JQH's Law for arguments with homeopaths

“Perhaps their homeopathic philosophy suggests to them that any arguments are made more potent if they are greatly diluted with tens of thousands of meaningless words.”

--jaycueaitch, Letting Off Steam

I submit for the internet's consideration that this is the best synopsis of all homeopathic arguments EVER and should henceforth be known as JQH’s Law!

Linkitty-links!!! Skeptic Circle! Skeptical Parent Crossing! Carnival of the Godless!

The 104th Edition of the Skeptics' Circle is now up over at Space City Skeptics, a blog I have enjoyed since its fabulous inception! Go check it out!

Another great blog carnival, Skeptical Parent Crossing, is up at Skepdad! This is an awesome carnival that I've been privileged to participate in in the past! I always look forward to reading other skeptical parents' writings.

There's a mighty poetic Carnival of the Godless up at Reduce to Common Sense! I'm still reading through all the awesome entries!

GRACIOUS, there's some awesome blogging going on out there!!! I even managed an actual submission to the Skeptics' Circle this time. Clearly I was too busy blogging about squirrels to post much in the way of critical thinking and parenting this month, and also, I haven't been posting as much godlessery. ZIRCON is now my god!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

(Have some more coffee, Perky!)

If I were an astrophysicist...

... I would just NEVER BE ABLE TO STOP HI5-ING people!!!!!

Why Zircon is AWESOME!!!

I am reading about the mineral zircon.

ZIRCON!!!!

Sounds like an evil science-villain from a pulp serial, doesn't it! ZIRCON THE DESTROYER, galactic space-emperor!!!! It is not, I found, the same thing as cubic zirconium, the diamond substitute, which is ZnO2, zirconium dioxide. No, the zircon I'm talkin' 'bout is ZrSiO4, zirconium silicate, and apart from the action-adventure name, here's why it's so cool.

Zircon is the oldest known mineral on earth. This is because it is the very first thing to crystallize when molten granitic magma cools to the point where solid crystals are even possible. Then granite forms around the zircon crystals. However, zircon is harder than granite, a 7.5 on the Mohs scale (1 = talc, 7 = quartz, 10 = diamond). Thus this oldest granite part of Earth's first crust eroded away, leaving the zircon crystals to stand as our only relic of the first-ever surface of our planet! Planet Earth's oldest minerals!!! How cool is that???

It gets even better.

We are using a tiny FLECK of zircon crystal from Apollo-freakin'-17 to help us fine-tune date the age of the freakin' MOON!!!

HOW AWESOME IS THAT??? :) :) :)

Here's my utterly sleep-deprived, exercise-sore, underperkilycaffeinated understanding of how it works. Please feel more than welcome to correct me in the comments if I've fluffed it!

To date, our analyzed lunar samples had been from low-lying areas of the moon, which had suffered meteor impacts, and thus the crust had re-melted. Thus, these zircons were younger than the formation of the moon. The fleck, half a millimeter in diameter, which will hence be known as THE FLECK, came from the lunar highlands, and is 4.42 billion years old! That's TWO DECIMAL POINTS, BAYBEE!!!! In geological terms, that's INSANELY precise! We can date it with this degree of precision 'cause zircon crystals often contain uranium, which of course decays into lead at an extremely regular and well-known rate. So you measure the ratio of lead to uranium inside your zircon, and voila! The age of your mineral. The reason we've never done this precise an analysis before is that our technology has advanced considerably since the time the Apollo samples came back. They've got that hoopy frood Alexander Nemchin, who discovered the world's oldest diamond, working on it! :)

The Moon is generally believed to have coalesced out of the debris when a Mars-sized object BASHED into the Earth back when the solar system was still gettin' its shiznit together. KAPOWWWWWW, SPLAT!!!! Ohhhhh the chaos!!! Cats and dogs living together!!! Mass hysteria! So, the Moon cooled off before the Earth did 'cause it's got less mass, and we know about how long it would have taken a Moon-sized glop of magma to cool off enough to form zircon crystals. So the approximate age of the Moon = the age of the oldest zircon we find there + cooling time. NEAT, huh? :)

Finding THE FLECK, this tiny mote, and with our tools of analysis turning it into such a COLOSSUS OF SCIENCE, is hugely exciting to me-- not just in the results, but in the manner in which we get the results! I LOVE IT when huge discoveries come in teeny, tiny packages!!!

It's one small stone for man, and one giant leap for mankind's understanding.


http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/40214/title/Oldest_zircon_fine-tunes_history_of_moons_formation

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16486-moon-sample-contains-oldest-zircon-on-earth.html

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/01/26/2474456.htm?site=science&topic=latest

A skeptical argument for troll-feeding

Why do I talk to trolls?

I spent some o' my precious time last night feeding a concern troll over on Respectful Insolence. Trolls exist to argue. They only have power if you argue with them, i.e., feed 'em. I've been around the internet block, I know better than to troll-feed... and yet...

Here's the thing. I view troll-feeding as a useful tool in the skeptical arsenal--because I owe much of my skeptical "conversion" to reading skeptics' responses to internet trolls.

Let me back up a bit. Bear with me, won't you, while I take you on a guided tour of how one woman went from innocent technophobe to 83% 4chan. :)

Computers were good for two things, as far as I used to be concerned-- Photoshop, and email. Let's look through my email back then. My dad loves a good conspiracy theory. He used to forward them willy-nilly, without fact-checking, because he "just wants to inform people," claiming he held no opinion one way or the other. Well, way back in the day, my father was forwarding me antivax newsletters, and they scared me silly! THIMEROSAL!!! MERCURY!!! POISON!!!! and the dreaded a-word... AUTISM!!!!!!! I was first-time preggers. Soon afterward I was a new mom-- sleep-deprived, paranoid, and scared all the time that I was accidentally going to harm my child. I was vulnerable, confused, parched for objective information, and the antivaxx Kool-aid was sitting right there on the table in front of me. I even asked the nurse at the pediatrician's office about thimerosal-- she sounded irked, and replied shortly that their office doesn't even order the ones with thimerosal.

Ok... fears temporarily assuaged. But why did she sound so short with me? What was that all about?

Welllllllll....

As a new mom, and a stay-at-home one at that, I used the magic of the internets to connect with other adults throughout the day. It saved my sanity. What did I read? Well, LiveJournal. I started with my husband's friendslist before I made my own. Then, when our friends weren't posting enough to keep my mind occupied, I read the comics blogs my hubby linked to. One of them is Polite Dissent, written by a doctor-- a review of medicine in comic books! HOW AWESOMELY GEEKY! Exactly my cup of Supersoldier-serum-laced tea! Plus, I liked the title of the blog. "Polite Dissent." How clever! How pithy! And look, he has a sidebar full of links!... Hey, lookit that blog there-- it's called "Respectful Insolence." Sounds kinda like "Polite Dissent," only sassier. Lemme check that one out.

*click*

And thus was my skeptical conversion begun.

I read Respectful Insolence voraciously, going through all the archives. I clicked on links on his sidebar-- I found myself addicted to medical blogs! I still am addicted to medical blogs. They are shiny. They make me feel happy, interested, engaged, and intrigued! They stretch my mind and my heart. (Ew.) They are the ultimate human drama, and the fact that the stories are true makes them that much more awesome. I love reading about real people doing real things to help other real people! These blogs, especially the activist blogs like Orac's and others written by docs and scientists in the fight against pseudoscience, denialism and quackery, put forth arguments for vaccination so reasonably and refuted the antivax complaints of which I had read in my dad's emails so deftly that I was able to see that the evidence was FIRMLY on the side of vaccination being good for the human race. In fact, they made me itch to get my own vaxxes updated (which I did, thank you). Kool-aid averted, reason prevails!

Well, one late night I was reading a doctor's blog-- I cannot for the life of me remember which one, alas!!!-- and the author was dandily refuting some antivax canard or other. It was so fun to read that I scrolled into the comments.

These particular comments were plagued by an antivaxxer by the handle of "Sue." She has shown up in many blogs and blog posts devoted to autism and vaccines, and has adopted many handles, "Common Sense" being ironically among them. And what I saw was denialism in action. No matter how many times she had her ass handed to her, she ad hom attacked the arguers as stupid or pharma shills, flagrantly ignored any argument she couldn't refute, resorted to "nuh-UH" and dismissing out of hand any studies that refuted her position, and generally repeated her same already-refuted arguments over and over and over. This went on for pages and pages!!! She argued, people replied, the cycle kept going! NOW I UNDERSTOOD why my pediatrician's nurse was so brusque when I brought up thimerosal-- those who have heard the antivax canards TIME AND TIME AGAIN have refuted them SO MANY TIMES that we just sound SNIPPY to anyone who hasn't heard the whole argument a MILLION TIMES!!!

So, why feed trolls? What good does it do to keep arguing?

Because trolls, through their own incoherent rantings, are making the skeptical arguments FOR us.

THIS was the truth I realized while I was reading those pages and pages of Sue. She was making her own side look terrible, and the people who argued against her just kept on providing evidence-- evidence which was helpful to me in finding objective answers! Reasonable but underinformed people, like me, will read the thoughtful, logical arguments, see the evidence with links to the science, then see the screeds of trolls in the comments for a shining, foetid example of how the other side thinks.

So, take a moment to thank the troll sitting next to you. Thanks, troll! You've helped save my kid from getting measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, Hib, polio, pertussis, and more!!! Jus' keep on talkin'... :)

:Sniffle: I'm so proud!

My husband's skeptic blog Homologous Trend got its very first troll today!

How quickly the young blogs grow up! :)

More adventures with autism!

Wonderful Husband and I dealt with a low-blood-sugar-fueled autistic SUPER-meltdown today, which got me to thinking, yet again, about the Frustrated Mom's Curse: "I hope you have a child who acts just like you." I remember my mother uttering this many times to me. When I was a child, I thought nothing of it. "A child just like me? Pff. Wha'EVAH." Nowadays, though... yeah, I see what she meant, 'cause my boy and I are SO MUCH alike it's beyond zany.

You see, my son and I think like mathematicians. At least, like mathematicians as exemplified in the old joke where a physicist and a mathematician were both told to go into a house, fill a pan with water, and boil the water on the stove. The physicist goes into the house and finds there is already a pan of water on the stove, so she simply turns on the stove. The mathematician goes into the house and finds there is already a pan of water on the stove. She gets the pan, takes it to the sink, pours the water out, thereby reducing the problem to the instructed scenario, fills the pan with water, and boils it on the stove.

Yyyyyyyyyep. My son and I, we follow directions, tasks, routines etc., explicitly and to the letter, occasionally to ridiculous extremes. I know this is a characteristic shared by many folks with Asperger's. Yet still it slips out of my awareness at the worst times.

Today, for instance, Wonderful Son accidentally wet himself just a tiny bit before making it to the toilet and asked for a change of underwear. So I took off the underwear, along with shoes and pants (as this happened just exactly when he and WH were about to go out for the day). I asked that when he was done in the bathroom for him to come into his room so I could put new underwear on him and re-dress him in pants and shoes for going out. Well, he FLIPPED OUT!!! He resisted all attempts to get him into his room, he SCREAMED AND CRIED for about ten minutes, through much travail we got him dressed and more or less calmed down.... and FINALLY I figured out he didn't WANT to be dressed in his room, he wanted to be dressed in the BATHROOM, which is where his clothes came off. *facepalm* We compromised by his leaving his room dressed, then pulling pants and underwear down, so I could pull them back up in the PROPER room. It's the pan on the stove scenario EXACTLY!

Considering my own reducing-problems-to-instructed-scenarios quirk, I really, REALLY shoulda figured that one out sooner.

Quick Friday observation

A crow trying to perch on a phone wire looks very silly.

That is all. Carry on.

So-called "Conscience Clauses" violate your rights to healthcare

I am seething about this. I put the words "conscience clause" in scare-quotes, because frankly, the very idea scares me.

Simply put, the Bush administration passed a rule allowing healthcare workers not to treat patients whose care violated their moral/religious beliefs. The wording is "Regulation Proposed to Help Protect Health Care Providers from Discrimination."

Oh, I am SO sowwy-- does my need for oo to meet the standard of care for my MEDICAL tweatment make oo feel discwiminated against? Well, I've got an idea! Why not work in some OTHER field where you're not likely to encounter these AWFUL dilemmas? I hear Burger King is hiring!

Here's a great discussion of the medical ethics of the whole "conscience clause" issue, from the ever-awesome PalMD at White Coat Underground.

Also, I'll link back to my own post about it, from months ago, here.

Anyway, the rule went into effect on January 19th. I think the Obama administration needs to get rid of that festering piece of crap.

Why am I re-ranting about this now? Well, I just saw this on Pharyngula. Seems a woman (I can't bring myself to call her a medical practitioner, and there is apparently some confusion over whether she is a Nurse Practitioner or a Physician's Assistant) in New Mexico's Presbyterian Health Services Rio Rancho Family Health Center has made a habit of "accidentally" pulling out the IUDs of patients who explicitly wanted them left in! Seriously, click on the linked article. It must be read to be believed.

One of her victims is suing her. GOOD, I say! There is a word for administering a non-consentual procedure, and it's "assault." [Edit: Whoops, I think the word is actually "battery." IANAL.]

Those noisy woodland creatures

I grew up reading J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. My dad read it to me when I was six, and I re-read it many, many times after that.

The impression I received from that work is that Men, humans that is, are clumsy, noisy creatures who stalk about the wilderness making a huge racket and every animal and elf can hear them coming for miles away. ZOMG we r not 1 wit teh Nature!!! I used to practice moving as silently as I could through the woods, so as not to be one of those awful, unmindful humans (this was before I learned that moving noisily is a good thing, letting snakes know to get out of your way). Such a contrast to those noble, quiet woodland creatures! They live so in harmony with their environment that they almost ne'er make a telltale sound to give their presence away!

Now that I am grown and have had many chances to observe animal behavior, I would like to call bullshit on that premise.

I have a poorly-sealed window in my bedroom.

From this window, I hear the little woodland creatures, going about their natural, morning things, one with Nature in every respect, living in harmony with their environment... AND MAKING A GODAWFUL RACKET!!!!!! O! M! G!!! I will hear the most HORRENDOUS RUSTLING in the bushes and think a PACK OF URBAN COYOTES must be trying to get into our trash cans!!! I flip up the curtain, only to see two teeny freakin' Carolina wrens hopping about. Yelling at each other. I cannot type their call. But I will try: MREEEEEECHHHHHHHHHHH MREEEEEEEEEECHHHHHHHH MREEEEEEEEEEEEECHHHHHHH is an approximation of the noise that greets me.

And the birds are not the worst offenders in the Lack O' Stealth department. Oh no.

That honor goes to... the squirrels.

Let me paraphrase Mark Twain and say that two squirrels amount to a permanent riot, and there ain't any real difference between three squirrels and an insurrection. They like to play on my roof. I say "play," but the fact is, I have NO IDEA WHAT they're doing up there. Playing squirrel rugby? Staging squirrel Civil War reinactments? Fighting for the rights of albino squirrels to get married? 'Cause if they're up there just hopping around from place to place, and managing to make THAT MUCH racket in the process, then these particular woodland creatures need remedial woodland creature lessons!

It's not the noise I mind, it's the not knowing what they're up to. In fact, it drives me to irrational acts in my own house. We have at least one mouse at the moment, and sometimes I think it is using construction equipment. When the noise gets to be just TOO MUCH, I feel dissed! It's like the mouse has NO RESPECT for the fact that I could eat him! "HEY! I am bigger than you!!! At least PRETEND to be scared of me!" Or, every now and then, I will just burst into the room whence the noise emanates and yell, "What ARE you DOING in there???" As if I expect an answer. I just want to SEE the construction equipment, that's all!

Now, I must state for the record that all our good foodstuffs are put away out of the reach of rodents, sealed in airtight ceramic or glass containers, or refrigerated-- all except for the junk food. Normally, after a bout of extreme noise, I will discover in the pantry that a tin of cocoa has been chewed through-- a little mouse-head-sized hole in the plastic top. One day I came in to find an ENTIRE BAG of chocolate-covered espresso beans emptied out. I had to dump the Halloween candy that had been stored in the pantry, because mice had found their way into the jack-o'-lantern and eaten an entire candy necklace, leaving the chewed-up bag behind. Those mice are NOT eating right, 's all I gotta say.

Perhaps I'm being unfair to the creatures of a true woodland. These birds and squirrels and mice I have the opportunity to observe close at hand have adapted to an urban environment where their only natural predators are house cats. If so, I'd say the cats have the advantage. Cats, at least, know how to be quiet!

Nowadays, when I read about those silent-footed Hobbits stealing through the woods without a rustle, I think, "OF COURSE they're quiet! All they have to do is be less LOUD than the other animals!!!"

What's in your hoard?

I just finished a pic of a dragon resting on its hoard, and the thing is super-detailed, so while I was drawing it I was thinking, "MAN, this is a LOT of gold coins and stuff!" It really reflects a certain archetype of the dragon as, first of all, this creature of immeasurable AGE, and secondly, obsessive-compulsive in the extreme.

What a LUST for shiny things it must have! What a raging compulsion, to be triggered at the merest glint of the objects of desire...

Then it occurred to me how familiar this is sounding. Yes, that's the exact same feeling that washes over me EVERY TIME I visit the gravelly area near our local coffee shop and deli which has TONS of fossils in it. I cannot seem to set foot in it without being irresistibly drawn to search for them, and before I know it I'm sitting plopped in the gravel sifting for crinoid stems!

I've got an embarrassingly large hoard of them.

So, how about you? Is there anything that makes you feel particularly dragony? Any large hoards around your house?

On Day 4 of prescribed dietary fiber supplementation...

... one idly wonders if one can DIE from taking the recommended dosage of psyllium seed husk.

That is all. Carry on.

Ode to Scienceblogs, having gone dark for a few measley hours

(With apologies to Keats)

Thou still unravish'd bride of logic best,
Thou foster-child of Science and slow thought,
Oh 'net historian, who canst thus express
An educational post more sweetly than e'er taught:
What physiologic lessons haunt thy ISP
Of cephalopods or humans, or of both,
In Michigan or Minnesota freeze?
What Chopra-fiskers here, what denialists loth?
What mad pursuit of reason? What woos struggle to escape?
What snark and satire? What mad comment'ry?

Heard arguments are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye intertubes, rock on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Type to thy loyal readers text alone:
Fair reason, cached on web, thou canst not leave
Thy blog, nor ever can those bits be bare;
Bold lover of science, never canst thou be deleted,
Though beset by antivaxxers, do not grieve;
Thy words won't fade, thou hast not been defeated,
For ever wilt thy points stand, fair and square!

Ah, happy, happy blogs! that cannot shed
Your code, nor ever bid the Net adieu;
And, happy scientist, unwearied,
Forever fisking woo forever new;
More sciencey love! more happy, sciencey love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
Forever explaining wonders of the world;
Inspiring human passion for the skies above,
That leaves a mind elated and employ'd
In search of hidden beauty yet to be unfurl'd.

Who are these coming to the Comments sections?
What strange crank or mysterious priest
Cries his logical fallacies to the skies,
And all his spurious arguments with rhetoric dress'd?
What little corner of these electron shores,
Or scientific peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this wretched morn?
And, 'net community, thy Comments all this morn'
Will silent be; and not a sysadmin to tell
When thou, all desolate, can e'er return.

O bugger! How I wish thee back! I've need
Of science men and women and their thoughts
On shady con-men and their herbs and weed;
Thou, ScienceBlogs! dost tease us, overwrought,
For seems eternity: No new entries yet!!!
Yet when old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of all this woo,
Saying science is a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'We seek truth through RCTs-- that is all
Ye know on earth-- now science go forth and do!'

Best Song Ever!!!-- at the moment ;)

Wonderful Husband left th' iTunes on the Genius setting, having made a playlist based on Anthrax's song, "I'm the Man." I happened to click on it, and it was on Random, and it played this AWESOME exemplar of the early 1990's Seattle sound! GAH, I had forgotten just how GRUNGY the growl of the guitar, how RASPY Chris Cornell's vocals, how utterly this song helped define a whole musical movement!

Also, the lyrics are hitting my Aspergery-ear JUST right today!!! The poetry is in the assonance, seriously! Not a lot of songwriters pay enough attention to vowel sounds, IMO! "Soooooooo down... sooooooooold out..." Hear that glorious repetition, not just of the long O but of the OW as well-- it makes the whole segment just LOCK INTO PLACE like a couple of legos!!! "Rooooooooolling... Ooooooooold now..." OMG he does it again!!! I just LOVE that!!!

Then, of course, who can overlook the unforgettable Best Line Ever, "I'm lookin' California and feelin' Minnesota!" ROFLOL! I feel like that EVERY morning before my coffee!

ANYWAY, the second verse is more of the delicious same, with its inter-clicking sounds... the band truly earns its name! I will now quit babbling and let you see it/read it/whatever you like! The Vid has Chris with his shirt off, though. ;D



Soundgarden Outshined

Written by Chris Cornell

I got up feeling so down
I got off being sold out
I've kept the movie rolling
But the story's getting old now
I just looked in the mirror
Things aren't looking so good
I'm looking California
And feeling Minnesota
So now you know, who gets mystified


Show me the power child
I'd like to say
That I'm down on my knees today
It gives me butterflies
Gives me away
Till I'm up on my feet again
I'm feeling outshined


Someone let the dogs out
They'll show you where the truth is
The grass is always greener
Where the dogs are shitting
I'm feeling that I'm sober
Even though I'm drinking
Well, I can't get any lower
Still I feel I'm sinking
So now you know, who gets mystified


Show me the power child
I'd like to say
That I'm down on my knees today
It gives me butterflies
Gives me away
Till I'm up on my feet again
I'm feeling outshined

Health stuff: followup internist visit

So, finally had my followup visit with my internist, after the Blood Test Of DOOOOOOOOOM-- ok, blood test wasn't that bad, but it did indicate that I need to lower my cholesterol by a whopping 45 points, or I risk being put on medication to lower it.

Medicating my high cholesterol with a drug like Lipitor or whathaveyou is undesirable to me because of one big huge factor-- my bipolar disorder. My particular variety of hypomanic BPD is VERY nicely controlled by low doses of both paroxetine HCL (Paxil, or Seroxat for you Brits :)) and oxcarbazepine (Trileptal). This combination of meds makes me feel my perfectly normal perky self, I suffer no side effects, and I'm FREAKIN' LUCKY in that regard. Adding another med to this cocktail is risky, because both oxcarbazepine and Lipitor are well-known for being twitchy other-drug-interactors, and frankly, I'd rather risk heart disease than my emotional equilibrium. It's a quality-of-life thing. For those who don't know about bipolar disorder, the hypomanic variety is such that my highs are not all that high-- not like the people who spend their life savings on a shopping spree, or impulsively buy a plane ticket to someplace halfway around the world while in manic phases-- but my lows are just as horrific and stygian as any depression you can imagine. Rather not have those anymore, thanks.

So, my Awesome Internist has prescribed fiber supplements. I think I can tackle that 45 points with my Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes(TM) and with this added fiber. I've got 3 months to lower those numbers, and I think I can do it.

Those aren't the only numbers I'm interested in lowering. My latest weigh-in indicates I've lost 8 lbs. since my last doctor visit! I'd like to lose 10 more, not necessarily in 3 months, but maybe in 6. I've been exercising more-- 30 minutes on the track in the morning, plus whatever I can con the kids into walking/running with me in the evenings. Also I've been exercising portion control over what I eat. This seems to be a major contributor to those missing 8 lbs. ;) Funny how that works out.

OOOH! But here's my latest MAD SCHEME!!! I've decided to buy lettuces by the head and just EAT THEM like they were a bag of potato chips! Why am I doing this, you might well ask? Well, I never get enough leafy greens, so snacking on them seems like a good idea. They don't have a lot of calories, so you can eat them and not feel guilty, and what better snack than a high-fiber one, right? Also, I read on a horse blog that horses generate a lot of warmth for themselves in the winter by digesting hay, so you should feed your horse free-choice hay in winter. I don't actually own a horse, but I AM hoping eating a lot more fibrous plants will not only lower my cholesterol but also will keep me feeling warmer in the winter!!! Hah-- I have NO way to test this hypothesis without completely confounding comfirmation bias. But it will inspire me to eat more greens FTW! Yee-ha!!!

More math dreams!

I love dreams wherein I can actually read printed words or do math. It makes me giggly. Last night's dream was a clear holdover from my woo days, however-- I was performing a numerology calculation on someone's name (ok, fine, it was Spike the vampire from Buffy! NORMAL people have EROTIC dreams about hotties like that, but do I? NooooOOOOOOOooooo!). What amused me was that I remembered the principles of numerology so well that I could actually perform the number-to-letter correspondences in my sleep.

For those unaware, numerology buffs like to line up the letters of the alphabet like so:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Thus, if you're doing a numerological hand-waving over the name PERKY SKEPTIC, you would get 7+5+9+2+7 + 1+2+5+7+2+9+3 = 30 + 29 = 59, which you further would reduce to 5+9 = 14, and even further until you get a single-digit answer, 1+4 = 5. Five! The number of strife! YAY, my skepticism brings strife to numerology!!!

What kills me, looking back on all this, is how utterly arbitrary the whole system is-- yet there have been SELF-HELP BOOKS written on this, most notably Change Your Life With Numerology by Karen David, which I used to own a copy of before I sent it to the recycling bin. Even a quick Google search shows thousands of hits for changing your destiny by re-naming yourself to something more numerologically fortunate! An example of this which gets touted by many woo sources is when obscure people change their names, then go on to become famous under their new name-- like Elda Furry, who languished until her name-change to Hedda Hopper, who reportedly paid a numerologist ten dollars to tell her the name she should use. Well, jeez, it couldn't possibly be because the old name wasn't as catchy or memorable, it HAD to be the numbers, DUHhhhhhh... woo fail!

Even as a practicing Wiccan I never gave numerology much credence.

"So, Perky, if you never gave it much credence, how in the world did you become proficient enough at the system that you were able to remember it accurately and do it in your sleep???"

...

Well, you see...

*COUGH*I used to do numerological calculations on the names of all my roleplaying characters, and I've been playing RPGs for a really, reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally long time.

Dear Internet Failtrolls,

There is this thing called "google" and these things called "search terms." If you cannot be bothered to rub two brain cells together to find out your favorite net adversary's not-at-all-secret real name, I am darn well not going to help you by outing him. Do your own typing, or STFU.

HIV denialist Christine Maggiore, dead at 52

Being raised as woo-woo as they come, I was familiar with a lot of "alternative health" claims before I even went into the skeptical/rationalist movement. One of the ideas that really took me by surprise, though, was HIV denialism. Simply put, these folks deny that HIV has anything to do with AIDS. Seems at first blush like a movement of wacky cranks whom no one would take seriously, right? Well, this is a crank idea that kills.

This movement originated with, among others, Peter Duesberg, a former top-notch scientist who descended into denialism after first doubting HIV as the cause of AIDS. Doubting does not make one a crank, of course. What makes one a crank is refusal to change one's opinion based on the most logical interpretation of all the evidence-- and all the evidence we have points to HIV being the cause of AIDS. Here's a great page for further reading on the issue. You can even read the thousands of mouth-foaming denialist comments she gets for daring to, I dunno, be an epidemiologist.

Duesberg's banner was taken up and waved frantically by Christine Maggiore. She was an HIV-positive mother of two, founder of the Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives activist group, and she achieved great notoriety by refusing to take antiretrovirals during her pregnancy to prevent transmission of the HIV to her daughter AND insisting on breastfeeding after the birth. Maggiore's daughter, Eliza Jane Scovill, died at age 3.

Here and here are obituaries by science bloggers Dr. Steve Novella and Dr. David Gorski. Be sure to read Respectful Insolence's take on it, too-- Orac has tackled these folks for a long time now, and Maggiore even tried to get him to "debate" her.

The whole thing is tragic and sad-- tragic hundreds of thousands needlessly dead in Africa because of Thabo Mbeki's unfortunate listening to Duesberg, tragic that a little girl's mother's fanciful ideas led directly to her death, and tragic that Maggiore's family has now lost her, too. Will any of this change the minds of any of the HIV-denialists? Probably not. Even now, Maggiore's friends are circling the wagons to try to deny that her death was AIDS-related, and they will continue to cause needless deaths. That is the greatest tragedy of all.

Dear Blog,

Someone is wrong on the internet and I yearn to correct them.

I must be strong, for the sake of the children.

The things we learn about our nearest and dearest...

So, today I found out something interesting (to me) about my boy: how he likes his pizza.

This would seem to be self-evident. I mean, every time we have ordered pizza, we have given him input into the process. But today, when he wanted pizza, we walked over to our neighborhood pizza joint, and I let him order all by himself.

"What would you like on your pizza?"

He said very clearly, and with emphasis, "Pepperoni. And nothing else." He then wandered off muttering, "No mushrooms, no sausage, no muttermutter..."

Ok, no huge revelation-- he likes it without the extra toppings that Wonderful Husband and I usually crap up the pizza with. But then when we started to eat it... he asked me to pull all the cheese off and just layer the pepperoni over the sauced crust. My boy wants his pizzas with NO CHEESE.

This fills me with burbling, giggly glee.

DESTROY ALL VIRUSES!!!

...is the name of the Godzilla movie I wish to make. I am SUCH a whiny crybaby when ill, and it's because I've so rarely been sick in my life (thankfully!) that I'm just not used to it. This year, however, I seem to have fallen prey to a record number of 24-hour microorganism-infections. I blame Kindergarten. Or, "K," as Wonderful Son likes to call it when asked what grade he is in.

My heart goes out to all chronic pain sufferers, migraine-susceptibles, and other often-miserable folk. While I like to think of myself as a tough Klingon warrior, my latest upper-respiratory infection has caused me to shrivel up like a wilted violet. Feh!

yIn rInbe'taH neHqu' 'Iv... Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam! By which I mean, I guess it won't kill me to crawl out of my chair and get some coffee. ;)

Happy New Year, everyone!