Skepticism
pharyngula | October 17, 2009Once again, Maher sticks his foot in his mouth and gnaws on it for a while.
The most telling moment for me was when he compares vaccination to global warming and evolution; global warming and evolution, he says, are settled science (which is correct), but vaccination is not. That is not correct. Vaccination works. It's been tested and measured and analyzed, and vaccinations save lives. It has been settled, repeatedly.
Michael Shermer has commented on RichardDawkins.net on this issue, too. Maybe someday it will sink in.
gregladen | October 16, 2009Omar Mouallem, Desiree Schell and Greg Laden (that's me) had a very interesting conversation Wednesday night about how skepticism gets noticed. Through comedy, music, blogging, scientific studies, and other outlets, how do we bring people on board? We decided blogging was irrelevant but that music was cool, we came down divided on what some call "attention grabbing stunts" like blasphemy day and killing crackers. And we are going to finish our conversation tonight, on Skeptically Speaking Episode 29.
Be there or be pie! (And we all know pie are square).
pharyngula | October 12, 2009I've recently made arrangements to come speak at the University of Ireland in Galway in early February. Hooray! I've been looking forward to visiting Ireland for some time, so it's going to be great.
And then I discover that not all the Irish are sane. There are crowds listening to 'psychic' prophets and standing in churchyards to stare at the sun until their eyeballs are all wobbly and semi-toasted, and then declaring that the fact that they can't see straight is a miracle! From God! Hallelujah to a creator who would make a delicate energy sensor friable!
I was planning on giving a couple of…
pharyngula | October 11, 2009Bill Maher doesn't believe in vaccines at all? Man, you've have got to be utterly nuts to make Bill Frist look good.
The first part is pretty good, where Frist gives Maher a lesson in vaccines; the last bit is rather annoying, as they find common cause in agreeing that we don't need to make modern medicine available to more, because "we have the best health care system in the world" (baloney), and our bloated health care budget is simply a consequence of bad food and obesity.
pharyngula | October 8, 2009There is a poll in Germany that will determine who will win a "Dedication Award" for service to the community. You can vote on it! In fact, you better vote on it! Here are the top 5 leaders in the votes right now.
Elisabeth von Wedel, Homöopathen ohne Grenzen e.V.
1514 Stimmen
Raul Krauthausen, SOZIALHELDEN e.V.
1208 Stimmen
Jürgen Dangl, Hofgut Himmelreich gGmbH
634 Stimmen
Dr. Stefanie Christmann, Esel-Initiative e.V.
510 Stimmen
Margit Adamski, Zweites Leben e.V.
344 Stimmen
Notice the leader with 1514 stimmen, or votes? To translate, that's "Homeopathy without borders," a team of quacks…
aardvarchaeology | October 5, 2009
I forgot to mention the variety show on Saturday night. It was headlined by comedian Robin Ince (you may have seen his MAGIC MAN DUNNIT clip) and offered a lot of funny and musical and skeptical and cynical acts of high standard. I was particularly impressed by high-brow rapper Baba Brinkman. Not only is he witty and knowledgeable, he also made me feel that hmm, rapping really can involve a lot of technical mastery. When I told him I like him not rapping about bitches and bling, he replied, "But I do, in other bits of my Darwin rhymes. I say that bling is peacock feathers evolved by sexual…
gregladen | October 4, 2009This is a continuation of a discussion on the role of Global Warming in the decline of moose populations in Minnesota. It is also a discussion of Global Warming denialism.
When I started to write Part II of this post, I realized that one aspect of the argument would probably distract from all the others, could be dealt with quickly and summarily, and makes a nice pithy post all by itself. This aspect is the claim made by commenter Gerard on an earlier post regarding global warming (or lack thereof) in Minnesota.
Gerard made this claim:
The average monthly high/low temperatures for January…
aardvarchaeology | October 3, 2009
I'm at The Amazing Meeting London, an Old World instance of the skeptical conferences organised by the James Randi Educational Foundation. (Or more correctly, I am waiting for breakfast at my threadbare Bayswater hotel, where I sleep in a basement closet.) I came to London Friday night and started off with a few social hours with other Swedish skeptics at a pub. Yesterday was the first of two conference days, and I've been making acquaintances left and right. Apart from the locals, I've met a lot of Norwegians and Americans. Among the locals, these days, is Rebecca Watson. She promised me to…
pharyngula | September 28, 2009Oh, boy. As many of you already know, the big AAI conference is taking place in LA at the end of this week — I'll be there! — and they are giving Bill Maher an award. This is a problem. Maher made a provocative movie about religion this year, Religulous, and that's the kind of thing we want to acknowledge and encourage, but at the same time…Maher is as loopy as they come on medical matters. He's a conspiracy theorist who blames Big Pharma for controlling health care, thinks modern medicine is a failure, and promotes 'alternative' therapies that don't work. It is a serious embarrassment.
I…
pharyngula | September 28, 2009In 2002, Thomas and Manju Sam had a very sick child: their daughter Gloria was suffering from a life-threatening case of eczema, and essentially screamed herself to death by painful suppuration. That's a ghastly tragedy, and we'd normally feel for the parents who suffered that loss. My sympathies are all for their daughter, however, since her parents watched her die…and treated her with homeopathy.
Oh, wait. "Treated" is the wrong word. They neglected her with homeopathy.
I can't call it good news, but at least it's a small measure of justice. Thomas and Manju Sam have been convicted of…
pharyngula | September 26, 2009The HuffPo is once again a source of gross misinformation. Don't worry about swine flu — it's benign. If you really must protect yourself, take vitamins, eat garlic, get herbal supplements, and trust in homeopathy.
It's patent quackery.
Really, people: boycott the HuffPo. I never read that slurry of watery dog crap anymore unless you cruel readers send me a link — it's not worth it.
gregladen | September 24, 2009Are women more likely to be stupid/gullible? That seems to be the assumption that the ungenerous of us might make when considering the 7% gap between men and women when it comes to religious affiliation....
... that was discussed recently in an ARIS poll. Earlier, I had pointed to Stephanie Zvan's comments on this, and now I see that Pandagon is all over it too. I just hope the ladies at Pandagon don't just buy the bill of goods or fall for the old snake oil routine or anything.
gregladen | September 23, 2009Are women less skeptical than men? Follow that link to find Stephanie Zvan's analysis of the recently reported study that is making its way around the Internet. Stephanie seems to buy into the study uncritically, you know, like chicks tend to do ...... NOT!
gregladen | September 19, 2009Nineteen former pilots and government officials ... told reporters their questions can no longer be dismissed ..."We want the US government to stop perpetuating the myth that all UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth, conventional terms," said Fife Symington, former governor of Arizona... "Instead our country needs to reopen its official investigation that it shut down in 1969," Symington told a news conference. [source]
I saw an UFO (pronounced "ooofo," I think) once too. It was a sight I can never forget. Let me tell you about it.
A repost, slightly revised
I was in an airplane, a…
pharyngula | September 13, 2009That's a disturbing logo for Skepticon II: my eyes are whited out. It reminds me of The Village of the Damned, that creepy movie about alien-human hybrid children. We will be taking over Missouri on 20-21 November, infecting the entire population with the curse of doubt. It will be fun!
They have a good lineup of speakers, but the one thing they lack is money. One of the problems with being godless is that we have failed to institutionalize a means of gouging money out of people…no tithing, no offering plates, no thugs in clerical collars telling you you'll go to hell if you don't include us…
gregladen | September 13, 2009Dave Mabus sent me this along with a threatening e-mail with a subject line I've used as the title of this post.
The email was cc'ed to me, but meant of PZ Myers, and it says:
Hey PZ Myers, you little fool...
Just wanted to let you know this has been posted on every forum of the internet. Some good came out of you after all. They will remember your ugly blaspheming head forever!
Good riddance....
If you comment on this post, I recommend you do not include a link-back because Dave will mine it for your email address and from now on you will get an obnoxious emails like this too. The emails…
pharyngula | September 10, 2009Speaking of being underwhelmed by the arguments, we've actually got people arguing for the existence of fairies and bigfoot. They even say they've got evidence: here's the Croydon photo:
Looks like an ugly flash artifact of an insect caught in flight.
Some guy in Kentucky had a video camera set up to monitor his backyard, and it caught this frame of a purported Bigfoot:
I have no idea what that blurry blob is…somehow, whenever one of these mysterious creatures is seen, the lucky witness is always either a really awful photographer or is using garbage equipment.
There are some real mysteries…
aardvarchaeology | September 1, 2009This past Sunday the Department of Archaeology at the University of Lund organised a public debate about creationism and archaeology. One of the invited speakers was Young Earth creationist Mats Molén, who should not in my opinion have been lent academic credibility in that manner. Universities should teach students about pseudoscience and why it is not science, but they should not let pseudoscientists teach.
Lund is far from my home and I didn't attend the event. But I wrote the non-creationist participants beforehand and suggested that they familiarise themselves with creationist debate…
pharyngula | August 30, 2009I'm sorry, you are all required to watch this video before doing anything else today. Don't worry, you'll enjoy it.
Penn & Teller, Bullshit! The Vatican from Brewster on Vimeo.
(via Atheist Media Blog)