Quickies
Skepchick Quickies, 11.15
- Homeopathy works – but it is talking not tinctures that help patients. (From Jay.)
- Nutritionists of America say: don’t try the Twinkie diet.
- 5 ways to teach science with Star Trek.
- Watch Daniel Radcliffe sing the entire periodic table. (From Daniela.)
I did The Elements song for my high school talent show some…gah…25 years ago, and surprisingly, I still remember it. I wasn’t as well-known, but at least I didn’t mess it up (he didn’t get it right even when he corrected himself). Still, always good to get science out there in popular culture.
Nice homeopathy article. A similar test was done in Norway a few years back with the same results. Of course the proponents aren’t interested in research, as can be seen in the comments.
What I learned about science from Star Trek : any media technology, no matter how revolutionary to the point where simulations become indistinguishable from reality, will mostly be used for cheesy genre fiction and porn.
@scribe999: Hell, you coulda just taken a look at RPGs and seen that. Pretty much all of them are cheesy genre fiction.
@Bjornar, I think most homeopathy proponents fail the first test of skepticism: their answer to the question “what evidence could convince you that you are wrong” is almost always “nothing“.
@Mark Hall: I was thinking more of how the Holodeck, what would be the greatest accomplisment in simulating reality, is mostly used for keeping a Vulcan’s libido in check during Pon Farr or living out Mickey Spillane novels. Heck, in DS9 they’re pretty much used as virtual brothels. This is why I felt so much sympathy for Rom, Quark’s brother…because he likely had to clean those holosuite booths *shiver*.
@scribe999: Oh, I know what you were talking about. I’ve just been having a lot of conversations about genres recently.
@scribe999:
Wouldn’t everything be self-cleaning in the future? Or else we’d have robots clean everything.
@catgirl: It does seem odd that in space station where they routinely rearrange matter and energy at will (holosuites and transporters) they never even thought of something as simple as the ‘Roomba’.
@scribe999: Yea for 1812!
Yea for Daniel Radcliffe and Tom Lehrer too!
@scribe999: Truthfully, this is the disease of not stealing from other science fiction.
Of course, in Star Wars, people dislike jobs because they see them as taking jobs from “real people”, so maybe there’s that.
Of course homeopathy works! http://xrl.in/6ust