I forgot to mention in my comment policy yesterday a couple of things that people commenting here should know. Because of our comment spam problem, filters at most of the blogs at ScienceBlogs are set up such that putting more than two hyperlinks in a comment will automatically trigger a filter that will flag the comment for moderation, regardless of any other factors. In addition, there are also a variety of keywords and PERL regular expressions that I have added to the filters to catch additional spam that might occasionally catch legitimate comments unintentionally. I mention this now…
This just in: Doctor Who has been nominated for three prestigious Hugo Awards this year, according to an announcement made yesterday by the award's administrators and the 64th World Science Fiction Convention, L.A. Con IV. Taking three of seven slots in the "Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form" category are the Doctor Who episodes Dalek written by Robert Shearman, Father's Day written by Paul Cornell, and The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, written by Steven Moffat. The three are running against an episode of the new "Battlestar Galactica" series, the Pixar animated short "Jack Jack Attack…
Longtime readers of this blog may have noticed that, since my move to ScienceBlogs six weeks ago, I haven't written nearly as much about evolution or intelligent design as I used to on the old blog.. There are probably at least several reasons for this. For one thing, lots of other topics have forced their way to the forefront of my attention, including more autism quackery by the Geiers, a politically oriented medical journal that is anything but scientific, the fire at The Holocaust History Project, applying science to green tea, and a variety of other things. Also, in light of the Dover…
At the time this post is scheduled to appear, I should be somewhere over the Midwest on my way to California to attend a surgical meeting for a few days. Don't worry, though, Orac-philes, I haven't left you in the lurch, without that Respectful Insolence that I like to dish out and that you (well, most of you anyway) like to read. There are posts already written and scheduled to appear tomorrow while I'm learning about the latest in surgical oncology. Also, meetings usually provide pretty good blog fodder, which means I'll probably come up with something for Friday too. After that, I'll play…
Just yesterday, I commented about an article that analyzed President Bush's penchant for using rather artless straw man fallacies when answering his critics. By an almost amazing coincidence, that very day he was busily engaged in doing more of the same in a press conference. For example, when asked about the terrorist surveillance program in which he used not one but two straw men argument in the same response: I did notice that nobody from the Democrat Party has actually stood up and called for getting rid of the terrorist surveillance program. You know, if that's what they believe, if…
evolgen reports that that Specter-Harken amendment to restore some of the cuts to the NIH budget and provide a modest increase necessary to prevent the our biomedical research effort from slowly eroding. Support was broad, and it was bipartisan. (No doubt it doesn't hurt that this is an election year.) However, this is just the first step. The House still has to vote on the Department of Health and Human Services budget, and then there will be a House-Senate conference committee. To preserve the progress made, we'll have to turn our attention to the House. I'll keep an eye out for when this…
Recently, the BBC posted an article soliciting opinions about whether African traditional or alternative medicines have a role in combatting AIDS. Not surprisingly there were a lot of credulous responses saying yes, but one response was more on target: BBC, this question "Can herbal medicine combat Aids?" to me is a big joke. HIV death rate in Africa is growing at an alarming rate. If herbalists have power to cure people with HIV, why should they let the continent suffer? I have a number of old schoolmates who were affected by virus, their families took them away from town to villages…
Now here's something you don't see every day: a news analysis article pointing out a politician's love of a logical fallacy: WASHINGTON - "Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost and not worth another dime or another day," President Bush said recently. Another time he said, "Some say that if you're Muslim you can't be free." "There are some really decent people," the president said earlier this year, "who believe that the federal government ought to be the decider of health care ... for all people." Of course, hardly anyone in mainstream political debate has made…
American soldiers are still fighting and dying in Afghanistan. It's not nearly as many as in Iraq, and there aren't nearly as many news stories about it, to be sure, but we are still spending blood and treasure to "stabilize" this supremely dysfunctional nation. The reason, we are told, is to bring freedom and to prevent the Taliban from coming to power again. Well, here's what we're spending our blood and treasure for: To protect a theocracy that punishes infidels with death: An Afghan man is being tried in a court in the capital, Kabul, for converting from Islam to Christianity. Abdul…
Perhaps the most eagerly anticipated film of the summer is Snakes on a Plane, starring Samuel L. Jackson. Very little is known about the plot of this movie, other than that it will involve--well--snakes on a plane and Samuel L. Jackson. Here's a trailer: Too bad it's unoffical. I almost wish it were the real trailer. Actually, the real trailer is almost as good, and can be found here. It looks hysterical. I might have to check this movie out. It looks like a hoot.
Those of us who are fans of 24 have noted that there seems to be a higher body count this year. True, 24 has always had a high body count, but this year seems different. Here's a convenient summary of the major characters killed thus far, and the season's only slightly more than half over.
You may have noticed that I haven't been paying as close attention to the ol' blog as usual over the last three days, leading to a bit of hyperbole in the comments section of at least one post without my responding until today. Indeed, here's a secret: Most of the posts that have appeared since Friday were written Thursday or earlier and scheduled. My wife happened to have some time off; so I took a rare three-day weekend off work. We took a road trip to Philadelphia to check out an exhibit at the Franklin Institute that we both had wanted to see before it left Philadelphia: Gunther von…
As many have pointed out, Isaac Hayes, who happens to be a Scientologist, quit his role as Chef on South Park last week, unhappy that the show had produced an episode that made fun of Scientology. Apparently, it's OK with him if South Park makes fun of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, but say anything derogatory about his religion, and Hayes is suddenly not so open-minded. Now, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have released this statement through their lawyer in response to Comedy Central's recent pulling of a repeat showing of the episode in question in response to pressure by Tom Cruise on…
A couple of weeks ago, I lambasted Mark and David Geier for their irresponsible proposal to treat autism by using Lupron to lower testosterone levels, in essence chemically castrating autistic children, because, they claimed, it would make the mercury that supposedly caused the autism in the first place "easier to excrete." Naturally, Prometheus couldn't resist piling on too in an article entitled Armchair Science vs. Real Science, which complements my previous analysis by looking at an infamous video the Geiers made, in which they explain the "revelation" that led them to the concept that…
Trek Passions, anyone? The sad thing is, if I had discovered such a site before I met my wife, I might have been seriously tempted to join, even though I suspect that the male-to-female ratio is very unfavorable--to males.
Based on some comments on my previous post complaining that the first episode of the new Doctor Who was a bit uneven and the stories not so great, I thought I'd mention my overview of the season. I have one thing to say: Patience. I agree that the first couple of episodes were uneven and realize that I have the benefit of hindsight. I also understand that it's also a bit hard at first for longtime Who fans to get used to the new format of one hour episodes with self-contained stories (although there are some two-part stories scattered throughout the season). Remember that it always takes at…
Ever since I started blogging 15 months ago, I had always wondered if this day would come, if my blog would ever become popular enough for this day to come, something that was hard to imagine back when I was averaging less than 50 visits a day to this blog. Finally it has. I can no longer respond to everyone's e-mails. It just isn't feasible anymore. The volume has just gotten to the point where it takes too much time, and, over the last week, as I fell farther and farther behind, I decided that I have to rethink my practice with regard to e-mail on this blog or risk being buried. It was…
Woo-hoo! The new Doctor Who is appearing on the SciFi Channel tonight, with a two-hour, two episode premiere. I've already seen all the episodes, thanks to my mother's proximity to the Canadian border and her willingness to send me videotapes from Canadian TV, but those of you who are (or were) Doctor Who fans and haven't seen the new Doctor yet, are in for a real treat. It'll also give me a chance to check the best episodes out again.
Last week, I reported about arson at the offices of The Holocaust History Project (THHP), posted one update, and was gratified to see how many bloggers responded to my call to link to THHP as a big "screw you!" to whoever did this. An article about the arson at the Holocaust History Project has appeared in the San Antonio Express News, including an interview with Sara Salzman, who acted as spokesperson for THHP because Harry Mazal was out of town. It appears that the police and fire department do not believe that this was a hate crime for reasons that I have to question: But the fire, set in…