You can’t make stuff like this up. You really can’t. Did you know that Tom and Jerry are in reality a clever secret nefarious plot by the Jews? That’s what Professor Hassan Bolkhari, who teaches philosophy of art at Tabatabaei and Al-Zahra Universities in Iran and is a member of the Film Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran and a cultural advisor to the Iranian Education Ministry, asserts (if you understand the language, feel free to check out the original video here):
Anger management
Here’s a guy who really could use some anger management training, clearly the roomate from hell.
On a lighter note…
Those who’ve been regulars here for a while know that on Fridays and the weekends, I often (although not always) like to take a lighter approach with my posts and links. In that vein, I bring you a vision of what’s become of Michael Jackson…
Impressive science failing to impress patients
One of the greatest challenges in medicine can sometimes be to convince a patient that the results of scientific and medical research apply to them, or, at the very least, to explain how such results apply. A couple of days ago, in an article the New York Times, Dr. Abigail Zuker, proposed one reason why this might be, beginning with a discussion with her mother in which she tries to convince her of the benefit of exercise, even in the elderly, a concept that her mother would have none of: “Studies,” she says, dripping scorn. “Don’t give me studies. Look …
Orac gets fan mail
Here’s a comment that popped up in my moderation queue for an article I wrote on the old blog several months ago: The Holocaust is a huge money maker for Jews; one they do not wish to lose. Irving’s and Zundel’s struggle in our time is analogous to Galileo’s struggle with discovery that threatened the TPTB’s power structure. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Now the Holocaust deniers are pulling the Galileo gambit. This guy needs to get a clue. As much as I find the law that sent him to prison for three years to …
Opinions without expertise
While I’m busy plugging blogs I like, I thought I’d mention that A Photon in the Darkness is another one of my favorite skeptical blogs. Lately, in all the turmoil over my move to ScienceBlogs, I failed to mention two good pieces that Prometheus has posted in the last few days: Why anecdotes aren’t data (I suspect this one will really annoy a certain lurker who occasionally likes to trash me on his blog) and Opinions are like…; everybody’s got one Of the two, the second is my favorite, because he does quite a nice takedown of the apparent belief …
Let the poo fly again!
Good news! One of my favorite skeptical bloggers, Matt at Pooflingers Anonymous, has ended his blogging hiatus. I was sad to see him announce in early January that he was leaving the blogosphere , and I’m happy to see that he’s back in business. It turns out that the constant intense exposure to the rampant credulity of creationists like Kent Hovind and the writers of the Evolution Cruncher had made him fear for his critical thinking skills and even his mental health. (I warned him about it at the time, but would he listen? Nooooo!) He had to take a …
Why not just castrate them?
There are many quack treatments for autism, ranging from the benign and ineffective to the harmful and ineffective. Mark and David Geier have come up with one that's definitely harmful, chemical castration. I thought I'd seen it all, but this is the vilest quackery I've seen yet.
Bird flu weirdness
What is it about the Avian flu that seems to inspire all sorts of wild craziness? Yes, the avian flu has the potential to be a big problem in humans (but is not one yet–so far its main lethal affect has been in birds). Yes, if it ever acquired the ability to be transmitted from person to person, rather than only from bird to human, it could cause a pandemic as nasty as the 1918 influenza pandemic, but, as far as can be determined, it has not acquired such an ability yet. Nonetheless, the avian flu inspires a lot more …
Stomping free speech flat in Austria
Austrian prosecutors think Irving’s jail term is too short: Austrian prosecutors have filed an appeal against the three-year prison sentence handed to the British historian David Irving, arguing that he escaped too lightly for the crime of Holocaust denial. Irving was left stunned and open-mouthed when the sentence was handed down after a one-day trial in a Vienna court yesterday. After entering a guilty plea and publicly accepting that he had made a mistake when denying existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz, Irving had clearly expected a more lenient punishment over two speeches made to Austrian neo-Nazis in 1989. Irving’s …