Dragon*Con 2009

I have returned from Dragon*Con and managed to figure out Picasa well enough to have a LOT of pictures uploaded. You can view the main album there, but here are a few highlights.



And I also managed to attend the Arc Attack concert at the Mad Scientists' Ball on Sunday night. We control the Lightning!

Zentra Happy Pills

I've been hearing ads for a product called "Zentra" on the radio lately. They make it sound like a medication to treat depression, but it's obviously not a medicine, because the commercials lack all the disclaimers that are required for pharmaceutical commercials, and the Zentra website has fine print that says, "These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration." It's sold as a dietary supplement, so naturally the disclaimer also says, "This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease."

On the other hand, their radio ad claims that "users have compared the effect of Zentra to falling in love" or "an overwhelming sensation that all is well in the world, and things are getting better" (paraphrased, I don't remember the exact terms from the ad, but they were similarly glowing). Note that the producers don't claim themselves that Zentra has these effects, they just say that some customers report them.

I can't even find an ingredient list for the stuff on the website. Since it's sold as a dietary supplement, I'm pretty sure it will just list an assortment of vitamins and minerals. They don't peddle it as homeopathy, but there's still no sign of a clinical trial or any other legitimate evidence to support that it actually does anything significant to reduce depression or improve mood.

This strikes me as a dodgy, sneaky ad campaign designed to separate people with mental health issues from their money by hinting -- if not actually promising -- that their product is as effective as real depression medication without the side-effects associated with real medication, which they make sure to say Zentra doesn't have.

Update:

Reader SKN990 directed me to the ingredient listings for the two Zentra supplements.

Zentra Complete utilizes a proprietary formula derived from b-vitamin molecules which an excellent source of energy, feelings of overall wellness and calm, improved memory, focus and concentration without the side effects of caffiene.

Zentra Daily (Day Time Stress Relief Formula) contains magnolia bark extract (standardized for honokiol), Phenibut, GABA, and Picamilon.

Zentra Complete (Night Time Stress Relief Formula) contains Vitamin B12, Sulbutiamine (a vitamin B1 derivative), and Pyrithioxine (a vitamine B6 derivative, also known as Pyritinol).

A study published on PubMed does show reduction in some stress indicators in rodents from a mixture of honokiol and magnolol (another compound extracted from magnolia bark), although I have no idea how the dosage in the mice compares to the dosage in Zentra for humans.

Phenibut apparently also has real effects on mood in mice.

GABA is gamma-Aminobutyric acid that apparently functions as a neurotransmitter, although I can’t claim to understand neurochemistry well enough to properly interpret the extract of the article.

Picamilon is a combination of GABA and niacin (vitamin B3), and one study describes it as a known nootropic: a drug that enhances cognition, memory, attention, motivation, and concentration.

A study of sulbutiamine says, “Sulbutiamine has no antidepressive effect but it can… facilitate the rehabilitation of patients in their social, professional and family life functioning.”

Pyrithioxine is lab-created variant of vitamin B6 that apparently does have some effect on chemical activity in the brain, as well.

All-in-all, it looks like Zentra could legitimately affect a person's mood and relieve depression. I do not see any studies or evidence to support the glorious language used in their advertising, however. Some of the ingredients are listed as over-the-counter or even prescription medications in some countries, although Zentra is being sold as a dietary supplement in the US with claims that it is perfectly safe to use. Given that some of its contents really do seem to have chemical effects in the brain, I would hesitate to say that it's perfectly safe, although it is probably quite low in risk (especially at the doses they're probably recommending).

In a nutshell, if Zentra affects mood as much as their advertising implies (and they make it sound like heroin with their talk of "blissful" sensations), it's probably not perfectly safe. On the other hand, if it's perfectly safe, it's probably not as effective as they want you to think.

• Honokiol study
• Phenibut study
• GABA study
• Pyrithioxine study that describes Picamilon as nootropic
• Pyritinol study

A Quotation

"False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutory pleasure in proving their falseness: and when this is done, one path toward error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened." --Charles Darwin

Kinda prophetic, actually when you realize how many false "facts" you get thrown at you every day by creationists.

Skeptics' Circle 116

Yep, I'm in the Skeptics' Circle again, this time hosted at Beyond the Short Coat. Of course, if you're finding out about it here, you've probably already read my entries, but you should read all the other skeptic goodness, too.

Why Fighting Creationism is Important

Some people are far more eloquent than I, and they have also learned video editing.

Is this transparent or what?

How about another scam email? This one wants me to give away my email account password. Of course, the most obvious giveaway was that it didn't even have a Charter return address. The shoddy grammar and total lack of the usual Charter branding in the formatting of the email don't help.

This message is to inform all our CHARTER email account owners that we are currently upgrading our data base and e-mail account center.We are deleting all unused CHARTER email account to create more space for new accounts.

To prevent your CHARTER account from closing you will have to update it
below so that we will know that it's a present used account.

CONFIRM YOUR EMAIL IDENTITY BELOW
Email Address:...............
Password:..................
Date of Birth :.................

Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his or her account will lose his or her account permanently.

Thanks For your understanding.
Charter Communication

No, you may not have my email address, password, and date of birth for use in your identity theft schemes, moron.

Lim Yang: Parter in Crime

It's about time I made use of a scam email that's been sitting in my mailbox since March.

My proposition to you is to seek your consent, A deceased client of mine, that shares the same last name as yours, who died as the result of heart-related conditionin March 12th 2007. His heart condition was due to the death of all the members of his family in the tsunami disaster on the 26th December 2004 in Sumatra Indonesia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake.

I have contacted you to assist in distributing the money left behind by my client before it is confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank where this deposit valued at Nineteen million dollars (US$19million dollars) is lodged. This bank has issued me a notice to contact the next of kin, or the account will be confiscated. I will like you to acknowledge the receipt of this e-mail as soon as possible via my private email [deleted].

Best regards,
Lim Yang
Attorney at Law

Yeah, right. A lawyer is going to be dumb enough to ask a stranger to help him embezzle money from a bank just because I happen to have the same last name as his client.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- people with millions of dollars in the bank have estate plans; any fortune they have in a bank account is not going to be left hanging with no one to claim it. The deceased in this particular scam had three years to figure out how to dispose of his millions upon his death.

People who send these emails count on the world being full of gullible morons to receive them.

Darth Hammer

Saw this first from Elwyn on his LiveJournal...


EMBED-MC Hammer Vader Busts a Move - Watch more free videos

My brain hurts, now.

Food Porn: Jamaican Escovitch

Sometimes I think I watch the Food Network too much. Earlier this week, I watched an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and the dish in question was Jamaican Escovitch. It just sounded so good that I had to make it, and I must say, it turned out really well. In fact, it may be the best fish dish I've ever eaten, let alone prepared myself.

So I looked it up on the internet to see how it's made. I have a few tweaks (using tips from the chef in the Throwdown episode), so here's what's in mine:

• 3 tilapia fillets (about 3/4 of a pound)
• 1 large onion
• 1 medium carrot
• half of a Scotch Bonnet pepper, seeded and cut into thin strips
• 1 teaspoon of minced garlic
• 1 tablespoons canola oil
• half of a bay leaf
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp Allspice berries (optional)
• 1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup white wine vinegar
• 1/8 cup water
• 1-1/2 limes, sliced into wedges
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup flour
• 1/4 cup peanut or corn oil
• 1/2 tsp whole black peppercorns (optional)
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1/8 cup brown sugar

With the exception of adding the brown sugar when adding the water, vinegar, and lemon juice, the process is pretty much what you can read at GroupRecipes.com, so I'll let you follow the link for that part so they can get their hits.

And incidentally, Bobby lost.

UPDATE: As suggested at GroupRecipes.com, Escovitch does make a nice cold lunch.

Food Porn: Aloo Matar

Yes, yes... I've been a terrible blog slacker. I haven't been out doing much of interest frankly, so I haven't had much to post about. But, the Saga can't be left to decay indefinitely, so when I made a tasty Indian dish, it was time to produce a new Food Porn entry. It amuses me how many perverts find their way to the Saga this way, only to be disappointed by the lack of nekkid wimmin.


So, let's discuss the ingredients. This is from a recipe on AllRecipes.com, but with minor tweaks. I've highlighted the changes below.

• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 medium onions, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon ginger garlic paste
• 1 bay leaf
• 4 large potatoes, peeled and chopped
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1/2 cup of canned tomatoes with green chilis, pureed
• 1-1/2 teaspoons curry powder
• 1-1/2 teaspoons paprika
• 1 teaspoon white sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

I discovered after getting home with the groceries that I didn't actually have the canned tomatoes I thought I had, so I used the tomatoes with green chilis; a little extra heat wasn't going to bother me. I actually have garam masala around somewhere, but I didn't feel like hunting for it right then, and the curry powder was handy. I wasn't particularly careful with measurements, and I naturally used a good bit more cilantro than the recipe called for.

The process is pretty simple and already described on AllRecipes, so I won't steal their hits by repeating it here. This recipe makes enough for four people, so I should have lunches for a couple of days.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

So, William and Juliana and I went to see Transformers 2 on opening night. I have to call this one another big win. As with the first film, the humor gets more sitcommy than I like at times, and this time it really pushed the limits of my tolerance, but the pace of the movie is still fast enough for me to get over that pretty quickly. There are also times when Michael Bay and the writing staff are clearly channeling George Lucas and James Cameron.

Please don’t be fooled into thinking this is a kids’ movie. You probably wouldn’t want your kids using some of this language in school, Megan Fox is definitely “Miss Fanservice” (with a little additional help, too), and the violence is intense. Incidentally, this movie is over two hours long, and probably the last half is a protracted battle, so expect to be very wired when you leave the theatre.

On the other hand, this movie is extremely pro-military. The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines must see Michael Bay as their number one advertising assistant, and the Coast Guard is probably wondering why they get left out.

Joining the Evil Alien Conspiracy

Because Hulu now has episodes of Babylon 5!

Something to Keep in Mind

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."
--Thomas Jefferson

And Now for Something Completely Different

Good old-fashioned Star Trek destroys Star Trek: Enterprise. Yay!

Poor Water Stanley

There's nothing quite so amusing as a good scam letter. I've let this one linger in my email box for a while, but finally gotten around to it.

Dear friend, As you read this, I do not want you to feel sorry for me, because I believe everyone will die someday.

So this time, instead of an appeal to my greed, I'm getting an appeal to my sympathy. At least it's not a disaster exploit.

My name is water stanley a merchant in London, United Kingdom.

For a British national, he has appallingly poor English grammar. That's also a rather odd name for a Brit (I would have expected Walter rather than "water"), and if memory serves, the British typically capitalize their names. These little details don't necessarily mean the writer isn't British, but they do raise my doubts.

I have been diagnosed with esophageal cancer and have been in the hospital for a very long time. It has defied all forms of medical treatment,and right now I have about few months to live, according to the medical experts. I have not particularly lived my life so well, as I never really cared for anyone (not even myself) but my business and wealth. Though I Am very rich, I was never generous, I was always hostile to people and only focused on my business as that was the only thing I cared for. But now I regret all this as I now know that there is more to life than just wanting to have or make all the money in the world.

The appeal to my sympathy continues. Most of us want to feel like we've been generous and helped our fellow human beings, but we feel like we haven't had the opportunity to be as generous as we would like. "Water" is plucking at those harp strings.

I believe when God gives me a second chance to come to this world I would live my life a different way from how I have lived it till date. Now that God is calling me, I have willed and shared most of my properties and assets to my immediate and extended family members, including few close friends. I want God to be merciful to me and accept my soul, so I have decided to give alms to charity organizations, as I want this to be one of the last good deeds I do on earth before Gods call.

"Water" puts out an appeal to my religious sentiments, as well. I'm not exactly the most susceptible person in the world to such appeals, and there are plenty of evangelicals who might tell him that good works don't carry any weight with God, but there's no shortage of people who might feel the pull.

So far, I have distributed money to some charity organizations in the U.K, Algeria and Malaysia and some other countries. Now that my health has been deteriorated so badly, I cannot do this myself anymore. I once asked members of my family to close one of my accounts and distribute the money which I have there to charity organization in Bulgaria and Pakistan; they refused and kept the money to themselves. Hence, I do not trust them anymore, as they seem not to be contended with what I have left for them.

Betrayed by his greedy family; that's really sad. If only there were estate attorneys in the United Kingdom who specialized in helping wealthy people arrange for their assets to be distributed as they wanted at the time of their deaths. So sad.

The last of my money which no one knows of is the huge cash deposit of twenty eight million united states dollars ($28.000.000) that I have with a Bank. I would want you to help me collect this deposit on my behalf and distribute it to charity organizations in your country. I would want you to keep 20% of the funds to yourself and share the rest to charity organizations in your country. Reply this email as soon as possible if you are capable to handle this transaction on my behalf. My regards and Love to you and your family members. God be with you,

Water Stanley

Oh, I'm sorry, there is going to be an appeal to my greed. "Water" is going to trust me, a complete stranger, to donate over 22 million dollars to charities of my choice, keeping only about five and a half million for myself.

Once again, a scammer who hopes I'm stupid enough to believe there are absurdly wealth people who have no idea how to handle money. Do not fall for this crap, people! The rich don't get that way by being idiots.

Silly TV: Deadliest Warrior

Spike TV has been running a new show lately that I find amusing, in an MST3K sort of way. The show is Deadliest Warrior, and it purports to determine which of two historical “warriors” would prevail if they had to fight.

Each week on Deadliest Warrior, a new episode will pit two of the most feared warriors civilization has ever known against each other. Along with the use of 21st century science and the latest in CGI technology, each episode enlists warrior-specific world-class fighters and experts to provide insight into what makes these combatants tick, analyzing every facet of their unique skills of destruction, culminating in a head-to-head final fight between two legends of the battlefield that will produce the deadliest warrior.

Recent match-ups include “Gladiator vs Apache”, “Viking vs Samurai”, and “Knight vs Pirate”. The general setup of the show is to get some “experts” to evaluate the weapons used by the warriors in the contest, feed this information into a “state-of-the-art computer program”, and get an “objective” conclusion about the result. Each warrior has special advocates pulled in to argue for their side during the evaluations, and the smack-talk flows thick.

I’m surprised that they don’t hit any of the “classic” matchups that I would expect: “Pirate vs Ninja” or “Knight vs Samurai”, for example. They seem to prefer throwing opponents with radically different fighting styles against each other. The outcome of such a contest would really be determined more by the circumstances of the fight than by the equipment of the combatants. For instance, in “Gladiator vs Apache”, the outcome would largely depend on whether the battle was more like a woodland ambush or an arena bout.

Alas, the show never addresses the circumstances of the fight. The evaluation revolves entirely around the amount of damage the combatants' weapons can do to various ballistics gel dummies, pig bodies, and other human analogs. It goes without saying that the choice of weapons assigned to each combatant will significantly affect the outcome of a contest.

As a quick example, we’ll look at one contest: “Samurai vs Viking”. Each warrior comes to the fight with four weapons, with each weapon assigned to a category: long-range, mid-range, short-range, or special. The weapons assigned to the Samurai are the katana (short-range, the classic Samurai sword), naginata (mid-range, a pole-arm used for both slashing and thrusting), yumi (long-range, a type of bow), and kanabo (special, essentially a weighted club). The Viking comes to the fight with a great axe (short-range), long sword (mid-range), spear (long-range), and shield (special).

The show’s methodology is to directly compare the long-range weapons to each other, the short-range weapons to each other, etc. The evaluators give an “edge” to one warrior or the other for each weapon type, depending on which weapon did more damage in their tests. I don’t really know how their “state-of-the-art computer program” works, but I’d have to guess that it starts the combatants at long-range and performs some kind of test to see if one warrior kills the other. If there’s no kill, it advances them to mid-range and tests again, and so on until it finally gets a kill at short-range. The program runs through the entire procedure 1000 times, and the warrior with the most wins is declared "the deadliest warrior" (shown in a dramatization that apparently does not try to simulate the computer outcomes in any meaningful way).

I immediately see a problem with their evaluation, though. They evaluated the Viking shield based on how much damage it could do with a shield punch, compared to the damage that could be inflicted by the kanabo. It goes without saying that the kanabo is a more practical way to deal damage than a shield punch, but the usefulness of the shield as a defense was never really evaluated.

For instance, they compared the yumi to the spear and concluded that the Samurai would have the advantage at long range. Now, I won’t dispute that the yumi has superior range and accuracy, but the Viking shield apparently wasn’t factored into the long-range portion of the contest. Bows were a well-known weapon to the Vikings, and any Viking with a grain of sense would put his shield up in front of him upon noticing that his enemy was armed with a bow, allowing him to close the distance in relative safety.

The shield would remain a factor at mid-range. If the Viking succeeds in blocking a stroke from the naginata with his shield, he can move inside it’s range.

And the shield continues to be a factor at short range. Here, the Samurai may decide to draw his katana, but the Viking has no incentive to abandon the protection of the shield to use the two-handed axe. In close combat, the Viking would probably continue using the long sword, if he had one (the reason many Vikings carried axes being that they were much less expensive than swords). The shield continues to afford extra protection for the Viking, allowing him to attack without being as vulnerable to counter-attack, and there’s a very real possibility that a katana slash would bite into the edge of the shield and stick, trapping the blade. Effectively disarmed, if only briefly, the Samurai would be extremely vulnerable in such a situation.

I’m not saying that the Viking should have won this match; I’m just saying that many factors affecting its outcome were overlooked. For instance, in their heyday, Samurai were primarily horse archers, not footmen. A Samurai on horseback with his bow would have a considerable advantage, as he would be able to maintain his distance and repeatedly attack his opponent with little danger of a counter-attack. As I said, the circumstances of these fights would have a huge effect on their outcome.

Even their weapon-to-weapon comparisons are dubious. For instance, their comparison of the Pirate cutlass to the Knight's broadsword resulted in an “even” evaluation, despite the fact that the cutlass is exactly the sort of weapon against which the Knight's armor (listed among his assets) would be most effective.

And let's not even start on their characterizations of which warrior had honor, discipline, and courage on his side; they don't really affect the outcomes, anyway.

So Deadliest Warrior is really a show about smack-talk and breaking things, not a serious scientific evaluation of historical combat practices. The outcomes seem to be based much more on popularity than on any real science, since getting a desired outcome is easy to achieve simply by choosing which weapon comparisons to make to give the desired results.

"Intelligent Designer" comes back in the comments

"Intelligent Designer" (Randy) finally got around to responding (see the comments) to my response to his refute...

Our different perspectives about the nature of DNA do indeed account for some of our disagreement. I don’t consider DNA to be a hodgepodge of genes in no particular order interspersed with vast amounts of gibberish. Instead I think that the majority of DNA appears to gibberish because the current scientific understanding of DNA has barely scratched the surface of what is really there. It only makes sense that scientists would figure out what the protein-coding sequences of DNA do first. It doesn’t make sense to jump to the conclusion that the rest of it is junk.

But let’s say for the sake of argument that you are right about the nature of DNA. Even in that case my argument is still valid. As you recall my calculation regarding the probability of information used a 151 character sequence. The average length of a gene is 1210 base pairs and is hardly equivalent to the three of four letter words used in your example.

Randy has taken the safe approach by claiming that the DNA that is currently considered "junk" by geneticists will eventually be found to be important. It's safe because it's a position that can't be falsified. There's no way I can possibly prove that "junk DNA" will never be found to have an important function. He can lurk in that nebulous "one day we may discover its importance" realm forever, because he has until the end of the universe to be disproven. All I can say is that since he can not show that "junk DNA" has a function, there's no evidence of a function. Generally speaking, the burden of proof is on the person who asserts the existence of a thing, not the person who denies it. To use a cliche, I can assert that there's an invisible, intangible dragon living in the shed behind my house, but do you have any reason to believe my assertion? Without any evidence that junk DNA serves a purpose (beyond adding to the medium in which mutation and subsequent selection can work), there's no reason to assume we will eventually find one. So "Yes", Randy, it does make sense to assume that DNA that has no known function is junk.

As to the rest of his case, no I don't see the validity. The average length of a gene may be 1210 base pairs (I haven't done a fact check on that), but the current average length of a gene is irrelevant. There are certainly many shorter genes, and there's no reason to assume that the current average must apply all the way back to the original molecule that started the process of evolution. I've already linked to a good explanation of abiogenesis, which works with self-replicating molecules that are composed entirely of junk DNA. You can get the ball rolling with pure static, so you don't need to have hundreds of base pairs in some kind of functional code for evolution to begin. From abiogenesis forward, any DNA strand that forms the simplest of productive genes is gravy.

The Ticking Time Bomb Challenge

I’m hearing this argument on talk radio a lot lately.

You are a government agent who has discovered a plot to set off a nuclear weapon in the US. You have captured one of the terrorists involved in the plot, and you are convinced that your captive knows where to find the bomb. You are also convinced that the bomb will go off in just a few hours, so time is of the essence. Would you torture the captive to make him tell you the location of the bomb?

This argument is designed to get you to admit that the federal government should not publicly outlaw “aggressive interrogation” techniques like waterboarding. If you say “yes”, you agree that such techniques should not be forbidden; if you say “no”, you put the well-being of one terrorist ahead of the lives of thousands of American citizens.

Let me go on record as saying that the government should unequivocally outlaw torture. Not only is it unethical, it’s an unreliable means of getting information. Victims of torture do not necessarily tell the truth. Generally speaking, they tell the torturer whatever they think will make the torture stop, whether it’s true or not. In the hypothetical situation, the interrogator really doesn’t have a way to tell if the captive is lying; anything the captive says could lead agents on a wild goose chase, making it even less likely that they’ll succeed in stopping the bomb.

But let’s say that I really am convinced that my captive has the information needed to save thousands of American lives and that I’m convinced I can get that information from him in time to do something about it. In that case, yes, I will use “aggressive techniques” to extract the information. I will not, however, complain when I’m sent to prison for torturing the guy. If the information was worth his pain and suffering, then it’s also worth my personal freedom.

Can we give this argument a rest, now?

Overachievement

This is a picture I took on my last trip to Pennsic, made into a poster with the BigHugeLabs motivational poster maker.



The Ashleys should get a kick out of it.

Reclaiming the Blade

This is apparently due for DVD release soon (if it isn't out already).