Body organs can send status updates to your cellphone - tech - 08 October 2010 - New Scientist

Body organs can send status updates to your cellphone - tech - 08 October 2010 - New Scientist: "Dutch research organisation IMEC, based in Eindhoven, this week demonstrated a new type of wireless body area network (BAN). Dubbed the Human BAN platform, the system converts IMEC's ultra-low-power electrocardiogram sensors into wireless nodes in a short-range network, transmitting physiological data to a hub – the patient's cellphone. From there, the readings can be forwarded to doctors via a Wi-Fi or 3G connection. They can also be displayed on the phone or sound an alarm when things are about to go wrong, giving patients like me a chance to try to slow our heart rates and avoid an unnecessary shock."

Politico on polling driven journalism

Alex Burns @ 4:30 am

Forget the careful craft of survey research; as the midterm election hurtles toward the finish, campaigns are wielding polls less like scientific instruments than like heavy weaponry, using them to hijack news cycles and push their favored narratives about the campaign.

Alex Burns @ 5:53 am

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has widened his advantage over Republican wrestling executive Linda McMahon to 15 points, the Democrat’s internal tracking poll shows. The Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner has Blumenthal holding steady with a majority of the vote and leading McMahon, 53 percent to 38 percent. The pollster notes in a memo that McMahon’s public image remains deeply problematic, and “large numbers of Connecticut voters hold unfavorable views of McMahon.” Her favorability rating in the survey was 32 percent, while 47 percent said they had an unfavorable impression of her. The poll tested 600 likely voters on Oct. 3 and 4. Read the polling memo here.

Third way or same old way?

Via Oliver Willis

Third Way is the newest attempt of the corporate elements within the Democratic party to move the party into something that’s just a smidge less conservative than the GOP. It pushes the sort of DLC thinking that led Clinton to embrace the types of conservative deregulation that helped to cause the financial crisis. Look no further than Third Way’s honorary co-chairs, people like Blanche Lincoln and Evan Bayh who rarely have seen a right-leaning “solution” they didn’t like. Or Artur Davis, who ran so far to the right he got whomped in the Democratic primary for Governor of Alabama.

I find it interesting that these so-called moderate movements are mostly made up of self-identified Democrats moving to the right and not Republicans moving to the left. When Republicans want to reach out they reach out to the far right, not the middle.

Terrorism Prosecutions

Via TPMMuckraker

Faisal Shahzad, who pleaded guilty in June to terrorism charges after attempting to detonate a car bomb in Times Square, was sentenced today in Manhattan federal court to life in prison without parole.

• Caught by Police work
• Read Miranda warning
• Pleads guilty
• Sentenced to life

Is there a moral there somewhere?

The Horror

From POLITICO.com

“Michele Bachmann: not doing s—- for the people of the 6th District, but doing more than her share for the special interests in Washington,” the announcer says, bleeping out the expletive.

Let the passing of the smelling salts begin.

On Witches

Via Politico.com

Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell is using a new TV ad to stress that she’s no witch, but her latest attempt to get past a decade-ago comment is providing fresh fodder for chattering classes.

Case in point: Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said O’Donnell “looks like she might be a witch,” referring to O’Donnell’s appearance in the ad where she looks the directly at the camera and proclaims: “I’m not a witch.”

Which century is this again?

I See Stupid People

From Crooks and Liars

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) attempted to convince pastors that economic issues are moral issues at the Greater Freedom Rally at a church in Spartanburg, South Carolina yesterday, imploring them to help conservatives retake Congress in November.

In addition to reiterating anti-choice talking points on abortion and backing 'traditional marriage,' according to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, the senator went further and 'said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend -- she shouldn't be in the classroom.'

To which I can only say,

WTF?