The CBC’s The National ran an exposé on Dr. Ranjit Kumar Chandra. It turns out he’s been faking his research data for 20 years: Chandra claimed to have given 96 healthy seniors from St. John’s a daily multivitamin pill for a year. He then tested their memory for improvements. But the test results didn’t make …
Author Archives: paulschreiber
tim redmond loses it
the san francisco bay guardian‘s editor, tim redmond, has been drinking something funny lately, resulting in him ranting against craigslist: The problem with that is simple: When Craig comes to town (and he’s coming to just about every town in the nation soon), the existing community institutions – say, the locally owned weekly newspaper – …
when your warranty expires
Ssomeone called me last week and asked what do about his 16-month-old monitor that had just died. He had already shown it to a dealer, and the dealer told him there would be a $500 minimum charge. Since monitors aren’t something you can easily troubleshoot or repair, i started think about ways to avoid paying …
o’reilly gets skewered
Thanks, Keith Olbermann — that was excellent.
one expensive VISIT
Since January 2004, the US-VISIT program has apprehended nearly 1,000 people. Out of 44 million. At a cost of $15 billion. That’s $15 million per bad guy caught.
cash cows explained
at work, i posed the question “can vegetarians have cash cows?” the answer: since a cash cow is something that generates cash, and vegetarians are okay with consuming animal products (but not animals), vegetarians can indeed have cash cows. vegans, on the other hand, cannot.
musician bingo
Some musicians are more comfortable in studio than on stage, and it shows. While on stage, they often resort to clichés and canned lines. We should have a game called “musician bingo.” We can print out cards and bring them to shows. Here’s what I have so far: musician mentions name of city musician asks …
the west wing
Why Farhad Manjoo still watches The West Wing: The show is a fiction, certainly. There isn’t a politician in the world like Jed Bartlet, an exceedingly smart, (mostly) honest man with principles, who doesn’t govern by politics, who takes counsel from the cooler, calmer heads on his staff, and even from his opponents. Today in …
great speeches of the 21st century
Robert F. Kennedy at the Sierra Club, September 10, 2005 [via Wil]: I do 40 speeches a year in red states, and there is no difference between how Republican audiences and Democratic audiences react when they hear what this White House and this Congress are doing. There is no difference except that the Republicans come …
saying no to diamonds
A couple of months ago, Sarah got engaged. She declined to get an engagement ring (she doesn’t elaborate on her reasons). This, in my opinion, was an excellent decision. Why? Since then, I came across an Econ-Atrocity Bulletin “Ten reasons why you should never accept a diamond ring from anyone, under any circumstances, even if …