By Page, on March 12, 2010, at 7:03 am
- Next I wanted to direct you my favorite website of the week: Information Is Beautiful. This is the brain child of David McCandless, a London-based author, writer and designer. He researches relevant topics and uses design to create visualizations of the data or concept in attractive, appealing and informative ways.
My faves:
Information Is Beautiful’s take on the H1N1 flu vaccine and virus
Information Is Beautiful describes evidence for and against nutritional supplements
Information Is Beautiful looks at the scientific consensus of global warming
Check it out there are plenty more gems. And of course, I like it because he provides a laundry list of references for his figures. Terrific!
By The Quixotic Man, on March 11, 2010, at 7:03 am  Plum pox-resistant plums (Photo from the Agricultural Research Service) The argument I’m getting into lately is the one about Genetically Modified crops. I tend to take the position that 1- these are the most tested crops in the world 2- they’re completely healthy 3- what we’re doing is not fundamentally different than what we’ve been doing through selective breeding since agriculture began – we’re just doing it smarter now and, oh yeah 4- without them, approximately 1/3 of the world will starve to death. “Their” position is that corporations are evil. I generally come back with “Yes, but we’re talking about science here,” but… honestly I can’t shake the juggling feeling that these organic folk have a bit of a point. The business end of GM crops actually does make me kind of uncomfortable. The laws and patents that go into these things, seed laws, charging farmers when their crops are accidentally pollinated by GM crops planted in the vicinity… It all does feel kind of… wrong. I’m starting to worry that perhaps, my intended science advocacy has become a sort of science idealism, and to me, that means I’m not being very skeptical. … continue reading this entry.
By The Quixotic Man, on March 10, 2010, at 7:03 am
By Michael Rosch, on March 9, 2010, at 7:03 am  Growing up I was always fascinated, obsessed even, with the paranormal. I would watch all the primetime specials purporting to investigate UFOs, psychics, and of course ghosts.
Sure I didn’t believe in every psychic, UFO sighting, and ghost story I ever heard. In fact, I thought that probably over 99% of all reported paranormal cases were either products of self-delusion or deliberate hoaxes. But surely they couldn’t ALL be bogus, right? There had to be something to all these ubiquitous paranormal phenomena. There had to be some real psychics out there and real encounters with spectral entities. … continue reading this entry.
By The Quixotic Man, on March 8, 2010, at 7:03 am Recently, scientists found possible precursors to life way out in the middle of space. This is really cool, but I started wondering, “What will the Mainstream Media say?” So I asked my old friend, the Skeptic Psychic, and after peering into his bowl of homeopathic tea leaves suspended in a 9% alcohol lager, this is what he came up with.
FOX AND FRIENDS
Steve Doocy: I’m just thinking out loud here, but I think we’re soon going to see a space virus.
Gretchen Carlson: Wow! I can certainly imagine that!
Doocy: Just some big evil virus, eating all of us and killing your children.
Carlson: If only President Obama hadn’t canceled NASA’s budget, we probably could have stopped it.
Doocy: Hah hah- you’re probably right, Gretchen. And now, Bryan Kilmead has some information on the new sensation sweeping Junior League Softball! … continue reading this entry.
By The Quixotic Man, on March 5, 2010, at 7:03 am  As some of you may have seen, one of Lisa’s posts and one of mine have been nominated for inclusion into The Young Australian Skeptics Blog Anthology. I’d like to congratulate my fellow nominee, and say I’m very happy the two of us got noticed. I’ve been a writer for a while, but I’ve never been published in a real like… Book, so this is pretty cool. I’m really happy about it, and I imagine Lisa is too. The closest I’ve ever come to this is when, instead of writing his own article about Elliott Spitzer, a Boston Globe reporter decided to quote mine. There’s only one slight caveat… I’m not crazy about the article that’s been chosen. … continue reading this entry.
By Page, on March 4, 2010, at 7:03 am  In the third Rationally Speaking podcast, guest, Prof. Peter Turchin from the University of Connecticut, joins Massimo and Julia to discuss whether history can be studied and understood in a scientific manner. In an article in Nature (3 July 2008) on what he termed “cliodynamics,” he discusses the possibility of turning history into a science. In it, he proposes that history, contrary to what most historians might think — is not just one damn thing after another, that there are regular and predictable patterns, from which we can learn and that we can predict. Of course, he is not the only scientist to have turned to history in an attempt to make that field more scientific, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse immediately come to mind. And naturally, many historians vehemently object to what they perceive as a crude scientistic attempt at interdisciplinary colonization.
Subscribe via iTunes!
By New York City Skeptics, on March 3, 2010, at 7:03 am
New York City Skeptics is thrilled to announce that Dr. John Snyder will join the NYC Skeptics Board of Advisors, effective immediately. He joins fellow advisory board members John Rennie, Michael Shermer, and James Randi. … continue reading this entry.
By Page, on March 2, 2010, at 7:03 am  Even if you haven’t yet read Time’s new article, Who’s Afraid of Jenny McCarthy?, I bet most of you have answered the question already. The author, Karl Taro Greenfeld, is no stranger to the issue of autism and wrote a book about his autistic brother. While the article takes a hard-line on McCarthy’s belief that vaccines cause autism, it paints a very clear and realistic picture of Jenny’s mass appeal and her devotion to her son.
The antivaccine movement has by now gone through numerous iterations in trying to explain how autism happens… Each of these theories has been thoroughly discredited by scientific research, but that has done nothing to silence McCarthy and her Generation Rescue colleagues.
It is impossible to overlook the larger and direct dangers inherent in her position on vaccines. Yet it is equally difficult to ignore the emotional core of what she is saying: Listen to parents. … continue reading this entry.
By The Quixotic Man, on March 1, 2010, at 7:03 am  David Kirby: Evidence of Lazy Editors There are two reasons why I write for this blog. The first is from that part of me that’s altruistic. From the minute I knew the New York City Skeptics existed, I wanted to do what I could to help the organization out, and when all is said and done, writing is sort of my most marketable skill. I went to a drinking skeptically, barged into a conversation between Michael Feldman and Matt Sekedat and forced them to agree to let me write for them. I wrote for this blog before this blog existed because in the end, I figured this was what I could do best to help the organization. The second reason is… not quite so altruistic. Though I have other jobs as well, at my core, I’m a writer. It’s what I want to do with my life, it’s the only thing I’ve ever really been able to imagine doing forever. I write for pretty much anyone who will have me as their writer. I rarely do it for money, I do it because I hope it’ll give me a resume I can eventually turn into a real job, for the experience of doing it, and because if I don’t write regularly, my head gets full of clutter and eventually explodes. It was for a few of these reasons that I started writing for the Huffington Post. … continue reading this entry.
|
|
