Disqus - Latest Comments for Aerik

Re: Daily Kitteh

Aerik — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:50:16 -0000

I know what Sophie is really thinking.

But that just raises more questions!

Does she ever do her prairie dog impression watching lost? lol

Re: Better Living Through Chemistry

Aerik — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 01:47:48 -0000

HA!!

That's great. As usual, "organic," "natural," and "free-range" don't really mean anything.

Something doesn't have to be organic to be food. Even so, about everything we eat is organic anyways, if you go by it's actual chemical definition. Brian Dunning of Skeptoid.com points us to how all a producer has to do to earn his "free range" badge is to let turkeys or chickens walk a certain amount, even if it's still not a humane amount. Californians just voted to let chickens turn around in their cages. But they still urinate and defecate on each other enough that they get skin infections and eye infections that end up closing them with scarring.

Some people into "organic food" or "raw food" insist that cooking food makes it inorganic, showing that most people, especially organic foodies, don't know what 'organic' means.

Let's review what an organic compound is. Ever take o-chem in college? Organic chemistry is the study of carbon compounds, and organic compounds are those formed by living organisms, with molecules containing two or more carbon atoms, linked by carbon-carbon bonds. These can be double bonds, where the carbon atoms share 4 electrons, or in the case of saturated fatty acids, they can be single bonds, where the carbon atoms share two electrons, and the other electrons are shared with bonded hydrogen atoms. Breaking these bonds would, in effect, make an organic compound non-organic.

So really, the claim being made by the raw food people is that cooking breaks those carbon-carbon bonds. You would have to really, really cook your food to break these bonds. Carbon-carbon bonds will begin to break at temperatures above 750 Fahrenheit, or about 400 Celsius. So if you cook your food in a ceramics kiln, then yes, it is possible to chemically change it into a non-organic compound. But if you're looking for it to happen at regular cooking temperatures, well then, you need to retake your o-chem.

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4019

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4030

As for "natural," well hey, plenty of poisons and venoms are natural. Are they still good? What isn't natural would have to be supernatural. Are you into ghost livestock?

What really saddens me is that a lot of fellow feminists I know are into woo-woo and the organic food industry. It's pretty hard to talk to them about it as a skeptic as most Skeptics are total misogynists.

Sigh.

There are only two reasons for the better treatment of animals: to stop feeding bloodlust for the torture of other animals and act humanely, and to make it possible to cut down on antibiotics so that we don't render them useless too soon. The only other thing wrong with our food industry is our ludicrous dependence on corn. Anything manages to wipe our corn or bees and this country is in big trouble.

Re: Daily Kitteh

Aerik — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 02:47:10 -0000

I love the cutness of the kitteh, but I'm allergic to the fur/dander. Any more than a few hours w/ just 1 cat, and I start swelling up all over and stuff. If only we could cure pet allergies, I'd have kittehs. Right now the best I could do is cat-sit. They like me well enough. Even outdoor pet cats who only go home to demand foodz will come up with me for cuddles.

In other news, over at female science professor, Kitten X has earned tenure from

the departmental tenure and promotion committee, the faculty of his department, the department Chair, the college promotion and tenure committee, the Associate Dean, the Dean, the Assistant Vice-Provost for Academic Stuff, the Provost, the President, and the Board of Trustees

which

are all the same individuals and therefore the process is awesomely efficient and fast.

http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2008/10/k...

Re: Daily Kitteh

Aerik — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:15:38 -0000

Yup. Here's the comment thread.

http://www.reddit.com/r/aww/comments/775l0/you_...

Alice Capone: Sophie!

Aerik: Pic shamelessly stolen from Shakesville.

Alice Capone: Yep. I have to wonder if I should be worried that I can instantly identify some random kitten on the Net by name.

Although, both "/shakespeares_sister/" and "/soph" are right in the URL, it's still fun.

Re: Daily Kitteh

Aerik — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:27:33 -0000

hahaha.

I like Sophie. I shamelessly hotlinked that pic of her in front of your computer and sent it to reddit, captioned "You shouldn't have googled that. Nao u know too much." A fellow shakesville fan instantly recognized her.

Re: retrospekt

Aerik — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:58:24 -0000

Damn, that's awesome news. I wish I had a DS now, too.

Is Virtual Console where you play previous Nintendo console games on the Wii or something? That sounds good. Superior video/graphics capabilities, should be good.

Re: Best. Email. Ever.

Aerik — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:53:49 -0000

There is only one emoticon I can create to approximate my reaction:

~_~

Re: Doctor Knows Best

Aerik — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 17:51:55 -0000

I thought you may have gone somewhere with this until you heaped in the discrimination against midwives with discrimination against "alternative" (see: useless pseudoscience) medicine spheres, 'holistic' and 'herbal'.

Like it or not, medicine is evidence-based. A history of midwivery doesn't prove it's efficacy any more than a history of, say, bloodletting and things like that. It's because of modern medicine that babies survive birth much, much, much more often than they did when midwives were the only help a childbirthing had. That argument is totally fallacious.

A questoin arises: if midwives have so little medical training that you have to separate midwives and doctors as mutually exclusive by definition, how do they actually know what they're doing? Conventions and understanding are two different things. Perhaps that is why the AMA is against it -- medical endeavors (and childbirth is just that) need medical training.

What frightens me is that, should the AMA successfully assist states in developing legislation that would force all women to give birth in a hospital because of safety, mother and child will effectively become property of the hospital.

NO! That is not how things work. You also have to perform brain surgery in a hospital/clinic. Or any surgery, for that matter, except in cases of extreme emergency where no hospital is within reach to save person's life. The way you put it, all recipients of surgery have become hospital property. But it's just not so. You can't put an arbitrary line in the sand where those people are treated properly, but you're being discriminated against in the case of a single procedure that does not stand out from these other procedures on any merit.

Damn right it's criminally negligent to deny a baby necessary medical care. A doctor loses his/her license if a bare minimum is not performed. What makes anybody else any different? Here I was under the impression that once a baby is born it is endowed with certain unalienable rights, such as the right not to be neglected into injury, but apparently I'm wrong because... because what? Because midwifery feels good? Sorry, but "spiritual experience" is no justification for medical negligence.

Re: Fat Rant 3!

Aerik — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:07:36 -0000

I'm falling for Joy Nash. Totally. I read she's an author, I wonder why her name hasn't come up and stuck on me before.

Re: I Write Letters update: "Rapist Talk" author pulls posts

Aerik — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 14:54:41 -0000

That's always the question, isn't it, Bettyboondoggle? But of course, the women are always to blame for their freudian slips, aren't they? If they're not thinking it when they say it, they sure as hell are when they defend it or fake-apologize for it.