Good news, and bad news

So, I’m updating this blog because of two major news that have shaked the skeptics community for the good, and the bad.

Let’s go for the bad one, first.

Jeff Medkeff, known in the internet as Blue Collar Scientist, has passed away in Sunday due to complications by his liver cancer that was diagnosed to him a while ago.

These are very sad news, as he was a skeptic, and not only that, a great person, as you could see in his blog.

My condolences to his family, and anybody who was close to him. I’m speechless, as this happened really fast. Thank you BA for letting us know.

The good news, however, is that Phil Plait, that’s right, THE Phil Plait, is now the President of the James Randi Educational Fundation! This is badass, and I know that I speak in behalf of everybody when I say that I’m happy for him, a lot. Read more about it here!

Update: As I was finishing this blog, I have been notified that Robert S. Lancaster, owner of StopSylviaBrowne.com, has suffered a stroke and is now in a local Hospital’s CCU. Major major bummer. He’s on a ‘wait and see’ phase, for the moment, so nothing about his prognosis just yet. Read more about it here.

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Brainwashing Part 1 - Religion, hardcore mode

Remember when I said on an earlier post that creationists and religious people in general use the “get ‘em while they’re soft” tactic? Well, I wasn’t that wrong after all.

On the search of stuff to rage and laugh, I went to see a good webpage of religious fun: FSTDT. It’s always nice to see what are the bleevers rambling about on some particular day, but there was one particular submission that left me speechless:

well,thats wat i was told!!!
i warned my ex-frend not to choose to be pagan because they have sex with animals,n she spat on me n told me to burn…she made the wrong choice,she should have became christian like me…

This comment was made by GlenNashly on Youtube, after being criticised of a comment she made about pagan having sex with animals.

Okay, wait for it… wait for it… Okay, start rage now.

I actually wondered why does she think that. She was very likely bombed with utter crap like this when she was a child. Or maybe the church. Or maybe she came up with that by herself. Either way, I had to find out.

I did a very very quick background check on this person and the “ex-frend”.

I found out easily that GlenNashly is a 14 year old girl, and there was a trouble with the former friend because she chose to be a “pagan”. Nashly tried to persuade her saying that pagans do nasty nasty things, and therefore their friendship broke. No surprise, if you ask me.

What else is this priest teaching to everybody? God did everything, fine. God did everything in 6000 years, meh. God did everything in 6000 years and science is wrong, urgh. God did everything in 6000 years, science is wrong, and anybody who does not follow the allmighty word of the FSM will rape a pig or something, RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE!

Whenever I get a hold of this girl again, I will update.

But this is a good example about what can hardcore religion do to the youth of today.

Here is the link to Glennashly’s youtube page. From there, you can see her latest comments and when she talked about me, she talked to her friend, mzdarknezz, etc.

P.S: Before I forget, kisses to a.real.girl, from the Skepchick Magazine!

P.S.S: Moderate NSFW language on my channel, if you go there through my comments on GlenNashly’s channel. I’m kind of a vivid (and yes, irreverent) guy, what can we do about it?

Splendid Elles on Teen skepchick

After a long long time of hiatus (School, gentlemen, what can we do about it?), I decided to bring it on again with some good news for us teenager skeptics:

Elles, from the blog Splendid Elles has been chosen to be a writer for the new “Teen Skepchick“, a sub-division of the Skepchick Blog, created and hosted by Rebecca Watson and her crew. She has already made a really good intro, and I believe that she will do splendidly on the bashing of TEH WOO.

From a casual, teenager skeptic, congratulations! I wish you the best of luck with this job. We teenagers need more rational thinking. We need to live our lifes sprinkled with a bit of skpeticism, and it’s way better if you start skeptical from square one; and I bet that this blog will serve its purpose fully.

Again, congratulations, Elles!

News about Blue Collar Scientist.

If you are a skeptic, and have been around the skeptic community, then I’m sure you heard about the Blue Collar Scientist, also known as Jeff Medkeff. Another skeptic, writer, and many other stuff, he’s definitely one of the good guys.

And I was actually shocked when I read through the Bad Astronomy Blog that he has been diagnosed with liver cancer.

These are terrible news, I knew that he was ill about 3 weeks ago, when I read on his blog that he had some sort of gastrointestinal infection that spread a bit through his body. And then, I read this.

If you don’t want to click the link and drink the rest of the Victory Gin, I can sum it up for you.

Jeff has been diagnosed with liver cancer. After a full-body MRI, 2 tumors were found: One small, but the other one is quite a big fucker with 10 cm in diameter. And considering that he was great a few months ago, then there is a chance that they are not precisely benign.

The good stuff (And I quite like to stress it): Jeff is a tremendously healthy guy, apart of all this liver cancer stuff: He haw never been a drinker, no hepatitis, no HIV, and he never had any serious cardiac or metabolic health issues that could screw him up. So these are great news.

Note that the diagnose is not final, we would only know the next week how the business is going.

Also, correct me if I wrong, but I believe that the liver regenerates, so you can pretty much cut pieces as long as it doesn’t screw up the rest of the body and still regenerate.

And last, but not least, the modern science. Oh, yes, that medical science that saves lifes? Well, that one.

Best of luck to Jeff, please go to his blog and leave a comment. It’s not only great, but it’s also good for the mood. What’s better than leaving up a comment for such an awesome blogger like him?

And besides, it would be good if you didn’t pray for him. It would go totally against him.

Daily OMG-ish: Phoenix Landing follow-up

It is my happy duty to inform you that Phoenix has landed safely and is now on Martian soil.

Cool.

Again, this will confirm the chemical composition of the frozen poles in Mars and might (And I like to stress MIGHT) find signs of life on the Red Planet.

I’m watching right now the scientists involved on the project cheered up, and it makes my day to see them all happy, jumping around, and eating peanuts.

Without any issue, it has landed after 7 minutes of anxious expectation. NASA has about 1 minute worth of data, and there are only 15 minutes left (As I’m writing this) until the probe expands it’s solar panel.

“I wouldn’t have imagined it [the landing], not even in my dreams. The landing was perfect.”  This is what some scientist guy is saying right now. “We have the best team in the World”.

They did it. They simply did it. And that’s freakin’ awesome.

Of course, it’s gonna take a while to get even more info. The processing speed is of only 8K. Imagine that good ol’ dial-up modems had a max of 56K. Pics and maybe even a video will be on NASA (And the NASA site) by tomorrow.

Who knows, maybe they will just find life on Mars. And that will be even more awesome. But make it clear, it’s not Phoenix’s main objective.

I’m making a note here:

HUGE SUCCESS.

Martian probe “Phoenix” lands tonight, at 23:40 GMT

At around 23:40 GMT, the Phoenix probe will land into the Martian Artic Pole at 23:40 UT (Or GMT, or whatever). This will be a very cool event because the pole hasn’t been explorated and there is a chance that on the frozen water and on the frozen carbon, life can be found.

The landing will last for 7 minutes, but there will not be a confirmation of the landing until 23:55 GMT, because the delay of the radio signals traveling all the way from the Red Planet to Earth. This period has been called “The seven minutes of terror”.

I’ll have more details up later, but this certainly looks cool. Good luck, Phoenix, you got thousands of eyes over you.

Food eaten on pregnancy determines baby’s gender? Oh, snap!

My brain nearly melted as I read through this. But then I raged.

Making it short: British scientists found out that food intake can influence if the baby will be a boy or a girl.

Scientists? If they had some common sense, this “scientists” would have known already that the gender is determined when the male sexual cell ovulates the female sexual cell (On other words, the woman gets pregnant due to spraying manly juice). The food you eat on pregnancy wouldn’t give a damn to the baby, as the gender is already determined.

Basically: The woman has two XX sexual cromosomes. The man has two sexual cromosomes as well, but XY. When these two “collide”, and the woman gets pregnant, the meiosis process will determine the baby’s sex on the first division, and three things can happen:

• Meiosis determines the sex gene to be XX, making it a girl.

• Meoisis determines the sex gene to be XY, making it a boy.

• Or, in a highly unlikely case, we get XXY, XXX, YYY, etc, or even XXXY, making the baby an hermaphrodite.

Again, the food doesn’t cause the baby to be a boy or a girl, or whatever. It’s a type of fallacy. It’s the sperm that determines it. If the X cromosomes go through the Meiosis, then it’s a girl. If the Y cromosome goes with the woman’s X cromosome, then it’s a guy.

I find it funny everytime I read “Scientists”. Heh.

Another good 2012 Takedown

You might have heard of all the 2012 nonsense that’s popping around in the magic world of the internets recently. What basically says is that the Mayans have predicted that the end of the world (or the end of mankind, or a mean monumental change, go fill in the blanks) will be on December 21st, 2012.

Now, will these prophecies become true?

Spoiler: No, they won’t.

Now, I was always eager to make a point-to-point debunking of this particular piece of woo, but never had enough time to prepare it. But if I wanna build up a 5-second debunking, I’ll do it:

The calendar won’t end in that day. It will reset. If you think that it will end then you may as well think that the end of the world is going to be on December 31st, 2008.

There you go.

Back to the point, Ian O’Neill at Universe Today has made a well-made takedown on this. I suggest you skeptics and general public to go check it out. Digg this if you want, it’s also really appreciated.

The faster we take this myth down, or the faster it will evolve. It has been already linked to the New World Order and Planet X. Geez.

The daily OMG - The Unified theory of the woo (R)

Woah.

You best be joking.

My brain started slowly to dissolve in 01:00. You gotta me kidding me. Okay, you believe in one particular piece of woo. It’s alright, it happens. But believing on every single conspiracy, doomsday bleef and single piece of woo in the world, and piece it up. Planet X, Freemasonic conspiracy, Satanism, Global enslavement, and the LHC. Yes, the poor LHC.

It shall be named: “The Unified theory of the woo”.

And, as he says, tip o’ the Annunaki spaceship (Gotta bear with it, I don’t have such a creative mind when it comes to original puns) to Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, who very accurately said that this guy is made out of BA antimatter.