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June 24th, 2009
 | 07:24 am
Here's a wonderful story about a nine-year-old who became lost in the woods while out with his family. With nary a helmet, curfew, or child-proof cap in sight, he did not panic and took steps to facilitate his own rescue. He is now safe and sound at home.
I am so happy that June is almost over. It's getting tiresome having the sun come up before 5:00. When I'm up in the middle of the night, I do not need the sun poking its head out and making the sky bright.
I think it's fascinating that my daughter, who isn't even -2 months old, already has her ovaries and all of the eggs she'll ever have. 50% of my grand-children's genetic information has already been printed.
Michael Shermer's baloney detection kit can help you spot warning flags that you may need to think twice before accepting what you're being told.
Last week I got bored and decided to go looking for some Australian television to watch. I seem to have struck pay dirt by finding Swift & Shift Couriers and Russel Coight's All Aussie Adventures on my first two tries. The first deals with the shenanigans of a package delivery service in Sydney, and the second is a satirical look at adventure/travel shows. What other Aussie TV should I check out? How about non-Aussie TV?
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June 5th, 2009
| 05:00 am
So, we still don't know the sex of Meatwad. This is the second time we've tried to find out, and hesheit won't open hisherits legs. I grounded himherit for 3 months and said all hisherits stuff would wind up being yellow. We're going back in two weeks for another appointment. Maybe we'll find out then.
Finally someone in the mainstream gets it. Newsweek did an article on Oprah being a douche for promoting quackery and lies. I hope this isn't the last we hear of it. If someone doesn't stop her, she's likely to start advocating leeches, astrology, and homeopathy. She probably already does, actually.
We're taking the kitties in tomorrow for a checkup. No, nothing is wrong with either of them.
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May 18th, 2009
| 12:09 pm
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason
and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all,
then accept it and live up to it.
--Buddha
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May 6th, 2009
| 01:29 pm
My sister in law once asked me why I thought Oprah Winfrey was a douche. I semi-explained that it was due to her promotion of pseudo-science to fill her purse. I recently read an article about Jenny McCarthy and Oprah Winfrey that reminded me of that question. Then I read this BadAstronomy post about a four-week-old child in Australia who died of whooping cough. What does this have to do with anything? Let me try to explain.
The anti-vax crowd, in which Jenny McCarthy includes herself, is convinced that vaccines cause autism. This is not true. [1], [2], [3], [4]. However, due to her celebrity status, the generally gullible population listens to her and doesn't vaccinate its children against common and easily dealt-with diseases, including whooping cough. This pretty much sucks for the children in question, since they now have a greatly increased chance of contracting the disease in question. This would be bad enough if that were the end of it. But it's not.
Herd immunity is when a population is generally protected against a disease because a certain percentage of its people are vaccinated or otherwise immune to the disease, thereby protecting the rest against infection. Some people cannot be vaccinated due to allergies or other reasons. These people rely on herd immunity to be protected from the disease. The fewer people who have their children vaccinated against certain diseases, the more likely the disease will spread to those who aren't vaccinated, and people die. Those who choose to go unvaccinated, those whose parents decide to not have them vaccinated, and those who can't be vaccinated like the four-week-old infant mentioned above.
Read again: children die because of the proven falsehoods that people like Jenny McCarthy spread.
And since Oprah, with her billions of American dollars, and her vast audience, promotes this and other pseudo-science and sham medicine, she is a douche.
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April 21st, 2009
| 09:03 am - Remembering The Holocaust, And Its Deniers
Remembering The Holocaust, And Its Deniers, by Evan Bernstein
Tuesday, April 21 is Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laGvura, “Remembrance Day for the Holocaust and Heroism”. This day is observed as a day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. In Israel, it is a national memorial day.
As a boy growing up in a reformed Jewish home, Hebrew school on Wednesday nights and synagogue on Saturdays were part of my upbringing. As winter turned to spring each year, the discussions in the classroom and in the temple were that of Holocaust remembrance. Jewish children are exposed to both the horrors and history of the Holocaust at a very early age. By extension comes the learning of the broader history of Adolph Hitler, and the even broader history World War II. Eventually, these young and inquisitive minds delve, quite logically, deeper into even larger questions, such as “What was World War I”? There is practically no limit to how far you can extrapolate questions that stem from those world-altering events of the 20th century.
( Read more... )
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April 1st, 2009
| 09:32 am
Pigasus Awards for 2008 Written by Phil Plait
Every year, on the appropriate date of April 1, the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) gives out the Pigasus Awards, a dubious honor to people or organizations that have done their best in the past year to snuff out science and promote irrationality. The award is named after the beloved mascot of the JREF because, after all, when paranormal powers are proven, pigs will fly.
The five categories of the Pigasus Award are:
1. To the Scientist who said or did the silliest thing relating to parapsychology in the preceding twelve months.
2. To the Funding Organization that supports the most useless parapsychological study during the year.
3. To the Media outlet that reported as fact the most outrageous paranormal claim.
4. To the "Psychic" performer who fools the greatest number of people with the least effort in that twelve-month period.
5. For the most persistent refusal to face reality.
This year's (dis)honorees are:
1) Dr. Colin Ross, who can shoot electromagnetic radiation from his eyes;
2) The Producers of the movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed";
3) Late night cable TV stations;
4) Jenny McCarthy; who has written books and appeared on countless TV shows promoting measles; and
5) Kevin Trudeau; who sold quack books even after the government fined him for it.
Details of these prestigious prestidigitators are below. They receive no actual trophy, no prize money, no plaque; just the publicity they generally seek, though perhaps not in the way they want it.
Pigasus Awards for 2008
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February 23rd, 2009
| 12:46 pm
Sounds too good to be true? These early warning signs should give you reason to ask a few more questions.
The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science by Robert L. Park, professor of physics at the University of Maryland at College Park and the director of public information for the American Physical Society; author of Voodoo Science: The Road From Foolishness to Fraud (Oxford University Press, 2002)
And no, we haven't found Atlantis yet
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November 19th, 2008
 | 09:17 am
This may be of interest to those of you who are in Tejas.
http://www.theskepticsguide.org/sgublog/?p=375
Tomorrow, several of us are going to testify at the State Board of Education hearings over the revising of the science standards. This happens once every ten years, and since Texas is an adoption state for textbooks, it effects more than just the schools in Texas. They are attempting to keep language in the standards that allows teachers to teach the alleged “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories. As you know, this is a bogus concept, and they are only interested in teaching the alleged “weaknesses” of just a single theory of science.
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October 25th, 2008
 | 08:37 am
So, my cousin is still sending me political/racist/religious chain spam email. A couple of weeks ago she sent one which supposedly outed Obama as a Muslim and had several quotes allegedly spoken or written by him. After checking snopes and a couple of other sites, I decided she was once again full of shit, and emailed her, including a link to the snopes article in which the email was debunked. I don't know if it took her two weeks to research this, or if she got more juicy email and decided to pass it along, but yesterday she sent me this.
( Read more... )
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June 5th, 1973
March 12th, 1973
| 05:08 am - Meatwad Science
Evolution Books for Kids
If this page shows up on my friends feed, I apologize. It's not supposed to.
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