General Discussion
denialism | March 13, 2009Check out all three parts. Jon takes Cramer out behind the woodshed and indicts the whole financial/journalism failure at CNBC.
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The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c
Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 1
Daily Show Full EpisodesImportant Things w/ Demetri Martin
Political HumorJim Cramer
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The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c
Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 2
Daily Show Full EpisodesImportant Things w/ Demetri Martin
Political HumorJim Cramer
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The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c
Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 3
Daily Show Full…
denialism | February 17, 2009Dan MacArthur has started a big discussion on whether or not the relationship between IQ and race should be studied. Inspired by a pair of essays for and against the idea it has created a pretty healthy debate among the sciencebloggers including Razib with whom I will likely never agree on this issue. For the record, I'm on the side of those like Richard Nisbett (for a good review of his analysis of race and the black white divide see here PDF) that genetics are a poor explanation for the divide.
But this issue aside, why do I believe this is a still a bad idea to expend resources to…
sb admin | September 7, 2008Like many Jewish families, tracing our history is often a sad and difficult task. Three of my four grandparents escaped Europe to found new families in America, giving me the illusion of having a small family, as Hitler uprooted and burnt the rest of my family tree. But the networks formed by immigrants were close, familial, and geographic, facts that were so obvious to them that they often didn't talk about it.
For example, my paternal grandfather comes from a small city in Poland called Ostrow-Mazowiecka. His mother died of cholera shortly after he was born, and he was raised by…
sb admin | July 9, 2008This is my little version of blogrolling, something I vowed to never do, but I've been reading so many good blogs lately that I'd like to share some links. Some of these are on our blogroll, some aren't.
EpiWonk: An epidemiology blog.
Archeoporn: one of the best names on the web.
Submitted to a Candid World: progressive politics, but not a rant.
Evangelical Realism: this ain't your grandma's Old Time Religion
The field negro: stuff you didn't know you needed to know, but you need to know it
The Bad Idea Blog, apparently written by Jabba the Hut.
Historiann: written by a, well, historian,…
sb admin | July 9, 2008Some links, general business, and not-so random thoughts.
Tangled Bank #109 is up at Greg's place.
The Blog that Ate Manhattan is hosting the latest Grand Rounds, Seinfeld additon.
ScienceBlogs has a new project called Next Generation Energy. It will cover energy problems, alternative, etc. It will feature writers from ScienceBlogs and other outside experts. Interestingly, it's being sponsored by Shell, which has led to a bit of discussion. Check it out.
The 94th Carnival of the Godless came out a few weeks ago, and I hadn't realized we were featured, so here's a link.
PZ Myers had an…
sb admin | June 29, 2008I've just returned from one of the world's great treasures, Algonquin Provincial Park, in Ontario, Canada. I have very little skepticism to offer---sure, I could talk about Park management, the Master Plan, logging, First Nations, etc. but then I'd lose an opportunity to share some of the natural beauty and some of the medical highlights.
The Park is about the size of Connecticut and occupies a huge chunk of Ontario as it bends around Lake Huron. (Remember that Ontario's southernmost leg is rather far south, with the city of Windsor being directly south of Detroit. It widens toward the…
sb admin | May 30, 2008Spring is here, despite this week's frost (I'm really happy I didn't get around to planting last weekend). I love being outdoors, but my work keeps me inside a lot. Now that the days are longer, I have more opportunities to take my kiddo outside exploring. Her favorite thing to do is go "hiking", which essentially means her getting into this kid-carrying backpack I've got and riding on my back for several miles of rail-trail.
She just turned 4, and can reliably identify poison ivy and a number of trees. We've picked wild raspberries and mulberries, and have seen snapping turtles nesting…
sb admin | May 7, 2008I'll admit right of the bat that I didn't do any research before posting this one. I haven't read any literature on dreams in years, but somehow discussion among some egghead-types turned to common dreams. Among these:
--The one where you sign up for a class and forget about it until finals
--The one where you are in class and notice you're naked
--The one where your teeth are falling out
Now all of these have, in each person, all sorts of interesting associations, but I'm curious whether these particular dreams are more common in academic types. Do folks outside of academia have similar…
sb admin | May 6, 2008The end of the world is a common religious idea. The end of this planet and the end of time itself are ideas not unknown to cosmologists, but are not exactly an immediate threat.
To certain religious groups, the threat is now, and is welcome. "Signs" are everywhere. Of course, we've been down this road before, in the 9th century, a few times in the 19th century, and of course in 2000.
Turn on the TV any Sunday---there are plenty of preachers reading and reading and reading, and of course finding signs of the imminent apocalypse. Hey, there's that whole "Left Behind" series of books…
denialism | April 30, 2008Today represents one year since we joined scienceblogs, and I think we've had a great deal of success in defining the problem of denialism, establishing a new vocabulary for dealing with the problem of pseudoscience, and establishing uniform standards for what is legitimate scientific discourse and debate.
Our first post describes the problem of denialism, and our subsequent posts on cranks, and the 5 tactics of denialism - Conspiracy, Selectivity, Fake Experts, Moving Goalposts, and Fallacies of Logic - have stood the test of time. They accurately describe the types of argument that fail…
denialism | April 29, 2008No time for blogging today but make sure to welcome ERV, on of my favorite bloggers, to the network.
Welcome ERV!
sb admin | April 22, 2008Dear Mr. Steenland,
I would contact you using more conventional means, but getting through to even a minor lackey at your company is next to impossible. Thank you in advance for reading this.
I hate your company. They are perhaps the most difficult company I have ever dealt with as a consumer, and I won't be sorry to see them go, although I doubt it will change anything.
Let me give you a little background.
In December, my in-laws planned a family trip for their 50th anniversary. I'll spare you some of the details, but let me give you the basics---an elderly couple, and two young couples…
sb admin | April 21, 2008We're heading home from the hospital soon.We've gone from, "Daddy, I don't want to cough anymore...it's too boring," to, "Daddy, do pirates have convertibles?"
But infectious diseases have lots of consequences. I'm starting to get a tickle in my throat and a bit of a cough. I have asthma, and this could really set it off. My father has a type of immunity problem, so he can't come around her for a while.
My wife and I planned our first vacation alone together since we were married. Unfortunately, that vacation starts at the end of the week. The kiddo can't stay with my folks while she's…
sb admin | April 20, 2008Yesterday my daughter (the one in my picture, but older now) started sneezing---a lot. Allergy season in this part of the country is brutal. We keep a box of kleenex on every flat surface in the house. But this morning she started coughing, and had a low-grade fever, so we knew she was sick, not just allergic. My wife stayed home with her while I represented us at our family's Passover Seder. When I got home, she was still coughing---a lot. I grabbed a stethoscope and listened to her chest. It wasn't perfectly clear, but she was coughing and crying so it was hard to hear (also, I'm not…
sb admin | April 14, 2008It's all the buzz around here, so it's my turn to share some interesting verse with you. Death and dying is a common topic of discussion with my patients and colleagues.
Some of these are well-known to all, some of them aren't, but I enjoy all of them.
Conscientious Objector
--Edna St. Vincent Millay
I shall die, but
that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the…
denialism | April 6, 2008I must admit I have a love-hate relationship with Bill Maher. He is a funny guy, he is good at mocking some of the more ludicrous aspects of politics, and he has been an effective critic of this administration and some of its more egregious policies.
However, I've also long held the position that both liberals and conservatives alike must own up to their own extremists. Liberals must own up to the fact that they don't have a universally-solid grasp on scientific truth, and just like the right wingers, we have people and movements within the left wing that are cranky and denialist. I would…
sb admin | April 6, 2008Bloggers are an odd bunch. Some are "serious journalists", some glorified editorialists, but most are just folks with access to a computer. This was the genesis of the blogosphere---individuals writing whatever they wanted, not knowing (but hoping) that maybe a few others might read their work.
As it turns out, there are some excellent writers out there that we might never have read were it not for the internet. But most still maintain an independence of spirit and of thought. Yes, there are "corporate" bloggers out there. For instance, one of the local hospitals has an internal blog…
sb admin | March 26, 2008Science is the investigation of reality. Reality is, by definition, everything. It is all we can see, all we can measure. It is, for all practical purposes, a god; it is omnipresent, omnipotent. The only tool that successfully measures and describes reality is science (including mathematics).
So why the desire to placate theologians and theocrats in scientific discussions? What can religion offer the exploration of reality?
The only thing it has to offer is a potentially consistent moral code; and that isn't unique to religion. Religion can offer beauty, song, art, poetry, fellowship…
sb admin | March 24, 2008It means nothing to those who have lost someone. One is the only number that matters. The one brother my friend lost. The one son my patient lost. The one child a nameless Iraqi mother lost.
People say they find solace in God. Bullshit. People say they find solace in heroism and valor. Bull-fucking-shit. Those left behind are still devastated. Lives are left unfinished. Valor could have taken place on a street corner or in a factory.
I'm not going to make friends with this post. I don't know the answers. I don't even know if we should be leaving Iraq soon. What I do know is that…
denialism | March 24, 2008This week I think I'm going to spend some time discussing denialism throughout history. In part inspired by the recent attacks on some of the most effective scientific communicators we have by by Mooney and Matthew Nisbet, and PalMD's post on some modern thinking by "ancients" I feel like it's time to provide some more historical context to debunking bullshit, and the long and honorable tradition of debunking by the world's greatest thinkers and communicators. We're going to start a little bit light with my nomination of Plato as history's first debunker.
You see, Plato had to deal with…