Science

Skepchick Quickies 7.24

And here’s a couple bonus links because they’re from my neck of the woods.

  • Pigs fly in Maine–  And here’s the local coverage of the “Wizard of Oz”-type storm.  Their words, not mine.
  • Can psychosis be prevented? – “PIER (Portland Identification and Early Referral) is an effort to find and treat patients in the “early stages of deterioration towards psychosis,” so as to prevent the development of psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression.”  Harriet Hall discusses the possible problems of such a program.

Amanda

Amanda works in healthcare, is a loudmouthed feminist, and proud supporter of the Oxford comma.

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26 Comments

  1. The mirror lies? Damn I already saw ugly when I looked in the mirror. I wonder if I scare kids.

    Crackers? Again? Still? I mean come on, crackers?

    I would have really liked to see the pigs trying to swim in the air.

  2. However, others like Len Torine, who heads the American Association of Vegetarians, doesn’t see any humor in what he considers a “slur on veganism and vegetarianism,” which he finds “aggravating.”

    What kind of fanatic is this Len Torine (if that is his real name…). Calling someone’s opinion “aggravating” instead of blasphemous or a hate crime! That is not way to disagree with someone!

  3. Also, ethnic cleansing, colon cleansing, same diff…Milosovic selling snake oil. Why am I not surprised?

  4. [devil’s advocate]
    So a war criminal poses as an alternative practitioner, and we have just one instance of someone suffering side effects from detox, and that’s enough to declare all of alternative medicine quackery?

    Come on! You can do better than that! Conventional medicine has it’s share of epic fails too!
    [/devil’s advocate]

    I know that I should read more than just the headline, but I’m at work right now. I’ll do it later.

    But seriously, though, here’s a couple more I found this morning:

    Apparently soy foods can be bad for your little swimmers, and someone out there still thinks that cell phones are bad for you.

  5. Maybe those vegans are cranky because they don’t have the right balance in the rest of their lives. Rearrange the furniture in their living rooms and they’ll feel much better. I think.

  6. Say what you will about feng shui, but I’ve got to tell you, I trip over the coffee table a lot less these days, and it really improves my lifestyle.

  7. Ninjas? NINJAS? Posers.

    No wonder I can’t get any action from the Catholics. I should have been the Cracker Pirate.

  8. Living in Southern California I’ve been able to observe the vegan in their natural envirnment and can say that, they are generally a cranky bunch. It will take further study on my part to see if the fact that I’m generally observing them while eating a cheeseburger has anything to do with their attitude.

  9. @ Peregrine: The cell phone thing is currently making the rounds with -every- media outlet. I work in radio, and in our morning prep paper that we get every day, it was the #1 story. I spent a fair amount of time explaining to listeners the fact that the doctor is basing his conclusions on unpublished (hence unreviewed) data. My favorite bit was when he said “science moves too slow, we need to take action now!” Scary thoughts from someone who runs a cancer research center.

  10. Re: PIER.

    Can’t say I’d be in favor of treating ‘pre-psychosis’ folks as if they had psychosis.

    As pointed out in the comments below the article, that’s just too agressive given the difficulty of diagnosis and potential for after effects….and the available data doesn’t support it (i.e. PIER *has* no data available).

    I must note I’m biased, though, since I’ve had some rather negative experiences with shotgun-style medicating/therapy on the part of mental health professionals.

  11. Peregrine:
    Say what you will about feng shui, but I’ve got to tell you, I trip over the coffee table a lot less these days, and it really improves my lifestyle.

    Pointing a cannon at my neighbor’s aggressive house was fun … until he twigged and positioned a mirror strategically ….

    http://tinyurl.com/5tbbb7

  12. I took a look at the “What’s the Harm” website and found it to be pretty good and a resource to see read the stories of the many people who’ve been harmed or killed because of religious idiocy and quackery. Worth checking out.
    http://whatstheharm.net/

  13. I consider the worst side effect to detox’s and “nutritional cleanses” to be the fact that they seem to turn my friends into walking advertisements. I’ve heard the word “Isagenix” so damn often my head is going to explode…

  14. Maybe we should call it the “cell phone microwave theory” so everyone will know it is a lie and propaganda by the evil atheist scientists. If it were true, I would buy a bigger cell phone, a bluetooth headset and put it in my front pocket for a poor man’s vasectomy.

  15. “relying on GPS, home child birth and even being a vegetarian”

    I haven’t read the site itself, just this quote from the ABC article, but there is actually empirical data that supports the safety of home births. So if they start calling it unsafe quackery, I really hope they also mention complications from unnecessary interventions like optional c-sections and induction for convenience.

  16. “Living in Southern California I’ve been able to observe the vegan in their natural envirnment and can say that, they are generally a cranky bunch. It will take further study on my part to see if the fact that I’m generally observing them while eating a cheeseburger has anything to do with their attitude.”

    While I was at school in northern California, every group project I worked on included a vegetarian. The problems would start when it was time to eat, usually pizza. It would have to be vegetarian pizza, and I’d want sausage (they put eegplant and brocoli on veggi pizza there). Can we get half sausage? No, because the juice will run to the vegetarian side. Fine, I’ll get one of my own. No, because the smell will make them sick.

    About this this time I’d be almost as cranky as they were.

  17. “Your self-image is way hotter than you really are.”

    For men, absolutely. My general experience with women is they are way hotter than the reflections they see.

  18. @24: “(they put eegplant and brocoli on veggi pizza there)”

    aaaahh! when will this madness end?!?!

    Broccoli and eggplant have about as much business being on a vegetarian pizza as they do being in a vegetarian burrito, IMO.

    veg pizza = mushrooms, olives, onions, peppers, and combo of those.

    veg burrito = beans (pinto, not black! refried or whole), rice (mexican-style white, not brown!), cheese, sour cream, pico de gallo /salsa, guacamole, lettuce.

    No more grilled inappropriate vegetables on our americanized ethnic-esque foods!!

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