Oy. Via David Colquhoun on Twitter, I’m reading a PhD thesis on homeopathy and Evidence Based Medicine, one that argues that EBM gets it all wrong. I have learned that homeopathy is not just the dilution – tut tut, that’s just silly – it’s dilution that gets dynamized. You didn’t know that, did you. Scientistic bastards.

One might draw an analogy with the relationship between a cake and the cake-mixture. To argue that cake-mixture is a delicious complement to tea because cake is, is clearly to neglect that cake is cooked cake-mixture. And so, to argue that homeopathic treatments are not effective medicines because high dilutions are not, is to neglect that homeopathic treatments are dynamized high

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So there’s this Catholic priest in Illinois who’s been accused of sexually abusing a boy of 14 and was removed from his ministry because of the accusation. There’s this bishop who is letting him go back to just a little bit of ministering because 14 is old enough to say yes to the priest’s overtures.

The bishop says Rome has decided that at the time Ryan allegedly molested a teen[ager], what he did was not considered a serious crime by the Church according to Church law at the time. For that reason, Conlon ruled, Ryan could not be moved from ministry altogether.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests says Church law at the time actually said a 14-year-old

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Maryam has a post saying Bravo Charlie Hebdo, which alerted me to this cringing piece of crap in the Guardian. It’s by Philippe Marlière, who is a professor of French politics at UCL. The body of the article is a quick history of Charlie Hebdo, then suddenly in the last paragraph he flings himself down on the floor in surrender.

Of course people should be entitled to mock Islam and any other religion. However, in the current climate of racial and religious prejudice in Europe, how can these cartoons be helpful? Charlie Hebdo is waging a rearguard battle.

Helpful to what? It depends what you’re trying to “help,” doesn’t it. If you’re hoping to help defend the genuine right … Read the rest

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Via Kausik Datta, a satirical video about the exciting possibilities when bosses can fire employees for using birth control.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLFDF2dxerM

 … Read the rest

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Sean Carroll points out a study of gender bias among scientists.

To test scientists’ reactions to men and women with precisely equal qualifications, the researchers did a randomized double-blind study in which academic scientists were given application materials from a student applying for a lab manager position. The substance of the applications were all identical, but sometimes a male name was attached, and sometimes a female name.

Results: female applicants were rated lower than men on the measured scales of competence, hireability, and mentoring (whether the scientist would be willing to mentor this student). Both male and female scientists rated the female applicants lower.

Not at all surprising, alas. I’m sure I have the same bias.

I’m especially interested … Read the rest

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Deeyah has produced and directed a documentary film about the “honour” killing of Banaz Mahmod in South London in 2006. Deeyah talks to A Safe World for Women.

If you worry about offending the Muslim, Sikh, Hindu or any other community by criticising honour killings, then you are complicit in perpetuating it. Our silence provides the fertile soil and circumstances for this oppression and violence to continue. It’s not Islamophobic or racist to protest against honour killings. We have a duty to stand up for individual human rights for all people, not just men and not just for groups. Let’s not sacrifice the lives of ethnic minority women for the sake of so called political correctness.

Exactly. Not just men, … Read the rest

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I took Cooper to the beach this afternoon, his first time since he had his paw stitched. It had been a foggy morning but was pretty sunny in the afternoon, though not as hot as it had been the last few days. The park where the beach is (Golden Gardens) was sunny, and I chucked the ball (with the chuckit) on the grass before we got to the beach and Cooper chased it, and then we got to the little trail through the Scotch Broom (aka gorse) to the beach…and we were in a different universe – some of the thickest fog I’ve ever seen, which got thicker while we were there. It was weird and beautiful. There was just … Read the rest

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Maryam reports that there’s growing evidence that very young girls are being “married” to much older men in Sharia courts in the UK. Girls as young as five.

A recent undercover investigation by the Sunday Times found imams in Britain willing to “marry” young girls, provided this was carried out in secret. The imams had been approached by an undercover reporter posing as a father who said he wanted his 12 year old daughter married, to prevent her from being tempted in to a “western lifestyle”.

Imam Mohammed Kassamali, of the Husaini Islamic Centre in Peterborough, sanctioned the marriage, but stressed the need for total secrecy. He stated: “I would love the girl to go to her husband’s houses

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I often find Sam Harris irritating, but he can be very good at hitting the right nail on the head. He is in his new piece on the freedom to offend.

I’ll just give a few examples of nail-hitting.

Whether over a film, a cartoon, a novel, a beauty pageant, or an inauspiciously named teddy bear, the coming eruption of pious rage is now as predictable as the dawn. This is already an old and boring story about old, boring, and deadly ideas.

…

The contagion of moral cowardice followed its usual course, wherein liberal journalists and pundits began to reconsider our most basic freedoms in light of the sadomasochistic fury known as “religious sensitivity” among Muslims. Contributors to

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Faith healing doesn’t work; would interfaith healing do better?

No. So why is interfaith such a good thing again? Why is faith a good thing?

It’s not.

Consider Randi and Russel Bellew for instance. (No, I don’t know why Russel spells his own name wrong.)

A Creswell,  Ore., husband and wife have pleaded guilty to negligent homicide charges in the faith healing death of their 16-year-old son.

KVAL-TV reports that the teen, Austin Sprout, died at home last December after his appendix  burst. Lane County sheriff’s Capt. Byron  Trapp says medical professionals believe the boy’s condition was treatable had he been provided medical care.

Ya think?

That’s one hell of a painful death those two damn fools inflicted on their … Read the rest

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Another piece on women in tech fields. The takeaway:

It was always the ones that said they didn’t see gender or color who did the most damage. “They’re just words,” they would say, “Why do you let them hurt you?” And with that, my pain was made as invisible as me. “They’re just words.” Indeed, just the verbal incantations of power, like law and code and everything else that made the world. I decided to leave tech for words.

❧

But now I’m all shouty. Now people are angry at me because I have a stage, and they can’t make me invisible and ignore me, because the truth is you can’t ignore words, and I have the words. So

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