I saw this posted this morning at PZ's and it brought a smile to my face. I have my own sexy little atheist, and our story is similar to Jodi and Jasons. So check this out. The internet proposal, Version 2.0
The first clue
The payoff
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Something New....
I still do not have internet access at my new home, but more and more I find myself in front of a computer elsewhere. Now that I have the time, I am only waiting for the access to either continue this blog, or start a new one.
Until then, I'll post some things that I care about, for the random person who stumbles upon this blog.
Today, it's Every Child By Two
Peace.
Until then, I'll post some things that I care about, for the random person who stumbles upon this blog.
Today, it's Every Child By Two
Peace.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
Dr. Frank is an asshole.
Dr. Frank's Pet Pain Spray
Homeopathic pet pain relief. 5 sprays in your pets water bowl everytime you give it water. 20 bucks for a 200 spray bottle.
I have a blind dog. He had poor vision as a puppy when I adopted him from the humane society (who found him left along the side of the road. How can anyone leave a puppy on the side of the road to die? Anyway,....) and lost the rest of his vision before he was a year old. He gets around pretty well. He has a habit of picking up one of my sneakers and carrying it around the house. If I didn't know better, I'd swear he uses the sneaker like a blind person uses a cane, carrying it so when he runs into something, the shoe hits first instead of his head.
I bring up my dog because I feel the pain of the people in the commercial for Dr. Frank's. I wish I could give my dog sight. I feel horrible when he runs into something, especially something new I just brought into the house that he isn't familiar with. I know that a lot of people, myself included, consider their pets part of the family. Ranger (my dog) dislocated his shoulder one day, and I held him, comforted him, and cried until he stretched out and popped it back in place. I can not stand suffering, and I would do anything that I could to prevent any member of my family from suffering.
And now, for 20$ to start, Dr. Frank will take advantage of our love for our pets, and sell us a bottle of flavored water.
I hate people.
Homeopathic pet pain relief. 5 sprays in your pets water bowl everytime you give it water. 20 bucks for a 200 spray bottle.
I have a blind dog. He had poor vision as a puppy when I adopted him from the humane society (who found him left along the side of the road. How can anyone leave a puppy on the side of the road to die? Anyway,....) and lost the rest of his vision before he was a year old. He gets around pretty well. He has a habit of picking up one of my sneakers and carrying it around the house. If I didn't know better, I'd swear he uses the sneaker like a blind person uses a cane, carrying it so when he runs into something, the shoe hits first instead of his head.
I bring up my dog because I feel the pain of the people in the commercial for Dr. Frank's. I wish I could give my dog sight. I feel horrible when he runs into something, especially something new I just brought into the house that he isn't familiar with. I know that a lot of people, myself included, consider their pets part of the family. Ranger (my dog) dislocated his shoulder one day, and I held him, comforted him, and cried until he stretched out and popped it back in place. I can not stand suffering, and I would do anything that I could to prevent any member of my family from suffering.
And now, for 20$ to start, Dr. Frank will take advantage of our love for our pets, and sell us a bottle of flavored water.
I hate people.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Fresh meat
A big thanks to Epiwonk for the link and spike in traffic. Welcome to the rebirth of a blog. I'll be back in a few hours with todays postings, hopefully some of you, my new visitors, will stick around and see if what I have to say is worth your time to read.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Evidence? Who needs evidence to start a panic?
Oh what the fu....
I remember the good ole days, when a flawed study actually had to be released for the panic to hit the streets. You may remember it as well. Power lines. Childhood Leukemia. Well meaning social scientists. Lack of control groups. Lack of proper methodology. Logical fallacies. The end result being widespread panic as people began believing that the electromagnetic radiation from power lines was causing cancer in little kids. An entire industry sprung up to take advantage of it, and it took real scientists years of real science and proper studies to convince people of the truth. Living near power lines is not going to kill your child. There is no increased cancer risk from the power lines. Hell, even today, you will find people who still believe the lines are giving tons of innocent children a horrible disease and the scientists are covering up the truth. All from a couple poorly done studies.
Well, now you don't even need a study. You can just wake up in the morning and decide to freak half of the United States out.
Front page of my local fish wrap today, Ronald B. Herberman, MD, the director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute has issued a warning linking cell phone usage with brain cancer.
So I know what you must be thinking. The head of a major cancer research center issues a warning that using cell phones can cause/causes brain cancer, he must have some hard evidence to back it up. Surely he wouldn't freak out the country and start another cancer panic without knowing what he was talking about, right?
Right?
Nope. Dr. Herberman issued his warning based on "early unpublished data." And you know, if this "early unpublished data" was coming from the first study ever done on the possible link between cell phones and cancer, I may give him a pass and assume that the "early unpublished data" actually backs him up on his claims.
But this is a subject that has been studied before. And the results are always the same. There is no link between cell phones and brain cancer. The study that his "early unpublished data" comes from, a multinational research project known as Interphone has already released peer reviewed results. And guess what? No cancer link so far.
So why issue the warning? Well, the good doctor says that "it takes too long to get answers from science and he believes people should take action now — especially when it comes to children." JENNIFER C. YATES and SETH BORENSTEIN AP News
Let's let Dr. Herberman speak for himself.
So rather than letting science work, and seeing if there is a risk involved, let's throw it all out and go with our gut feeling.
Pushing this man to yell, "fire!" in a crowded theater, apparently, was Devra Lee Davis, the director of the university's center for environmental oncology. She says:
Isn't that precious? Well, let's warn people about breathing. I mean, I don't know that breathing is dangerous, but I don't know that it is safe either! 100% of all people who breathe end up dying, after all.
Seriously. Technology comes with a price, whether it's pollution, health risks, or just that it makes us a little bit lazier. We really don't know the looooooooong term effects of cell phone use. But we really don't know the long term effects of countless new inventions. Maybe my ipod is giving me herpes and my flat screen is turning my brain into lettuce. Right now, all available evidence shows no link between cell phones and cancer. The FDA states on their website that if there is a risk from using cell phones, while stressing that they have no evidence that there is a risk, the risk would be very small.
We can live in fear, or we can live. Each and everyone of us has so many real terrors to worry about. To issue an unsupported warning like this is irresponsible and a slap in the face to science. Dr. Herberman probably thinks he is saving lives, but all he is causing is this:
Thank you for giving millions of people something new to worry about, for no reason at all.
I remember the good ole days, when a flawed study actually had to be released for the panic to hit the streets. You may remember it as well. Power lines. Childhood Leukemia. Well meaning social scientists. Lack of control groups. Lack of proper methodology. Logical fallacies. The end result being widespread panic as people began believing that the electromagnetic radiation from power lines was causing cancer in little kids. An entire industry sprung up to take advantage of it, and it took real scientists years of real science and proper studies to convince people of the truth. Living near power lines is not going to kill your child. There is no increased cancer risk from the power lines. Hell, even today, you will find people who still believe the lines are giving tons of innocent children a horrible disease and the scientists are covering up the truth. All from a couple poorly done studies.
Well, now you don't even need a study. You can just wake up in the morning and decide to freak half of the United States out.
Front page of my local fish wrap today, Ronald B. Herberman, MD, the director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute has issued a warning linking cell phone usage with brain cancer.
So I know what you must be thinking. The head of a major cancer research center issues a warning that using cell phones can cause/causes brain cancer, he must have some hard evidence to back it up. Surely he wouldn't freak out the country and start another cancer panic without knowing what he was talking about, right?
Right?
Nope. Dr. Herberman issued his warning based on "early unpublished data." And you know, if this "early unpublished data" was coming from the first study ever done on the possible link between cell phones and cancer, I may give him a pass and assume that the "early unpublished data" actually backs him up on his claims.
But this is a subject that has been studied before. And the results are always the same. There is no link between cell phones and brain cancer. The study that his "early unpublished data" comes from, a multinational research project known as Interphone has already released peer reviewed results. And guess what? No cancer link so far.
So why issue the warning? Well, the good doctor says that "it takes too long to get answers from science and he believes people should take action now — especially when it comes to children." JENNIFER C. YATES and SETH BORENSTEIN AP News
Let's let Dr. Herberman speak for himself.
"Really at the heart of my concern is that we shouldn't wait for a definitive study to come out, but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later"
So rather than letting science work, and seeing if there is a risk involved, let's throw it all out and go with our gut feeling.
Pushing this man to yell, "fire!" in a crowded theater, apparently, was Devra Lee Davis, the director of the university's center for environmental oncology. She says:
"I don't know that cell phones are dangerous. But I don't know that they are safe."
Isn't that precious? Well, let's warn people about breathing. I mean, I don't know that breathing is dangerous, but I don't know that it is safe either! 100% of all people who breathe end up dying, after all.
Seriously. Technology comes with a price, whether it's pollution, health risks, or just that it makes us a little bit lazier. We really don't know the looooooooong term effects of cell phone use. But we really don't know the long term effects of countless new inventions. Maybe my ipod is giving me herpes and my flat screen is turning my brain into lettuce. Right now, all available evidence shows no link between cell phones and cancer. The FDA states on their website that if there is a risk from using cell phones, while stressing that they have no evidence that there is a risk, the risk would be very small.
We can live in fear, or we can live. Each and everyone of us has so many real terrors to worry about. To issue an unsupported warning like this is irresponsible and a slap in the face to science. Dr. Herberman probably thinks he is saving lives, but all he is causing is this:
Susan Juffe, a 58-year-old Pittsburgh special education teacher, heard about Herberman's cell phone advice on the radio earlier in the day.
"Now, I'm worried. It's scary," she said.
She says she'll think twice about allowing her 10-year-old daughter Jayne to use the cell phone.
"I don't want to get it (brain cancer) and I certainly don't want you to get it," she explained to her daughter.
Thank you for giving millions of people something new to worry about, for no reason at all.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Polygamists 1, Texas 0
Is forcing your teenage daughter to get married to a man with multiple wives and have her first sexual experience on a bed in the middle of the chapel an act you should lose custody of your children over?
Not in Texas.
In an embarassing ruling for the Texas State Child Protective Services agency, the Third Court of Appeals ruled that the state had no right to take custody of the more than 440 children living at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints compound in West Texas. Read the whole story HERE.
The court ruled that there was no proof the children were in immediate danger, which is apparently the only legal justification for seizing custody in Texas.
This whole case bothers me. In a country built upon freedom of religion, this case toes the line of what is acceptable religious beliefs and what requires government action. Clearly to me, these children are being abused. Isolated from the world and born into the sect they will most likely die a part of because of an accident of birth. The male children are routinely abandoned so there are enough wives for the current men. The female kids have it worse, being in my eyes little more than property, sheltered from the world their whole lives, forced to conform and believe, until their parents marry them off in their early teens to a much older man. These kids are brainwashed from birth, and as a free citizen, I honestly have trouble imagining what it would be like to have no opportunity at all to make choices in my life.
One of the founding principles of this country is freedom to choose and practice your own religion, or no religion. But there has to be limits. Where do you draw the line? When does a belief stop being protected, and start being child abuse?
Not in Texas.
In an embarassing ruling for the Texas State Child Protective Services agency, the Third Court of Appeals ruled that the state had no right to take custody of the more than 440 children living at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints compound in West Texas. Read the whole story HERE.
The court ruled that there was no proof the children were in immediate danger, which is apparently the only legal justification for seizing custody in Texas.
This whole case bothers me. In a country built upon freedom of religion, this case toes the line of what is acceptable religious beliefs and what requires government action. Clearly to me, these children are being abused. Isolated from the world and born into the sect they will most likely die a part of because of an accident of birth. The male children are routinely abandoned so there are enough wives for the current men. The female kids have it worse, being in my eyes little more than property, sheltered from the world their whole lives, forced to conform and believe, until their parents marry them off in their early teens to a much older man. These kids are brainwashed from birth, and as a free citizen, I honestly have trouble imagining what it would be like to have no opportunity at all to make choices in my life.
One of the founding principles of this country is freedom to choose and practice your own religion, or no religion. But there has to be limits. Where do you draw the line? When does a belief stop being protected, and start being child abuse?
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