With celebrity comes duties: Jenny McCarthy, Oprah Winfrey, and the ethical burden of a soapbox.

At White Coat Underground, PalMD explores the question of what kind of responsibilities might fall on celebrities, especially those who use their soapboxes in a way that exceeds the tether of their expertise. The particular celebrities under examination are Jenny McCarthy, who has used her celebrity to spread her views on the proper treatment and prevention of autism, and Oprah Winfrey, who has used her media empire to give McCarthy a soapbox with more reach.
Pal writes:

Jenny claims an expertise based on her personal experience. Whether one views themselves as an expert is largely irrelevant, unless others so christen them. In Jenny’s case, various fake experts have helped promote her status as an expert (making her a 2nd generation fake expert?) and she has embraced this status.
Being a public figure confers a certain status in our society, whether or not it should. It gives one great reach and influence. While Jenny’s putative lack of intelligence certainly makes her susceptible to having her status used by others, it does not absolve her of her responsibilities. She has made a conscious choice to use her status to spread a message, and has chosen to listen to some experts over others. The moral culpability is hers. …
When it comes to medical issues, the only thing consistent about Oprah is her own inconsistency. It appears that she christens experts based on her personal preference rather than any objective criteria. This is a problem. Oprah’s influence is inversely proportional to her ability to choose good experts, which is a troubling trend. One thing she is good at is picking a winner; Dr. Phil may or may not be a good therapist, but he’s great TV. Time will tell whether Jenny is equally lucrative, but Oprah doesn’t pick losers, so we’re likely to be seeing Jenny under Oprah’s banner for a long time to come.

Rather than hewing to close to the specifics of Jenny McCarthy or Oprah Winfrey, I’d like to raise the questions more generally:

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In which the younger Free-Ride offspring offers a visual representation of Skullcrusher Mountain.

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The younger Free-Ride offspring’s admiration for and appreciation of the work of Jonathan Coulton continues unabated.
In fact, JoCo songs have become the subject of painstaking drawings that the younger Free-Ride hopes Mr. Coulton might encounter while Googling himself (as one does).
The latest offering is the younger Free-Ride offspring’s conception of Skullcrusher Mountain (lyrics here):

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Passing thoughts on nature documentaries.

We’ve been watching some episodes of Blue Planet here, marveling at the beautiful cinematography, as well as at how emotionally gripping they can be.
Especially in the Frozen Seas episode, I found myself feeling almost wrung out by the dramatic roller-coaster. This is definitely nature red in tooth and claw (and blood-soaked maw), although as my better half points out, there’s actually rather less on-camera carnage than you might expect from the narration.*

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In which the younger Free-Ride offspring opines that Jonathan Coulton rocks.

On our drive to the Monterey Peninsula last night, la familia Free-Ride listened to (most of) the new Jonathan Coulton album JoCo Looks Back. (We skipped a few songs whose subject matter and lyrics were deemed “too mature” for the audience in the back seat.) The Free-Ride offspring had some prior exposure to Jonathan Coulton by way of concert videos on YouTube, but this was their longest duration Coulton jam.
“Do you know him,” the younger offspring asked me.

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Unprovoked Christmas YouTubery.

In an earlier post, I neglected to mention that Uncle Fishy and RMD engaged a party bus to transport revelers to and from the dinner at Blue Hill at Stone Barn. Conditions on the roads were icy and treacherous, which means the trip took longer than it might have. Also, there was a wine pairing for each course of the dinner.
So, on the way back, there was singing on the bus. A lot of singing. There were folks on the bus who knew every word to Christmas songs I didn’t even know existed. For example, “Dominic the Donkey”:

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The inner workings of the North Pole.

I was presented with this picture by the younger Free-Ride offspring.

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I’m not entirely sure whether it’s more accurate to describe it as a map or a process diagram. However, this being December 24th, it is timely.
Here is what I can glean from the various pieces of the diagram:

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Ask a ScienceBlogger: is science fiction good for science?

Another “Ask a ScienceBlogger” question has been posed:
What do you see as science fiction’s role in promoting science, if any?
For an answer to the question as asked, what Isis said. Also, what Scicurious said about a bunch of related questions.
Myself, I think science fiction could do more than make non-scientists excited about science and the cool things science can (or might someday) do. I think science fiction has the potential to help us make better science.

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Who are you calling funny looking?

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Yesterday, heading out to lunch with some colleagues, I noticed some of the other people out on the street were … oddly attired. We saw these folks as we were passing by a cinema, so our first thought was, “Maybe this has something to do with the Speed Racer movie?”
And then we remembered the banners, and last year’s Memorial Day weekend in downtown San Jose.

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Song chart meme: for two-two-two geeks in one.

Some screechy monkey or other tagged me on the song chart meme. The idea seems to be to come up with a visual/graphical representation of a song or some lyrical subset of it.
In other words, you can get your music-geek and your math-geek on at the same time.
I came very close to going through our entire record collection last night to pick the optimal song. But then I figured I’d just put up two suboptimal responses rather than laboring to determine what the optimal response would be. (Of course, because I’m a tremendous Luddite, both are hand drawn.)

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