Skepticism
pharyngula | May 28, 2008My brief summary of the position of apologists for religion, The Courtier's Reply, continues to rankle the believers, and they continue to make responses that only make me laugh at their cluelessness. The standard rebuttal is to claim that I was making an argument in favor of ignorance in the face of theological scholarship, followed by a laundry list of esteemed theologians … but never, and I mean absolutely never, even the slightest attempt to address the core of my criticism — not once have they presented a solid, confirmable reason to believe in a deity.
Here's the latest example, and it…
aardvarchaeology | May 27, 2008Many people are afraid of cell phones and base stations because they emit radiation. These people tend to know very little about physics, and are generally unaware that daylight through a window on an overcast day is also radiation. Much careful research has turned up no significant health risks with cell phone use or proximity to base stations.
So your mobile handset is unlikely to cause you any harm. But a recent case in the district court of Falun, Sweden, demonstrates that cell phone alarmism is in fact dangerous.
An elderly gentleman who feared cell phone radiation greatly saw his grand-…
denialism | May 24, 2008It's a must read over at action skeptics. Dirty limerick skepticism!
Of note, Orac on quackademic medicine, and Greta Christina on the science of sexuality.
aardvarchaeology | May 21, 2008Akusai of Action Skeptics has done something pretty ostentatious and very cool: he's written the latest Skeptics' Circle blog carnival entirely as a collection of dirty limericks!
"An Irishman living with Swedes
Speaks about bodily needs
Eat and drink well
So at sex you'll excel
But vitamins? Useless as weeds"
aardvarchaeology | May 17, 2008Getting up in the small hours on Thursday morning paid off: I'm on The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe #147!
aardvarchaeology | May 14, 2008
Yesterday I did 5.5 more man-hours of metal detecting at the "Hall of Odin" site in Västmanland with Per Vikstrand. No prehistoric finds: just a piece of a 15/16/17th century brass cooking pot.
Bob Lind's craziness is once more repeated uncritically by a local Scanian newspaper.
I had a nice chat with the panel of the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast this morning. At 9 pm EST, i.e. 3 am local time. Which was not a very good idea, seeing as my wife was trying to sleep in the next room. But I think the show will be good. Hear Rebecca Watson say "Suckle the teat of the Mother Goddess"!…
aardvarchaeology | May 13, 2008My home municipality of Nacka is governed by a coalition of right-wing parties. (This, in Sweden, means that our local politics are somewhat to the left [!] of the US Democratic Party.) Aard regular Lennart Nilsson is the chairman of the Nacka section of the Liberal Party, Folkpartiet. I just received a fresh copy of the local newspaper, Nacka Värmdö Posten, whose main front-page headline reads "Folkpartiet politician: 'The Christian Democrats have Medieval moral views'". Interestingly, this is one of the governing coalition's members criticising another. And who is the Christian-bashing…
pharyngula | April 25, 2008Mars seems to bring out the kooks. I was pointed to the bizarre Xenotech "research" site, which consists entirely of the delusional fantasies of Sir Charles W. Shults III, Scientist (yes, that's what he calls himself). His research program? He gleans photographs from Mars probes for random shapes that look biological to him. Here, for instance, is the "clearest and most perfect trilobite" he has found in these pictures.
It's a good thing he marked up that one photo with his imaginary lines—I've seen a lot of trilobites, and I wouldn't have seen one in his rock if he hadn't pulled out the…
denialism | April 24, 2008Andrea's Buzzing about the latest skeptic's circle.
I'd point out in particular Blake Stacey's discussion of the real expelled, scientists who challenge creationism.
And I'd also recommend the Pap smear to Skepchic. It makes sense in context.
pharyngula | April 24, 2008It's 2008 — I think astrology has been dead for a few centuries. But OK, it's been shown to be worthless again. A large study of thousands of "time twins" — people who were born at the same time — has concluded that there are no correspondence between them.
Researchers looked at more than 100 different characteristics, including occupation, anxiety levels, marital status, aggressiveness, sociability, IQ levels and ability in art, sport, mathematics and reading - all of which astrologers claim can be gauged from birth charts.
The scientists failed to find any evidence of similarities between…
pharyngula | April 22, 2008What am I supposed to do when all three candidates for the presidency turn out to be credulous, anti-science ignoramuses? Obama thinks there's a link between vaccines and autism, and now Hillary has jumped off the cliff with him. They're both nuts, or at least suck-ups to the kooks.
Orac, of course, weighs in.
pharyngula | April 15, 2008Does everyone here listen to NPR or something? Not only have I been hearing all about the Expelled ads running, which is bad enough, but apparently in their attempts to sidle towards the lunatic side of the political spectrum, this morning they also ran a story about a pretentious 16 year old climate skeptic. Woo hoo, teenager thinks she knows more than scientific experts … now that is news. I took a look; I'm unimpressed, even considering her age. Parroting right-wing thinktanks is not evidence of independent, skeptical thought, I'm afraid.
Fortunately, James Hrynyshyn and Janet Stemwedel…
aardvarchaeology | April 14, 2008On Wednesday 2 April, British fringe researcher Rupert Sheldrake was stabbed in the leg by a man showing symptoms of severe mental illness. The wound was serious but not fatal. The attacker struck shortly after Sheldrake had called a break in his presentation to the 10th International Conference on Science and Consciousness in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In my opinion, the paranormal ideas for which Sheldrake is known are simply nuts. But I don't think he would be likely to attack anybody with a knife, and he certainly doesn't deserve such treatment himself. Get well soon, Dr. Sheldrake! I much…
aardvarchaeology | April 12, 2008
The thirty-eighth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at A Very Remote Period Indeed. Archaeology and anthropology, and all seen in relation to the the Rice Track/Soccer Stadium in Houston, Texas.
The next open hosting slot is on 4 June. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. No need to be an anthro pro. But you must be a trustee of the Rice Track/Soccer Stadium, like me.
And check out the new Skeptics' Circle!
pharyngula | April 12, 2008If you've ever stopped to think that maybe there might just be something to phrenology, homeopathy, coffee enemas, etc., you should be reading Crap-Based Medicine. It's for you.
pharyngula | April 9, 2008It's worth a try, and it certainly would stand out against the near-universal background of credulity on television. The makers of the Skeptoid podcast are putting together a pilot for a program on skepticism, with Phil Plait and Steven Novella in the cast. Let's hope it makes it! Network executives — it's something new and different, and it's the kind of thing that might get me and people like me (you know, upscale, highly educated technophiles with some disposable income to spend on high-end luxury items) to turn on our TVs again.
aardvarchaeology | April 5, 2008The Austrian city of Salzburg has been hit by a measles outbreak among private-school children. Measles are no laughing matter, and thankfully outbreaks like these are rare in the West these days thanks to vaccination. So it comes as no surprise that the school in question is the Rudolf-Steiner-Schule in Mayrwies, a Waldorf school run by anthroposophists. Anthroposophy is an old New Age movement based upon the supernatural visions of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Its current altie medical practices include a strong antivaccination ideology.
Said Steiner in the fifth lecture of his 1910 series…
tsmith | April 2, 2008Sent off yet another grant, so I'm still (once again) catching up on everything. Meanwhile, some posts for you to check out:
I thought I was self-sacrificing by submitting myself to Kentucky's creation museum for your amusement. Guess I could have stayed home and wasted 2 1/2 hours of my life as Drek did, live-blogging an anti-vaccine movie he was challenged to watch.
Or, if you've had it with vaccine naysayers (and oh look, CNN gave more space to Jenny McCarthy to gush about how chelation and diet allowed her son to recover from autism), head over to Mike's place for a refreshing post on…
sb admin | March 31, 2008In case you haven't heard, cooking food is bad--at least according to the raw food movement. This movement has developed over the last 5-10 years, and is still fairly fringe, but fad diets, restaurants, stores, and websites devoted to raw foods are flourishing. Let's see what they're up to.
According to one popular website, we should begin our story by thinking about a few questions:
What other animal on earth denatures its food by cooking?
What other animal on earth suffers from all the health challenges that we face?
What did people eat before there was fire?? They ate it RAW!
This is…
aardvarchaeology | March 28, 2008
Local newspaper Ystads Allehanda reports on new fieldwork in Ravlunda by amateur archaeologist Bob G Lind and retired geology professor Nils-Axel Mörner. The last time the two enthusiastic gentlemen interfered with the Iron Age cemetery in question, they were reprimanded by the County Archaeologist. Now they are clearing brush from the site in order to make their imagined Bronze Age calendar alignments clearer.
Future plans include magnetometry mapping. Mörner is quoted as believing that this technique will allow the pair to map individual ancient footprints in the subsoil, because in his…