Wasting your time

Dear British friends, I am deeply ashamed, and mortified, on behalf of my entire country for the embarrassing phenomenon that is Alex Jones. I see you have learned now for yourselves, this disturbed, bizarre person, is quite possibly the worst guest you could have ever invited to be on a television show. I have enclosed the relevant clip below. I feel the need to apologize, as Jones appears to represent the worst stereotypes of Americans; that we are loud, bullying, and rude, that we prefer to shout to win debates, that we have no manners compared to our cousins across the pond. Please…

Sorry, things will be quiet for a week. Cranks, please don't start crying censorship. I'm just not going to be available to moderate comments until the 6th.

Thomas Kinkade, painter of pablum and our nation's most collected living artist, died on Good Friday. Hmmmm.

Somebody please tell me why the national library of medicine gave up their pubmed.com and pubmed.org domains? It used to be you could just type "pubmed.org" and get pubmed. Now, some cyber squatter has put some worthless spam search on the site. Before I realized it wasn't a site redesign my search got me redirected to a celebrity gossip site, then experimenting with the same search I got a site selling anti-aging cream. Really? How much does it cost to keep a domain a year? And for that matter, what cyber squatter thinks redirecting scientists at celebrity gossip sites is a great…

Sometimes I'm reading essays in major newspapers and have to wonder if they've been reading denialism blog. Today, Krugman on Santorum: Nor is this only about sex and religion: he has also declared that climate change is a hoax, part of a "beautifully concocted scheme" on the part of "the left" to provide "an excuse for more government control of your life." You may say that such conspiracy-theorizing is hardly unique to Mr. Santorum, but that's the point: tinfoil hats have become a common, if not mandatory, G.O.P. fashion accessory. I just gave Santorum the tinfoil hat a few days ago! Is…

Denialism fans, you might enjoy the archive of informercials at my favorite website, Everything is Terrible. It's so much fun to watch all those lame infomercials from the 80s and 90s and realize how little has changed in the marketing world. Okay, back to Chair Dancing.

As you can see, mine included blogging again. Fortunately, I'm in a brief research hiatus from surgical residency, so for the next year or so, I actually have some free time. Today I was inspired to start by the Huffington Post of all things, and with good news! I realized that one of the biggest obstacles to blogging while being a resident was how difficult it is to read outside of work when you're being overworked. After a 14 or 16 hour day, or 30 hour call, the last thing I wanted to do was do more analysis of information, make more decisions, or think at all. I read a lot of Terry…

A response is requested from a non-scientist.

What is this business about the Broadway opening of Green Day's American Idiot? Both the Journal and the Times have reported on it, and in the process, defamed an entire genre by describing Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong as a "punk" rocker. This musical, which opened at the Berkeley Rep a few months ago (to an audience that will ovate any performance), was pretty disappointing. The musical is essentially a "buddy movie," but typically in buddy movies, some great thing is accomplished. It might be some caper or venal activity, but at least one can care about its execution. Not so with…

Shamelessly stolen from Gawker: Brick Fatwa Libertarian Also Gets Fat Government Checks. For what? A preventable disease! Oh, what ever happened to personal responsibility? Illustration: A typical American male libertarian in its natural habitat

Dear Readers, we've been completely derelict in maintaining Denialism Blog. Please accept our apologies. Mark is training to be a surgeon, and Chris recently had an enormous baby! We hope to get back blogging soon. Please excuse our absence until life is back in order.

Check out this week's New Yorker for a well-put insight into the Rand-infected mind. Nick Paumgarten writes about John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods and his attitudes towards unions: ...His [Mackey's] disdain for contemporary unionism is ideological, as well as self-serving. Like many who have come before, he says that it was only when he started a business--when he had to meet payroll and deal with government red tape--that his political and economic views, fed on readings of Friedman, Rand, and the Austrians, veered to the right. But there is also a psychological dimension. It derives in…

Take Pristiq. Warning: side effects include becoming a fat wind up doll.

Exhibit 1001, on our great college and university campuses, this wretch can complain of coyote ugly. The nerve. Nice hat, BTW. Do you have a matching jersey? Ladies, imagine waking up with this puffy misogynist! Via Gawker. Exhibit 1002, Southern Football's Dating Game in Today's WSJ.

Alex Pareene has given voice to what many longtime Post readers believe: Fred Hiatt needs to be axed. Under editor Fred Hiatt, the Post op-ed page has gone completely off the rails. They picked up Bill Kristol after the Times dumped him for being not just wrong but boring and lazy. They openly allow George Will to lie, to straight-up lie, without fact-checking or corrections, because we all know reality is open to different "interpretations" and if a prominent columnist writes something patently untrue the best response is to then publish a "true" column by someone else as a counterpoint,…

Bloggers, under new guidelines issued by the Federal Trade Commission, you must disclose gifts or payments for products that you review! Also your endorsements cannot be false or misleading! The FTC's release advises: The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that "material connections" (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers - connections that consumers would not expect - must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other "word-of-mouth"…

I'm a fan of Jason Nelson's I made this. You play this. We are enemies. He's just released his newest game, Evidence of Everything Exploding, described as: ...Using documents, both historical and little-known from B. Gates, NASA, James Joyce, Dadaism, Neil Gaiman, Fidel Castro, the Pizza Box Patent and many others, the game explores those strange moments where history turns or doesn't, where unusual forces collide to create or topple storylines, possible futures. Complete with matchbook death rewards, strange marked up text and curious prophecies, The madness of the pages meets the madness…

Here's a fun article by the Chronicle's Mark Morford on how to talk with complete idiots. You ignore them, in Denialism blog fashion. Morford points to this youtube video, which is divine:

Update: looks like the picture expired from Tumblr. It was a picture of a teabagger in Washington DC holding a sign that said "We Are John Galt," which is pretty much retarded.

Update: LaTFT!!1! Maybe the teabaggers just need ridicule, Morans-style, says Gawker: "Check out that fucking teabagger," writes in tipster Stefan, referencing "Look At This Fucking Hipster," the blog chronicling hipsters looking ridiculous. Unfortunately, while hipsters have to be sought out within the pseudo-bohemian enclaves of their respective parishes, people who can't have any kind of normal, rational discussion about politics--or even a rational, agenda-based protest--are easily found at protests like the one going on today in Washington D.C. Best pic comes from DirtyPerz: Ouch!