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Blaming the Western Diet for all that ails you sets off my quackometer ;-)

> I've changed my diet, and my tendonitis has gone down considerably. Typing less would eliminate the problem, but hey...
> > http://www.drweil.com/database/display/0,1412,72,0 0.html

You mean this Dr. Andrew Weil, as featured on Quackwatch.

Stephen Barret (operator of Quackwatch) on Weil in an interview is particularly caustic:

Barrett: His advice is an unsortable mixture of sense and nonsense. For example, he says in one of his books that bloodroot, a caustic herb which burns your skin, can kill skin-cancer cells without injuring the surrounding normal cells. That's absurd. It burns everything it touches. It can't tell the difference. On his Web site, which is owned by Time magazine, he has a questionnaire you fill out, and he'll tell you what ten vitamin and herbal products to take. And there's no foundation for such recommendations. Then you click on a link, mid you'll go to an online "store" to buy them. The "Ask Dr. Weil" Web site is brought to you by The Vitamin Shoppe, a company paying over a million dollars for the privilege of placing its link next to Weil's stupid advice.

Color me skeptical.

(I don't dispute that your symptoms went away after you changed your diet. I do dispute that this implies a causal relationship between your dietary change and your tendonitis relief.)

Me? I had RSI in my right hand from wanking far too often. I tried my left hand, but it wasn't the same. So I got a g/f who'd give me head six times a day while I reconditioned the muscles in my right hand by repeatedly lifting 12-oz weights (usually Guinness, but sometimes Murphy's Stout), and the pain went away after a few weeks. Alcohol consumption and blowjobs are the obvious cure for RSI. (Just don't tell her I'm cured!)

The cry of the quack everywhere.

Yeah, I know Slashdot was just trollin' when they decided to interview Chiu, and I think both the "Ask Alex Chiu" and his responses constitute some of the funniest shit I've read this week.

But to get serious for a minute: If you're interested in quackery, check out http://www.quackwatch.com for all the dirt.

In the case of Alex, he hits pretty much all the buttons on How Quackery Sells. Bravo!

> How do scientists know the diameter of earth? Must a scientist walk the equator in order to tell you the exact diameter of earth? [ ... ] We gather scientific evidence (testimonials) in order to base our assumptions.

Alex, m'boy, you wouldn't know the scientific method if it propositioned you on the street and asked for a rim-job.

The cry of the quack everywhere.

Yeah, I know Slashdot was just trollin' when they decided to interview Chiu, and I think both the "Ask Alex Chiu" and his responses constitute some of the funniest shit I've read this week.

But to get serious for a minute: If you're interested in quackery, check out http://www.quackwatch.com for all the dirt.

In the case of Alex, he hits pretty much all the buttons on How Quackery Sells. Bravo!

> How do scientists know the diameter of earth? Must a scientist walk the equator in order to tell you the exact diameter of earth? [ ... ] We gather scientific evidence (testimonials) in order to base our assumptions.

Alex, m'boy, you wouldn't know the scientific method if it propositioned you on the street and asked for a rim-job.

From quackwatch: A good chiropractor can do a lot to help you when you have mechanical-type back pain and other musculoskeletal problems. But until the chiropractic profession cleans up its act, and its colleges uniformly graduate properly limited chiropractors who specialize in neuromusculoskeletal problems, you'll have to exercise caution and informed judgment when seeking chiropractic care.

Dangers of Chiropractors Much of what chiropractors do is nonsense, and they often misinform their patients.

I know this article is about young minds in math and science. Even though Therapeutic Touch is a whole other can of worms, it's good to see that Emily has a sense of humor about the relative (un)importance of her research. In her speech at the 1998 Ig Nobel Awards ceremony, Emily stated:

"Scientists shouldn't have to spend a lot of time and money testing really far-out ideas. I had an excuse for doing the first basic research on TT: I was just learning about science, and I only spent ten dollars."

The Ig Nobel award for Science Education went to Dolores Krieger, Prof Emerita of NY Univ. and founder of TT. The host gave the award with the comment that TT is "a method by which nurses manipulate the energy fields of ailing patients, by carefully avoiding physical contact with those patients." He added that since Dr. Krieger "could not (or would not) be with us tonight," the prize will be accepted on her behalf by Emily Rosa. Emily gave this acceptance speech:

"My career in science started off with such promise. At age four, I was successfully conducting parent behavior-modification experiments. Within a few short years, I was obtaining dramatic results in studying the effects of oatmeal porridge on the respiratory system of the common goldfish.

"But by the time I entered fourth grade, my career was definitely languishing. You can appreciate that grant money was tight, and my peers - they weren't taking me seriously. Always just kidding around. But I was concerned; I had yet to get even one paper published in a major medical journal. Then I heard about Therapeutic Touch and NYU Prof. Dolored Krieger, who introduced the practice to nursing back in 1972.

"Apparently realizing it was mere child's play, they saved all the basic research on TT for future generations to do. Imagine, 15 years before I was even born, Professor Krieger and NYU were giving me my first really big break. I can't thank you enough, Prof. Krieger (who is not here)."

Therapeutic Touch: Responses to Objections to the JAMA Paper

- MFN

Depending on which dictionary you go to, monopoly is either held exclusively by one company, or by a group. (Dictionary.com uses the word "group", while Merriam-Webster just refers to a single company.) The definition of "group" is what's important here. There are many instances in business history where competitors in one field got together to agree not to compete in certain ways -- most notably by price-fixing.

Free-market economic theory would indicate that CEOs would never do this, that they would decide to compete in any way possible to eke out more market share. Yet this does happen. We have documented cases of price-fixing across all sorts of industries: legal research, oil firms, even vitamin manufacturers. There are plenty of theories as to why it happens, though my personal favorite is psychological. I think that CEOs, when they're placed in charge of vast corporations they cannot entirely control or understand, become extremely risk-averse. This is why large corporations rarely innovate; it's also why a CEO might enter into a price-fixing agreement. It's just one less thing to worry about. At least for the CEO; everybody else usually suffers, in higher prices and poorer quality.

Here's a few, mostly virus-related links (some are a little outdated):

www.quackwatch.com
hoaxbusters.ciac.org
urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/blhoax.htm
korova.com/virus/hoax_index.htm
www.vmyths.com

Use too much water and electricity, and the cops will assume you're running a hydroponics lab.

As for your VIN - someone joked that they might not want their insurance company knowing they'd just purchased some bondo and paint. I agree - 'cuz I just read the [H]ardOCP article on case-modding, and have a free weekend coming up... ;-)

A better example - would you want your insurance company or a potential employer knowing you were purchasing over-the-counter "supplements" ( never mind the issue of the questionable efficacy of herbals) that people often use to treat medical conditions?

What happens when a data miner notices your purchase of St. John's Wort (that you ran down to the store to get for your bedridden grandmother who believes in the stuff) coinciding with your purchase of a gun ('cuz you happened to take up target shooting last week) and some industrial music (for your skr1pt k1dd13 nephew's Christmas present) and comes to the obvious - yet incorrect - conclusion.

> I really, honestly, WANT TO KNOW what it is they [could/are going to] do with it that would be so terrible as to warrant the hassle of paying my bills by hand...

Unless you want to live in a universe in which the data miners know everything about everyone (so that their software can come to the correct conclusion in cases like the one I outlined), the best response is to deny access to the data unless there's a need-to-know. What you see as the most trivial piece of information could be the one your adversary's looking for.

The marketing organizations do not have your best interests at heart. They have demonstrated a voracious appetite for your data. The logical response is to deny them what they want.

If it's the Cold War and you're a CIA agent, and a cute Russian babe walks up to you and asks you "Amerikanski, I theenk my cheep Russian watch is two minutes slow, and I have to get to the train, what time do you have on your fine Amerikan timepiece?", you don't answer.

Maybe it was just a gal who wanted to know if she'd catch her train. Or maybe she wants to know where to wait for after you synchronize watches with your junior agent who's mission involves walking around town and "bumping into" his contact under a bridge at precisely midnight.

Your call ;-)

http://www.quackwatch.com/11Ind/bates .ht ml

The article you referenced is about power lines and EMF, not about cell phones. While the principle behind the article is quite similar, there are nonetheless significant differences. I would argue that the jury is still out regarding cell phones, and that while I feel that power lines do not presently pose a significant threat to human health, we should still be concerned about other sources of EMF.

One of the replies to your post mentioned radiation output from TVs and microwaves, and they are quite a bit higher than cellphones. One recent article from Fortune is by a neurologist who has studied EMF for the last 30 years. Even though we haven't seen an explosion of cancer rates from young children watching 8 hours of TV a day, the human body doesn't always show drastic changes when it has been affected.

Bottom line, true, not everything with the word "radiation" is bad for you, but it shouldn't be necessarily ignored either. The FCC is only in its first year or two of its five year study on the effects of cellphone radiation.

As for the suggestion that the phone be housed in a Faraday cage, uh, wouldn't that kinda defeat the purpose of a cell phone?

Bottom line. Not everything with the word "radiation" is bad for you. Don't believe the hype, believe the physics.

(For that matter, not everything with the word "nuclear" is bad for you either. But that's another story.)

Make sure you keep us informed of what happens to you.

I prefer the technical cure for carpal tunnel syndrome.

Hmmmm... sort of like a physics version of Quackwatch?

Since many homeopathic remedies contain no detectable amount of active ingredient, it is impossible to test whether they contain what their label says.

I guess you're suggesting that the reason that an absurdly low concentration of a substance can supposedly have some sort of medical effect is that the molecules of the substance are breeding more of themselves through some sort of "self-assembly" process. Don't you think that a chemist would notice if this was going on? "Huh, I mixed in a small amount of X into Y, but now the concentration of X has gone up." This kind of thing is pretty easy to measure these days.

Better still, save your time. Read www.quackwatch.com for good information about "fixing" your eyes via exercise, chiropractic, chelation and other idiocies.