I struggled a bit trying to categorize this post: science, politics, culture, humor, or? It touches on them all and I chuckled (and, yes, groaned) as I read the original material:
Dean, at Powerline, leaps to the defense of Hindrocket in a post titled “Call me Stupid” and PZ Myers doesn’t hesitate.
Also, John Holbo on Hindrocket as Jonah Jameson via Fables of the Reconstruction.
Embed sensors and transmit the data to a collection device via Human Area Network (HAN).
I can think of a myriad of health care related applications for RedTacton’s technology, e.g., real time glucose monitoring for diabetics or real time micro dosing of medication in direct response to physiological changes. RedTacton has more suggestions.
Check it out and let your imagination run wild.
Via Medgadgets via Catallarchy.
Most of you are, by now, aware of the Choicepoint fiasco:
Criminals posing as legitimate businesses have accessed critical personal data stored by ChoicePoint Inc., a firm that maintains databases of background information on virtually every U.S. citizen, MSNBC.com has learned.
The incident involves a wide swath of consumer data, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, credit reports and other information. ChoicePoint aggregates and sells such personal information to government agencies and private companies.
Ed Foster notes:
What the ChoicePoint fiasco really shows we need, however, are baseline federal privacy standards that apply to all industries. Although it’s certainly ironic that the “nation’s leading provider of identification and credential verification services” couldn’t figure out it was selling our info to a ring of criminals, the real problem is that data brokers like ChoicePoint can legally sell our information to just about whomever they please.
Federal standards and regulations are invariably broken and generally never written with individual citizens in mind but Ed’s last point hits the nail on the head.
No institution, government or private, can be allowed to collect or distribute, for free or for fee, any information about an individual without that individuals specific consent on a per incident basis and if the distribution is for a fee then that individual must be compensated at a rate agreeable to the individual.
The Privacy Digest has more information on both what the Choicepoint breach means to individuals and what information they may have about you.
Get a healthy dose of medical reading at Grand Rounds XXII now up at Catallarchy.
Bird lovers, biologists, and the curious will find these skulls, bones, and accompanying text fascinating:
Seabirds live in a complicated world. They have to cope with very different situations: flying in all types of weather, walking on land, swimming in the water, digging burrows, diving under water etc. Seabirds also have to deal with a myriad of prey and food types. No wonder they developed a wide range of foraging techniques tuned to their main source of food: from the small zooplankton to dead whales. No wonder that there exist a great variety of seabirds with a likewise great variety of adaptations.
All of these adaptations are reflected by the built of the skeleton. Although the parts are treated separately, their form and function can only be understood by looking at the whole picture: the morphology of the bird in relation to is environment, its adaptations, its foraging strategies etc.
Here is the skull of a Caspian Tern:
Via Boing Boing.