dwnomad

I’ve heard it said a few times that alternative medicine that is proven to work is just called medicine. Medicine is by nature a conservative field, they have to be since people’s health and very lives are at stake. However, if a treatment is proposed that has a plausible mechanism for how it works then it’s not that hard to start clinical trials and show that it is safe and effective,  but if a treatment has been around for decades and it doesn’t have the scientific backing of real medicine then odds are pretty good that the reason is that it would or has failed the efficacy trials. In other words, it’s because there is no evidence that it works.

Fortunately most people won’t turn to alternative medicine most of the time, but there is a definite temptation to do so if medicine has failed to correct an issue or has failed to identify the core issue behind it. What I wonder though, is when the magic herbs, water, sticks, and touch have failed, what’s left for the desperate to turn too?

If anecdotes are good enough for you then you just might be gullible to trade in the magical treatments for an invisible magical healer.  Oh, what’s the term for that….that’s right it’s faith healing. They’ve got lots of anecdotes for that as “evidence” of it’s effectiveness, they just probably won’t tell you about how the “genuine successes” still relied on real medical treatment. The really cool thing is that when that treatment fails, they have these awesome platitudes to “explain” why you died.

The big news from a few months ago was a nuetrino had broken the cosmic speed limit. This anomaly has now been explained as being as simple as a bad fiber optic connect and the GPS linked clock being just a little bit off. Wesley covered this in more detail yesterday.

When a new male takes over a troop of gelada monkeys he will kill any pre-existing young, that is the ones that he didn’t father. It’s now been observed that the females of the species will generally abort their young once a new male arrives. This makes since considering that pregnancy is quite expensive in terms of energy required and there’s no point in carrying a fetus to term if it’s just going to be killed as soon as it’s born. (New Scientist)

The loss of arctic sea ice results in significantly warmer winter weather in the arctic (4 degrees C warmer), but it may cause colder winters to the south (New Scientist). Climate change is also changing the flavor of Australian wines due to the faster ripening (Scientific American).

Researchers at MIT are using hard spheres packed with RNA to deliver it to the needed areas for cancer treatment. This is an interesting take on gene therapy as it it would minimize the risk of modifying the genes of healthy cells. It also seems kind of similar to bunker buster bombs or a guided missile in a way. (Massachusetts High Tech)

It’s long been thought that women are born with all the ova they will ever have already present. A team at Massachusetts General Hospital has now found ovarian stem cells that can be used to produce new eggs. (Scientific American)

Check out this video about Australopithecus Sediba, a one of the earliest hominid skeletons found to date:

(Via Jesus Needs Money

Check out this interview of Eric on Religious Antagonist that covers some of the wacky Mormon doctrines and Eric’s experience leaving the church just a year ago.

Disclaimer – There is no evidence supporting the blood type diet, all they have is anecdotes.

Neutrinos 0 – GPS 1
Remember the story late last year about neutrinos traveling faster than light at CERN? If proven, those neutrinos traveling 60 nanoseconds faster than expected would have redefined Einstein’s special relativity. Along with that, many new discoveries in physics would have followed.

Well, scratch that. It seems there was a problem with the GPS that would have caused the problem. Like Schrodinger’s Cat, this problem has two possible solutions. Unfortunately, neither involve gunpowder or poisonous gas. CERN had this to say:

The OPERA collaboration has informed its funding agencies and host laboratories that it has identified two possible effects that could have an influence on its neutrino timing measurement. These both require further tests with a short pulsed beam. If confirmed, one would increase the size of the measured effect, the other would diminish it. The first possible effect concerns an oscillator used to provide the time stamps for GPS synchronization. It could have led to an overestimate of the neutrino’s time of flight. The second concerns the optical fibre connector that brings the external GPS signal to the OPERA master clock, which may not have been functioning correctly when the measurements were taken. If this is the case, it could have led to an underestimate of the time of flight of the neutrinos.

Hugs and kisses to everyone on the OPERA team for demonstrating grace under so much pressure to replicate or disprove their original findings. Especially when the cause is something so mundane as an equipment glitch.

Israeli Ultra-Orthodox Jews Get a Dose of Reality
The Supreme Court in Israel just overturned the Tal Law in a 6-3 decision recently. In what I can only see as a good thing, the law which allowed all yeshiva (religious university) students to get out of compulsory military or civil service in Israel is ending. After 10 years on the books, the law is being allowed to expire this August.

The outgoing High Court President Dorit Beinisch said in the majority decision that the Tal Law was unconstitutional. Groups like The Movement for Quality Government have been petitioning the court for years to get the law repealed. Lending support to the court’s decision, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said,

As I have already declared, prior to the ruling, the Tal Law in its present form will not be extended. In the approaching months we will formulate a new bill that would guarantee a more equal sharing of the burden of all parts of Israeli society.

62,000 young haredi men could potentially be forced out of their highly insular surroundings and into a much wider world. Sure, a world where many of them would be carrying firearms – but also a place where they need to keep the peace with their enemies. Walk in another mans shoes and all that. Of course the ultra-orthodox Jewish men seem hell bent on getting out of duty to their country. They would rather stone women and throw poo on little girls. It’s time they get their hands dirty doing honest work.

I hope to see each and every one of you at the Northwest Free-thought Convention close to Seattle, Washington in a few weeks!

~Wesley

Feel free to email me or add me on Google+

Since I have a lot of friends on Facebook from my, uh, former life, I see a fair amount of religious stuff. Last night I had to exercise a lot of restraint to keep the snide comments to myself, but I’ll share them here.

The first was Ephesians 5:1-8 (KJV)

¹Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; ²And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour. ³But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints; ⁴Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks. ⁵For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. ⁶Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. ⁷Be not ye therefore partakers with them. ⁸For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:

To which I wanted to reply along the lines of “You know, that list of ‘bad’ things is just a few of my favorite things.” But I didn’t.

Then I saw a picture some friends were tagged in of them sleeping in church. The comment that came immediately to mind, which I also kept to myself was, “At least they’re doing the most productive thing they can in a place like that.”

If your the type that just types in the address or clicks on a bookmark when you want to visit the blog and you want a way to find out when there’s a new post available, then at the top of the sidebar there’s links that allow you to subscribe to the RSS feed, follow me on Twitter, or like the blog on Facebook.* Whichever one you choose will get notices of new blog posts right in the center of you digital life within minutes of the time it they go live.

The plugin I got for Facebook is really pretty cool. Comments on the blog show up on the Facebook link and comments on Facebook are copied back to the blog. That way if a conversation is going on, you won’t miss it either place.

You also don’t want to forget the handy buttons on the bottom of each blog post that allow you to share it with your friends, followers, and anybody else on your social network of choice. If you liked an article here, odds are pretty good that they will too.

*Google+ coming soon.

When it comes to theology it’s not a matter of right or wrong, it’s just a matter of which is a little more wrong. For example, when it comes to free will vs predestination, free will is more wrong because predestination is just phrasing naturalistic determinism in absurd theological terms, whereas free will theology (like I was trained with) is based on nothing more than an attempt to make their god look a little less capricious. Adult, adolescent, child, and infant baptism along with the baptism of the dead is quite similar.

Mormons like to baptize children at the age of 8, but they’re also happy to baptize you again when you’re an adult on behalf of your dead friends and relatives*, like Mit Romney did on behalf of his dead atheist father-in-law, of course they’ll also do it for holocaust victims like Anne Frank. When you’re 8 and everybody else your age is getting baptized and everybody in your family and community expects it of you, there is no choice involved. It’s just a case of a young child doing what young children do: trying to please adults.

The only reason that baptizing the dead is any worse than baptizing children, especially in cases like what Mit Romney did, is that it completely dishonors the memory of a life that was lived and shows no respect for the decisions and values of the diseased during his or her life. The only redeeming factor in an act like this is the dead guy can’t be harmed by it.

Baptizing infants also isn’t really any better that baptizing the dead, it’s just considered mainstream. Neither has any choice in the matter and neither is even aware of it. The only real difference is that one is disrespectful of a life already lived while the other is disrespectful of a life to be lived.

Even with the groups that believe in “adult” baptism, denominations like Adventists and Baptists, they often consider 12 year olds to have reached the “age of reason” and able to make the choice to be baptized. This isn’t adult baptism, it’s adolescent baptism, carefully timed to try to hook the young just before their teenage rebellion begins. Of course this is a process that is complete with publicly taking solemn vows to be faithful to God and the church for your whole life.

I was baptized at 12, not because I had attained reason (that really took another decade), but because, at least at that point, the indoctrination had taken hold and in the Adventist church getting baptized at 12 is the thing you’re supposed to do. One ironic thing is that I first broke my baptismal vows less than a year later when I had my first Mountain Dew. I could go deeper into the various telling issues with adolescent baptism, but I covered that just a few months ago.

Baptism is fine for adults who are actually capable of entering into contracts and making commitments, the age of majority would be a good starting place for this.  For anybody else it’s just plain wrong. It’s not wrong in the sense of being horribly dangerous or damaging, since no adult takes the decisions they made as a child or the decisions made for them as an infant seriously. It’s just wrong in the sense that it’s laughably absurd, with increasing levels of absurdity as you move towards less and eventually no living tissue.

*On a side note, since Mormons believe that baptism should be the product of a free choice, but they are just fine with making that choice for the dead, and they believe that homosexuality is a free choice, you can now make the choice to be gay for a dead Mormon at All Dead Mormons Are Now Gay! If you don’t happen to know any, then one can be chosen for you at random from their extensive genealogical records. They’re giving the gift of eternal paradise to thousands, now you can give them the gift of a fabulous eternal paradise.

As if the Reason Rally wasn’t awesome enough already with an awesome line up of speakers, both Tim Minchin and Bad Religion performing, and a godless horde taking to the National Mall, now we’ll have even more entertainment. A group of evangelicals will be coming to spread their myths and legends to a group of atheists and skeptics.

Come join us there! We invite you to unite with us in a spirit of grace and truth (John 1:14, 1:18), ready to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15), with godly grace and wisdom (Col. 4:6).

This is not a counter-demonstration. We are going there to share Christ person to person as opportunity arises. We will not raise our voices. We will talk with those who want to talk with us. We will offer gifts and materials to all, but we will not press ourselves on those who do not wish to converse. Knowing that the way others may choose to gather near us is not entirely in our control, we will nevertheless attempt to avoid gathering groups larger than a handful of people.

I just might have to have a little fun with them. Oh…this should be fun.

(via Ophelia via Pharyngula)

I hear it’s Lent, so while the Catholic faithful are giving up something for their lord and savior, what can we, the godless hoard give up?

Moderation - All things in moderation, right? It’s a wonderful thing and generally makes you feel good, so if the point of Lent is to suffer, then let’s give up moderation.

Just imagine the pain and agony you’d experience after 40 days of bacon in every meal, chocolate every hour, and spending the whole time drunk! For the atheists who are fortunate enough to be employed, then there’s always just getting smashed every night and suffering through a hangover every day, you know, along with the bacon and chocolate. Then if your boss gives you crap about your hangovers, just let him know it’s for your pious Lentine suffering.

Accommodationalism - Even the most strident and outspoken atheist ass hole can be a bit accommodating at times, after all it’s necessary to survive in society. For Lent, you can let your inner douche show for 40 days! If you see someone on Facebook offer to pray for someone, you could respond with, “Get off your knees, you jack ass, and do something useful” or “While you’re on your knees, why don’t you do something useful?”However, I would NOT recommend going as far as ripping off Jesus fish and spitting on people wearing sanctimonious t-shirts as either could land you in jail.

I have a few other ideas, but they seem really dangerous and far too painful, but if you wanted I suppose you could, just for 40 days, give up such things as:

• Reason
• Critical thinking
• Humanist ethics
• Science
• Freedom
• Skepticism
• Hating God
• Eating babies
• Worshipping the devil

Oh, the horror!

You know what, since they think we believe in nothing, let’s give up what’s dearest to us all: nothing!

For those of you who aren’t aware, Idaho is a one party state. Sure, there are a handful of Democrats in the state legislature and it wasn’t that long ago that there was even a Democrat representing Idaho’s first congressional district in the last US congress, but Republicans control the state legislature. It’s not too bad when it’s the more reasonable, moderate Republicans in control, but in the last few elections the Tea Party has seized control.

HB 530 which would allow all employers, regardless of reason to not provide insurance policies that include coverage for contraceptives has passed it’s first committee vote by a vote of 7-3.

Now, according to an action alert I received from Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest a bill will be introduced on Monday, February 27 that will mirror Virginia’s recent legislation that would require trans-vaginal and trans-abdominal ultrasound prior to an abortion. While there are many very good objections to this kind of legislation, I don’t think we need to go any further than it’s a political move to mandate an unnecessary medical procedure. Let doctors and patients make those decisions and don’t make an already difficult and painful procedure worse.

As far as the political angle, this picture I saw on Living After Faith‘s Rich Lyon‘s Facebook wall sums it up well, as it involves an anatomy image that may not be safe for work, it’s below the fold:

Read more…