Great post, John. I was going to comment more here, but instead posted to the blog:
http://goo.gl/j93wF
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comment on: Penguin ebooks & The Research Works Act: Publishers gain, communities lose »
comment on: How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog Photoshop Contest Results »
Sweeeeeet!
Love the Dali painting, too.
comment on: Our illness is their profit »
If Jesus Christ were actually real, as described in the gospels, and alive today, the American right would denounce him as a socialist (they'd be wrong*, he'd actually be a communist in the purest sense of that word -he lived and traveled in a commune with his disciples) and if they could get away with it, crucify him again.
The major US politician whose platform most closely resembles Jesus' teachings, as literally described in the gospels, is Barack Obama.
*one of many things that no one of note on the American right seems to know, is the actual meaning of the word socialist. For example, one of the biggest, most active, abd most vocal socialists in US politics, thanks to her advocacy of farm subsidies, is Michelle Bachmann.
comment on: Periodic Table of Swearing »
#3166-9 Re: Chris "broccoli head" Brown -
This is another aspect that underscores the fact the baboons have become a personality cult religion without a need for a supernatural god -
infinite punishment for finite sin.
They are a church.
Now I don't know anything about Brown, much less care. TAA though I am prepared to say is a fundamentally decent human being - read someone who's word you could probably take, and entrust with a secret or your wallet in good faith. The crimes of both fall into the category of "brain explosion" - and given a chance of a replay, neither would replay their actions.
Contrast that with the baboons personal attacks on individuals - attacks which very clearly seek to harm a person's social and professional reputations and even damage the persons employment where possible. There is nothing spontaneous about their actions. They are premeditated and coldly calculated.
Which is more criminal?
comment on: How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog Photoshop Contest Results »
Wow! My friend got in the top five and my sister won!
I guess I'm the odd one out.
Congrats to the winners!comment on: The Trouble With Theistic Evolution »
The question is, Bilbo, can you demonstrate that implausibility, or are you just making an argument from personal incredulity?
comment on: Jonas Thread »
And this kid thinks he can teach me anyting about basic statistics!?
No, I suspect he knows he can't. Nobody can.
comment on: A global warming conspiracy theorist has won 4 states, should we be worried? »
There is nothing astonishing about the data, stewart.It actually represents a boring normality. Unfortunately, the numbers may come as an eye-opening shock to some of you, however.
Public universities in many states are required to publish salaries of all public employees, including university professors. Here is a comprehensive collection of that public data.
http://www.collegiatetimes.com/databases/salaries
Top ranked private universities are absent, of course. Feel free to check on the salaries of your colleagues.Take a look at any large, well-known university and you will find that professor salaries in science and engineering (and other professional disciplines) average over $100K and top out above $200K. I gave the Environmental Sciences Department at U VA as one example because the writer was from that school. Professor salaries there run from $77K to $231K. That was a random choice. Pick another.
A director of an institute may control grants worth millions, stewart. As you probably already know, the university rakes off a large fraction of those grants (40%? More in your university?) for overhead. The university rewards those who help support the institution with a salary that reflects his contribution, as any institution would.
Contrary to Mark's assertion, the monetary incentives to be a successful professor today are significant. Professor salaries at the university he graduated from are far higher than he claims them to be ("as high as $80-90K") - a fact he could have determined with a few minutes of effort. I have seen NO data that supports his charge that deniers more more highly paid than those who support AGW.
dean, been there done that, bought the T shirt.
comment on: February 2012 Open Thread »
Olaus, I asked you to show me some evidence that the atmosphere has a low sensitivity for Co2. You responded wonderfully by making completely off-topic, ad hom attacks.
"Sorry to break it to you", but if you are so self-evidently correct, why can't you provide any evidence? I see a lot of sweeping statements filled with ideological and religious wording but no actual evidence.
I read and what I find is that Deltoid/climate scientolgy isn't on par with what real climate science says
Then, please, share this "real climate science" with us.
There (sic) the (sic) uncertainties (sic) exists (sic).
And you really expect these small uncertainties to be resolved in your favour when there is a mountain of evidence already supporting the consensus view?
comment on: The Trouble With Theistic Evolution »
Hi Jason,
William Dembski (see his book, The End of Christianity) and C.S. Lewis (see his book, The Problem of Pain, especially the chapter "Animal Pain") agree with you that evolution (or at least, millions of years of additional animal pain) exacerbates the problem of evil. Both suggested Satanic influence in natural history as the culprit. Each offered different reasons as to why God would allow Satan to have such influence. Since I'm a Theist and believe that Satan exists, I find their explanations plausible.
I disagree with your view that evolution somehow diminishes the central role for humans. If God guided evolution, then He wanted humans to appear, as well as other animals. We rely upon revelation to know what role we have.
And since I'm an ID proponent, I disagree with the view that evolution has diminished the argument from design, since I find unguided natural processes to be an implausible explanation for the origin of life or of its evolution.
Would evolution mean an inconcistency in maintaining that humans have some sort of central role
comment on: How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog Photoshop Contest Results »
Congratulations to the winners, it was fun to participate!
comment on: The grey squirrel from a birder's point of view »
Don, better to cripple a moose, wolves prefer them.
comment on: Periodic Table of Swearing »
I so didn't get the black person hair broccoli bit. I was like, angry broccoli? I don't get it.
I'm a bad racist. :(
comment on: Stop Lurking Paul Krugman »
TylerD Lurking is a chat-room holdover-it has no meaning for any kind of reading material, that's like 'lurking' on a newspaper. And that wouldn't be an attempt at gay-bashing would it?
comment on: Still more evidence that Morgellons disease is most likely delusional parasitosis, 2012 edition »
and most people are in a drug/tv-trance-induced stupor, think it's a joke, and are too lazy and complacent to figure out that it's not.
Let the record show that I am personally in an alcohol-induced stupor.
comment on: A study that oversells massage therapy »
@yellow
"It is fine to take issue with this study, however, it is shameful to broaden it to a larger attack on massage therapy and to other practices that have been around much longer than western medicine"
This is called argument from antiquity. It assumes that usage from ancient times somehow guarantees validity. Many beliefs and practices from antiquity have been shown to be invalid.
What's the obsession with ancient practices anyway? I prefer electricity and running water to candles and a bucket & well.
"Closed minds close doors for our patients"
There's a difference between being open minded and being credulous or blindly accepting. There's also a difference between being closed minded and forming provisional conclusions based on the best available scientific evidence.
"If you don't believe in energy therapy or massage therapy, that's fine, maybe it's not the best treatment for you. That doesn't mean that it won't help someone else"
And believing in energy therapy doesn't mean it will help anyone either. It's probably not the best "treatment" for anyone for most things. It likely won't make any objective difference to any aspect of anyone's health at all. It won't cure cancer, it won't kill an infection, it won't clear an obstructed artery, it won't cure diabetes, etc.
"I don't believe in taking an antibiotic every time my doctor can't figure out what's wrong with me, but that doesn't mean I go around saying they never have any effect."
Actually, if your doctor is prescribing an antibiotic any time they can't figure out what's wrong with you, they're not practicing medicine correctly. If it's not a bacterial infection (or fungal or protozoan, depending on how you define antibiotic), it shouldn't have any objective effect. Anyway, that's a false analogy. Antibiotics have been scientifically shown to work when used appropriately, and what's more, the mechanism of effect are fairly well known. Energy therapy has not been scientifically shown to have any objective effect (nobody has even shown the ability to detect these energy fields under controlled conditions), and no plausible mechanism of possible action is known.
"There are many people who turn to massage therapy because western medicine has not provided them with answers. "
If scientific medicine doesn't have an answer, why must you assume someone else does have the answer? When science doesn't have the answer for what exactly dark matter and dark energy are, I don't look to see what the ancient Chinese or Greeks have to say about the nature of the universe to fill in the current gaps in our knowledge.
Hey, as Kimball has said, a massage feels good, I'm just not sure it's therapy. Lot's of things are enjoyable and feel good and are worth doing or receiving if they don't have significant downsides, but why must we label so many things as therapy?
"There is no reason to rule out possibilities"
I suppose that depends on how you define "possibilities". If you completely disregard probability and plausibility when determining what is possible, then you may as well consult the science fiction/fantasy section of the library as much as your doctor and consider the nearly infinite number of possibilities. At some point, some things have to get ruled out. You seem to be under the impression that these things are being dismissed out of hand without consideration. The fact that the author of this post so carefully critiqued the paper in question shows he did not dismiss it without consideration.
Adding to Beamup & MikeMa's comments, the supposed Eastern/Western dichotomy is also racist because the implication is also that "western" people are too close minded or not enlightened enough to appreciate or understand "eastern medicine".
comment on: Measles at the Super Bowl »
On the other hand, the lab report came back negative for measles, so either it was some hideously mutated recombinaltioned strain (which could also explain why it got past the vaccine?), or it was misdiagnosis (although I don't know what else has textbook symptoms for measles).
There's something strange here.
I didn't have my vaccine paperwork when I entered medical school, due to having had a very chaotic childhood. I also hadn't had a vaccine for chicken pox or mumps, but I had, however, had those diseases.
Even in those days, lab tests easily showed positive antibody titers for all relevant diseases. My lack of records necessitated some redundant blood draws and lab tests, but that was it.
1) If your husband was correctly vaccinated in the first place he should have had detectable immunity, absent an immune deficiency condition. If he wasn't immune, either he wasn't vaccinated or something odd was going on.
2) I suppose it's possible that they just vaccinated him, rather than checking antibody titers or anything. That should have made him immune to measles after a short period of time.
3) What lab test came back negative for measles after he became sick?
I can see three logical possibilities -
A) He was never previously vaccinated, they vaccinated him, he was very unlucky and got measles during the window between vaccine and immunity, which is fairly short but not instantaneous, and the lab test was either an error or an antibody test done before he had developed a detectable antibody response. All of this is possible but unlikely.
B) He is immune to measles but got something else that was clinically misdiagnosed as measles. Although there are classic presentations, it is also the case that the rash/fever diseases can overlap in presentation and most can present atypically from time to time, so a wrong clinical guess does not necessarily reflect poorly on anyone. Furthermore, the vaccine situation could have been biasing. If he's better it may not be a big deal, although he might want to be checked for rash-associated diseases that can have secondary or tertiary syndromes associated.
C) If he's been vaccinated for measles but isn't immune, and actually got measles, he may want to have that looked into. For that to be the case, either the lab test for measles was a false negative, or it was a test based on detection of immune status, such as an antibody test. If it was a DNA based test and it was negative, and he has an adequate titer of antibodies to measles, and he had this disease a reasonable time after the vaccine, it was probably something else. If he's been vaccinated, had a measles like disease, and still doesn't have protective antibody titers, that may be worth looking into.
comment on: The Trouble With Theistic Evolution »
I find this whole thing amusing, because mostly these kinds of discussions seem to be about convincing open-minded believers that it's okay to believe in evolution. The open-minded believers don't need much more reassurance - they have plenty of practice reading the Bible figuratively and figuring out how to ignore the bits that are obviously Iron Age myths, or find a "metaphorical" reading of those Iron Age myths to make them relevant.
It's the dogmatic, fundamentalist creeds that need the push. And they don't WANT reassurances - they know what the Truth is and it's in their Bibles. Unless you have an iron clad Biblical rationale that requires "if you believe in God then you MUST believe in evolution" you aren't going to convince them.
And you'll never find it. Because fundamentalist literalists can twist the plain text of the Bible into supporting whatever they want to say that it supports anyway. If you could find a passage in the Bible where Jesus said "And my Father created the world so that by the twin processes of genetic mutation and natural selection, eventually humans would evolve and attain intelligence" they would STILL find a way to ignore it. Look at how easily they ignore passages like "Sell all you have and give it all to the poor" when they want to.
comment on: Stop Lurking Paul Krugman »
"Lurking is the very common practice of reading an online or e-mail discussion without taking part in the discussion."
You seem awfully defensive, btw, are you secretly an asshurt Paul Krugman?
comment on: Periodic Table of Swearing »
File this under "Are you fucking kidding me?"
Watson approves of this comment by a music critic:
rebeccawatson Rebecca Watson
Here's my last tweet re:Chris Brown: "Woman-beating rage-broccoli" is the best, most apropos phrase ever. nyr.kr/AblXBMAnd approves of this piece of art by Elyse Anders.
HAHAHAHAHA! ITS FUNNY BECAUSE BLACK GUYS SHORT HAIR LOOKS LIKE BROCCOLI! ANGRY BLACK MAN BROCCOLI HEAD! HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA RACISM IS APROPOS! AND FUNNY!
*blink*
WTF????
comment on: A study that oversells massage therapy »
OK, So, I am not a scientist just a humble massage therapist most every day since 1994. I have no Woo Woo in my sessions. I am not a "healer". All I know is that I get a massage every week and my regulars get one every week or two. Massage raises the quality of life. I believe this to be a fact. I don't know how(maybe wish I did) But, it doesn't matter to me as I will continue to help people one body at a time. Thank you to everyone that cares about massage.
Your Partner in Wellness,
PAMI
www.pami.us
p.s. I don't believe I am alternative to anything.comment on: The Trouble With Theistic Evolution »
elliot sober #4 wrote:
Rather, the point was to show that evolutionary theory, properly interpreted, is silent on the question of whether there is a God.
The theory of evolution is not silent on the question of whether minds had to evolve, however. That's an absolutely devastating point. The "question of whether there is a God" is a question which therefore requires that the concept of "God" be formulated and approached as a hypothesis.
How do you think the hypothesis of a pre-existing disembodied goal-oriented Mind with no history or environment which shaped it stands up when considered in light of evolution and modern science?
I think the fatal problems come in even before you get to the Problem of Evil. That's just the coup de grace.
comment on: A study that oversells massage therapy »
Can someone help me with basics? I would not have thought that either exercise, muscle tears from exertion, or massage would change genes .. how is that even possible?!
Orac discusses RNA though, not DNA .. ?! .. also, I understand that cancers and tumors do involve DNA changes, unwanted ones (albeit not ones that can be passed to offspring?) I'm confused (lack basic knowledge) in how or what gene categories can possibly be affected by exertion, over-exertion, or massage .."messengers" and other cell mechanisms involving many chemicals, glucose, etc, I can see . but the genes .. that sounds like Lamarkian evolution ... ?!
comment on: February 2012 Open Thread »
Why do these ignoramuses like ignorance so much?
It's called willful ignorance.
comment on: Periodic Table of Swearing »
Considering all the religious type dogma which has been spewed forth for the last few months, we should be surprised that there wasn't a demand that Chris Brown be "stoned with stones" at the entrance to the Staples Center.
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