sanity has prevailed, and not only did the loony lawsuit go down in flames, but the presiding judge has ordered the plaintiff to pay the dry cleaners' court costs, about $1,000, covering photocopying and filing and the like. Whether the litigation-happy jurist will also have to pay the "tens of thousands of dollars" in lawyer's fees for the shop owners is still a pending decision, but, obviously, the newly-unburdened proprietors are happy with the way things have gone so far--as am I, quite frankly. I'd rather the ridiculous case had never wasted the tax-payers' dollars necessary to send this thing to trial in the first place, but at least the decision is one in which sane people everywhere can rejoice. The cleaners didn't get taken to the cleaners. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the world has not gone completely mad.

Hat tip: Tasina (of Mobius Stripped)

"The Pants Suit"

Here's a first for the Meow "bad ideas" file. Various forms of human silliness have given me reason to bestow the honor of induction into the "bad ideas" hall of fame. Frequently, the recipient is some gizmo or gadget--a gold plated barbeque, or a million dollar laptop--or maybe a hazard of some sort, like the LEGO shaped fruit snacks. Occasionally a stupid law or edict has made the grade, but this is the first time a lawsuit has been dumb enough to get the nod. This is not because many lawsuits are not worthy of the "bad ideas" label. Far, far too many are; I've just thought that since this was patently obvious there was very little point in beating a clearly dead and smelly horse. Now, however, a lawsuit has come along that has so outstripped the others in ridiculability, that I warrant it as worthy of exceptional notice. It is an outstanding achievement.

A Washington, D.C. judge is suing a dry cleaner over the loss of his pants. That in itself is not worth even seconds of your time, and I wouldn't toy with you that way. It's the details that make this suit worth at least the minute or two it'll take you to read this post. You'd be surprised at the amount of drama this trial has involved. For some reason the judge's divorce, financial trouble and even his weight gain have been part of his testimony regarding his missing apparel. (He is, of course, representing himself.) While under his own "questioning," the judge has apparently brought himself to tears over the loss of his trousers. Now don't automatically assume that these tears are unreasonable, a play for sympathy, or evidence of an unstable mind--you'd cry too, if you thought your lost pants were worth as much as this judge does. You'd cry buckets. The judge's perception of the value of his knickers? $54 million (and I'm guessing that's the garage sale price.) $54 million for a couple of yards of fabric, some thread and a zipper.

So, you tell me, which of these two people is most likely to win the crazy award: the judge who thinks his pants are worth more than the GDP of some small countries, or the presiding judge who's wasting taxpayer money by not summarily throwing this case out of court? Either way, it's a bad idea.

Emil Steiner has been live-blogging the trial.

Update: Okay, my mistake. Upon closer perusal, I see that it is not the pants that the esteemed judge considers so valuable. The dry cleaner has a sign up which says "satisfaction guaranteed," and apparently it is his satisfaction, and not his slacks, which the judge considers as meriting the 54 million dollar price tag. This changes everything, doesn't it? Well... maybe not.

Hat tip: Overlawyered, via Michelle Malkin

To Whom It May Concern, Or Anybody Else With Eyeballs

Heh. Don't you just love mass marketing that disguises itself as personal correspondence? My husband got a letter today marked, "Important Information: for addressee only." Then it was addressed to, "My Husband's Name, Or Current Resident." Any old resident, apparently, would do just fine. Do they actually think the "for addressee only" will make people feel important and more inclined to buy their product, despite the obvious and rather feeble manipulation? That's just goofy thinking. Into the recycling bin it goes. (It would have gone there anyway; it was just especially fun to toss it in with an added sense of scorn.)

Now That's Just Silly

A number of things have made the Meow "bad ideas" file over the last year. There was the new rule in the English town of Preston that made it a police-enforceable violation to consume alcoholic beverages while standing. There was the home monitoring system which included camera feeds all over your house to observe your behavior and report back to your bedroom mirror, which then magnified your flaws to reflect back at you what it thought you would look like after a steady period of the eating and exercise habits the snoopy guilt-machine had witnessed. Fun, huh? More "bad ideas" have followed. Who could forget LEGO-shaped fruit snacks for kids, or some of the other recent entries, like the million dollar laptop, and the fuzzy TV? Well, I've got a new one for you: the gold-plated barbecue. Yes, just in case you're not satisfied to burn your steaks on a regular grill, here's one that comes completely decked out in 24 carat gold. For a whopping $12,500, you can satisfy your desire to cook meat, waste money, and convince people of your foolishness all at the same time. According to Gizmag, BeefEater, the grill's manufacturer, says it's “for those who want to make a statement with their barbecue and have the money to burn.” Literally.

Note: For a look at all the "bad ideas" posts referenced above, and more, layed out on the same page all nice and tidy, just click here.

Weird Science

Here's a bit of fluff to start your week. Justin Mullins, at NewScientist.com, says that Phillips (you know, the TV manufacturer) is developing "Furry TV." Haven't you always longed for a pettable television? No? I can't say I have either. In fact, such a thing would never have entered my head, but apparently the folks at Phillips have actually been working on how to make it happen, and believe it should be possible to make a TV screen out of fabric, with hair-like strands acting as pixels. Ultimately this could lead to wearable television screens, and Mullins explains, "The company hopes to build furry displays into outfits." How weird is that?

I can "picture" it now--your favorite sweatshirt won't be the one that commemorates your trip to the Super Bowl, but the one that let's you watch the Superbowl. Of course, if you're watching television on your own shirt, instead of someone else's, the image better be upside down, and set somewhere down around your belly button, if you want to see and understand any of the action (which could give new meaning to the term "contemplating your navel.") Speaking of new meanings, this weird science could lead to a whole new set of vocabulary oddities. For example would a sweatshirt TV fitted out for the hearing impaired have "clothesed captioning?" Would a baby bib TV come equipped with a "video feed?" Would "volume control" suddenly have a double meaning--not only referring to turning down the sound, but maybe alluding to somebody's need to trim a few pounds so that they can fit into their wearable television?

I'm left wondering why Phillips wants to spend time and money developing this technology? I get the concept of developing flexible, portable TV screens; there are lots of practical applications, but what real purpose would clothing that can double as an idiot box serve? I wrote last week about how scientists are developing "electronic clothing for emergency personnel that can have updatable messages written across them in glowing letters." That I get, but furry fabric televisions sewn into clothing? That's too weird for even my extra-weird imagination to see the point. Anybody else have any "this is a great idea because..." solutions for me?

An Ounce Of Pretension...

Put this one in the "more money than sense" file. Would you pay a cool million for a laptop? How about if it had a rare diamond for a power button? What if you got to wear that power button around your neck? From Gizmag:

UK-based bespoke luxury goods creator Luvaglio has created the first million dollar laptop. That’s what the first of their luxury laptops will sell for. Full details of the laptop have not been released at this point, but it is known that it incorporates a 17" widescreen LED lit screen with a specially designed anti-reflective glare coating for clear and brighter image, 128GB of Solid State Disk space and a slot loading Blue-Ray drive. There is an integrated screen cleaning device and a very rare coloured diamond piece of jewellery that doubles up as the power button when placed into the laptop and also acts as security identification.

What do you think now? Does the integrated screen cleaning device give it more bang for the buck? Does the Blue Ray drive make it worth the extra $997, 801? What if you find out that you get to personalize your purchase, choosing your favorite color and everything? Are you dying to buy your own personal million dollar laptop now? Me neither. You know what they say--an ounce of pretension is worth a pound of manure.

Does This Sound Like A Good Idea To You?

Laurence Simon at IMAO is performing a public service, letting readers know about the latest edible sensation for the kiddies--LEGO-shaped fruit flavored snacks!! Looking for a fun and nutritious way to confuse your one-year-old? "Here honey, eat the LEGO. No, don't eat the LEGO, eat the LEGO! WAIT!!...maybe this wasn't such a good idea." Be sure to read the comments.

The Fat Police--Coming To A Supermarket Near You (If You Live In Britain That Is)

Here's a "you've got to be kidding" moment, brought to you by The Center For Consumer Freedom. The writing's a bit hyperbolic, but still...

Engage The Cloaking Device, Sir? No, Please Don't!

I got an email from New Scientist this morning, announcing that a "working invisibility cloak" had been "created at last." "At last?" I thought to myself. "What, like we've all been sitting around wondering what's taking so long?" Never mind that this is one of those science fiction type of concepts that most of us think must be heavy on the fiction, despite all the technological breakthroughs of recent years. I just don't really think I'm comfortable with the idea of invisibility being an option. I have not been pining for the day when enemy planes can fly over New York undetected. I also am not anxious for terrorist bombers to be able to walk with impunity through a crowded mall, looking for a properly substantial number of people to target. I have not even been impatiently checking the latest scientific journals for signs of progress in the fine art of "cloaking," frustrated that I can't yet slip into a room and hear what's being said about me when no one thinks I'm around. I don't want to know. Some genies are better left in the bottle.

Fortunately, upon reading the fine print in the article Justin Mullins wrote for New Scientist, I discovered that the technology is not quite as far along as the headline made it sound. Air Force commanders will not be telling their helmsmen to "raise shields and engage the cloaking device" anytime soon. (Although the shields are coming along, from what I've read, and are a much better idea than the cloak, if you ask me.) The progress that has been made, at Duke University, is in the "microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum," which means that scientists can now bend light around an object at a very specific frequency, and make it "disappear"--albeit a frequency which people can't see, and only in two dimensions.

It's still a remarkable scientific breakthrough, and the first step in what David Smith, a member of the Duke team, said he hopes will lead to "a 3D structure that could hide an object completely from view." When he says "structure," he means it. The success they've had to this point rests in a set of rings that encircle an object completely--the object in question for the tests at Duke being a copper ring, that mostly disappeared. There was still some distortion to indicate the ring was there, but mostly invisible is still mostly invisible. I'm betting if you didn't know to look for it, you probably would miss it, if you could see it in the first place, that is, which since we're talking microwaves, you can't, but...(moving on.)

Multiple steps led up to this amazing, if somewhat undesirable, accomplishment. The set-up involved creating new materials:

In recent years, materials scientists have made rapid progress in making so-called "metamaterials", which can have exotic electromagnetic properties unseen in nature. These are made up of repeating structures of simple electronic components such as capacitors and inductors.

In 2001, Smith built a metamaterial with a negative refractive index, which bends microwaves in a way impossible for ordinary lenses. Now he has gone one step further.

The one step further is the aforementioned rings, which "distort an electromagnetic field as it passes through." According to Smith, they "steer microwaves around the central region of the device," the region where they stashed the copper ring. Needless to say, the way they can tell it worked must involve fancy machines that can detect electromagnetic waves in this range, since we're not talking about something that's visible to the human eye. Making these materials in such a way that the results could be seen (or not seen, as it happens), creates some challenges. Mullins clarifies, "The problem with visible light is that it has a much smaller wavelength, meaning an optical metamaterial would have to be built on the nanoscale, which is beyond the limits of current nanotechnology." (Probably not for long. We know how nanotech is advancing by leaps and bounds.) There also would still be limitations as to frequency--Smith says even nanomaterials would still only work on one frequency. They'll have to work on that if they want to make Federation vessels disappear, or make spies' jobs really, really easy.

I have no doubt the problems can be overcome, maybe not in the immediate future, but probably sooner than I will be ready for such technology to make its way into ubiquity. Am I the only one who finds such an "advance" to have dubious merit? Maybe I'm just in a tech funk. Saturday I wrote with disapproval about the latest form of scientifically invented self-flagellation. (Some of you will remember the post about the mirror/camera combo. It's a different kind of "guilt mirror.") I don't think that's it, though. I really just think it's that some things bring up that old truism that just because we can build something doesn't mean we should. All of the applications I can think of for this new scientific direction are either nefarious, or pointless. Can anybody help me out here? Anyone else have an idea of how to use this in a good and fruitful way, especially one that can't be abused by the bad guys?

Reality Check

If you ask me, mirrors are a curse. People worry far too much about how they look to other people, and mirrors only exacerbate the problem. People generally are way easier on us than our mirror is, but the mirror never tells us that. Mirrors don't tell us how we look to other people--they tell us how we look to ourselves. A self-critical person looking in a mirror will always focus in on whatever flaws they perceive and magnify them to fit their insecurity level of the moment. Mirrors often give us confirmation of our worst fears, regardless of what they actually reflect. No matter how clear the image, our minds can find ways to distort it. Women, especially, are prone to twisted thinking about how we look, where every extra pound becomes ten, and every fine line becomes a Grand Canyon of wrinkles. We might as well be standing in front of a fun-house mirror most of the time. Women are experts at making the most out of our flaws.

So how about a mirror that does the same thing for you, only better? Would you like a mirror where you don't even have to apply any imagination to see yourself at your worst, one that magnifies your flaws for you? Well, there's apparently one coming--a mirror that aims to be completely honest with you about what you'll look like if you keep eating a pint of Haagen Dazs every night, or smoking three packs a day, or laying around watching reruns of Gilligan's Island. You see, this mirror is linked to cameras all over your house, that watch everything you're doing, and report back to the mirror, which extrapolates that info about your lifestyle choices to create images of the new and not-so-improved you.

Doesn't that sound fun? Photoshop finally has a real purpose--making you feel worse about yourself!! Supermarket magazine stands and television aren't enough. You need more reinforcement of your physical inadequacy. Now, to be fair, maybe your mirror friend will go the other route. Maybe it will see you trying and cut you some slack because its network of camera spies sees you hitting the treadmill a couple times a week. Maybe it will show you images that make you look toned and fit and absolutely fabulous, but I ask you, WHAT'S THE POINT!!? It isn't real!! Mirrors can't predict the future, no matter how many cameras there are inside your refrigerator. This "motivational tool" looks like it can only beat you up emotionally, or make promises you might not keep. Keep it far, far away from me, please. I usually love techno-gadgets, but this one definitely goes on my "not in a million years" list.

Hat tip: Futurismic

Vertical Drinking

Man, what will they think of next? Police in Preston, Lancashire, England are pushing for a new rule that bans "vertical drinking," a.k.a. standing at the bar and pounding a few back. Apparently there's the belief among Preston law enforcement that drinking at the bar causes fights, not so much because of increased alcohol capacity when standing, but because proximity to other drinkers increases the likelihood of confrontation. As Alan Hamilton of the Times Online put it:

When the mindless nerd next to you knocks the pint out of your hand, it’s much easier to go for him directly than having to get out of a chair to punch his lights out.

He goes on to add:

Police in Preston already have an alcohol harm reduction and prevention team. Sergeant Andy Hobson, the team’s alcohol project manager, said: “If people are sat down there is less potential for flashpoints than with vertical drinking. This is not designed so much to affect the amount they drink; it is the proximity of other people when you are stood up, which is where the problems can start.

“People go into these places and crowd round the bars, then the next you know somebody gets a push, the pint goes over and that’s it.”

So the obvious solution is to make a rule that says that only people who are seated can have a pint. Hamilton points out that next year there's an England-wide edict against smoking in pubs going into effect, and that's going to complicate matters. Uh oh!! Conflicting edict alert!! They're practically ordering people to start a donnybrook. There are going to be all these drinkers, whose only reason for not starting a brawl is the fact they're seated, having to stand up, walk to the door, and step outside together for a smoke. Even more dangerous, what if it's raining, and they have to huddle together around the door? The potential for violence is enormous.

Am I the only one who thinks this is hilarious?

Hat tip: Brannon Denning (who is one of four people subbing for Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit this week. I think he's doing a fine job.)

Another Psychiatric Breakthrough

Okay, maybe I'm missing something, but this seems absolutely ridiculous, and typical of the way our society approaches behavior issues. It seems there's an official psychiatric name for losing your temper and throwing a fit. It's called "intermittent explosive disorder", and (how's this for a waste of study funding) "a new study suggests it is far more common than they realized, affecting up to 16 million Americans." Wow, it took a scientific study to discover that 16 million Americans are prone to temper tantrums. An Associated Press article by Lindsey Tanner at Livescience.com delves into the particulars, and comes up with some real gems. Road rage, broken objects and spousal abuse can all be blamed on this "disorder", although, according to the article not always. Sometimes, apparently, it's just a bad temper that breaks things and abuses people. Parents of teenagers won't be shocked to hear that this condition often first shows up in adolescence, age 14 on average. Most of us also won't be surprised to learn it's pretty common:

About 5 percent to 7 percent of the nationally representative sample had had the disorder, which would equal up to 16 million Americans. That is higher than better-known mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, Coccaro said.

The average number of lifetime attacks per person was 43, resulting in $1,359 in property damage per person. About 4 percent had suffered recent attacks.

Too funny. Losing your temper is now called "suffering an attack". I thought it was committing an attack. The article goes on to describe reasons and treatment options, as explained by study co-author Dr. Emil Coccaro:

Coccaro said the disorder involves inadequate production or functioning of serotonin, a mood-regulating and behavior-inhibiting brain chemical. Treatment with antidepressants, including those that target serotonin receptors in the brain, is often helpful, along with behavior therapy akin to anger management, Coccaro said.

Most sufferers in the study had other emotional disorders or drug or alcohol problems and had gotten treatment for them, but only 28 percent had ever received treatment for anger.

"This is a well-designed, large-scale, face-to-face study with interesting and useful results,'' said Dr. David Fassler, a psychiatry professor at the University of Vermont. The findings also confirm that for most people, the difficulties associated with the disorder begin during childhood or adolescence, and they often have a profound and ongoing impact on the person's life.''

Here we go. According to Coccaro, the problem is chemical imbalance (I'm guessing he's not overly fond of the word sin), so the answer is two-fold--the ubiquitous anti-depressant steps forward, as does (here's my favorite part) anger management therapy. The doctor says that the disorder begins in childhood or adolescence and-- hold onto your hat--often has a profound impact on a person's life! Translation from a layman's point of view: The kid was never taught self-control, and now it's a problem. The anger management classes are going to try to remedy the lack of proper childhood instruction and failure to nip the temper tantrums in the bud. This was an incredible waste of research dollars that could have been spent on something useful, instead of giving people another excuse for bad behavior. "I couldn't help smashing your car with a sledgehammer. I have a disorder." I'm not saying that there's no possibility of any physical reason for some people to have temper issues, but come on, seven percent of the population has "intermittent explosive disorder"? Psychobabble.