Monthly Archives: October 2021

Gendered restrooms and Aunt Gert’s two-holer outhouse

Amish-school

“There are two types of people in the world: those who divide the world into two types of people and those who don’t.” – Anonymous I have long held that if you can turn an ethical dilemma into a binary choice, it either isn’t much of an ethical dilemma or you are not thinking too hard. And when it comes… Read more »

The Ron DeSantis death factor

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Life-expectancy-FL

Fifteen thousand excess deaths from Covid-19 in Florida so far in 2021. That is the “Ron DeSantis death factor” I assert versus what would have happened if he had just been a mediocre governor instead of a dangerous one. The nation’s governors, perhaps more than any other group of influential Americans, currently set the boundaries for most local responses regarding… Read more »

Inoculating your brain against misinformation

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Bayes theorem

If more people had been “mentally inoculated” somewhere during their education with a simple logical “vaccine” called a “Bayesian prior” we perhaps would not be in this current state of political craziness with elections and vaccine hesitancy. Here is an “In the News” example: When thousands of signatures on mail-in ballots appear, to the untrained eye, to be different from… Read more »

Worth a read: Life’s Edge by Carl Zimmer

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The three Fates

An interesting tidbit from a recent DNA study documented by researchers in the Netherlands, translated for a general audience in Science News: Overall, as many as 12% of human pregnancies may start as multiple pregnancies, but under 2% carry to term, resulting in a vanishing twin. To think that a new science book can contribute positively to the hot-again issue… Read more »

Drug pricing and game theory

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Drug bottle

The “battle of the commercials” has been going on for some time now. The AARP wants Congress to step in against high prescription prices, especially for “old staples” like insulin. In response, a near-tears diabetic says on my TV that Medicare is going to take her drugs away if Congress limits drug prices (no surprise, the commercial sponsored by PhRMA,… Read more »