June 25, 2007
I for one salute Gavin Newsom for refusing to waste government money on bottled water.
I have never bought bottled water. It's silly to spend good money on bottled water when throughout this country it's possible to drink clean potable water for free or a tiny fraction of the cost of bottled…
June 23, 2007
Mingle2 - Online Dating
I actually try to be less potty-mouthed since I joined science blogs. I'm trying to differentiate myself from PZ.
June 22, 2007
Tara points out that we missed a nice little article in Science last week about our friends at AidsTruth. They discuss their ongoing efforts to counter HIV/AIDS denialism on the Web.
Launched by AIDS researchers, clinicians, and activists from several countries, AIDSTruth.org offers more than 100…
June 22, 2007
Bible Belt Blogger brings us this excerpt from the Family Research Council's "Dear Praying Friends" letter:
Surgeon General Nominee under Fire - Dr. James Holsinger, President Bush's nominee for Surgeon General, has been harshly condemned by pro-homosexual activists for a 1991 paper he wrote for…
June 22, 2007
And Cordova has used the conflict between molecular and fossil data to attack evolution.
Sigh. To busy to write about everything wrong with this. Go ahead and use this as an open thread to mock Cordova for being a predictable, quote-mining, dishonest creep. Also note, in line with perfect crank…
June 21, 2007
It's up at Relatively Science.
Swing by and show them some love.
June 21, 2007
Hooray for science! The New England Journal reports on the imminent eradication of the Guinea worm.
For those who haven't heard of this nasty little parasite, it is a really horrible infection to get. It starts with the ingestion of Dracunculus medinensis infected water. The larvae, when freed…
June 21, 2007
Those who are interested in the Colony-Collapse Disorder phenomenon will probably enjoy this paper from PLoS entitled "What's Killing American Honey Bees?" It lays out the history of mass bee die-offs - which have been recorded extensively by apiarists, and discusses whether or not major concern…
June 21, 2007
Greg Laden writes a very nice tangled bank. It's a model for what a good carnival post should look like I think. And he was kind enough to link our discussion of Uncommon Descent's remarkable ability to predict the past.
Definitely worth a click.
June 21, 2007
Nature reports on this new paper that shows a major conflict resolving the fossil and molecular records of mammalian evolution. It's entitled, "Cretaceous eutherians and Laurasian origin for placental mammals near the K/T boundary" and the major finding is that mammals seem to have evolved largely…
June 20, 2007
It lives up to it's title.
H/T boingboing
June 20, 2007
RFK Jr. writes the standard crank screed in Huffpo, and it's like a mirror reflection of the CBS news crankery that Orac takes on.
Let's see, it's a crank screed so it at a very minimum has to have four elements. The wacky idea, a bunch of inflated non-evidence, conspiracy theories to deflect…
June 19, 2007
I don't know how many people knew about this - the sciencebloggers were informed a little bit late, but Seed had a competition on threadless to design a t-shirt in honor of our benevolent overlords, Seed publishing.
Here's the winner
Also, you guys may have noticed our rotating masthead. Well, I'…
June 18, 2007
David Kirby seems to be planning his escape from the autism debate. At Huffington post, he demands that science perform epidemiological studies that compare the healthiness or autism rates of unvaccinated versus vaccinated children.
Most people (save for a handful of fringe parents who believe…
June 18, 2007
It's time to talk about the anti-vaccine (or anti-vax) denialists. Considering the Autism Omnibus trial is underway to decide whether or not parents of autistic children can benefit from the vaccine-compensation program, a fund designed to compensate those who have had reactions to vaccines and…
June 16, 2007
You know how dumb Egnor sounds with his mind outside the brain cell-phone silliness? He sounds as dumb as Deepak Chopra writing more brain-dead new agey nonsense for the Huffington Post.
To gain credibility, the mind outside the brain must also be mirrored inside the brain. If your brain didn't…
June 16, 2007
Casey Luskin is also celebrating the death of the "junk" DNA hypothesis over at Evolution News and Views. You see, a Wired magazine article has breathlessly reported what we've known for decades. And guess what? Just like Sal Cordova, Luskin has a really interesting view of the history of…
June 15, 2007
Michael Egnor is to "argument from analogy" as a fish is to __________.
A. Fire
B. Victorian Literature
C. Mathematics
D. Water
Imagine scientists living on an isolated island who have developed sophisticated science and culture, with one exception: they deny that telecommunication is possible…
June 15, 2007
La Corte de los Milagros translates the Crank HOWTO!
I'm flattered. Thanks Martin.
June 15, 2007
I just knew it. The second I read this abstract I just knew that the Uncommon Descent cranks would dust off their old "Junk DNA" harangue and suggest that if it wasn't for them, no one would believe that all that non-coding DNA had a purpose. Sal Cordova obliged, and it's the usual embarrassing…
June 14, 2007
George Monbiot posts his last reply to Alexander Cockburn.
Wisely, Monbiot has chosen not to continue arguing with a crank. At a certain point it's always a lost cause. And considering Cockburn's evidence one would be crazy to continue.
It turns out, the sole-source of his rambling diatribe…
June 13, 2007
I'm surprised it took as long as a day for denialists like Patrick Michaels to gloat over the finding that the loss of the ice caps on Kilimanjaro - an example used by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth - has turned out to be from causes other than global warming (a more in depth paper).
But one…
June 13, 2007
Now it's the "Rachel Carson killed millions" nonsense over at Uncommon Descent and it's based upon this WSJ editorial from Dr. Zaramba, the health minister for Uganda.
What's really embarrassing is how they link the entire article and it's clear they didn't even read it.
BarryA writes:
When I got…
June 12, 2007
As promised, I'm going through the three papers from last week about the re-programming of adult cells into an embryonic-like phenotype. Since it is three papers I'll go through first what's common to all three, and then what each group did special.
First of all, let's summarize the method one…
June 11, 2007
Anyone else want to venture a guess as to what that ending was about?
To those who haven't seen it - I'd avoid going below the fold - it will be a spoiler.
This is a total spoiler so seriously stop reading if you don't want to talk about the end of the series.
Watching the show on a DVR I was…
June 11, 2007
Last week we discussed the nomination of Dr. James Holsinger to be Surgeon General of the United States, and our concerns considering his anti-gay views.
Now Jim Burroway has done a thorough dissection of Holsinger's attempt to use science to advocate for homophobic policies in his church and it's…
June 9, 2007
It's a good read, also check out MarkCC's review
It's another example of cranks not recognizing talent - or rather the absence of it. And Sean Carroll hits pretty hard in his review making the point that there are so many basic errors in the book that Behe isn't doing ID any favors. He ends with…
June 8, 2007
Ever since I heard the link I was hoping for something more solid than the weak associations I was hearing about on NPR and other news sources. It seemed very preliminary, and a bit worrisome that, especially in the foreign press, that they were claiming things like the New Orleans/Katrina…
June 8, 2007
Ben Goldacre at Bad Science is leading the way on opposing this new absurdity of "electric smog", and one of it's leading proponents in Britain, Julia Stephenson.
It's really too easy. Remember the crank HOWTO? Well, she's just about a perfect example.
It all started when she got wifi in her…
June 7, 2007
I see that Tim Blair has decided to quote mine me. As part of my analysis of Cockburn's crankery I made the following statement.
Below the fold I'll summarize Cockburn's arguments and how they use the denialist tactics, George Monbiot's responses (including his amazing crank-fu!) and discuss why…
