oracknows | April 13, 2006I have to hand it to Matt (a.k.a. The Pooflinger). When he hosts a Skeptics' Circle, he does it up right. Last time, he envisioned the 21st Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle as a Shakespearean play. This time around, he envisions a very frightening future world in which credulity and religious fanaticism have been dominant for hundreds of years.
And then an archaelogist is made aware of an ancient and mysterious object:
Unlike most anybody, Dr. Ivanoa didn't consider unexpected late-night phone calls to be a bad thing at all. With no surviving relatives and less than a few friends (even at her…
oracknows | April 13, 2006Oh, lovely.
Before I leave the topic of mercury-autism conspiracy mongering for a while, something perverse has led me to feel the need to point out something I've become aware of: Not surprisingly, it looks as though our favorite "Christian Libertarian" commentator from WorldNet Daily, tireless fighter against women's suffrage, and overall antivaccination loon Vox Day has foolishly and credulously falls hook, line, and sinker for the Geiers' claim in their mind-numbingly bad dumpster-diving paper that autism rates have fallen since the removal of thimerosal in vaccines.
Vox, whom I've not…
oracknows | April 12, 2006A while ago, I discussed the case of a chiropracter who has pioneered a technique of "touchless" chiropractic, manipulating patient's spines without even touching them. Well, an Ohio chiropracter has gone one step further. He claims he can cure patients by going back in time:
COLUMBUS, Ohio - A chiropractor who claims he can treat anyone by reaching back in time to when an injury occurred has attracted the attention of state regulators.
The Ohio State Chiropractic Board, in a notice of hearing, has accused James Burda of Athens of being "unable to practice chiropractic according to acceptable…
oracknows | April 12, 2006After his behavior in Monday's post about the Geiers, I've reluctantly decided to issue my first ban ever on a commenter. The one on the receiving end?
Fore Sam. Is anyone surprised?
His rhetoric has become increasingly violent-sounding, with his posting comments suggesting that Kathleen Seidel should be taken out and horsewhipped. That's over the top. I cannot tolerate threats, either explicit or implicit, against others in the comments on this blog and have come to agree with Kev. I thought about it a bit after Fore Sam's remark above, and I've decided to ban him for 30 days. After that, I…
oracknows | April 12, 2006Tangled Bank #51 has been posted over at Discovering Biology in a Digital World. Get your fix of science blogging all in one neat package.
oracknows | April 12, 2006Excellent.
Having had to work on a talk last night, I didn't have any time to write anything substantive. Horrified at the thought of this blog going silent on a weekday (going silent on the weekend doesn't concern me much, given that my traffic almost always falls by around 50% regardless of whether I post on the weekend or not, barring any unexpected links from bigger blogs), I thought about doing what PZ did yesterday and recycling one of my more memorable posts from the old blog. Unfortunately, I couldn't come up with topic as likely to draw as much interest as PZ's, and I wasn't sure if…
oracknows | April 11, 2006Grand Rounds Vol. 2 No. 29 has been posted over at Anxiety, Addiction, and Depression Treatments. As always, there's lots of good stuff over there for your reading pleasure.
And don't forget that tomorrow there's a new Tangled Bank--and the day after that a brand spanking-new Skeptics' Circle to look forward to.
oracknows | April 11, 2006OK, I've been prodded enough!
Yes, I've been aware of the study purporting to present good anecdotal case reports showing that there might be something to the hypothesis that megadoses of vitamin C can cure cancer where other therapies fail. I've also been aware of an in vitro study that suggested selective toxicity of vitamin C to tumor cells compared to normal cells. I've even been meaning to write about since I first saw it a couple of weeks ago, but the AACR intervened, as did a number of other topics, and, like so many other topics that I want to write about but somehow never find the…
oracknows | April 10, 2006Recently, I mentioned a case of fishing line inserted in a patient's urethra that had to be removed by a urologist.
Now I've become aware of an even odder case, of a woman who managed to hide a loaded pistol in her vagina. She managed to go through a pat-down:
Move over, Bond girls.
A Ross County jail inmate hid a gun so well that not even the guards who did an extensive pat-down found it.
The Cleveland woman hid a loaded handgun inside her body and smuggled it all the way to her jail cell, where it accidentally fired when she was trying to hide it.
"While in the holding cell, she removed a .…
oracknows | April 10, 2006When it rains, it pours. Last week, we had the Shattuck paper; this week, I'm sucked right back into this topic, at least for today.
A few weeks ago, I commented about a truly frightening direction that autism quackery was taking, with the father-son team of Mark and David Geier's bizarre proposal that chemically castrating autistic children using a drug like Lupron would "make chelation therapy" more effective because, according to them, testosterone somehow binds up mercury, making it more difficult to remove with chelation. Never mind that there is no convincing scientific evidence that…
oracknows | April 9, 2006
Lucky bastards living in Manhattan. You'll soon have a flagship Apple Store that will be open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Bastards.
Is it just me, though, or does the store thus far bear an uncanny resemblance to a Borg ship?
This is one case where I'd gladly be assimilated.
oracknows | April 9, 2006Unbelievable.
Contrary to my predictions last week, somehow the Detroit Tigers have managed to remain undefeated through the first week of the baseball season. They're 5-0. Just as enjoyable, the Cleveland Indians are right behind them, with a 4-1 record.
But that's not the best thing.
No, the best thing is that the dreaded New York Yankees are in last place as of this writing. They're 1-4.
I love it.
Yes, I know it probably can't last (with the possible exception of the Indians remaining in contention for winning the A.L. Central Division) and that the first 5 games or so of a 162 game…
oracknows | April 9, 2006One thing surgeons sometimes have to deal with is foreign objects placed in various orifices. As a general surgeon, I've seen various objects swallowed or placed in the rectum or nose. But I've never seen a case like this one described by RangelMD:
The other day the topic came up (don't ask how) about cases where foreign objects are inserted into various human orifi (and I don't mean green beans up the nose). One "interesting" (read, "difficult for males to listen to") case involved an apparently bored male who decided to insert a strand of weed eater line into his urethra.
Once the line…
oracknows | April 8, 2006More blog filling, thanks to GrrlScientist.
Really, though, if I belong in any European city at all, I'd have guessed London, but the test says otherwise:
You Belong in Paris
You enjoy all that life has to offer, and you can appreciate the fine tastes and sites of Paris.
You're the perfect person to wander the streets of Paris aimlessly, enjoying architecture and a crepe.
What European City Do You Belong In?
oracknows | April 8, 2006As you may remember, our intrepid blog mascot has been traveling though history since January, going from Mount Everest, to Canada, to inventing paper currency. He even found time to wish fellow SB'er PZ a happy birthday. Fans probably wonder where he'd end up next. I realize that this is a few days late, but that was intentional, so that I had an excuse to post the April Fools Day EneMan.
So where will he appear next?
Here's where:
Don't mess with EneMan. He wields a nasty sword and isn't afraid to use it. I bet you didn't know that underneath that cheery exterior lurks the heart of a…
oracknows | April 7, 2006Just a reminder that the Skeptics' Circle is fast approaching. This time, it's hosted once again by a guy who goes by the name of The Pooflinger, and it's set to be flung at the blogosphere next Thursday, April 13. Submissions are due sometime in the evening next Wednesday.
As you may recall, The Pooflinger did one of the more creative renderings of the Skeptics' Circle ever, turning it into a veritable Shakespearian drama of skepticism. I can't wait to see what he comes up with this time. However, he can't do it if you don't provide him with the raw material in the form of good skeptical…
oracknows | April 7, 2006One last photo from my afternoon at Venice Beach a couple of weeks ago.
All I want to ask is this:
Is this Alice Cooper's daughter?
Dark eyeliner like Dad's?
Check.
Huge snake like Dad's?
Check.
It could be.
Or is this her below?
oracknows | April 7, 2006It's rare for me to be gone so much in such a short period of time. Two meetings in two weeks, one in San Diego and one in Washington, DC, and I'm bushed. One thing that continually irks me on the two or three occasions each year when I go to meetings is how blatantly hotels rip customers off for high speed Internet access. Most of the hotels that I end up staying at for these meetings are pretty nice hotels. Some of them are even very nice. You'd think that they'd throw in high speed Internet access and/or wi-fi as part of the package. After all, even a budget hotel chain like the Baymont…
oracknows | April 6, 2006Over the last couple of days, I've blogged a bit about a study by Paul Shattuck that shows how useless it is to try to use special education classification numbers as a means of proving the existence of an "autism epidemic." Well, at the risk of driving at least one person away, I'm going to comment one last time on this study. (And the answer to that person's question is that I'll blog about this topic when there's something going on that interests me enough to blog about it. He is perfectly free to ignore my posts on the topic if they annoy him so.)
In any case, Paul Shattuck himself showed…
oracknows | April 6, 2006Oh, no. Not deterred by the utter slapdown he got from me and PZ last time, Radaractive has posted the second edition of the "Darwin Is Dead" Carnival. (Hat tip, as before, to the Pooflinger!)
I was feeling a little depressed at having to go back to work this morning, and seeing this carnival lightened my spirits considerably. It's truly hysterically funny stuff, chock full of the same creationist canards dished up in a completely credulous manner, the contributors apparently unaware that they've been conclusively debunked time and time again. I particularly liked this comment by the host:
I…