oracknows | February 18, 2007It's truly depressing to see children indoctrinated in anti-science like this:
The part where a preacher has the kids singing along about how the Bible supposedly describes dinosaurs in the Book of Job has to be seen to be believed, and seeing little kids parroting antievolution anti-science is truly depressing. But worst of all is the kid who says he wants to be a biochemist and go to work for the Institute of Creation Research when he grows up.
(Via Bad Science.)
oracknows | February 17, 2007As a diehard Lord of the Rings fan since around age 13, I have only one thing to say about this:
They're taking the hobbits to Isengard!
I bet you can't get this out of your head now, can you?
This guy couldn't:
oracknows | February 17, 2007Last week, in the commentary after taking yet another silly Internet test, one that happened to reveal that the supervillain that I'm best suited to be is Doctor Doom, there were others who also tested as Doctor Doom. In order to separate the real Doom from the Doombots, I asked a few simple questions to which Doom would know the answer:
1. Can any of these Doom impostors, without reference to the Internet or other references, tell us the name of Victor von Doom's father and what it was he did for a living?
2. Who was von Doom's faithful retainer back in the early days?
3. What is the vow…
oracknows | February 16, 2007It figures, it really does, that this would have to be one of the first clinical uses of stem cells that they'd come up with.
The really weird thing about this article is its schizophrenic nature. It starts out with a sensationalistic description of the new use of stem cells, and then it describes the discovery of a mutated allele of a gene that gives around a 10% decreased risk of breast cancer. It's like two entirely different articles pasted together in a haphazard fashion.
oracknows | February 16, 2007Like most people, I like making money. True, it's not the main goal of my life (otherwise I definitely wouldn't be in academics), but, all in all, it's better to be comfortably off than to be poor. And, as I've said before, although I could make more in private practice, I don't do too badly as an academic surgeon. I can afford a decent house, a nice car, computers, and gadgets, and still save for retirement. Of course, key to that is not spending beyond my means, as some at my income level somehow still manage to do, but wouldn't it be nice if you could access forces and powers that would--…
oracknows | February 15, 2007Fellow ScienceBlogger Martin is hosting the History Carnival over at Aardvarchaeology. More good stuff to peruse!
oracknows | February 15, 2007It's that time again, when the part of the blogosphere that celebrates critical thinking over the usual credulousness that allows dubious stories to spread far and wide meets to examine those stories and claims with a hard-nosed skepticism. And few skeptics, it would seem, are as tough as the narrator of this edition of the Skeptics' Circle, who's now telling his tale over at Action Skeptics (where, I guess, they're trying to take the name of the blog literally):
I've been on my own since the Department cut me loose over the Pendelton incident, when I decked that con-artist "psychic" the…
oracknows | February 15, 2007I've written quite a bit about the role of the theory of evolution in medicine, including how it can be used to better understand disease processes such as cancer and sleeping sickness. I've also lamented the woeful state of knowledge about evolution that is possessed by all too many medical students and physicians, most recently taking to task an orthopedic surgeon named David Cook for some astoundingly ignorant statements about evolution and Dr. Geoffrey Simmons. (At least it's somewhat comforting to know that I'm not the only one who's embarrassed for his profession in this matter.)…
oracknows | February 14, 2007[Note: There is a followup to this post here.]
I've been writing a lot about dichloroacetate (DCA) lately, perhaps even to the point of becoming repetitive and risking boring my readers. Fortunately, this post is not primarily about DCA. Unfortunately, it's about a question that is related to the recent hype over DCA in that it pits the desperation of dying cancer patients who want to try out the latest drugs, even if they haven't been demonstrated to be safe or efficacious, versus the what remaining ability the FDA has to regulate drug safety and, some might argue, the scientific method…
oracknows | February 13, 2007One year ago today, Orac was assimilated--I mean welcomed--into the ScienceBlogs collective. it's been a wild ride, a fantastic opportunity to reach more readers than I ever did on my old Blogspot blog. (My traffic has roughly doubled since I joined up.) I didn't show up with the first crop of ScienceBloggers mainly because of my hesitation due to my concern about getting permission for "outside employment" from my University. Fortunately, I overcame that, and the rest is history.
I want to take this opportunity to thank my readers for reading and the Seed Media Group for liking what I was…
oracknows | February 13, 2007Every so often, just for laughs or my own personal edification, periodically I check my referral logs to see who's linking to me and what posts are being linked to. Most of the time, there's not much there worth commenting on. Sometimes, it's bloggers who agree with me; other times, it's bloggers who were simply amused enough by something I've posted to link to it; and occasionally, it's bloggers who really, really don't like me, for reasons that most of you would find obvious. Sometimes, however, there's a link that catches my attention. In this case, the link came from here.
At first glance…
oracknows | February 12, 2007Just a quick reminder: The Skeptics' Circle is fast approaching. If you're a blogger who likes to apply critical thinking and science to dubious claims, get your best skeptical entries over to Akusai at Action Skeptics by Wednesday evening.
Then join us all at Action Skeptics on Thursday to partake of the best skeptical blogging of the last fortnight!
oracknows | February 12, 2007Yes, I know that my blog buddy Abel wrote a post with almost exactly the same title as this. No, I'm not mindlessly aping him. I'm doing it because of what Abel revealed in his post: That most of his referrals lately have been Google searches looking for information on where to buy dichloroacetate, a.k.a. DCA.
I, too, have noticed a lot of referrals to my original post on DCA, in which I tried to explain why it isn't the "cure" for cancer that some have been touting it as, most recently, a rather annoying troll going by the name of Robert Smith who's been infesting my blog lately in my posts…
oracknows | February 12, 2007I've written about the corrosive effect that religion can have on medical care when it is allowed to become too pervasive. One example where the intersection of religion and medicine concerns me is when various religious doctors insist on very dubious evidence that religiosity is good for a patient's health and that physicians should therefore take a "spiritual history" of all of their patients, with one even going so far as to claim that "excluding God from a consultation should be grounds for malpractice." I've also critically discussed studies that purport to show various benefits of…
oracknows | February 11, 2007I have to admit, I don't quite "get" the whole Aqua Teen Hunger Force thing (I'm either too old or too uncool, I guess), but, as a certified 24 addict, I found this to be a rather amusing take on the terror scare caused by an ill-fated ad campaign in Boston a couple of weeks ago:
(Via Stupid Evil Bastard.)
oracknows | February 11, 2007A couple of weeks ago, I posted about a bizarre complication of a central venous catheter placement. Now, on YouTube, I find a primer on how to place central venous catheters.
The remaining parts can be found here.
oracknows | February 11, 2007This one seems to be going around the ScienceBlogs, bunch, and, given the nature of the test and my having collected comics for over 30 years, there was no way I could pass it up. The results are, of course, utterly expected.
Bow before your better! Bow before...Doom!
Your results:
You are Dr. Doom
Dr. Doom
91%
Apocalypse
82%
Magneto
66%
Mr. Freeze
64%
Lex Luthor
64%
Juggernaut
54%
Venom
53%
Dark Phoenix
53%
The Joker
52%
Green Goblin
50%
Two-Face
46%
Kingpin
41%
Catwoman
39%
Poison Ivy
37%
Mystique
26%
Riddler
23%
Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.
Click…
oracknows | February 10, 2007It's sort of becoming a bit of a tradition here. Well, sporadically, anyway. This time, David Tennant himself joins in the fun...
oracknows | February 10, 2007Apparently I'm not safe, even here. I thought I could escape him.
Who am I talking about?
Richard Simmons, that's who, and he's shown up on ScienceBlogs on the mothership's official blog.
I'm having acid flashbacks.
You see, there was a time, back in 1997 or 1998, when I briefly met Richard Simmons. It was at BookExpo America, back when I was living in Chicago. Richard Simmons was pushing some cookbook or other of healthy recipes, as I recall, and, just for yucks, my wife and I decided to get in the line for a signing.
Well, Richard seemed to like me, and said I "looked very smart." When he…