INTERESTING TIMES

Incantation used to bring the Geni from the bottle
in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad:

From the land beyond, beyond
From the world past hope and fear
I bid you Geni, now appear..


--Ray Harryhausen ?
(thanks to ML)

To be able to see into other people's worlds.
To not be able to not see into other people's worlds.
Is this a gift or a curse?
( my answer )

...there is an even stronger reason why I am not afraid that scientists will inadvertently go and explain everything--it will never happen. ...for every question answered, a dozen newer ones are generated. And they are usually far more puzzling, more challenging than the prior problems. ... We will never have our flames extinguished by knowledge. The purpose of science is not to cure us of our sense of mystery and wonder, but to constantly reinvent and reinvigorate it.
--Robert M. Sapolsky, in The Trouble with Testosterone (and other essays), p286.

http://www.randi.org/site/
Another person offering a million bucks to anyone offering a homeopathic or other cure that will withstand scientific challenge.

I've been reading the assigned chapter (chapter 7 of Amy Lansky's book Impossible Cure; The Promise of Homeopathy) and decided to do a little web search to see if anyone else had some thoughts about the way that homeopaths like to present the science about their pet topic. I discovered that I am not the only one who thinks the presentation of the material is biased and that the so-called science is distorted so badly as to not merit the name "science" anymore. But check out the links for yourself, if you're interested. I found these by searching for "Linde 1997 homeopathy", referencing his 1997 meta analysis "proving" that homeopathy is 245% more effective than placebo. Linde's analysis included research in all languages, making it difficult for any non-linguistically oriented individual to directly critique his much-quoted analysis.

First, here's the Linde meta analysis
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9310601
And a nugget of Linde's work:
http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/CRDWeb/ShowRecord.asp?ID=11999000167
( And now for lots of links to the other side of the story. )