LEGAL NEWS:
Woo v. Woo - JZ Knight, a New Age charlatan who claims to “channel” a 35,000 year old Atlantean warrior named Ramtha is suing a former student because she dared to cut in on Knight’s action based on Ramtha’s advice. As PZ Myers says:
“The only thing that could make the trial sillier is if the court put Ramtha on the witness stand.”
And here’s a very telling excerpt from the article:
Knight’s attorneys claim Weaver copied seven school processes, including Fieldwork, an exercise designed to improve ability to focus attention and intuition by finding a symbolic card on a fence while blindfolded.
“Is Pin the Tail on the Donkey focused attention?” Spellman asked Wright.
“It could be,” Wright replied.
“So, then is it Fieldwork?” Spellman said.
“No, it’s Pin the Tail on the Donkey,” Wright said.
And then this:
Kilborne, on cross-examination, was not impressed.
“Isn’t it the flat truth that there is no Ramtha?” he asked.
“That is incorrect,” said Knight, who hosted a conference of scientists at her school to investigate the Ramtha phenomenon. “And science proved in 1997 that Ramtha was not me.”
I knew they had to update those science textbooks!
Woo settles in Woo v. Ben Goldacre – Alt. Med. quack Matthias Rath sued Goldacre for libel and the case has finally settled in Goldacre’s favor. Suck it, Rath!
Strike 3 for Andy Schlafly of Conservapædia (not to be confused with that evil, anti-creationist biased Wikipedia) – Twice before, Schlafly has received a sufficient intellectual beating in his crusade against to find some argument to use against Richard Lensky’s irrefutable proof for Evolution, but like a good masochist, Schlafly had to come back for yet another pounding . . . which the Editorial Board was happy to give him.
Play the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator – What would your name be had you been born to Sarah Palin?
Was the Large Hadron Collider worth all that money?
How much tuna is too much in one week? – As many of you know, canned tuna contains mercury, which in large quantities can be very dangerous. This article elaborates on how much tuna individuals can consume in a week to avoid going beyond the safe levels of mercury. I also really enjoyed this comment from one of the blog’s readers:
“An aside about heavy metals in food: According to ‘The Elements of Murder – A History of Poison‘ by John Emsley, we accumulate so much mercury in our bodies from our environment, that, by most world nutritional regulations for the amount of mercury allowable in meat for consumption, one in every ten people would be unsuitable as food for cannibals.”
So maybe exceeding the safe levels of mercury consumption will 1 day save your life.
In yet another beautiful piece of the pot calling the kettle black, after years of attacting Dr. Paul Offit’s character and making baseless conspirac accusatons about him, anti-vaxxeers Age of Autism chastize Offit for addressing Robert Kennedy Jr.’s criminal record (presumably in addition to refuting Kennedy’s claims though AoA would have us believe that Offit only attacks Kennedy’s character and not his claims). Oddly, now they’ve decided to pretend they’ve been fair to Offit all along while attacking his character as they deny having attacked his characer. Now that’s impressive.
Age of Autism is also promoting “Autism File Magazine,” praising it for it’s experts and advocates from around the world. So if they’re praising it, that can only mean 1 thing, that “the experts” who run the rag embrace the vaccine myth. If it didn’t, AoA would be attacking it as viciously as they do Paul Offit, Barack Obama, Amanda Peet, every medical study that’s ever proven them wrong, and anyone who publically disagrees with them.
AND NOW FOR A MOMENT OF SCIENCE:
Miscalculation In Geological Record Uncovered – “The precise timing of the origin of life on Earth and the changes in life during the past 4.5 billion years has been a subject of great controversy for the past century . . . It appears that records related to carbonate platforms which are often used throughout the early history of the Earth are not good recorders of the 13C/12C ratio in the open oceans. Hence, the work presented suggests that assumptions made previously about changes in the 13C/12C ratios of carbonate sediments in the geological record are incorrect.” Even though science once again proves itself to be self-correcting, non-authoritative, and able change its conclusions when shown new evidence, I expect creationists will falsely trumpet this story as further proof of the evil scientist conspiracy to deny god.
DNA ‘Tattoos’ Link Adult, Daughter Stem Cells – “Using the molecular equivalent of a tattoo on DNA that adult stem cells (ASC) pass to their “daughter” cells in combination with gene expression profiles, University of Utah researchers have identified two early steps in adult stem cell differentiation—the process that determines whether cells will form muscle, neurons, skin, etc., in people and animals.”
[...] Fall of the doctor who said his vitamins would cure AIDS – Several days ago, I posted that Matthias Rath was forced to settle in his libel case against skeptic Ben Goldacre for articles he’d written in the Guardian. Goldacre and the Guardian were found by a court of [...]