A page dedicated to the ample evidence that we need better science education. Not everything here rises to Pauli's immortal description, but some of it does. Things like this are way too easy to find.

Junk Science: More Research is Needed

Science by publicity. There ought to be a Nobel Prize out there for the first researcher to discover that failing to find an effect is the best reason to do further research.

Earth destroyed. Film at 11.

This happens every time a new particle accelerator is commissioned.

• Hawaii residents sue the DOE, Fermilab, CERN, and the NSF to prevent the Large Hadron Collider from destroying the world. (They are accepting donations.)
• Wagner also unsuccessfully sued over strangelet production at RHIC. If only we had listened, JFK Jr. might still be with us.
• The flaws in the collider doomsday scenario can be patiently explained, or not so patiently explained.
• I wouldn't worry until the Lifeboat Foundation raises the Global Existential Threat Advisory level to at least orange.
• A physics blogger who evidently has a bit of a crush on Lisa Randall. The comment section is hilarious.
• The really funny thing is that CERN felt obligated to convene a panel to study the (non)-issue. Surely John Ellis has better things to do...

Vaccines, Mercury and Autism

I'm getting messages from my fillings.

• One small victory for science: A Federal court sends vaccine/autism advocates packing.
• This just in: MMR vaccinations don't cause autism, (Here is the full article in PLoS.) The National Autism Association appears nonetheless to be impervious to facts.
• Measles cases are on the rise due to hysteria about vaccinations. "Most parents I know will take measles over autism," is a really terrific attitude, especially if it's somebody else's kid who dies.
• Kathleen Seidel of the Neurodiversity weblog has been subpoenaed in connection with posts about a personal injury lawsuit alleging mercury poisoning from vaccines. (The effort was ultimately unsuccessful.)
• A New York Times Op-Ed by Paul Offit on the Poling court case, which is cited by anti-vaccine activists as admission that vaccines cause autism. Offit's article was not well received by the vaccines-and-autism crowd. (More authoritative research on autism by David Kirby can be found here.)
• CNN gives Offit six sentences to explain the science, but Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey get an entire page and an appearance on Larry King Live to share their scientific expertise: "what might surprise a lot of you is that we've never been contacted by a single member of the CDC". Um, not really.
• The Coalition for Safe Minds.
• Autism blog Age of Autism (formerly the The Rescue Post.)
• This just in: thimerosal does not cause neurological damage. (That doesn't stop the bloggers).
• Generation Rescue flogs the idea that autism, ADD, and other disorders are environmental illnesses.
• Vaccines are a Homeland Security plot.
• The National Vaccine Information Center sounds pretty official, doesn't it? It's not.
• Satan's chemist. See also Is vaccination Christian?.
• VaccineTruth.org: I especially like the statistic that doctors are 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners. Next time you get sick, call the NRA!
• Doctors are actually hoarding a secret cancer vaccine.
• An outbreak of polio in Pakistan after rumors that the vaccine was an American plot to sterilize children.
• A California study shows that autism rates continued to increase after thimerosal was removed from vaccines.
• THE VACCINATION HOAX and HOLOCAUST from Whale. Don't miss the article on cell phone towers and mind control.
• Fundamentalist groups continue to oppose mandating use of the HPV vaccine, despite the fact that 1 in 4 teenage girls have at least one sexually transmitted disease.
• The truth behind the vaccine coverup, by Russell Blaylock, MD. Don't miss Fluoride is Toxic or how antibiotics kill "your body's patriots" (Blaylock is also a member of Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which takes a variety of interesting positions on health care issues.)
• Vaccination: Vatican's Medical Inquisition Revealed at Last! from Reformation Online. Also make sure to visit their exposé of Jesuit astronomy.
• A New York Times article on parents refusing to vaccinate their children. Never mind that it puts other people's children at risk from potentially devastating and completely preventable diseases like polio and measles.
• A New York Times Article (registration required) on the politics of mercury and autism.
• An online petition from the National Autism Association.
• Another authoritative sounding article on amalgam fillings from The Center for Environmental Medicine: "Environmental illnesses are escalating because humans cannot adapt to our new chemical environment and are further compromised by the devitalized food sources available."
• Don't wait: chelate away those heavy metals with cilantro! "...the filling is an amalgam that contains some silver as well as what is for some people a lethal amount of mercury... insistence on the safety of amalgams is not just nonsense, but criminally irresponsible." From kitchendoctor.com.
• A web article on chelation, with lots of links.
• A Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article on the death of Abubakar Nadama.
• An article from quackwatch.org on the mercury filling scam, and set of links on chelation.
• A CDC fact sheet on thimerosal.
• America's silent holocaust: "it is time for lawyers to summon up their brute muscle to bring down the tyranny of the medical elite as soon as possible for children are being hurt and killed each and everyday."
• Autism in a Needle?
• An FDA web site on thimerosal: "The [Institute of Medicine's Immunization Safety Review Committee] concluded that this body of evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism, and that hypotheses generated to date concerning a biological mechanism for such causality are theoretical only. Further, the committee stated that the benefits of vaccination are proven and the hypothesis of susceptible populations is presently speculative, and that widespread rejection of vaccines would lead to increases in incidences of serious infectious diseases like measles, whooping cough and Hib bacterial meningitis."
• An overview of the IOM report on vaccines and autism.
• I have no relation to this book, which has gotten some very good reviews.
• Robert Kennedy, Jr. is at it again.

Windbags

There is no way environmental activists could be against wind energy, right? Guess again.


• Save Western New York, a concerned citizens group. I like the Einstein quote.
• National Wind Watch notes that wind power doesn't reduce use of other fuels. Of course, nothing can without control of demand. But that is somebody else's problem.
• Buffalo installs its first wind farm. Way to go!
• Tom Golisano flip-flops on wind power. Sort of. Also read an earlier Wired News article on Golisano and Save Upstate New York.
• Cohocton Wind Watch claims that wind farms cause headaches, sleep problems, anxiety, migraines, nausea, dizziness, palpitations, stress, and depression, and can trigger seizures in people with epilepsy. Wow. (Don't miss the other exciting content on batr.net.)
• Dr. Nina Pierpont is conducting an obviously unbiased and properly controlled study of "wind turbine syndrome".
• We Oppose Windfarms (WOW), another New York State organization tilting at windmills.
• Robert Kennedy Jr. leads the noble fight against messing up the view from Cape Cod. (Kudos to Greenpeace on this one.) My take is that if Cape Wind gets shut down, somebody should build a thousand-megawatt light water nuke smack in the middle of Martha's Vineyard.
• But wind turbines kill birds! (Of course, so do lots of other things.) How many of these folks have cats, I wonder?
• Infrasound is actually good for you!
• A New York Times article about the anti-wind lobby.
• Where I buy my electricity. (Of course, Green Mountain is run by evil energy companies.)

Electromagnetic fields (EMF)

Do low-frequency electromagnetic fields cause cancer? One in twenty studies says yes to 95% certainty.


• Parents sue an elementary school for providing in-school wireless internet access. I wonder which of them are busy calling the school board on their 2.4 GHz cordless phone while keeping tabs on little Jimmy with their 2.4 GHz wireless baby monitor?
• A new Stony Brook University study finds no link between power lines and breast cancer on Long Island. Unsurprisingly, the Long Island breast cancer advocacy group One in Nine dismisses the finding, as well as a National Cancer Institute study which showed no correlation between breast cancer clusters and several environmental toxins, citing a need for a more comprehensive study. Ironically, the "one in nine" figure is itself a useless statistic.
• EMFs cause mercury poisoning!
• A new study indicates that breast cancer is instead linked to hormone therapy. (So go ahead and buy that pink cell phone.)
• A Federal probe determines that Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories EMF researcher Robert Liburdy fabricated data.
• A National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences web site on EMF research, including a 1999 Report (PDF format) concluding that evidence for an EMF/cancer link is "weak".
• Microwave News. A large EMF advocacy site. Has an extensive collection of links.
• Mast-Victims.org.
• Blow driers cause leukemia.
• EMF shielding devices. Sure beats tinfoil in your hat.
• The diomid transmitter, from Ener-G-Polarit: "The natural Diode Frequencies broadcast through walls and floors creating its own vortex energy 60 yards in all directions. " The "Amazing Diode" works by emitting a "powerful shield" whichextends 18" into your aura.
• There is nothing that can't be healed by love (or placebos).
• This T-shirt doesn't even have tinfoil in it. Apparently you can protect yourself just as effectively with happy pictures.

Cell phones and cancer: I'd be more worried about wrecking my Explorer if I were you.

• This just in: Cell phones don't cause cancer. Can we stop arguing now? (Apparently not.)
• Even people who ought to know better are spreading FUD about cell phones. Now Davis' colleague Ronald Herberman has gotten in on the act with a scary memo circulated at the University of Pittsburgh, citing unspecified results from unpublished reports. (He has to, since actual published science shows no link between cell phones and cancer.) Herberman's advice includes "Avoid using your cell phone in places, like a bus, where you can passively expose others to your phone's electromagnetic fields." I can't wait for the first lawsuit alleging cancer from passive cell phone use!
• News flash: cell phones kill bees! (Or they confuse them or something.)
• The Safe Wireless Initiative. Good thing it's already safe.
• An FDA information site on mobile phones and health. Of course, more research is needed.
• The Mobile Telephone Health Concerns Registry. It's a voluntary survey, just like on Slashdot!
• Australian columnist Stewart Fist, one of the original cell phone cancer crusaders.
• More tinfoil for your hat: the AegisGuard phone radiation shield.
• Q-Link Pendant. Brought to you by fastfengshui.com. (And don't forget to schedule your email feng shui consultation!)

Cold Fusion

Venerable junk science, and still going strong.

• A Cold Fusion FAQ from Infinite Energy Magazine.

Hydrinos

What lies below the ground state? Free energy!

• Blacklight Power: to boldly patent where no one has patented before. All based on Dr. Randell Mills' "Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics".
• NASA, of course, is interested.
• A Village Voice article on the good Dr. Mills.

Silicone Breast Implants

Guess what? They're perfectly safe.

• The FDA finally does the sensible thing. Naturally, the science falls on deaf ears. So much for informed women making their own health care choices.
• An Institute of Medicine Report concluding that silicone breast implants don't cause systemic illness.
• All But Forgotten from the National Research Center for Women and Families.
• Silicone Holocaust.
• Dow Corning Chapter 11 Information.

Plastic Softeners (Phthalates)

Classic scare tactics from Greenpeace. This one hasn't been decisively proven to be bunk. Yet.

• Greenpeace web page on vinyl toys.
• Industry web site on phthalates.
• Consumer Product Safety Commission web page on phthalates in toys. Conclusion: "few, if any children are at risk from liver or other organ toxicity." The CPSC recommends, as usual, "more research" into possible cancer risk.

Depleted Uranium

Depleted uranium is somewhat less toxic than lead. But it's radioactive!

• The Depleted Uranium Education Project from the International Action Project: "Has U.S. use of depleted-uranium weapons turned Iraq into a radioactive danger area for both Iraqis and occupation troops?" Never mind that DU is not especially radioactive.
• Depleted Uranium Watch from Stop NATO.
• An article claiming (as usual without a shred of proof) that depleted uranium is causing cancer and birth defects in Iraq, which has been left "a radioactive toxic wasteland", despite the fact that DU is not especially radioactive.
• The Silent Genocide from America: "Every day, people see the silent death striking their families and friends, hopeless and terrified at the sight of the next funeral in their minds' eyes." Of course, depleted uranium is not especially radioactive.
• A sensible evaluation of the hazards of DU can be found here (PDF format).

Fundamental(ist) Research

Religiously motivated science: God is my referee.

• A statement on evolution fromt he Society of Saint Pius X, recently welcomed back into the Catholic Church by Pope Benedict. (Don't miss In Defense of the Inquisition.)
• The Wall Street Journal blames the financial meltdown on atheists.
• Evolution Exposed empowers high-school students to be as annoying as possible in class.
• A fundamentalist attempt to slam science/sex writer, Olivia Judson, who is doing some the best science writing out there. Go Tatiana!
• The Evolution Fairytale Discussion Forum. Don't miss What is the WMAP measuring? and Big Bang..., The evolution of the compression god
• The latest tactic: justify magical thinking as academic freedom, and call people who insist on scientific integrity fundamentalists. Beautiful.
• Louisiana passes a stealth law to allow creationism in schools, hailed by the the crackpot-American community as a blow against the science thought police.
• Blogger and biologist PZ Myers is kicked out of Ben Stein's new creationist movie. But Richard Dawkins gets in.
• Here is a new trailer for Expelled. Read a thorough debunking here.
• Proof that evolution is a hoax, from the endlessly amusing jesus-is-savior.com.
• Islamic creationist Harun Yahya, as covered in this New York Times article. Also see a summary of Yahya's work by Taner Edis of Truman State University.
• The Physics of Christianity, by Tulane physics professor Frank Tipler. Buy this one together with Paul Davies' latest book. (Davies' interview with Salon made me want to gouge out my frontal lobes.)
• Faculty at University of Colorado in Boulder receive threatening letters attacking their support for evolution. Panda's Thumb has exerpts from the letters.
• A new creationist museum opens in Kentucky.
• The Journal of Creation, brought to you by Creation Ministries International. Don't miss this paper, which explains Dark Energy as "power of the Lord giving a boost to the expansion of the fabric of space". (These people are not helping.)
• Now there is a creationist Wiki. I like the little fish logo, but not as much as the one for Flipper.
• Science Ministries.
• Dr. Don, MD (formerly Faithmeds.com): perfect health is "God's plan." (Except amputees.)
• Ten papers "censored" by the Cornell arXiv.
• An open letter to the Kansas School Board.
• The Museum of Earth History, a creationist natural history museum in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. See how dinosaurs and humans coexisted! (Exhibits include "Eden", "Curse", "The Great Flood", "Ice Age", and "Fish Aquarium").
• More on the Biblical truth about dinosaurs. Don't miss this thrilling video!
• Florida State Representative Dennis Baxley thinks students should be able to sue professors for being indoctrinated with intolerant liberal ideas like evolution. (Reminds me of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.) Here is a transcript of a debate between Baxley and University of South Florida Philosophy professor Roy Weatherford.
• The homepage of Students for Academic Freedom, including a recent Buffalo News article on UB. I do like the bake sale for the Pentagon.
• Christian Right Lobbies to Overturn Second Law of Thermodynamics from The Onion.
• Students in a Pennsylvania high school receive a statment on intelligent design from school administrators. Update: The entire Dover School Board was tossed out of office in 2005, just before a court ruling barring the teaching of "intelligent design".
• Bill Maher weighs in.
• The National Park Service is under fire for selling a book that claims the Grand Canyon was formed in the Biblical flood. Sign up for your Bible-based canyon tour today!
• A hit list of NIH grants from the Traditional Values Coalition.
• A professor at Texas Tech is investigated by the Justice Department for refusing to write letters of recommendation for students who do not believe in evolution. Courtesy of the Liberty Legal Institute. Update: Dini caves.
• The Discovery Institute. Tired of materialism's destructive social consequences? This is the site for you.
• Intelligent Design Network.
• Unfortunately, Ohio gets bullied into a tepid compromise over teaching evolution. The anti-science lobby is tickled pink.
• Cobb County, Georgia opens the door to pseudoscience in the name of "critical thinking" and "tolerance".
• The Creation Science homepage. Cosmologists might be especially interested in Evidences of a Young Universe.
• The Handy Dandy Evolution Refuter from The Creation Science Research Center.
• Darwinian Poetry.
• The Big Bang is a Kabbalist-Zionist plot: "What needs to be made perfectly clear now are two factors which blow NASA's masquerade as 'science' and reveal its true identity as an agent of a religion dedicated to the destruction of New Testament Christianity." From this rather disturbing web site.
• The Big Bang Theory vs. God's Word from The Christian Courier.
• A site claiming the Big Bang is a religious hoax. Now I'm really confused.
• The Evolution of Truth. A creationist discovers the Golden Mean. I can't wait 'til he hears about Napier's constant!
• An extensive intelligent design web site. Frankly, I find it a stretch to describe people as intelligent design.
• The Official God FAQ.
• Quantum Mechanics, a Modern Goliath, by Hugh Ross, Ph.D (with links to other gems.)
I agree with Ross on one thing: any cosmologist who makes use of the Anthropic Principle should be soundly beaten with a five iron. (Also check Ross's creationist take on the Big Bang.)
• Copernicus was wrong: The Biblical Astronomer. Don't miss Massive Superstrings and the Firmament.
• The talk.origins archive.

The 9/11 Coverup

This one leaves me utterly speechless.

• Scholars for 9/11 Truth: devaluing the PhD, one scholar at a time. Also read the Wikipedia article on this group of distinguished researchers.
• A New York Times article on Kevin Barrett. I'm sure calls from government officials to have Barrett fired will convince him he's on the wrong track. (Kudos to the University of Wisconsin for standing up for academic freedom, even academic freedom as screwed up as this.)
• Brigham Young Physics Professor Steven Jones has suddenly retired. Of course, it is a government conspiracy.
• Physics 911.
• Skeptical of theories which are not based on cold, hard facts? Go to 9/11 Proof.
• Truth 9/11 has lots of very convincing videos.
• Going viral: 9.11 Truth: New York City. "Charlie Sheen Calls For Fresh 9/11 Investigation" We should get right on it then.
• 911sharethetruth.com.
• 9/11 Truth Radio.
• At least letsroll911.org has a (relatively) original name.
• Debunking 9/11 explains why the conspiracy theorists are wrong (as if it were really necessary.) Also look at here and here. Also try the official government report on the Pentagon attack. (Thanks to Linda Shanahan for these links.)

Truthiness

If the name of the web site has the word "truth" in it, it has to be good.

• Alex Jones' Truth News.
• ProjecTruth.
• The Truth Project.
• Truth in science.
• Science: Truth or Fraud? from optionality.com.
• Nasty little truths about physics.
• Love the Truth: make sure you look at Fluoride is poison and AIDS and bio-warfare.
• The Truth about Fluoride, which is a "key dumbing-down ingredient of Prozac and Sarin nerve gas."
• Aliens the Truth.
• The Truth Seeker.
• The Truth about Evolution from Truth for Youth.
• Creation Truth.
• Hard Truth / Wake Up America.
• Alternative Medicine Truth.
• Crisis in Physics: Why is Truth Not Granted Humankind?
• The Truth About Relativity.
• Da Truth blog.

New-Age Ninnies

Excuse me, but your karma ran over my dogma.

National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices.

Homeopathy

Would a placebo by any other name smell as sweet?

• Homeopathy Home Lots of links.
• Structured Water: Wired goes goofy.
• New England Journal of Homeopathy. Not to be confused with that other journal.
• Homeopathy article from quackwatch.com.
• Article from The Skeptic's Dictionary.
• Veterinary homeopathy. For the new-age dog.

Reiki

Reiki is Japanese for "Universal Life Force Energy". Or something.

• The International Center for Reiki Training. Includes a request form for a remote Reiki healing, right over the web!
• Article on Reiki from The Skeptic's Dictionary.
• The Science of Reiki. "Reiki is `nonpolarized' subatomic energy that is released as a harmonic into energy blueprints (e.g. - the body) that are in a state of disharmony. Once it leaves the subatomic world, it must polarize because it is entering the physical, manifest world where it is acted upon by time. Because it is, by nature, a harmonic, it will polarize and form a `mirror image' of any disharmonious frequency in that energy blueprint, thereby restoring normal harmony and well being."
• David Herron's Reiki Page. Reiki works on your car too!
• Energetic Arts: "Reiki, EMF balancing, Tachyon Energy, and more!" Be sure to check out the diagram of how tachyons help your liver.
• The Reiki Council. Why do I get this image of little Anakin being taken to see Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson?
• Your tax dollars at work: a supposedly double-blind study on the efficacy of Reiki. Wondering how it is even possible to do a placebo-controlled Reiki study? (No, not laying of hands with the magnetic fields turned off.) This study has the answer: the "placebo" practitioners had not yet been initiated. You can't make this stuff up.
• Big surprise: placebo controlled studies show no effect.
• Of course, more research is needed, no matter how idiotic the premise.
• An interview with James Oschman: "There are several phenomena in physics that could mediate healing at a distance. For example, scalar waves have the extraordinary property of affecting the structure of space everywhere, instantaneously. Scalar waves therefore do not have a velocity as such, and their effects do not diminish with distance." (Last I heard, scalar fields obey causality...)

Magnetic Therapy

But I thought EMF's were bad!

• Buy-a-Mag Company. I especially like the $60 magnetic water cups and the portable "sauna".
• Magnetic jewelry from painreliever.com.
• These folks market a unipolar magnet, much better than dangerous bipolar magnets!
• Therapy Magnet FAQ from Discover Magnetics. "Some overzealous opportunists have glutted the market with seductive cheep [sic] prices for very low quality products leaving many consumers bewildered." I'm sure.

Pleiadian Cosmology

Are these the same extra dimensions as in string theory?

• The Pleidian (sic) Home Page.
• Alien artifacts in Chaco Canyon? Sure.
• The Melchizedek and Pleiadian Light Network. "In order to understand your multidimensional nature as your Higher Light you need to accept that you are all Master Beings of Love and Light." Besides, if it's challenging to spell, it must be profound.
• The writings of Aluna Joy.

The End is Near (Again)

The Mayan long count calendar ends on December 21, 2012. Scaaary!

• Apocalypse 2012, by Lawrence E. Joseph, who also brought you Gaia: The Growth of an Idea.
• 2012: Dire Gnosis "has been set up as a data-base for information about the year 2012 ( not including Olympic games and political candidates for elections and similar trivia)." This voluminous site should probably get an award for bad web design.
• A video which explains that the 2012 apocalypse was predicted by Nostradamus.
• Armageddon Online has a list of possible catasrophes for us to look forward to, including a super volcano, a mega tsunami, World War III, and World War IV (which will presumably happen after World War III).
• Debunk this kind of nonsense with Bible prophecy.
• The Mathematics of Timewave Zero, the late Terence McKenna's theory of time. More on McKenna's, um, ideas can be found here. Don't miss this video, in which McKenna explains the nature of the 2012 singularity. Put down the bong, dude.
• All about 2012.
• A large connection of links to 2012 prophecies.
• My contribution to the scientific literature on the end of the world.

Easy Money

I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

• Thomas Nogales: "After many failed attempts and dead ends, the idea for the model literally flashed into being in a financial epiphany." Don't miss Break-a-bank for America.
• Amateur-Investor.net: "Then I look for a change in color from the Red Bars to a Green Bar..."
• Stock Chartist: "How do I know this? Because I back tested the MTI against the 44 years of daily trading back to March, 1963."
• Signaltrend.com: "SignalTrend's Stock Market Timing Indicator was developed through years of research and thoroughly back-tested over one hundred years. The result nearly tripled the annual price gains of the Dow. The result using margin was nearly 5 times the Dow's annual return!"
• Gann Signs: Title-Bible Tetragrams is "NO LONGER AVAILABLE to Australian traders." Bummer. (Here is more on W. D. Gann.)
• FibTimer: "Timing trends for profits," at only $29 a month.
• 401Ktrend.com: "Please monitor the site and your e-mail for further indicator changes and warnings."
• A statement on values from The Elf Report.
• Enter your favorite stock symbol in the Holy Grail Indicator Box and click OK!

Listen to your Mother

Who could be against a concerned mother?

• Moms Against Mercury.
• Mothers for Natural Law, an anti-genetic engineering group.
• Mothers for Peace, another appropriately named anti-nuclear group.
• A statement on biotechnology from the Concerned Women for America. Don't miss "Homosexuals Prepare to March on Jerusalem as Bombs Fly"
• Where is my foreskin? Mothers Against Circumcision leads the struggle for genital integrity, despite the fact that male circumcision prevents transmission of HIV.
• Mothers Against Airport Pollution "plans to develop a website in the near future". I can't wait. (In the meantime, Jack Saporito has been kind enough to send me a link to this advocacy site detailing environmental effects on neighborhoods near O'Hare Airport. I am still not sure what this has to do with being a mother.)
• All of this concern can be good for sales.
• Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Originally started as a laudable effort to counter lax attitudes toward drunk driving, MADD has evolved into a temperance society, and was long ago repudiated by its founder. Kudos to these college adminstrators for finally standing up to MADD's shrill bullying tactics: somebody needs to point out that virtually every other country in the world has a drinking age under 21, and most of them have so far failed to collapse into anarchy and bloodshed. (Maybe not this guy though...) Go here for a reasoned perspective on supposedly under-age drinking.

Killing the messenger

Retired.

Making It Up

Nothing like a little old-fashioned fraud.

• Hwang Woo-Suk became famous for cloning human embryonic stem cells. Hwang has since resigned over fabricated data and ethical violations. Coercing your graduate students into giving you eggs is really, really creepy.
• Hendrik Shon was a high-profile, innovative researcher for Bell Labs. The only problem? He made it all up. Schon was apparently averaging a paper every eight days for more than a year, and nobody suspected anything? Here is an excellent article from Salon on the Schon case.
• Element 118 renamed Unobtanium.
• Be careful for whom you do a favor.

Oh, the Humanities!

I will admit that I don't really know what "postmodernism" actually means. In fact, I suspect that's the whole idea.

• At what point does something indistinguishable from gibberish become actual gibberish?
• What's this with Zeno's paradox? Evidently nobody in literary criticism takes calculus. (From Perforations.)
• Here's another gem from Vadim Linetski. (This is a peer reviewed article!)
• Postmodern Culture online journal.
• I have a feeling that if I understood this guy I would probably agree with him. As it is, I have no idea what the hell he's talking about.
• Beyond postmodernism? hypermodernism! "Virilio, a devotee of Mandelbrot's (1977) geometry of fractals, argues that cultural theory must take account of interruptions in the rhythm of human consciousness and 'morphological irruptions' in the physical dimension. Using his concept of 'picnolepsy' (frequent interruption) and Einstein's General Relativity Theory, he suggests that modern vision and the contemporary city are both the products of military power and time-based cinematic technologies of disappearance." (From CTHEORY.)
• Alan Sokal's infamous article, Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, published in Social Text Spring/Summer 1996. A classic. Sokal's explanation of the hoax is required reading.
• A magnificent rant by Camille Paglia.

Monkeys in a Can

Now we are going back to the moon. This is what we get when our science priorities are defined by somebody who says "nuke-yoo-lur" in public.

• A leaked email from Michael Griffin, as reported by the Orlando Sentinel. Wow. Just ... wow.
• NASA's Beyond Einstein science program is now all but dead. Here is an action alert from the AAS.
• Twelve out of fifteen ain't bad: The space shuttle returns to flight despite NASA's failure to resolve safety issues.
• Apollo on Crack. But who cares if it works as long as it has a cool name.
• Beat the rush: buy your plot of lunar property here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here. (Whoops! Some are already out of business...)
• The International Space Station. Cost: something over $100 billion. New worlds explored: zero. Science: zero. You would think that for that much money they would have enough to eat: Maybe they need extra room for all the garbage.
• A New York Times Op-Ed by Paul Davies, advocating cost savings by sending astronauts to Mars, but not bringing them back. I wish I were making this stuff up.
• Not to worry. Bush has only allocated $1 billion in new funds to pay for his proposal. (Perhaps it's a faith-based initiative.) Update: NASA gets a big budget increase for fiscal year 2005. Meanwhile the National Science Foundation budget is cut.
• Meanwhile, robots do real science at a fraction of the cost and none of the risk:
• WMAP
• Galileo
• SOHO
• Cassini
• Spitzer
• Chandra
• Ulysses
• Stardust
• LISA
• Planck
• The Webb Space Telescope
• The Terrestrial Planet Finder
• Hubble Space Telescope. (Whoops. scratch that. Or maybe not.)
• Kepler
• New Horizons
• Deep Impact
• Messenger
• Herschel
• Rosetta
• It's all been faked anyway.

But is it Physics? The Bogdanov Affair.

Two brothers churn out apparent nonsense and call it field theory. Papers get published in peer-reviewed journals. Brothers get PhDs. Things only get murkier from there...

• John Baez exposes the Bogdanov brothers.
• An article in the New York Times (registration required). "It showed some originality and some familiarity with the jargon. That's all I ask."
• Follow the debate in sci.physics.research, including my comments and subsequent apology to the Bogdanovs.
• Paper from Nuovo Cimento. (PDF format.)
• Paper from Chinese Journal of Physics.

The Far Fringe

Really unique ideas.

• Archimedes Plutonium. The one. The only. Here's the Wikipedia page on the infamous mad theorist.
• World Jump Day.came and went on 20 July. I didn't feel anything.
• Robert E. McElwaine. Hollow earth, Larsonian relativity, and renegade space cannibals. This page has it all.
• Moses = Smoking, Jesus = Bed, Ford = Car, Bell = Phone ... keep movin': Alan Jackson's home page. I met Alan in the backcountry canyons of Utah in 1996. He showed me Anasazi ruins and we debated science and smoked his hand-rolled cigarettes. I didn't get through to him and he didn't get through to me, but it was really cool. Hi Alan!
• "The Final Theory shows that the simple reality of our universe has been unrecognizably distorted by a long succession of misunderstandings. It began with Newton mistaking gravity as an attracting force." This is actually selling on Amazon, which has been censoring negative reviews.
• The Maharishi Effect Get flying, people!
• The Grant Chronicles: "I would like to thank God for bestowing upon me the ability and wisdom to present these new and alternate concepts in the field of astrophysics for all of mankind to ponder."
• Quintessence of the Loon: A collection of some of the fringiest sites on the net. Now dormant, the back issues are still good reading.