oracknows | December 30, 2007The other day, I posted about how quacks and pseudoscientists seem to find Ron Paul's promise of "health freedom" as irresistible as moths do flame. Now it seems that Ron Paul has another most excellent endorsement to add to that of Stormfront, Dr. Mercola, and Mike Adams, not to mention to the support of the likes of David Duke and 9/11 Truthers.
Yes, indeed, it's Hutton Gibson:
(Hat tip: Orcinus and VoteRonPaul.com.)
Because nothing adds to the credibility of a candidacy with overwhelming support among pseudoscientists like the endorsement of a Holocaust denying conspiracy theorist, who…
oracknows | December 29, 2007As if Jenny McCarthy weren't enough stupidity in pushing the alleged "link" between vaccines and autism, it looks as though Donald Trump has joined the fray on the side of pseudoscience:
In an interview with Palm Beach Politics, Donald Trump offered a controversial opinion on a new topic: autism. The New York-Palm Beach real estate mogul is no doctor, but he said he thinks the rising prevalence of autism is related to vaccinations given to children at a young age.
Autism now affects 1 in 150 children, a sharp increase from a few decades ago.
But whether vaccinations have anything to do with…
oracknows | December 29, 2007...I find it rather amazing that after all these months I'm still getting a steady, constant stream of traffic, probably at least a couple of dozen visits a day, to this old post from Your Friday Dose of Woo, all coming from this discussion on the JREF forums.
That forum must get a lot of traffic. Who knew there'd be such interest in Kinoki "detox" footpads?
oracknows | December 28, 2007Over at A Blog Around the Clock, the mother of fellow ScienceBlogger Bora's is guest blogging. I mention this because she's blogging about a trip to Israel she took in November to attend a conference of Holocaust Child Survivors. I had no idea. So far, there are four parts:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
The series is well worth checking out.
oracknows | December 28, 2007Lately, bloggers, including some of my fellow ScienceBloggers, have been expressing various concerns about the phenomenon that is Ron Paul, the Republican candidate who's ridden a wave of discontent to do surprisingly well in the polls leading up to the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries. First, Jake and Greg have pointed out that Ron Paul apparently does not accept the theory of evolution. The other day, Ed Brayton and Sara Robinson discussed a story about an open letter by Bill White, the leader of the American Socialist Workers' Party, in which White claimed that Paul and his aides…
oracknows | December 28, 2007Orac's circuits have yet to recover from the assault on his logic circuits caused by the über-woo of a couple of weeks ago, coupled with the even more powerful woo two weeks before that. Consequently, in order to marshal additional time scour the Internet for only the finest woo to be featured in 2008, he has decided that Your Friday Dose of Woo will take a brief but well-earned holiday hiatus. Fear now, however! There will, however, be at least one, if not two, other posts today, and YFDoW will return in 2008, bigger and badder than ever.
In the meantime, now that Christmas has passed,…
oracknows | December 27, 2007...this is what a troll is on the Internet.
Personally, though, I prefer the Flame Warriors version, although I'm not sure that I agree with Mike Reed's characterization of trolls as "generally quite harmless."
oracknows | December 27, 2007It's been a while since I've heard anything about Abraham Cherrix, the teen who rejected conventional chemotherapy for Hodgkins' lymphoma in favor of the quackery known as Hoxsey therapy. Ultimately, there was a legal battle resulting in a compromise that allowed Cherrix to pursue "alternative" therapy at a clinic in Mississippi run by a radiation oncologist who, in addition to providing radiation, also provides a variety of "alternative" therapies. When last we left Abraham Cherrix, after multiple recurrences on low dose radiation plus an unproven "immunotherapy," he had no evaluable disease…
oracknows | December 27, 2007It figures.
Some of the most interesting questions and posts showed up right before Christmas, just the time when I didn't have time to discuss and (hopefully) expand upon them. Neither, I'm guessing, did anyone else, which is unfortunate because this post was about an issue worth further discussion in the skeptical blogosphere. I'm talking about a post in which fellow ScienceBlogger Martin Rundkvist made this rather provocative observation about skepticism:
A discussion in the comments section of the recent Skeptics' Circle reminded me of something I learned only after years in the skeptical…
oracknows | December 26, 2007The whole post-Christmas thing left me without time to do anything other than a couple of brief bits. Consequently, given Deirdre Imus' two recent appearances on the Huffington Post, I thought it would be as good a time as any to resurrect this post from June 27, 2005. For those of you who haven't been regular readers that long (and I'm guessing that's most of you), this should be a good primer about why I consider the Huffington Post to have been a bastion of antivaccination misinformation and propaganda since its very inception. With the exception of Arthur Allen's occasional posts, the…
oracknows | December 26, 2007While I'm recharging a bit from the Christmas festivities yesterday to the point where soon I'll be able to write a substantive post, full of the Respectful Insolence⢠and science or medicine that readers have come to expect, here's something to amuse (I hope).
On Sunday, I wrote a not-so-respectfully insolent takedown of a truly mendacious Huffington Post article by antivaccinationist and card-carrying member of the mercury militia, Deirdre Imus, wife of washed up shock jock Don Imus. In essence, while deconstructing her misinformation about the alleged dangers of vaccination, I also…
oracknows | December 26, 2007We interrupt this post-holiday blogging slowdown for an important blog housekeeping message. Something weird happened to Respectful Insolence⢠over the weekend before Christmas.
Sunday, I was composing a little missive to autopost over the holidays. I went to the pulldown menu in Movable Type to assign a category to it and noticed something odd. There were many more categories than I had, many of which had nothing to do with my usual topics and most of them uncapitalized. My user-defined categories for posts were there, but a whole bunch of unfamiliar categories had appeared. Puzzled, I…
oracknows | December 25, 2007Bowie and Bing. Christmas. What more needs to be said?
Consider this making up for the last Christmas video.
Simply awesome.
oracknows | December 24, 2007I think my eyes are bleeding:
Maybe this one will be better:
Only a little. At least it rocks a bit and is a tad warped in its outlook. That counts for something.
In any case, what are you doing here messing around on the Internet and watching silly Christmas videos? Shouldn't you be with your family? This post was timed to autopost, you know.
oracknows | December 24, 2007It's Christmas Eve, and nothing says Christmas like Santa Claus. And nothing says Christmas quite as much as the terrified reactions of some little children when they see Santa Claus and realize that they're Scared of Santa.
There are lots more where these two pictures came from here, here, and here.
Merry Christmas!
oracknows | December 24, 2007Even though it's Christmas Eve and I hadn't been planning on posting anything except what I hope to be humorous holiday greetings, I couldn't resist mentioning this example of political correctness run amok:
A Croatian rock star accused of anti-Semitism will be forced to undergo tolerance counselling as a condition of entry to Australia.
A Jewish rights group on Friday expressed anger over the federal government's decision to allow Marko Perkovic into Australia.
Mr Perkovic, singer and songwriter with the Croatian rock band Thompson, has been criticised for making strongly anti-Semitic…
oracknows | December 23, 2007You be the judge:
I believe, first of all, evolution is a crock.
It takes a lot of faith to believe that I came from an ameba. A lot of faith!
So evolution should be taught in Faith Class, otherwise known in parochial schools as Religion Class.
It's a crazy world we live in. Crazier every day. But one of the craziest notions that ever came down the pike is evolution. Who in his right mind would ever believe that the complicated homo sapien derived from a speck? That's getting the larger from the smaller.
No, it's an even crazier world when a clueless twit like Grant Swank can write something…
oracknows | December 23, 2007Getting it right once again (click on the image for the whole comic)...
I've been meaning to do a piece about Head On, but I think I've decided that it's just too ridiculous to bother with, and that's saying something. After all, this is the blog that regularly posts pictures of a giant enema bottle.
oracknows | December 23, 2007I've mentioned before that it irritates me that Don Imus is back on the air. It's not that I give a rodent's posterior that he made an offensive comment about the Rutgers women's basketball team that lead to his being fired from his previous gig. It's actually more because he somehow managed to displace the radio show that I usually listened to on my way to work in the morning (and in my office on mornings when I didn't have any clinical responsibilites), Curtis & Kuby, which may have been getting a little bit long in the tooth but was still usually far more entertaining on its worst day…
oracknows | December 22, 2007Here's one of my all time favorite David Bowie tunes, truly an underrated gem from his career. (Too bad the movie it came from was only so-so.) This performance is from June 2000:
Why? Because Christmas is coming and I felt like it. Enjoy!