denialism | November 10, 2007Mark at Boing Boing proposes an excellent new name for Intelligent Design creationists - "cdesign proponentsists". It's in honor of this wonderful observation from "Of Pandas and People" the creati ... I mean cdesign proponentsists textbook:
This is one of numerous examples of their dishonesty in suggesting that they're anything but creationists in disguise.
I like Mark's this idea, this should be their new name. It's a bit of a compromise. They don't want to be called creationists, and we don't want them to get away with lying. It's perfect!
Now as to the pronunciation. How about "see-…
denialism | November 9, 2007Just watching CNN, and saw them mindlessly parrot the latest rant from a crank. In this instance it's the founder of the weather channel John Coleman, now a San Diego meteorologist, who peels off a doozy.
It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motivesmanipulated long term scientific data to create an allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the "research" to further…
denialism | November 9, 2007Multiple news sources have been covering this recent article in JAMA (1) which provides epidemiological evidence that being overweight (but not obese) may decrease the risk of some illnesses, while not increasing one's overall mortality from cardiovascular disease.
Given that we've talked about overweight and obesity recently on the blog, I think it's worthwhile to go over these findings in context, and discuss what this paper, and related ones in the literature, actually mean in terms of our health.
Sorry, the news is not all good, you don't want to start putting on the pounds, and the…
denialism | November 8, 2007Holford Watch has a form letter for us to fill out for this week's version of the circle.
My favorite from this week is Action Skeptic's essay, which I think describes a character flaw common among cranks. That is, it's not so important for them to operate with scientifically valid rules of evidence or inquiry, but as long always perceive themselves to be right.
It was right then that I realized a major difference between skeptics and woos, between those dedicated to using and promoting the scientific method and those whose ignorance, nihilism, and epistemological hedonism lead them to…
choofnagle | November 7, 2007I'm continuing to bore you with the Federal Trade Commission's report on Consumer Fraud in the United States.
Would it be surprising to hear that individuals with higher levels of debt are more likely to be victims of fraud?
Yes, people in debt can be desperate, and thus be more likely to fall for scams, but there is another reason--people in debt are highly targeted by listbrokers (companies that sell lists of consumers). DirectMag's Listfinder has over 400 lists of debtors for sale. Scammers can buy these lists and target these populations for their frauds.
The good news is that,…
choofnagle | November 6, 2007The Federal Trade Commission just released their second report on Consumer Fraud in the United States. Since it is full of interesting information, I'm going to do several posts on the Commission's findings.
First a quick notes about methods: this report presents findings from 3,888 telephonic interviews of Spanish and English speaking adults. The Commission oversampled to ensure that several minority groups were strongly represented, because it is believed that inadequate attention is being paid in particular to scams against Latinos with limited English skills.
Despite the limitations of…
choofnagle | November 6, 2007Kevin Poulsen of Threat Level considers who's nuttier: Apple fans or Ron Paul fans? Complete with obfuscation, lying, and even fake posts on election sites. (Full disclosure: I am an Apple fan.)
denialism | November 6, 2007Just giving everyone a heads up. If you're an atheist and you're starting to get a little demented make sure someone is there to protect you from religious people with an axe to grind. The story of the so-called turning of Antony Flew is sad, and really very cruel, as IDers and religious ideologues have clearly exploited a man in decline.
TWO YEARS LATER, Flew's doubts have disappeared, and the philosopher has a reinvigorated faith in his theistic friends. In his new book, he freely cites Schroeder, Haldane and Varghese. And the author who two years ago was forgetting his Hume is, in the…
denialism | November 5, 2007As either evidence that you can convince idiots of anything to get high, or that police don't have a sense of humor, check out the Smoking Gun's coverage of this police bulletin warning of a new drug - Jenkem.
The hilarious part? The drug is supposedly created by fermenting human sewage in the sun, then inhaling the fumes. Slang terms include: Winnie, Shit, Runners, Fruit from Crack Pipe, Leroy Jenkems, Might, Butthash, and Waste. Ha!
Now Snopes has the skinny on this supposedly new epidemic which the memo warns is "now a popular drug in American schools." Yeah, maybe among kids with…
choofnagle | November 5, 2007Cynthia Crossen writes in today's Journal about subliminal advertising:
At a New York press conference 50 years ago, a market researcher, James Vicary, announced he had invented a way to make people buy things whether they wanted them or not. It was called subliminal advertising.
He had tested the process at a New Jersey movie theater, he said, where he had flashed the words "Eat Popcorn" or "Coca-Cola" on the screen every five seconds as the films played. The words came and went so fast -- in three-thousandths of a second -- that the audience didn't know they'd seen them. Yet sales of…
denialism | November 5, 2007It's the latest idiotic attack on the science of global warming, Joe Queenan tells us it was great for the Vikings! Why the LA Times publishes this crap is beyond me.
So the argument is, the Vikings had a merry old time the last time it was warm like today, therefore, why worry? Global warming is good?
Well, take a look at temperature reconstructions for the last 2 thousand years or so (1):
The Vikings supposedly roamed the northern Atlantic around the year 1000 AD +/- 200 years.
Can you see the problem? We're at happy Viking now (and that's if you except the top, end of the…
denialism | November 5, 2007On his blog Stein espouses one of the weakest attacks I've heard yet against evolution, and not even original. It's a pathetic set of logical fallacies. Basically, he starts from the assumption that scientific theories arise if they serve the prevailing ideology of the time period, and because "Darwinism" was developed during the Victorian/imperialist age, it represents nothing but the worst aspects of that era.
Let's make this short and sweet. It would be taken for granted by any serious historian that any ideology or worldview would partake of the culture in which it grew up and would…
denialism | November 5, 2007The mainstream media has been reporting on this paper (open access at PNAS) on the hunt for the origin of HIV in the Americas.
The surprising result was the finding that HIV first came to the United States from Haiti (rather than the previous origin which was thought to be a flight attendant from Canada) between 1966 and 1972, and flew under the radar of public health authorities for over a decade. The infection, spread initially by heterosexuals from Haiti, went undetected from as early as 1966 until 1981 and then only because it had jumped into a highly susceptible population. This…
denialism | November 2, 2007The latest pathetic assault on a scientist came from ALF against UCLA scientist Edyth London. Using a garden hose they flooded her home, causing tens of thousands in damage. However, rather than intimidating her out of performing research in addiction she has written an article for the LA Times, defending animal research.
For years, I have watched with growing concern as my UCLA colleagues have been subjected to increasing harassment, violence and threats by animal rights extremists. In the last 15 months, these attempts at intimidation have included the placement of a Molotov cocktail-type…
denialism | November 1, 2007Last week you may remember I watched phenomenon with eye out for Uri Geller's nonsense, and I was pleasantly surprised to find Criss Angel playing the skeptic pretty well.
Well this week's was awesome! Jim Callahan does a pretty cheesy psychic bit, with some really terrible acting, and it's so bad that Angel calls him out. Angel starts demanding he (or Geller) show real psychic ability and if he did he'd give him a million dollars. It ends up with them being physically separated - check it out!
Some spoilers below the fold.
The rest of the mentalism gags this week were more of the same.…
denialism | November 1, 2007 The question this month is "Which parts of the human body could you design better?"
This is a great question, because a lot of aspects of the human body represent what worked well enough for survival, not necessarily what works best. Therefore the engineering ends up being rather ramshackle, and convoluted, and sometimes, downright terrible.
For instance, who can look at this image - an anatomical model of human pregnancy at term, and not think this is really, really stupid engineering.
(image via wikipedia)
The very first thing I would change would be the female reproductive system.…
choofnagle | October 31, 2007
Denialism blog has failed you. We totally missed Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. Would anyone like to share how they recognized this event?
denialism | October 30, 2007Another sign the monkeys are running the zoo is the news that the head of consumer protection doesn't want consumer protection.
The top official for consumer product safety has asked Congress in recent days to reject legislation that would strengthen the agency that polices thousands of consumer goods, from toys to tools.
On the eve of an important Senate committee meeting to consider the legislation, Nancy A. Nord, the acting chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has asked lawmakers in two letters not to approve the bulk of legislation that would increase the agency's…
denialism | October 30, 2007It's already got the fundamentalists up in arms. Apparently, one of them managed to read something outside the accepted cannon of Christ-like books and now they're all bothered about the December 7th release (see trailer) of the first installment of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy - the Golden Compass (IMDB).
According to CNSNews.com, leading atheist writers and intellectuals are engaged in a "scientific" quest to ultimately destroy organized religion, particularly Christianity. Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, author Sam Harris and journalist Christopher Hitchens are some of…