oracknows | December 16, 2008Just as a quick followup to my post on Tong Ren, the quackery that combines acupuncture, "energy healing," and, in essence, the stereotype of voodoo dolls in a veritable potpourri of woo, take a look at this news report done by the FOX News affiliate in Boston:
If you want horrible, credulous, idiotic reporting, the above segment has it all. Indeed, it doesn't even include the usual obligatory brief sound bite from a skeptic! True, it does mention that the Massachusetts State Board of Medicine's Committee on Acupuncture had received complaints about Tom Tam for his claiming to be a "master…
oracknows | December 16, 2008After four years and five days of nearly continuous blogging about skepticism, quackery, science- and evidence-based medicine, and a variety of other topics, you'd think there wouldn't be much that I haven't seen before. Certainly, lately, I've been wondering lately if there was anything left that could surprise me or horrify me anymore, and jaded is not a good way to be as a blogger. Indeed, in retrospect, I wonder if jadedness was why I had to stop Your Friday Dose of Woo for a while, the death of my dog notwithstanding, and why I'm happier now that I no longer feel obligated to do it every…
oracknows | December 15, 2008Three goodies on skepticism and science:
Skeptical Battlegrounds: Part III - Alternative Medicine. Suffice it to say, Steve agrees with me. He just lays it all out in one post instead of ten.
Once again, Egnor and Tautologies. Blogchild Mark Chu-Carroll takes on our favorite creationist neurosurgeon, Dr. Egnor. This time he deals directly with something I've touched upon recently: Egnor's false labeling of the theory of evolution as a tautology.
Alternative Medicine's Rapid Spread? Nonsense. Oddly enough, Avery Camarow, whose articles I've taken issue with before for credulity towards the…
oracknows | December 15, 2008Several months ago, I wrote a post about the experimentation with acupuncture by an Air Force physician, Col. Robert Niemtzow. In the post, I started with an admittedly exaggerated vignette--a story, if you will--of a soldier whose leg was shredded by a mortar in battle. When the medic came to treat his wounds and get him ready for transport, this soldier was in for a surprise, because after applying a tourniquet to his leg, this medic offered him not morphine for his pain but acupuncture. At the time, the military acupuncture program spearheaded by Col. Niemtzow was not proposing anything…
oracknows | December 14, 2008The other day, I mentioned how the ever-warped and evil Westboro Baptist Church wanted in on the Washington State melee in which every religious and antireligion group out there is trying to get a display at the capitol after the state allowed a Christian Nativity scene. Included were the lyrics to a lovely jingle these twisted idiots came up with called Santa Claus Will Take You To Hell.
Ed Brayton may have posted an image of the actual poster that the WBC wanted to display and reported that the State of Washington, deluged with requests for displays, has declared a moratorium on new…
oracknows | December 14, 2008...is due out in a mere four days.
Yes, on Thursday, December 18, Bing McGhandi over at Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes will be closing out 2008 by hosting the 102nd Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle.
But there's a problem.
Bing has informed me that he only has three entries as of last night. With only four days to go, that's not good. Come on, skeptics! Do you want to finish out 2008 with a bang or with a whimper? This is not only going to be the last Skeptics' Circle for a year, but it's going to be four weeks between the 102nd and 103rd Meetings of the Skeptics' Circle. The reason is that…
oracknows | December 13, 2008The Hitler Zombie definitely approves of this movie:
Too bad I don't speak German or Norwegian, because here's the movie website, and here's another trailer sans subtitles:
I wonder if I can take some stills from this trailer to use the next time I feel "inspired" (at least I like to call it that) to pen yet another Hitler Zombie epic.
oracknows | December 12, 2008I detest Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church. Few religious loonies bring the hate home in a more concentrated fashion than Phelps and his not-so-merry band of homophobic nutcases. Whether it be threatening to picket the funerals of Amish girls killed in a school shooting, showing up on TV to spew hate against homosexuals and anyone who doesn't agree with their particularly twisted brand of fundamentalist Christianity, planning pickets at the memorial for the passengers and crew of Flight 93, or praising God for the tsunami four years ago, few people can bring the religious crazy to…
oracknows | December 12, 2008It figures.
Right around the time of my blogiversary yesterday, when I had intended nothing more than a brief by characteristically self-indulgent bit of navel-gazing twaddle (at which, I succeeded brilliantly, I might add; no one--and I mean no one--does self-indulgent navel-gazing twaddle better than I do), what should be there tempting me from my intended day off? Lots of news stories about a report published by the Centers for Disease Control about a yearly survey regarding the usage of so-called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies in the U.S. Predictably, headlines in…
oracknows | December 11, 2008For once, I actually managed not to miss it. For once, this day hasn't passed me by, leaving me not to remember its significance for a couple of days.
For once, I haven't forgotten my blogiversary.
Yes, as hard as it is to believe, I've been at this more or less nonstop just as long as a Presidential term in office. It all began on a dank, overcast Saturday afternoon in December four years ago today. What whim struck me to sit down in front of my computer and use Blogger to create my original blog I have no idea, but I did. Maybe it was because I had become tired of sparring with Holocaust…
oracknows | December 10, 2008I didn't get to see this interview last night on Late Night With Conan O'Brien. After all, I usually show up at work between 7:00 and 7:30 AM. However, Hugh Laurie, star of House, was interviewed by Conan and revealed himself to be not unlike me in that he's definitely a booster of reason and science in medicine over irrationality and dubious "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) therapies, not unlike the character he plays on House. Check out the interview. (The relevant passage begins at about 23:50 into the show.)
I knew there was a reason I liked Hugh Laurie, even though I haven'…
oracknows | December 10, 2008
I have to wonder if the most famous denizen of the Discovery Institute in medical circles, Dr. Michael Egnor, is on vacation or something. For some reason, he's been especially active over at the Discovery Institute's repository of pseudoscience, Evolution News & Views, over the last couple of weeks. Neurosurgeons tend to be very busy people, more so even than a humble breast cancer surgeon like me, and few are as motivated as I am to blog. Yet, these days Dr. Egnor's been flooding EN&V with more of his blather than I've seen him do in a long time, maybe ever.
It's times like these…
oracknows | December 9, 2008My original post that asked the intentionally provocative question Was Nazi science good science? provoked a lot of comments, some of which made me think, which is good. This post was inspired by an article in which historian of the Nazi era Richard Evans was featured in a story about Nazi science and expressed his amazement at how much Nazi science was treated just like any other science, with little or no comment by other scientists of the era about the completely unethical and downright evil nature of the experiments, which reduced human beings to the status of laboratory animals, and…
oracknows | December 8, 2008The thought of Jack Black as Jesus just cracks me up:
See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die
You know, more and more I'm starting to be of the mind that perhaps marriage should not be defined by the government. After all, to the government, marriage is nothing more than a contract. Consequently, I wonder whether the government should simply issue civil contracts to any couples wanting to be married, be they straight or gay, without distinction of sexual orientation and let people for whom a religious imprimatur on their union matters go to their churches to be officially "married."
oracknows | December 8, 2008In 2007, I wrote a series of posts about what I found to be a fascinating yet at the same time disturbing phenomenon, specifically self-experimentation by cancer patients using an as yet unapproved drug called dichloroacetate. If you'll recall, DCA is a small molecule drug that was used to treat congenital lactic acidosis in children through its inhibition of the enzyme pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase. This inhibition shifts the metabolism of glucose towards oxidative metabolism in the mitochondria and away from glycolysis, the product of which is lactic acid. In January 2007, Dr. Evangelos…
oracknows | December 7, 2008As usual, he nails it, at least a significant part of it:
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The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c
Autoerotic Explanation
Barack Obama InterviewJohn McCain Interview
Sarah Palin VideoFunny Election Video
Again, I remain ambivalent about the whole bailout thing, mainly because I hate rewarding incompetence. On the other hand, the economic devastation that would result gives me pause, the reassurances of some commenters that it wouldn't be such a huge deal having utterly failed to convince me. However, there is one thing that irritates the hell out of me, regardless of…
oracknows | December 6, 2008Ever wonder who'd win in a war of Trek vs. the Empire?
Well now you know!
oracknows | December 5, 2008What is it about celebrity models and credulity towards woo?
Very early in the history of this blog, we first encountered Suzanne Somers, someone who underwent lumpectomy and radiation therapy for breast cancer, as well as radiation, but eschewed chemotherapy for "alternative" medicine. Guess to what she attributed her survival? Then she got into bioidentical hormones, even though it's generally a bad idea to pump yourself full of huge doses of estrogen far beyond anything ever used for hormone replacement therapy if you're a breast cancer survivor. (Her luck in not having induced a…
oracknows | December 4, 2008And so it begins...
The first 100 have passed, and now the second 100 begin. This time, it comes from Africa, the 101st Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. Go forth. Read. Enjoy. Be enlightened.
Next up two weeks hence will be Bing McGhandi over at Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes on December 18. (I really love the name of that blog.) Start getting your skeptical pens ready (metaphorically speaking, of course). Check out the guidelines here. And while you're at it, check out the Carnival of the Africans, basically an African version of the Skeptics' Circle.
oracknows | December 4, 2008It may well be; Roger Ebert has finally gotten around to reviewing Expelled! Short version: He didn't like it.
Long version: He really, really didn't like it.
I knew there was a reason I liked Roger Ebert.