The Latest from Boing Boing

Service emails you your year-old photos
Twitterer: I egged and shoed the father of the Great Firewall of China
RIP Jeffrey Jones
Venezuela suspends driving license
Wikileaks releases "The Pakistan Papers" through Pakistani newspaper The Dawn
Which came first: the media orgy or the prurient interest? (Donald Trump edition)
Magnet Boy of Croatia: gadgets stick to his chest (big photo gallery)
Do astronauts have internet in space?
The Infernal Device: giant, ambitious steampunk Kickstarter project
Hello Kitty Portal Personality Sphere
How To Look Punk: a marketing/trendspotter's "zine" from 1977
Hunting the Yeti with "Popular Science"
Natural selection is neat
Unabomber auction
Red-crested tree rat is adorable, not extinct
There is no miracle cure for cancer
MAFIAA wants warrantless searches of CD and DVD factories
And now, a moment of silence for the Prophet Hen of Leeds
Interview with Mark Kelly and Shuttle Endeavour astronauts, live from space
America's first monorail: Even older than I thought
Sherlock Holmes as a series of exciting graphic novels
CDC explains how to prepare for a zombie apocalypse
Legal rebuttal: "vade et caca in pilleum et ipse traheatur super aures tuo"

Posted: 20 May 2011 03:45 AM PDT

Photo Time Capsule is a service that trawls through the photos you posted to Flickr last year and, twice a month, sends you an email with some year-old images. A nice way to communicate with yourself across time. (via O'Reilly Radar)

Twitterer: I egged and shoed the father of the Great Firewall of China

Posted: 20 May 2011 03:40 AM PDT

A pseudonymous Twitter user who posts as @hanunyi claims to have attended a talk by Fang Binxing (characterized as the "father of China's Great Firewall" and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications) at Wuhan University in Hubei province and to have pelted Fang with eggs and shoes. Fang's office denies the attack took place, but the Luojiashan public security bureau alerted the Associated Press that police came to the university to "investigate a shoe-throwing incident."

"The egg missed the target. The first shoe hit the target. The second shoe was blocked by a man and a woman.
"I didn't think this little thing would get such a big response," he added several hours later, following the online outpouring of glee.
@hanunyi, who said he was not a student at the university, was still tweeting on Friday. Responding to one comment warning he might be detained, he noted: "So far, not yet. Just woke up. Thank you..."
Earlier this year Fang closed a microblog within days of opening it after thousands of Chinese internet users left comments, almost all of them deriding him. They attacked him as "a running dog for the government" and "the enemy of netizens".
He later told the Global Times newspaper: "I regard the dirty abuse as a sacrifice for my country."
Fang told the state-run newspaper that internet controls were not tough enough, a comment that presaged increasingly tight controls.

China's 'great firewall' creator pelted with shoes

(Image: Humpty was pushed, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from aussiegall's photostream)

RIP Jeffrey Jones

Posted: 19 May 2011 09:37 PM PDT

I was sad to learn that one of my favorite illustrators, Jeffrey Catherine Jones, died today. I first came across her work in the 1970s when she was doing a regular one page comic strip for National Lampoon called Idyl. It was light hearted and whimsical and nothing like the rest of the magazine.

Jeffrey Catherine Jones, the fantasy artist who helped introduce fine art and illustration influences to comics in the '70s and beyond, has died of complications from emphysema and bronchitis, according to numerous reports. She was 67.
In the early 70s, then known just as Jeffrey, Jones helped form The Studio, a group of cartoonists/illustrators that included Mike Kaluta, Bernie Wrightson and Barry Windsor-Smith. Jones was known for her lyrical linework and ethereal paintings, which prompted Frazetta himself to say that Jones was "the world's greatest living painter." Although she produced the comics strip Idyll for National Lampoon in the '70s, Jones was best known for her book covers, prints, and painting, with only a brief dabbling in comics.

RIP Jeffrey Jones

Venezuela suspends driving license

Posted: 19 May 2011 09:19 PM PDT

Venezuelan drivers are so excellent that local authorities have never once found it necessary to suspend anyone's driving license. Until now.

Wikileaks releases "The Pakistan Papers" through Pakistani newspaper The Dawn

Posted: 19 May 2011 09:33 PM PDT

The Pakistan Papers: "The Dawn Media Group and Julian Assange, Chief Executive of Sunshine Press Productions, the publishing arm of WikiLeaks, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the exclusive first use in Pakistan of all the secret US diplomatic cables related to political and other developments in the country. The MoU signed in the UK allows the publication and use of these secret cables in Dawn, its website Dawn.com and DawnNews television."

Which came first: the media orgy or the prurient interest? (Donald Trump edition)

Posted: 19 May 2011 09:13 AM PDT

(via Sociological Images)

Magnet Boy of Croatia: gadgets stick to his chest (big photo gallery)

Posted: 19 May 2011 02:48 PM PDT

Young Ivan Stoiljkovic poses for pictures with a Samsung Galaxy Tab stuck to his chest in front of his home near Koprivnica, about 62 miles (100km) north of Croatia's capital city, Zagreb, on May 12, 2011. Ivan, 6, is purported to posess an extraordinary and seemingly magical talent: the ability to attract metallic objects -- from spoons to heavy frying pans -- to his body. He is said to be able to carry up to 25 kg of metal stuck to his torso. Ivan's family also claims that his hands can emit heat and his mysterious ability has also given him healing powers. "Medical checkups so far have reaped inconclusive results," reports Reuters. More images follow, in which Ivan "attracts" cutlery, cookware, an iron, and other metallic objects. In the image below, his grandfather tosses coins at his chest. Surely this isn't a hoax! (all photos: Reuters)

Do astronauts have internet in space?

Posted: 19 May 2011 02:16 PM PDT

Just noticed this interesting detail from the PBS NewsHour/YouTube/Google webcast earlier today, in which Miles O'Brien interviewed astronauts from the space shuttle and International Space Station about life in space -- while they were floating around in space. At one point, Miles asked astronaut Greg Johnson (pilot for the shuttle STS-134 mission) and Ron Garan (a current member of the International Space Station crew) a question posed by a YouTube viewer: "What kind of Internet connection do you get up there? Is it fast? Any restrictions, wink wink. What's the IP range of visits from outer space?"

GREG JOHNSON: Good question, DJ. As shuttle guys, we really don't partake in the Internet. We've got synchronizations with our emails. It kind of gives us a pseudo-email or pseudo-Internet to communicate with our families and friends and our associates. However, I'm going to pass this to Ronnie because on the station, I believe that they have a better Internet than we do on the shuttle.
RON GARAN: So this is something that is somewhat new is our capability to use the Internet. And how it works is we can be on a laptop here on the International Space Station and basically control remotely a PC or a computer down on the ground that is connected to the Internet. So it's - we're limited to when we have the correct communications coverage to be able to be on the Internet and there is some lag in it. So it does work slower than you're probably used to on the ground. But it's a very useful tool. And it really helps us to stay connected with what's going on, on the Earth.

Full transcript here. By the way, some of the astronauts mentioned during the webcast that they are tweeting from space, and you can follow them as they post photos and observations. Clearly, Twitter is not making them stupid.

The Infernal Device: giant, ambitious steampunk Kickstarter project

Posted: 19 May 2011 11:10 AM PDT

Myke sez,

Three Enginartists from the "Steampunk Form and Function" exhibit at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation, are seeking to raise funds for their biggest collaborative project to date: "The Infernal Device" "The Device" is a huge 20-foot-tall kinetic sculpture with a 25-foot long spinning painting in the center, which include a zoetropic animation (a spinning animation seen through slats, like the one seen in "The House on Haunted Hill). It will also have moving automata/sculptures on all four corners, and a lot of mechanical activity in between.
It will be powered completely by alternative energy, such as wind and electrical from wind, and will be made from upcycled/recycled parts... we're going seriously for the green aspect, as well as the steampunk aspect, as well as the arcane and out of this world aspect for this monumental endeavor.
The three artists (Myke Amend, Steve Brook, and Todd Cahill) are in the last 4 days of their KickStarter, and could still use your help making this project happen. For rewards, they are offering one of the world's most unique/rare coffee table art books, custom steampunked guitars, one of a kind paintings such as Myke Amend's "ChaiThulhu", a steampunk and strange fiction coloring book for grown up kids, and at least 30 other rewards.

(Thanks, Myke!)

Hello Kitty Portal Personality Sphere

Posted: 19 May 2011 11:08 AM PDT

Chris Myles made this beautiful Hello Kitty/Portal Personality Sphere sculptural mashup. It's a gift for a baby shower.

Hello Kitty Sphere

How To Look Punk: a marketing/trendspotter's "zine" from 1977

Posted: 19 May 2011 10:48 AM PDT

From 1977, this "'zine" about "How To Look Punk" written by Marliz, who according to the "note on author" is "internationally known in the industry for her marketing ability in current-trend perception and 'how to' help it explode on the scene.'" This is quite an artifact.
Punk Rock, The New Wave of Sound & Style: "How To Look Punk" (PDF, via threadbared, thanks Koshi!)

Hunting the Yeti with "Popular Science"

Posted: 19 May 2011 10:02 AM PDT

The Popular Science archives—Google-digitzed versions of whole issues stretching back to the beginning of the 20th century—will never not be awesome. Reading these magazines can teach you a lot about the culture and history of science. It's also a nice way for journalists, like me, to remind ourselves about how very easy it is to get our jobs wrong.

For instance, just because the Royal Geographic Society is sending an expedition to the Himalayas to hunt for the Abominable Snowman doesn't mean the Abominable Snowman definitely exists. In this story, from a gallery of Pop Sci articles about pseudoscience (some appropriately skeptical, some ... not), it's easy to see the writer getting so caught up in the excitement of the hunt that he stopped questioning whether there was really anything to hunt for. It's a fun read. And a nice kick in the pants.

Natural selection is neat

Posted: 19 May 2011 09:42 AM PDT

Life on Earth: "Yup, it's pretty much a giant accident," says recent study.

Unabomber auction

Posted: 19 May 2011 09:34 AM PDT

For the right price, you could be the proud owner of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski's iconic sunglasses and hoodie. The US Marshals are auctioning off Kaczynski's personal effects with the profits to go to Kaczynski's victims. The auction -- which includes his university diplomas, tools, books, and even the original handwritten and typed "Unabom Manifesto" -- runs until June 2. From a US government press release:

"The U.S. Marshals Service has been given a unique opportunity to help the victims of Theodore Kaczynski's horrific crimes," said U.S. Marshal Albert Nájera of the Eastern District of California. "We will use the technology that Kaczynski railed against in his various manifestos to sell artifacts of his life. The proceeds will go to his victims and, in a very small way, offset some of the hardships they have suffered."

Theodore John Kaczynski aka The Unabomber auction (GSA Auctions) (via The Atlantic)

Unabomber Auction 5/18-6/2 2011 (Flickr)

Red-crested tree rat is adorable, not extinct

Posted: 19 May 2011 09:31 AM PDT

The last red-crested tree rat was spotted in 1898. After 113 years, and several searches, the species was assumed to be extinct. That is, until this one showed up on a public handrail at 9:30 pm on May 4, in Colombia's El Dorado Nature Reserve. Cute! And not dead!

Via Joan

There is no miracle cure for cancer

Posted: 19 May 2011 09:08 AM PDT

Or: Maybe Facebook isn't the best source for science and health news. An interesting debunking.

You know the game, Telephone? You line up a bunch of people and the person on one end whispers something to their neighbor, who repeats it to the next person in line, and so on. At the other end, the last player says the secret out loud, and then everybody gets a nice chuckle from how distorted the secret has become as it was passed along the line. I rather like Telephone the game. But, lord, how I hate when it happens in real life.

So, this week on the Internet, there's a story circulating that claims scientists have discovered a foolproof, side-effect free cure for cancer ... but They (you know, "THEY") are preventing you from getting access to it. This story is like the end of a game of Telephone. There's some real (and interesting!) science going on, but by the time the story made it to Facebook the reality of a promising chemical compound that could be a good treatment for some types of cancer (maybe, scientists aren't sure yet) had become a first-rate conspiracy theory.

The compound in question is dichloroacetate (or DCA), and it's not really anything new. In fact, research into this compound has been going on long enough—and with enough attention from within the field of people who closely follow basic, laboratory chemical research—that I could almost do this entire debunking using only excerpts from four-year-old posts made by Orac, a surgeon and scientist who blogs about this kind of stuff in a much more specialized way than I do.

Here is something fundamental that you need to remember: Every moment of every day, there is tons of research happening that is centered around chemical compounds that might be useful in some medical application. New compounds are discovered. Existing compounds are tested in new ways. Sometimes, one of these compounds looks particularly interesting to a researcher. They'll publish on it, and their school or institution will put out a press release. Basic chemistry isn't much of a news hook, so these press releases tend to speculate about what the compound could be used for, how it might benefit us someday.

There are so many of these sort of press releases floating around at any given time that journalists who focus on medical science talk about them as a separate category. But, just because a compound is interesting in a chemistry sense, or just because it has shown promise in some in vitro laboratory tests, doesn't mean that it will ever be useful in a practical application. It is very common for a compound to kill cancer in a test tube, but not actually do anything in a human body. Sometimes, a compound successfully fights cancer, but isn't actually safe for humans. And, most importantly, "cancer" isn't really one disease. Different cancers have different causes and require different kinds of treatment—even the same cancer at different stages might not be able to be treated the same. A compound could be effective against stage 2 leukemia, but not do a damn thing to treat stage 4 breast cancer.

DCA is just one of those chemical compounds that scientists are excited about. It's made it past some of the most basic, early studies, but we don't yet know how effective it truly is, and what it's effective against. From what I have read about it, the vast majority of research has been in vitro and in animals. Here's Orac on what we know about why, in those settings, it has been an effective treatment against some cancers:

... to boil it down even further, DCA shifts the cell's metabolism from anaerobic to aerobic metabolism. Why, then, would such an activity be useful as an anticancer therapy?

It all boils down to something known as the Warburg effect, which Otto Warburg first described way back in 1928 and reported in Science back in 1956. Over the last five years or so, cancer researchers have been increasingly coming to appreciate the role of abnormalities in metabolism, in particular the mitochondria, in cancer. To put it briefly, many cancers (approximately 60-90%) favor glycolysis, even in the presence of adequate oxygen for oxidative phosphorylation, leading to a voracious appetite for glucose. Indeed, it is this very avidity of cancer cells for glucose that is the basis of the PET scan, which detects the high uptake of a radiolabeled form of glucose by cancer cells relative to the surrounding normal cells.

Over the last few years, there has been a sort of "chicken or the egg" argument about what is more important and what is the first abnormality leading to cancer. The traditional view has long been that mutations in DNA lead to the activation of protooncogenes into cancer-initiating and causing oncogenes and to the shutdown of tumor suppressor genes. Under this model, mutations leading to cancer also lead to the observations of abnormalities in metabolism. In the wake of the DCA furor, there have been data reported suggesting that the metabolic derangements may actually occur first or simultaneously with the mutations.

This fascinating basic science met the public in January 2007, when Michelakis and his colleagues at the University of Alberta in Edmonton published a seminal paper in Cancer Cell. In the study, DCA was tested in multiple cell culture and rodent models of cancer. In rats, tumor weights in animals treated with DCA were approximately 60% lower than the tumors in the untreated control groups. The drug increased apoptosis, decreased proliferation, and inhibits tumor growth by acting on a critical enzyme that controls the switch between aerobic and anaerobic metabolism without harming non-cancerous cells. Even better, DCA had already been FDA-approved for mitochondrial disorders, meaning that using it in humans would be an "off-label" use of an already existing drug to test it in humans. Thus, the regulatory requirements were considerably easier to meet for early drug trials in cancer.

This new round of excitement on the Internet has bubbled up because those same researchers recently published the results of a first, very small clinical trial of DCA. For the first part of the study, the researchers tested DCA on 49 tumors that had been taken out of human patients. They got some good results, and then tested DCA on five actual human cancer patients. But here's the thing—those humans were treated with more than just DCA. In fact, they were also getting chemotherapy and radiation treatments, stuff we already know is effective in some situations against some cancers.

So, why do that? If you're tying to figure out whether DCA is effective, why administer it alongside things we already know are effective? Doesn't that muddle your results?

It would, yes. If efficacy was the thing that was being tested here. Orac again:

For those not familiar with the various types of clinical trials, phase I clinical trials are not trials of efficacy. They are designed to determine two things: dose and dose-limiting side effects. They generally use a few patients (although five patients represent a rather small number, even for a phase I trial, which usually requires around 10 or 20), and it is not uncommon to perform a dose escalation. Researchers don't expect necessarily to see tumor response in a phase I trial, as that is not the purpose of the trial, but it is heartening when tumor shrinkage is observed, for obvious reasons. Phase 0 trials similarly are not therapeutic trials but rather seek to determine if the drug is doing biochemically what it is expected to do based on preclinical studies. The usual design is to take a biopsy of the tumor, test it for biochemical markers in the laboratory, treat the patient with experimental drug, and then resect the tumor. The biochemical markers in the resected tumor are then compared with those measured in the pre-treatment biopsy. The idea is to see whether the drug can recapitulate biochemical changes in actual living tumors in human patients, the idea being that, if it can, then the drug is "hitting the target" (i.e., its molecular target) and therefore "working." Whether its "working" actually shrinks tumors or results in prolonged patient survival is then the next question that has to be tested.

Five different patients, in different stages of cancer, and using different treatment regimens took DCA in addition to their ongoing traditional cancer treatments. One died. When you look at all the patients' tumors, there's evidence that the DCA did what the researchers expected it to do—which is good, and is part of the process of studying a chemical like this—but it isn't the same as evidence that DCA cured anybody.

Basically, as I said before, DCA is an interesting and promising chemical that could, someday end up being a treatment for some cancers. But that has by no means been proven yet. Scientists are studying this chemical the same way they study all promising chemicals. It's a slow process, one that involves many little steps of research—any of which could easily be overblown into something that it is not. This is probably not the last time you will hear about DCA. And there is a good chance that the next time you hear about it, it still won't be because the chemical has been proven to work. You'll just be hearing about another link in the chain of evidence.

The snail's pace of cancer research is frustrating. Especially to people who actually have cancer right now. It's easy to wonder, "Why don't we just give DCA to cancer patients who want to try it, and see what happens?" That's a tough a question. And it doesn't have any easy answer. I'm going to pass this back to Orac just one more time:

... there is always a conflict between wanting to do something now for suffering patients, damn the consequences, and following the scientific method to demonstrate efficacy and safety. Our nation has been at both extremes. Indeed, until 1906, pharmaceutical companies could make essentially any claims and sell essentially anything to the public as a drug without regulation. We all know how well that worked out. Early in the history of the FDA, as Dr Jerome Groopman points out, companies often tested new drugs by sending them to doctors to offer to their patients, asked for little information regarding side effects and complications, and had no standard criteria for efficacy. There was a reason we moved away from such a system.

Many are the lists of new "miracle cures" that have met this same fate. The difference today is that the Internet has allowed news of these drugs to be disseminated to more people than ever before--and faster than every before. Moreover, it has linked patients and activists into mutually supportive disease-specific communities, who can inform and educate each other, as well as publicizing research about their disease and lobbying legislators. The dark side of this power, however, is that it can facilitate the spread of false hope and the demand for a drug after only cell culture and animal work, before it even makes it to human trials.

Emotion is easy. Conspiracy mongering is even easier. Balancing harms versus benefits, risks and rewards, all the while doing the best for each patient that we can is very, very hard.

Here's a couple of links I'd recommend for further reading:
• Dichloroacetate (DCA) and cancer: Déjà vu all over again—This is the recent Orac blog post where the quotes in this post of mine come from. If you're interested, there is a lot more detail in here about DCA, and about the research that's been done on it to date. There are also some good links to previous stuff Orac has written about DCA.

• Another cure for cancer?—This is from the Skeptic blog, where Dr. Steven Novella talks a lot more about the conspiracy theory part of this DCA story, and pokes some neat holes in it.

• The Hidden Cancer Cure—DCA isn't the only supposed perfect cancer killer that is being suppressed by powerful forces. This Steven Novella post, from last February, talks about the standard cancer cure conspiracy narrative, and why it doesn't really mesh with reality. I'd recommend bookmarking this, and pulling it out every time you hear about a miracle cancer cure.

Image: Cancer?, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from runran's photostream

MAFIAA wants warrantless searches of CD and DVD factories

Posted: 18 May 2011 09:45 PM PDT

The MPAA and RIAA are pushing California legislation that would allow police to search optical disc duplication plants without a warrant; the bill's passed two state senate committees.

"The crime of illegal mass reproduction of music and movies is a serious problem. Last year alone, more than 820,000 illegal discs were seized by law enforcement authorities in California," state Sen. Alex Padilla, a Los Angeles-area Democrat and author of the legislation, said in a statement. "Fraudulent CDs and DVDs undermine our economy and California's role as a global leader in music and film. They steal revenue from artists, retailers, and our entertainment sector."

RIAA Legislation: No Warrant Required to Search, Seize Optical-Disc Plants

And now, a moment of silence for the Prophet Hen of Leeds

Posted: 19 May 2011 07:32 AM PDT

The Christian Science Monitor would like to take this moment to remind everyone of five previous (and utterly incorrect) attempts to predict the end of the world. My favorite: The 1806 prediction by the Prophet Hen of Leeds, who was a chicken. It's a tale that is one part Zuckerman's Famous Pig, one part Jesus on toast, and one part Humane Society nightmare.

Interview with Mark Kelly and Shuttle Endeavour astronauts, live from space

Posted: 19 May 2011 07:29 AM PDT

[Video Link] Miles O'Brien interviewed the Endeavour crew in a "live from space" webcast this morning, for PBS NewsHour. The interview took place as the shuttle and space station complex flew about 250 miles above earth, traveling at 17,500 miles per hour. Bad ass! Transcript here.

America's first monorail: Even older than I thought

Posted: 19 May 2011 07:24 AM PDT

The other day, I ran across some photos of Fawkes' Aerial Swallow, a circa-1910 monorail built on a ranch in what is now Burbank, California. The site where I found the photos, and a couple of others, referred to the Aerial Swallow as America's first monorail. But, in the comments on that post, several people noted earlier examples that put the Swallow to shame.

The photo above, for instance, is a stereoscope image of General LeRoy Stone's Centennial Monorail, which ferried attendees of the 1876 Centennial Exposition between the Agricultural Hall and the Horticultural Hall. (Thanks to Square for linking me to that one!)

Ten years later, another monorail was operating, this time in the Boston area. And unlike the Centennial Monorail or the Swallow, this one really looked like the Fantasy Steampunk Monorail of Dreams.

Look at the wheel configuration! How badass is that?

Invented by Joe V. Meigs, the Boston monorail was designed for a top speed of 20 miles per hour, and to be able round tight corners without disturbing the passengers inside. The train cars themselves were sleek and rounded. The Scientific American article describing Meigs' monorail goes into a lot of explanation about why the rounded shape was clearly mechanically and practically superior, but you kind of get the impression that, even then, everybody just knew that shape made it look more futuristic and awesome.

According to a 1992 article in The Boston Globe, the Meigs monorail failed not because of technical problems, but because of some literally heated competition—Meigs' test line was the victim of arson and vandalism before it was finally shut down in 1894. (Thanks to Rus Gant!)

If you want more info on early monorails in America, I'd recommend checking out this New York Times Magazine story from May 29, 1910. Suggested by Ironic Sans, the article uses several (mostly European) monorails as examples of the different types of monorail one can build.

In conclusion: MONORAIL!

Sherlock Holmes as a series of exciting graphic novels

Posted: 05 May 2011 06:30 AM PDT

Today marks the publication of The Valley of Fear the fourth and final volume in Self Made Hero's graphic novel adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle's four full-length Sherlock Holmes novels. Adapted by Ian Edginton and drawn by INJ Culbard, these four volumes are among the most exciting treatments of the Holmes novels that I've ever seen -- Culbard's pulpy, golden-age illustration style complements Edginton's sharp eye for pacing to great effect. The books hew very closely to the original Doyle novels, abdriging the less-interesting expository sections and stage-direction through the use of cleverly juxtaposed panels, which, though often wordless, keep the action moving at great potboiler pace (click through below to see some examples of the great art in these books).

Each volume is introduced by a short essay from a Holmes scholar or contemporary mystery novelist, providing excellent context for the story, its original production, and the way it was initially received. I've loved Sherlock Holmes all my life, and I've read the original novels a dozen times or more, but these adaptations still brought new life and energy to the familiar texts. But they're not just a great complement for a Holmes-lover's collection -- they'd make an excellent introduction to the original stories, for adults and sharp adolescents alike.

Sherlock Holmes Graphic Novels

CDC explains how to prepare for a zombie apocalypse

Posted: 18 May 2011 09:42 PM PDT

The US Centers for Disease Control have published their plan for keeping America safe during a zombie uprising. It's an exercise in general disaster preparedness, and a clever way of getting people engaged in keeping themselves and their communities safe in the event of unexpected bad stuff.

If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine). It's likely that an investigation of this scenario would seek to accomplish several goals: determine the cause of the illness, the source of the infection/virus/toxin, learn how it is transmitted and how readily it is spread, how to break the cycle of transmission and thus prevent further cases, and how patients can best be treated. Not only would scientists be working to identify the cause and cure of the zombie outbreak, but CDC and other federal agencies would send medical teams and first responders to help those in affected areas (I will be volunteering the young nameless disease detectives for the field work).

Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse

(Image: Zombie Walk 2010 - Curitiba, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from nivaldoarruda's photostream)

Legal rebuttal: "vade et caca in pilleum et ipse traheatur super aures tuo"

Posted: 19 May 2011 05:07 AM PDT

Eric Tukewitz, a New York lawblogger, was one of many, many people who wrote about a badly managed legal defense from an inexperienced lawyer representing an accused murderer. The defense was handled very badly, and resulted in a mistrial, and then observers remarked in depth on the website of Joseph Rakofsky, the inexperienced lawyer in question, and on the erroneous impression of vast experience that the website created.

Rakofsky has responded by suing everyone involved, from the Washington Post, who covered the story (in which they quote the judge in the case, remarking unfavorably on Rakofsky's legal prowess), to the American Bar Association, to the large number of lawbloggers who wrote about him.

Tukewitz is just one of the lawbloggers in question, but he's come up with a legal rebuttal to Rakofsky's suit, which he considers baseless: "vade et caca in pilleum et ipse traheatur super aures tuo," which, loosely translated, means "Go shit in a hat and pull it down over your ears" (lit., "go shit in a [knit] hat & let that same hat itself be pulled over your ears.").

Now that's the law at its finest!

What was Rakofsky thinking? That a bunch of lawyers that make their living in the well of the courtroom, accustomed to walking a high-wire without a net as we cross-examine hostile witnesses, would somehow cower in fear at an utterly frivolous lawsuit? Did he think that those of us that write blogs, for all to see, might not somehow have a basic grasp of the First Amendment? Didn't he know, well before he even went to law school, that people have a right to set forth their opinions? How could he survive law school and pass a bar exam without knowing constitutional fundamentals? Perhaps the better question, why wasn't he thinking of what would happen in response to such a suit? Was he a spoiled child that got everything he wanted simply by throwing a tantrum?
And those of us that are practicing lawyers are the small fries, compared with our co-defendants Washington Post, American Bar Association and Thompson Reuters. Like they are going to roll over and pull down their articles? Good grief.