When Pseudoscience Kills

I am linking to a topic written on the James Randi Education Foundation (JREF) forum.
This is about a woman at a personal-development seminar called Dying in Consciousness, she was covered with mud, wrapped in plastic, put under blankets and immobilized with her head in a cardboard boxe for about nine hours, under instructions to hyperventilate. This happened in Canada recently.
The woman died by being cooked.
Below is a link to the story. 
Written by Dr. Steven Novella When Pseudoscience Kills.
The unfortunate thing is that these people that are running the course have no idea about basic science of how people regulate their temperature. Their ignorance is confounded by the people that attend these new agey, pseudo science courses, who have no idea about basic science as well.
Don't put your health in the hands of pseudo science.

Global Warming & Climate Change Myths

If you have ever been confounded by the toing and froing between science and the climate science deniers, well here is a guide to maybe make things clearer. 
Skeptical Science and "Global Warming & Climate Change Myths".
Click on the blue writing about what science says for an explanation and unfortunately some further toing and froing.

More Noalition NBN Bullshit Busting

Here is some more Noalition bullshit busting.
NBN Bullshit Busting.
From the linked article.

 Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has claimed it is a "charade" that the NBN is kept off budget. The government, in response, has always argued that the NBN is not an expense to the government, because ultimately the project will be paid back to government, with a commercial rate of return estimated at around 7 per cent.

The NBN is an asset not an expense.
Background note. The national broadband network and the federalgovernment budget statements, a PDF from the Parliamentary Library. 
When will the media start asking the hard questions of the Noalition on the NBN. Questioning their assertions against the NBN and challenging what they say they want to do?

Update to "Fighting the NBN Bullshit".

It seems that the article by Piers Ackerman on the 4/1/12 has been pulled by the Daily terror.
It seems that possibly this piece is even too inaccurate for the Daily Terror.
I did not think they had any morals, ha, ha.

Fighting the NBN Bullshit

This is from Delimiter, an online technology magazine.
From Delimiter,

Over the past several weeks, several prominent newspaper commentators have published a number of factual inaccuracies with respect to the Federal Government’s National Broadband Network project. With the aim of informing good public policy debate, it seems appropriate to try and correct the record.

It starts out talking of the Daily Telegraph commentator Piers Akerman.
From his opinionated article that was published in the Daily Terror Telegraph on the 4th January.
They have signaled out a number of things in his piece and bullshit busted them.
The things that Akerman said are below.

The NBN is the most expensive piece of infrastructure ever committed to by the nation and is on track to be the greatest ever economic disaster any government has ever created.

Only 4000 homes have been connected to the fibre optic cable so far at a cost of more than $1 billion … NBN’s own projection for 2011 were 35,000 connections. That is a huge discrepancy and a massive failure to deliver.

Everything about the NBN is dodgy.

 The creation of the NBN Co was itself a demonstration of Labor’s lack of administrative skills and ineptitude with no background checks conducted on the men who have been handed a blank cheque drawn on the taxpayers of the nation.

Below is from Dean Jaensch, a political science academic and commentator for The Advertiser in Adelaide.

The roll-out is miles behind what NBN Co set as a target. It promised 35,000 connections by mid-2011. By the end of 2011, the NBN Co spin-doctors proudly announced that they had connected 12 per cent of the target.

We did not even have the opportunity to closely examine a prospectus before we decided to invest. The Government can claim that its mandate to inaugurate the NBN was based on the 2010 election result.

But it would be a good idea to let the public learn and understand what is going on in the finances and productivity of a company that they, not the Government, own and will pay for. Secrecy is not the best way to win support.

This low productivity has the potential to be interpreted as another policy failure coming up.

Now go to the Delimiter article to see the Bullshit Busting.

RightWing.org video 2012 Prediction

Have a look at this video from RightWingWatch.org
An evangelical preacher Pat Robertson waffles on about getting a message from god telling him the winner of the next Presidential Elections in the USA.
He says that he is not allowed to tell us the winner. What a juvenile jerk he is.
He is of course railing against Barack Obama.
Here is a newspaper article about this.
TheAtlantic
Who takes this stuff seriously?

The Pharmacy Guild and Blackmores

The Pharmacy Guild was "in bed" with Blackmores, the Alternative/Complementary drug company last year 2011.
Information for this blog obtained here at The Skeptic Magazine.
Read more at the above link.
They decided to "push" complementary medicines when people arrived at their pharmacy with a script for these four types of medicines.
Antihypertensives, they were going to "push" zinc supplements. 
Statins (cholesterol lowering drugs), they were going to "push" Co-enzyme Q10, for muscle pain.
Proton Pump inhibitors (for the treatment of gastric reflux), they were going to "push" Magnesium supplements, long term PPI use may cause Magnesium depletion.
Antibiotics, Probiotics for diarrhoea that may happen due to antibiotic use.
Luckily opposition to this started as soon as the Pharmacy Guild announced the agreement. It was fortunately shelved due to the lack of evidence for any of the "pushed" Blackmore "drugs" being of any use and not having any benefit.
Pharmacy Guild's attitude to CAMs (Complementary and Alternative Medicine).
Money to me obviously has gotten in the way in many pharmacies at the detriment of good science.