The discredited 1998 paper linking the MMR vaccine and autism has been retracted by The Lancet. Lead author Andrew Wakefield sounds like a winner on so many levels:

On another occasion, at his own son’s birthday party in 1999, he took blood from children who were there as guests and paid them each £5 for agreeing to this. He was accused by the panel of showing “callous disregard for the distress and pain that you knew, or ought to have known, the children would suffer.”

Update: Why it won’t help.

Lost meets 24: the crash of flight 815 in realtime:

Oh what the hell, everybody else is writing about it. Here are the best iPad pieces I’ve read:

• Why the iPad may be just what we need for Digital Inclusion
• Is the iPad the harbinger of doom for personal computing?
• Old World vs. New World Computing
• Stephen Fry’s total over-the-top infectious rave

Harvey Weinstein tells Errol Morris he’s boring. I’d excerpt it, but I think that would detract from a full read-through. I guess there’s no harm in putting up the opening paragraph: “Dear Errol: Heard your NPR interview and you were boring. You couldn’t have dragged me to see THE THIN BLUE LINE if my life depended on it.”

Readability gets even better, adding Typekit support. I like Style=Athelas, Size=Medium, Margin=Wide.

Who better to review Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind than Garry Kasparov? I found his thoughts on human/computer “partnership” matches particularly fascinating.

Love the Gorilla Productions Muhammad Ali Tribute:

Wow, I’d love to have the skills to pull off something like this: how to make a $170 sewing machine totally awesome.

So far my two favorite charts from FlowingData’s Data Underload category are Little Things and Bed Head.

Had to post this for the Deadwood connection: Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency letterhead.

Christopher Hitchens on the word “like." Geoffrey Nunberg beat him to the bunch by like nine years.

Here’s a great Slowpoke strip from 2006 that is painfully relevant today.