Pandit Surender Sharma is a well known Indian guru who claims to have magical powers which he can use to do any number of amazing things.  Among them is the ability to kill with magic and spiritual energy alone. Well known Indian skeptic and debunker Sanal Edamaruku didn’t buy it and went so far as to challenge Sharma to kill him on live television using only his magical powers.   Surprisingly, Sharma took the challenge, but warned that Edamaruku was asking for a painful death.

You really don’t need to understand the language to see what happens:

Needless to say, Mr. Edamaruku is still alive and well. The only problem he has encountered during these kind of challenges has been the occasions where he has had difficulty keeping a straight face and fighting back laughter.

I really love when people like Sharma are actually willing to prove their powers – it never does actually work, but it’s fun to watch.

This is actually a topic that was covered here some time ago. A hologram is a specialized image recording which allows for photon distribution to be replicated from a 3D source, thus allowing a two-dimensional surface to appear to show a three dimensional object or scene.   High quality holograms, which produce realistic depth and high resolution are expensive and fairly limited.   Cheaper holograms are smaller and often don’t produce much a a 3D illusion, but rather just have a shine pattern that varies depending on angle.  You probably have one of these on your bank card or credit card.  They work as a security feature since they’re hard to replicate.

Cheap little holograms are also used as reflectors or on stickers.   There has been research into holographic media for storing digital data, but thus far, it has had only limited commercial use.

One thing that a little hologram sticker will not do is cure any disease or relieve any symptom of disease.

The topic came up recently on Chron.com

Does it make some feel better?  Perhaps, but this should not be seen as a justification for its sale.   The placebo effect is well known to exist, but modern medicine universally considers dispensing of a placebo-based treatment in mass to be unethical.   It destroys the trust relationship between doctor and patient and prevents informed consent.   They’re also not necessarily that effective – sure, they may be effective for some, but the effect varies.

Finally, feeling better is not the same as being better.   If you have arthritis and your joints hurt, that’s because there is a real problem going on in your body.   Cartilage is damaged and joint tissue has become inflamed.  Putting a sticker on the area might convince you that the pain is not as bad, but there’s really no change in the condition.  The tissue is still damaged and inflamed, even if you think it feels a bit better.  Of course, placebos will never cure cancer or an infectious disease.

In the end these kind of products are universally the same: someone is trying to make a buck by being dishonest, and that’s never acceptable.

In recent times, medical imaging procedures that utilize x-rays have come under increased scrutiny as numerous media outlets and even peer-reviewed studies have reported that these procedures are putting patients at risk of cancer and causing tens of thousands of new cases of cancer per year, with many of those resulting in death.   These reports are leading to not only increased fear of medical imaging, but also to calls for policy changes and reduced use of x-ray medical imaging.

The CT scan has become on of the biggest targets.   CT scans are rapidly becoming one of the most common forms of medical imaging.  They’re relatively quick, painless and provide excellent diagnostic data for a wide number of conditions.   The technology of CT scanning and imaging processing has improved dramatically in recent years, making the procedures both more economical and increasing data quality and resolution.    There’s no doubt that these procedures save lives and improve the quality of life by giving doctors a look inside the human body at both bone and soft tissue.

CT scans do subject patients to some radiation exposure, however.   The levels of radiation which a patient receives from a CT scan (or even several of them) has never been shown to actually cause any long term harm, but the long-standing and many times debunked linear non-threshold model presumes that it will.  LNT was conceived as a “worst case scenario” for the effect that ionizing radiation might have on the human body in the earliest days of radiation research, when data was scarce.

LNT holds that radiation effect is directly proportional to dose, all the way down to zero and therefore assumes that the human body is incapable of repairing damage caused by radiation, recovering from radiation-induced cellular damage or in any way mitigating the effects of radiation.   It further assumes that the effect of a few atoms in a human cell being ionized is smaller, but otherwise no different than an enormous amount of ionization of the cells.

There’s no doubt that cancer risk is increased by radiation if the dose is high enough.   Radiation can damage the body on both a macroscopic and cellular level.   A high enough dose of radiation can cause tissue damage, internal bleeding and even death.  Those who do recover from multiple incidence of near-fatal acute radiation poisoning may face life-long complications and health issues relating to the damage caused by radiation.   At high enough levels, the dangers appear to be relatively linear in relation to radiation dose.  In other words, a person exposed to 1000 rems has approximately twice the risk of complications like cancer as someone exposed to 500.

By this logic, one rem should result in .1% the likelihood of developing cancer as 1000 rems.   This has been likened to observing that when a person is thrown off a ten story building they die 100% of the time, when thrown off of a 5 story building, they die 50% of the time and therefore assuming that 10% will die from a one story fall and 1% will die after falling 12 inches.  Furthermore, the implication is that the optimal living situation is zero radiation exposure (something which is effectively impossible) and the higher the exposure is over zero, the worse off you are for cancer risk.

Needless to say, many have pointed out that there’s a flaw in this logic and as knowledge of radiation has increased, LNT has begun to look less and less likely.  Unfortunately for the promoters of LNT, examination of the cancer rates in populations living in high radiation background areas shows no increase in cancer and in fact, has produced some evidence of a decreased risk of cancer.

Yet what these reports on the dangers of medical imaging really are is nothing more than a combination of the LNT hypothysis and fifth grade level mathematics.

In the media:
SF Gate: CT scan cancer warnings worry patients
WEB MD: Multiple CT Scans Raise Cancer Risk
Daily Mail: CAT scan cancer fear: Radiation ‘could trigger the disease in one in 80 patients’
US News and World Report: Too Many CT Scans Pose Cancer Risk, Studies Say
Wall Street Journal: Radiation Risks Prompt Push to Curb CT Scans

The math:
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From a more hopeful time when most saw nuclear energy and nuclear technology as the amazing and hopeful field that it is, these ads ran in magazines in the 1950’s and early 1960’s.   They have a great positive and optimistic message combined with some inspiring symbolism and artwork.   My favorite are the Union Carbide ads, but others here include ads from Honeywell, General Dynamics, General Atomics, The Railroad Association of America, Inco Nickle, Lockheed, General Electric and others.   A few of these ads are not even for companies whose main activity was nuclear related, but noted that they were at least somewhat involved in the nuclear technology world.

I collected these classics from a number of sources.  A few came from the excellent Modern Mechanix blog, while others  came from Wikimedia, Erik Nitsche’s Flickr account and other websites.   Since these images were scanned from original material and posted to begin with, I’m assuming that there’s probably no copyright issue here, either because the original ad owner doesn’t mind them being distributed or because they’re no longer under copyright.   In any case, their use for documentary purposes should constitute fair use.

I really love these classics.

Paul Watson is many things:  a pathological liar, a terrorist (and I don’t use that word lightly), an attempted murderer, a coward, an attention whore, a criminal, an attempted murderer and someone who generally is not to be trusted.   Watson likes to play pirate and pretend he’s at war on a ship that was bought by the money from those stupid enough to donate money to his group.   If he really was at war, he’d have been blown to pieces a long time ago.   In his warped mind, ramming other ships, throwing glass bottles and trying to entangle their props is legitimate “law enforcement” activity.

Now that his organization has a television deal, they’ve been trying to outdo themselves for dramatic footage and news stories that will grab headlines and get some more donations. Ratings, news coverage, donations – after all, it’s all about the money.

One notorious incident includes Watson claiming he was shot by the Japanese Coast Guard, who were tasked with protecting the whalers. The situation was as follows: after repeatedly coming dangerously close to the whaling vessels, the Sea Shepherd crew began hurling glass bottles of butyric acid at the crew of the Nisshin Maru. It is claimed that this was only because butyric acid smells bad, but one should consider that these glass bottles could still have caused injury and the contents were not known to the Japanese.

The Japanese Coast Guard responded with the use of “flash bang” grenades. These are little more than firecrackers and are typically designed to create an unpleasantly loud sound and otherwise stun or confuse. They’re not very effective at repelling an attack, but the Japanese Coast Guard seems to have been under orders not to use lethal force (which I stress, they would have been justified in using.)

At this point, Watson claims he was shot and survived only because of a bullet proof vest and a badge, which just happened to catch the bullet.

Natural gas is cheap and plentiful, eh?   Really?   It’s the source we should use for energy because it’s so common we’ll never have to worry about a supply crunch?

Dang, well, I like to think I’m young, but I’m pretty sure I remember in my lifetime this not being the case.   Actually, I’m damn sure of it.    Believe it or not, the natural gas market is just about as volatile as the petroleum market.   For those who don’t remember, around 1999-2000, gasoline was under a dollar a gallon.   Ten years is really not all that long ago, especially when you’re about infrastructure and building it – as infrastructure tends to last more than ten years.   Natural gas doesn’t tend to be much more stable.

In fact, the cost of natural gas and its availability is effected by a number of things:  politics in countries like Qatar and Russia, the worldwide demand for plastics and various chemical products, the severity of winter and the cost of oil and the volume of heavy crude being refined, the availability of pipelines and well heads all factor in to how much natural gas is being consumed and whether enough can be provided.

Based on television ads and the general opinion of many on natural gas, it would seem like this isn’t the case.   Unfortunately, reality stays the same no matter how much you say something.

So now, for those with a poor memory, here’s a refresher:

There’s no doubt that radiation saves lives when applied properly in a medical setting.  In recent years, narrow beam radiation therapy has made it possible to zap cancerous tumors while keeping damage to nearby tissue to a minimum.   CT scans and digital filmless x-ray imaging has improved at an astonishing rate, making it possible to see inside the body with unprecedented detail.

The exposure from imaging procedures tends to be fairly low and no empirical evidence exists for any harm from routine diagnostic imaging.  However, it’s no surprise that a lot of scaremongering has come about over this.   People seem to fear “radiation” like few other things an reports that indicate patients are exposed to more radiation than ever before (on average) raise alarm even though they never state that there’s actually any harm arising from this.

Of course, the greater danger is that these reports, empty though they may be, could lead some to avoid life saving diagnostic imaging and radiation therapy.  Forging radiation therapy for a tumor that cannot be removed completely with surgery can be a death sentence, but some of the sensational reporting makes it seem like radiation could be even worse, emphasizing the dangers without any context.

Via the New York Times:
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The following commercial ran during the Superbowl:

Not surprisingly, it also has the standard hypocrisy and self-appointed pompous message.   How dare you pick plastic bags or throw away an orange peel?    The fact of the matter is that the earth is not going to be saved or destroyed by how we dispose of fruit rinds.   It also seems to be lost on them that the very notion of enforcing bans on throwing away fruit with a helicopter is a bit hypocritical.    Granted, groups like Greenpeace do blockade oil tankers with a ship that is powered on marine diesel.

While the images are over the top, the concept that this is even a positive thing is sickening.   It’s about as funny as a Holocaust joke to imply that happy-faced gestapo riding on big Segways and arresting people for throwing away batteries is anything but reprehensible.   It’s a little ironic how the same themes that are seen in real eco-fascism groups are seen here.

Why would you kick someone when they’re down? Simple – because you don’t want them to get back up again. While that may sound a bit cruel, if the one you’re kicking happens to be fond of spreading disease and death across your country, it’s actually about the most merciful thing you can possibly do for the health and well-being of everyone.

In Australia, the AVN, or Australian Vaccine Network – a major anti-vaccine and anti-science advocacy group got some extremely bad press not long ago when a newborn baby died of whooping cough – a disease that can be kept in check by vaccination and which has been spreading in the country due to low vaccine rates as a result of misinformation.   Recognizing that this was a big blow to the AVN, an impromptu effort was made by skeptics, medical professionals, rational thinkers and others in Australia and elsewhere to keep the pressure on the organization and put them on the defensive when it comes to their lies and the concequences.

A number of forces helped in the PR assault.   The Australian Skeptics lead the charge, while individuals and groups helped by donating the funds to run ads in several Australian papers.  Bloggers and podcasters helped spread the word and when the Australian media ran stories slanted in favor of the AVN, readers and viewers deluged them with complaints. Groups like “STOP AVN” used social networks like Facebook to gain support and members.

Well it seems to have worked.   This ran on the primary blog of the Australian Vaccine network:

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Skilled amateurs have built some pretty amazing things – things you might expect to beyond the capacity of a private citizen.   These include things like particle accelerators, nuclear fusion reactors (Farnsworth Fusors), radio telescopes, weather radar systems, robots of various types and sizes, aircraft and almost anything else you can think of.

Of all the amateur science and technology projects, however, I think this takes the cake.

Yes, it’s a submarine.  A fully functional submarine, complete with deisel engine, electric battery bank, life support systems and everything else a submarine should have.  Obviously this is not the safest thing in the world to build, if you don’t know what you’re doing.   However, Danish submarine Peter Madsen seems to know what he’s doing pretty well.  He built one the world’s biggest and longest endurance home built submarine several years ago – the Kraka. There’s no doubt that the Kraka is an amazing piece of work for something somebody welded together in his garage, but it was relatively shallow diving and only had enough space to crawl around in. More recently he built an even larger and more capable submarine, the UC3 Nautilus, which is large enough to accommodate several people comfortably and has a galley, sleeping berths and everything else you’d find on a small yacht or pleasurecraft. If that isn’t enough, these submarines even have the ability to launch and retrieve scuba divers by an underside hatch and a system to equalize the pressure to that of the water at depth.

Clearly Peter Madsen has spent quite a lot of time and money on these amazing craft, but he did weld them together in his home workshop. Absolutely amazing. It just goes to show what you can do if you really set your mind to it. Now he just needs to build a nuclear reactor so he can construct a “real” submarine as opposed to a surface vessel that can hold its breath for a little bit. Still, even this amateur diesel-electric is cooler than anything I own.