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Respectful Insolence
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Keep calm and carry on, Insolently.
Posted by Orac on February 16, 2013 You might have noticed that I’ve been…preoccupied. I posted a “rerun” on Thursday, and yesterday I didn’t even post at all. That doesn’t mean that I don’t check in from time to time to see what you all are doing in my absence. That’s how I saw this comment from Dangerous Bacon (cool ‘nym, BTW—I’ve…
Eight years
Posted by Orac on December 11, 2012 As I mentioned yesterday, Orac is currently away at an undisclosed location that is someplace warm. He is there, taking a rare pre-solstice break, preparing for the Mayan apocalypse that is to come on the 21st of this month. (Actually, he’s recharging his Tarial cell, the better to be prepared for the utter nonsense that…
Does all this blogging about quackery really accomplish anything?
Posted by Orac on September 7, 2012 Believe it or not, after nearly eight years blogging and around five years before that cutting my skeptical teeth on that vast and wild (and now mostly deserted and fallow) wilderness that was Usenet, I have occasionally wondered whether what I’m doing is worthwhile. Sometime around 1998, after I first discovered Holocaust denial on Usenet,…
Disaster at TAM!
Posted by Orac on July 12, 2012 I was thinking of doing a quickie post about the silliness that’s erupted in the antivaccine cranksophere over the IACC hearing that I mentioned yesterday. (Of course, a “quickie” post for me is usually only 1,000 words long, as opposed to the usual 2,000.) Then disaster struck!
A brief holiday blog update
Posted by Orac on May 27, 2012 My American readers don’t need this reminder, but, because I’m continually humbled at how many international readers I have, I thought I’d just mention it anyway. We here in the States are in the middle of a three day holiday weekend for Memorial Day on Monday. As a result, I’m taking it (mostly) easy, although…
And so it begins…
Posted by Orac on May 21, 2012 …the long-awaited migration to WordPress, promised ever since NatGeo took over: Notice: ScienceBlogs.com will be migrating to a new publishing platform starting on the evening of Monday, May 21 at 7 PM Eastern Standard Time. Please do not add any comments or posts between then and Tuesday afternoon. We will update this page when maintenance…
At the AACR
Posted by Orac on April 2, 2012 Blogging might be a little sketchy for the next couple of days, because I’m at the American Association for Cancer Research Meeting (AACR) in Chicago, all to to imbibe the latest and greatest in cancer research. I’m sure I’ll manage to get a post or two in while I’m here, but I doubt there will…
Seven years…
Posted by Orac on December 16, 2011 Seeing Martin’s mention that he’s hit the sixth anniversary of his entry into the awoke a vague sense of unease in me. It was that sort of unease that one gets when one realizes that he’s forgotten something but can’t quite remember what it is that he’s forgotten. Then it came to me. Somehow, some…
The Contagion of conspiracy mongering and pseudoscience
Posted by Orac on September 13, 2011 Unfortunately, I don’t get to see very many movies these days. My wife and I both lead very busy lives, and with periodic spasms of grant writing, plus several new administrative responsibilities, it’s just hard. Last weekend, however, a movie that I’d rather like to see came out. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen it yet; so…
The consequences of blogging under one’s own name
Posted by Orac on August 22, 2011 Sadly, a crank has silenced another skeptic. Many of you may know EpiRen, which is the Twitter and blog handle (and sometimes commenting handle here) of René Najera. René is an epidemiologist employed by the state public health department of health of an East Coast state and has been a force for reality- and science-based…
Independence Day open thread
Posted by Orac on July 4, 2011 Happy Independence Day, everyone! Believe it or not, your normally blogorrheic host is taking this holiday off. For one thing, I have to work on my talk for the Science-Based Medicine workshop at The Amaz!ng Meeting 9 next week. For another thing, I have a fair amount of work for my actual job to do…
10,000,000
Posted by Orac on April 21, 2011 I demand the sum of…..ten MILLION visits! Muhahahahahaha! Yes, I know I did that bit before–twice, three times, even!—but I liked it so much that I wanted to do it again, at least until my readers run screaming away, annoyed that Orac, of all people, would recycle the same old joke over and over. Of…
Fun with a naturopathic rant against The SkepDoc
Posted by Orac on April 11, 2011 As many of you probably know, I’m proud to call Dr. Harriet Hall (a.k.a. the SkepDoc) my friend, and, I daresay, so is my wife. We’ve both hung out with her at the last two TAMs, and we’ve hit it off pretty well. I also admire her history of standing up for science, reason, and…
Post-grant open thread
Posted by Orac on March 29, 2011 Well, it’s over. The grant is in, but it was painful, and I was exhausted, both in brain and body, last night. That’s why there’s no Insolence right now. Last night, I chilled, cracked open a cold one, watched some utterly mindless TV, and crashed early in order to be ready for a day in…
Another update from the mothership on the DDoS attack
Posted by Orac on March 15, 2011 Our (mostly) benevolent but unfortunately all-too-uncommunicative Seed Overlords have finally bestowed upon us another report regarding the ongoing DDoS attack. Believe me, I know many of you can’t access ScienceBlogs and, most important of all to me, this blog, the better to read every word of Insolence, Respectful and otherwise, that pours from my keyboard.…
On teaching the controversy in medicine
Posted by Orac on March 3, 2011 The other day, I wrote to express my disappointment with Dr. Kevin Pho, of KevinMD, for posting credulous crap about alternative medicine. I noted in an addendum that he responded with a comment that in essence said that he posts things he “doesn’t necessarily agree with myself to promote discussion and debate”: Orac, I appreciate…
Off we go….
Posted by Orac on March 2, 2011 Well, I’m off to the annual meeting of the Society of Surgical Oncology in San Antonio, where, as usual, I hope to learn about the latest advances in cancer surgery and hang out with old friends. Unfortunately, that means I didn’t get around to writing a new post today, even though there is one development…
Six years in the blogosphere…
Posted by Orac on December 11, 2010 Has it really been six years? Six years ago today, on a dim and dreary Saturday in December, almost on a whim I sat down, went to Blogspot, and started up the first version of Respectful Insolence with an introductory post with the cliched title, Please allow me to introduce myself. Here it is, six…
Head on over to…
Posted by Orac on August 2, 2010 …Scientopia, a new science blogging collective that just opened shop today. You’ll note that several of its founding members are refugees from right here at Sb, including White Coat Underground, Good Math, Bad Math, Adventures in Ethics and Science, The Questionable Authority, This Scientific Life, and Thus Spake Zuska. There are also several other intriguing-looking…
Another one gone…
Posted by Orac on July 21, 2010 …this time it’s Abel Pharmboy, who’s now here. Please reset your bookmarks. Farewell, friend. I’ll still be reading.
Just a notice while I’m dithering over my future here at Sb…
Posted by Orac on July 20, 2010 …remember that the following three domains will always point to where I am: http://www.respectfulinsolence.net http://www.respectfulinsolence.org http://www.respectfulinsolence.com Also remember that, should anything happen, I still have my old Blogspot blog Respectful Insolence, which can be reactivated at a moment’s notice, as I did last year when an attempt at a software upgrade at ScienceBlogs took longer…
Bora and PalMD leave ScienceBlogs: What to do now?
Posted by Orac on July 20, 2010 I can’t believe it. I really can’t believe it. I really, really, really can’t believe it. Bora has left ScienceBlogs. Readers of just this blog probably don’t know what a body blow that is to the ScienceBlogs collective. Readers of multiple ScienceBlogs probably realize that Bora was the proverbial heart and soul of ScienceBlogs. It’s…
Pepsigeddon claims Good Math, Bad Math
Posted by Orac on July 8, 2010 I learned with dismay this morning that blogchild Mark Chu-Carroll has decided to leave ScienceBlogs over our management’s incredibly bone-headed decision to host a blog written by PepsiCo. Given that Mark’s blog was the first (and, as far as I know, only) blog directly inspired by my efforts over the last few years, I find…
Off to TAM…
Posted by Orac on July 7, 2010 After the annoying kerfuffle that erupted last night over our Seed Overlords’ most unfortunate decision to let a corporate blog breach the firewall between content and advertising, it’s a good thing that I can go and hang out with fellow skeptics, chill, and think about things a few days. Yes, I’m going to TAM8. By…
Blindsided by my corporate overlords and PepsiCo
Posted by Orac on July 7, 2010 There’s a problem brewing and ScienceBlogs, a disturbance in the Force, if you will, and it’s a doozy. It’s a darkness that’s distubed several of my fellow ScienceBloggers to the point where I fear that some of them may leave. Indeed, it’s a spectacularly tin-eared and idiotic decision on the part of management that is…