NYT on Mitochondrial Disorders and Vaccination

In the Health section of the New York Times today, there was an article concerning mitochondiral disorders and vaccination entitled “Experts to Discuss One Puzzling Autism Case, as a Second Case Has Arisen“. As the title notes, a second case has cropped up:

What do Obama, Scalia, Roberts, Alito, and Thomas have in common?

They all think child rape should be execution-worthy.

The SCOTUS came back today with a decision on Kennedy v. Louisiana, in which they rejected the state of Louisiana’s assertion that rape of a child under the age of 12 should be subject to the death penalty in a split 5-4 decision. Personally, I was pretty surprised. I thought it was going to be a split court, but I thought that they were going to come down on the side of the State.

The (Not) Scientific Method

Like I mentioned a couple of posts ago when I was trashing Kirby, I’m not a scientist (then again, neither is Kirby…okay, enough about Kirby). In fact, the extent of my science education amounts to an undergraduate degree in psychology and philosophy. Neither of those are exactly “sciency”, except for maybe psychology (though if I had a nickel for ever time a Chemistry or Physics major told me that psychology was not a “real” science). I do have some funny letters after my name, but none of them involve any sort of ‘D’ for doctor.

Pharmaceutical Companies Will Eat Your Children

Okay. Maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit. Maybe pharmaceutical companies will not actually eat your children. The point that I’m trying to get across though, is that pharmaceutical companies are pretty indifferent to your plight (and that they drink the blood of puppies, but that’s another post).

How Can You Tell When David Kirby is Lying?

His lips are moving.

David Kirby, the “journalist” who has hitched his wagon to the now defunct hypothesis that thimerosal in vaccines cause autism, birthed an article over at HuffPo about an “explosive” report how the CDC admitted that using the Vaccine Safety Datalink in conjunction with ecological studies is bad news when looking at any possible connection between thimerosal and ASD.

I’m Not a Bigot, but Your Religion Sucks.

We all have one of those friends. You know, the friend that will every so often begin a sentence with “I’m not a racist, but…” to which you respond with a pre-emptive cringe because you know whatever is coming after the fold is going to be atrocious. It’s as if they know that what they are going to say is incredibly racist, but they have the minimal amount of social awareness to realize that they should strive to be egalitarian.

I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham…

The illustrious PZ Meyers over at Pharyngula wrote a piece yesterday that I think marks one of the low points for my blame-America-first patriotism. Apparently, Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis and all-around religious nuttery fame was invited to a Pentagon prayer breakfast. Here’s PZ:

Speak No Evil…

I had heard several months ago about the (in)famous case of a presiding judge barring the word “rape” from a rape trial, ruling that it was too prejudicial towards the defendant. This morning I caught an article on Law.Com reporting that the practice is spreading:

Tell Me Sweet, Sweet Lies

One of the things that I spend some spare time doing is debating Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) advocates on the intertubes. The wide, wonderful, and wacky world of CAM is full of all manner of cure-alls for whatever ails you. From reflexology to homeopathy to magnet therapy, if you’ve got an illness then surely there’s someone on google claiming that they can heal you.

Something that I have noticed during these enlightened meeting of the minds (or flamewars, if you prefer) is a certain rhetorical strategy that CAM advocates use that seems to trip a good number of people up. Namely, it’s somewhat reminiscent of a bait-and-switch tactic.

Good Afternoon.

Welcome to my (new) blog! I plan on bringing over posts that I have written over the years…well, the good ones anyway…as well as updating with new content. Enjoy!