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Leaping into the void: On apples, frogs and rockets

A new essay is out at TheScian.com. It is about why apples fall downwards, why frogs leap and why we fly rockets. In other words, it is about the force of gravity. It's written by a non-scientist, so there are no discussions about strings tangled in eleven dimensions, tensor calculus or fluxions that made Newton's mama proud. In some ways, this essay started two years ago while I lived in Atlanta. I was wondering about how easy it is to move horizontally but not vertically (prompted by what JRD Tata had said). Since then it has slowly grown, shed words, morphed, evolved and finally has seen…

PCS

I'm guessing (hoping) that some of you might have noticed my lack of recent blog activity. There are a few reasons for this, but the big one is that since very shortly after my my wife got home, we've been in a state of military life known as "PCS." For most people, "PCS" is the acronym that Sprint uses when it describes its cell phone network. For those in the military, it means something different: Permanent Change of Station. PCS combines all of the wonderful fun of moving with the joy that comes from repeated adventures into the Kafkaesque military bureaucracy. At the best of times, a…

A quick eye-exercise can improve your performance on memory tests (but only if you're right-handed)

Several studies have confirmed this bizarre proposition: If you're taking a test of rote memorization, like words from a list, move your eyes from side to side for about 30 seconds before you start. Really. Researchers have found, with relative consistency, that if you saccade from left to right and back several times before a test of simple recall, you're likely to do better. Why? It may be that this quick activity helps facilitate interaction between the brain hemispheres. Since split-brain patients have more difficulty recalling words than people with normal brains, any activity that…

Stream of (un)consciousness linklove.

You know how I was sick last week? I was all responsible and stuff, drinking lots of green tea and getting to sleep early and all, and over the weekend I actually felt reasonably healthy for like a day and a half. And now? I seem to have caught another nasty cold. Which is to explain that this post may reflect my current state of not partaking as fully of consciousness as I generally like to. Also, in the interests of your own health, you should avoid licking the screen while reading this. *Belle Waring has been sick, too, and it sounds like her bug is nastier than the one I have now,…

#scio10 preparation: What people might have in mind when they say they want online civility.

In preparation for our session at ScienceOnline2010, Dr. Isis asks: I talked to my two lovely, delightful, and beloved comoderators last night, I couldn't help but think that we were approaching this from different experiences and, potentially, with different goals. That made it hard for me to figure out what having me there might add to our discussion, other than to cross the line in some way. I realized that some of my discomfort might come from the fact that I'm not sure that we are all defining "civil" in the same way. ... [T]o get the discussion going here and help me in crafting my…

Do Prayers for the Sick Make a Difference?

Da mihi, Domine Deus, cor pervigil, quod nulla abducat a te curiosa cogitatio: da nobile, quod nulla deorsum trahat indigna affectio; da rectum, quod nulla seorsum obliquet sinistra intentio: da firmum, quod nulla frangat tribulatio: da liberum, quod nulla sibi vindicet violenta affectio. Do intercessory prayers (those said on behalf of another person and no, I'm not talking about having your friends quickly pray that the approaching police officer doesn't give you a ticket) have an effect on the recovery from illness above and beyond what medical treatment can provide? Answer: Some say…

Friday Fractal VI

When I joined the crew here at ScienceBlogs, I was given a pledge name: Fractal. Now, you can see why: I'm in love with fractals. As a close friend of mine put it, a fractal is essentially "a tangent off on a tangent off on a tangent off on a tangent...," which described me rather well. It describes nature rather well, too. In living beings or solid rock, there are often many layers of complexity, each reliant on other layers. I used this idea with today's fractal, by layering two separate Julia sets on top of one another. In the upper set, I used a formula which masked certain areas,…

The Great California Shake Out, and the World Series Quake... 20 years later

There's a lot going on the online geo-world tomorrow. It's Blog Action Day, and the subject is Climate Change. It's Earth Science Week's first Women in Geoscience day. And, at 10:15 am Pacific time, it's California's second annual earthquake drill - the Shake Out. I don't live in California, but I might crawl under my desk tomorrow morning just to be part of the action. Because there's a big anniversary coming up on Saturday, and I'll be busy in Portland, Oregon, without the time to post. At 5 pm on Tuesday, October 17, 1989, I was just settling down to do my Chinese homework. (Yes, I had…

What Color Was Ailuropoda microta, the Pygmy Giant Panda?

From ScienceDaily/Press TV: The ancestor of today's giant panda really was a pygmy giant panda, says Russell Ciochon, UI professor of anthropology. Ciochon is a co-author of an article published in the June 18-22 online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Previous discoveries of teeth and other remains made between 1985 and 2002 had failed to establish the animal's size. Ciochon says that the ancient panda (formally known as Ailuropoda microta, or "pygmy giant panda") was probably about three feet in length, compared to the modern giant panda, which…

Global Warming, Creationism, and Religious Nutcases

Since I've been on the road so much lately, I haven't really had a chance to follow up on some of the more interesting links forwarded to me lately. Each probably deserves its own post... but I'm going to dump them all into this post anyway. Besides, there seems to be a common thread running through all of them. First up is an interview with climate scientist Ben Santer in Environmental Science & Technology. Santer was a lead author on the president's recent Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) and has been a target of anti-environmental groups since he was a lead author on a 1995…

Bedazzled Neurons

Anyone with a young daughter knows about "bedazzled." When I first saw these images of intact, single neurons capable of generating electrical signals, "bedazzled" came to mind. The figure above was kindly provided by Dr. Bruno Pichler at The National Institute for Medical Research in London. According to the paper in Nature Neuroscience: Single-cell genetic manipulation is expected to substantially advance the field of systems neuroscience. However, existing gene delivery techniques do not allow researchers to electrophysiologically characterize cells and to thereby establish an…

With or without health care reform, doctors' jobs get harder

Early in the prolonged economic crisis a patient who had lost his factory job came to see me. He no longer had insurance, but he had plenty of health problems. Our office normally doesn't see uninsured patients (we simply can't afford to) but from time to time we make exceptions. I changed his prescriptions to the cheapest possible effective medications and gave him an online resource for the meds that did not have inexpensive alternatives. I referred him to a clinic that has the resources to care for the uninsured and that may be able to help him get his diabetic supplies. By doing this…

More fake news: No, the Trump administration is not going to remove all vaccine-related information from the CDC website, but that doesn't mean science advocates shouldn't worry

Last night was a bit weird. I think too many days of only getting a few hours of sleep finally caught up to me, and I crashed by around 9:30 PM. So, contrary to usually happens, when I say this post will be briefer than usual, I actually mean it; I have even less time this morning than usual to pump out a quickie post. However, this is the perfect time to look at one thing that probably doesn't rate a full heapin' helpin' of not-so-Respectful Insolence but that I'd like to take note of anyway. It's a bit of fake news that's been making the rounds similar to the fake news a couple of weeks ago…

Kansas Board of Education: Still Battles to be Fought

August 1 brought a thrilling result, the overthrow of the creationist majority on the Kansas Board of Education. Unfortunately, there remain two races where creationists won and where we need to take the seat in the general election. The picture above shows 4 of the 5 Democrats in the race. Two are working to unseat the remaining creationists on the Board (Don Weiss, right and Jack Wempe, who had yet to file when this picture was taken at the Kansas Democrats Washington Days), two who will be having serious, thoughtful debates about education with the moderate winners (Kent Runyan, left,…

Surgery Checklists

The brain is a careless beast. Mostly, I blame my carelessness on the limited capacity of working memory - it can hold seven discrete items, plus or minus two - which means that we're constantly forcing ideas to exit the stage of awareness. And so thoughts come and go, as we try to juggle the demands of the real world with the feeble processing powers of the mind. For instance, as I was packing for my latest work trip, I went into the bathroom to grab my toothbrush and toothpaste. I grabbed the toothbrush, opened up the drawer to get the toothpaste, but then I noticed all these other things…

Atheist Evangelists

Richard Dawkins has been everywhere lately. Dawkins is even keeping an online journal while on his book tour. It's full of amusing, if slightly mean-spirited, vignettes like this: The large hall at Randolph Macon Woman's College was packed. I gave a fairly short program of readings from The God Delusion, and then the bulk of the evening was given over to much more than an hour of Q & A. The first questioner announced himself as coming from Liberty (Falwell's 'University'), and he began by saying he had never been so insulted, yet simultaneously so amused, by any lecture. Many of the…

Urban Innovation

I'll have more to say about cities and the brain in the coming days, but I thought it was worth highlighting this thoughtful post by the economist Edward Glaeser on how NYC is "America's most resilient city": When other cities, including Boston, experienced significant population declines from 1950 to 1970, New York City still grew, albeit modestly. Only during the 1970s, the years of my Manhattan youth, did the city a suffer major population decline. However, New York managed to come roaring back, while other cities have just continued to fall. The secret of New York's post-1970 reinvention…

2012 Predictions: The More Things Change...

First of all, I owe y'all an apology for the radio silence. Somehow this month I've felt a deep need for some quiet, rest and offlineness. It was quite an autumn here - it started with the destruction of Irene and Lee (and dealing with those disasters are still a major part of life in our community although they've faded from public focus), included the usual autumn and holiday rush, our usual sequence of family events and birthday parties (three kids have birthday in six weeks, right after the high holidays wind up), ASPO, my book, two foster placements and the loss of M., and the wind up…

Getting the Actual People in Your House to Eat the Healthy Food

I've heard from quite a number of people lately who have started gardening, but find that they can't get everyone in their family onboard with the actual eating part of all these veggies. Here are some thoughts (from 2008) on how to to convince people to try the kohlrabi. Really. I think I get more requests for ideas for helping people who are on-board with the idea of sustainable eating get the rest of their families on-board than on any other food storage topic. In a perfect world, of course, our partners, roommates, children and other assorted members of our lives would say "Oh, I'm so…

A Year In Review - A Blog Around The Clock 2008

New Year's Day, a time to reminisce about the past year, perhaps to analyze its ups and downs, and in the blogosphere: to link to one's "Best of" posts for all of those who missed them. I posted 2960 posts so far this year - with six days to go I may reach 3000. It is not easy sifting through all of those, so I picked the highlights for you here. Some are milestones, some are examples from multi-post series, some are posts that provoked a lot of comments, some are posts that took a lot of time and effort to write, and some are, well, just very long. There were other posts that elicited a…

Birds in the News 111 -- Holiday Edition

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Male Broad-billed Hummingbird, Cynanthus latirostris, with a pollen cap. Image: Greg Scott [wallpaper size]. Birds in Science A new research paper shows that female blue tits use plumage color to clue in males of the species to their genetic quality: the brighter their blue cap coloring and their yellow collar coloring, the better mothers they make. Some birds nesting in the central and eastern United States have moved their range over a hundred miles farther north in less than three decades. Scientists at…

Markets, Mutation, and Mathematics: Why Evolution Is Counter-Intuitive

Over at Karmatics, Rob Brown thinks the counter-intuitiveness of natural selection is a big reason why people find evolution difficult to comprehend. In that way, natural selection is similar to prediction markets, where people bet on the chances of future events, such as the outcomes of sports events or political elections: Prediction markets turn out to be remarkably accurate, typically more accurate than any individual expert can predict, as non-intuitive as it may seem. Like Wikipedia, prediction markets also tap into the power of selection, but the most dramatic similarity they share…

Why Unconditional Support by Democrats for Democrats Is Bad Politics

Matthew Yglesias fires off a screed against Democrats who have told pollsters that they are unlikely to vote for Democratic congressional candidates in 2010 (I think Amanda's response sums up my thoughts rather well: people have to like this stuff, or surprisingly, they might not take the time to vote--or want to make the emotional investment in supporting you). Yglesias and others primarily pin the blame on the Blue Douchebags in the Senate. Yes, the Senate is dysfunctional. But to pin this all on Nelson, Bayh, Lieberman and the rest of the Asshole Caucus is overstating the case. Ezra…

"Fed up", not "Afraid"

A columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer is quite irate about the fact that we squelched the zoo/creation museum deal. If you read his article, you'll discover a theme. The live Nativity at the Creation Museum will have an actual, living, cud-chewing camel. Frightening. There will also be goats and sheep. Terrifying. Cuddly lambs might seem harmless to the average visitor, but some people are scared witless by the possibility that some innocent, devout secularist could accidentally wander onto the grounds of the Creation Museum and get exposed to radioactive Christianity or other dangerous…

Public health: who cares?

I'm (more than) pleased to say the public health conversation is starting. I assume it was already going on but not where we could all hear what others were saying. So let me continue by responding to a point raised at The Pump Handle (TPH) that was also the subject of offline discussion from someone who read the post. Liz and Catherine (at TPH) made special reference to this comment from me: "If I am an ordinary person, I don't want to have to think about public health. I want it to work well but in the background, like the water system." Each had a slightly different take on it, as did my…

Public health: who cares?

by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure I'm (more than) pleased to say the public health conversation is starting. I assume it was already going on but not where we could all hear what others were saying. So let me continue by responding to a point raised at The Pump Handle (TPH) that was also the subject of offline discussion from someone who read the post. Liz and Catherine (at TPH) made special reference to this comment from me:   "If I am an ordinary person, I don't want to have to think about public health. I want it to work well but in the background, like the water system." Each…

Time to Go?

by PotomacFeverish  In the first of what may be numerous resignations, Scott Gottlieb, MD has announced that he will leave his post as Deputy Commissioner at the Food and Drug Administration.  He has been at the center of the political science practiced at the FDA as noted by Time last year: Nowhere in the federal bureaucracy is it more important to insulate government experts from the influences of politics and special interests than at the Food and Drug Administration, the agency charged with assuring the safety of everything from new vaccines and dietary supplements to animal feed and…

GMOs: Seven Obvious Questions in Search of Straightforward Answers?

From campaignforrealfarming.org, via IR. Inspired by KK, of course. I don't know who the campaignforrealfarming are, but for the moment I'll treat them as worth talking to. You'll notice there is a total absence of refs in the piece, so I feel no obligation to provide any in response. The first three questions The first three questions are: 1: After 30 years of intense effort and huge investment, can the GM advocates offer any examples of GM food crops that have brought unequivocal benefit to humanity or to the world at large? 2: Assuming that the advocates of GM food can demonstrate…

You Can't Cook a Cow: The Problem with Raw Data

Bill Hooker is a regular advocate of "open science," and is currently supporting a new subversive proposal: to make all raw data freely available on some sort of Creative Commons type license. It sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea on the face of it, but I have to say, I'm a little dubious about it when I read things like this: First, note that papers do not usually contain raw (useful, useable) data. They contain, say, graphs made from such data, or bitmapped images of it -- as Peter says, the paper offers hamburger when what we want is the original cow.  Chris Surridge of PLoS puts it…

The Shadow of Scientific Opinion

    Wall Street's shadow in New York CityAs the education reformer and philosopher John Dewey once stated, "politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance." Unlike other critics of scientific communication, it is my contention that as long as we only address the shadow we will never create substantive change on such pressing scientific issues as health care and the climate crisis. Today James Hrynyshyn at Island of Doubt has linked to an excellent post highlighting this very concern. The post is from an anonymous employee…

Interview: Thomas A. Day

Welcome to the second in an ongoing series of Interviews with authors of Science Fiction. I'm lucky to have had a chance, recently, to review Portland local Thomas A. Day's A Grey Moon Over China, a totally postapocalyptic epic that takes the ongoing cultural fear of an energy crisis to a particularly dark and alienating place in the cosmos. He's an interesting writer for his sense of grand scope -- in the complexity of the narrative and the breadth of time it represents -- but also because of his background: he's worked in the aerospace industry, flown night-cargo planes, and developed…

Casual Fridays: You think THAT is romantic?

Last week's Casual Fridays study started out innocently enough: A contact on Twitter asked if most women would prefer fresh fruit or chocolates as a romantic gift. That's a fascinating question, I said -- maybe even interesting enough to merit study on Casual Friday. With Valentine's Day coming up, it might be a valuable service to our readers, preventing them from making a big mistake on the big day. But once we're asking, I figured, why not ask about a few other possible gifts, like jewelry or perfume. And maybe we should ask about sexy lingerie and sex toys, just to make things more…

Flat to fem?

I had originally intended to use this one for a segment of Your Friday Dose of Woo. Unfortunately, when I tried to start writing, I realized it was unsuitable. No, it wasn't unsuitable because the content wasn't delightfully loopy enough to deserve targeting. The problem was that it was an insufficient--shall we say?--target-rich environment. Again, this wasn't because the overall concept wasn't bizarre enough. No, it is certainly more than strange enough to qualify. It was that there was so little information on how this supposedly works and the little information that was there was vague in…

The "Inherent Linearity" of Class A Amplifiers?

I'm what they used to call an audiophile. What with folks listening to music on cell phones, low bit-rate MP3's and the like, it's kind of out of fashion these days. That is, unless you're into music production. In that case, you can buy all manner of interesting goodies, including microphone preamps that will set you back a kilobuck and loudspeaker cables that could pay a semester's tuition. Unfortunately, just as it was true for hi-fi enthusiasts 30 years ago, there's a lot of misinformation floating around in the semi-pro or "prosumer" music field regarding audio circuitry. I was reading…

Daylight Savings Savings?

Sometimes the little things mean a lot. I normally get out of bed around 6:00 AM. In the foothills of the Adirondacks in mid June, this means that the sky has been light for an hour. I like this. For whatever reason, my brain just doesn't want to fully engage in the morning when it's dark out. This makes the winter months a drag, but come summer, I'm in heaven. Mind you, I don't need it to be light at 4:00 AM so I am a big fan of Daylight Savings Time (DST). I love the extra hour of sun in the evening, seeing the final rays disappear well after 9:00 PM. One of the ideas behind DST was energy…

Healthcare: A Response to Galt

Or actually visitors who cite Galt. Jane Galt responds to calls for adopting a French-like system: In the United States, government at its various levels now accounts for roughly 45% of health care spending. (And by "now", I mean 2004, the latest year for which OECD data are available. In 2004, of course, the government provided little prescription drug coverage. Remember that fact; it will become important later.) The United States spends about 15.3% of total GDP on healthcare. That means, for those following along at home, that government spending on health care consumes about 7.7% of GDP…

Facts Don't Always Backfire: The Estate Tax Edition

I'm loathe to disagree with Digby because I think a variant of the Delong Rules of Krugman also apply to her too. Digby, like others on the intertubes, is very concerned about work by Brendan Nyhan, Jason Reifle, and others (covered in this Boston Globe article) which shows that: Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It's this: Facts don't necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University…

Reading Diary: Steve Jobs: Insanely great by Jessie Hartland

It's tempting to go a couple of different ways here. A book that has "Insanely Great" in the title? What could possibly go wrong? On the other hand.... A kids book about what a jerk Steve Jobs was. What could possibly go wrong? Steve Jobs: Insanely Great by Jessie Hartland. An illustrated biography of Steve Jobs aimed at a younger audience which gives an honest, unflinching look at his life, warts and all. Maybe not up to the "insanely great" standard, but engaging and enjoyable with a lot of openings for parents and children to talk about how complicated real people are. What more could you…

Yet Another Crappy Bayesian Argument

A reader sent me a link to *yet another* purported [Bayesian argument for the existence of god][unwin], this time by a physicist named Stephen Unwin. It's actually very similar to Swinburne's argument, which I discussed back at the old home of this blog. The difference is the degree of *dishonesty* demonstrated by the author. As usual, you can only see the entire argument if you [buy his book][buymybook]. But from a number of reviews of the book, and a self-interview posted on his personal website, we can get the gist. Scientific American's [review][sciam] has the best concise description of…

Exploring links between working conditions and obesity in low-wage workers

It's no secret that the U.S. has a weight problem.   Nearly 36% of U.S. adults are obese and another 33% are overweight, with respective body mass indices of 30 or higher and 25 to 29.9.   Strategies to address this public health problem rely heavily on individuals' changing their behavior, such as increasing physical activity and reducing calorie intake.   These interventions are easier said than done, and may not be making a dent in the U.S. obesity epidemic.  A result analysis suggests that by 2030, 51% of the U.S. population will be obese. A new report explores the potential links between…

Wait, don't buy an Echo yet!

I had mentioned before that we are enjoying our Amazon Echo, one of those robots that listens and then responds with a certain degree of intelligence. We don't use the Echo for very many things, but that is partly because we are not in the habit. For example, if I'm sitting in a certain chair in the library, reading, I have to stand up and turn around and kind of bend over in a certain direction to see the clock on the wall. Or, I can say, "Alexa, what time is it?" and the Echo Dot tells me. But, I almost never think of asking Alexa. But over time I'm sure I'll get in the habit, and after…

More academic journals discussing ID

(And not in a supportive way). PZ and Orac discussed a recent New England Journal of Medicine editorial critical of intelligent design. Though the article had several shortcomings, it's always a bonus to see other scientists treating ID as a valid threat (not in the scientific sphere, of course, but in the "hearts and minds" of the populace). Now the Journal of Clinical Investigation, another fairly heavy-hitter as far as medical journals go, recommends to its readers, Don't be stupid about intelligent design. Kudos to them...now come the nitpicks. :) Neill writes, For those who have had…

The Battle for Bachmann's Seat

... is all about the terrain. One might assume that Michele Bachmann's idiotic public statements on Hardball would be enough to put her down, metaphorically. It certainly was enough for the RNCCC to pull funding, for the DNCCC to toss in a million on behalf of El Tinklenberg, Bachmann's opponent, and for a couple of million dollars to pour into Tinklenberg's war chest from zillions of small donations around the country. But this is not enough. The PEOPLE of the Sixth District have to decide to vote for Tinklenberg rather than Bachmann. What will these voters do? I know the Sixth…

New Year, New Class: Gen Ed Relativity

The new academic year starts this week-- first day of classes is Wednesday-- and I'm dealing with the usual chaos associated with the influx of a new class of students. Who now look to me only a tiny bit older than SteelyKid and the Pip in the above picture (and if you think that sharing that extremely cute photo is part of the motivation for this post, well, you're not wrong...). This year, the madness of the new term is complicated by having been away for essentially all of August, and by the fact that I'm teaching an entirely new class this term: Astronomy 052: Relativity, Black Holes, and…

Enzyte exec admits they were lying

Color me unsurprised. You have no doubt seen the commercials for the herbal penis-enlarging supplement Enzyte. They feature a guy with a weird smile and his grinning wife. The pills themselves come in suspiciously medicinal-looking packaging. (With a picture of a race car on the package, you begin to wonder who their target market is...) Well, all of those guys are getting prosecuted for fraud. And one exec -- likely to save his own ass -- is coming clean. James Teegarden Jr., the former vice president of operations at Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, explained Tuesday in U.S. District…

Why are we bailing out Detroit?

I agreed (reluctantly) with the need to bailout banks because they constitute a special case in the financial system -- the overall health of banks is linked to the overall health of the economy. I am not against bailouts per se, but the devil is in the details. There are a lot of ways that they can make recessions worse by putting inefficient companies on life support. This view of recessions is explained well on Economist Democracy in America blog: A dialectic model of the business cycle suggests that in prosperity, inefficiencies are allowed to build up alongside innovations until the…

Bluegrass in Gettysburg

Mr. Zuska and I spent a few days in Gettysburg at the Bluegrass Festival. I am a conflicted fan of bluegrass music. That is, I do love me some banjo. And hearing a good banjo, fiddle, bass, mandolin, and guitar together is, to me, a true aural delight. The problem lies with some of the lyrics. As the Steep Canyon Rangers pointed out Thursday night, there are a lot of "mean woman songs" in bluegrass. Thursday I must have heard at least three whose story went along the lines of "you done me wrong and broke my heart; that's why I had to shoot you and him with my daddy's gun; you're layin…

What's the bigger crime: Religion, non-religion, or meta-analysis?

Eric Schwitzgebel has been doing a lot of thinking about the relationship between thinking about ethical behavior and actually behaving ethically. In his most recent post, he takes on a meta-analysis claiming that religious belief correlates negatively with criminal activity: I found a 2001 "meta-analysis" (Baier & Wright) of the literature that shows all the usual blindnesses of meta-analyses. Oh, you don't know what a meta-analysis is? As usually practiced, it's a way of doing math instead of thinking. First, you find all the published experiments pertinent to Hypothesis X (e.g., "…

A plumbing parable

My kitchen sink has a problem. Something has broken inside the Moen faucet, so that the handle is loose and only marginally effective. I'm thinking I should run down to the hardware store and get a new faucet assembly, and get under the sink with a pipe wrench. It shouldn't be too difficult. Right away, I run into an obstacle. I get down to the basement to fetch my wrench, and there's one of the local ministers sitting on the toolbox. "Have you tried the incredible power of prayer yet, son?" he asked. I said no, of course not. I'm trying to fix a broken faucet. And then he gave me one of…

The wild Weil world of woo

Dr. Weil is often seen as the smiling "mainstream" of alternative medicine. He's a real doctor (unlike, say, Gary Null), and much of what he advocates is standard and uncontroversial nutritional advice. But Weil illustrates the two biggest problems with so-called alternative medicne: once you've decided science is dispensible, the door is open to anything, no matter how insane; and no matter how altruistic you may start, sooner or later you start selling snake oil. Most doctors out there are working hard to help their patients prevent and overcome disease use the available evidence.  …