Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.
That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)
DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.
To contact Orac: [email protected]
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20 replies on “It’s baaaacck…”
nice!
why not add a lovely giant clam illustration to that post? they’re so gorgeous!
http://www.scooldivers.com/images/sites/critters/giant-clam.jpg
(not vouching for copyright on that, just one i liked) 🙂
Are you sure it’s stable?
All I get is:
“A communication error occurred: The Web Server may be down, too busy, or experiencing other problems preventing it from responding to requests. You may wish to try again at a later time.”
I’m having trouble too. I was able to reach it up until about ten minutes ago, but no more, sadly.
Well if it is back, it isn’t for me.
Down again, worked 2 hours before. Now I’m really suspecting a DoS-Attack.
I can’t get into it either. 🙁
Works for me ATM – nice and snappy, too!
Working for me. Yay!
Yay! I can get into SBM and get my fix. Oh…and read what your “friend” has to say. 🙂
I get an error every time I try from host pops
“This Account Has Been Suspended.”
Sorry to report this, but it’s gone again!
Seems to still be okay for me. Have you guys tried clearing your cache/temp files?
It worked fine in Firefox, though for Internet Explorer 8 I had to clear the cache, history and then just delete if from the Favorites list… and then add it back into Favorites.
What also worked was just typing the URL in my hand.
Wow, Chris, if you type the URL in your hand, your computer goes to the right site? What a fabulous connection you must have! (Just kidding. I know what you meant.)
Since the Science-Based Medicine web server is now being hosted by a new service, it will have a new IP address. It takes a (short) while for that new address to propagate to all the Domain Name Servers (DNS) in the internet, including that of one’s personal internet provider, that a web browser uses to find web pages. Until the address is updated at the DNS of one’s internet provider, you will continue to be directed to the old location, and the error message there. It is possible to replace whatever default DNS you use with a third party DNS, which may have other benefits. I use OpenDNS, which already had the new SBM address late last night my time, which thus enabled me to reach the site already then.
PS I wonder why you are suggesting we view that article, Orac? 😉
Dawn, I realized later what happened. When they switched to that server it was having trouble switching, so I used the odd number address (DNS?) that worked for that time and set it in favorites.
The problem was I was going directly to the wrong DNS. sigh
It was a stupid user problem.
So what those of us with crappy ISPs need is someone to post the numerical value of the new URL. (do I have that right?)
I found it, and it works
http://72.47.235.241/
Not sure if this is a temporary issue or not, but SBM appears to be down again. Got a “failed to connect” error.