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Another Week of GW News, May 6, 2012

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another Week in the Ecological Crisis Information Overload is Pattern RecognitionMay 6, 2012 Chuckles, Rio+20, COP18+, Moon, Zhou, Peru, IEA, Elgin Banks, Global Legal Framework, Cook Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Fisheries, Food Prices, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs,…

Trust and accountability in the vaccine-autism wars.

There's a new feature article by Liza Gross [1] up at PLoS Biology. Titled "A Broken Trust: Lessons from the Vaccine-Autism Wars," the article does a nice job illuminating how the themes of trust and accountability play out in interactions between researchers, physicians, patients, parents, journalists, and others in the public discourse about autism and vaccines. Ultimately, the events Gross examines -- and the ways the various participants react to those events -- underline the questions: Who can we trust for good information? and To whom are we accountable for our actions and our…

The antivaccine conspiracy theory narrative: You want it darker?

Some of you might have been wondering just WTF has been going on here on the old blog, given the relative paucity of posts over the last week and the "reruns" from the distant past that I've been posting. I address this question because I realize that not everyone reads the comments and it's quite possible some of you might have missed it, but here in Michigan we had an enormous windstorm last Wednesday that knocked out power to 800,000+ people. Unfortunately, Orac was one of them. True, we did get the power back over the weekend, but then, in a cruel twist of fate, we lot power again on…

Selling an alternative medicine cancer cure testimonial as an "N-of-1" trial: Integrative medicine's new propaganda technique?

If there's one thing that proponents of "integrative medicine" (or, as it's been called in the past, "complementary and alternative medicine," or CAM) take great pains to emphasize whenever defending their integration of prescientific and pseudoscientific medicine into medicine, it's that they do not recommend using "alternative medicine" instead of real medicine but in addition to real medicine. Indeed, even the "gods" of integrative medicine, such as Barrie Cassileth at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, not only emphasize that but actually often take umbrage when it is suggested that…

The wonderfully Orwellian Free Speech About Science Act of 2011 (H.R. 1364)

"Health freedom." It's a battle cry frequently used by supporters of "alternative" medicine against what they perceive to be persecution by the medical and scientific establishment that uses the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, and other federal agencies charged with regulating pharmaceuticals, food, cosmetics, and medical devices in order to protect the public against fraud, adulterated food, and quackery. It's a potent argument to those not versed in skepticism and science-based medicine, and even to many who are. After all, Who could argue with "health freedom"?…

Medical marijuana and the new herbalism, part 2: The cult of "cannabis cures cancer"

About five weeks ago a month ago, I finally wrote the post I had been promising to write for months before about medical marijuana. At the time, I also promised that there would be follow-up posts. Like Dug the Dog seeing a squirrel, I kept running into other topics that kept me from revisiting the topic. However, recently the New York Times gave me just the little nudge I needed to come back and revisit the topic, first by openly advocating the legalization of marijuana, then by vastly overstating the potential medical benefits of pot (compare the NYT coverage with my post from last month…

The Best of Neurophilosophy

For the benefit of new readers, I've selected what I think are the best posts from this blog. Wilder Penfield, Neural Cartographer: The patient lies on the operating table, with the right side of his body raised slightly. The anaesthetist sterilizes his scalp and injects it with Nupercaine to produce analgesia - the patient will remain fully conscious throughout the procedure. Behind the surgical drapes, three large incisions are made in his scalp. A large flap of bone is then cut from his skull, and turned downward to expose the surface of his brain. The ultraviolet lights which illuminate…

Back to School

On my lap, I’ve got a set of school books that date from the 1850s to the 1890s.  They belonged to various of my father’s family – my great-uncle, George Hume, who died long before I was born and studied Eaton’s Common School Arithmetic in Amesbury, MA in the late 19th century,  20 miles from where I would go to school 100 years later.  The majority belonged to my great-grandfather, Edgar White, who studied latin and algebra in Jonesboro, Maine, and later went on to teach school in Cheshire, Connecticut, using the same books.  My grandfather’s books were mostly published in the 1860s, right…

A gun control debate with Matt Springer

Given that Matt and I are both gun enthusiasts, scientists, and bloggers, and we're both interested in something being done to prevent mass shootings such as in Newtown, Aurora, and almost one dozen other locations in just the last few years, we decided to host a more formal debate on the issue. I'm taking the side of a more stringent policy specifically on certain types of firearms that I don't believe should be freely-available to citizens, that is, magazine-fed semi-automatic handguns and rifles. This doesn't mean I believe in a ban, but simply more barriers to purchase, and simple safety…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Would you like a liver flush with that colon cleanse?

I have to apologize for last week's Dose of Woo. No, I'm not apologizing for the subject matter (the obsession that reigns supreme among some alties with "cleansing" one's colon to "purge toxins" and achieve the super-regularity of several bowel movements a day). Rather, I'm sorry I didn't point out just how disgusting one of the links I included was, because among all the glowing testimonials for how great colon cleansers felt after having supposedly rid themselves of all that nasty fecal matter caked on the walls of their colons and achieved the Nirvana of many bowel movements a day (or, as…

Another Week of GW News, July 7, 2013

This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years July 7, 2013 Chuckles, COP19+, WMO, Steinacher, CO2 Fertilization, Desertec, Rabobank, Cook Fukushima: Note, News, Policies Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food: Crisis, Fisheries, Food vs. Biofuel, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, Notable Weather, New Weather, GHGs, Temperatures, Aerosols Paleoclimate, ENSO, Biosphere, Extinctions,…

Another Week of Global Warming News, November 24, 2013

(featured image comes from the world resources institute, go to the link for background and explanation, here is a short cut to a full size image) This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Sipping from the Internet Firehose... November 24, 2013 Chuckles, COP19: The Deal, REDD+, The Negotiations, Daily Reports GCP, CCPI, CGD, Heede, Cowtan & Way , Potash, Energiewende Bottom Line, Subsidies, Big Banks, Pricing Nature, Crap Detector, Cook Fukushima: Note, News…

Accelerated adaptive human evolution?

Update on paper access: You can get it here already. Note: I'm going to put a link roundup (updated) at this post. End Note Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution: Genomic surveys in humans identify a large amount of recent positive selection. Using the 3.9-million HapMap SNP dataset, we found that selection has accelerated greatly during the last 40,000 years. We tested the null hypothesis that the observed age distribution of recent positively selected linkage blocks is consistent with a constant rate of adaptive substitution during human evolution. We show that a constant rate…

Another Week in the Ecological Crisis, October 13, 2013

This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom As we enter a new Age of ConsequencesOctober 13, 2013 Chuckles, COP19+, GCF, Greenhouse 2013, Africa Climate, Post-AR5, Mora Potash, Maldives GFIs, CookFukushima: Note, News, Related Papers Melting Arctic, Walrus, Methane, Geopolitics, AntarcticaFood: Crisis, Fisheries, Prices, Food vs. Biofuel, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, Notable Weather, Abrupt CC, Carbon Cycle, Cosmic Rays Weather Machine,…

Another Week of Climate Disruption News, May 4, 2014

This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another Week of Climate Disruption News Information is not Knowledge...Knowledge is not Wisdom May 4, 2014 Chuckles, COP20+, Post WGx, EGU, Landslide, Energiewende Bottom Line, Subsidies, Economics, EcoCrime, Cook Fukushima: Note, News Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics Food: Crisis, Fisheries, Prices, Land Grabs, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, Notable Weather, Extreme Weather, New Weather…

Another week of GW News, June 20, 2010

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Sipping from the internet firehose...June 20, 2010 Chuckles, Bonn, BASIC, COP16+, Cochabamba, Kyoto Fraud, Free Science, Changing Oceans, CO2 Link Bottom Line, Subsidies, MCF, Doubts, Doubts 2, IPCC Review, Post CRU, Late Comments Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Agricultural Outlook 2010, IP Issues, Food Production…

How not to Feyerabend

On Monday night last, Jason Grossman, a philosopher form the Australian National University rang me with an idea. He was coming to my university to give a talk entitled "How to Feyerabend", arguing that Feyerabend was a dadaist rather than an anarchist. I'd tell you more about his talk, but I can't, for reasons that will become obvious. He wanted to do the talk as a dadaist performance. How can I help? I enquired. That was my mistake. Well, he said, I want us to give a simultaneous presentation. What, in turn? I asked. No, at the same time. With music. And Allison (his partner) folding…

Revised Repost: What big teeth you have

One of Charles R. Knight's paintings of Smilodon fatalis, this one menacing a giant sloth stuck in tar (off panel). There are few fossil mammals that are as impressive as the saber-toothed cat Smilodon fatalis, but despite it's fearsome dentition some recent reports have suggested it was more of a pussycat when it came to bite strength. This seems to be counter-intuitive; how could such a fearsome-looking animal be associated with the term "weak"? Incredulity aside, it has become apparent that the bite of Smilodon wasn't as strong as that of some other carnivores (extinct and extant), yet…

Another Week of GW News, January 1, 2012

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another Week of Climate Disruption News Sipping from the Internet Firehose...January 1, 2012 Chuckles, HNY, Retrospectives, Oil & Sunlight, Ecuador, Cook, Post CRU Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food Prices, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures,…

Another Week of GW News, January 13, 2008

Sipping from the internet firehose... This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup (skip to bottom) Top Stories:UK Nukes, Canadian NRTEE Report Melting Arctic, Antarctica, Methane Hydrates, Carbon Forum America, Bali Hurricanes, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures, Paleoclimate ENSO, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Solar Cycle, NASA/JPL Spat Impacts, Forests, Corals, Wacky Weather, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings, Geoengineering, Iron Hypothesis, Adaptation…

Kevin in China, part 4 - Snakebites as a Daily Hobby

Here is the fourth part of Kevin's journey. I have just realized that I posted the previous two in the wrong order, thus post #2 should be third and post #3 should be second. I was going by the order in which I received them instead of dates in the journal. And I am doing these things late at night (having them automatically published at a preset time - noon), doing all the HTML for italicising the species names, running the spellcheck, expanding IM-style contractions into full-length words, breaking long paragraphs into multiples of shorter ones for ease of reading on a computer screen,…

"Bullying" over vaccines?

There's been a post over at the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism that I had meant to address when it first broke its head through the surface of the stupid to spew more stupid. Fortunately, nothing much was going on in the blogosphere that compelled me; so this was a good time to revisit the post and take care of some unfinished business, particularly given that there have been followup posts since then. It also goes to show how antivaccine cranks like to misuse language, sometimes unintentionally (which is probably the case here) and sometimes intentionally (too many examples over the…

Another Week of GW News, April 29, 2012

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Another Week in the Ecological CrisisApril 29, 2012 Chuckles, Rio+20, CEM, IPY2012, People & Planet, Pritchard, Durack, Kort Elgin, IPBES, Maldives, World Bank, Pricing Nature, Cook, Post CRU Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy Melting Arctic, Grolar Bears, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Fisheries, Food Prices, Land…

The Open Laboratory 2009 - the submissions so far

Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 340 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays): 2020 Science: Hooked on science - ten things that inspired me to become a scientist A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a Nurse- a guest post A Blog Around The Clock: Why social insects…

The Open Laboratory 2009 - the submissions so far

Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 340 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays): 2020 Science: Hooked on science - ten things that inspired me to become a scientist A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a Nurse- a guest post A Blog Around The Clock: Why social insects…

The annals of "I'm not antivaccine," part 25: We're not antivaccine, we just publish posts about stopping the "Vaccine Holocaust"

As hard as it is to believe, it was over seven years ago that I started my Annals of "I'm not antivaccine" series. The idea was (and continues to be) to point out how the claim that many antivaccine activists proclaiming themselves to be "not antivaccine" but rather "vaccine safety advocates" is, depending on the specific antivaxer making it, a lie, a delusion, or perhaps both. I do that by simply highlighting bits of over-the-top rhetoric I see on antivaccine websites likening vaccines to all sorts of evil things, particularly the Holocaust. In the case of the very first entry in this series…

Another week of GW News, January 31, 2010

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Information overload is pattern recognition January 31, 2010 Chuckles, COP15, Copenhagen Accord, Scorecard, BASIC, COP16, Solomon et al., EPI, WGMS, Usama, IPCC Attack Bottom Line, Cold Snap, Frank et al., WEF, WSF, China & AGW, Gates, OIC - Oct 2011 Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Land…

Jim Carrey's antivaccine rants are nothing new (a blast from the past, featuring Fire Marshal Bill)

In the wake of the passage of SB 277 into law in California, the antivaccine contingent went full mental jacket. SB 277, as you might recall, eliminates non-medical exemptions (i.e., religious and personal belief exemptions) to school vaccine mandates. One thing watching the crazy was good for, at least for me, was to note how various antivaccinationists behaved. For instance, Jim Carrey, former paramour of the celebrity queen of the antivaccine movement, Jenny McCarthy, issued a series of Tweets in response: Greed trumps reason again as Gov Brown moves closer to signing vaccine law in Cali…

The Saga of the Bosnian Pyramid

You may have heard about the crazy "discovery" of a pyramid in Bosnia, the scientific nonsense about it and the political heat it provoked. I have covered the story last winter and spring in a lot of detail (see my posts from December 07, 2005, January 30, 2006, April 17, 2006, April 22, 2006, April 29, 2006, May 02, 2006, May 07, 2006, May 13, 2006, May 16, 2006, June 02, 2006 and June 07, 2006), but have lost touch since then. And a lot of stuff happened in the meantime. The members of the Anti-Pyramid Webring have been pursuing the story with vigor and I'll try to catch up with them and…

The story of Seán Ó'Laighin, patient of Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski

Eric Merola doesn't much like me. Actually, no one who is an apologist for Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, a.k.a. "Stan the Man," who over 30 years ago unleashed antineoplastons on unsuspecting cancer patients, much likes me. It's not surprising. As you might recall, antineoplastons are chemicals that Burzynski found in the urine of cancer patients and that (or so he claims). Claiming that antineoplastons were endogenous inhibitors of tumor growth made by the body and of which cancer patients are deficient, thus allowing cancer to grow, he embarked on a campaign to treat cancer patients with them.…

Big Tick and Ugly Deer

I'm on the road and visiting the Midwestern homelands. This evening, I'm in Madison where a former classmate (and longtime friend) and I will join our grad advisor and his wife for dinner. The newly minted professor emeritis doesn't know that we're showing up so the element of surprise should be entertaining. In lieu of fresh bloviation, I'll recap a classic rambling Bushwellian essay which touches upon ticks, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Singer, and Jersey devil deer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- July 2005 Although I still pine for my former…

Troodon sapiens?: Thoughts on the "Dinosauroid"

Regardless of whether it was gradual or happened in a geologic instant, non-avian dinosaurs went extinct by approximately 65 million years ago, but the question of what they might be like today had they survived makes for some entertaining fiction. Most of such imaginary works are set on isolated islands or plateaus, "Lost Worlds" that have provided a refuge for dinosaurs (the most spectacular and enjoyable example being Weta Workshop's companion book to Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong entitled The World of Kong). Still, many of the dinosaurian hideaways do not take evolution into…

The Lunatic Rev. Moon

Note: My friend DarkSyde posted an entry on his diary at DailyKos pointing people here for information about Rev. Moon. It's been a few weeks since I last wrote about Moon, so I thought I'd repost the one that started it all, my fisking of the insanely ridiculous full page ad that Moon took out around the world in 2002. Here it is in all its glory: On July 4, 2002, the Unification Church (a.k.a. the Moonies) took out a full page ad in newspapers all around the world that just has to be seen to be believed. I'm going to reprint parts of that ad here, skipping all of the statements by all of…

The Lunatic Reverend Moon

On July 4, 2002, the Unification Church (a.k.a. the Moonies) took out a full page ad in newspapers all around the world that just has to be seen to be believed. I'm going to reprint parts of that ad here, skipping all of the statements by all of the "underlings" of the great religions, along with my own comments interspersed in italics. And at the end, I'll tell you why this is important. ------------------------------------ “A Cloud of Witnesses: The Saints’ Testimonies to the True Parents” Preface: What follows is a complex document. It was produced at a seminar in spirit world for leaders…

September 11: Five years later

Today is the fifth anniversary of September 11. There will be a whole lot of verbiage put forth into the blogosphere, spanning the gauntlet from blaming all Muslims for the attack, to blaming America for bringing it upon itself, to the idiotic 9/11 conspiracy mongers who will claim that George Bush and/or the Mossad were responsible for blowing up the towers or that the planes that hit the tower were remote controlled. (Who knows? Perhaps the Masons and the Illuminati were involved as well, all as part of a plan to produce the dreaded One World Government.) Given all this verbiage, I wasn't…

A Reply to Robert Asher

Back in February, paleontologist Robert Asher wrote this essay for HuffPo. The essay was called, “Why I am an Accommodationist,” and it defended the compatibility of science and religion. As regular readers of this blog are aware, I don't much care for that view. So I wrote this reply. After a long break, Asher has now replied to my reply, over at The Panda's Thumb. I thank him for taking the time to have to done so. However, I am not moved by his remarks to revise anything I said in my original post. So let's go one more round, and have a look at what he has to say. After a brief…

Another Week in the Ecological Crises, September 22, 2013

This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Information Overload is Pattern Recognition Equinox Edition September 22, 2013 Equinox, COP19+, IPCC, HMNDP, MDG, EDF, Potash, Maldives, Energiewende Bottom Line, Pricing Nature, Cook, Shrinkology Fukushima: Note, News Melting Arctic, Megafauna, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food: Crisis, Land Grabs, GMOs, Production Hurricanes, Notable Weather, Extreme Weather, New Weather GHGs, Aerosols, Volcanoes,…

Regressives

An oldie (March 28, 2005) but goodie, bound to stir up the comment section (why do I post controversial stuff on Fridays when the traffic starts coming down?) WHAT SHOULD WE CALL THEM? First, who is "them"? Second, why should they be "called"? Third, who are "we"? Fourth, why "should" we call them anything? Finally, "what" is the appropriate name? These are all interconnected questions, dealing with the current US political environment, and the notion of "framing". In his book Moral Politics (MP) and later, more explicitely, in "Don't Think Of An Elephant" (DTOAE), George Lakoff…

Regressives

An oldie (March 28, 2005) but goodie, bound to stir up the comment section.......... WHAT SHOULD WE CALL THEM? First, who is "them"? Second, why should they be "called"? Third, who are "we"? Fourth, why "should" we call them anything? Finally, "what" is the appropriate name? These are all interconnected questions, dealing with the current US political environment, and the notion of "framing". In his book Moral Politics (MP) and later, more explicitely, in "Don't Think Of An Elephant" (DTOAE), George Lakoff struggles with the nomenclature. He is not entirely happy with words "…

Medicine and evolution, part 13: The fly in the ointment of personalized cancer therapy

About a year ago, I addressed what might seem to the average reader to be a very simple, albeit clichéd question: If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we cure cancer? As I pointed out at the time, it's a question that I sometimes even ask myself, particularly given that cancer has touched my life. Three years ago, my mother-in-law died of a particularly nasty form of breast cancer. Even though I am a breast cancer surgeon, I still wonder why there was nothing that could save her (and still is nothing that could have saved her if it existed then) from a decline over several months…

Another Week of GW News, March 25, 2012

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Sipping from the Internet Firehose...March 25, 2012 Chuckles, Equinox, WWD, Heatwave, SEI, Earth Hour, Maldives Exxon Valdez, WMO, SkS Hacked, World Bank, Value, Cook Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Methane, Antarctica Food Crisis, Fisheries, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Nitrogen Cycle…

Another Week of GW News, May 27, 2012

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another Week in the Planetary Crisis Sipping from the Internet Firehose... May 27, 2012 Chuckles, Rio+20, COP18+, Bonn, G8, Elgin, Peru Subsidies, Banks, Cook Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Fisheries, Food Prices, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Aerosols, ENSO Solar,…

Replying to Knop

That last post makes a nice lead-in to this post, from my fellow Science Blogger Rob Knop. This post is a follow-up to this previous post, in which Knop professed his own Christian faith, and protested what he perceives as a bias towards atheism here at SB. The present post is entitled, “What is the Purpose of Religion and/or Spirituality in a Scientific Age.” Let's have a look. Referring to his earlier post, Knop writes: In that post, I make it very clear that religion is no good at explaining the processes of the natural world. Once upon a time, that was a big part of what religion was…

Stanislaw Burzynski and the cynical use of cancer patients as shields and weapons against the FDA: Yes, the FDA has caved.

As I sat down to write this bit of Insolence, I had at least two ideas for what I thought would be informative, entertaining, and timely posts. I also didn't want to have to write about Stanislaw Burzynski again after having just done so on Friday, having to note that the FDA caved, granting compassionate use exemptions to use antineoplastons (ANPs) to several patients who had been lobbying for just such exemptions. I already described why what the FDA did was horrifically cynical. When I first saw the message rejoicing of the FDA's decision in message on the Prayers for Elisha Facebook page…

Another Week of GW News, September 30, 2007

This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's GW news roundup(skip to bottom) Top Stories, African Floods, Melting Arctic, Greenland, Ward Hunt Lake, Polls, CDP Meetings, UN, Clinton Initiative, Washington, Retrospectives Hurricanes, Ozone, Sea Levels, ENSO, Satellites, DSCOVR Impacts, Rainforests, Wacky Weather, WildFires, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel, Agro-Corps Mitigation, Transportation, Sequestration, Iron Hypothesis, Ocean Pipes Journals, Misc. Science Kyoto, Carbon Trade, Carbon Tax, Optimal Carbon Reduction…

Another political roundup

Under the fold.... Senator to president: A new day: But is it a good thing for senators to be frozen out of the process? Though governors may make better candidates, it's not clear that they're well prepared to deal with the complex mix of personalities and parliamentary procedures that will decide whether their agenda is quickly passed or quietly strangled. Unocommon Ground: Admittedly, the general tone of this site over the past week or so has been one of unabashed anger and outrage. While I won't apologize for this -- mostly because I feel like the more that people throw down the gauntlet…

Jeremy Sherr, homeopathy for AIDS in Africa, and the most fortunate failure of memory holes in the age of Internet

I almost feel sorry for homeopathy Jeremy Sherr. Almost. You see, he is busily learning a lesson that HIV/AIDS denialist Celia Farber learned a couple of weeks ago, namely that, unlike the fictional nation of Oceania in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, memory holes do not work very well in the Internet age. I'll backtrack a bit and explain. Last week, several readers sent me reports about a homeopath named Jeremy Sherr, who apparently in November went to Tanzania in Africa and has been busted by the skeptical blogosphere for proposing on his blog Jeremy's Journal from Africa completely…

An Open Letter To the Future President

As presidential politics ramp up and the environment becomes part of the rhetoric, it reminded me of a essay I wrote a couple of years ago as part of book project entitled Thirty-five Years Since Earth Day: Visions of a New Generation. The editor ended up dropping the ball on the book, but my essay is still lingering. So I thought I would share it here. My essay addresses the state of biodiversity and reads much like a open letter to the president and voters. Perhaps some of you will enjoy some or all of it here: History, our gardens, and the future of biodiversity: Why we should care and…

Neonatal death rates after home births and a strange skeptic kerfuffle

If there's a topic that I don't write about much, it's obstetrics. The reason is that it's not a major area of my interest, and it's not an area where I have as much expertise as I do in, say, cancer or even vaccines. My expertise in cancer comes from my career, of course, and my expertise in vaccines is self-taught through my 9+ years of blogging about it. Ditto my expertise in "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), also known as "integrative medicine," about which I know quite a lot now. That's probably why I didn't pay much attention to a study that came out in late January from…

Another Week in the Ecological Crisis, September 15, 2013

(Featured image from http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/photo/2013-09/14/c_132720300.htm) This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup.  I am late because I am traveling.  Normality should resume before next Monday's posting... skip to bottom Sipping from the Internet Firehose... September 15, 2013 Chuckles, COP19+, G20, XPrize, CDP, Germany, Potash Bottom Line, EBRD, Cook Fukushima: Note, News, Policies Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food: Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel,…