Monthly Archives: April 2010

Uffda

I’m using the Internet connection of some neighbor who’s name is “linksys” because my 6 year old wireless router died this morning. I have had a GI disease of some kind for the last few days which has made it impossible to eat pain meds. Ouch ouch ouch. Tomorrow, I get oral surgery. I blew all the dust out of all of my computers with those cans of air, and it settled on everything. And the vacuum cleaner sucks. In that it doesn’t.

So don’t expect any great blogging from me today, or even tomorrow, OK? Just don’t.

Maybe I’ll twitter baby duty tomorrow.

The Cucumber Slice on the Wheel of Death

Knife throwing is for real. This came up on a different thread. Although it is possible to make a fake stage act that involves what looks like knife throwing, that is actually fairly rare. It is easier to learn to throw the knife than to make a contraption that would actually fool today’s skeptical audiences.

The following is a YouTube video that happens to be of a performance that Stephanie Zvan, Julia and I saw last September (I remember two or three things in this video that identify it as that specific show, that specific day).
Continue reading The Cucumber Slice on the Wheel of Death

Boobquake: Well? Did the earth move for you?

I felt prettty sick all day, so I was unable to attend our local boobquake dinner. But I have been monitoring the seismographs. It is in fact somewhat rare to have an earthquake of 6.0 or greater on a given day. There are about 200 a year at that level, and they are random, and thus cluster somewhat as random things do. So the daily expectation of one or more earthquakes is less than 4/7. Nonetheless, the single 6 magnitude earthquake that happened on Boob Day (using the international time coordinates) was not impressive. We can conclude:
Continue reading Boobquake: Well? Did the earth move for you?

Study Confirms Link Between Autism and Use of Cells From Abortions in Vaccines?

First, let’s get this straight. I’m all for anti-science anti-vaxer right wingers not being vaccinated, as long as a) we take their children away from them (and vaccinate the poor dears) and b) isolate the adult anti-vaxers from the rest of the species, perhaps in Texas. But in the meantime, let’s look at the latest bit of (mis)information from the utterly insane side of our society. If nothing else, this story may serve to remind us all what we are fighting about…. not the attitude of this or that skeptics, or which movements should or should not be engaged in chopping the pope down to size. This, folks, is the real deal:
Continue reading Study Confirms Link Between Autism and Use of Cells From Abortions in Vaccines?

If you don’t understand that there is message in the medium, then you may not be helping

Notice that I didn’t say that the medium IS the message. Just that some of the message is in there. In the medium.

I am forever amazed at how easily compelled my fellow skeptics, and/or my fellow atheists, and/or my fellow feminists, and/or my fellow anti-racists are to tell each other that they are doing it wrong. It was once said (by a straight white male Christian, probably), that “If half the people who make speeches would make concrete floors, they would be doing more good.”

Continue reading If you don’t understand that there is message in the medium, then you may not be helping