Unreasoning awe

One from the “how did I miss this?” file – Tony Blair is gobsmacked that it was government policy not to appoint a Catholic as ambassador to the Vatican.

The former prime minister tells a BBC Northern Ireland documentary – to be broadcast from Wednesday 17 February – that the policy of banning Catholics from the post was “stupid”, “ridiculous” and “discriminatory”.

Really? Is it discriminatory not to appoint a lobbyist for cigarette manufacturers to a health-related job? Is it discriminatory not to appoint a murderer to run a domestic violence shelter? [Read more…]

A perfect storm of press releases

Some more on the Burzynski clinic and the Observer.

From Keir Liddle at the Twenty-first Floor on a perfect storm for skepticism.

The characterisation of skeptical bloggers as aggressive and sanctimonious is unfortunately nothing new and there are undoubtedly skeptics out there who benefit from reading Hayley Stevens post on the subject but I for one am fed up of how we are characterised.  We are seen at best as spoilsports and at worst know it alls robbing the universe of beauty and people of hope. We seem to seen as the lackeys of either big pharma or representatives of some sort of scientific hegemony intent on unweaving the rainbow. But most skeptics aren’t like that in the slightest, we don’t live in a grey universe composed solely of reason and logic, we find wonder and beauty in the near infinite majesty of the Universe and the more we discover the more there is to be awestruck by. [Read more…]

Flying around the internet

Skeptical Humanities on the Observer on Burzynski:

Entire communities throw untold sums of money at the slimmest (nonexistent, really) hope that these patients will recover at the Burzynski Clinic, and the Observer finds this uplifting.

…

Uncritically giving a cancer quack uncritical press? How could we possibly have mistaken that for promotion? We should have just called it as it was: a shoddy, pathetic, and irresponsible attempt at journalism. [Read more…]

We never

One or two points about that first Observer article, because that blame-the-bloggers not-pology is so annoying.

One, Stephen Pritchard wrote yesterday, truculently,

that concern should have been in the article, but because it was absent doesn’t mean that the paper was promoting the treatment, as some have suggested (“pimping” it, as one science writer so crudely tweeted).

No, the fact that the concern was absent doesn’t mean that the paper was promoting the treatment, but all the same, the paper (via the article) was to some extent promoting the treatment. Bainbridge called it “a pioneering treatment” when it’s a trial rather than a treatment, and “pioneering” makes it sound new and potentially promising as opposed to more than 30 years old and so far not a success. Bainbridge made it sound more promising than it is. How is that not promoting the treatment? [Read more…]

A sustained attack on the paper

The Observer has responded to bloggers’ responses to its uncritical story about a fundraising campaign to send a child to the Burzynski clinic. Stephen Pritchard writes:

Yet what was intended as a gripping, human-interest story quickly drew a sustained attack on the paper for apparently offering unquestioning support for a highly controversial cancer treatment, known at antineoplaston therapy.

That seems like an unnervingly irresponsible way to look at the matter. However gripping a human-interest story may be, surely it’s irresponsible (at least) to report a campaign to enable a very expensive very dubious “treatment” as if it were just a gripping story. [Read more…]

Dinosaur quiverfull

Wow.

Dinosaur picture: a nest full of baby dinosaur fossils

 What an amazing find. That’s fifteen juvenile dinosaurs in one nest. They’re thought to be about a year old. Fifteen juveniles in one nest! I was already puzzling about that before I read the text – which confirms that it’s puzzling.

Scientists  once believed that dinosaurs generally followed a crocodile-like model  of child care—they would lay their eggs and leave their nests for good.  This idea was replaced by the view that dinosaurs raised their  young for a time after hatching, the way many birds do.

Now,  Fastovsky explained, people understand that the ancient reptiles had  parenting styles unlike those of any animals alive today.

Fifteen  babies, as seen in the newfound fossil nest, is an unusually large  number of offspring for any animal to nurture at once, Fastovsky said.  Modern animals tend to have a few young, in which they invest heavily,  like humans, or they have a “zillion babies” and show no parental care,  like mosquitoes.

“So these [dinosaurs] seem to be something else.”

Kind of worst of both worlds – lots of kids, intensively raised. But how fascinating.

How did they all die at once? I was thinking maybe a blast of toxic gas from somewhere, such as a volcano. But –

As seen above, all of the young Protoceratops in the newfound nest are facing the same direction, giving scientists a clue to how they died.

“Our  scenario is that these things were pointed away from the wind as it was  blowing during a sand storm, and then they were catastrophically buried  by an encroaching dune,” Fastovsky said.

“I  think in this particular case, it really was dramatic—this fossil  really records the last, bug-eyed, terrified minutes of their little  lives.”

Like Herculaneum.

I love amazing finds.

 

 

More whacked-out causation

They seem to have a shaky grasp on what causes what, in Saudi Arabia.

A report in Saudi Arabia has warned that if Saudi women were given the right to drive, it would spell the end of virginity in the country.

See? That’s bizarre. If Saudi women drove, babies would be born non-virgins? How? How would that work?

Though there is no formal ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia, if they get behind the wheel, they can be arrested.

That too is bizarre. If there’s no actual law against women driving, what can they be arrested for?

As part of his careful reform process, King Abdullah has allowed suggestions to surface that the ban might be reviewed.

This has angered the conservative religious elite – a key power base for any
Saudi ruler.

Now, one of their number – well-known academic Kamal Subhi – has presented a new report to the country’s legislative assembly, the Shura.

The aim was to get it to drop plans to reconsider the ban.

The report contains graphic warnings that letting women drive would increase prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce.

…………..Homosexuality? How?

Anyway –  well-known academic Kamal Subhi seems to have a ludicrous idea of sensible risk-avoidance. Letting anyone do anything would increase all sorts of things, but it’s not worth locking everyone up in a small room for life to avoid all those things.

On the other hand, if the Saudi bosses do decide women can drive, I hope they urge them to reconsider the policy of wearing a blanket over their heads too.

Saudi women get in the back seat of a car

You don’t want those women driving a car, for sure.

What’s the big idea?

Just for the sake of argument, or exploration, let’s take seriously this claim that atheism is a little idea and god is a big one.

Atheism has become a very little idea, an idea that has to be shouted to seem important.  And that is a shame, because God was a big idea, and the rejection of the existence of God was also a big idea, once upon a time.

Was god a big idea?

Perhaps I’m not taking it seriously after all, because I can’t honestly see that it was. [Read more…]

The milk of human kindness

And then there’s Gulnare Freewill Baptist church, which told a parishioner – ever so politely, you understand – that her fiancé couldn’t come to the church again, on account of how he’s not a white person. Perfectly understandable. It’s because they (church members who voted on “the issue”) want to promote greater unity among the church body and the community. Obviously you can’t do that if there’s a not-white person at the church when all the other persons there are white. That would promote lesser unity. Everybody would look around uneasily and kind of split apart.

Melvin Thompson, former pastor of Gulnare Freewill Baptist church, proposed the ban after Stella Harville brought her fiance, Ticha Chikuni, to services in June. Harville, who goes by the name Suzie, played the piano while Chikuni sang.

[Read more…]