oracknows | August 9, 2006As you probably remember, the case that first got me discussing the issue of children and minors opting for "alternative therapy" rather than conventional medicine was not Starchild Abraham Cherrix (Abraham's personal website). Rather, this is a topic that I first approached nine months ago, even before I moved over to ScienceBlogs. With the prominence of the Cherrix case, the Wernecke case has dropped off the map more or less. Basically, her parents won the right to refuse the recommended radiation therapy for her, a treatment with a good chance of rendering her disease-free, and instead…
oracknows | August 8, 2006Grand Rounds, vol. 2, no 46 has been posted at Mexico Medical Student. Enjoy!
oracknows | August 8, 2006The other day, I posted about the reaction in the white power ranger blogosphere to Mel Gibson's little anti-Semitic tirade. Apparently a blogger by the name of Occidentalist took umbrage in the comments at my having pointed out that the rantings about "the synagogue of Satan" contained on an anti-Semitic blog were, in fact, anti-Semitic and downright un-Christian:
Ya know the Talmud says Jesus Christ is boiling in hot excrement for all eternity, right?
Besides being irrelevant, that statement has nothing to do with the contents of my post. (I don't recall mentioning the Talmud, Jesus, or the…
oracknows | August 8, 2006Our Seed overlords beckon:
What movie do you think does something admirable (though not necessarily accurate) regarding science? Bonus points for answering whether the chosen movie is any good generally....
This one's a bit of a toughy. First off, I waited too long to answer it, which means that other ScienceBloggers have copped answers that I had thought of, movies such as Real Genius and Apollo 13. Those were definitely among the first movies that came to mind. Even though the science itself in Real Genius is downright silly, its celebration of the joys of being a science geek is infectious…
oracknows | August 7, 2006Via Advice Goddess, I find that the Atlanta Zoo is using psychics to predict whether their prize Panda is actually pregnant.
One of them predicted that the Panda is definitely pregnant and will bear a male cub before September 4. I'll give her credit for putting herself out there with a definite prediction. Of course, if she's wrong, it's likely that no one will remember. The other psychic was more cagey; she only estimated a 65% chance that the Panda is pregant. (I wonder how she came up with those odds?) Of course, if she's wrong, she can just say that she had only predicted a 2/3…
oracknows | August 7, 2006It occurred to me over the weekend that I hadn't updated my Medicine and Evolution series in a while. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a couple of clueless creationists who had wildly misinterpreted a recent paper about how the cornea prevents blood vessels from growing into it from the surrounding sclera as "evidence" against evolution, basing his conclusion on, in essence, a single sentence from the abstract of the paper. It turns out that my humble efforts attracted the attention of an editor for American Academy of Ophthalmology, who was kind enough to forward to me a fascinating…
oracknows | August 6, 2006This one's been making the rounds over the last few days, but, Star Wars geek that I am, I found it hilarious enough to post, even though it's shown up in a lot of other places. Enjoy!
oracknows | August 6, 2006
Yet another music pioneer from the 1960's has passed away. This time, it's Arthur Lee, who died of leukemia at age 61.
Arthur Lee was the leader of Love, one of the most prominent L.A. bands during the height of the psychedelic era in the 1960's and one of my favorite bands of all time. Although Love was little known to the public outside of southern California, only released three albums, and rarely toured, its influence on rock was huge. Lee was also an unusual character and liked to say that he was the "first black hippie" (Love was one of the very first multiracial rock bands), and in…
oracknows | August 5, 2006Angel Falls produces the tallest free fall of water in the world, at over 3,000 feet, with an uninterrupted drop of over 2,600 feet. If you read the conventional history of the falls, you'd know that the one credited officially with discovering the falls is James Angel, who found the falls while looking for an ore bed. Oh, sure, it's true that Ernesto Sanchez La Cruz found them first and that the Venezuelan natives in the area knew about them long before Angel showed up, but the falls weren't named after any of them, now were they?
Of course, there's another explorer to contend with who also…
oracknows | August 5, 2006Amazing. As hard as it is for me to believe, it looks as though I might have spawned another one. One of my regular commenters has decided to dip her foot into the blogosphere. Oddly enough for one of my offspring, the blog concerns motorcycles. (I've only been on a motorcycle a couple of times in my life and never as the driver.) Even so, I'd be a really neglectful blog parent if I didn't give her a plug for Ren and the Art of Motorcycles.
oracknows | August 5, 2006Here are a few links that I didn't get around to mentioning during the week that are, in this blogger's humble opinion, worth a read by my readers:
This week saw the 25th anniversary of MTV. Terra Sigillata has two posts on his favorite MTV memories (with the latter link showing a 17-year-old Pharmboy jamming out), and Stereogum has the playlist for the first 24 hours of MTV, plus a YouTube of the first few minutes, in which the VJs were introduced.
Should I get wooden knobs for my stereo system? The manufacturers claim that they will greatly improve sound quality, and they're a bargain at $…
oracknows | August 4, 2006After the last couple of weeks of Your Friday Dose of Woo, I was in a bind. You see, people were telling me that they really enjoyed the last couple of weeks, particularly last week. For some reason, they were amused by my discussion of various liver cleansing regimens, hot on the heals of having discussed colon cleansing regimens. (Must be the bathroom humor; it gets 'em every time.) Some of you were surprised at the real obsession that alties have with "purifying" their insides from various "poisons" or "toxins." As I discussed, some of these folks seem to believe that their insides are…
oracknows | August 3, 2006Today, the Skeptics' Circle turns 40. Well, not exactly, but it is the 40th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, and this time around it's being held at Daylight Atheism. Once again, it's time for an antidote for the rampant credulity in the blogosphere, where dubious stories travel around the world far faster than skeptics can apply critical thinking skills to them, this time by entering the Daylight Atheism Museum of Superstition and Pseudoscience:
The doors of the Observatory are closed, and an eager crowd has gathered before them, milling about anxiously to await the unveiling of the newest…
oracknows | August 3, 2006Ron Rosenbaum on Starchild Abraham Cherrix and his choosing the Hoxsey treatment over chemotherapy:
Young Cherrix has expressed his feelings this way to the Associated Press: "I'll fight until I do die. I'm not going to let it go. I would rather die healthy and strong and in my house than die in a hospital bed, bedridden and unable to even open my eyes."
It's a moving and heartfelt plea, but a problematic one as well. My instinct to support young Cherrix on libertarian grounds is undermined by the not quite fully developed thought process this statement suggests.
Is the choice he faces really…
oracknows | August 3, 2006Now that Mel Gibson has apologized for his anti-Semitic tirade during his arrest for DUI last week and the ADL has accepted Gibson's apology, everyone is discussing what the fallout will be among the Hollywood elite, many of whom happen to be Jewish. Ever the contrarian, using my knowledge of the darker places of the Internet, where white power rangers spin ever more self-pitying tales of depradations at the hands of "the Jews," I thought I'd see what Gibson's other fan base thinks of the whole affair, in an unflinching effort to bring you a perspective that no other blogger would, mainly…
oracknows | August 3, 2006...while driving to work at 6:30 AM you notice the thermometer in your car already registers the outside temperature as 83 degrees Farehnheit.
Ack.
oracknows | August 2, 2006Here's something so obvious that it should have been done years ago:
WASHINGTON -- Unlike prescription drugmakers, manufacturers of vitamins, minerals and herbal remedies have no obligation to tell the Food and Drug Administration if consumers suffer serious side effects after taking their products.
That may soon change.
Legislation headed for a vote in the Senate would mandate for the first time that makers of dietary supplements and over-the-counter drugs inform the FDA when they learn of any serious adverse event linked to their products.
"The current reporting system is voluntary. It's…
oracknows | August 2, 2006I had seriously considered jumping all over this story when I first saw it early Monday morning. After all, look at the headline:
Jewish groups call for hate-crime probe on Mel Gibson
A more truly ominous thing to be calling for based on a drunken anti-Semitic tirade I have a hard time imagining. As you may remember from my previous discussions of, for example, the David Irving trial, I am very much against hate speech laws. What I don't recall if I've ever mentioned before is that I'm also very skeptical of hate crime laws. I can see using racial or religious bigotry as an aggravating…
oracknows | August 1, 2006With the appearance of the Hitler Zombie twice in less than a month on this blog, Andrew Mathis was inspired to send me this YouTube video. He's right; it's perhaps the best commentary I've heard about the use of the Hitler analogy or argumentum ad Nazium to demonize one's political opponents.
oracknows | August 1, 2006I don't often do reader mailbag sorts of posts, but this question was so good that I thought it would be worth answering on the blog. Indeed, I almost thought of making this whole question another in my Friday Woo series, but decided that I wanted to answer it now.
Reader TB writes:
I've been following your blog for a few months now and love being both educated and entertained. The Friday Dose of Woo is great. While I have an idea of what you mean by woo it would be helpful to me and others visiting the page if you included a definition and perhaps the etymology.
My first temptation was to…