floccinaucinihilipilification: The Blog

The following is a reprint of an article by Simon Singh where in he criticizes the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) for promoting treatments which have not been shown to be effective. Instead of providing evidence to support their claims, the BCA sued Singh for libel. I am reproducing this article to show support [...]

Here are some picture of the first flowers in our native garden, (not including the serviceberry). I’m sure that some of our plants won’t flower this year, but it is nice to see what the ones that are, do. Most of the plants seem to be growing nicely, the Mayapples in particular seem [...]

http://shirleywho.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/an-open-letter-to-oprah/

One argument against vaccination is so called “Herd Immunity”. Herd Immunity occurs in a population that has very high immunity to a disease. When an infected individual enters the population, the disease cannot spread because most people are already immune. This prevents an outbreak and protects the the population. Those [...]

There is a meeting going on to try and determine if Canadian Content (CanCon) rules should be applied to online distributors. For unfamiliar with the concept, Canadian Content rules require broadcasters in Canada to broadcast a certain amount of Canadian content. This is meant to help foster the production of content within Canada. [...]

I’m testing the Facebook “Notes” app, and its ability to import entries from my blog.

I’ve disabled the twitter tools plugin, so there won’t be anymore tweets showing up here. I did this for two reasons, first I could not get it to play nice with the wp-mediawiki plugin, and second I have my tweets updating my facebook status, which is probably more useful for more people.

I saw Jenny McCarthy on Canada AM this morning. I was hoping that Canada AM would have interview with an actual scientist or medical doctor (perhaps Dr. Shapiro) to explain the scientific consensus that there is no link between autism and vaccinations. Vaccines are a safe and effective way to protect people [...]

The Canadian government has tabled its DMCA rip off. Learning nothing from the host of problems created in the United States of America with the original DMCA, the Canadian version is, apparently
worse.
For those unfamiliar with the DMCA, it makes breaking copy protection a crime. The problem with this is that it allows copyright [...]

There is a very interesting article at the Ottawa Skeptics site detailing the regulatory framework, currently in place for Supplements, Complementary and Alternative Medicines (SCAM). This is background information to help understand the proposed changes in Bill C-51.
There are a few interesting tidbits. Most interestingly, are the rules which allow weasel words when [...]