oracknows | August 22, 2006While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…
oracknows | August 22, 2006While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…
oracknows | August 21, 2006While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…
oracknows | August 21, 2006While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…
oracknows | August 21, 2006By the time you read this, I'll be somewhere on either the Pennsylvania Turnpike or Ohio Turnpike on the our yearly trip to visit my wife's and my families.
But never fear! I've decided to use this opportunity to do something that I've been meaning to do for a ever since I made the move over to ScienceBlogs: Move a lot of what I like to call Classic Insolence from the old blog over to the new blog, starting with some cancer-related posts tomorrow. These posts, lovingly chosen by me, will be appearing at a rate of two to five per day. (Heck, the blog will be more active in my absence than it…
oracknows | August 21, 2006Things had been quiet. Too quiet. So quiet that Orac couldn't even enjoy his usual recreational pastime of analyzing limericks and jokes linguistically in order to try to understand what made them so amusing to the humans among whom he was forced to exist. Even probing the perturbations in the electromagnetic fields caused by the nearest black hole wouldn't let him shake this sense that something was going to happen.
Sense? Orac is a computer; how could he have a "sense" of anything? Certainly, computers don't usually have intuition or a "sense," but Orac was a much higher order of computer,…
oracknows | August 20, 2006...I love it when Nick Terry makes dim Holocaust deniers run away just by asking them to back up their claims.
oracknows | August 20, 2006The latest Carnival of Bad History, the blog carnival dedicated to the discussion of the misuse and misunderstanding of history, has landed over at Liberty and Power.
oracknows | August 20, 2006Wallace Sampson tells us the real history of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Much of TCM, it turns out, isn't as "traditional" as it is sold as being.
oracknows | August 20, 2006Well, this might cause a fuss:
Newly reordained brand whore Kate Moss has landed herself another job, this time for a new ad campaign for Calvin Klein. One of the ads, located directly across the street from the Madina Masjid Mosque on east 11th street, features a topless Moss flirtingly touching a man from behind. This surely must not be a favorite for devout East Village Muslims especially since their rigorous prayer routine requires at least 5 viewings of the wide eyed infidel daily.
Here's the billboard:
I'm not sure this was such a good idea on the part of the advertising company. One…
oracknows | August 19, 2006And, worse, this is from my home state as well:
LANSING - A Rochester Hills chiropractor defended the techniques of a Fenton chiropractor accused of performing unorthodox breast treatments.
The teen girls treated by Robert J. Moore have spinal curvatures that may have caused their bodies to tilt and force one breast to droop lower than the other, said Dr. Robert Ducharme, a chiropractor who testified Tuesday in Moore's defense.
Moore risks losing his chiropractic license after four women, including two teenage girls, claim he fondled them during office and after-hours visits.
Moore, 41,…
oracknows | August 18, 2006Given how much I've written about the Abraham Cherrix case, I would be remiss in not pointing out some posts by fellow ScienceBloggers:
1. First, Abel Pharmboy discusses how this might all come down to a failure of communication between Cherrix's doctors and Cherrix and his parents. While this is probably true, I'm not sure that any amount of communication and empathy would have changed Cherrix's mind. Abel also makes some good points about "natural" therapies in cancer. I would also agree with him that it is important to be as nonconfrontational as possible when a patient insists on…
oracknows | August 18, 2006Glutton for punishment that I am, all in the name of skepticism, critical thinking, and evidence-based medicine, I am sometimes wont to surf through the stranger parts of the Internet in search of truly amazing material for Your Friday Dose of Woo. Sometimes, I hit the jackpot, as I did a few weeks ago. Sometimes I don't. Regardless, I'm always amazed at the strangeness that I encounter. This week, I was pondering what topic to cover. Once again, there were so many possibilities that I was having a hard time making up my mind, even more so than usual. While contemplating this dilemma, I felt…
oracknows | August 17, 2006I wondered what took him so long (maybe diving into heated debates is not his style), but fellow ScienceBlogger The Cheerful Oncologist has weighed on on the Cherrix case, in which a 16-year-old has refused chemotherapy for his Hodgkin's disease. And he would know better than I what the treatment options are for relapsed Hodgkin's disease. Personally, I'd like to see him chime in on such issues more often.
oracknows | August 17, 2006Yes, it's that time again, time for the biweekly carnival dedicated to highlighting actual critical thinking and skepticism directed against the general credulity that we usually find in the blogosphere: The Skeptics' Circle. This time around, our host is Interverbal, who is hosting Awards Night at the Circle:
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, I would like to welcome you to the 41st Skeptic's Circle which is of course, Awards Night! We certainly have had many fine nominees in the last few weeks and I know that the excitement is mounting! But before we begin I would like to take a minute and…
oracknows | August 17, 2006You know, as a native Detroiter and Tigers fan, I'm not sure whether to be pleased or appalled by this picture of one of my more--shall we say?--"illustrious" fellow Detroiters getting married. The least he could do would be to wear the jersey along with the hat, don't you think?
oracknows | August 16, 2006Sadly, Starchild Abraham Cherrix is almost certainly doomed:
ACCOMAC, Virginia (AP) -- A 16-year-old cancer patient's legal fight ended in victory Wednesday when his family's attorneys and social services officials reached an agreement that would allow him to forgo chemotherapy.
At the start of what was scheduled to be a two-day hearing, Circuit Judge Glen A. Tyler announced that both sides had reached a consent decree, which Tyler approved.
Under the decree, Starchild Abraham Cherrix, who is battling Hodgkin's disease, will be treated by an oncologist of his choice who is board-certified in…
oracknows | August 16, 2006I bet that this probably isn't applicable to too many women:
One Israeli woman has received an unexpected boost from her breast implants during the Lebanon war -- the silicone embeds saved her life during a Hezbollah rocket attack, a doctor said.
"This is an extraordinary case, but it's a fact that the silicone implants prevented her from a more serious and deeper wound," Jacky Govrin, of the hospital in Nahariya that treated the woman, told army radio Tuesday.
"The young woman went through surgery two years ago to have a larger chest," he said. "During the war she was wounded in the chest by…