Random Thoughts
October Weather
I was walking to the grocery store in the rain this afternoon when the rain changed. I thought leaves were falling from the trees as raindrops knocked them loose, until I realized it was snowing. Huge snowflakes like cherry blossom petals falling from the sky fluttered down around me to disappear on the ground, like neutrinos passing through the Earth. Every once in a while one would actually hit and leave a fading white splat long enough for me pass by.
Some instructors have lamented the challenges of teaching students who are constantly logged-on, plugged-in, facebooked, etc.
Guess what? I like teaching the iGeneration*. I enjoy using YouTube clips in my lectures, putting together online discussions, and making use of blogs and online resources. I like the fact that they all have laptops (but not if they're rude enough to play games during class). I appreciate that I can upload my lecture notes as PDF files and they will all be able to bring them to lectures. I have a BlackBerry, an iPod, a netbook, a blog (obviously), a document…
It's been all over the news for so long and so hyped that people expect it to be 1918-1919 all over again. Well I reckon that I have that pandemic flu. Let me tell you all you need to know about this flu. How bad is it? How easy is it to catch it? How long has it taken for me to get over it? How does it feel to have it? (Some of you will ask how do I know I have that flu?)
I am not a medical doctor, if you feel sick follow the guidelines given by the Centers for Disease Control, and if you feel really sick report to an emergency room. Though honestly I don't…
Last week it was Science, with a swath of Ardipithecus papers. This week Nature has an above-average issue. I can't vouch for the quality of the papers (since I havent' finished them yet), but these look interesting (subscription required, unfortunately):
- Craig Venter and some distinguished colleagued offer "An agenda for personalized medicine.".
- Another team of outstanding researchers, including Francis Collins, David Goldstein, Leonid Kruglyak, Elaine Mardis, Andrew Clark, Evan Eichler, Greg Gibson, Trudy Mackay put up a review: "Finding the missing heritability of complex diseases."
-…
This just in: Berlusconi is not above the law. In a reassuring sentence the judges of the Italian "Consulta" of the constitutional court have ruled today that the "Lodo Alfano", a law strongly wanted by Berlusconi himself, is in conflict with the Italian Constitution where the latter says that citizens are equal in their rights and for the Law.
The "Lodo Alfano", named after one of Silvio's lacqueys who wrote it under dictation, is a law which was recently passed with the votes of the center-right parties. It prevents the Italian President, the Prime Minister, and the Chairs of…
Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it; and I have given the evidence to the best of my ability. We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most…
To test whether my belief that homeopathy is not an evidence-based rational system of medicine is reasonable or just prejudice on my part, I did a quick experiment using Google Scholar. (This was done Jan 17, 2008)
A "layman's meta-analysis" of sorts. Not supremely scientific alas (although perhaps somewhat reminiscent of a GCSE science project ), but the best I could do early in the morning with only vending-machine coffee to keep my brain from sleep ;-)
The Setup
The basics of the test were as follows:
1. Search for homeopathic trials in Google Scholar (using a neutral search term…
I was reading Charlie Brooker's excellent column in The Guardian and was disappointed to learn that our educational system, underfunded though it is, seems to have bought into the wave of pseudo-scientific nonsense that is washing over us and is paying good money for something called "Brain Gym".
You can view the official "Brain Gym" website here: http://www.braingym.org.uk/
Even from the first page, it starts looking more than a little suspicious. Look at this quote for example, which surely won't fill you with confidence that the tax money being put into Brain Gym is well spent:
"the UK…
Following on from a debate I had some time ago, in relation to alternative medicine (see my "Life Energy" rant) I tried to summarise the materialist view of the universe, to try and explain the reasoning behind my objection to use of the term "life energy".
It was written as a stream of consciousness and not researched or planned, so it is far from rigorous, but I think it works well enough as a rough outline, despite its many flaws. Here it is for your viewing pleasure.... I hope you're sitting comfortably, this is a long one ;-)
In the Beginning there was the Universe. Before that time didn…
Polly Toynbee has written a great article titled Quackery and superstition - available soon on the NHS"A sharp line has to be drawn between fact and fiction when it comes to spending public funds on alternative therapies".The full article is available at:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2236975,00.htmlIt is being discussed on www.richarddawkins.net here:http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=33297&p=608800#p608800As part of this, I had a little rant about those alternative practices that dabble in pseudo-scientific use of the word energy, usually in the…