television
grrlscientist | May 26, 2009tags: birding, bird watching, birds, television, Animal Planet, streaming video
Richard Crossley, a birder who co-author the book, The Shorebird Guide, has been involved in making documentaries on birdwatching, and particularly on birds in cities. But unfortunately, the higher-ups at The Animal Planet network don't believe there is really a market for TV shows about birds and birdwatching. So the people producing bird shows are looking for a strong response from the birding community indicating that there is indeed a niche for such programs [5:28]
Now that you've watched the video,…
oracknows | May 21, 2009I know I've been very, very harsh on Jenny McCarthy. After all, she has become the face of the anti-vaccine movement in America, and her activities are directly endangering children. Let's take a look back, oh, a few days to a video that she made in which she decried all manner of "toxins" in vaccines as the cause of autism, including aluminum (which is not toxic at the doses used in vaccines), mercury (which is no longer in most childhood vaccines other than in trace amounts), antifreeze (there is no antifreeze in vaccines), and ether (again, there is no ether in vaccines). Then look back a…
oracknows | May 19, 2009A reader informs me of a plaintive, heartfelt request from Oprah for help in developing the television show of her new protege Jenny McCarthy:
You've seen it all over the news...Jenny McCarthy, one of America's funniest and coolest moms and Harpo is giving her, her own show.
Here is where YOU come in.
What would you like to see featured on Jenny's show? What would you like for her to talk about? What are you and your friends buzzing about?
Any topics you'd like for her to tackle? Are there any questions that you have -- that you would love for her to answer?
If so -- we definitely want to…
oracknows | May 15, 2009
While I'm on the topic, blog bud has proclaimed that he loves Jenny McCarthy's new blog at the Oprah website, in particular her Poop Stories. Personally, when I first saw Jenny's blog, my first thought was that a question I had always had ever since Jenny McCarthy became the chief propagandist for the antivaccine movement had finally been answered. I now know why that cesspit of anti-vaccine lunacy, The Huffington Post, had never invited Jenny McCarthy to blog. HuffPo may not have standards when it comes to science, but at least it has standards when it comes to writing, and Jenny's…
oracknows | May 14, 2009A loving ode to Jenny McCarthy from her good friends, Measles, Mumps, and Rubella:
Genius. That's all I can say.Thank you Brian Thompson, a.k.a. the Amateur Scientist. And to you, Jenny McCarthy, the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella offer their profound thanks for saving them from eradication in the U.S., just as they've offered their thanks to Andrew Wakefield for saving them from eradication in the U.K..Bloggers, you know what to do. Spread this video far and wide. E-mail it to your friends. Even better, e-mail it to antivaccinationists. Let's see if we can make this sucker go viral. (Hey,…
oracknows | May 8, 2009I know, I know it seems like the proverbial shooting fish in a barrel, but some creature that I can't identify is having a fight somewhere in the neighborhood, freaking out my dog, and now I can't go back to sleep; so why not blog? In any case, I found out last week that Jenny McCarthy is on Twitter as JennyfromMTV.
Now, when I first saw it, I thought it had to be a spoof, someone pretending to be Jenny. No one could be as inane as to Tweet things like:
Im inside a hyperbaric chamber. This thing makes me feel amazing.
About to fly to jersey. Security stole my sugar free jelly out of my purse…
oracknows | May 4, 2009...comes, from of all places, Gawker:
Oh, good, Oprah is going to give Jenny McCarthy a talk show, because she wants your kid to die of the measles.
McCarthy, a famous celebrity from the long-defunct Playboy magazine and much missed MTV channel, has been on a crusade to find an evildoer responsible for her son's autism. She settled on vaccines, because why not. And now she spends a great deal of time on TV explaining that the mercury that has not been vaccines since 1999 is giving all the kids autism, but it can be cured with Chelation therapy, which has so far only killed one or two autistic…
laelaps | May 4, 2009
A swarm of hunters tries to take down a Uintatherium. Nevermind that it lived over 35 million years before the first hominins appeared...
oracknows | May 4, 2009Ugh.
Double ugh.
Sitting in my e-mail in box this morning were lots of your e-mails warning me about a bit of news that shows definitively that Oprah Winfrey is beyond redemption, at least when it comes to any sort of medicine or science (not nice, given that I hadn't even had my morning coffee yet).
The reason? Jenny McCarthy has inked a deal with Winfrey's Harpo Studios to develop a syndicated talk show and other media projects, including a blog, which has already started dishing out the stupid, albeit (thus far) not about vaccines and autism. Apparently sensing that her advocacy of the…
oracknows | April 22, 2009
After writing about a new low of pseudoscience published in that repository of all things antivaccine and quackery, The Huffington Post (do you even have to ask?), on Tuesday, I had hoped--really hoped--that I could ignore HuffPo for a while. After all, there's only so much stupid that even Orac can tolerate before his logic circuits start shorting out and he has to shut down a while so that his self-repair circuits can undo the damage. Besides, I sometimes think that the twit who created HuffPo, Arianna Huffington, likes the attention that pseudoscience turds dropped onto her blog by…
oracknows | April 16, 2009For skeptics, TV news in my hometown sucks.
Actually, it sucks for just about anyone with two brain cells to rub together, but it's especially painful for skeptics and scientists to watch. On one station last year, there was the most credulous report I've ever seen about--of all things--orbs! It was presented as though these "orbs" in photos were actually ghosts or spirit presences, rather than the reflections from bits of dust in the air or on the camera lens that we know them to be. As I pointed out at the time, not even die-hard ghostbusters take orbs seriously anymore. They're so...1970s…
oracknows | April 13, 2009You be the judge!
And patriotic, too!
Huh, huh, huh. He said "stimulus package."
oracknows | April 8, 2009I really need to rein myself in sometimes.
Yesterday, all pleased as punch with myself for my mad Google skillz and for thinking I figured out just what "alternative" therapy it was that Farrah Fawcett had undergone that had resulted in what sounded for all the world like a rectus sheath hematoma, I wrote about how I thought that Fawcett had been undergoing galvanotherapy in Bad Weissee in southern Germany. Either my mad Google skillz failed me, or I was just too lazy to scroll through a sufficient number of screens to find additional information that would have brought the most likely answer…
oracknows | April 7, 2009Note the followup post to this one, in which Orac admits error. You just have to read it, given how rarely Orac messes up when speculating...
Our cancer center has a large, open area interspersed with patient waiting areas, one of which is the clinic where I see patients, that I frequently must traverse to get to the elevators that will take me to my lab. In each patient area is a large-screen television to help patients pass the time during the inevitable wait to be seen by their doctors. As I happened to be wandering through that area on the way to my lab and office, I noticed on one of…
oracknows | April 6, 2009
Embedded video from CNN Video
Over the weekend, a lot of readers sent me links to Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey's appearance on Larry King Live. (If you can't stand watching the embedded video of the segment, the transcript is here.) Fortunately for me (and, I hope, you), a "friend" of mine has written a comprehensive takedown of not just the nonsense spewed by Jenny and Jim, but of a new "study" released by Generation Rescue purporting to show that nations with low numbers of mandatory vaccines have low levels of autism. Of course, it shows nothing of the sort.
Find out why at Science-…
oracknows | April 5, 2009Sorry, all. I'm all tied up putting the finishing touches on a grant application. However, via Behind the Sofa, I did come across this trailer for the next Doctor Who special, to be aired on Easter:
I suspect I'll have to fire up BitTorrent.
oracknows | April 1, 2009...but sadly, it's not. Jenny McCarthy has struck again.
Yesterday, given the release of Jenny McCarthy's new book espousing antivaccinationism and autism quackery and the attendant media blitz the antivaccine movement has organized to promote it, I predicted that a wave of stupid is about to fall upon our great nation.
Well, the stupid has landed. And how. An interview with Jenny has just been published on the TIME Magazine website in which she "surpasses" herself. In fact, so dense is the stupid emanating from what passes for a "brain" in that empty head of hers that words fail me.…
oracknows | March 26, 2009Because of my stands against dubious medical "therapies" and outright quackery and for science- and evidence-based medicine, I have been the frequent target of what I've come to call the "pharma shill gambit." It's a pretty stupid and common ad hominem attack in which the attacker, virtually always an advocate of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) tries to smear those of us who argue against pseudoscience and for science-based medicine as being hopelessly in the pocket of big pharma to the point where we make the statements we do because we're "shills" for the drug companies.…
laelaps | March 23, 2009You may recall that last December I shared a clip or two from Isabella Rossellini's delightful short film series on the mating habits of insects called "Green Porno." Some viewers were fascinated, others horrified, but regardless of your reaction you might be interested to know that on April 1st Rossellini will be back with a slew of new shorts for the second season of Green Porno.
Whereas the original run focused on insects the new season will feature sea creatures. (Among the episodes are "Why Vagina", "Whale", and "Angler".) Here is a promotional clip for the upcoming shorts;
I can't…
oracknows | March 16, 2009By way of badscience.net:
Speak it, brother Ben!
Oh, and don't be too hard on your hairstyle and clothing in that one. I could totally picture you as an incarnation of The Doctor in that getup. That sweater vest does look a bit Peter Davison-ish, although the curly locks do rather echo Tom Baker.