QuickReaction, Wednesday-5

Amusing security breach story: In this article the author is basically defending Evernote, despite their security breach. What is more interesting though is his pointing out Blizzard Entertainment’s superior security using two-factor security and a hardware key. BUT, attempting to just follow the link on the hardware key leads to a dead link and a little more poking about leads to announcement that Blizzard has dropped the hardware token, so acclaimed by the author. And even a little more poking around indicates that Blizzard has been breached. So the defense of Evernote(and therefore the cloud) really stalls and is made worse by pointing out even better security that also has been breached. The point is still true, private networks are just as vulnerable as the cloud, or conversely the cloud is no better (one of its main claims). This security stuff is really serious and it’s clear the defense is at a serious disadvantage to the attackers.

I’m so sick of the dufus twins: Lindsey and John – will you just shutdown and take your clown act somewhere else. John – stop being a sore loser and grouch and Lindsey – stop showing off how nasty and rightwingnut you are. These two idiots just keep poking and poking where there is no there there. They end up delaying, but not actually stopping, people from getting on with the government business. If they had real objections to actually block nominations, then that’s one thing, but they’re just playing games and acting like spoiled brat children throwing a tantrum on a playground. Boy will I be happy not to hear from them again.

Repugs running for President are almost as big a pain as Senator running for re-election, eh, Lindsey? You’ve been doing your crap to show off to the tea baggers back in South Carolina, so you won’t get primaried, and now you’re nagging Jeb Bush as a sellout for changing his position on immigrant as he tries to move right for the 2015 primaries.  My, how the pot calls the kettle black. A politician blaming another politician for being a politician, the rich irony.

The HuffPo quack managed to make it onto public TV: This proves the Repugs are right and we should abolish public TV. It’s a liberal wacko world filled with super-quacks like Mark Hyman (I refuse to acknowledge the Dr. he claims), ultra-huckster of pet theory books. He has an infomercial on IPTV (which they’re using for fund raising, everyone is a shill tonight) that is just garbage. Some ridiculous theory that plant genes from food (duh, you think DNA makes it intact through the small intestine and gets into our blood, what biology courses did you take!) alter gene expression of our genes (and since when is diabetes an issue of gene expression, sources, please, Dr. Quack-Quack!). Food is medicine, naturally the paleo crap approach being pushed today. Blame it on industrial food. Calories aren’t calories, there are good ones and bad ones. All the nutrition myths now being peddled to people to solve medical issues. The good news is that the diet is not anything any real human being will stick with so his feel-good Tony Robbins style pitch may win some converts briefly, but the snake oil will quickly wear off. These guys are as sociopathological as Wall Street bond traders. Wow, watched some more. Not only is the substance just like the informercials the style is too, sticking in the hooks, promising the answers later in the show, customized solutions in the supplementary materials (and how much do those cost), answers in yet more seminars. He absolutely sounds like one of those idiots selling get-rich-quick in real estate packages that suckered people into those lousy investments, but this is health we’re talking about, not just money. This guy is a criminal and an outrage! Oh yeah, a big pile of supplements (thoroughly discredited over and over) will save you too.

This lying is criminal: Yet another bogus claim, using the careful language of “association” of obesity and low testosterone (meaning no evidence of any causation, or perhaps that both are caused by some other factor) yet then screaming the headline from a study paid for by Solvay Pharmeceutical. What do they make – the highly advertised and pitched testosterone gels. What do they want? To convince all fat men they need more drugs? So some “study” finds exactly what they wanted, although, remember, only an association, but as we know guilt-by-association is sufficient for many people to convict. Lies! And it’s even worse when scientists pimp themselves out to drug companies than when politicians do. Move on, Repugs, there are some villains worse than you. Of course the actual article is hidden behind a paywall so I can’t see it, only the sensationalist popular press accounts. Gosh, maybe fat guys aren’t getting laid and so the old juices aren’t flowing, or maybe, well, er, they’re old. All sorts of things can be “linked” but someone is bound to cherry-pick and claim causation where there is none! (As the study cautiously, buried deep in the text, readily admits.)

Long but interesting debate: I stumbled onto this old debate triggered by one of the food alarmists and the claim of both sugar and fructose, but esp. fructose is poison. There is a lot of back-and-forward, just as there is in the comments in this article. So all the ranting I’ve been doing is really small compared to what had been going on around me. It’s clear that there are some people with stronger credentials than me taking on these junk nutrition nuts. Hurrah for them!

Jesus is a Muslim, so says noted religious scholar Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad claims there is no revealed religion of Judaism or Christianity, only Islam which includes Jesus. So apparently he believes in the resurrection (presumably the second one, but who knows if he denies the first) of Jesus, and now along with Jesus Hugo Chavez will return as well to usher in era of peace, presumably under Islamic rule. This guy is almost as creative a nutjob as Joseph Smith was who plans on bringing Jesus back to Independence Missouri (naturally a Jew from Palestine would see Missouri as home today). Hey xtians, you need to reclaim your hero from the other nutjobs who worship him but spread false doctrine. Isn’t religion delightfully amusing in its foolishness.

Gross science illiteracy: I’d hardly expect HuffPo to be a source of correct science, but sheesh, can’t they get junior high school basics right. It’s one thing when idiot Repugs sound off on ridiculous stuff but the lefties should be held to higher standards. So the headline, “Sleep deprivation can change your genes” Now that instantly struck me as wrong, so I figured it was just headline sensationalism and the article might acquit itself better. But it got way worse. “Blood samples taken after just one week of getting fewer than six hours of sleep a night showed changes to more than 700 genes…” Blood samples don’t show anything about genes (supporting information of the study for methodology). Genes aren’t floating around in the blood where they can be measured. And genes don’t change at all, except through some mutational processes (i.e. cancer). Presumably what they mean is not ‘genes’, but ‘gene products’, i.e. levels of gene expression which might make some sense. Now gene expression is about as basic molecular biology as it gets, probably talented 3rd graders already know about it. So whatever imbecile (anonymous) wrote this article should not be allowed anywhere near commenting on science articles. Naturally the actual science article, abstract only of course, gets it right.