This doesn’t happen much on non-biological issues, but I think I can say, without reservation, that I agree entirely and wholeheartedly with PZ Myers’ take on the events that inspired my post “Community”.
Community
I regularly have a problem when trying to fix problems with physical objects that do mechanically things[1]. In attempting to solve the problem, I learn that the problem I thought was the problem is not the problem and discover what the actual the problem is. Not that I then necessarily have any idea how to solve the new the problem, but at least I know what the problem is now.
Its like an episode of House, without the erroneous suggestion that it might be lupus[2].
Or, maybe its like Atheism[3].
One of Atheism’s major problems is that not enough girls are showing up to their parties. Recently, there was a great deal of attention focused on the issue of sexism in Atheism after a dust-up erupted around the reporting of events during a predominantly male “women in atheism” panel. Briefly, a female audience member took vocal issue with some of the panel’s statements and left in some distress feeling that the panel’s responses to her concerns were condescending and mocking.
I’m not sure there is much to learn from this event. There is a lot to learn from the response.
Tripping the Sedge
I have no idea if it is ok to call the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences “The Sedge”; but it should be. For St. Patrick’s Day, we took The Frogger and The Bell to The Sedge to hunt dinosaurs: Continue reading “Tripping the Sedge”
Cell phones don’t cause blinding either
According to a preliminary study in the Journal of the American Medical Association – “Effects of Cell Phone Radiofrequency Signal Exposure on Brain Glucose Metabolism” (Volkow et al. 2011) – the radio frequency emissions from cell phones can cause detectable changes in the metabolism of a specific brain region.
In healthy participants and compared with no exposure, 50-minute cell phone exposure was associated with increased brain glucose metabolism in the region closest to the antenna. This finding is of unknown clinical significance.
While there has been a great deal of speculation in the media regarding the mechanism of this effect, we need to dedicated some thought to whether there is actually an effect that requires explanation.
Wired Fear Mongering – Body Scanners
Wired lets me down with some airport body scanner fear mongering:
TSA admits bungling of airport body scanner radiation test:
The Transportation Security Administration is reanalyzing the radiation levels of X-ray body scanners installed in airports nationwide, after testing produced dramatically higher-than-expected results.
The TSA, which has deployed at least 500 body scanners to at least 78 airports, said Tuesday the machines meet all safety standards and would remain in operation despite a “calculation error” in safety studies. The flawed results showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected.
Read a little more deeply, and it turns out that the problem is not that the machines are emitting 10 times higher than expected radiation – it’s the much less hazardous (and less sensational) problem that the technicians testing the machines forgot to divide by 10. Continue reading “Wired Fear Mongering – Body Scanners”
The Finch and Pea 