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Friday Sprog Blogging: psychic powers?

On a busy weekday morning as members of the Free-Ride family prepare to get out the door: Elder offspring: Let's check if you have psychic powers. Younger offspring: How can you check if I have psychic powers? Elder offspring: We'll see if you can tell which Pokemon is on the card before I flip it over. Younger offspring: I don't think I can do that. Elder offspring: (to Dr. Free-Ride's better half) Can you do an experiment with me? Dr. Free-Ride's better half: There's not really time right now -- I'm trying to get ready for work. What kind of experiment? Elder offspring: I'm going to…

Department of Homeland Security and academic labs.

In the June 4, 2007 issue of Chemical & Engineering News (which is behind a paywall accessible only to ACS members and those with institutional subscriptions, I'm afraid) there's an article on how college and university labs may be impacted by the interim final regulation on chemical security issued recently by the Department of Homeland Security. In a nutshell, that impact looks like it could involve thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single university to comply with the rules, even if the chemicals they use fall into those specified by DHS as being at the…

Marshmallow reviews fierce book

Nicholas Kristof seems like a decent enough fellow, with a concern for humanitarian causes. He's also something of a simpering apologist for religion — anything with a whiff of godlessness seems to put him on edge and start him whining about intolerant, obnoxious atheists. He is definitely not the right person to have review Ayaan Hirsi Ali's new book. He might be able to sympathize with the human rights issues she confronts, but at the same time he's got a kind of willful blindness to the contributions religion makes to human misery, and is guaranteed to belittle the problem of Islam. If you…

How is your graduate education funded (or not)?

Bitch Ph.D. links an interesting op-ed piece in the Washington Post about the challenges of being a single parent and paying for grad school. Given the academia/parenting discussion we've been having here, I figured this was another relevant issue to consider. I've mentioned before that the standard practice in science Ph.D. programs in the U.S. seems to be that students get tuition plus a stipend that, depending on the local cost of living, ranges from barely-adequate to almost-comfortable. There are also a good number of U.S. Ph.D. programs in the humanities and social sciences that offer…

The Dirty Secrets of fMRI

The blogosphere has begun debating the merits of fMRI. That's a good thing. The debate began with Paul Bloom's excellent editorial in Seed, in which he argued that "fMRI imagery has attained an undue influence, and we shouldn't be seduced." It continues here and here. I used to work in a neuroscience lab grounded in molecular biology, and there was no shortage of fMRI bashing. A typical complaint went like this: "I'm here struggling with my damn Western blot [or Southern, or PCR, etc.], trying to be a good reductionist, while all those fMRI researchers just pick a sexy question, stuff some…

All the creationist fallacies in one easy-to-read pamphlet

If you want to see how the other side thinks, and I mean more than just the vocal leaders at the top of the creationist movement, there's an excellent example at The Friendly Atheist. It's written by a fellow who visited his local church, Parkview Christian Church, and reviewed a 25 page pamphlet on creationism put out by the pastor, Tim Harlow. I have to be blunter than the Friendly Atheist (he's friendly, after all; I have no such qualifier): Reverend Tim Harlow is sincere, caring, literate, and open to conversation, but his pamphlet is 199 proof distilled stupid, aged in oaken casks and…

To the Moon

May 5th, 1961. Freedom 7. The United States took its first small step on its journey to the moon... Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Do you hear the nervousness in his voice? I think the whole thing got a bit more causal, but not necessarily much safer, later on in the space program. "I had not realized the intensity of the emotions and feelings that so many people had for me, the other astronauts, the whole damned manned space program. This was the first sense of adulation, a sense of public response, a sense of public expression of thanks for…

A chiropractic "adjustment" in New Jersey

Here's a rather interesting wrinkle in the regulation of chiropractors. This time, it's New Jersey: A recent state court decision has hundreds of chiropractors across the state bent out of shape because it sharply limits what they can legally do. And while the decision is being appealed to the state Supreme Court and state legislators have proposed amending state law to return the field to where it was, changes are not expected for months. In the meantime, the decision "definitely wiped out a source of income, because we were able to bill for the extremity adjustment before and now we can't…

Those darned kids!

Students cheat on exams. There's just no getting around it. No matter how secure teachers think they've made their examination processes, there will always be a subset of students who try to find a way around any security procedures and give themselves an advantage, either by hook or by crook. These days, technology is making it even harder to prevent such cheating: Devices including iPods and Zunes can be hidden under clothing, with just an earbud and a wire snaking behind an ear and into a shirt collar to give them away, school officials say. "It doesn't take long to get out of the loop…

Hurricane warnings likely for Earl

North Carolina will receive hurricane warnings (a significant notch above watches) within a few hours, as the forecasted path for earl shift a bit to the west than previously thought and b) becomes less certain. From NOAA/Hurricane Prediction Center: Hurricane Watch: North of Surf City North Carolina to Parramore Island Virginia including the Pamlico and Albermale Sounds Tropical Storm Warning for San Salvador Tropical Storm Watch for North Carolina Coast from Cape Fear to Surf City You can expect, approximately, for the first of these watches to be upgraded to a warning soon. Thursday…

Eskow—yet another backlasher

RJ Eskow has a set of 15 questions he wants us "militant atheists" to answer. Apparently, we've been blaming every problem in the universe on religion and religion alone, and we need to eradicate faith in order to inaugurate our new world order of peace, prosperity, and reason. That isn't really hyperbole: his questions really are exercises in the obvious. Here's one, for instance (no, I'm not going to waste my time with all 15): Where the wars so often cited by militants (the Crusades, etc.) primarily religious in nature, or did their root causes stem from other factors such as economics,…

The Origin of Syphilis

Syphilis is first clearly seen in Europe in 1495, when it appeared as a plague (though it was not "the blague" ... Yersinia pestis) among Charles VIII's troops. When these troops went home shortly after the fall of Naples, they brought this disease with them, staring an epidemic. The level of mortality in Europe was truly devastating. Is it the case that syphilis was brought to Europe by Columbus and his men just prior to the plague-like outbreak of 1495? The origin of syphilis has been debated for years, really since the actual 1495 event itself. Some researchers have asserted that…

How to get to Mars

If you thought robotic snakes were creepy, you should check out this (very serious) proposal for how to make a "manned" Mars trip a reality. Will humans ever really go to Mars? Let's face it, the obstacles are quite daunting. Not only are there numerous, difficult, technical issues to overcome, but the political will and perseverance of any one nation to undertake such an arduous task just can't be counted on. However, one former NASA engineer believes a human mission to Mars is quite doable, and such an event would unify the world as never before. But Jim McLane's proposal includes a…

Jenny McCarthy "absolutely loves" injecting toxins into her bloodstream

I realize I'm a bit late on this, but it's hard not to take the antivaccine movement's icon and apply her own misinformation about vaccines being "toxins" injected into the bloodstream against her. In fact, doing so is far more justified, given that last week she was quoted in an interview as singing paeans of praise to one of the most deadly poisons known to humankind: Botulinum toxin. See: I think plastic surgery is fun if it makes you feel good. I'm all for looking better, so I plan on doing whatever I want when the time comes. I love Botox, I absolutely love it. I get it minimally, so I…

Sigh. Sometimes anti-evolutionists are so tiresome

There are certain bloggers who can reliably be counted on to deliver the stupid. We've met several of them over the time this blog's been in existence. One such blogger, the born again Christian named LaShawn Barber, has been particularly good at it, although we've only met her a couple of times before, likening the NAACP to the white nationalist teen duo Prussian Blue as a means of trolling and saying rather odd things about Ted Haggard. Those were bad enough, but now she's even more out of her depth than usual as she decides to pontificate about something about which it is brain-fryingly…

The Hosue of Blair

Tim Blair links to some interesting articles in this week's Bulletin. First up is a page on John Howard with the intriguing title "The hosue of Howard". It's a fearless, hard hitting complete suck up to Howard. Apparently, after a decade of power and privilege as prime minister, Howard hasn't lost touch with the common folk. Why not? Because he owns a regular, simple house. He doesn't live there or even in the Prime Minister's official residence -- he lives in a mansion with multi-million dollar harbour views, but just owning that house is enough to stay in touch with the little people…

Donohue and Levitt's new measure of abortion

Steve Levitt has a post with a detailed response to Foote and Goetz's paper. They construct a new, better, measure of abortions under which more abortions are associated with less crime. They conclude: The results we show in this new table are consistent with the impact of abortion on crime that we find in our three other types of analyses we presented in the original paper using different sources of variation. These results are consistent with the unwantedness hypothesis. In comments to Levitt's post Steve Sailer raises objections that do not impress me in the slightest but Daniel Davies…

Lancet study and cluster sampling

In an earlier post I observed that "Seixon does not understand sampling". Seixon removed any doubt about this with his comments on that post and two more posts. Despite superhuman efforts to explain sampling to him by several qualified people in comments, Seixon has continued to claim that the sample was biased and therefore "that the study is so fatally flawed that there's no reason to believe it." I'm going to show, without numbers, just pictures, that the sampling was not biased and what the effect of the clustering of the governorates was. Let's look at a simplified example. Suppose we…

McIntyre's irrational demands

In a comment to post on the Barton letters, Ed Snack claimed that Michael Mann made an error in MBH98, he confused the square root of the cosine of the latitude with the cosine Now if you look at MBH98, cosine latitude is only mentioned here: Northern Hemisphere (NH) and global (GLB) mean temperature are estimated as areally-weighted (ie, cosine latitude) averages over the Northern hemisphere and global domains respectively I did a bit of searching and found that Snack's source is this statement in the supplementary material for von Storch at al's paper "Reconstructing Past Climate from…

Did Global Warming claim an inhabited island?

Geoffrey Lean in The Independent claims: Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true. .. Two-thirds of nearby populated island Ghoramara has also been permanently inundated. Dr Sugata Hazra, director of the university's School of Oceanographic…

Flypaper for innumerates: WSJ edition

It never ceases to amaze me the way the Wall Street Journal combines superb news coverage with a completely clueless editorial page. To balance an excellent news article by Carl Bialik on the first Lancet study, we have an innumerate article on the editorial page by Steven E. Moore. Moore claims that the sample size for the Lancet study is too small: However, the key to the validity of cluster sampling is to use enough cluster points. In their 2006 report, "Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional sample survey," the Johns Hopkins team says it used 47 cluster points for…

Refused treatment due to a practitioner's religious beliefs

Via Kevin, MD, here's a Washington Post article describing how the religious beliefs of health care practitioners result in the denial of care. Here are some examples: Cynthia Copeland also had a run-in with a pharmacist in 2004. He wrongly assumed she was planning an abortion because she had a prescription for a drug that can be used for that purpose. In fact, Copeland had already had undergone a procedure to remove a fetus that had no pulse, and she needed the drug to complete the process. "I was sitting there in the drugstore waiting and heard the pharmacist say really loudly, 'I refuse to…

Perhaps the Hitler Zombie is smarter than we think...

After last week's reemergence of the Hitler Zombie from his underground crypt to snack on the brains of a couple of political consultants in my home city of Detroit, my sister kindly sent me this link, which explains a bit more of the background. It turns out that the HItler Zombie may be cleverer than even I thought. The use of Hitler imagery, besides being inspired by a chomp on the brain by the Hitler Zombie, appears to have a definite purpose beyond simply being over the top and offensive: What is really going on here? Here's a pretty well-informed guess. Everyone in Detroit politics…

The Australian's War on Science XXVI

I'm afraid the very silly editorial in the Weekend Australian about how environmentalists hate the proletariat, already taken to pieces by Glenn Albrecht doesn't qualify as part of their War on Science because it doesn't include anything on the science, but they can't resist taking another shot at climate science, so today's Australian has an article by political scientist Bjorn Lomborg: Obama went on to say why he wants to prioritise global warming policies: "The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We've seen record drought,…

Chris Mitchell's folly

Back in 1996 the Australian Press Council upheld a complaint against The Courier Mail under editor Chris Mitchell for printing a nutty story that historian Manning Clark was an agent of the Soviet Union who had been awarded the Order of Lenin for his services. The Press Council concluded: The newspaper had too little evidence to assert that Prof Clark was awarded the Order of Lenin - rather there is much evidence to the contrary. That being so, the Press Council finds that The Courier-Mail was not justified in publishing its key assertion and the conclusions which so strongly flowed from it…

The Listener against free speech

Earlier, I wrote how the environmental writer for the New Zealand Listener was fired after Heartland demanded he be silenced, and: Gareth Renowden has the full story. Well not any more. The Listener hired a lawyer to threaten him and the post has been taken down and an apology put up, which includes this statement: In fact Mr Hansford was not sacked by The Listener, and nor did The Listener seek to censor or suppress Mr Hansford's views. When you use lawyers to suppress people's views it kind of undercuts your claims that you didn't suppress Hansford's views. Dave Hansford commented on the…

McKitrick's quote mining

Deep Climate dissects Ross McKitrick's deceptive quoting from the emails stolen from CRU in 2009: In one particularly outrageous and error-filled passage, McKitrick accuses IPCC AR4 co-ordinating lead authors Phil Jones and Kevin Trenberth of selecting their team of contributing authors solely on the basis of whether they agree with the pair's scientific views. He even goes so far as to accuse Jones of "dismissing" (i.e. rejecting as a contributing author) one qualified expert who, supposedly in Jones's own words, "has done a lot, but I don't trust him." But the record clearly shows that it…

The Australian's War on Science 50: 'one-sided' reporting

The Australian's coverage of the story of the emails stolen from CRU has been extensive -- my Factiva search found that there have published 85 articles so far that mention the matter, with repeated allegations that the emails showed that the scientists were corrupt, had acted dishonestly and that the science could not be trusted. In February they reported on the Independent Climate Change Email Review: The university had already announced a wide-ranging probe into whether its researchers manipulated information about global warming. That review, headed by senior British civil servant Muir…

Plimer calls his critics "rent-seekers"

Ian Plimer responds to criticism with by calling his critics names and failing to address their arguments. In an interview on BBC Radio 4, Plimer spouts his usual outrageous falsehoods: "We cannot stop carbon emissions because most of them come from volcanoes." Not true -- even Martin Durkin's Swindle retracted this one. And when the interviewer brought up Michael Ashley's devastating review of Heaven and Earth, we got this: Plimer: "When you look at my critics -- they are people who are rent seekers. They have everything to gain by continuing the process of frightening people witless, by…

Too much sciency-ness for the vitamin industry?

Damn if PZ didn't beat me to this one: A federal panel concluded yesterday that there is not enough evidence to recommend for or against use of multivitamins and minerals -- the popular dietary supplements taken by more than half of American adults in the hope of preventing heart disease, cancer and other chronic illnesses. Americans spend an estimated $23 billion annually on various multivitamins and multi-mineral supplements, the 13-member panel found. One of the latest federally funded national surveys showed that 52 percent of adults reported taking multivitamins. Slightly more than a…

Spraying Monterey Citizens now, asking if that's okay is scheduled for next month.

Perhaps I should call this entry Mr Kawamura, CA secretary of the state department of Food and Agriculture, is a moron. Background The Monterey area has a problem with the light brown apple moth. Apparently it's been there for a while but now the state is concerned. They want to spray a pheramone to disrupt the life cycle. The EPA gave them emergency clearance to spray Checkmate from an airplane over the area both agricultural and residental. The people of the Monterey peninsula don't want to be sprayed with something that the EPA didn't give a full review to. The state did it anyway.…

Somewhat Sciency Friday: Saving the Environment Edition

Three things I thought you might find interesting today, starting with the shortest: Don't pass the gas. When you get crude oil, there is usually a natural gas pocket that goes along with it. Most drillers just burn it off. According to the World Bank, the gas burned off last year was enough to supply 27% of the US need for natural gas (~$40 billion dollars). Geez, if you you're gonna burn it, you might as well burn it in a usefull way. I should add that producers wouldn't get $40B, it costs money to collect it. (Via C&EN) (Thanks for indulging my juvenile title :) Oh, and my juvenile…

2008 Resolution No. 3: Uphold Magnanimity

"What Is Assertiveness?: Assertiveness is the ability to express one's feelings and assert one's rights while respecting the feelings and rights of others. Assertive communication is appropriately direct, open and honest, and clarifies one's needs to the other person." "What Are the Benefits of Assertiveness?: Assertiveness affects many areas of life. Assertive people tend to have fewer conflicts in their dealings with others, which translates into much less stress in their lives. They get their needs met (which also means less stressing over unmet needs), and help others get their needs met…

Medicare to Lymphoma Patients: Drop Dead!

Beginning Jan. 1, Medicare will reimburse only $16,000 of the $30,000 total cost for hospitals to acquire and administer each treatment of radioimmunotherapy drugs. Currently, only two drugs -- Bexxar and Zevalin -- fall under this class of therapy. What on earth is going on here? Why would our government reimburse cancer care providers for less than the actual cost of a new lymphoma treatment, not to mention the cost of the physicians, nurses, equipment and space needed in order to give the treatment at the correct dose, in the correct manner, flawlessly, without any adverse outcomes, with…

Theobroma Cacao - "Food of the Gods"

"The superiority of chocolate (hot chocolate), both for health and nourishment, will soon give it the same preference over tea and coffee in America which it has in Spain..." -Thomas Jefferson (1785) Talk about prescience! How did Mr. Jefferson know the truth back then, and when did he tell Mom about it? Remember those days when you and your friends came stamping in after a shivering January afternoon on the local sledding hill? Didn't your mother have a steaming mug of hot cocoa waiting on the kitchen table - with a plate of cookies, too, if you were lucky? Did you like hot cocoa back…

Drink Your Milk! Go Outside and Play! You Just Might Live Longer

The season in which cancer is diagnosed appears to affect survival, as does sunlight exposure to some extent, according to a study published in the October issue of the International Journal of Cancer. Talk about not having any control over your health - not only do some of us get cancer, but now there is evidence that the season in which we are diagnosed may influence our chance for survival. Not to be frivolous, but is this akin to getting a crappy lower double berth on the Titanic? Patients who were diagnosed with cancer in summer and autumn had better survival compared to those diagnosed…

How Autism Has Become A Secondary Concern

In his post today, Dr. Offit raises the point that is at the heart of the matter for me. A couple of bloggers praised the book for its tone, that I never appeared to get angry at the false prophets described in the book. The reason for that is that I'm not the father of a child with autism. If I were, I would have been quite angry. Angry because I think that the anti-vaccine forces have taken the autism story hostage. I'm angry. I'm damn angry. I don't want to blog about vaccines. I don't want to blog about the frighteningly casual way serious medical interventions are tested on autistic…

THE \xe2\x80\x98PSYCHIC COST' OF HOLIDAY GIFT-GIVING

" THE 'PSYCHIC COST' OF HOLIDAY GIFT-GIVING" By Dr. Paul Gallant and David Kopel The approach of the holiday season brings a perennial problem: what to give the relative or good friend who already has a VCR? For many American gift-givers the answer has often been a high-quality firearm. Perhaps that long-admired hunting rifle, for him? Maybe a LadySmith revolver for her? "Don't do it --- you'll frighten your neighbors!" warn some latter-day Scrooges, citing an article "Firearms and Community Feelings of Safety," from the Journal on Criminal Law and Criminology. Polling information "provides…

Red Spot Reprise: Friday Fractal II

Speaking of unpredictable climate changes, there was always that surprising storm on Jupiter that started brewing last year (and still blows strongly.) I figured now would be as good a time as any to repost the fractal I made in tribute. (This works out especially well, as I didn’t have anything else prepared.) Pictures released to the media [May 5, 2006] seemed absolutely perfect for the Friday Fractal. A breathtaking example of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, today’s image shows the enigmatic beauty of chaotic patterns. No scientist has yet been able to explain the famous deep…

Categorize This

Thanks to everyone who responded to the spirituality survey! After seeing the all the responses to the spirituality survey, this week, I've come to one definite conclusion: While folks are eager to define categories, they don't like being fit into them. I think this is because categories tend to be exclusive; if you belong in one group, you don't belong in another. Even overlapping categories seem to supersede one another; in the case of the spirituality quiz, the all-inclusive philosophical categories, such as Unitarian Universalism or Secular Humanism seemed less important than more…

The right words

It was a pretty simple story: their 3-year old had had fever and lethargy for three days. She was fussier than usual, but consolable. On the second day of the fever, her cautious doctor had done some blood tests and an x-ray, and although neither confirmed a bacterial infection, he'd started antibiotics. The medicine hadn't helped her much, and now they were in the emergency room on Easter Sunday, both furrowing their brows as I looked in her eyes, her mouth, her ears. They were worried, but not worry-crazed, and they seemed cool--like the kind of people I'd sit down with for a beer. We…

Know Your Biomes VII: Temperate Forest

Walking through a streamside copse of eastern hemlock in the ancient Appalachians is revealing for several reasons. First, the sheer size and age of these virgin stands can be humbling - at 45+ meters high, one tree may have been alive for more than 600 years. Second, a closer look at the forest's composition can tell ecologists two things: By assessing the pollen contained within pond sediment, you learn that these hemlocks started repopulating the eastern US about 12,000 years ago, following in the "footsteps" of the maple genus (Acer spp.) after the retreat of the massive glaciers covering…

The Death of a Titan

I'm sure everyone has heard by now that the life of American novelist Kurt Vonnegut has been cut short: His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Mr. Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago. He was an ornery man and an ornery writer; if the fall had not have happened, I wouldn't have been surprised to see Vonnegut live well beyond 90 years. In fact, after seeing him on the Daily Show some months ago, he seemed invincible. I have always held Vonnegut in my elusive and incomplete top [insert number] favorite authors list. He…

The Difference between the Exxon and BP Spills? Dollars and Photoshop...

History repeats itself. Boy does it. This was never more evident than after I finished reading Charles Wohlforth's The Fate of Nature (2010), which has a few ominous chapters dedicated to the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Wohlforth was a journalist who covered the spill in the field and after reading his account, I was humbled by the realization that none of my observations of the BP oil spill were orignal. The landscape is almost exactly the same, except for the fact that BP is going to wind up paying less money for a bigger disaster and that photoshop didn't exist yet, so Exxon couldn't…

Technology and Intent

No technology is inherently good or evil, it's the use of that technology that determines its value. A blade can be used in surgery to save a life, or as a weapon to take one. The ballistics that enable missiles to destroy enemies also enables the launch of communication satellites and exploration of other worlds. For quite a while, I've been reading +Jeff Jarvis' commentary on these issues in the realm of the internet. His principal argument is that regulation that aims to block technology in order to keep people safe will also block the innovation and potential benefits of that technology…

Bad Science in Science Fiction

I'm sure that science isn't the only profession that gets misrepresented in popular media. I'm sure lawyers and police cringe when watching crime dramas, and soldiers are uncomfortable when watching war movies. Leaving aside shows like CSI, I think that scientist's main media foil is almost by definition science fiction. On the one hand, I've learned to mostly ignore exaggeration, over-simplification, and implausible technology - I've come to understand (though it was hard) that these things are sometimes necessary to drive a plot, and that it's unrealistic to expect that the writers are all…

Walking bacteria - and some weighty researcher cajones (repost)

[This post was originally published at webeasties.wordpress.com] Most papers I read these days are long. Nature and Science papers tend to have 3-4 figures (Cell and Immunity papers can be twice that), tons of supplementary data and are at least a couple pages of dense, science-speak prose. I think I once read a paper (from like 20 years ago) that had a gene sequence as figure 1, a hand-drawn model for figure 2 and one figure of functional data, and I thought that was sparse. So imagine my surprise when I stumbled on this new paper. One figure. Less than 500 words. And it's about bacteria…

Oh shit, that's 320 terabytes! Dealing with data in a high-throughput age

Nature News has a special feature on "big data" - a broad look at the demands of the brave new world of massively high-throughput data generation, and the solutions adopted by research institutes and corporations to deal with those demands. The image to the left (from an article in the feature by Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow) is a picture of the office door of Tony Cox, head of sequencing informatics at the Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK. The 320 terabytes refers to the scale of the raw data being produced by the Sanger's next-generation sequencing machines as they chew through kilometres…

Archbishop to England: Take Your Fancy Schmancy Legal Tradition and Shove It

The Guardian reports today that Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, raised eyebrows last night when he suggested that the UK ought to recognize sharia law. Sharia law, or Islamic law, forms the basis of the legal systems in Islamic theocracies, but is often practiced informally within other societies, particularly on matters such as marriage and divorce. The idea that the UK--a society that like Europe at large has almost fully rejected the shackles of religious tyranny--would take such a huge leap backwards is almost unthinkable. Not only that, but one of the fundamental pillars…

I Don't Believe in Miracles, But...

No, I am not a Scrooge or a Grinch, just a pragmatist. The holiday season is, for many, a reminder of tales of miracles, whether of the story of the birth of Christ as a savior, of Chanukah's menorah that was lit for eight days with only enough oil for a single day, Bodhi Day to honor the enlightenment of Siddhartha Gautama or the Islamic Day of Ashura, to name a few. manymeez's Flickr photostream I envy those who can embrace such miracles; try as I might, it is something I could never do. A common theme of these miracle stories is a spirit of giving towards a greater good. One of my…