Dustin Boyer

Quick Thoughts: Attraction and Sexy Advertising

Dustin Boyer — Tue, 21 May 2013 12:55:01 +0000

It’s interesting that so much time is spent in pursuit of beauty when that doesn’t necessarily correlate to how good someone is in bed. This obviously isn’t profound but it does help me to resist the allure of sex based advertising. When I’m being confronted with a dazzling photoshopped image luring me into some sort of mindless consumer interaction it’s nice to remember the person in question is probably only average to have sex with.

Speaking of which, I would really like to have sex in an antechoic chamber

News Roundup: Sloth Edition

Dustin Boyer — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:12:21 +0000

This is a video from AfrikaBurn (burning man in africa) that is quite compelling. I have the music on repeat. (via Brad)

Ex-African Dictator Mobuto Sese Seku has a smart and engaging piece on the things internet people are saying about Angelina Jolie’s breasts. Best of all, it’s smug, hilarious and makes fun of people who don’t “get it.” (via Sidney)

I think it’s interesting that a guy who is trying to throw parties (PARTIES!) is going to jail for a decade when a lot of the sketchy wall st people responsible for a massive recession haven’t even seen a trial. (via Alex)

This is a very well written, reasoned and supported article on the resurgence of Ketamine to treat depression. This is not directly relevant to me as I have zero interest in ketamine as a recreational drug and don’t have anything near depression but I still think it’s worth knowing about. Ketamine is schedule III and off label drug usage in the service of saving your life is generally accepted as ethical. If you’re in that place you should know this is an option. (via Josh)

This is a picture of wedding rings pulled off of people at Auschwitz that has been kind of making me a sick to my stomach all day.

Switching gears, this Werner Herzog clip on the Obscenity of the Jungle is still one of the funniest goddamn things on the entire internet.

Finally, a very cute sloth. (via Chloe)

Quote of the Day: Kelly Oxford

Dustin Boyer — Tue, 14 May 2013 20:57:11 +0000

It’s too bad that everyone who has a solution for everything is at home commenting on the internet.

— kelly oxford (@kellyoxford) September 6, 2011

Quote of the Day – ?

Dustin Boyer — Sat, 04 May 2013 12:43:31 +0000

“the more you travel, the more you realize that people are not their governments. “

As an American, this is particularly comforting.

Psychiatric Drug Innovation In Crisis

Dustin Boyer — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 04:41:12 +0000

“The interest in psychedelics may also have something to do with a growing sense of frustration over the lack of promising new psychiatric drugs in the pipeline. Many of the current drugs are based on compounds discovered serendipitously in the 1950s, and true innovation has been so hard to come by that many companies are giving up.”

:: Wired covers the MAPS Conference ::

BONUS QUOTE

“Psychedelic scientists still face obstacles at every step of the process, from getting research funding, to getting the compounds themselves, to publishing the findings, says psychiatrist David Nutt of Imperial College London. Nutt recently won a large grant from the British government to conduct a clinical trial of psilocybin for depression. But red tape is holding it up.

To comply with the law, Nutt has to find a manufacturer who’s capable of making medical-grade psilocybin and has all the proper permits to make controlled substances. So far, he hasn’t found one. The study is on hold.

“The illegality of these drugs has profoundly distorted research and continues to do so,” Nutt said at the conference. “It’s one of the greatest scandals in modern research.”

—-

I’d say that not publishing negative data is a substantially bigger scandal but this is certainly something that should be of concern to people with depression.

Yes, Miranda Warnings Are Important EVEN FOR BAD PEOPLE

Dustin Boyer — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:18:10 +0000

“Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will not hear his Miranda rights before the FBI questions him Friday night. He will have to remember on his own that he has a right to a lawyer, and that anything he says can be used against him in court, because the government won’t tell him. This is an extension of a rule the Justice Department wrote for the FBI—without the oversight of any court—called the “public safety exception.”

There is one specific circumstance in which it makes sense to hold off on Miranda. It’s exactly what the name of the exception suggests. The police can interrogate a suspect without offering him the benefit of Miranda if he could have information that’s of urgent concern for public safety. That may or may not be the case with Tsarnaev. The problem is that Attorney General Eric Holder has stretched the law beyond that scenario. And that should trouble anyone who worries about the police railroading suspects, which can end in false confessions. No matter how unsympathetic accused terrorists are, the precedents the government sets for them matter outside the easy context of questioning them. When the law gets bent out of shape for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, it’s easier to bend out of shape for the rest of us.”

:: Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights? by The Inimitable Emily Bazelon ::

Viral In Pakistan

Dustin Boyer — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 23:02:33 +0000

My buddy Micah Daigle’s Facebook post has officially gone viral in Pakistan. How do you measure virality? 10k+ shares and a huffpo article.

Right now it’s at 10,571 shares but I bet it will hit 11k by the end of the day. There’s a lot to say about this post.
There are no simple numbers for the ratio of terrorists/civilians killed in drone strikes. The wikipedia article on Drone Attacks in Pakistan is pretty good if you want a more nuanced view and a good general primer on the topic. I think it’s illuminating to play with the number in my head. What if we killed 40 civilians for every one terrorist? or 30? or 20? or 10? Best case scenario…what about five civilians killed for every terrorist? Would you be willing to have your sister or mother killed in exchange for a mid level taliban operative?

Quote of the Day – The Krugster

Dustin Boyer — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:19:05 +0000

“The true test of an analytical framework is how it performs in unusual or extreme circumstances, how well it predicts out of sample.”

:: Destructive Creativity by Paul Krugman ::

Atul Gawande on the Boston Bombing

Dustin Boyer — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 19:08:18 +0000

“Talking to people about that day, I was struck by how ready and almost rehearsed they were for this event. A decade earlier, nothing approaching their level of collaboration and efficiency would have occurred. We have, as one colleague put it to me, replaced our pre-9/11 naïveté with post-9/11 sobriety. Where before we’d have been struck dumb with shock about such events, now we are almost calculating about them. When ball bearings and nails were found in the wounds of the victims, everyone understood the bombs had been packed with them as projectiles. At every hospital, clinicians considered the possibility of chemical or radiation contamination, a second wave of attacks, or a direct attack on a hospital. Even nonmedical friends e-mailed and texted me to warn people about secondary and tertiary explosive devices aimed at responders. Everyone’s imaginations have come to encompass these once unimaginable events.”

:: Why Boston’s Hospitals Were Ready by Atul Gawande : via Zoe ::

This is a fast read that also gave me a sense for what “180 injured” really means and just how horrifying it was.

Good RSAnimate on Social Interactions

Dustin Boyer — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 00:25:02 +0000