oracknows | September 19, 2006Heh.
I love it when the guys over at Holocaust Controversies get involved in a tussle with someone who clearly doesn't know what he is talking about, and I figure that perhaps my readers will too. So, enjoy this amusing little rebuttal to a guy who calls himself the "Birdman" and seems to think it's so cool to be "politically incorrect," even going so far as to bill himself the "world's most controversial author." (Get a load of his blatant anti-Semitism, for example.) Apparently he's also a UFO maven, as well.
In any case, enjoy as Sergey takes the Birdman apart.
While you're at it, enjoy…
oracknows | September 19, 2006Grand Rounds, vol. 2., no 52 has been posted at Tundra Medicine Dreams.
Enjoy!
oracknows | September 19, 2006Unfortunately for them, folks in Colorado have a hard core anti-vaxer named Dawn Winkler running for governor on the Libertarian ticket. I'm hoping for their sakes that, as a third party candidate, that she has virtually no chance of winning. Check out some of her rhetoric posted on Whale.to seven years ago in response to an essay by Dr. J. Thomas Megerian of Children's Hospital in Boston. Even though it's seven years old, I present part of it because it is so astonishingly clueless and because, as you will see later, Winkler apparently hasn't learned a thing since then:
How on earth did we…
oracknows | September 18, 2006Janet has posted the final results of the Nerd-off, and, contrary to what he deserves, Orac did not come in first place.
I was robbed!
Come on, how could the Dalek cookie jar sitting on the shelf in my office not have guaranteed my ultimate triumph over all in the realm of nerdiness?
oracknows | September 18, 2006Listen to this episode of Point of Inquiry. It includes an interview with Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's widow, who cowrote Cosmos and Contact. That's good enough (although the sound quality of her connection is not so good), but what will really get you fired up is the last half of the podcast contains last public address for CSICOP, from its conference in Seattle in 1994. Entitled "Wonder and Skepticism," Sagan how he became interested in science and astronomy because of his sheer wonder at science and the stars, argues why science is the best way of looking at the world (his part about the…
oracknows | September 18, 2006Ensconced at a conference center in North Carolina near Abel's and Bora's home turf since Saturday, I appear to have missed an update on the story of Starchild Abraham Cherrix. As you may recall, he is a 16 year old who fought for the right to pursue "alternative" therapy over evidence-based medicine to treat his relapsed Hodgkin's lymphoma. Last month he and his parents agreed to a compromise with the court in which he would be allowed to pursue his desired form of quackery (known as the Hoxsey therapy) in addition to other therapies in the clinic of a radiation oncologist named Dr. Arnold…
oracknows | September 17, 2006Here's something that tells me, that should I ever visit Russia, I will need to be very, very careful crossing the street or going anywhere near traffic:
About 25 percent of Russians have had sex while driving, a poll released by KRC Research and Goodyear revealed. And this is just one of the things that make them the worst drivers in Europe.
According to the research, Russians do not use seatbelts, break speed-limits, drive through red lights, drive drunk and have sex while driving much more often than other Europeans do.
The odd thing is they don't think all this is bad.
According to the…
oracknows | September 17, 2006I'm still kind of scratching my head over this one. It's preaching to the converted and is not particularly illuminating.
Surely they could have come up with something better. (Via the bioethics web log.)
oracknows | September 16, 2006This reminds me of what the result might be were Monty Python to do a public service announcement encouraging organ donation, except Monty Python would have done it in drag rather than using a real female:
oracknows | September 16, 2006It may not seem like much when it comes to dealing with animal rights "activists" who cross the line into vandalism, harassment, and intimidation, but it's a start:
Three animal rights activists who organized a campaign to harass employees and clients of a New Jersey research lab were sen tenced to prison yesterday by a judge who said their commitment to social justice had morphed into frightening and sometimes violent protests outside people's homes and offices.
"The means used, the harm im posed, almost arrogantly, is serious -- and warrants serious punishment," Senior U.S. District Judge…
oracknows | September 15, 2006It's about time it was Friday. No, it's not because it will mean any less work for me; in fact, this weekend will probably mean more, as I have to go to a workshop that's more like boot camp. It's more because the subject matter of this blog had become such a major bummer, with the fifth anniversary of September 11, followed by a rumination about aging, followed by two posts about the dismal funding situation at the NIH. The only thing breaking up the gloom was getting a chance to point out a lovely deconstruction of an HIV "skeptics'" misguided attempt at claiming the mantle of skepticism,…
oracknows | September 14, 2006I never knew that puppies liked logic and critical thinking. I always thought that they liked running, playing, eating, sleeping, and being petted. But, according to Janet Stemwedel, there is at least one puppy who is a budding skeptic, and bad reasoning and gullibility make him sad. She explains in the introduction to the 43rd Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle:
Welcome to the meeting of the 43rd Skeptics' Circle! Good logic and critical thinking never hurt anyone, but bad logic, gullibility, and uncritical acceptance of questionable claims causes distress to small, furry animals. I'm not…
oracknows | September 14, 2006I hadn't planned on writing about this again after yesterday. The subject is profoundly depressing to those of us needing to compete for declining NIH grant resources with only a 9% chance of success the first time. However, given that Your Friday Dose of Woo will make an appearance tomorrow to make everything all right; that is, assuming that my O.R. day tomorrow isn't too stressful. After all, there's little better to lift your spirits than a bit of amusing woo, you know.
In any case, a commenter named Theodore Price said:
Orac, maybe (almost certainly not actually) you didn't mean it this…
oracknows | September 13, 2006With the latest edition of the Skeptics' Circle due to appear later today, I'd just like to point out that I've become aware of two new skeptical blogs:
Action Skeptics (I like its catchphrase, "Annoying stupid people, one woo at a time.")
The Antidote: Counterspin for Health Care and Health News
They're worth checking out, and I'll keep an eye on them to see how they develop. And while we're at it, I would be remiss if I didn't mention another skeptical blog belonging to someone who's become a frequent commenter here. That's right, I mean Amy Alkon, a.k.a. The Advice Goddess, who runs a…
oracknows | September 13, 2006For an unforgettable perspective on the tragic events of five years ago, watch this video. No further comment by me is necessary.
The video speaks for itself.
oracknows | September 13, 2006Tangled Bank #62 has been posted at The Hairy Museum of Natural History. Get your science blogging fix.
oracknows | September 13, 2006I was going to blog about this a couple of days ago, but the Scientific Activist beat me to it, leading to a heads-up from PZ Myers. Never let it be said that a little thing like that stopped me from putting my two cents in. Besides, I think I bring a certain perspective that hasn't been addressed thus far about this subject, namely the declining success rates for applications for R01 grants from the NIH. For one thing, I have an R01. I'm about a year and a half into a five year grant, which means that I have about two and a half years or so before I have to go for renewal. Consequently, I…
oracknows | September 12, 2006Sometimes there are things that happen when blogging. You get accolades from unexpected sources, little ego boosts that make it all worthwhile. Such a thing happened yesterday, on the basis of my little blurb mentioning Skeptico's takedown of Hank Barnes's misuse of logical fallacies. The reaction, as reflected in the comments in Hank's blog, was quite hilarious. One reader whined:
Whenever somebody claims to be debunking something, it always means that somebody revealed an uncomfortable truth and now they've got to stuff it back in the bottle.
Well no, actually, the only thing "uncomfortable…
oracknows | September 12, 2006Grand Rounds no. 2, vol. 51 has been posted at Diabetes Mine. Time for more of the best medical blogging of the last week.