Research suggests that, except among high-risk heart patients, the benefits of statins such as Lipitor are overstated.

If the drugs were used more rationally, drugmakers would take a hit. But the nation's health and pocketbook might be better off. Could it happen? Will data on NNTs, the weak link to cholesterol, and knowledge of genetic variations change what doctors do and what patients believe? Not until the country changes the incentives in health care, says UCLA's Hoffman. "The way our health-care system runs, it is not based on data, it is based on what makes money."

Do Cholesterol Drugs Do Any Good?

In a major strategic shift, France is setting up its first permanent naval base in the Persian Gulf, just across from Iran, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced during a visit yesterday to the United Arab Emirates.

The 400-strong military base will be built in Abu Dhabi, the wealthiest and most influential of the Emirates, and will include a significant intelligence operation, French officials said.

Right hand, left hand:

At first sight this is proof that capitalism works. Money is flowing from countries with excess savings to those that need it. Rather than blowing their reserves on gargantuan schemes, Arab and Asian governments are investing it, relatively professionally. But there are still two sets of concerns. The first has to do with the shortcomings of sovereign-wealth funds. The second, bigger, problem is the backlash they will surely provoke from protectionists and nationalists. Already, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has promised to protect innocent French managers from the "extremely aggressive" sovereign funds (even though none has shown much interest in his country).

France setting up naval base in Persian Gulf

"I admit it does sound crazy," says Michael Wong of his idea to use gold to clean up toxic waste. Wong plans to combine gold with palladium—an even more precious metal—to treat polluted groundwater beneath waste dumps and contaminated factories and military sites. "It not only works faster [than current methods], but a hundred times faster," Wong says, "and I bet it will be cheaper too."

A golden detergent? Here is Wong's trick: he creates nanoparticles of gold. In his realm, the work product is measured not in carats but in atoms. A thimbleful of coffee-colored solution contains 100 trillion gold spheres—each only 15 atoms wide, or about the width of a virus. Upon every golden nanosphere, Wong and his team dust a dash of palladium atoms. Think of an infinitely small ice-cream scoop flecked with sprinkles.

Mmm, ice cream.

Midas Touch

Not only am I a huge fan of software design patterns, I'm also strongly supportive of process in software. Process makes us strong. Process enables us to achieve highly metric-driven quality levels. Process allows us to attend meetings throughout every day, ensuring that any coding time we get will be that much more intense because it is necessarily so short and focused. And finally, process allows us to draw pretty charts and graphs on endless presentations.

Or, as I like to say it every morning when I wake up, "Software Is Process." For without the process, where would software engineers be but in their offices, cranking away code, pretending to be productive?

Now that people have had time to understand and incorporate the important patterns I discussed in my earlier Male Pattern Boldness article, it seems high time to tackle the larger topic of Software Processeseses.

...

Testosterone-Driven Development:

Like its namesake Test-driven Development, which is known for the requirement of engineers writing tests before code, Testosterone-driven Development focuses on testing first. But it does so in an an extremely aggressive manner, requiring every engineer to produce entire test suites, test frameworks, and test scripting languages for every line of product code written, including whitespace and comments. Engineers violating this contract are taken out back where they have the crap kicked out of them. Any code found to have bugs not caught by tests results in the offending engineer having to go three rounds with the project manager (with the engineer being handcuffed and blindfolded during the match). Finally, any bug found in tests will result in the engineer's body never being found again.

Expectations are high from this newcomer to the field, although to date none of the products using this process has left any survivors.

Crystal Methodology

It has now been more than ten years since Congress enacted section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. During that time courts have held that CDA 230 grants interactive online services of all types, including blogs, forums, and listservs, broad immunity from tort liability so long as the information at issue is provided by a third party. Relatively few court decisions, however, have analyzed the scope of this immunity in the context of “mixed content” that is created jointly by the operator of the interactive service and a third party through significant editing of content or shaping of content by submission forms and drop-downs. Accordingly, this is an area that we will be watching carefully and reporting on in the future.

So what are the practical things you can take away from this discussion? Here are five:

1. If you passively host third-party content, you will be fully protected against defamation and defamation-like claims under CDA 230.
2. If you exercise traditional editorial functions over user submitted content, such as deciding whether to publish, remove, or edit material, you will not lose your immunity unless your edits materially alter the meaning of the content.
3. If you pre-screen objectionable content or correct, edit, or remove content, you will not lose your immunity.
4. If you encourage or pay third-parties to create or submit content, you will not lose your immunity.
5. If you use drop-down forms or multiple-choice questionnaires, you should be cautious of allowing users to submit information through these forms that might be deemed illegal.

Primer on Immunity — and Liability — for Third-Party Content Under Section 230 of Communications Decency Act

Each month, Frank Furedi picks apart a really bad idea. This month he challenges the moralisation of science, and the transformation of scientific evidence into a new superstitious dogma.

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If science is turned into a moralising project, its ability to develop human knowledge will be compromised. It will also distract people from developing a properly moral understanding of the problems that face humanity in the twenty-first century. Those who insist on treating science as a new form of revealed truth should remember Pascal’s words: ‘We know the truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart.’

The tyranny of science

A recent slide deck from Brad DeLong. His parting words:

Good luck to Bernanke and company...

Cheers!

Are We in a Recession? What Will It Look Like If We Have One?

Bill St. Arnaud:

Like a slow-moving glacier, the Internet is relentlessly and inexorably pulverizing the beloved walled gardens of the telecommunications companies. In the past few days, there have been some exciting new developments on how the wireless carriers’ garden walls are starting to "come a tumblin' down."

Apple, Comcast, and others are making the Internet a much bigger pie where everyone can profit, rather than limiting themselves to decorative cup cakes. This is the future of the Internet. The carriers that try to buttress and reinforce their walled gardens are doomed to failure.

Carrier Garden Walls Are Tumbling Down

I believe in aristocracy ... — if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke. I give no examples — it is risky to do that — but the reader may as well consider whether this is the type of person he would like to meet and to be, and whether (going further with me) he would prefer that this type should not be an ascetic one. I am against asceticism myself. I am with the old Scotsman who wanted less chastity and more delicacy. I do not feel that my aristocrats are a real aristocracy if they thwart their bodies, since bodies are the instruments through which we register and enjoy the world. Still, I do not insist. This is not a major point. It is clearly possible to be sensitive, considerate and plucky and yet be an ascetic too, and if anyone possesses the first three qualities I will let him in! On they go — an invincible army, yet not a victorious one. The aristocrats, the elect, the chosen, the Best People — all the words that describe them are false, and all attempts to organize them fail. Again and again Authority, seeing their value, has tried to net them and to utilize them as the Egyptian Priesthood or the Christian Church or the Chinese Civil Service or the Group Movement, or some other worthy stunt. But they slip through the net and are gone; when the door is shut, they are no longer in the room; their temple, as one of them remarked, is the holiness of the Heart’s affections, and their kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide-open world.

-- Edward Morgan Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy, “What I Believe” (1951)

Forster’s Aristocracy

A few years ago, my first novel was published. It did pretty well, won an award, was translated and sold around the world; the movie rights were even optioned. Now I want to put it online — no charge, no hook, no catch. My motivation is simple: greed.

My publishers are resolutely opposed to this idea. They fear it will “devalue the brand” and set a dangerous precedent. They fear, intuitively but wrongly, that fewer people will buy a book that is also given away for free. But most of all, they fear the future — and with good reason. Book publishing is a dinosaur industry, and there’s a big scary meteor on the way.

Apocalypse Soon