Dirty Limericks and Skeptics

Well I'll be that sounds like just the best combination ever and it can be found in the 87th skeptics circle of at Action Skeptics, go and enjoy if you dare.

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The latest skeptic's circle

The latest edition of the skeptics circle is up Archaeoporn, read and enjoy.

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A few things to think about

Well courtesy of the Scienceblogs weekly round up email I found several posts that I just had to share with you all.

Firstly Living the Scientific Life gives reason why more science education (especially biology in this case) is needed.

Secondly Pharyngula highlights possible the best comeback to a creationist statement ever! (from Mike the Mad Biologist).

And finally again from Pharyngula something that just has to be watched.

Enjoy and stay tuned for when I actually get back to blogging again lol.

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New skeptics circle is up

Well here is most recent skeptics circle hosted by Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes. Read and enjoy

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Love is in the air at the skeptics circle

Well at least the Valentine's Day edition of the skeptic's circle is out at Bug Girls Blog.

Check it out as usual the quality is good and the quackery is busted.

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Homeopathy the way it should be sold

Here is a site that sells homeopathy the way it should be sold with plenty of disclaimers as to the actuall effects and lots of winks and nods to the placebo effect. Now if only I had thought of it sooner.

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Diet Water

Hmmm well i guess someone had to try and sell it after all people will buy anything it seems

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=23701

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Science Based Medicine

Orac has kindly made us aware of a great new group blog looking at Science-Based Medicine.

As he succinctly puts it:

It's a new year, a year that I, as an advocate of science- and evidence-based medicine hope will be less filled with dubious claims and quackery than last year. (I'm ever the optimist.) To that end, Steve Novella has asked me to announce a new blog to the Skeptics' Circle mailing list as well as to bloggers who are alarmed by the proliferation of non-evidence-based medicine. It is a blog that many of you, I hope, will be interested in and find to be of value in the never-ending battle against woo.

I hope you join with me in enjoying what the big guns of the medical/skeptical blogosphere have to teach/share with us.

First up is a great article on the false dichotomy between herbs and drugs, or to put it another way Herbs = Drugs, so why should they be treated differently?

Oh and on a similar note the latestest skeptics circles is up at Whitecoatunderground.

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Compliments of the Season

Well I hope every one is enjoying the holiday season. For once our summer is actually being summer and it was nice to have a lot of sun on the solstice (our wedding anniversary - 3 years), of course it helps to be in the southern hemisphere. Though I must admit the December is usually out wettest month and there is now some concern for lack of water for the rest of the summer and into early autumn (ie March) which is our period of usually good weather.

Two thoughts I wanted to leave you with prompted mainly by the season:

1. Why oh why would shepherds be out in the fields tending their flocks in the middle of winter?
2. Do nun's habits remind anyone else of a Burkha?

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Giving Thanks

In the spirit of the US holiday of thanksgiving that occurred so recently (Ok it was a week ago now almost), and that I got a chance to participate in due to a friend of ours from the states hosting a thanksgiving dinner, I would like to post some thoughts I had about the general tradition of giving thanks before meals (rather than the tradition specific to this holiday).

Yes I have some thoughts about saying grace before meal.

It is supposed to be sauying thanks for the food that we are about to receive but how inconsiderate is it to not give thanks to the people who actually provided the food the farmers who grew it, those invovled in the processing of it (ie bakers butchers etc) and possibly most importantly in our consumer age the person who earned the money to buy it. (ok I could really get pedantic and talk about the ancients who domesticated the crops and cattle - by genetic modification through cross breading and artificial selecttion but then that really should be a subject for its own whole history of science post).

How arogant is it to ignore all the effort that goes into the food we eat and give thanks only to god.

If you take the farmer or the baker out of the equation it pretty much falls over for most people in this day and age so it is to them that the bulk of thanks should go.

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