You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Science’ tag.
I like it when people on TV are right. :) I’ve already talked about Germ Theory Denial in a previous post, more of the here, but P&T do a great job on destructing and deconstructing the foolishness that people engage in.
Orac has a few qualms, but agrees mostly with what P&T have to say.
Astrophysics caught a magnificent break when they registered a huge burst of X-rays emanating from a galaxy in our neighbourhood.
The authors of this particular video have taken pains to make particle physics and the LHC as interesting and accessible as possible. Not a lot of meat here, but still the fly though of the LHC site and some of the pictures of the first higher energy collisions are really quite fantastic.
It is a video week here at DWR for better or worse. Sometimes you just want to share cool stuff with people, the Rationalist Anthem fits nicely into that category.
Going down to haggle at the local Farmer’s market is a weekly ritual for many urban dwellers. A recent study also indicates that the markets could be a contributing factor do our sense of fairness and altruism.
“They found that even sharing of money with a stranger in a psychological experiment was more common in societies were people got most of their food from markets, rather than growing it themselves, and in societies that embrace world religions.
In all there were 2,100 participants in the experiments, from communities ranging in size from 20 to 10,000 people, including hunter-gatherers, farmers and people who work for a wage.”
It is nice to see finally, that religions might actually be of some good in the overall picture. Here at DWR the opinion is the sooner they go away the better. However, the findings of the study seem to indicate that subscribing to a “world religion” could be a positive factor when deciding how fair to be to strangers. I guess, the buring the heretics and apostates comes later. :)
“Natural selection would never favour it in these large contexts, but it might work anyway,” Henrick said. “If that’s true, then hunter-gatherers and people in the smaller-scale societies should behave like people in large-scale societies” in the anonymous interactions modeled in the economic games.
Their study showed the opposite, Henrick said.
“In our view, it’s actually pretty tough to get people to co-operate in large-scale societies, and it took a lot of cultural evolution over millennia, probably, to get the right set of norms and institutions to internalize the notions of fairness and mutually beneficial exchange,” Henrick said.”
Sharing is never an easy thing as this study points out. I’m glad I live now and there is a modicum of altruism in people these days, as I suspect my career as a hunter-gatherer would be nasty, brutish and short.
Now in star trekkian like language fresh from the LHC webpage:
Full steam ahead!
Following the completion of the campaign to improve the reliability of the cabling for the new Quench Protection System, the main dipoles and quadrupoles of the eight LHC sectors have now been commissioned up to a current of 6 kAmps. In the early hours of Sunday 28 February, the beams were circulating again in the LHC: the longest run in CERN’s history has just started!
The beams are interfacing appropriately within acceptable parameters! Excellent. :)
Just Spreading the word here at the quaking in their boots err..Word Press Blogosphere.
Just a quick note, a wordpress blogger Micheal Hawkins had their blog removed at the spurious threats issued by the quack below. Reposting in the name of free speech and keeping quacks firmly in the cross hairs of skeptical inquiry and criticism.
Andreas Moritz is a cancer quack
Category: Skepticism
Posted on: February 18, 2010 5:07 PM, by PZ Myers
The Prime Quack has been identified: Andreas Moritz. He has admitted to getting WordPress to pull Michael Hawkins’ blog, and is also threatening me, now.
Michael Hawkins,
You may blame me for having your blog pulled. WorldPress had to remove your blog because otherwise it would have faced a hefty lawsuit, given the nature of the defamation campaign you had launched against me, and having positioned your blog link second place on the search engines.
I have not yet decided whether to sue you for defamation. I have asked my attorneys to assess the damages your defamation campaign has done to my work, business, and reputation since your blog has been up. I know that they are significant, but if they turn out to be an excessive loss of revenue and reputation and/or if I see any more defaming publications by you or your blog friends against me or Dr. Makoney, I will not hesitate to launch an expensive lawsuit against you that you will not forget for a long time. I have collected all the data of your blogs and publications involving me. Your last email to Dr. Makoney clearly shows that you are instigating a new defamation campaign, at least against him.
My investigations show me where you live and where you study (Augusta, Amine), and if I hear or see any further activities that involve me or Dr. Makoney you will need to hire a good attorney to defend your slanderous actions and campaigns.
My close friend, Dr Deepak Chopra, who in addition to Dr Makoney and myself have been viciously attacked by your friend, the fish zoologist, PZ Myers, are considering a lawsuit against him. Slander is slander, whether it is done online or offline. If your friend is wise, he will immediately remove those blogs from his site.
Just in case you are not aware of it, below are stated the laws that protect people like me against people like you.
Sincerely,
Andreas Moritz
Hmmm, misspelling names seems to be an epidemic among quacks. It’s also interesting that he’s openly threatening an expensive legal campaign against Hawkins.
If the threats of lawsuits and his own crazy snakeoil site aren’t enough to convince you that he’s a loon, consider that he was written up favorably on NaturalNews.com (you may recall Mike Adams, whose mind snapped under the weight of our criticism). Michael Hawkins wrote up an angry rebuttal to Moritz, as did I. He’s not a good person.
Moritz is a cancer quack. He is an evil man who takes advantage of others’ pain for his own profit.
Here’s what he says about cancer.
Cancer has always been an extremely rare illness, except in industrialized nations during the past 40-50 years. Human genes have not significantly changed for thousands of years. Why would they change so drastically now, and suddenly decide to kill scores of people? The answer to this question is amazingly simple: Damaged or faulty genes do not kill anyone. Cancer does not kill a person afflicted with it! What kills a cancer patient is not the tumor, but the numerous reasons behind cell mutation and tumor growth. These root causes should be the focus of every cancer treatment, yet most oncologists typically ignore them. Constant conflicts, guilt and shame, for example, can easily paralyze the body’s most basic functions, and lead to the growth of a cancerous tumor.
After having seen thousands of cancer patients over a period of three decades, I began to recognize a certain pattern of thinking, believing and feeling that was common to most of them. To be more specific, I have yet to meet a cancer patient who does not feel burdened by some poor self-image, unresolved conflict and worries, or past emotional trauma that still lingers in his/her subconscious. Cancer, the physical disease, cannot occur unless there is a strong undercurrent of emotional uneasiness and deep-seated frustration.
Note that he has absolutely no credentials or expertise in medicine; he calls himself a “medical intuitive”. Yet he is dispensing dangerous, defeatist advice on how to manage cancer, such as recommending against chemotherapy. Have you had a loved one die of cancer? It was their fault. Do you have or have you had cancer? It’s your own damn fault for being so negative.
Switch your target from Makoney, errm, Maloney to Moritz: he’s even crazier and more dangerous.
By the way, here is Andreas Moritz.
He’s peddling something called a liver flush — you gulp down a nasty concoction of Epsom salts, olive oil, and grapefruit, and then you go lie down for a while and suffer nausea and diarrhea. If you’re really dedicated, you can poop into a colander and collect strange lumps, as much as 2″ in diameter, that he claims are liver stones flushed out by the oily glop. This will make your knees feel better.
Seriously.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…