Wow, Wikipedia shows Kevin Trudeau to be, if not a great snake oil salesman, an oft fined and imprisoned character. Hopefully his recent 10 year sentence in federal prison will keep him out of trouble for a while.
He has been selling goods with false claims for many years, and getting caught and fined most of the time. Good riddance to a person like that.
Let’s hope the owners of all the nail fungus scams take heart. I’m talking to you Fungavir, Purnail, Funginix, Fungusil, Fungisil, Zetaclear.
Update 5-14-15: I should add that the reason I am so bitter about Kevin Trudeau’s imprisonment is that I saw him on late night info-mercials for “Mega Speed Reading” and “Mega Memory” with Howard Berg. I knew they were shady when I watched the info-mercials and I was extremely bothered that they were playing on my desire to read faster and have a better memory.
If I see a correlation between two variables, is it generally correct terminology to say that one “predicts” the other? For example, in this chart, should I say that hours studied predict the grade received?
I would think one shouldn’t say “predicts” because that is a one-way term. For example, it is possible that A predicts B but B does not predict A. Waking up 10 minutes before sunrise every day predicts getting to see the sunrise often, but seeing the sunrise often wouldn’t necessarily predict your wake up time, especially if you work the night-shift.
I would say “there is a correlation between A and B” but without more research on the directionality of the relationship, I shouldn’t say “A predicts B” or “B predicts A”.
I’m asking because I’ve seen a few research papers that use this terminology and I wonder if I should adopt it.
I just repaired two bits of Ikea furniture by buying parts from SwedishFurnitureParts.com. [update 3-2017, it’s now furnitureparts.com] That was a much better solution than spending 2 hours going to an Ikea and fishing through their spare parts box. Thanks internet!
Here’s most of the Ikea manuals, in case you are looking for part numbers. http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/customer_service/assembly_instructions.html
Abigail Jane’s First 6 Weeks Video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHk4TOq5Mxk
The most vital message I’ve ever seen on a license plate! Hurray!
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
I worked on The Serpent Mother for Burning Man 2006. I can’t tell anymore if that was a long time ago or not. Regardless, here is a little tour…
Serpent Mother PDF Promo
Serpent Mother in Servo Magazine February 2007 PDF
Serpent Mother in IEEE Spectrum Magazine November 2006 PDF
The Serpent Mother in 2006. Image by Tristan Savatier.
Before I joined the Flaming Lotus Girls, one of their first and bestest pieces was The Seven Sisters. Image by Waldamar Horwat.
A closeup of Alcyon, my favorite of the Seven Sisters. A spinning ball of fire! Image by Cathy Lynch.
The Hand of God, another piece that predates my joining FLG. It can shoot liquid methanol under high pressure! Image by David Ellsworth.
The Serpent Mother. I helped build her! Image by Tristan Savatier.
Her tail. Image by Tristan Savatier.
She draws a crowd. Image by Caroline Miller (mills).
A big crowd. Image by Caroline Miller (mills).
One part I worked on was her LED underbelly. Image by Eddie Codel.
Propane flows through her spine like blood. Image by Caroline Miller (mills).
As I said I would, I cancelled my Godaddy.com DNS hosting because I found out about their long string of misogynistic advertisements. See my conversation with Godaddy folks about this. While they don’t run such ads any more, it is important to not encourage any company to benefit from such practices. They got big because of their negative publicity and that is not right.
Here is the Godaddy ad that broke the camel’s back.
My web hosting is through Dreamhost so I switched to Dreamhost DNS.
For Megan and my wedding, we created a nice website connected with our invitation.
(you may want to right-click to open these images in a new window because they are very large)
The wedding invitation was pretty rad. Lasercut and etched and cut in stainless steel by MyMetalBusinessCard.com, designed by our friend Sarahjane Bernhisel, owner of Bison Paper Company.
At the bottom, “Visit www.MeganAndLeeWedding.com”
Here are snapshots of the site:
Introducing Abigail!
Our dear daughter Abigail was born January 19th at 12:17pm! She came into this world quickly after a routine (and VERY fortuitously timed) non-stress test discovered a problem with reverse blood flow in the umbilical cord. Within 2 hours of the beginning of the appointment, mother, father, and baby met one another during a C-section!
Abigail’s birth was just a few weeks unexpectedly early but apparently it was time! Every hour she is getting stronger and it looks like she’ll be going home with us in a week or two. Every sign is excellent! Megan is doing very well, breastfeeding has been magical, and she’s been bounding around the hospital more quickly than much of the staff anticipated.
Love!
Megan, Lee, and Abigail
