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Animal Experimentation and Simulation
In my post yesterday, I briefly mentioned the problem with simulations as a replacement for animal testing. But I've gotten a couple of self-righteous emails from people criticizing that: they've all argued that given the quantity of computational resources available to us today, of course we can do all of our research...
Scumbag Animal Rights Villains Harass Children for Father's Speech
This post is off-topic for this blog, but there are some things that I just can't keep quiet about. Via my friend and fellow ScienceBlogger Janet over at Adventures in Ethics and Science, I've heard about some absolutely disgraceful antics by an animal rights group. To be clear, in what follows,...
Transatlantic, "The Whirlwind (Part 4) - A Man Can Feel": a track from the new Transatlantic album. Transatlantic is a supergroup: it's made of members of Marillion (Pete Trevawas on bass), the Flower Kings (Roine Stolte, guitar), Spock's Beard (Neil Morse, vocals and keyboards), and Dream...
Disco Strikes Out Again: Casey Luskin, Kitzmiller, and New Information
For a lot of people, I seem to have become the go-to blogger for information theory stuff. I really don't deserve it: Jeff Shallit at Recursivity knows a whole lot more than I do. But I do my best. Anyway, several people pointed out that over at the Disco Institute, resident...
The End of Defining Chaos: Mixing it all together
The last major property of a chaotic system is topological mixing. You can think of mixing as being, in some sense, the opposite of the dense periodic orbits property. Intuitively, the dense orbits tell you that things that are arbitrarily close together for arbitrarily long periods of time can have vastly different behaviors....
A Crank among Cranks: Debating John Gabriel
So, remember back in December, I wrote a post about a Cantor crank who had a Knol page supposedly refuting Cantor's diagonalization? This week, I foolishly let myself get drawn into an extended conversation with him in comments. Since it's a comment thread on an old post that had been inactive...
Respectful Insolence
Computer simulations to "replace" animal research: Garbage in, garbage out
In my recent rehashing, rebranding, and repurposing an article addressing many of the flaws in the so-called scientific arguments against animal research often made by animal rights activists and extremists, I only briefly discussed one common argument among many, namely that computer simulations can replace the use of animals in...
Answering "scientific" arguments of animal rights extremists
I spent a lot of time writing about animal rights extremists who have threatened to harass the children of an investigator whom they view as a "vivisector" and how they fetishize the very violence they decry. Unfortunately, I was disappointed to see that a fellow ScienceBlogger, namely Eric Michael Johnson...
Science is the poetry of reality...
...and I can't argue with Symphony of Science: Read the comments on this post......
Your Friday Dose of Woo: Homeopathy gets needled
I realize that there are two huge target-rich articles out there that my readers have been clamoring for me to comment on. First, there's a particularly silly and simplistic article by Nicholas Kristof about how it's supposedly the "toxins" causing autism (an article in which he apparently doesn't realize that...
Animal rights: Fetishizing violence?
As much as I hate to bring more attention than I did a couple of days ago to the truly evil animal rights extremist website run by a truly despicable animal rights terrorist wannabe Camille Marino, a website whose very title, Negotiation Is Over (NIO) tells you everything you need...
The invasion of Haiti by well-intentioned but useless woo continues apace
Pity the poor Haitians. Not only is their nation dirt poor, but to kick off 2010, they suffered an earthquake that killed approximately a quarter of a million people, left at least 300,000 injured, and resulted in 1,000,000 homeless. Huge swaths of its capital of Port au Prince and Léogâne, among...
skeptic cat
Monkey Monday: George Michael - Monkey
George Michael - MonkeyWhy can't you do it?Why can't you set your monkey free?Always giving into it -Do you love your monkey or do you love me?Why can't you do itWhy do I have to share my baby with a monkey?monkeyWith a monkeymonkeylalalaOh, I count to tenBut I don't know...
Monkey Monday: James Kochalka - Monkey Versus Robot
Monkey Versus Robot Music video for Monkey Versus Robot by James Kochalka.Monkey play in the jungleRobot work in the factorythey will have a giant rumbleMonkey Versus RobotMonkey Versus RobotMonkey hate technologyRobot hate the monkeythey will fight eternallyMonkey Versus RobotMonkey Versus RobotMonkey Mate in the jungleRobot replicate in factoryThey both love...
Psychic Drawing FailMaybe she was drawing his personality....
Da Yoopers- A Love Song Called Diarreah
Da Yoopers- A Love Song Called DiarreahI know it's getting lateAnd i know we had a date luciaI hate to make you waitCause it would be so great to see yaTears fall from my eyesAnd i must apologize luciaI’ll have to stay at homeSo i called you on the phoneCause...
Today's Roundup (March 7, 2010)
Top home-school texts dismiss Darwin, evolution -- Please Also Read: Why Evolution is True: Evolution and home-schooling redux -- Oh and there's a poll: MSNBC: Is it OK for home-school textbooks to dismiss the theory of evolution?Come Feel the Noise [re the holographic principle]Psoriasis Is More Than Skin DeepMysterious snake...
Today's Roundup (March 3, 2010)
Point of Inquiry - Michael Mann - Unprecedented Attacks on Climate ResearchWhy it is important for media articles to link to scientific papersScientists Propose 'Hella' as New Big-Number PrefixNominations Open for The National Academies' 2010 Communication AwardsWeird Things - Roger Penrose: Yet another spawn of quantum consciousnessAnti-Drinking Ads Induce More...
Skeptic.com
IN THIS RIVETING STORY about his remarkable discoveries from the Gogo fossil site in the Kimberly district of Western Australia, the Australian paleontologist John Long, now Vice President of Research and Collections at the Natural History Museum of L.A. County, takes us beyond just reconstructing animal morphology and into the...
Adventures Among the Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions
INTREPID INTERNATIONAL EXPLORER, biologist, and National Geographic photographer Mark W. Moffett, “the Indiana Jones of entomology,” takes us around the globe on a strange and colorful journey in search of the hidden world of ants. In tales from Nigeria, Indonesia, the Amazon, Australia, California, and elsewhere, Moffett recounts his entomological...
How the Economy Works: Confidence, Crashes & Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
In this lecture based on his new book, How the Economy Works, one of our leading economists, the UCLA professor Roger Farmer, provides a jargon-free exploration of the current crisis, offering a powerful argument for how economics must change to get us out of it....
On Fact & Fraud: Cautionary Tales from the Front Lines of Science
FRAUD IN SCIENCE is not as easy to identify as one might think. When accusations of scientific misconduct occur, truth can often be elusive, and the cause of a scientist’s ethical misstep isn’t always clear. In his lecture based on his new book, On Fact and Fraud, Caltech physicist David...
The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
A DRUNKARD’S WALK is a type of random statistical distribution with important applications in scientific studies ranging from biology to astronomy. Mlodinow, a visiting lecturer at Caltech and coauthor with Stephen Hawking of A Briefer History of Time, takes us on a walk through the hills and valleys of randomness...
Does God have a Future? A Great Debate Filmed by ABC’s Nightline
Does God Have a Future? Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston debate the question with Michael Shermer and Sam Harris....
Science After Sunclipse
Book Announcement: Mathematical Methods for Optical Physics and Engineering
Greg "Dr. SkySkull" Gbur, my fellow physics writer and Prisoner aficionado, has just gotten the official go-ahead to hype his forthcoming textbook, Mathematical Methods for Optical Physics and Engineering. One of the biggest problems in teaching mathematics is making the connection between the math itself and the application of said math....
Predictable People are Predictable
Jeffrey Shallit calls our attention to the recent antics of Suzan Mazur, a journalist well-known among science bloggers for, well, getting everything wrong. The best parts of any conspiracy theory are those which sound reasonable upon a first hearing, and Mazur is no exception. Among the bits not...
The Best Thing About This Season is the Music
Little-known "fact": the reason physicists are trying to create a black hole at the LHC is because it's the only weapon powerful enough to defeat Cthulhu. Read the comments on this post......
. . . And I Grew Up Just Fine!
The Intertubes are filling up with arguments just not worth having. Sigh. You know what I need? Yeah: (Reliving one's childhood can be a scary business. And on a related note: if my generation was raised by television, and everything on TV then is available on the Internet...
In Which I Am Less Than Courteous
Deepak Chopra is, basically, a parasite. He takes scientific discoveries made through hard work and sacrifice, strips them of all context and meaning until only jargon is left, and uses the fruits of his petty thievery to add spurious credibility to the mystical snake oil he peddles. Like certain others...
In no particular order: The LHC is now the world's highest-energy particle collider. The Copenhagen Diagnosis. Abbie Smith discusses Cryptococcus neoformans and rheumatoid arthritis. Ben Allen reviews "a graphic novel biography of mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell". Jeffrey Shallit has recently written three interesting posts exposing cdesign proponentsist nonsense. Dr. SkySkull explores the topic of "video...
James Randi Educational Foundation
Randi welcoming the Amazing Adventurers to the Isaac Asimov Library Last night, we had a reception at the James Randi Educational Foundation for those folks who are joining us on the Amazing Adventure 5: Skeptics of the Caribbean, which sets sail today. We are off for a week of fun and...
For Good Reason: Science-Based Medicine with Harriet Hall
Harriet Hall, MD, The SkepDoc, discusses her column in O, The Oprah Magazine that focuses on debunking medical myths. She contrasts science-based medicine and “complementary and alternative medicine,” and tells why she objects to the latter term. She details why homeopathy elicits more moral outrage from her than other kinds...
A Brief Report On The Finances of The World-Controlling Atheist Cabal
I recently had the pleasure of dealing with a very polite young woman who wanted to give me a flyer about a presentation by Eric Hovind, son of the more (in)famous Kent Hovind. A snippet of our conversation went something like this: Me: Has this been experimentally demonstrated? Her: Oh, yes....
Once again JREF is issuing a call for papers to those who would like to share their work or accomplishments at the eighth annual Amazing Meeting, July 8-11, 2010 in Las Vegas. Anyone may submit a request to present a paper. If your proposal is accepted you will be allotted 20...
Last Week In Science-Based Medicine
Here is a recap of the stories that appeared last week at Science-Based Medicine, a multi-author skeptical blog that separates the science from the woo in medicine. The fall of Andrew Wakefield (David Gorski) Andrew Wakefield’s MMR/autism research paper was retracted by the Lancet, he was found guilty of grossly unethical...
The JREF is proud to have begun a fellowship and learning program with the Center for Inquiry, the first of which is recounted below by Christina Stephens, the first participant in the program. Additional arrangements with other organizations are being explored, as well. Check back at randi.org in the months...
Skepchick
I deactivated Google Voice last week because the service usurped my voicemail and translated my messages to text (badly), yet these messages were for Kay, Karina, or Carol. People often mistakenly hear my name as Carol. This isn’t just an accent issue, this happens to me in Australia, and the US. Sometimes...
What I’ve Been Up To This Past Year…
I thought I’d tell the Skepchick readers a little about my ongoing thesis research, which I’ve been working on for about a year and a half now. I was trying to think of the best way to explain my thesis research to a general audience, and I remembered that I...
See, Because the Klingons are Jews
How else would he know what they do with their penises? Once again via Everything is Terrible...
Geology Word (Phrase?) of the Week: Volcanic Bomb
Hi everyone! Guess what? I’m posting again on human timescales. I have tried and failed (at least twice) in the past to regularly post a “Geology Word of the Week.” Third time is a charm, let’s hope! I’ll do my best to post a geology word of the week every...
First off ladies and gentlemen, do you have your tickets to NECSS? It’s April 17th in New York City and I’m a-gonna be there, along with James Randi, DJ Grothe, George Hrab, and the rest of the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe crew! Get your tickets nao. COTW! (Reminder: vote for your...
Gut bacteria causes overeating in mice – Posted mostly because I love photos of fat mice. From Steve. Woman in Iowa arrested for falling down stairs while pregnant – From Deb. Doctor’s sued over dangerous autism treatment – “The father of a 7-year-old Chicago boy who was diagnosed as a toddler with...
Skepticblog
I’m not normally prone to mystical cats or too much Internet craziness, but since I’ll be off on the Skeptics of the Carribean cruise with Randi and lots of other fun loving folks next week, I thought I would leave you all with some silliness to ponder. We all need some time off and...
Even before I started writing Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be I knew that it would very briefly mention religion, make a mild assertion that religious questions are out of scope for science, and move on. I knew this was likely to provoke blow-back from some...
“The Standard Pablum” — Science and Atheism
I’m pleased to say that the release of Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be has been enjoying quite a bit of attention from skeptics — which has helped this full-color kids’ book get off to a great start. Perhaps the most rewarding moment for me so far was...
I am often asked if skeptics and skeptical organizations should undertake first-hand investigations. Of course, it depends upon what your goals are. But I think the question can be re-phrased to mean – is there any value or benefit to first hand investigation, and to this the answer is a...
The Results of Booze on Telepathic Ability
The results are in: alcohol and telepathy don’t mix. At least they didn’t this past Saturday, when after over two years of negotiations with alleged telepath Regan Traynor, his test ended in a complete wash-out for him and his “receiver” Fernando.CFI hosted this much awaited preliminary test for their $50,000 challenge....
Some feedback on the Large Hadron Collider
As Skeptoid listeners know, occasionally I like to go the Listener Feedback files to hear what people have to say. I found a note from Nick from Albuquerque, who disagreed strongly with the way I discussed the safety of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. I offer my response to...