12-sided calendar

Just saw this nifty little toy on Boing Boing:

The 12 sided calendar, each month on a pentagonal face of a dodecahedron.

In all my free time (HAH!), I want to alter the postscript to print holidays and weekends in red like the example photos, but that would require learning how to program in postscript. Maybe in 2008...

Updated Eminem "Mosh" Video

The animated video for "Mosh" by Eminem and produced/hosted by the Guerrilla News Network, attempting to energize the youth into voting this year, now has a new ending.

(on Launch)

Why journalism and science don't work together as well as they should

As /. points out, here is a prime example of how the current state of journalism is "hurting America" (thank you, Jon Stewart): acting a little too balanced in scientific coverage.

From the November/December 2004 Columbia Journalism Review, Blinded by Science
How ‘Balanced’ Coverage Lets the Scientific Fringe Hijack Reality
By Chris Mooney

In part,

The basic notion that journalists should go beyond mere “balance” in search of the actual truth hardly represents a novel insight. This magazine, along with its political Web site, Campaign Desk, has been part of a rising chorus against a prevalent but lazy form of journalism that makes no attempt to dig beneath competing claims. But for journalists raised on objectivity and tempered by accusations of bias, knowing that phony balance can create distortion is one thing and taking steps to fix the reporting is another.

...

Yet in each case, the basic journalistic remedy would probably be the same. As a general rule, journalists should treat fringe scientific claims with considerable skepticism, and find out what major peer-reviewed papers or assessments have to say about them. Moreover, they should adhere to the principle that the more outlandish or dramatic the claim, the more skepticism it warrants. The Los Angeles Times’s Carroll observes that “every good journalist has a bit of a contrarian in his soul,” but it is precisely this impulse that can lead reporters astray. The fact is, nonscientist journalists can all too easily fall for scientific-sounding claims that they can’t adequately evaluate on their own.

That doesn’t mean that scientific consensus is right in every instance. There are famous examples, in fact, of when it was proved wrong: Galileo comes to mind, as does a lowly patent clerk named Einstein. In the vast majority of modern cases, however, scientific consensus can be expected to hold up under scrutiny precisely because it was reached through a lengthy and rigorous process of professional skepticism and criticism. At the very least, journalists covering science-based policy debates should familiarize themselves with this professional proving ground, learn what it says about the relative merits of competing claims, and “balance” their reports accordingly.

A National Reality Check: One Married Gay Man's View on the 2004 Election

I wonder if my family would read this if I emailed it out... And if they did, would they get it?

Steve Silberman: Our Traditional Non-Traditional Wedding

(via BoingBoing)

Pissed off and Flabbergasted

I keep trying to blog about the election, but I invariantly end up depressing or outrageously angry or both... I mean, a majority voted for this guy? Reports, despite a supposedly record voter registration, that only 17% of people 18-30 actually voted? I'm glad I'm leaving that demographic in 31 days. Stupid Kids! Time to be a curmudgeonly old person already?

Finally, I leave it to an international tabloid rag to sum things up for me...

Voting the Vote Vote

I had to be on campus at 9am, and I'm in class until 7pm. Since it was likely that I would miss the pesky deadline of 8pm if I tried to end the day by voting, given the reliability of my bus sometimes, I opted for attempted voting early in the morning.

At 7:25am, there was a line of at least 50 people. I was inside after close to an hour wait. When I left, the line was much longer than when I initially joined it. Thankfully, I had 5 minutes to spare and catch a bus and made it to school on time.

There was no turmoil or calamity at my polling station, unless you count little children running around outside as they arrived at school (I vote at Palms Elementary around the corner from my apartment). One 8ish-year old boy called out "Vote for Kerry!" at least twice, in clear violation of electioneering law.

If you haven't voted yet, get the heck over to your polling station and do it now, my friends. The registered voter has been coming out of the woodwork this morning, and news coverage makes it sound like I should expect riots as polls begin to close.