Apreche.net » Science

Put Iron in the Ocean to Stop Global Warming?

Apreche — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 19:04:19 +0000

I am a software engineer. I am not qualified to say whether or not this is a good idea. However, I do want to make a point that I have made many times in the past. If global warming is real, and we decide it is something we want to avoid. The only way to realistically solve such a problem is with new science, such as this. Decreasing energy usage, carbon footprints, recycling, etc. will all theoretically help to delay the bad news. However, even if everyone became a super green hippy, it would still eventually come. Unless you want the world to give up electricity, rapid transportation, rapid communication, etc. we will slowly but surely bring about this kind of end as long as we do it with our current technology. Only a new advance in science that allows us to find a way to more efficiently use solar energy, put CO2 on the bottom of the ocean, or something else similar, will save us. If you are really worried, you should tell your representatives you want your tax money to go towards scientists like these.

BoingBoing Believes in Bullshit

Apreche — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 13:47:24 +0000

I am a big fan of the blog BoingBoing. It is, as it says, a directory of wonderful things. And the editors of BoingBoing are very intelligent people including the likes of Cory Doctorow and Xeni Jardin who I have much respect for. They often put up links to some of my favorite other smart people on the Internet like Douglas Rushkoff and James Randi.

But this morning, that all changed. Apparently Mark Frauenfelder is a BoingBoing editor who is a complete idiot. He put up a post supporting homepathic “medicine”. It is well known that homeopathy is complete bullshit. Just do a search at the JREF and you will learn all you need to know about the farce that is Zicam. I mean seriously, if it was actually a cure for the common cold don’t you think doctors all over would be going nuts and such?

The worst part is that there are reports Zicam is causing loss of smell to people. I don’t have evidence to say wheter it does or does not. But let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if cramming completely useless jellies up your nose screwed up your olfactory nerve.

What it all comes down to is that I’ve lost a little respect for BoingBoing and consider this Mark Frauenfelder to be a complete idiot. Posts made by him in the future will be examined thoroughly. Hopefully the other skeptical and intelligent BoingBoing editors will put him in his place. Join me in tagging this on del.icio.us as flimflam.

del.icio.us Flim Flam Tag

Apreche — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 01:08:33 +0000

There has been something bothering me very recently that I would like to share with you. I’ve been getting all my news from the Internet for over 6 years now, and I can’t say I’m more pleased. Google, Firefox, RSS, del.icio.us and others have all combined to make my browsing experience better and better over the years. Thanks to these technologies I can acquire new information in a very small amount of time without having to manually filter out a lot information I don’t care for.

The problem is that occasionally a bad story slips in. By bad story I don’t just mean a story I don’t care about. I’m talking about a story that is absolutely false. And not just a harmless lie, I’m talking about lies that can cause serious harm, even death, to those who believe them. Would you believe it there are people who claim that a vitamin cures cancer? The reality is that the vitamin turns into cyanide in your body and kills you. People who do not know better beleive this drek.

In the case of the mass media or an editor-controlled source of news like a newspaper or Slashdot this problem isn’t so bad. I’m not saying that the stories don’t show up in those places, that couldn’t be further from the truth. But at least there is a single person who can be forced to take responsibility for publishing dangerous and misleading information and presenting it as truth. In the case of more democratic websites like digg and del.icio.us popular this is a more difficult problem.

If a deceiving website appears on Digg or del.icio.us it is because it has already deceived enough people to make it to the top of the ranks. The trouble begins when these things make it near the top of the charts, they get increased exposure and cause more harm. I’m sure the people who run these websites do not want to promote this false information. But at the same time they do not want to ruin the pure democracy of their sites. I understand their feelings and I actually agree with them.

Since these are websites where the content is completely democratically controlled by the users we need to take a stand and vote against any bad items we see. The trouble is that the software running these sites does not allow negative votes. You can’t “undigg” something and you can’t subtract a link on something for del.icio.us popular. So what are we to do? I have a possible solution for del.icio.us that can work if it gains enough support. I’m still thinking about digg.

The next time you see something on del.icio.us popular that is complete bullshit make a link to it and add the tag “flimflam”. Yes, I know, this will cause the link to become even more popular. But if you don’t add any other tags besides flimflam it will only rise up the popular and flimflam pages. If awareness of the tag spreads then people will take notice of things on the popular list with the flimflam tag. Also, people might just monitor the flimflam tag on its own to find out things which are fake. There is a chance for abuse if people mark things as flimflam which are not. However, the democracy of the system should make sure that only real flim flam is heavily tagged as such.

For Digg, I don’t know what to do. The only thing I can come up with is to post a story contradicting the original and then digging it up as high as possible. That is no easy task. If anyone comes up with anything better, I’d love to hear it.

So next time you see something promoting alternative medicine, scientology, pseudoscience, etc. on del.icio.us tag it as flimflam. Then be sure to keep a close eye on the flimflam tag to be sure that you aren’t deceived by anything fake. Let’s use the democratic power of these sites to keep them free of the crap that infests the rest of the net.