Regular readers of this blog since before the move to ScienceBlogs a month ago have probably wondered when everybody's favorite blog mascot would return. It's likely that Christopher Mims and the rest of the ScienceBlog editors probably hoped that he wouldn't, so as not to associate the Seed Magazine name with such strangeness. Perhaps even my fellow ScienceBloggers, some of whom may not be familiar with the wonder that is Orac's mascot, may find themselves scratching their heads and wondering, "WTF?" while wishing Orac would restrain his stranger impulses. If only it were so easy. Orac has…

Given the spring-like weather we've been enjoying the last couple of days, I happened across a reminder of what the weather was like just a few weeks ago. I've never understood the attraction of doing this for fun. To me it looks profoundly unpleasant at best. Insanity.

Need more cowbell? Not if you're this guy. Bummer. Next we'll hear about miraculous "cowbell cures" from alties.

Just a reminder that the Skeptics' Circle is nearly upon us. It's scheduled to appear this Thursday at Paiges' Page. Get your submissions to Paige at paige@paiges-page.net before Wednesday night. The guidelines can be found here, with more detail than you probably want to know here. Let's help Paige keep up the tradition of great Meetings of the Skeptics' Circle!

It's good to see the Pooflinger back in action. It really is. I don't even mind that he's starting to muscle in on my territory, because, as he points out, alties need poo-love too. In the process He's unearthed a "gem" of altie wackiness that even I had never encountered before. Better still, he's returned to deconstructing that tome of creationist nuttiness, The Evolution Cruncher.

As a skeptic, when discussing psychics and how there is zero scientific evidence for the existence of psychic powers, I often come up against the attitude that says, "What's the harm if people believe in psychics?" What's the harm indeed? Have your palm read, and it's kind of fun, but you generally don't take it all that seriously. The same is true of psychic readings, which, for most people, seem to be more a form of entertainment than anything else, given how little stock most people put in them. The prevailing attitude out there seems to be that, if people are willing to give up their…

An update to the story of arson at the Holocaust History Project that I first discussed on Wednesday. A local news report showing the extent of the damage to the offices of the Holocaust History Project and including an interview with Harry Mazal can be found here. Not unexpectedly, the cockroaches are crawling out of the woodwork on some discussion boards. A Holocaust denier under the 'nym of "Lurkerthe" (you'll need to scroll down a bit). I knew it wouldn't be long before deniers tried this gambit, or some variation thereof: Hats off to Mazal. He is smarter than I thought. A nice little…

Those of you who've been around a while may have noticed something different about the blog over the last few days. What's happened is that, instead of doing what I normally used to do with my old Blogspot blog and either posting right after midnight or posting messages that I had written the night before right before I left for work every morning, now posts are appearing throughout the day. They're no longer bunched up at midnight or between 5:30 and 7:30 AM. Does that mean I'm risking my job blogging at work continually? Of course not. It's because of the wonder of scheduled posts. Now,…

A little bird told me that today is PZ Myers' birthday and instigated a little blog birthday party for him among various science bloggers. I wondered how I might send my wishes to him for a happy birthday or whom I might invite. Then it came to me. There was only one entity, one creature appropriate to the task, one being who hasn't been heard from on this blog in a while. Indeed, he hasn't been heard from since I made the move to ScienceBlogs. Yes, you have to look below the fold to see it: EneMan says: "Happy Birthday, PZ!" (Who else could it be, but that tireless defender of colon health…

Light blogging today, as I'm in the O.R. (Although there will be one more brief post, which, thanks to the wonders of Movable Type's ability to let me schedule a time when posts are published, will be appearing early this afternoon, while I'm still working.The reason why I'm delaying it will, hopefully, be apparent.) Light blogging or not, I couldn't resist mentioning a post by Kathleen Seidel in which she's picked up on something that I hadn't noticed but wish I had. In a long, multi-topic "roundup" sort of post, near the end, she mentions RFK Jr.'s essay Tobacco Science and the Thimerosal…

Yesterday, after writing about the arson at the offices of the Holocaust History Project (THHP) earlier this week, I made an appeal to the blogosphere to link to THHP. My concept was thus: Since the arsonists appear to have wanted to silence THHP, I thought that it would be a fine "screw you!" to them to get as many bloggers as I could to link to THHP and increase its readership and exposure as far above what it was before as my humble efforts could produce. And boy, did you come through! From fellow ScienceBloggers to fellow RINOs to a variety of others, lots of you have linked to THHP and…

Today's regularly scheduled post has been delayed due to an important and tragic development. Something bad happened a couple of days ago, something that cuts rather close to home. Arsonists targeted the offices used as a mailing address for the Holocaust History Project (THHP). (Video here, but only if you have IE and Active X installed, unfortunately.) The fire caused considerable damage to a warehouse complex and caused smoke damage to nearby businesses. Although the perpetrators have not been identified, there is good reason to suspect that it was not the business that was targeted, but…

Here's an interesting new blog that I discovered via Trackback. Remember my post yesterday praising a certain commenter who chimed in about the Geiers. He's started his own blog called Good Math, Bad Math, which he describes thusly: ...in my experience, one of the most clear ways of identifying a crackpot is through math. No matter the specific subject, the crackpots always either avoid or screw up the math. Whether it's the "mercuy causes autism" folks, the Velikovskians, creationists, alt-medicine quacks, republican pollsters, or scientologists - you can always recognize the crackpots by…

I'm a bit late on this one, but Deborah Lipstadt won the National Jewish Book Award for best book about the Holocaust for her book History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving. I started reading the book a couple of months ago, but got sidetracked. Last weekend, I picked it up again and plowed through nearly half of it in one sitting. It's that compelling, and it reveals much about David Irving that I didn't already know, particularly his anti-Semitism. For anyone interested in the Holocaust and Holocaust denial, it's well worth reading. Note: Due to a comment and TrackBack spam attack…

Geez, it snuck up on me this week. Grand Rounds vol. 2, no. 24 has been posted at Emergiblog, and I totally forgot to submit some custom Respectful Insolence. Go forth and experience the best that the Orac-less medical blogosphere has to offer. (It's probably an improvement over the weeks when I do submit something.)

After all the violence and controversy over the Danish cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed, why is nobody protesting this real blasphemy?

I'm a bit burned out from spending far more time than they deserve debunking the Geiers' bad science and even worse statistics; so today's blogging will tend towards lighter fare (and shorter posts). One thing I found recently via PharmaGossip is some rather compelling evidence in support of global warming. Just check below the fold. Pretty compelling evidence, wouldn't you say?

I was going to give this a rest for a while, but this is too good not to post a brief note about. Posted in the comments of my piece debunking the Geiers' pseudoscience and their laughable "scientific" article claiming to show a decrease in the rate of new cases of autism since late 2002, when thimerosal was removed from vaccines completely other than some flu vaccines was this gem of a comment, by one MarkCC, which stated the essence of what was wrong with the Geiers' so-called "statistical analysis" of the VAERS database: Here's the key, fundamental issue: when you're doing statistical…

Holy crap! They killed off... {Spoiler below the fold--if you're in a time zone west of Eastern Standard, haven't yet seen the episode because of the time difference, and don't want to know what happens at the end of the episode, don't read below the fold. You've been warned!} ... Edgar at the end of tonight's episode of 24 by nerve gas! I'm bummed. As annoying as he could be at times, I kind of liked his rather whiny, pudgy character. It's a rather nifty cliffhanger ending, though, with nerve gas released into CTU headquarters and the core staff trapped in the situation room. And we're only…

Curse you, Mark and David Geier. I'm getting tired of having to subject my scientific and critical thinking skills to the assaults on science and reason that you routinely publish in dubious journals to use as weapons in your apparently never-ending crusade to extract as much money as possible out of vaccine manufacturers and the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Dissecting your pseudoscientific claims causes me pain, not so much that I'm driven to take a hiatus from blogging, as Matt was by Kent Hovind's creationism, but almost. I had hoped to let this cup pass, given how much I've…