Frank Skinner once admitted that new girlfriends were always “subjected to the Laurel and Hardy test”, when he would play a video of the Laurel and Hardy dance sequence from Way Out West. “If she didn’t laugh, I instantly wrote her off as a future companion,” said Skinner, conceding that this wasn’t exactly rational behaviour.

Perhaps we can all be divided by that Laurel and Hardy test. Those who love the Way Out West dance, which captures perfectly the charm and on-screen chemistry of the comedy duo, will already have been delighted by the news that the BBC1 is to show in 2015 a one-off 90-minute drama called Stan and Ollie – written by Jeff Pope of Philomena note – which is based around their 1953 tour of the UK, during which Hardy suffered a heart attack.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

The internet’s villain of the month is easily Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. In August, Turing, a pharma startup that had just received its first round of financing, bought the rights to manufacture an anti-parasitic drug called Daraprim. Turing’s first act was to jack the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per tablet, inciting much justifiable outrage.

Here’s the thing though: The drug was already priced outrageously and prohibitively. Daraprim is a very old and off-patent drug—just a few years ago, when the drug was still being manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, it cost $1 per pill. When GSK sold it to CorePharma in 2010 (CorePharma was eventually bought by Impax Labs, who sold the drug to Turing), the price went up to $13.50. Which is indeed much cheaper than $750 per pill, but relative cheapness doesn’t translate to accessibility. For many patients, a $13.50 daily medication might as well cost $750.

Source: Motherboard

‘False equivalence, for those joining us late, is the almost irresistible instinct in mainstream journalism to present differing views as being equally valid “sides” of an argument, even if one of them is objectively true and the rest are not.

False equivalence: “President Obama claims that he was born in the United States and thus is eligible to serve as president; his critics disagree on both counts.”

Actual truth: “Barack Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961; a persistent ‘birther’ movement denies this fact.”

As chronicled over the years in posts collected here, the “both sides make their claims, who are we to judge?” reflex is very powerful in our business. That is largely because we’re most comfortable when acting in the role of a referee at a sporting event, a judge at a trial, a moderator at a debate, or some similar figure letting presumptively legitimate contenders fight it out on their own. To intervene directly and say “There are two sides here, but one of them is bunk” is uncomfortable, because it seems “partisan.” It is also risky, because it requires the reporter to learn enough about an issue to judge claims of relative truth.

Our friends at WNYC’s On the Media—Brooke Gladstone, Bob Garfield, and their team, whom I know and like—have done two very strong recent episodes on the false-equivalence snarl. In general you should listen to their show, but here are two especially worth seeking out.’

Source: The Atlantic

Via The New York Times: ‘Health-scare stories, even those that are not overblown, draw their special power from the fact that we go through the days denying our mortality. Each one reminds us anew that there’s no way out. Unable to avoid this tragic and absurd-seeming condition, we lash out against our fates by finding fresh reasons to make a villain out of the one thing that is doing its part to keep us alive: food. We add salt to the psychic wound when we momentarily trick ourselves into believing that bugs, worms and dirt are the only things fit for human consumption. I’m not falling for it anymore. I’m going back to bologna and cheese…’