But it's funny to me - I just read, as an example in my experimental design textbook, the design of a 1976 study on whether vitamin C prevents the common cold. About 37% of the treatment group got the cold, whereas 38% of the control group got it: fail to reject the null hypothesis. It's in my textbook as an example of good design. Yet people are very willing to believe vitamin C will help the cold, partly because it's "natural", even as they disbelieve in the efficacy of, say, the measles vaccine for preventing measles, despite the fact that we have very good statistical evidence for it. They talk suspiciously about the profits of Big Pharma, how they're pushing these vaccines so they get the big bucks, while turning a blind eye to the supplement industry, a very blind eye.

So, yeah, this means I'm dinking around on the internets rather than doing my experimental design homework. It's hard to get started.

The Republican congressional candidate for my district is appallingly bad in some ways. He is also in the lead. The Humane Society tried to air some ads talking about his controversial position on dog-fighting, but a few TV stations (in the more conservative areas) refused to air them. To be perfectly fair, his remarks on the matter were intended to convey his opposition to making dog fighting and such a federal crime, as there are already adequate measures in place on the state level (in his opinion), as well as expressing his concern for the principle that it is more important to deal with injustices concerning humans than to fix animal problems. He was extremely inept in his expression of those concerns, however.

Maybe I'm turning boring and crazy. I fill my facebook feed with links about vaccination, climate change, and statistics, as well as occasional political snark.

Not that I'm a football fan in any way, but I'm very surprised that the local team is 4-1.

It really does annoy me when I see s-i-l commenting on somebody's wall posts about how they shouldn't get a flu shot since they are quite likely to follow her advice.

I've been thinking about Russian politics lately. I kind of have the feeling that it is what attempts at libertarianism would wind up producing, but I have to know more about the system than I do to say that confidently.

I played the Bill O'Reilly vs John Stewart debate in the background while "working" this afternoon. Amusing, interesting, irrelevant.