Raise a glass to Christopher Hitchens

As soon as I can this evening, I will pour a toast to a man who never gave quarter to a world filled with every kind of petty dictator and delusional powermonger. And even when his friends and allies disagreed on some point, he could build an incredibly strong case as easily and as casually as though he was conversing about the weather.

Given his fondness for libations, and his rabble-rousing ways, I suspect he would have respected the primary mode of remembrance that he’s garnering.

Though The Hitch didn’t believe in sin, I bet he’d have gotten a chuckle out of this song.

He was an orator, a statesman, and a good human being. The movement is poorer without him, but it marches on.

Raise a glass to Christopher Hitchens
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Fasting Away To Nothing for an Imaginary Deity

Anorexia is a serious mental illness that wastes your body as it ravages your self-image. Some people find it a display of piety to simply not eat for forty days, mimicking all the mental illnesses that lead anorexics to the same behaviour. This is disturbing, especially when you can see them waste away and their already religiously-degraded mental functions dissipate over time. This video, via Andrew Skegg, is disturbing in exactly that way, especially when viewed in its proper context.

This woman is starving herself repeatedly over three forty-day fasts, engaging in anorexic behaviour by ingesting nothing but a multivitamin and water, breaking the fast with a week of Passover-kosher food then repeating the cycle, all for the purpose of getting in good with a deity that very probably does not exist. And on the chances that it does, it very probably does not care that you have starved yourself for so long out of supplication.

Below the fold. Trigger warning for anorexics.
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Fasting Away To Nothing for an Imaginary Deity

UN to Canada: “If you won’t investigate Aboriginal women’s murders, we will”

Via a press release by Native Women’s Association of Canada, evidently the United Nations will be stepping in to investigate the significantly higher murder rates of Aboriginal women in Canada after law enforcement has essentially failed to adequately investigate.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has decided to conduct an inquiry into the murders and disappearances of Aboriginal women and girls across Canada. The Committee, composed of 23 independent experts from around the world, is the UN’s main authority on women’s human rights. The Committee’s decision was announced today by Jeannette Corbiere Lavell, President of the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), and Sharon McIvor of the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA).
[…]

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UN to Canada: “If you won’t investigate Aboriginal women’s murders, we will”

Harper will destroy long gun data despite Quebec’s pending court challenge

Via The Globe and Mail:

Brushing off attacks from Quebec and the opposition, Mr. Harper and his ministers said they will not wait for the court ruling to fulfill a campaign promise to get rid of the registry and its unreliable data.
[…]

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Harper will destroy long gun data despite Quebec’s pending court challenge

Meta-analysis: Still no link between cell phones and cancer

Via Skeptic North, good news for the side of science in the ongoing manufactroversy driven by people who are deathly afraid of wireless technology. A new meta-analysis of prior studies shows no link, causal or otherwise, between cellular phone usage and any of the forms of cancer commonly claimed by anti-wifi advocates. I’m sure this won’t stop them from repeating their claims that there must be damage if only we look at specific variations of the EMF spectrum.

We are constantly reminded of the failure of society to recognize the dangers of tobacco, let alone do something about it, and the industry led effort to suppress information and increase uncertainty in the pubic is held up as proof that all industries will stop at no lengths to protect their investment, despite dangers to the public. In the face of this, we need a scientific outlook to unblinker us from determining an unbiased truth. A new systematic review published in October’s Bioelectromagnetics is an excellent illustration of how we determine causality.

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Meta-analysis: Still no link between cell phones and cancer

Canada withdraws from Kyoto protocol

Hot on the heels of my last post, wherein Michael Mann proclaims there’s still time to make the right choices, Canada makes a very wrong one. And for very wrong reasons.

Canada has pulled out of the Kyoto protocol on climate change, one day after an update [the Durban accord] was agreed on, saying the accord won’t work.
[…]
“The Kyoto protocol does not cover the world’s largest two emitters, the United States and China, and therefore cannot work,” Kent said. “It’s now clear that Kyoto is not the path forward to a global solution to climate change. If anything it’s an impediment.”

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Canada withdraws from Kyoto protocol

Michael Mann at TEDxPSU: “there’s still time”

Michael Mann and his IPCC report, the hockey stick graph, which has (by the way) been vindicated in twelve subsequent papers as being accurate and correct in how steeply climate has changed since humans began emitting CO2, have essentially sealed the climate denialists’ fate. Unfortunately, these same climate denialists, by their systematic campaign of disinformation about climate change, have all but sealed all of humanity into ours, in preventing us from taking meaningful action. Mann says, however, “there’s still time to make the right choice”.
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Michael Mann at TEDxPSU: “there’s still time”

Frozen Planet promo

I was on the fence about actually buying BBC’s Frozen Planet, though I started warming to it after rumors that it was going to cut out mentions of climate change in North American releases turned out to be false. Now, however, I think I need to get the Blu-Ray — on the condition that I can get the Attenborough version.

Yes, it was the turtle at ~1:30 that sold me.

Frozen Planet promo

Double X Science on pseudoscience

Emily Willingham’s blog Double X Science is only about two months old, though I’ve followed her on Twitter for a long time now so I’ve been well aware she’s worth reading. She’s not alone in her new endeavour either — she has a bang-up host of contributors.

Emily’s post from yesterday is worth highlighting, given that we bandy about terms of art like “pseudoscience” all too freely sometimes. Visit for a ten-question cheat sheet for quickly and reliably determining what’s real science, and what’s pseudoscience.
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Double X Science on pseudoscience