The Gathering of the Flakes in Calgary

March 4, 2010 in Uncategorized by askeptic | No comments

You too, can be at the centre of the universe – for $63.00

Can you imagine how lucky I am, living here in Calgary? My home town is a site of a great convergence, a gathering of two of the worlds greatest flakes – Deepak Chopra and Sylvia Browne. Actually three flakes, Sarah Palin is coming too, but she is somewhat off topic for this blog.

Deepak, evidently, has come and gone. I missed him. You’d think that would be hard to do, given that attendees were taught the 7 Keys to Joy and Enlightenment. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re Back!

February 21, 2010 in Skeptic News, Uncategorized by askeptic | No comments

Okay, this may not be as big as news as Tiger’s apology (it was an apology, right?) but ASkepticRTN is back in operation.

Visitors to www.askepticrtn.com may have noticed a host of troubles with our little website over the past few weeks. It turns out we were the target of some  hackers that planted malicious code throughout our site. Visitors to ASkepticRTN were treated to all sorts of nastiness.

I’m not very techie and it took the help of some friends to track down and eliminate the code. The cost of openness I suppose. Evidently, the ease with which people can post comments etc. also makes it easy to hack the site. We are not going to change.

Anyway, we are back.

Just in time too, as things are beginning to get interesting. It turns out some of the world’s greatest flakes and hucksters are descending on my little home town of Calgary to peddle healing and spiritualism by thoroughly engaging people in new age gobbledygook. At upwards of $100 per seat.

Stay tuned.

Fraser Health Authority Experiments With Modern Medicine

January 20, 2010 in Health & Medicine, Religion by askeptic | No comments

New strategy leads to the firing of 12 witch doctors

Naturally the Calgary Herald and its sister paper The Vancouver Sun are outraged. Imagine, the publicly funded Fraser Health Authority actually committing itself to modern medicine and tossing out its staff of witch doctors or spiritual care directors.

Vancouver Sun writer Douglass Todd is leading the charge against this outrage. His biography on the Vancouver Sun website states: Although he was raised in a family of staunch atheists, Douglas Todd has gone on to become one of the most decorated spirituality and ethics writers in North America. (Whew, that was close!)

His piece entitled, Spiritual care directors help keep Canada healthy, was published in the Sunday, January 17 edition of the Calgary Herald.  This seemed to be a follow up piece to Fraser Health’s firing of spiritual-care directors a step backwards, published in the Vancouver Sun on December 21. Read the rest of this entry »

Made it Through the Holidays

January 16, 2010 in Religion, Uncategorized by askeptic | 3 comments

I feel great now that I am praying for Haiti

Thanks to all who wrote wondering where I was.  I have been here, but taking a break over the holidays.

Outside of a piece concerning the Canadian Cancer Society’s recent endorsement and promotion of medical quackery, I haven’t written anything since mid December, despite having plenty to write about, courtesy of the Calgary Herald (Canada’s Largest Christian Daily).  Fortunately, most of what the Calgary Herald had to say over the holidays of concern to skeptics came in the form of trivial remarks or minor pieces. Read the rest of this entry »

How much of Canadian Cancer Society’s research budget is wasted on the terminally flaky?

January 5, 2010 in Health & Medicine by askeptic | No comments

New advertising effort promotes complimentary and alternative therapies.

The Canadian Cancer Society has undertaken a major new fund-raising campaign called Join the Fight complete with a new, very nice website at fightback.ca. The campaign was introduced through a full page ad in the  December 8, 2009 edition of the Calgary Herald. Roughly a third of the ad was dedicated to the work that is being done in the field of complementary and alternative medicine. 

Highlighting research funded by the Canadian Cancer Society, the headline read: Research team explores impact of complementary cancer treatments. The story describes the research of Dr. Marja Verhoef who readers of ASkepticRTN will recall has been involved in all sorts of CAM nonsense including the laughable Integrative Health Institute (now part of Mount Royal University).  Read the rest of this entry »

More Shoddy Reporting on Alternative Medicine from the CBC

December 17, 2009 in Health & Medicine by askeptic | No comments

Television being what it is, it can be rather difficult to research the stories presented. I don’t record the television news and at my age, my memory is a good deal less than perfect.

What I do remember from the Wednesday, December 16 edition of the CBC Television News at 6:00, is someone telling me that acupuncture cures migraine headaches. Not for everyone mind you, but definitely for some people. I remember there was no qualifiers to this. It wasn’t that someone was claiming acupuncture cures migraines. It was a definitive statement by the reporter – acupuncture cures migraines for some people.

It is pure nonsense of course, but I couldn’t help wonder what evidence the reporter had, to substantiate the claim.  I could be wrong in my assessment after all. Perhaps some new research had demonstrated a strong link between acupuncture and pain relief. It would have to be new research, because after twenty years of past research, acupuncture has failed to show positive pain relief much beyond a placebo. Read the rest of this entry »

ScienceDaily reports British Medical Journal editorial calls for a crackdown on alternative therapies

December 17, 2009 in Health & Medicine, Skeptic News by askeptic | No comments

The medical establishment and politicians must do more to crack down on alternative medicine, argues a senior scientist on the British Medical Journal website.  Thank goodness some medical associations are looking in the mirror and taking on the complimentary and alternative medicine crackpots. <read more ScienceDaily>

Astrologists Getting Wise? I Don’t Think So.

December 14, 2009 in General Science by askeptic | No comments

The headline in the Friday December 11 edition of the Calgary Herald caught my attention. It read: Astrologists get WISE to cosmos and was accompanied with a nice picture of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite.

I knew that WISE was soon to be launched but it came as a surprise that astrologists were taking such an interest. They’re not of course, claims of the Calgary Herald notwithstanding. Just how dumb do you have to be to print a headline like this? I wonder if anyone at the Calgary Herald even knows what’s wrong with it?

The story is a hacked up version of what is a very good piece of scientific journalism from a John Johnson Jr. of the Los Angeles Times. The story, as published in the Times, ran  about 1200 words and was entitled: The dark side of space about to be illuminated. As reprinted in the Herald, the piece ran less than a quarter of its original length and of course, there’s that headline.

For all my skeptical friends out there in Calgary (and beyond), read the original article in the Times just to get a feeling of what it is like to read a real newspaper. Oh yes, and rest assured that astrologists will not be working with data from WISE.

Paranormal sighting in Toronto

November 29, 2009 in Psychics by askeptic | No comments

How do you tell what is normal in Toronto anyway?

Okay, cheap shot. But not half as cheap as what passes for journalism in the story: Paranormal sighting in Toronto by David Bezmozgis in the Saturday Nov. 28 edition of the Globe and Mail.

Focusing on Ms. Nateliya Frolova, the story concerns Russian immigrants  bringing with them a fascination with paranormal clairvoyance and healing. In introducing the piece, Mr. Bezmozgis says, what distinguishes Ms. Frolova and many of her Russian counterparts from the regular Western clairvoyants are the Russians’ claims to supernatural healing abilities. Read the rest of this entry »

On Evolution: The Calgary Herald still evokes awe and outrage

November 24, 2009 in Evolution by askeptic | 3 comments

This year is Charles Darwin’s year. It marks the 200th Anniversary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication On the Origin of Species.

On the Origin of Species is one of the most important and influential books of all time. In it, Darwin details his theory of evolution by means of natural selection, a crowning scientific achievement and one of the singular accomplishments of our species in the 200,000 or so years we have been around. Read the rest of this entry »

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