Cookiesse!

And now I share the suffering.

Jasper has found this nauseatingly catchy Lord Of The Rings clip-video.

Today's comics trawl!

In the movie version, cerebrate would play Rat.

(no subject)

A case in point.

Why "Modern Intellectual Conservative" generally translates to "Wannabe Sociopath"

Found through World O'Crap's wonderful dissection of it, here

Ben Goldacre needs your help!

In our eagerness to focus on the supply side of pseudoscience - the dismal outpourings of flaky humanities graduates in the media and the bogus pseudoscience of people with products to sell - we've neglected an important area of study: the impact on the end market. Take this from reader Richard Neville, last weekend, who was simply trying to get a drink: "I was at the bar buying a round," he begins. "'Grapefruit and soda please.' I said. The barman adopted a pained expression. 'I should point out to you, sir, that this juice is 100% pure organic and, therefore, I don't like to add chemicals - you see, I don't know what's in soda water.' 'Well,' I said, 'I think it's mostly water - which, of course, is a chemical plus a little bicarbonate of soda and added carbon dioxide.' He didn't look happy, while I just looked thirsty and persisted: 'Well,' he warned, 'if you'll take full responsibility ...'"

So it occurs to me: if I have a grandiose delusion, it is that we're engaged in a useful project here, the study of the Public Misunderstanding of Science. And this is uncharted territory. So I'm asking for qualitative research; I'm asking for your help in a grand experiment, with the widest possible sampling frame, that is: you. Only you can help me to document the stupidity that's out there.
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sclerotic_rings has an excellent example that should be emailed to M. Goldacre.

Coffee and recreational sodomy

You can see how this might offend the stupid and the insane.

Speaking of whom,

This man, head of "Concerned Women Of America", is afraid that Starbucks coffee is going to turn you gay.

From here

You'd have to buy a REALLY big SUV to compete with this.

The Milky Way is not a perfect spiral galaxy but instead sports a long bar through its centre, according to new infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

The bar is estimated to stretch a total of about 27,000 light years from end to end.

CRIKEY!

Crocodile blood eats HIV.

(no subject)

As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

Burdett added: "Gravity - which is taught to our children as a law - is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force. Isaac Newton himself said, 'I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.' Of course, he is alluding to a higher power."