Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski. That Orac has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 30 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)
DISCLAIMER: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.
While I'm recharging a bit from the Christmas festivities yesterday to the point where soon I'll be able to write a substantive post, full of the Respectful Insolence⢠and science or medicine that readers have come to expect, here's something to amuse (I hope).
On Sunday, I wrote a not-so-…
We interrupt this post-holiday blogging slowdown for an important blog housekeeping message. Something weird happened to Respectful Insolence⢠over the weekend before Christmas.
Sunday, I was composing a little missive to autopost over the holidays. I went to the pulldown menu in Movable Type to…
I think my eyes are bleeding:
Maybe this one will be better:
Only a little. At least it rocks a bit and is a tad warped in its outlook. That counts for something.
In any case, what are you doing here messing around on the Internet and watching silly Christmas videos? Shouldn't you be with your…
It's Christmas Eve, and nothing says Christmas like Santa Claus. And nothing says Christmas quite as much as the terrified reactions of some little children when they see Santa Claus and realize that they're Scared of Santa.
There are lots more where these two pictures came from here, here,…
Even though it's Christmas Eve and I hadn't been planning on posting anything except what I hope to be humorous holiday greetings, I couldn't resist mentioning this example of political correctness run amok:
A Croatian rock star accused of anti-Semitism will be forced to undergo tolerance…
You be the judge:
I believe, first of all, evolution is a crock.
It takes a lot of faith to believe that I came from an ameba. A lot of faith!
So evolution should be taught in Faith Class, otherwise known in parochial schools as Religion Class.
It's a crazy world we live in. Crazier every day. But…
Getting it right once again (click on the image for the whole comic)...
I've been meaning to do a piece about Head On, but I think I've decided that it's just too ridiculous to bother with, and that's saying something. After all, this is the blog that regularly posts pictures of a giant enema…
I've mentioned before that it irritates me that Don Imus is back on the air. It's not that I give a rodent's posterior that he made an offensive comment about the Rutgers women's basketball team that lead to his being fired from his previous gig. It's actually more because he somehow managed to…
Here's one of my all time favorite David Bowie tunes, truly an underrated gem from his career. (Too bad the movie it came from was only so-so.) This performance is from June 2000:
Why? Because Christmas is coming and I felt like it. Enjoy!
Quoth global warming "skeptic" (translation: "crank") Senator Inhofe:
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) got the crowd cheering early in the day. "I have been called -- my kids are all aware of this -- dumb, crazy man, science abuser, Holocaust denier, villain of the month, hate-filled, warmonger,…
Now why can't all New Age-y pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo be like this New Age-y pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo?
Yes, it's back. Starting right around now, it's Global Orgasm time again:
WHO? All Men and Women, you and everyone you know.
WHERE? Everywhere in the world, but especially in countries…
People never cease to amaze me.
Sometimes it's in a good way, when a person whom I would least expect to be capable of it does something really kind or brilliant. Sometimes it's in a bad way. One of the bad ways people never cease to amaze me is how someone can continue down a path that has…
It occurred to me. For someone looking for last minute Christmas gifts for the credulous, perhaps the Chi Machine, which I mentioned this morning, won't fit the bill. One thing about it is that it's too limited in what it can do, and if I'm going to give the gift of woo for Christmas, I really want…
As hard as it is to believe, yet another Christmas is fast approaching. I can feel it in the blogosphere. Heck, I can feel it here on the ol' blog. Once garrulous commenters here have gone strangely silent for the most part (at least in comparison to their usual prodigious output), and traffic…
Maybe it's unfair to proclaim this a "well, duh!" study, but its conclusions do seem rather obvious. On the other hand, it's information that we need in a cold, hard scientific form, and I'm glad that the investigators did it:
(AP) -- Uninsured cancer patients are nearly twice as likely to die…
As regular readers of the Skeptics' Circle know, hosts are usually given pretty wide latitude about how they handle the presentation of the posts. This time around, host Martin Rundkvist, who's hosted an excellent edition before (albeit with a puzzling theme), decides that a large dish brush is…
Evidence-based medicine is not perfect.
There, I've said it. Like anything else humans do in science or any other endeavor, evidence-based medicine (EBM) has its strengths and its weaknesses. On the whole, I consider it to be potentially vastly superior to the way that medicine was practiced in the…
You can probably manage to tell a Picasso from a Monet. But can you do the same for Churchill and Hitler?
Inquiring minds want to know.
The website's Swiss, and it's written in German, but you should be able to figure it out. Just click on one of the four painting to get started and indicate…
I used to be of the opinion that there might just be something to acupuncture. No, I never thought there was anything to the notion that acupuncture "works" by somehow rerouting the flow of a magical life force (qi) that no scientific instrument can detect and that no practitioner of acupuncture (…
If you listen to what advocates of homeopathy, acupuncture, or whatever form of so-called "alternative" medicine you can think of (in reality, non-evidence-based medicine for the most part), you'd think that physicians are in the pockets of Big Pharma, hopeless slaves to its propaganda, addicted to…
Several months ago, i wrote quite a few posts about a new anticancer drug that had not yet passed through clinical trials but had demonstrated efficacy against tumors in rat models of cancer. The drug, called dichloroacetate (DCA), is a small molecule that targeted a phenomenon common in cancer…
Regular readers of this blog know that I have been becoming increasingly disturbed by what I see as the infiltration of non-evidenced-based "alternative" medicine into academic medical centers. Indeed, about a month ago, I went so far as to count the number of medical schools that offer some form…
...well, not really:
OK, I don't really hate them. But it used to be that science journalists stood between scientists and the public. The scientists did research, then we asked questions and translated their dry jargon and complicated ideas into scintillating prose. Sure, there were a few…
It's been a while since I mentioned the Autism Omnibus hearings. The Omnibus proceeding is the culmination of all the legal cases brought to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program by nearly 5,000 families who "feel" that their children's autism was caused by vaccines. Many, but not all, of the…
It's almost here.
No, not Christmas, although that's almost here too. what I'm talking about is the fast-approaching 76th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, which is due to land at Aardvarchaelogy on Thursday, December 20, right in time for the holidays. (And what better time to indulge in a…
I have to confess, the ol' Folder of Woo was looking a little thin this week.
No, it's not that I'm running out of topics (a.k.a. targets) for my usual Friday jaunt into the wacky world of woo. Far from it. It's just that, in the run-up to writing this, perusing the odd stuff therein just wasn't…
There's been a bit of bad news on the vaccination front:
ATLANTA - More than a million doses of a common vaccine given to babies as young as 2 months were being recalled Wednesday because of contamination risks, but the top U.S. health official said it was not a health threat.
The recall is for 1.2…
