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Restoring sight to the blind with deep brain stimulation - a World Changing Idea

John Pezaris emailed me yesterday to say: Last spring, you were kind enough to write an article for your Neurophilosophy blog covering my research into restoring sight to the blind, following the publication of our scientific paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Your article was one of the best ones written: I was really impressed at how accurately you summarized our work. I'd like to bring to your attention that the project has been named one of the 10 finalists for the Saatchi and Saatchi Award for World Changing Ideas. Congratulations to John Pezaris and…

IBC vs Les Roberts

Stephen Soldz posts an exchange of letters between the IBC's John Sloboda and Les Roberts. Sloboda accused Roberts of spreading misinformation about a NEJM study. Roberts said: In a very prestigious journal called the New England Journal of Medicine there was an article published on 1 July 2004. Military doctors interviewed soldiers returning from Iraq. They interviewed them because they were interested in post-traumatic stress disorder, so they asked the soldiers about stressful things that might have happened to them. Among other things they found that 14 percent of the ground forces in…

Mike Adams and "natural biopreparedness" against Ebola and pandemics

This one will be much shorter than usual, mainly because I was out late last night for a dinner function at which I was on a panel of breast cancer experts. I must admit, even after having been an attending surgeon for 15 years, it never ceases to make me feel a bit weird to be presented as a “breast cancer expert”—or an expert at anything, for that matter. It’s rather like how I sometimes feel a bit weird that skeptic groups still invite me to give talks. Ten years ago, I sucked at public speaking. Now I’m apparently good enough that people want to hear me. Go figure. In any event, I hate…

Brains Open Access Initiative

An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research - coming from their brains - in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The problem with this approach is that the brains are not exposed, just the thoughts, and that the brains available have been those physically accessible, such as those at the local university. Thus, those desiring to gain new knowledge through the consumption of peer-reviewed brains have been…

Legal thuggery directed at Steve Novella and Science-Based Medicine

If there’s one characteristic of supporters of dubious medicine, it’s that they detest criticism. Whereas your average skeptic might not like criticism—sensitivity to criticism being a human trait and all—science- and evidence-based criticism tends to drive dubious medical practitioners (and, I might add, promoters of various other forms of woo) into paroxysms of anger. Not infrequently, because they can’t refute such criticisms with science and evidence, they respond by lashing out, by going on the attack. That lashing out can take many forms, from simply writing abusive posts about their…

Stress

I've got a new article in the latest Wired on the science of stress, as seen through the prism of Robert Sapolsky. The article isn't online yet (read it on the iPad!), but here are the opening paragraphs: Baboons are nasty, brutish and short. They have a long muzzle and sharp fangs designed to inflict deadly injury. Their bodies are covered in thick, olive-colored fur, except on their buttocks, which are hairless. The species is defined by its social habits: The primates live in troops, or small groupings of several dozen individuals. These troops have a strict hierarchy, and each animal is…

"Popcorn Lung" Media Roundup

Over the past week, several newspapers and wire services have reported on the story we broke here at The Pump Handle about the first reported case of bronchiolitis obliterans in a microwave popcorn consumer â quickly followed by microwave popcorn manufacturersâ announcements about the removal of diacetyl from their products, and by additional calls from health advocates and members of Congress for federal agencies to address the problem. Itâs interesting to look at the different angles from which the various articles approach the topic, and the details they include. The Associated Press and…

The PTSD Trap - Extras (sources, links, a bit of multimedia)

Below are materials supplementing my story "The Post-Traumatic Stress Trap," Scientific American, April 2009. (You can find the story here and my blog post introducing it here.) I'm starting with annotated sources, source materials, and a bit of multimedia. I hope to add a couple sidebars that didn't fit in the main piece -- though those may end up at the main blog, so you may want to keep an eye there or subscribe via RSS or Atom. Main sources and documents in "The Post-Traumatic Stress Trap." These are organized by story section, roughly in the order the relevant material appears.…

From the Archives: Interview with Eugene Wallingford of Knowing and Doing

I'm on my annual summer hiatus for the month of July so I'll be only publishing my weekly Friday Fun posts as well as re-posting some of the interviews I did a few years ago on the old blog with people from the publishing, library and science worlds. Not that my posting of late has been particularly distinguishable from the hiatus state, but such is the blogging life after nearly ten years: filled with ups, downs, peaks, valleys. This interview, with Eugene Wallingford, is from July 9, 2008. I'm hoping to get these out weekly, but we'll see. They're mostly cobbled together in odd moments…

Necks for sex? No thank you, we're sauropod dinosaurs

If asked "Why do giraffes have such long necks?", the majority of people - professional biologists among them - will answer that it's something to do with increasing vertical reach and hence feeding range. But while the 'increased vertical reach' or 'increased feeding envelope' hypothesis has always been the most popular explanation invoked to explain the giraffe's neck, it isn't the only one. In 1996, Robert Simmons and Lue Scheepers argued that the giraffe neck functions as a sexual signal: they said that the necks of males are bigger and thicker than those of females, that the necks of…

The scam of "detox": Ritual purification by another name

"You need to detox." How many times have you heard or read this? Maybe a friend of yours suggested it for the New Year. Maybe you saw it on a website, in a magazine, or as part of an ad. I like to say sometimes, "Toujours les toxines," because in many branches of alternative medicine the overarching idea behind the interventions used is that vague, unnamed "toxins" are somehow poisoning you and that the only way to fix what's wrong with you is to "detoxify." These "detox" interventions can take many forms, ranging from the relatively (but not completely) benign, such as "juice cleanses," to…

Switching to Linux: One man's personal experience

Photographer Scott Rowed has penned an excellent essay on his experience making the switch to Linux, and he's agreed to place it here as a guest post. Please read it and pass it on to people, school districts, small island nations, and others who may benefit. This is a repost from about two years ago: Switching to Linux by Scott Rowed Changing operating systems is not a task to be taken lightly. I generally follow the philosophy "if it ain't broke don't fix it." A year ago, however, the family notebook was broken, hopelessly crippled by a nasty virus or worm. I'd been regularly updating the…

I am a nerd, you geeks! And I have a lava lamp!

This nerd thing going on is really bugging me. I went back and re-did the test, changing only 2 or 3 answers to what I did before (not lying, just taking the other one of two possibly correct answers) and got a much higher score: I agree with Jim that the quiz is not really measuring nerdiness so well. I'd argue that it actually measures geekiness instead. The questions are all about computers, math and Star Trek! And others have added Tolkien and slide-rules to the mix. I can barely figure out HTML after two years of blogging. Yeah, I played Pong with another friend when I was a kid,…

My Job in 10 Years -- The Book

Yes, the book. My Job in 10 Years: The Future of Academic Libraries. To rewind a bit, the story begins this past January. I did a little off-the-cuff post on how libraries could model their web presences on commercial book-related sites like Tor.com or the Globe & Mail Books site. It ended up being surprisingly popular, even getting picked up by AL Direct. Shortly after that, I was contacted by Christopher Rhodes of ALA Editions to see if I was interested in proposing a book for them about designing library web pages that way. (Thanks, Chris!) Well, like any good blogger, I've always…

Time's 'Hero For The Planet' Imprisoned in Brazil

tags: Marc van Roosmalen, primatology,monkeys, Brazil, research, biopiracy Dutch scientist Marc van Roosmalen (pictured) was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for trying to auction off the names of several monkey species and for keeping monkeys at his house without proper authorization. Image: Eraldo Peres (AP). In a surprising move, the Brazilian government recently sentenced world renowned primatologist, Dr. Marc van Roosmalen, to nearly 16 years in prison. Van Roosmalen, who discovered seven species of monkeys and a new primate genus in the Amazon rainforest, was formally…

You can now start submitting your blog posts for the Open Laboratory 2010

Now that the 2009 edition of Open Laboratory, the fourth annual anthology of the best writing on science blogs, is out and getting the first (very positive!) reviews on blog and in the media, it's time to start looking ahead at the next year. Yesterday I cleaned up the submission form, made the necessary edits, and opened it up - please go to the new Submission Form and start entering the posts you consider worthy of publishing in the book. Each entry needs to be originally published as a blog post between December 1st 2009 and December 1st 2010 to be eligible. You can nominate as many…

Some Thoughts About My Book Reviews

I have been thinking about a book review that I published yesterday about David Attenborough's Life in Cold Blood. In short, my review of that particular book was positive, but not effusive. Because I focused on errors/ambiguous wordings and on what I think that book lacked, it is possible that I came across as being too harsh. As a result, I'd like to know if I should use an unambiguous rating system, such as something like Amazon's five star system, to help you quickly assess what I think of the book? I like to publish positive book reviews on my blog, and generally refuse to even finish…

Warrant issued against UCLA professor in 2008 workplace death of lab assistant

Sheri Sangji, 23, earned a bachelors degree in chemistry from Pomona College in 2008, and dreamed of being an attorney. While awaiting word on her admission to law school, Sangji took a job in October 2008 as a research assistant in the laboratory of UCLA chemistry professor Patrick Harran. Three months later, Sangji was dead. She suffered severe burns on December 29 while working in Harran's lab with tert-butyllithium (tBuLi), a substance that will spontaneously ignite when exposed to air. Despite expert care provided at the Grossman Burn Center in Sherman Oaks, Sangji succumb to her…

The uncertainty of uncertainty

There is a paper by Roe and Baker out in Nature Science arguing that Both models and observations yield broad probability distributions for long-term increases in global mean temperature expected from the doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide, with small but finite probabilities of very large increases. We show that the shape of these probability distributions is an inevitable and general consequence of the nature of the climate system. Predictably enough it will get misinterpreted, and indeed Nature itself leads the field in doing so. See-also Grauniad. For a general take, you'll want to…

Expelled redux? Creationists Misrepresent Historians

From the NCSE: Three historians of science are unhappy about their treatment in a creationist movie about Darwin, as they explain in a note in the July 2009 Newsletter of the History of Science Society. Peter Bowler, Janet Browne, and Sandra Herbert write, "We have recently been featured in a documentary film, 'The Voyage that Shook the World,' produced by Fathom Media of Australia and directed by Stephen Murray of Synergy Films, New Zealand. We were led to believe that the movie was being made to be shown as an educational film on Australian broadcast television and possibly elsewhere.…

Cool scientists, #2

Id like to take a minute to expand upon my post from yesterday-- What I find odd about 'Science Rock Stars' is the way scientists and rock stars were awkwardly mashed together. Like mixing peanut butter and Twizzlers. They are both good independently, but unless youve got a real, obvious reason to mush them together, its weird. I think it would make more sense, if one was deeply concerned about coolness, to utilize innate 'cool' aspects of scientists lives. As many pointed out in the comments, it would make more sense to interview scientists who were actual rock stars. Or if music was…

ATTN MIT kids! How to communicate science

You laugh, you lose: Learn to better communicate your research to non-scientists at the Workshop on Communicating Science & Engineering with Chris Mooney When: May 24, 2010-9am-1pm. Lunch will be provided. Where: MIT- Room/Bldg TBA Why: These days, amid ongoing media controversies over climate change, the teaching of evolution, the safety of vaccines, and many other scientific topics, researchers are increasingly asking themselves questions like these: Should I be doing more to communicate about my work to the public? And if so, how should I go about preparing for media encounters--and…

Just an observation.

DRAMA-LLAMA-DING-DONG! Just an observation. Move along, unless youre bored on a Sunday afternoon. So you all know how I 'debated' Charles Jackson a few months ago? Like over 9,000 hours of presentation and Q&A? Well, I answered a lot more Qs after the Q&A, after we had officially 'stopped'. A nice young man came up, a little sheepishly, and as delicately as he could, asked me how I could be 'good' without his God. He was very concerned that this question might offend me, and kept gushing about how nice I was and such, so I was happy to give him a nice answer, and not the usual '…

What have you got against nuclear power, anyway?

Sooner or later, at least one member of the audience that has turned out to see me present Al Gore's climate change slide show wants to know why I haven't included nuclear power in the list of technologies that can help cut our carbon emissions. The question is usually put by the likes of a retired engineer who actually understands the physics and technical aspects of nuclear power. I have to admit that I don't welcome the question, because it tends to lead to a drawn-out debate at what is already a longer evening that most attendees bargained for. But I do have an answer: time. I've written…

Technologically conservative young scholars – you’re surprised, really?

At the PSP Pre-Conference (see my notes), Dr. Harley of the Higher Education in the Digital Age program reported being surprised by their finding that young scholars were unwilling or unlikely to experiment with new scholarly communication (tools/practices/channels). There was a question from the audience that showed the person's disbelief of this finding. No matter how many times this myth is debunked, it remains firmly entrenched. Here are some variations on it: when generation {x,y, millennial, etc} gets in {university, grad school, the workplace}, {collaboration, communication, search…

"Push" science journalism, or how diversity matters more than size

I've been deemed a pusher, and that's a good thing. The accuser is Colin Schultz, a busy, curious, and inquisitive young journalist who awarded a story of mine his first annual prize for "push" science journalism. First of all let me say I'm pleased, mainly because the story, " A Depression Switch?", about neurologist Helen Mayberg's experiment using deep brain stimulation to treat depression, is one of the most fascinating, enthralling, and rewarding I've ever worked on. But what is this push journalism business? Push science journalism, says Colin, is science writing that…

I've never been very good at hiding

"I am not a pretty girl - that is not what I do." Ani DiFranco A few weeks ago, I received a facebook message. It was from a male admirer of my blog (and his fiancée, coincidentally). In it, he said "You are GORGEOUS, and your tits look absolutely incredible." I froze. I know it was meant as a compliment, but it made me really uncomfortable. It was a sentiment that was much more muted in other comments I'd gotten. You know, ones like "wow, you're an amazing writer AND you're hot?" or "who would have thought a pretty girl could be so good at science?"Of course, if you point out to any of…

The annals of "I'm not antivaccine," part 15: California SB 277, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the vaccine "holocaust"

Later today, I'll be on my way to New York City to take part in the Science-Based Medicine portion of NECSS. I'm very much looking forward to it, not the least because I haven't been to New York in five years but even more so because I look forward to meeting up with the rest of the SBM crew and those interested in science and skepticism and trying, in my small way, to impart some little bit of what I've learned over the years about quackery, pseudoscience, and how to counter them. As a result, blogging might be more sporadic than usual for a few days. I mean, I haven't even quite finished my…

Advancing Science through Conversations: Bridging the Gap between Blogs and the Academy

Just over a year ago, I joined fellow science bloggers Shelley Batts (Of Two Minds) and Tara Smith (Aetiology) in setting out to catalogue the accomplishments--and pitfalls--of the scientific blogosphere and to explain why people should pay attention. In a sense, we wanted to say "We are the science bloggers; hear us roar!" And, in order to make our case, we drew from the collective experience of our fellow science bloggers, far and wide, asking how blogging had affected their work, their careers, and their lives--both positively and negatively. The results were astounding. Across the…

Eric Merola apparently doesn't like what Orac writes about Stanislaw Burzynski

As our great Lord Draconis Zeneca promises, besides the fantasies of filthy lucre in the minds of our opponents, there are other rewards to being one of his shills and minions besides getting to blog to my heart's content about the pseudoscience and quackery that is "alternative" medicine. One of them is that sometimes I find out that my victim target subject notices me. So it was, when I became aware on Facebook that Eric Merola noticed me. Merola, as you might recall, is the producer of that paean to Stanislaw Burzynski, entitled, unimaginatively and awkwardly enough, Burzynski the Movie -…

Naturopathic quackery wins licensure in Massachusetts

I was busy last night doing something other than actually blogging. Perhaps I was recovering from the one-two punch of the antivaccine rant penned by the director of the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute followed by Donald Trump's meeting with antivaccine crank Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Whatever the case I crashed early. However, I can't help but note still more bad news. I woke up this morning to this headline Naturopaths get their own licensing board in Mass.: Governor Charlie Baker on Wednesday signed into law a bill that creates a licensing board to regulate naturopaths, alternative…

Preclinical research has a problem, but that doesn't mean religion is better

Remember Vox Day? Sure, I bet you do, at least if you've been a regular reader of this blog more than a year or two. If you're a really long-timer, you probably remember him even better. Let's just put it this way. Vox is a guy who has a much higher opinion of his intellectual prowess when it comes to science than is warranted by the bleatings that he calls a blog would warrant. I do have to thank him though. Besides giving me occasional material to apply some well-deserved not-so-Respectful Insolence to from time to time, on rare occasions he even points me in the direction of interesting…

Public health: starting the conversation in earnest

Yesterday Flu Wiki founding editor and DailyKos frontpager DemFromCT reviewed three recent report cards on public health, one each by the American Public Health Association (APHA), The Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the American College Of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). It was a great a service in two ways. The first is to remind us that "health reform" is hollow without making sure the public health infrastructure is sound. And second, he reviewed these reports so the rest of us don't have to. Believe me, that's a service in my eyes. My patience gets pretty short when I see these tomes…

Public Health: starting the conversation

by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure Yesterday Flu Wiki founding editor and DailyKos frontpager DemFromCT reviewed three recent report cards on public health, one each by the American Public Health Association (APHA), The Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the American College Of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). It was a great a service in two ways. The first is to remind us that "health reform" is hollow without making sure the public health infrastructure is sound. And second, he reviewed these reports so the rest of us don't have to. Believe me, that's a service in my eyes. My patience…

My Guy Barbaro: A Jockey's Journey Through Love, Triumph, and Heartbreak with America's Favorite Horse

tags: My Guy Barbaro, horse racing, horses, Kentucky Derby, Edgar Prado, John Eisenberg, book review Like most of America, I fell under the spell of the talented athlete, Barbaro. I was riveted by his brilliance and ability. Despite Barbaro's tragic end, I wanted to read a book that told his story, that gave him a voice without being maudlin or poorly-written. So thanks to one of my readers who kindly purchased this book for me, I was pleased to have the opportunity to read My Guy Barbaro: A Jockey's Journey Through Love, Triumph, and Heartbreak with America's Favorite Horse (NYC:…

Competing Constitutional Interpretations

In a discussion on the religion law listserv last week, in an exchange with Jim Henderson, senior counsel with Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice, the issue of constitutional law and original intent came up. Mr. Henderson was arguing that the original intent of the framers was the primary tool for constitutional interpretation and I, while agreeing with him that it is a very important tool, made the argument that it was not quite as simple as he seemed to think. The most obvious reason is because the framers themselves often disagreed on the meaning of various provisions. In…

The "Ruthlessness" Gene -or- 4 Caveats in Interpreting Behavioral Genetics Studies

I saw this news story in Nature a couple days ago about finding a gene for "ruthlessness." I realized that I always say the same thing about these behavioral genetics stories -- stories where they claim to find a gene for ____ (where blank is a behavioral abstraction like empathy). These studies are notoriously misinterpreted by the media, so I figure I will reiterate some caveats to remember about them. In this study, Knafo et al. compared performance in the Dictator game to genotype for a particular allele of the vasopressin receptor AVPR1a. In the Dictator game -- which isn't much of a…

Evolution: Having Some Fun With It

Ok, you caught me! This post wasn't originally one of my Evolution series. It was written long before, and published in The Open Laboratory 2008. But it IS a post about evolution, and this week is all about evolution on Observations of a Nerd, so I say it counts! It seems that you can't have a conversation about evolution that doesn't end with everyone involved feeling frustrated. You can't even mention the word 'evolution' without bringing up a political philippic, religious rant or scientific squabble. Unfortunately, this keeps everyone from the conversations that really matter - of course…

Colloidal silver: The real Blue Man Group

People never cease to amaze me. Sometimes it's in a good way, when a person whom I would least expect to be capable of it does something really kind or brilliant. Sometimes it's in a bad way. One of the bad ways people never cease to amaze me is how someone can continue down a path that has obviously caused them harm. I was reminded by this by a news story that's been making the rounds of the media. I first saw it a couple of days ago on the local ABC affiliate, and it seems to be making the rounds of many affiliates nationwide. It's the story of Paul Karason. Paul Karason is blue, and an…

I am the über-nerd. Bow before me.

Janet, Janet, Janet. What have you wrought? I know you're hosting the Skeptics' Circle next week, which gives you much cred in my book, but why this now? Annoyed at being shut out of the hottest scienceblogger list, you decreed a nerd-off, and then everybody had to get into the act, including Nick, Chad, Janet again, Joshua, PZ, Shelley (who in reality should be automatically disqualified, having been elected the hottest scienceblogger), John Wilkins, Afarensis, Razib, and Mike Dunford. (Bora tried to deny that he is a nerd, but I detect serious nerdiness underneath that seemingly cool…

Whence Uroplatus and... there are how many leaf-tailed gecko species now?? (gekkotans part VII)

Time to press on once more with gekkotan lizards, and again with yet more on the remarkable leaf-tailed geckos (Uroplatus) of Madagascar. So far, we've been introduced to these lizards and have also looked at their anatomical pecularities and on a little bit of their history within the herpetological literature [image below shows U. phantasticus - I think - photographed at Mandatia; courtesy of Mary Blanchard]. But there's lots more to look at: at the recently named and soon-to-be-named species, at their phylogenetic position within Gekkota and, sadly, at their inevitable plight at human…

Dichloroacetate and The DCA Site: A low bar for "success" (part 2)

Be careful what you ask for; you just might get it. I say this in light of a commenter, who decided to show up in one of my old posts to claim "positive results" from dichloroacetate (DCA), the small molecule experimental cancer drug that has shown promising activity in rat models of cancer but has not yet been subjected to testing in human trials, and invite me to check out new testimonials. Because DCA is a small molecule that is inexpensive to produce and can't itself be patented (although a patent for its use in treating cancer, a weaker form of patent, is possible), pharmaceutical…

Dichloroacetate (DCA) and cancer: Magical thinking versus Tumor Biology 101

Late yesterday afternoon, I was lazily checking my referral logs to see who might be linking to Respectful Insolenceâ¢, as most bloggers like to do from time to time (and any blogger who claims otherwise is probably feeding you a line), when I noticed a fairly large number of visits coming from one location, namely here. I was wondering when this would happen, but it looks as though the regulars at The DCA Site have finally noticed some of my writing. Surprisingly, what they say about me is not that bad, although that's probably because they seem to have found the least--shall we say?--…

Testing the flotation dynamics and swimming abilities of giraffes by way of computational analysis

One of the most significant papers ever published in the annals of science appeared recently; it deals, for the first time ever, with one of the biggest scientific questions ever faced by the scientific community, and uses cutting-edge technology and awesome powers of deductive reasoning and logic to reach shocking, paradigm-shifting conclusions. I refer, of course, to Don Henderson and Darren Naish's Journal of Theoretical Biology article 'Predicting the buoyancy, equilibrium and potential swimming ability of giraffes by computational analysis'. I'm sure you've already read it and have…

Dr. Jay Gordon: Get away from my alma mater!

I'm pretty sure that I've mentioned this before at least a couple of times, but I am an alumnus of the University of Michigan twice over. I completed a B.S. in Chemistry with Honors there and then I stayed on to do obtain my M.D. Several of my longtime friendships were forged or solidified during those years. Consequently, I still care about the place. That's why it distresses me when I see my alma mater shoots itself in the foot. Now, I'll grant you that what I'm about to discuss probably doesn't bother me as much as the plight of the Michigan Wolverines bothers me, given that never before…

CBO Scoring, Deficit Reduction, and Bad Assumptions: Why Most Economic Projections Are Flawed

I'm holding off on a couple of genomics posts, and instead wearing my Mike the Mad Post-Keynesian hat, since global financial system might get...shaky. During the ongoing pandimensional clusterfuck that is the debt ceiling negotiations, one thing that is used to bolster the prophecies of budgetary DOOOM!! is the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) estimates. These estimates lead to claims that future budget deficits are 'unsustainable.' We must therefore make Grandma eat catfood cut funding for the disabled and needy engage in fiscal austerity. But, as I've noted many times about Social…

Al Gore and Framing or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Scientific Data

We can't stop arguing about framing, can we? I've been pondering the subject much of late, especially while I waited these past four days for Duke Power to get us back on the grid following Sunday's windstorm, and I think I've got something relevant to contribute. I know Matt Nisbet has got lots of social science research that suggests people's eyes glaze over when a scientist uses data to explain something, but that's not my experience. Which is: As some may recall, I'm a member of The Climate Project, a team of some 1,000 volunteers that Al Gore trained to present his Keynote/PowerPoint…

Re: Nidal Hasan's Weapons

God help me, I resisted mightily. If my fellow SB friend Greg wants to spin the Ft. Hoot shooting as a cause for gun control then frankly there's pretty much nothing further to say. You'd think a @#$% major in the @#$% army on a @#$% army base just might not have been terribly inconvenienced in procuring weaponry even if every civilian gun in the hemisphere vanished in a puff of sunshine and wishful thinking. But I was going to leave it alone, assuming that that particular point makes itself. To each his own. But he wrote a follow-up post asserting a few points of fact, pretty much all of…

Two Points on "An Inconvenient Truth" (Point Two: Carbon Footprints)

Its a bit overdue, but I wanted to address the second point in regards to "An Inconvenient Truth"---whether or not carbon off-sets do any good and whether Al Gore is hypocritical for using jets (which pollute) to attend meetings, etc. This issue was first raised over at my SciBling's blog Stoat, during his review of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." During that review he said: How would we stop global warming? Since Gore fervently believes in it, clearly we should - emulate his lifestyle! Yes thats right, fly around the world and visit all kinds of interesting places. Um. Maybe not so…

God has an awesome PR department

Only the religious could turn a disaster into a mark in the plus column for God. Jim Downey has found an amazing series of books with some impressive titles, all with the point of giving credit to God for personal catastrophe: Thank God For Accidents Thank God For Mistakes Thank God I Adopted Thank God I Am A Bitch Thank God I Am A Dwarf/Midget Thank God I Am A Network Marketer Thank God I Am A Senior Citizen Thank God I Am A Single Parent Thank God I Am A Stay At Home Dad Thank God I Am A Stay At Home Mom Thank God I Am A Virgin Thank God I Am Afraid Of Commitment Thank God I Am An…