I'm afraid that I have been a bit remiss in my duties as the coordinator of the Skeptic's Circle. You see, today was a travel day, and I was heading to Chicago on business. Unfortunately, the Skeptics' Circle link was not posted very early this morning before I left (probably due to the fact that it was even earlier in California, the abode of our current host, The Innoculated Mind. But it's worth the wait. You see, this edition's host, Karl Mogel, has done something that's never been done with the Circle before. He's put together the first combined Skeptics' Circle/podcast with the 45th…

These days, I tend to detest Michael Moore almost as much as I detest Ann Coulter. However, as they say, a stopped watch is correct twice a day, and occasionally Moore can come up with something that's so spot on funny and appropriate that even I have to give him props. (This used to happen more often several years ago and happens far less often now.) In this case, it's a segment from his old show in which he took on the "Reverend" (and I use the term loosely, given Phelps' vicious and hateful spin on Christianity) Fred Phelps over his picketing of gay funerals. The video below was made well…

Last week, when I speculated about reasons why there hasn't been a National Slavery Museum in this nation until the one slated to open in 2007, I mentioned the power of Confederate sympathies that still persists even to today in much of the South. Basically, in the eyes of many, the Confederacy has been romanticized, downplayng the brutality of slavery upon which the economy of the South was based for so long. Another example has cropped up in the Senate campaign of Senator George Allen (R) in Virginia: The Confederate battle flag still stirs passions - reverence in some, fear and loathing in…

This would be hilarious if it weren't for what it says about critical thinking skills: BERLIN (Reuters) - A German lawyer hopes to drum up more business by pursuing state compensation claims for people who believe they were abducted by aliens. "There's quite obviously demand for legal advice here," Jens Lorek told Reuters by telephone on Thursday. "The trouble is, people are afraid of making fools of themselves in court." Lorek, a lawyer based in the eastern city of Dresden who specializes in social and labor law, said he hoped to expand his client base by taking on the unusual work. He has…

One of the favorite gambits that alternative medicine mavens like to use to defend their favorite remedies when a skeptic starts asking uncomfortably pointed and specific questions their scientific and evidentiary basis is to accuse said skeptic of being "in the pocket of big pharma." Indeed, I've written before of the "pharma shill gambit," where alties accuse skeptics of being nothing more than shills for the pharmaceutical industry (to which I always respond that it would be a dream come true to be paid for doing nothing more than posting skepticism about non-evidence-based medicine to a…

File this under the "You Learn Something New Every Day" category. Apparently, ghosts can be horny little buggers, and a "ghostbuster" named Syed Abdullah Alattas, founder and chief investigator of Seekers Malaysia, has been investigating: GHOSTS have sex. This is the claim of Syed Abdullah Alattas, founder and chief investigator of Seekers Malaysia. "We are doing research to find out their habits, behaviour, how they have sex and such," he said. Syed Abdullah said some texts on religion also mentioned naughty and randy ghosts. Dressed in a red T-shirt, a black leather vest and leather gloves…

It figures. After posting yesterday about whose responsibility it is when a cancer patient rejects evidence-based effective treatments in favor of quackery and then progresses, I would have to be made aware of an update in the case of Starchild Abraham Cherrix. Ever since Cherrix's story first rose to national prominence a few months ago, I've been periodically blogging about it. Cherrix, as you may recall, is the the teenager diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma late last year who underwent chemotherapy, went into remission, and then relapsed a few months ago. At that point, he refused to…

Preempting what will almost certainly be the Top Ten on David Letterman's show is this list of the Top Ten Reasons Why The New York Yankees Choked. My favorite? Clearly it has to be this one: Detroit Tigers tricked the Yankees by playing devious "fundamental baseball" That about sums it up. Damn those Tigers for emphasizing good pitching and fielding!

One of the more onerous duties I have as faculty at our cancer center is to "show the flag" at our various affiliates by attending their tumor boards. I say "onerous" not so much because the tumor boards themselves are onerous but rather because traveling to them cuts into my already limited time for research given that these tumor boards are always scheduled on days on which I don't have to be in clinic or the operating room. One of our affiliates is nearly an hour and a half away, and many of them are close to an hour away. When you add up travel time and the tumor board, that's easily more…

The latest installment of Pediatric Grand Rounds has been posted at Emergiblog. This time around, all hail Mickey!

Pretty much everyone knows about the existence of the fabulous cave paintings dating back 30,000 years in places such as Lascaux and Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc in France. In these caves, our forebearers used the walls as their canvases to paint amazingly vibrant and detailed paintings of animals and various other things. The paintings are beautiful, some of them even having been drawn using surprisingly sophisticated techniques of shading and perspective, and millions visit the caves to view . Long we have assumed that we knew quite a bit about these drawing in these caves. But now evidence has been…

The Yankees are done. Tigers win 8-3 The Yankees go home. Quoth Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman: "I'm stunned," New York general manager Brian Cashman said. "This team fooled me to some degree. Detroit was on top of their game and we weren't, and that combination was lethal for us. I'm disappointed where we're at now." Out of contention. That's where the Yankees are. Whatever else happens in the rest of the series, even if the Tigers fail to advance any further, this victory is particularly satisfying given the attitude of the media before the series and given my having to live within…

Music fan that I am, I found a particularly amusing video of album covers battling it out in a hysterically ultraviolent and cartoon-bloody manner. (Via Stereogum.) If you're like me, and have many hundreds of albums, you'll find yourself counting how many of the album coveres featured in this video you actually own. I own quite a few of them, although I will tell you off the bat that I most assuredly do not own the Shaun Cassidy album featured. (I do, however, have Metallica's Master of Puppets.) Genius!

Well, even as a born-in-Detroit Tigers fan, I wouldn't have expected it, but it's come to pass. The Tigers have the Yankees on the ropes, having defeated them last night quite convincingly 6-0 to take a 2-1 series lead. All they have to do is to win this afternoon, and the Yankees go home. How sweet that would be. Even if the Tigers were to be eliminated in the next round, just having the opportunities to send the despised Yankees home in the first round of the playoffs would make the entire season worthwhile. And, with Jaret Wright being the pitcher on the mound for the Yankees, I like the…

Why? Five words: Battlestar Galactica season premiere. Baby. I may have to call the answering service and sign out to the on call surgeon for the show. Yes, I know it's highly unlikely that any of my patients would choose to call me about something during those two hours, but why take the chance? That's what our on call person is for, even though I usually take my own calls even when I'm not technically "on call."

The 45th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is due to appear on Thursday at The Inoculated Mind. The deadline is Wednesday; so get your best skeptical blogging sent to Karl. Instructions for submission, along with Karl's personal take on the Circle, including areas that he hopes to emphasize, are here; more general guidelines, applicable to all Meetings of the Circle, are here. Karl promises a unique format to present the Circle: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to hammer out the finest skeptical blog post or dig through your blogs for something that didn't get the attention it…

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: There's a reason that I don't get seriously into blogging about politics that much, and this week reminded me why bigtime. For one thing, political bloggers are a dime a dozen, meaning that you have to be really, really good to distinguish yourself from the chattering hordes. (Or you have to be rabidly right or left wing.) Also, I like to think that I've carved out a nice unique niche in the blogosphere for myself in the world of skepticism, critical thinking, and the debunking of quackery. Were I to wander too far astray from those topics that my…

Well, the winners of the the evil Doppelganger of the Nobel Prizes, a. k. a. the Ig Nobel Prizes, have been announced, and more worthy winners I can't think of: BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- The sound sets teeth on edge, makes skin crawl and sends a shiver down the spine. Just thinking about it gives some people the heebie-jeebies. But what is it about the sound of fingernails scratching a blackboard that elicits such a universal reaction? Randolph Blake and two colleagues think they know -- the sound's frequency level. Their research has earned them an Ig Nobel, the annual award given at…

Woo-hoo! The Tigers just won Game 2 of the ALDS against the Yankees 4-3! Time to go to Detroit with the series tied! The odds are still against them, but at least they're not lying down and dying. I suspect they're going to make it interesting, and, who knows, they might even take the series. That is all. Please return to your regular perusal of the blogosphere.

Abel Pharmboy has posted the second part of his series about the use of botanicals, specifically curcumin, for cancer, and how the altie crowd misrepresents what can be achieved. Basically, the dose of curcumin that would be required to have any effect is so high that, as Abel put it, you'd have to "shovel" it in.