oracknows | February 26, 2006Time really flies, doesn't it?
In fact, the next meeting of the Skeptics' Circle will soon be upon us this Thursday. I'm anticipating that it will be...huge, as it's being hosted by none other than The Huge Entity.
The Huge One has placed his contact information and submission guidelines here. More general submission guidelines, plus a handy list of past and present Circles, can be found here.
Finally, once again, I'd like to post a request for more hosts of the Skeptics' Circle. I've had to do some minor rejiggering of the schedule recently due to the withdrawal of one of our planned hosts…
oracknows | February 26, 2006An autistic teen named Jason McElwain made the most of his chance to shine.
How long before this is a movie of the week or even a feature film?
oracknows | February 26, 2006Well, that didn't last long, did it? I've only been on ScienceBlogs for less that two weeks, and already I'm no longer the new kid on the block.
Nope, that honor now goes to William Connolley. Welcome Stoat to the Borg--I mean ScienceBlogs--collective. It looks as though he isn't integrated into the main ScienceBlogs page and newsfeed yet, but presumably he will be on Monday when the techies are back.
oracknows | February 26, 2006I've always kind of liked Spongebob Squarepants, although I had always wondered about his relationship with Patrick Star. Here's evidence that my suspicions may have been correct.
oracknows | February 25, 2006Today, while I'm making fun of anti-Semitic idiocy coming out of Iran, perhaps I should stop being so upset over the free speech infringement that I've railed about regarding David Irving's three year sentence for Holocaust denial in Austria.
It turns out that he isn't really in prison, and his name isn't even David Irving.
(Hat tip to Andrew Mathis!)
oracknows | February 25, 2006You can't make stuff like this up. You really can't.
Did you know that Tom and Jerry are in reality a clever secret nefarious plot by the Jews?
That's what Professor Hassan Bolkhari, who teaches philosophy of art at Tabatabaei and Al-Zahra Universities in Iran and is a member of the Film Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran and a cultural advisor to the Iranian Education Ministry, asserts (if you understand the language, feel free to check out the original video here):
There is a cartoon that children like. They like it very much, and so do adults - Tom and Jerry.
[...]
Some say that this…
oracknows | February 25, 2006Here's a guy who really could use some anger management training, clearly the roomate from hell.
oracknows | February 24, 2006Those who've been regulars here for a while know that on Fridays and the weekends, I often (although not always) like to take a lighter approach with my posts and links. In that vein, I bring you a vision of what's become of Michael Jackson...
oracknows | February 24, 2006One of the greatest challenges in medicine can sometimes be to convince a patient that the results of scientific and medical research apply to them, or, at the very least, to explain how such results apply. A couple of days ago, in an article the New York Times, Dr. Abigail Zuker, proposed one reason why this might be, beginning with a discussion with her mother in which she tries to convince her of the benefit of exercise, even in the elderly, a concept that her mother would have none of:
"Studies," she says, dripping scorn. "Don't give me studies. Look at Tee. Look at all the exercise she…
oracknows | February 23, 2006Here's a comment that popped up in my moderation queue for an article I wrote on the old blog several months ago:
The Holocaust is a huge money maker for Jews; one they do not wish to lose. Irving's and Zundel's struggle in our time is analogous to Galileo's struggle with discovery that threatened the TPTB's power structure.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Now the Holocaust deniers are pulling the Galileo gambit. This guy needs to get a clue. As much as I find the law that sent him to prison for three years to be an offense against free speech, Irving is no Galileo.
oracknows | February 23, 2006While I'm busy plugging blogs I like, I thought I'd mention that A Photon in the Darkness is another one of my favorite skeptical blogs. Lately, in all the turmoil over my move to ScienceBlogs, I failed to mention two good pieces that Prometheus has posted in the last few days:
Why anecdotes aren't data (I suspect this one will really annoy a certain lurker who occasionally likes to trash me on his blog)
and
Opinions are like...; everybody's got one
Of the two, the second is my favorite, because he does quite a nice takedown of the apparent belief among many alternative medicine devotees (and…
oracknows | February 23, 2006Good news!
One of my favorite skeptical bloggers, Matt at Pooflingers Anonymous, has ended his blogging hiatus. I was sad to see him announce in early January that he was leaving the blogosphere , and I'm happy to see that he's back in business.
It turns out that the constant intense exposure to the rampant credulity of creationists like Kent Hovind and the writers of the Evolution Cruncher had made him fear for his critical thinking skills and even his mental health. (I warned him about it at the time, but would he listen? Nooooo!) He had to take a break just to recover.
Now he's back,…
oracknows | February 23, 2006Treating autism with chemical castration
I thought I'd seen it all.
Ever since I found myself critically examining the claim that autism and autistic spectrum disorders are caused by mercury found in the preservative(thimerosal) used until recently in childhood vaccines, I thought that I'd heard of every dubious or quack autism therapy there is out there. Indeed, it is from that concept (that "autism is a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning,", which is not supported by epidemiological or preclinical evidence) that flows all sorts of dubious therapies to "remove" the mercury. Foremost among…
oracknows | February 22, 2006What is it about the Avian flu that seems to inspire all sorts of wild craziness? Yes, the avian flu has the potential to be a big problem in humans (but is not one yet--so far its main lethal affect has been in birds). Yes, if it ever acquired the ability to be transmitted from person to person, rather than only from bird to human, it could cause a pandemic as nasty as the 1918 influenza pandemic, but, as far as can be determined, it has not acquired such an ability yet. Nonetheless, the avian flu inspires a lot more kookiness than more likely threats, such as the return or emergence of a…
oracknows | February 22, 2006Austrian prosecutors think Irving's jail term is too short:
Austrian prosecutors have filed an appeal against the three-year prison sentence handed to the British historian David Irving, arguing that he escaped too lightly for the crime of Holocaust denial.
Irving was left stunned and open-mouthed when the sentence was handed down after a one-day trial in a Vienna court yesterday.
After entering a guilty plea and publicly accepting that he had made a mistake when denying existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz, Irving had clearly expected a more lenient punishment over two speeches made to…
oracknows | February 21, 2006Now that my technical problems have resolved, it's time to do what I do every week and plug the latest edition of Grand Rounds. It's a blog carnival that's like Grand Rounds for medical blogging (hence the name), and it collects the best of the medical blogosphere from the last week. I'm a regular contributor and have even hosted in the past.
This week, Grand Rounds, vol. 2, no. 22 is hosted by Dr. Andy, and a fine collection of medblogging he's gathered (including my first submission since moving to ScienceBlogs).
Next week the carnival is being hosted by a fellow surgeon at at the aptly…
oracknows | February 21, 2006Although the most serious blog problems (such as my not being able to post) appear to be resolved, that doesn't mean that everything is peaches and cream here at ScienceBlogs. Apparently the servers have been getting slammed by spammers attempting to deluge us with comment spam. Consequently, we have all been asked to tighten our security up. That is why a valid e-mail address is required to comment here. Don't worry. Neither I nor ScienceBlogs use the e-mail address for anything other than comment verification. If you ever have reason to suspect otherwise, let me know, and, like Chad, I…
oracknows | February 21, 2006His Noodliness walks (or flies) among us, and here's the evidence.
Hey, it's better than any "evidence" that I've seen supporting the existence of UFO's or ghosts.
oracknows | February 21, 2006Previous technical problems that prevented my posts and your comments from showing up on this blog have now been resolved.
Orac is back online.
Everything appears to be working as it should, and you should be able to comment again. If you haven't contributed your own You might be an altie if... idea, now's the time to jump in. (There are a lot of great entries there that I wish I had thought of.)
Normal blogging will resume tomorrow.
oracknows | February 21, 2006For a humorous take on the David Irving verdict, go here. The Photoshopped picture and caption are priceless.