Blogging
oracknows | June 11, 2008Fellow skeptical doc PalMD informs me that apparently a new blogger, who happens to be a law student at NYU, discovered that his school had invited antivaccinationist-apologist supreme, David Kirby, to speak at NYU on June 26. In response, antivaccinationists, including David Kirby himself and antivaccinationist crank extraordinaire Clifford G. Miller himself, the man who apparently invited David Kirby to befoul the fair city of London and even the halls of Parliament with his antivaccinationist nonsense, has appeared. Much hilarity ensues as every antivaccinationist canard known to…
oracknows | May 4, 2008Forgive me if you find bloggers trumpeting their traffic numbers to be painfully boring. Truth be told, sometimes I find them boring too. However, I hope you'll indulge me just this once, given that regular readers know how rarely I do posts dedicated to discussing my traffic. (Just remember that blogging is an exercise in ego gratification, anyway.) It's just that March and April have been the best two months ever in terms of traffic on this blog, and I can't resist taking a moment to post about it. Just take a look:
In March, there were 128,996 visits to Respectful Insolence, and in April…
oracknows | April 29, 2008I'm a day late on this, but welcome ERV (a.k.a. endogenous retrovirus) to the Collective. A graduate student studying the molecular biology and evolution of HIV, her joining the Collective was forced to be earlier than she had intended because of an unfortunate incident resulting in the temporary removal of her old blog by Google. However her entrance into the Seed mothership, we're glad she's here now...
oracknows | April 27, 2008You didn't think I wouldn't take notice of this bit of news, did you? Even if I had, I would have had little choice, as readers deluged me with various news reports about this.
Yes, it would appear that there might very well be a new Blakes 7 series. Of course, I'll believe it when I see it. Only two scripts have been ordered, and there isn't even a cast and crew assembled yet. There have been attempts to resurrect this series before, and they have all fallen through. We'll see.
I suspect that most of my non-U.K. readers have no clue where the inspiration for the name of this blog or the…
oracknows | April 6, 2008Dear Mr. Kirby and Mr. Olmsted:
You are both journalists. I realize that neither of you at present work for the traditional press and that both of you seem to devote yourselves mainly to blogging (Mr. Olmsted at the Age of Autism and Mr. Kirby at the Huffington Post), but I have to believe that you both still consider yourselves to be at heart journalists. That is why I am writing this to you and posting it publicly on my blog. If you've ever read any of my posts on this issue, you probably realize that I strongly disagree with your positions and that at times I have been quite harsh in my…
clock | April 5, 2008You must have noticed that there wasn't too much effort on this blog over the past couple of weeks (except for the elaborate and too successful April Fools hoax). I've just been so busy lately. So, here is a quick recap, and some pictures.
Back on March 21, I went to Duke University to participate in a panel called Shaping the world, one job at a time: An altruistic/alternative career panel. From education, to public health in the developing world, to science journalism, writing, blogging and publishing. The room was full (80 people? Perhaps 100?!). I am not sure one hour was enough for…
oracknows | March 30, 2008I'm actually surprised it's that high:
Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating
Must be some of the commenters. I have been known on occasion to use the word "bullshit" with reference to, for example, David Kirby, but I really do try to keep this blog fairly clean as far as cussing goes.
oracknows | March 11, 2008Buried in yesterday's post was a link to a post on the Science Business blog, which is one of the blogs of Forbes magazine that was a dangerous gratification to my ego in that it mentioned this humble blog as one of the Autism Debate Go-To Blogs. Although Matthew Harper, Associate Editor at Forbes, left out three go-to blogs about autism that probably surpass this blog (namely, Left Brain/Right Brain, Neurodiversity, and Autism News Beat), Harper did make an interesting observation about yours truly:
Respectful Insulence is written by a surgeon who goes by the nom-de-blog Orac. He blogs on…
oracknows | March 7, 2008I really have no idea how valid this is (I suspect not very), but every blogger likes a bit of ego stroking from time to time, and I'm no different. So, take this with an enormous grain of salt, but somehow on a new system of blog ranking on Wikio, Respectful Insolence is ranked #8 among science blogs and #466 among general blogs.
What this means, I have no idea, particularly given that the blog doesn't show up at all in the Health section. I suppose I can console myself that I'm ranked #3 on the Medicine Blog Directory. Again, I have no idea what this means; so take it with a huge grain of…
oracknows | February 20, 2008A blogger's duty calls:
(Click for the full-sized version.)
It's true: A skeptical blogger's work is never done! When pseudoscience or quackery is noticed on the Internet, no mater what time of day or night, this skeptical blogger cannot resist the call to craft a takedown.
Just ask my wife.
oracknows | February 19, 2008Via WhiteCoat Underground, I've learned of a most disturbing development.
Remember Le Canard Noir? He's the skeptical blogger whose Quackometer was one of my favorite websites and tools for identifying pseudoscience and quackery caused him to run afoul of the Society of Homeopaths and a highly dubious practitioner named Joseph Chikelue Obi, both of whom tried to get his Internet service provider to boot him off of its servers using vacuous legal threats of libel actions? Both led to an outcry from the medical and skeptical blogosphere in the form of many, many copies of the offending text…
oracknows | February 13, 2008
I'm baaack.
Well, thanks to free WiFi at Panera's, I was never really truly away. Thanks to Comcast, I was away longer than usual. In any case, although between waiting for Internet access, running errands, and doing some snowblowing last night, I didn't have time to do the usual epic substantive posts that I'm known (and either loved or hated) for. That's unfortunate, because it figures that when I go three or four days without any Internet access other than that I can manage to find by having lunch or getting coffee at a place with free WiFi, lots of things that I would have liked to have…
oracknows | February 11, 2008I hate you, Comcast.
I really do.
My hatred of Comcast also explains the paucity of activity on this blog over the last few days. You see, over the weekend, I moved to a larger house, and I've had no Internet access other than Panera's or Starbucks for the last three days. Before that, I had lined up a couple of brief posts over the weekend, as well as a rerun for this morning in anticipation of being back up and running this afternoon. Instead, here I am in Panera's having a tasty lunch but also posting a brief rant and explanation composed right after my encounter with Comcast.
I went from…
oracknows | February 2, 2008It's been a while since I've posted any fan mail, but I did get one a few days ago that amused me. It came from someone with a 'nym of "Baxtour". I post it because it represents a common flavor of antivaccinationist response to my blog:
You are a fucking moron, which I'm sure you already know, but if there is one thing you know absolutely nothing about it's thimerosal! You shouldn't even talk about it because you are so fucking clueless!!!
Sincerely,
Someone that actually has a brain
Truly, against such intellectual firepower, even Orac has a hard time standing. My first thought was that it…
oracknows | January 9, 2008I'll admit that I've been a bit oblivious to honors and awards in the blogosphere lately, but it's come to my attention that I'm actually a finalist for Best Medical Weblog.
I also note that the competition is fierce. Fellow surgeon Sid Schwab is there for Surgeonsblog, as is one of the pioneers of medical blogging, Kevin, MD. Oddly enough, I'm also nominated for Best Health Policies/Ethics Weblog.
In any case, thanks to all who nominated me, and be sure to head over and vote for your favorite, especially if it's me, and don't forget to vote in all the other categories. Polls close on Sunday…
oracknows | January 2, 2008If the pontifications of Orac are too--shall we say?--insolent for your taste, you'll be happy to know that there's a new group blog in town designed to provide a serious "alternative" voice of reason and science to discuss the claims made in favor of "alternative" medicine. Spearheaded by Steve Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society and active blogger at Neurologica Blog, this new effort is called Science-Based Medicine. It's manifesto starts:
Science-Based Medicine is a new daily science blog dedicated to promoting the highest standards and traditions of science in medicine…
oracknows | December 27, 2007...this is what a troll is on the Internet.
Personally, though, I prefer the Flame Warriors version, although I'm not sure that I agree with Mike Reed's characterization of trolls as "generally quite harmless."
oracknows | December 26, 2007We 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 assign a category to it and noticed something odd. There were many more categories than I had, many of which had nothing to do with my usual topics and most of them uncapitalized. My user-defined categories for posts were there, but a whole bunch of unfamiliar categories had appeared. Puzzled, I…
oracknows | December 16, 2007...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 scientists, like Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who wrote engagingly about the mysteries of the natural world, but they were relatively few.
Now look what's happened. Go to the Science Blogs website and you'll find dozens of actual scientists, commenting in real time on every aspect…
oracknows | December 15, 2007...when another blogger refers to your linking to him by adding "-lanche" to your 'nym?
I can't say I've ever had that happen to me before.