I will not wade into this one, it gets so tiresome over here, but Gnu Atheists aren’t the only people afflicted with tone trolls. Orac points out that the anti-vaxers are now using the ‘civility’ argument.
To people who are palpably wrong, the whole world is always going to look very rude to them. You’d think they’d learn after a while that whining about civility is never going to persuade anyone except other shallow, superficial wankers.
Hey, don’t miss this: Shermer will be speaking at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities next week, 14 October, at 7pm in Willey 175 (West Bank). There is a charge, but it’s cheap: $1 CASH members (advance sale only), $2 advance tickets through CASH tabling or at general meetings, and $4 at the door. All this is through the UM’s Campus Atheists, Skeptics, & Humanists.
I wish I could make it, but I’ll be all tied up that night.
This is terrible, wasteful, stupid news from Africa.
A measles outbreak has claimed the lives of 70 children in Zimbabwe over the past two weeks, mostly among families from apostolic sects that shun vaccinations, state media said Thursday.
I’m still waiting for news of evangelical atheists traveling to distant lands and killing people by encouraging ignorance. It doesn’t seem to happen.
California has had zero deaths from whooping cough in the last 55 years.
The toll this year: 9 babies dead of whooping cough. So far.
There is something about that link above that makes me angry. The source given for the terrible statistic is the Huffington Post — a site which has done far more than its share to promulgate lies and fear about vaccination, and which should bear a portion of the guilt for those dead children.
This video is of a crop circle fanatic seeing her dream come true: she actually gets taken to a fresh crop circle to experience the mystic energies emanating from it. It’s going to change her life, she says.
In case you don’t recognize the mysterious symbol flattened into the grass, all is revealed here.
Dr Hall had a gig writing for Oprah’s woo-laden magazine, and I didn’t even know it (that tells you how often I’ve looked at O), and it was a good plan: she’d be writing a skeptical column for them that would address common medical myths. Unfortunately, reality smacked hard into the jello of pop pseudo-medicine, passed through quickly, and Dr Hall now finds herself not writing for Oprah. She didn’t belong in that den of inanity anyway.
One amusing thing, though: compare the comments discussing her departure at Science-Based Medicine with those on Gawker. Right out of the gate, the Gawker commenters are whining that science doesn’t know everything, and wondering what’s wrong with Reiki, and accusing Dr Hall of all kinds of egotistical perfidy.
Two children are missing in Belize, and no one knows what happened to them. So a helpful ‘psychic’ declared that they had been fed to the crocodiles in a nearby sanctuary. The results were predictable.
Reports are that the mob shot and killed some of the 17 crocs held in captivity at the sanctuary. Also destroyed were the Rose’s two story home that included a laboratory and nursery for baby crocs. One baby American Crocodile was to be flown to Chicago to the Wildlife Discovery Center in Lake Forest, Ill. USA for the first ever animal exchange program between Belize and the USA. Over $2,500 in vet supplies that were recently donated for a new humane society that Cherie, along with other locals were working on in Punta Gorda were also lost. “This one wrongful incident has effected and hurt many innocent people and animals,” added Cherie.
The sanctuary looks like it was an amazing setup: all power was provided by solar and wind, they offered educational programs, they were training students, and they were also supporting local eco-tourism. And of course their primary mission was protecting endangered reptiles.
Now it’s all destroyed by the lies of one ignorant fraud, whipping up a mob into a ridiculous frenzy. Even now the people who ran the sanctuary can’t come back — they’ve been threatened with death.
Ignorance isn’t just a passive failure. Ignorance topples and destroys the great things people build up.
The organizers are asking for donations — they’re hoping to rebuild.
International wiring account number for donations
Belize Bank # 630-1-1-10130
Account# Vince & Cherie Rose Fire Victim Account
It’s a ridiculous myth that sharks have magical properties that prevent cancer, but it’s not true: sharks do get cancer. Furthermore, even if they did have low rates of cancer, grinding them up and powdering them and tossing them into your gut for chemical breakdown would no more cure your cancer than it would turn you into an unstoppable ferocious eating machine with gills.
Add them to the long list of species being exterminated on the altar of sympathetic magic.
Here’s a swami with his magic breathing advice for coping with throat cancer. How these guys can dispense bogus medical advice and not get lynched by angry cancer patients is a mystery.
At least he looks really goofy when he curls his tongue and breathes. Now if only there were some yogic enchantment that could do something about his creepy squink eye…
Roy Peter Clark wrote a book about language which was savaged viciously on Language Log — in other words, the poor guy was publicly ridiculed and his work rudely trashed. He couldn’t possibly have learned anything from that, could he? He has a guest post now in which he describes his reaction.
In brief, the criticism, some of it harsh and uninformed, helped me straighten out some crooked thinking about language, a process that resulted in the recent publication by Little, Brown of my book “The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English.” On August 22, Ammon Shea gave the book high marks in the New York Times Book Review, calling it “very much a manual for the 21st century.”
I write this on Language Log not to tell you that my success has proved some of your commentary off the mark. Quite the contrary, I have often said now to friends and colleagues that had I not been roughed up by the Language Loggers, I could not have developed the muscle tone to write the book.
Hmm. Who would have thought that maybe the response to criticism was dependent on the attitude of the recipient? Oh, gosh. Me.
