(Also on Sb)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Usually, Oz just dispenses pointless pap and feel-good noise, but now he’s antagonized the agriculture lobby. On a recent show, he claimed that apple juice was loaded with deadly arsenic — a claim he supported by running quick&dirty chemical tests on fruit juices, getting crude estimates of total arsenic, and then going on the air to horrify parents with the thought that they were poisoning their children.
One problem: his tests weren’t measuring what he claimed. The FDA got word of the fear-mongering he was doing, and sent him a warning letter.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is aware that EMSL Analytical, Inc. has obtained and tested 50 samples of retail apple juice for total arsenic content on behalf of Zoco Productions. It is our understanding that, based on these test results, you will assert during an upcoming episode of The Dr. Oz Show that apple juice is unsafe because of the amounts of total arsenic found in the samples.
We appreciate that you have made the results of these tests available to us. As we have previously advised you, the results from total arsenic tests CANNOT be used to determine whether a food is unsafe because of its arsenic content. We have explained to you that arsenic occurs naturally in many foods in both inorganic and organic forms and that only the inorganic forms of arsenic are toxic, depending on the amount. We have advised you that the test for total arsenic DOES NOT distinguish inorganic arsenic from organic arsenic.
The FDA has been aware of the potential for elevated levels of arsenic in fruit juices for many years and has been testing fruit juices for arsenic and other elemental contaminants as part of FDA’s toxic elements in foods program. The FDA typically tests juice samples for total arsenic first, because this test is rapid, accurate and cost effective. When total arsenic testing shows that a fruit juice sample has total arsenic in an amount greater than 23 parts per billion (ppb), we re-test the sample for its inorganic arsenic content. The vast majority of samples we have tested for total arsenic have less than 23 ppb. We consider the test results for inorganic arsenic on a case-by-case basis and take regulatory action as appropriate.
The analytical method for inorganic arsenic is much more complicated than the method for total arsenic. You can find the method that FDA uses to test for inorganic arsenic at this web address:
http://www.fda.gov/Food/ScienceResearch/LaboratoryMethods/ElementalAnalysisManualEAM/ucm219640.htm
The FDA believes that it would be irresponsible and misleading for The Dr. Oz Show to suggest that apple juice contains unsafe amounts of arsenic based solely on tests for total arsenic. Should The Dr. Oz Show choose to suggest that apple juice is unsafe because of the amounts of total arsenic found by EMSL Analytical, Inc.’s testing, the FDA will post this letter on its website.
His show got this letter that clearly explains why his measurements were invalid a week before the show was aired, and Oz ignored it and went ahead and broadcast a misleading and hysterical piece. Some public schools are already yanking apple juice from their lunchrooms on the basis of Oz’s lies.
Maybe somebody should explain to Oz that arsenic is entirely “natural”. Or maybe some orchard owners ought to get together for a big class-action suit.
(Also on FtB)
Usually, Oz just dispenses pointless pap and feel-good noise, but now he’s antagonized the agriculture lobby. On a recent show, he claimed that apple juice was loaded with deadly arsenic — a claim he supported by running quick&dirty chemical tests on fruit juices, getting crude estimates of total arsenic, and then going on the air to horrify parents with the thought that they were poisoning their children.
One problem: his tests weren’t measuring what he claimed. The FDA got word of the fear-mongering he was doing, and sent him a warning letter.
Every day, I get a few dozen emails telling me that there are inappropriate ads splattered on the site: people love to send me screencaps of that “Christian singles” ad.
I know.
You can stop telling me now.
They’re bad ads, we all know. Setting up this network wasn’t cheap: it took investment in a server, and most of all, paying out money to people who knew what they were doing in order to set it up. We’re currently in a small financial hole and Ed Brayton is scrambling to get us out of it as quickly as possible, so we can be at least a little bit profitable. We got what we could to bring us some return, while Ed is off shopping the network as a platform for more appropriate advertising. We’ve only been live for a bit more than a month! Be patient. Tolerate (or better yet, ignore) the noise on the sidebar as we try to grow.
But you can stop telling me what I already know, OK?
Gah, I hate flowcharts. And I hate pathetic attempts to explain philosophy with a flowchart.
Most people, I’ll wager, have a pretty hazy relationship to spiritual beliefs. For example, there are Christians who don’t go to church, Jews who don’t believe in God, and agnostics who don’t really believe in God but also say they’re spiritual. If you know exactly what you believe in, then consider yourself lucky. For the rest of us, this handy infographic, created by Cameron Blair of The Fellowship for Evangelism in the Arts, lays out an astonishingly wide array of religious thought into one deceptively simple flowchart.
Ugh. That thing is hideous — it’s another example of how religion makes ugly everything it touches.
It forces everything into simple binary choices: “deceptively simple” is right.
The entire right two-thirds of the graphic is dedicated entirely to Christian suppositions, asking questions that only matter to an evangelical Christian. The worldview of the ‘artist’ is all that’s explored here.
The left side does nothing but fuss over where the godless find meaning, as if that’s the most important thing we ever worry about. And then all it does is split everyone into categories…categories that are not mutually exclusive.
As long as we’re making flowcharts that are ugly, pointless, and simplistic, I thought I’d make my own, which is mine, which is far better than the one above.
| Does god exist? | → | NO | → Correct. Have a cookie. |
| ↓ | |||
| YES | |||
| ↓ | |||
| You’re a deluded moron. Goodbye. |
There. Done. Easy.
I can take a suggestion. Here’s a prettier version of my flowchart.
This is Superman getting shot by a tank.
The guy is so super-tough that his only response is to choke out some kind of gutteral noise, “GD”. I don’t even know how to pronounce that; maybe it’s Kryptonian for “ow” or something.
I could see Guy Gardner and maybe even Hal Jordan (Green Lanterns) saying it. I could see Oliver Queen (Green Arrow) saying it. I could easily see Damian Wayne (Robin) or MAYBE even Bruce Wayne saying it. But Superman was created to be the “perfect” super-hero. Unblemished. Superman is an American icon.
It grieves me to see a liberal Scottish schmuck like Grant Morrison take these liberties. I’m sorry, Superman would NEVER take God’s name in vain. In the words of the late Jim Croce, “You don’t tug on Superman’s cape.
“Perfect” apparently means “prissy” in his vocabulary. But I think he’s just given permission for some superheroes in the DC universe to start swearing like angry drunken sailors, which could be fun.
I understand that it’s only a comic and it’s not the real world, but I feel that as a Christian I have to draw the line somewhere.
Yeah, somewhere on the far side of petty and silly.
Besides, how can you get upset at a grunt? Everyone knows, Superman is a dick.
Scott Stephens is the Religion and Ethics editor for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation online, and he’s a bit of a whacker — he’s one of those cranky apologists for religion, and he really, really despises those awful New Atheists, as you’ll see. He was recently in an intelligence2 debate, on the proposition that “Atheists are wrong” — his side, the affirmative, lost. He has just posted his position on the debate, titled The Unbearable Lightness of Atheism, and it’s easy to see why he didn’t fare so well. It’s a bitter diatribe informed only by his own ignorance and his deeply held conceit that god is real and religion is good, and therefore atheists must be wrong.
You can find New Atheist sentiments expressed in the 1940s. So what’s new about ’em?
I just had to share. Look at this sample: at least 5 different fonts, 6 different colors, shadowed text, and all superimposed on an irrelevant and elaborate background.
And then there’s the content: It’s a creation museum! It’s a taxidermy collection! And it’s run by some antique tools!
Savor the Creation Museum and Taxidermy Hall of Fame of North Carolina; I don’t think it will change any time in the near future, so there’s no hurry. It’s so nice of creationists to erect these monuments to stupidity and tastelessness on the web.
(Also on FtB)
As I’ve mentioned before, one annoying property of Christians is that they keep lecturing us on what atheists believe…and they’re always wrong. Here’s a suggestion next time they do this to you: tell them to go look at these two lists written by atheists and get their stories straight.
10 Myths Many Religious People Hold About Atheists, Debunked.
I Am An Atheist: 16 Things Atheists Need Christians to Know.
