Comments:

1. tsphillips on October 15th, 2010 at 1:03:

   Saw this some time ago. Love it, particularly the French and German versions.

Comments:

1. Maarten on October 15th, 2010 at 10:14:

   The article you’re linking to does not, IMO, support applying the label “War on Terror psychologist” to Seligman. He’s got a long record of doing work to understand how people can lead happier lives. Please post more carefully.

Comments:

1. Maarten on October 14th, 2010 at 21:56:

   The headline says “man-made” but the article implies “prevented by past, healthier lifestyles”. Slight difference. No mention of difference in life expectancy and the fact that most cancer occurs after age, what, 50 or 60? How many pharaos lived to that age? I can’t imagine a peer-reviewed article not addressing that issue as it’s a basic teaching in biostatistics, so presumably they accounted for it.

2. Mr. N on October 14th, 2010 at 22:00:

   I call bullshit on the Daily Mail.
   I can clearly remind a few mummies I saw in museums (British, Castello Sforzesco of Milan and Turin Egyptian Museum above all) where the death cause had been attributed to illnesses related to cancer forms, like abnormal growth inside a part of the skull and even lung or bone cancer.

   There is solid proof that even a few dinosaurs died of tumors, still visible in the fossils. The rate of illness is much similar to the one of vertebrates, and has been used to disprove a few misconceptions about the worldwide extinction of the sauri.

3. tsphillips on October 15th, 2010 at 1:15:

   The average life expectancy of a Roman citizen during the Empire was 22. How many of those mummies were related to one another through royal houses and may have simply had genetic resistance, or even the limited gene pool of Egyptians during the time of the dynasties? Definitely smacks of sensationalized science.

4. Kharkov on October 15th, 2010 at 3:20:

   A citizen’s life expectancy during the Empire was 22? I call bullshit on that! Slaves, maybe. Field and Farm slaves certainly but a citizen was in the upper 50th percentile if he made it to 23?

   I’m not a professional historian nor do I have more than a passing knowledge (and interest) in Roman Times but I’d like to see a source for the 22-year life expectancy figure.

5. Mr. N on October 15th, 2010 at 8:21:

   According to Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica, average life expectancy in the roman empire was 28 years.

6. JJ on October 15th, 2010 at 12:35:

   Life expectancy is only an average of the age when people die. If it was only 22 or 28 in the Roman Empire it may be because of very high child mortality (or any other reason ppl die young) leaving those who actually survive their childhood to live a lot longer than 30 years.

7. Mr. N on October 15th, 2010 at 14:10:

   In roman times, if you were in your 40s, you were regarded as a wise man and you could easily be the oldest of your village. In big cities, life expectancy was a little higher, but not much.
   Of course, people in their sixties was not unheard of, but their percentage was around today’s centenarians.

8. Maarten on October 15th, 2010 at 14:49:

   Slightly different coverage here:
   http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/204809.php

   I’d love to see more analysis of the study; if you find any, please post.

9. Mr. N on October 15th, 2010 at 19:02:

   More evidence of bullshit in this study:
   “There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer”

   Enter asbestos (naturally occurring in fibrous rocks), long decay uranium isotopes (naturally occurring but rare), radon (common both in rock caves, pyramids and old houses), lead and a lot of other things

10. Jim on October 15th, 2010 at 23:29:

    Anyone with even the slightest understanding of what cancer actually is will know the story is utter crap. The longer we live and the more diseases we can cure, the higher the risk and prevalence of cancer in modern society, yes. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist a few thousand years ago – or tens of thousands for that matter.
    This item was probably published next to the ‘abducted by an alien’ story. Which, btw, has a higher probability of being true. Pffft.

11. John Sinteur on October 16th, 2010 at 11:24:

    There’s a metafilter thread, with links to New Scientist and others debunk the claim.

12. Maarten on October 17th, 2010 at 9:31:

    One of the co-authors is backpedaling by calling longer life spans one of the aspects of modern living that results in more cancer. So apparently healthier lives and better health care may be the leading causes of cancer.

Comments:

1. tsphillips on October 15th, 2010 at 1:17:

   Well, I hope this leads to considerably more funding once people find out how to send checks directly to them.

Comments:

1. Mark on October 15th, 2010 at 15:29:

   Mission Accomplished indeed!

Comments:

1. Jim on October 15th, 2010 at 23:30:

   LOL – truly.

Comments:

1. Mudak on October 14th, 2010 at 14:26:

   When I first saw this one in the Onion, I thought it was one of their more implausible articles. After all, when did Bush ever care about the little details?

Comments:

1. Mr. N on October 14th, 2010 at 17:17:

   John, for all the non-programmers out there, what would the lines do?

2. John Sinteur on October 14th, 2010 at 17:19:

   [Quote]:
   

   Let’s use a very simple SQL statement that selects a user name from a table. The (poorly-written) application doesn’t do any screening of the input characters. In this case, the user has entered the name “john” into the form field on the page. The application grabs the name “john” from the form field and then uses it in a SQL query like this:

   SELECT * FROM users WHERE user_name = 'john';
   

   Nothing special about that, right? But what if we added something to the end of “john”, as in the example below (shown underlined).  What if, for example, we typed “john OR ‘a’ = ‘a’” ? The application would grab the data in the form field and use it like this:

   SELECT * FROM users WHERE user_name = 'john' OR 'a'='a';

   If this code was used in an login system it would probably force the selection of a valid username because the evaluation of ‘t’='t’ is always true. That’s fairly benign, but what about if we went a step further and typed something else into the form field…something malicious?

   SELECT * FROM users WHERE user_name = 'john' ;DROP TABLE users; 

   Whoops. Submit the form and the ‘users’ table disappears into the Big Wastebasket In The Sky.

3. John Sinteur on October 14th, 2010 at 17:21:

   The second example is hoping that the input from the form is shown on a web page. It would then add some javascript to the web page that is showing the election results.

Comments:

1. Simon on October 14th, 2010 at 13:08:

   So that’s why they pick on children: least likely to have AIDS.

Comments:

1. Steffen on October 14th, 2010 at 8:58:

   Regarding the last two cartoons,

   The satirical magazine “The Onion” posted a brilliant satire some days ago, which hit the nail on the head:

   http://www.theonion.com/articles/american-people-hire-highpowered-lobbyist-to-push,18204/

Comments:

1. Maarten on October 14th, 2010 at 8:54:

   Have you seen the series of 180 daily photos of a McD burger on coffee table refusing to develop any mold? (I’m abit skeptical about it, actually but not interested enough to repeat the experiment.)

2. John Sinteur on October 14th, 2010 at 8:56:

   Yeah, I’ve seen it – and it does indeed need somebody repeating it..