Boston police officer sends racist e-mail to Boston Globe

Holy crap. I know I usually take a beat or two before sending an e-mail just to make sure that I didn't mess anything up... but this guy should probably not be sending e-mails at all.

This came, obviously, after the arrest of Harry Louis Gates.

Here's an excerpt of the letter from the Boston Globe (the full letter is at the link, but below is just an excerpt):

Your defense [4th paragraph] of Gates while he is on the phone while being confronted [INDEED] with a police officer is assuming he has rights when considered a suspect. He is a suspect and will always be a suspect. His first priority of effort should be to get off the phone and comply with police, for if I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC deserving of his belligerent non-compliance.

Wow.

Huffington Post health coverage sucks

I'm not sure about the Huffington Post. The site is undeniably popular and many people reference it (I have done so a few times at my other blog). But sometimes it is just... wrong.

Especially on health coverage, and Salon Took them to task for their poor, misleading and occasionally outright wrong coverage.

As a physician, I am not necessarily opposed to alternative health treatments. But I do want to be responsible and certain that what I prescribe to patients is safe and effective and not a waste of their time and money. A recent Associated Press investigation stated the federal government has spent $2.5 billion of our tax dollars to determine whether alternative health remedies -- including ones promoted on the Huffington Post -- work. It found next to none of them do. The site also regularly grants space to proponents of the thoroughly disproven conspiracy that childhood vaccines have caused autism. In short, the Huffington Post is hardly a site that promotes "a reasoned discussion," in its founder's words, of health and medicine.