chargerchant.wordpress.com

It's all about the ratio.

​Finally, a pair of Gainesville biologists have discovered another reason for men having ring fingers longer than their index fingers, and as folklore would have it, it's related to sex.

The findings of the University of Florida College of Medicine developmental biologists, Martin Cohn and Zhengui Zheng, add to the long list of things that are said to be determined by the "digit ratio," specifically the "2D:4D" ratio -- which compares the ring and index fingers.

Now, in addition to penis size, athletic ability, and dozens of other traits thought to be indicated by this ratio, the Florida biologists are now adding sex drive to the list.

More >>

I can has sterilization?

​This might come as a disappointment to animal hoarders, but well adjusted pet owners will be happy to learn that a local scientist's research could slow pet overpopulation.
More >>

David Geier, (not an) MD.

​Two weeks ago, the Pulp published a small item about Mark and David Geier -- a father-son team of self-proclaimed autism experts who treat the condition with a powerful chemical castration agent called Lupron. They're from Maryland, but their interests run deep in Florida.

They've got a clinic here, out in Pembroke Pines, and they've long enjoyed the support of Dr. Gary Kompothecras of Sarasota -- a chiropractor and advocate for fringe autism treatments who's good friends with our erstwhile governor, Charlie Crist. In 2008, Crist appointed Kompothecras to his special Autism Task Force, and Kompothecras -- or "Dr. Gary," as he's known -- used his political muscle to pressure the Florida Department of Health to give the Geiers Florida's confidential vaccination records so they could run a study that, they hoped, would conclusively prove the link between vaccines and autism.
More >>

African Greens.

​Respect and gratitude to the monkey lovers at the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida (ARFF) for ensuring that humanity will enjoy the company of AIDS, blindness, and hepatitis a little while longer.

These are just three of the maladies under investigation by scientists who use nonhuman primates in their research -- a practice that ARFF apparently regards as more appalling than AIDS, blindness, and hepatitis combined. Which is why it rallied its troops last week to protest the shipping of African green monkeys to Florida by IBC Airways, sufficiently scaring the higher-ups at that company that, by Friday, they'd promised to never ship monkeys for research purposes again.
More >>

For the chemical castration of abnormal youths.

​Governors should stay the hell out of the autism wars.

Their intrusion leads to naught but embarrassment and the enfranchisement of questionable characters. Example: In 2009, Charlie Crist appointed anti-vax chiropractor Dr. Gary Kompothecras to his Autism Task Force. After his appointment, Kompothecras -- not incidentally, a man whose uncanny ability to raise funds for politicians has earned him the moniker "the rain maker" -- attempted to strong-arm the Florida Department of Health into turning over state medical records to the execrable father-son team of quack autism experts, Mark and David Geier. (My partner and I broke the news of this embarrassing episode for the Miami New Times.) Crist, who was not elected for his scientific acumen, did the public a profound disservice by lending these gents the credibility implied by his office.

How profound? The Geiers are the leading proponents of what's called the "Lupron Protocol" -- the purported science behind which is explicated here -- which involves dosing autistic kids with large amounts of the chemical castration agent called Lupron. They get away with this by diagnosing autism as "precocious puberty." Even when used on children who actually do suffer from precocious puberty, the drug can occasionally cause permanent sterility. For those children who do not suffer from precocious puberty, the permanent effects are likely more severe -- especially since the Geiers prescribe the drug in extremely high doses.
More >>

James "The Amazing" Randi

​James "The Amazing" Randi was nowhere near New York City when the New York Observer researched its feature, "Dinner With The Unknowers: The NYC Skeptics Break Bread," so it says something about the long shadow the guy casts that it was his picture, and not that of any of the story's subjects, which the editors selected to illustrate the piece.

Check it out here. It's a fine article, which takes a fair look at the fast-growing subculture Randi all but willed into being. (Disclaimer: I used to work for Randi. Bias aside, the subculture really is growing, and he really did all but will it into being.)

If you don't know the guy, Randi was one of the world's most well-known conjurers and escape artists in the 1950s and 60's. Randi's career took a turn for he serious in the late 60's, when he realized that the gurus of the ascendant New Age movement who wooed followers with what appeared to be supernatural feats were actually achieving their effects with standard magic tricks. So on his New York-based radio show, he offered $10,000 to anybody who could demonstrate one of these feats under conditions which precluded cheating.
More >>

Gagarin in Cairo.

​We are fifty years and one day into the era of manned space flight. On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin's successful of into Earth's atmosphere and safe landing in the Saratov region of Russia made him a hero the world over, in Communist and capitalist countries alike. Everywhere, people sensed a new era of discovery and exploration coming into being; one that would make the Renaissance journeys of Columbus and Magellan look like strolls in the back yard. (Which, from an astronomical perspective, they were.)

Well, so much for that. I didn't want to write this on the proper anniversary of Gagarin's flight, which seemed like an inappropriate occasion for griping. But I wonder if anybody noticed the sick irony of yesterday's anniversary: That Gagarin's flight was made possible by a repressive Communist regime, and that the regime's accomplishments were only bested when the United States' government utilized its superior spending power to fund daring, impractical missions which, nowadays, would be laughed out of any budget proposed to our Congress. (In 1961, when the Apollo missions were first funded, they were estimated to cost $24,000,000,000. In today's dollars, that's $177,693,000,000.) Yet the anniversary of Gagarin's flight came on a day when the Kennedy Space Center -- surely the most noble human-made thing in our state -- is shuttering its shuttle program. For the foreseeable future, American space-farers will reach the heavens not in a vehicle built by the American people, but aboard either a Russian Soyuz module or in a Dragon capsule propelled by a Falcon 9 rocket.
More >>

Courtesy, Time Magazine & the James Randi Educational Foundation

Randi

​Yesterday, on April 1, my friend and ex-employer James Randi unveiled the recipients of this year's Pigasus Awards. This isn't the kind of award one wants to receive, necessarily. Randi, a local legend and internationally renowned enemy of pseudoscience and superstition, awards these flying piggies to those who have distinguished themselves by fooling the public. 

James Randi -- or "The Amazing Randi," as he used to be known -- rose to fame in the 1950s and '60s as a conjurer and escape artist. In the '70s, his ire raised by the ascendant New Age movement, Randi began working full-time to expose those individuals who used conjurers' tricks to persuade the public that they possessed supernatural abilities. (His first high-profile target was Uri Geller, the Israeli spoon-bender.)

Randi's cause has gained supporters and breadth in recent decades. "Skeptics'" conferences draw thousands of attendees the world over, and nowadays Randi's as likely to do battle with homeopaths or antivaccine activists as with magicians with delusions of grandeur. His organization, the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), offers $1 million to anyone who can demonstrate supernatural abilities or phenomena under proper observing conditions. Nobody's cashed out yet.

This year's Pigasuses (Pigasi?) have been awarded in the following categories: "Scientist," "Funder," "Media," "Performer/Comeback," and "Refusal to Face Reality." And the winners are:
More >>

​A few last words on Coulter's radiation fetish. Two weeks ago, she claimed ionizing radiation could act as a cancer vaccine, and that nobody died of radiation poisoning at Chernobyl. Then she appeared on the The O'Reilly Factor to defend the column. Last week, she devoted a second column to the promulgation of her pro-ionizing-radiation ideology, entitled "Liberals: They Blinded Us With Science."

The Juice has covered Coulter's previous radioactive rants twice already (here and here), so there wouldn't be any reason to talk about her latest if there wasn't something accidentally brilliant about it. In a very clear way, it demonstrates exactly where most people of all political persuasions go wrong in thinking about science, and why we lay folk are so often baffled by science writing.
More >>

The moon's up to no good.

​Whoops, I was wrong. Last week, I wrote that the so-called "supermoon" wouldn't cause any problems, 'cuz it's a silly astrological concept with virtually no real-world significance. Read the debunking here! It's great!

Unfortunately, it failed to account for human boneheadedness, which often foils good science. Because while the supermoon was happening, tides rose, as they will during any full moon. Why? Because full moons occur when the sun and moon are on opposite side of the planet, playing gravitational tug-of-war with Earth's tides. The supermoon brought the moon marginally closer to Earth than usual, and so tides rose ever so slightly more than usual. Which caused Barry and Penelope Connor's boat to crash into Blue Heron Bridge.
More >>