Announcements
oracknows | January 17, 2008It's that time again.
The Skeptics' Circle has once again descended upon the blogosphere to try to do battle with the rampant credulity therein and by bringing a whiff of skepticism and critical thinking into what is, sadly, a free-for-all of posting first and asking questions later. Hard as it is to believe, the Circle has been existence for three years now, and, in fact, the very first edition first appeared on February 3, 2005 on the blog of its founder, St. Nate, who sadly has given up blogging and, even more sadly, has deleted his blog so that it has now become a spam blog. Over the…
oracknows | January 11, 2008Well, 2008 is off to a great start with the Skeptics' Circle. It's fast approaching the time to see if the momentum can be maintained.
Yes, it won't be long before the next Skeptics' Circle comes around the pike. Indeed, the next meeting of the Skeptics' Circle will appear on Thursday, January 17 and will be hosted by the Skeptical Surfer. As always, the guidelines for submissions to the Circle are here. Help him maintain the momentum and produce the second great Skeptics' Circle of the new year.
If you're interested in hosting a Circle yourself, check out the schedule and the guidelines for…
oracknows | January 3, 2008It's 2008. Unfortunately, there don't appear to be any signs that the problems of 2007 as far as rampant credulity and susceptibility to quackery and pseudoscience on the part of the public will be abating this year. Fortunately, we have a remedy--or at least something that can help show you how to examine these outlandish claims from a critical and scientific perspective. Yes, it's the very first Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle of 2008, and it's over at White Coat Underground right now. Appropriately enough, the setting is a primary care office in Anytown, USA, and the patients are...well,…
oracknows | January 2, 2008If the pontifications of Orac are too--shall we say?--insolent for your taste, you'll be happy to know that there's a new group blog in town designed to provide a serious "alternative" voice of reason and science to discuss the claims made in favor of "alternative" medicine. Spearheaded by Steve Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society and active blogger at Neurologica Blog, this new effort is called Science-Based Medicine. It's manifesto starts:
Science-Based Medicine is a new daily science blog dedicated to promoting the highest standards and traditions of science in medicine…
oracknows | December 30, 2007...from submitting to the Skeptics' Circle!
Our latest host, Pal MD at White Coat Underground, has sent up the emergency flare. With a mere three days to go, he's worried that he won't have enough submissions to his Skeptics' Circle to keep up the usual high quality when the Circle lands on Thursday, January 3.
I realize that the holidays may have put a crimp in your blogging, or maybe all that merriment led you to forget to come up with an entry for the Circle. That's why I'm reminding you all now, before the partying of New Years' Eve gets under way. Make it a New Year's resolution:…
oracknows | December 28, 2007Orac's circuits have yet to recover from the assault on his logic circuits caused by the über-woo of a couple of weeks ago, coupled with the even more powerful woo two weeks before that. Consequently, in order to marshal additional time scour the Internet for only the finest woo to be featured in 2008, he has decided that Your Friday Dose of Woo will take a brief but well-earned holiday hiatus. Fear now, however! There will, however, be at least one, if not two, other posts today, and YFDoW will return in 2008, bigger and badder than ever.
In the meantime, now that Christmas has passed,…
oracknows | December 26, 2007We interrupt this post-holiday blogging slowdown for an important blog housekeeping message. Something weird happened to Respectful Insolence⢠over the weekend before Christmas.
Sunday, I was composing a little missive to autopost over the holidays. I went to the pulldown menu in Movable Type to assign a category to it and noticed something odd. There were many more categories than I had, many of which had nothing to do with my usual topics and most of them uncapitalized. My user-defined categories for posts were there, but a whole bunch of unfamiliar categories had appeared. Puzzled, I…
retrospectacle | December 20, 2007Well tomorrow (edit: TODAY!) is my birthday! 28 years ago, tomorrow, I was born in Euliss TX. Man, I'm getting old! Well happy birfhday to me. If you have a favorite birthday LOLcat please leave it in the comments. :D
oracknows | December 20, 2007As regular readers of the Skeptics' Circle know, hosts are usually given pretty wide latitude about how they handle the presentation of the posts. This time around, host Martin Rundkvist, who's hosted an excellent edition before (albeit with a puzzling theme), decides that a large dish brush is just the thing for the 76th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. Why? Who knows? It must be a Swedish thing. Fortunately, the carnival is chock full of bloggy goodness (albeit with one exception that somehow found its way in there) in a fine, no-nonsense (other than the brush) presentation and thus well…
oracknows | December 14, 2007
It's almost here.
No, not Christmas, although that's almost here too. what I'm talking about is the fast-approaching 76th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, which is due to land at Aardvarchaelogy on Thursday, December 20, right in time for the holidays. (And what better time to indulge in a serious dose of skepticism than in the midst of all this pre-Christmas cheer?) Ebenezer Scrooge would be proud. Well, the pre-visitation Scrooge, anyway. The post-visitation Scrooge clearly believed in ghosts and other paranormal happenings, like visitations promised to happen in over three nights…
retrospectacle | December 12, 2007Sorry for the paucity of posts this week, folks. Its been a crazy week, with school winding down and lots to get done. Things will be getting back to normal very soon, and I'll get back to writing here.
oracknows | December 12, 2007
It's times like these that I wonder if I've been at this blogging thing a bit too long. I ask that question because I've done it again. I've done the same thing in 2007 that I did a year ago in 2006.
I missed my own blogiversary.
Yes, believe it or not, yesterday was the third anniversary of a cold and dreary Saturday when, more or less on a whim, I sat down in front of my computer and wondered if I could do this blogging thing that had been written about in the media so much over the preceding few months. After all, I had had several years' experience sparring with Holocaust deniers,…
oracknows | December 12, 2007Let's see, the ScienceBlogs collective started out in English. Earlier this week, our German partner Hubert Burda Media soft-launched ScienceBlogs.de, a German version of the ScienceBlogging collective that you've come to know and love (or, in some cases, hate).
Now, our benevolent (well, most of the time, anyway) overlords at the Seed Collective Mothership in New York ask:
What language shall we tackle next?
Personally, I vote for French, but that's just because French is the only language other than English that I used to be able to speak and can still understand to some extent.
oracknows | December 11, 2007How could I have been so remiss? I totally forgot to plug a new blog carnival that I really should be plugging, given my area of scientific interest. Yes, indeed, it's a new edition of the Cancer Research Blog Carnival, with lots of scientific bloggy goodness to enjoy.
Worse, I forgot to submit anything to it. I'll have to remedy that next time...
thusspakezuska | December 2, 2007I finally had a chance to check in and I discovered three comments languishing in the junk folder, waiting for me to promote them to publication. A few were weeks old. I'm really sorry about that. I'm involved in a 24/7 caretaking situation and just don't have much spare time. I'll try to pay attention a little more frequently.
oracknows | November 30, 2007I would be remiss in my duties as organizer of the Skeptics' Circle if I were to forget to remind you that it won't be long before the next Skeptics' Circle comes around the pike. Indeed, the next meeting of the Skeptics' Circle will appear on Thursday, December 6 and will be hosted by Pro-Science, a blog hosted by long time commenter Kristjan Wager, who's even contributed a couple of guest blogs to Respectful Insolence. As always, the guidelines for submissions to the Circle are here.
If you're interested in hosting a Circle yourself, check out the schedule and the guidelines for hosting,…
oracknows | November 22, 2007...from EneMan.
Here's wishing everyone who celebrates it a Happy Thanksgiving. As you might expect, our blog mascot is joining in the fun, preparing the turkey, and loading up on tryptophan!
Believe it or not, given my usual prolific nature, I'm taking the day off from blogging to engage in the traditional Thanksgiving Day activities of eating, drinking, and falling asleep on the couch watching football.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, and I'll be back tomorrow.
You know, this reminds me. I've been very, very remiss in not featuring everyone's favorite blog mascot for his usual monthly…
oracknows | November 21, 2007It's that time again.
Oh, it's a day early because of the Thanksgiving holiday, but it's here nonetheless. It's time for the 74th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, this time hosted over at Med Journal Watch. I can't figure out why Christian is being heckled by skeptics, though, as he gives his address.
Don't forget that it won't be long before the next Skeptics' Circle comes around the pike. In fact, it will be longer than usual, thanks to the early appearance of this edition. The next meeting of the Skeptics' Circle will appear on Thursday, December 6 and will be hosted by Pro-Science, a blog…
oracknows | November 16, 2007Don't forget, once again the time is fast approaching.
Soon yet another installment of the Skeptics' Circle will be upon us. In fact, it's less than a week away and due to land at the Med Journal Watch. Note that, because of the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., this time around the Circle will be appearing a day early, on Wednesday, November 21. Skeptical bloggers, there isn't much time left for you to get your entries done and submitted. So head over to Med Journal Watch for instructions on how to submit your skeptical blogging, and get your entries to Christian by Tuesday.
Finally, if you'…
oracknows | November 14, 2007...Then go and visit Aggravated DocSurg, who's hosting the latest edition of SurgXperiences, the only blog carnival for surgery blogging, although his title makes me wonder a bit.