Kirk Cameron gets pwned by hot Romanian girl

For those who didn’t know, Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort (the “banana guy”) are handing out a “special edition” of Darwin’s Origin Of Species, that includes a 50 page introduction calling Darwin a racist misogynist who inspired the Holocaust.  The video above is of a Romanian totally pwning his argument.  The Cameron video and some more info is at Dlisted.

One of my heroes, Norman Borlaug, dies at 95

Via CNN:

Nobel laureate Norman E. Borlaug, an agricultural scientist who helped develop disease-resistant wheat used to fight famine in poor countries [Ed.- which saved over 245 million lives, by the way], died Saturday. He was 95. [...]

Borlaug was known as a champion of high-yield crop varieties, and other science and agricultural innovations to help fight hunger in developing nations. [...] Borlaug also created the World Food Prize, which recognized the work of scientists and humanitarians who have helped fight world hunger through advanced agriculture, the university said.

*tipping my 40 to a fellow Iowan lost*

*realizing that pouring food on the ground is probably the wrong way to honor Borlaug*

Oops.

Visualizing health care data: plain language, intuitive videos

Via scienceblogs:

So far this year 55 percent of coverage of health care has been about the political battles, 16 percent about the protests, and only 8 percent about substantive issues like how the system works now, what will happen if it remains unchanged, and what proposed changes will mean for ordinary people.

I recommend the video at the link.

California’s Real Death Panels: Insurers Deny 21% Of Claims

Via medicalnewstoday (more stats at the link):

More than one of every five requests for medical claims for insured patients, even when recommended by a patient’s physician, are rejected by California’s largest private insurers, amounting to very real death panels in practice daily in the nation’s biggest state, according to data released today by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee. 

CNA/NNOC researchers analyzed data reported by the insurers to the California Department of Managed Care. From 2002 through June 30, 2009, the five largest insurers operating in California rejected 31.2 million claims for care — 21 percent of all claims. [...]

“With all the dishonest claims made by some politicians about alleged ‘death panels’ in proposed national legislation, the reality for patients today is a daily, cold-hearted rejection of desperately needed medical care by the nation’s biggest and wealthiest insurance companies simply because they don’t want to pay for it,” said Deborah Burger, RN, CNA/NNOC co-president. 

For the first half of 2009, as the national debate over healthcare reform was escalating, the rejection rates are even more striking. 

PacifiCare denied 40 percent of all California claims in the first six months of 2009. Cigna, which gained notoriety two years ago for denying a liver transplant to 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan of Northridge, Calif. and then reversing itself, tragically too late to save her life, was still rejecting one-third of all claims for the first half of 2009. 

“Every claim that is denied represents a real patient enduring pain and suffering. Every denial has real, sometimes fatal consequences,” said Burger.

Free $1.29 towards amazon MP3’s

Via Amazon MP3’s twitter:

Celebrating 1+ million followers! Get one song. Limited-time only. Restrictions apply. Use code FIRSTMIL. Details: http://snurl.com/firstmil

You must redeem the credit by September 6, 2009 11:59 PM PDT.

Happy 40th birthday, Internet

Via boingboing:

September 2, 1969: Forty years ago today, in Leonard Kleinrock’s UCLA lab, a group of computer scientists managed to pass bits of data from one computer to another over some some gray cable. In doing so, they created the first node of what we now call (long dramatic pause) . . . the Internet.
Kleinrock and colleagues were working with the government-backed Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), without which I would not be blogging these words today.
Now, some folks believe the actual “birthday” was October 29, 1969 – when Kleinrock sent the first message between two nodes, UCLA to Stanford. The message? “LO.” As in “LO AND BEHOLD, THE INTERNET.” Well, okay, not really. It was supposed to be “LOGIN” but the system crashed after Kleinrock typed “L” and “O.”

Thousands call for Turing apology

Via BBC News:

Thousands of people have signed a Downing Street petition calling for a posthumous government apology to World War II code breaker Alan Turing. [...]  In 1952 Turing was prosecuted under the gross indecency act after admitting to a sexual relationship with a man. Two years later he killed himself. [...]  Alan Turing was given experimental chemical castration as a “treatment” and his security privileges were removed, meaning he could not continue work for the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). [...]

Alan Turing is most famous for his code-breaking work at Bletchley Park during WWII, helping to create the Bombe that cracked messages enciphered with the German Enigma machines.
However he also made significant contributions to the emerging fields of artificial intelligence and computing.
In 1936 he established the conceptual and philosophical basis for the rise of computers in a seminal paper called “On Computable Numbers”, whilst in 1950 he devised a test to measure the intelligence of a machine. Today it is known as the Turing Test.
After the war he worked at many institutions including the University of Manchester, where he worked on the Manchester Mark 1, one of the first recognisable modern computers.

UPDATE: Apology issued.