Sunday, April 7, 2013

Why science is failing us?

Science stands above all. Had it been failing, no one would ever miss Albert Einstein, Newton or respect Stephen Hawking's. Science is everywhere in today’s world. It is part of our daily lives, from cooking and gardening, to recycling and comprehending the daily weather report, to reading a map and using a computer. Advances in technology and science are transforming our world at an incredible pace, and our children’s future will surely be filled with leaps in technology we can only imagine. Being “science literate” will no longer be just an advantage but an absolute necessity. We can’t escape from the significance of science in our world.

Albert Einstein'Theory of Relativity is yet discussed among the Physicist but can be critically analysed. Science, especially that of Physics is the tough of all. Biology is itself the science of exception and nothing can be predicted in organic chemistry. 
Science does not work on hypothesis and it accounts the experimentally verified facts only. You can not simply predict things in science without mathematical logic. So what are areas where science is important? The first is in everyday human life. Thanks to advances in the biomedical fields there are fewer infectious or lethal disease than ever before. Some illnesses that would be death sentences even just twenty years ago with advanced research into the study of bacteria and viruses are now becoming manageable and in some cases have even eradicated. People are now living longer as we understand more about aging and the nutrients need to keep the body healthy and active long into our sunset years.

This is video from MinutePhysics which tells you why there is no fourth dimension.

So, earth is round

It must be at grade five or something so you must have read earth to be round. Of course earth is round. And, this concept came from the Greek Civilization. Except for the Flat Earth Society, the science asserts earth to be round at all which is of course a truth. If you look into this MinutePhysics, you will be given with ten reasons why earth is round.
Of course, the Earth isn't perfectly round. Because it’s turning on its axis approximately once every 24 hours, the Earth’s equator bulges outwards. The same effect of which you have your weight different at different places. Because weight (w) = mass (m) * acceleration due to gravity (g), and the value of g is inversely proportional to the radius of the earth. The radius of the earth at the equator is more than that of the poles. Hence, you have your weight more at the polar regions. This conversely suggests that the earth is spherical, one of the round structure of course.

Also, when an object has the gravity to pull itself into a sphere, astronomers say that it’s in hydrostatic equilibrium. And that’s why the Earth is round.

Hence, earth is round. Aren't you convinced?

See these still images from NASA, which cannot be wrong and hypothetical at all. 

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Everything OKAY with Curiosity rover?

Curiosity Rover Goes Solo on Mars for First Time. Image source: NASA/JPL

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity will be on its own for the first time over the next four weeks, thanks to an unfavorable alignment of the Red Planet, Earth and the sun.

Curiosity's handlers don't plan to send any commands to the car-size robot from April 4 through May 1. The sun comes between Earth and the Red Planet during this time, in a formation known as a Mars solar conjunction.

"The [communications] moratorium is a precaution against possible interference by the sun corrupting a command sent to the rover," NASA officials wrote last week in a Curiosity rover mission update.

While some mission team members may take advantage of the break to lie on a beach somewhere, Curiosity itself won't necessarily be idle. The 1-ton rover can continue doing stationary science work at a site known as Yellowknife Bay using commands sent up in advance, officials have said.

NASA's other active Mars spacecraft — the Opportunity rover, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and Mars Odyssey orbiter — will also go solo during conjunction, though for shorter periods of time. These robotic explorers won't receive any new commands from April 9 through April 26.

MRO and Mars Odyssey help relay data from Opportunity and Curiosity to Earth. MRO goes into a four-week-long record-only mode today, but Odyssey will keep sending rover information home throughout conjunction, helping engineers keep tabs on Opportunity and Curiosity.

"We will maintain visibility of rover status two ways," Torsten Zorn, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement last month. Zorn is conjunction planning leader for Curiosity's engineering operations team. "First, Curiosity will be sending daily beeps directly to Earth. Our second line of visibility is in the Odyssey relays."

Mars solar conjunctions come around every 26 months, so veterans of NASA's various Mars campaigns are used to dealing with them. Opportunity is weathering its fifth conjunction, for example, and Odyssey its sixth.

But this will be the first conjunction experience for Curiosity, which landed inside Mars' huge Gale Crater this past August to determine if the Red Planet could ever have supported microbial life.

The Curiosity team has already achieved its main mission goal, announcing last month that the Yellowknife Bay area was a wet, habitable environment — perhaps a lake — billions of years ago. Researchers came to this conclusion after studying analyses Curiosity performed of material drilled from deep within an outcrop in early February.

The rover team wants to drill another rock to confirm and extend what Curiosity has already observed. But this second drilling operation won't take place until after conjunction, officials have said.

This article originally published at Space.com here

Friday, April 5, 2013

Which one is dangerous? AC or DC?

An AC has a pulsating nature, but a DC is always steady. The green line shows the AC and the red one for a steady DC. 

Before you get confused between a DC and an AC, just think why do you have a voltage stabilizer for a refrigerator. Hmm, well let me tell you because it stabilizes the voltage received. Why does it do so? Because for alternating current, or simply AC, the one that travels through all your appliances at your home, have a change in current, or voltage or emf varying with respect to time. Meaning, AC goes sinusoidally and increases or decreases with respect to time. Then what's a DC? It's simple, boy! A DC is when you light a bulb from a emergency lamp. Or, in your schooling you must have lighted a bulb with a battery.

Okay let's get back to the point. An AC is dangerous. For the illustration, lets take an arbitrary magnitude of voltage, say 200 volts. This value of DC is much less dangerous than an AC. Because an AC would give greater voltage than this, about 311 volts. This is because the peak value is under root of twice greater than the indicated value. The peak value for DC is 220 volts but for an AC its under root 2 multiplied by 220 volts which equals about 311 volts. Now think why would you get shocked when you touch household circuits with hands! Thus an AC provides more shock than DC!
Voltage given out by AC = 0.707 * Indicated Value 
 You can see this Youtube video for further details

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Antibody and HIV?



Observing the evolution of a particular type of antibody in an infected HIV-1 patient, a study spearheaded by Duke University, including analysis from Los Alamos National Laboratory, has provided insights that will enable vaccination strategies that mimic the actual antibody development within the body.


The kind of antibody studied is called a broadly cross-reactive neutralizing antibody, and details of its generation could provide a blueprint for effective vaccination, according to the study’s authors. In a paper published online in Nature this week, the team reported on the isolation, evolution and structure of a broadly neutralizing antibody from an African donor followed from the time of infection.

The observations trace the co-evolution of the virus and antibodies, ultimately leading to the development of a strain of the potent antibodies in this subject, and they could provide insights into strategies to elicit similar antibodies by vaccination.

Patients early in HIV-1 infection have primarily a single “founder” form of the virus that has been strong enough to infect the patient, even though the population in the originating patient is usually far more diverse and contains a wide variety of HIV mutations. Once the founder virus is involved in the new patient’s system, the surrounding environment stimulates the HIV to mutate and form a unique, tailored population of virus that is specific to the individual.

The team, including Bette Korber, Peter Hraber, and S. Gnanakaran, of Los Alamos National Laboratory, led by Barton Haynes of Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, with colleagues at Boston University, the National Institutes of Health, and other institutions as part of a large collaboration, showed that broadly neutralizing antibodies developed only after the population of viruses in the individual had matured and become more diverse.

“Our hope is that a vaccine based on the series of HIV variants that evolved within this subject, that were together capable of stimulating this potent broad antibody response in his natural infection, may enable triggering similar protective antibody responses in vaccines,” said Bette Korber, leader of the Los Alamos team.

The research, “Co-evolution of a broadly neutralizing HIV-1 antibody and founder virus,” is online.

This study was supported by the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and by intramural National Institutes of Health (NIH) support for the NIAID Vaccine Research Center, by grants from the NIH, NIAID, AI067854 (the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology) and AI100645 (the Center for Vaccine Immunology-Immunogen Discovery). Use of sector 22 (Southeast Region Collaborative Access team) at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory was supported by the US Department of Energy, Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science, under contract number W-31-109-Eng-38.

First Mobile Phone Call Was Placed Exactly 40 Years Ago

Hello world! 
Today is exactly the same day when a mobile phone cell was placed by Motorola. With inputs from With inputs from Stan Schroeder, Mashable, do read the following piece of article. 
On April 3, 1973 — exactly 40 years from today — Motorola employee Marty Cooper made the first mobile phone call.
Marty used a Motorola DynaTAC to call Bell Labs (then a division of AT&T), reportedly saying "I'm ringing you just to see if my call sounds good at your end."
The device that Marty used to place the call was a prototype which would later become the Motorola DynaTAC 8000x. It was the first commercially available mobile phone, and despite its meager specs for today's standards — it weighed 2.5 pounds and only had a one-line, text-only LED display — it cost a whopping $3,995.
The DynaTAC phone can be seen in action in several Hollywood films, including "Wall Street," where Gordon Gekko uses it to place a call from the beach, and "American Psycho," with Patrick Bateman using it to place a fake dinner reservation call.

My divorce from Google - One year later



A year ago, I divorced Google. In any divorce, friends go with both sides. Most friends went with Google, but a few stayed with me. I'm in a much happier place. It can be done. The co-dependency is over.
Much has happened a year later, most of it good. I still have a few moments when strange things happen because of my lack of anything Google. But I'm happy I made the choice. Should you use a search engine, you'll find much more criticism of my divorce using the search string, “henderson ITworld divorcing google". It's been tough to find starkly negative criticism. Some of the criticism applauds, while other raises the spectre of what privacy has become, and if Google is the savior and protagonist we all once thought they were. I still use Search, but even Search has changed.
Observations and lessons learned
There are some observations that I've made, post-divorce, of just how pervasive online data gathering has become and how Terms of Service privacy invasion and data sharing are now so wide-spread and out-in-the-open. Online sites don't blush about what your use of the site means in terms of your privacy. From your phone, your credit cards, even your car must willingly give up what you've been doing, where you've been (correlating this with where your friends have been), how long you spent doing something, perhaps ownership of the pictures taken, and we're not even talking web surfing yet. All of this information might be sold to someone you don't know, and will be kept long after you're dead. This situation, imposed rejection problems when I surfing for replacement apps.
Initially, it was Google's Terms of Service and Privacy Statement that motivated me to give up over 3,000 Google+ Friends, and to stop using the Google search engine and the rest of their products, attractive as they were. I've listed some of what I used at Google, and the replacements below. Some friends followed my example onto other social media sites. Not many. Perhaps they weren't really friends. Others took my lead in their own ways.
I must admit that for purposes of my research and testing (and my Android phone) that I still have a Google account under ExtremeLab's name. Full disclosure also says that I occasionally spin up a Windows 7 virtual machine that doesn't use script blockers, solely to use the AirBNB site, which doesn't work without them. Google is interwoven into the code of AirBNB's site, and it's a necessary evil. AirBNB is a little paranoid, in my opinion, but given the crux of their business, I suppose I'm ok with that. I spin down the Windows 7 instance, logon to AirBNB, and move on. I could make it easier, procedurally. I don't. Even Apple knows the problems of divorcing Google Maps.
But that's about it. I was slowed down, temporarily. No longer.
How I've replaced Google
Search is DuckDuckGo. Has some strange features in it, and reminds me of the value of using Boolean logic in queries, like the old days of search. On a rare day, I might use Yahoo! I'm still looking for an actual Craigslist search engine that doesn't sputter.
Mail. I always had my own email server, and use it primarily. You'll find me using Yahoo! Classic, too, although they've just discontinued the Classic version.
Maps. Mapquest is ok. Yahoo! Maps are my go-to, either choice with script-blocking. The Yahoo! Maps UI isn't very good, but the maps are quite usable. The map apps don't care that I block their scripts. I kill their cookies afterwards, although I doubt this helps.
Music and Videos. YouTube was the best, and for non-music how-to videos, too. Gone. Spotify is my new music source, and they're heaven sent, with 99%+ of the music I want, which is admittedly often older stuff. Vimeo has some videos, and I often use DuckDuckGo to search for videos if I simply must, which usually entails looking at Terms of Service, Privacy Notices, and even then, blocking scripts and erasing cookies. I erase cookies on almost a daily basis.
Images. I maintain a Flickr and Shutterfly account, both of them entirely bolted down for private, invitation-only viewing.
Social Networking. Facebook is for friends/family; Linked-In is public. Facebook can be privatized, and will be audited for the next couple of decades as an FTC settlement. That doesn't mean I trust them. Most people's Facebook identities are poorly protected, and I avoid posting there. Linked-In is public and my participation is fully public as my public life. Twitter? I tweet once in a while.
GPS. I don't use it, even in a car. I'm old-school as I like printed maps.
Google Translation. Babelfish is ok. Others do well, too. None are as good as I would like.
Apps. Amazon is an alternative to the GooglePlay app retailer, but I'm not very big on apps. I don't use Google Books at all. I rarely use digital books. I usually obtain books in whatever format, from the local public library, which is excellent. I rarely use online “office-like apps”.
Aftermath observations: Search and content have changed
Seeing Google's presence is now odd. It's kind of like seeing your ex at a shopping mall. There's a perfunctory and polite hello, how's the folks, and you move on. There are a few pangs. Memories. But I've moved on, and there is nothing in the Google app cavalcade that I need at all. Not a thing.
Indeed Google's been keen to cut away applications that it believes are barnacles on its bow. I once felt Google was a bunch of barnacles on my bow. As Slate points out, there are many dead bodies in the Google Graveyard. I'm reminded of New Orleans, and the mausoleums there, some highly ornamented, others more like a potter's field. People put time and effort into the development of them, and some caught on, if only to comparatively small audiences -- and perhaps ones that didn't cause heartburn at Microsoft or Apple's DevOps. Don't fall in love; they die young.
Never again
Google's services and apps have a lot of competition these days, ranging from Google Docs through Google+ to Google's user storage variants. In my original divorce description, I needed seven days to make Google go away. Finding alternatives is definitely do-able. It's worth the effort, in hindsight. Google is gone.
What I've concluded is that I'm happy, and I find that Google and SEO and tracking have soiled the web in unbelievable ways. Google has imposed a constraint on content through its ad business that I can't get away from, because content is trying to adapt to Google so it can be found, but especially because content becomes monetized in doing so-- to the detriment of us all.
Products like Ghostery, no-script, FlashBlock, are all heros to me. Why? Courage. The bottom line here is the quid pro quo of free app use versus loss of privacy. It is the foundation of the models that fuel the web today, and starving that fuel is going to be the only way to change them, as rules of conduct are often mitigated by the fuel needs of legislators and thought leaders.
There might be alternate financial models in the near future to anything Google. Subscription-based models are a possible alternative revenue stream, in terms of changing the underlying business model used by many on the web to fuel web pages. But when users consider actually shelling out money for a service, rather than using a free service, they'll go a long way towards personal exposure and its tawdry erasure of personal privacy. What must be raised is the common denominator, as the current model is a race towards entropy of the web.
With inputs from Tom Henderson, ITworld. Copright Material from Reuters. 

Why Gmail is best?


So the sentences below this line might sound like an advertisement, but it's not so. The following paragraphs gives you idea why switching to Gmail is best for you. In the mean time, please be informed, we accept only Gmail accounts at Qsert.

Gmail is the only one with 10360 MB+ of free storage. So why not Gmail, right?
  • Compose new messages while keeping an eye on your inbox. The new experience is fast, easy to use and packed with new features. See here for the video by Gmail.
  • Forget about files being too big to send. With Gmail's integration with Google Drive, you can email files up to 10GB. Plus, files stay up-to-date & are available anywhere.
  • Plus, you don't need to delete any important emails for the matter of storage. You have the unlimited space! 
  • You can video chat with up to nine people at once, share YouTube videos with your friends and much more with Hangouts in Gmail. Google Hangout is best of all, and Qsert just loves it! 
  • At Gmail, you don't waste time with junk mail and unwanted messages.  If an unwanted message slips through to your inbox, just click on the SPAM button and the spam filters will catch any further incoming mail from the sender BEFORE it ever reaches your inbox.
  • With Gmail's filter service, you can create a filter that searches through all incoming mail looking for specific people or keywords and once found, immediately categorizes it into a specific folder, forwards it on to someone else, or moves it to the trash, to name just a few functions.
  • You can organize your replies into conversations. Within Gmail, each message you SEND is grouped with all the responses you RECEIVE.  As you receive more responses, the threaded conversation grows and keeps track of it all in chronological order
If you don't have a Gmail, why wait for the bell to ring? Come sign up here. To learn more about Gmail, check out this page from Google

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Don't Share These, Please!


5 Things you MUST not share on Social Networks
Anyone can easily take a screen shot of your Facebook. Things you share visible to public are really visible to everyone around the globe, and you do not have laws to sue against the abuser. So think before you post, share or tweet! Photo Credit: Qsert. All rights reserved. Screenshot provided by Site2pic.com
So you must have got an idea what this post is all about. Social networks, as from this data from Alexa, Facbook is the top two site all around the globe. Of course we don't need to tell you Facebook is one of those social networking site who are more eager to know about you, than you life partner :P

Okay, now let's get back to the blog. The five things that you must not share on Qsert and other on Social Networks are listed below:
  1. That you are confused of: Do not post anything you doubt that will harm you at any way. You always have an option to keep your privacy on social networking sites. But, do remember, once you post it, or tweet it it will be shared to the internet. No matter whether you keep it only between your circles, who knows your circle will prioritize your privacy of matters! 
  2. Password hints and passwords: Of course, you will probably not share your password. But, password hints? Does your tweet or post contain any of the answers that you were asked as security questions? 
  3. Your phone number: Unless for Gmail Phone verification, do not at any cost share your phone number. Reverse lookup services can supply anyone with your home address if you can provide the phone number.
  4. Your Passport sized photo: A passport sized photo is a legally accepted one. Then, why should you post it to informal social networking sites? Think thrice. They might be easily misused. Remember, you should not either way post a full length photo. Crop your photo to your face with variant-colour background. 
  5. Revealing your thoughts about a court case: Judiciary is the organ of government that will provide you with legitimate jurisdictional views. So respect it! 
Want more? Google it. For search keyword "what should you not share on the internet", click this link directly.

You shall also read this one, we found it quite worthy for you to read. 

Monday, April 1, 2013

Happy April Fool

Good morning, 
Well its April 1st, 2013! 
We don't know how you are going to 'fool' others, but here's something that's creating a buzz in the Internet. Early this morning we have Internet Giant Google creating a hoax for creating Gmail Blue
Actually, Google sets new announcements on 1st April each year, the ones till this date can be read here.


We wonder what prank could we make you to you. :D Take care, especially for the day when it's called April Fool!

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Who can quack the loudest?


Over the years this blog’s been in existence, I’ve fallen into a habit in which I tend to like to finish off the week taking on a bit of science (well, usually pseudoscience) that is either really out there, really funny, or in general not as heavy as, for example, writing about someone like Stanislaw Burzysnki. Indeed, for nearly two years, I even turned into a feature, Your Friday Dose of Woo. Eventually, I got a bit tired of being straitjacketed into having to find something kooky or wacky every Friday, and I let the feature lapse. That doesn’t mean that I don’t still deliver an occasionalFriday Dose of Woo, but now I do it on my schedule and when I feel like it, rather than having forced myself into doing it every single Friday. Things are much better that way.
This week, there were two candidates for doing another Friday Dose of Woo, “inspiring” me to want to do one. The problem was, I couldn’t pick. Think about it. Which one of these would you pick? There was a post talking about Gian Paolo Vanoli, who is apparently a 70-year-old Italian scientist, journalist and, unfortunately, antivaccinationist. What brought Vanoli attention outside of Italy is is apparent belief that vaccines turn you gay. No, I kid you not. That’s really what he has said and really the view he promotes:
The vaccine is introduced into the child, the child then grows and tries to find its own personality, and if this is inhibited by mercury or other substances present in the vaccine which enter the brain, the child becomes gay. The problem will especially be present in the next generations, because when gays have children, the children will carry along with them the DNA of their parent’s illness. Because homosexuality is a disease, even though the WHO has decided that it is not. Who cares! The reality is that it is so. Each vaccination produces homosexuality, because it prevents the formation of one’s personality. It is a microform of autism, if you will. You will see how many gays there will be in the next generation, it will be a disaster.
That’s right. According to Vanoli, not only are vaccines so powerful that they can turn a child gay, but they apparently rewrite the child’s DNA to produce heritable changes that lead to the gayness being passed on to any children the vaccinated child goes on to have when he or she grows up. There’s so much wrong in the paragraph above that it goes beyond black hole density when it comes to wrongness. I realize that that’s not possible for matter, but such amazing stupidity is capable of doing things that matter cannot, and one of those things is to become even denser than the densest black hole. Indeed, if Vanoli had the least bit of quack savvy, he would have invoked the alternative medicine magic of epigenetics to explain everything (and, remember, in the world of quacks, epigenetics, just like quantum, can do anything), but apparently he’s too ignorant to do even that.
First off, the amount of mercury in childhood vaccines is at most trace amounts these days. Second, even if significant quantities of mercury were in vaccines, there’s no evidence that mercury exposure is in any way associated with homosexuality. But even that’s not enough for Vanoli. He seems to view homosexuality as a form of autism, again without evidence. The phrase “so wrong he’s not even wrong” comes to mind. Or it would, at least until Vanoli “surpasses” himself:
“But we have to say that it’s an illness, something that does not respect the order of life,” he told the outlet. “One of the main causes is represented by vaccines, which go against life, disturbing our mind and our spirit. The proof of that is the big increase in the number of homosexuals. Since mass vaccination began, this is the result.”
Of course, there is no evidence that the prevalence of homosexuality has been increasing. There is, however, evidence that gays are more accepted and therefore more of them are “coming out,” which can give the appearance that there are more homosexuals. Maybe Vanoli would prefer it if gays were still all in the closet! Whatever the case, Vanoli is as antivaccine as any American or British antivaccinationist. In this article in Italian (which I perused, thanks to Google Translate), he rants against vaccines, claiming to be an “expert on vaccines,” saying, “One of the worst things you can do to the immune system is to vaccinate a child. The vaccine suspends the formation of the immune system.”
Uh no. Not even close.
As I said, though, Vanoli is an all purpose quack. In particular, he is enamored of urine therapy, claiming that it can cure any disease, even cancer.
However, on this particular Friday, Vanoli, as nutty as he is, was outdone. He was outdone in a big way by an old “friend.” I’m referring of course to that all-encompassing crank extraordinaire, that New World Order conspiracy theorist and antiscience loon, Mike Adams. Not content with his usual antiscience rants, Adams decides he needs to publish not one, but ten such rants under the umbrella title of Top ten ways humanity is being murdered in the name of ‘evidence-based science’.
The first thing I can’t help but mention is that “evidence-based science” is rather redundant. Science, by its very definition, is evidence-based. The only reason that the term “evidence-based medicine” was coined is because medicine is not, strictly speaking, a science, hence the use of the term to emphasize that medicine should be based in evidence. However, there are other considerations, such as each patient’s unique situation, that can impact the application of evidence to individual patients. The same is true of science, when the term science-based medicine was coined. In any case, the ten items in Adams’ “Top Ten” list of medical evils are the usual suspects. I’ll “cherry pick” my favorites (based, of course, on my usual blogging propensities) and let you, my readers, have some fun with the rest of Adams’ list, which he introduces thusly:
Of all the threats to humanity today, none is more destructive than modern-day “evidence-based science.” And by the word “science,” I don’t mean the humble pursuit of knowledge using genuine scientific methods. What I mean is the dogmatic, corporate-driven brand of distorted science based on falsified evidence, bribery of gatekeepers and corruption of government regulators.
That “science” is killing us all with hormone disruptors, hidden food chemicals, heavy metals, genetic engineering and neurological disruptors. The pushers of this corporate-driven “evidence-based science” claim to be aiding humanity, yet their actions prove they are only destroying the health of the population and the future viability of the life-sustaining ecosystem as well.
The most amusing thing about this little introductory screed is how Adams apparently views himself as a judge of what is and is not good science. Now there’s some chutzpah! This is, after all, a man who never met a form of pseudoscience he didn’t like, parrots every lie about vaccines that the antivaccine movement can come up with, and portrays the evidence-based use of chemotherapy as Nazi-like doctors marching women into concentration camp-like structures to be forced to be injected with “poison.” Basically, if Adams supports a treatment, chances are it’s the purest of pure quackeries, all justified with a heapin’ helpin’ of conspiracy theories. First up, not surprisingly, are genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Adams is not known for subtlety or logic, and he maintains that reputation here:
Given the deadly results of consuming GMOs, every “scientist” who pushes GMOs is an indirect murderer. To push this dangerous technology without any long-term safety testing whatsoever is a violation of the “precautionary principle” that used to be honored in scientific circles. But caution has been abandoned in favor of corporate profits, and now it’s all about selling more food, seeds and chemicals, regardless of how many men, women and children are killed or damaged in the process.
When you see a “scientist” arguing in favor of GMOs, think to yourself, “That’s a homicidal maniac” because widespread death is the ultimate result of their irresponsible, dangerous actions.
I guess I must be Hannibal Lecter, then, because I consider the furor over GMOs to be overblown. Indeed, I laughed when Adams used a particularly bad recent study to justify his rant. I covered that study in depth back in September. Suffice to say that it was some of the worst science I have ever seen. No wonder Mike Adams likes it so much. But, then, what do I know? I’m obviously a homicidal maniac.
Next up, unsurprisingly, are vaccines. The only thing that surprised me, in fact, was that vaccines weren’t the first on Adams’ hit list. After all, any good crank believes that vaccines are the root of all evil and disease, not to mention the cause of bad breath. Adams’ bit on vaccines consists of the usual antivaccine tropes, right down to the particularly vile claim by antivaccinationists that the “shaken baby syndrome” is a misdiagnosis for vaccine injury, but one caught my eye, as I was unfamiliar with it:
Over 145,000 children have been murdered by vaccines over the past two decades. Babies that receive the most vaccines are also the most likely to be hospitalized (or die). Furthermore, when pregnant women are injected with flu shots, it results in a 4,250% increase in fetal deaths.
When you encounter a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist recommending a vaccine and telling you it’s “perfectly safe” with “no side effects,” think to yourself, “That’s a lying child killer!”
And remember, vaccines are pushed in the name of “evidence-based science.” It’s all “scientific,” they say, to inject your child with mercury and watch as they experience convulsions, comas or death. Yet there is actually no science whatsoever to demonstrate that vaccines improve the health outcomes of children. The vaccine pushers are terrified of comparing vaccinated children against non-vaccinated children, because they know the non-vaccinated children are far healthier. So the studies are never done, and the vaccine myths are pushed via propaganda instead of real evidence.
I guess I’m not just a homicidal maniac, but a lying child killer, too. Well, if Adams thinks I’m one, I’ll wear the mantle proudly, because being called a child killer by Adams is a mark of honor for anyone with a science-based perspective on medicine—or life, for that matter. In the meantime, I couldn’t help but notice that Adams’ claim that babies who receive the most vaccines are the most likely to be hospitalized is based on a truly bad study that I already blogged in detail a mere three months ago by Neil Z. Miller and Gary S. Goldman, two antivaccine “researchers” who think they know what they’re doing but in reality epitomize the arrogance of ignorance. What about the claim that flu shots result in a massive increase in fetal deaths? Nonsense, of course. Isn’t it funny how I’ve already covered most of the pseudoscience and quackery that Adams is laying down? No, it’s not.
Some of the other things Adams attacks include, not surprisingly fluoride and, of course,pharmaceuticals. Indeed, of pharmaceuticals, Adams says:
Every drug-dealing doctor who pushes statin drugs, ADHD drugs, blood pressure drugs or antidepressants is a criminal co-conspirator of the drug cartels. Every one of them should be indicted for poisoning their patients with deadly chemicals, yet under the label of “science” this mass poisoning continues.
Hyperbole, much, Mikey?
Particular bile is reserved for chemotherapy, which is a frequent target of quacks because, well, it works, and quacks hate that. Mikey is no exception. He starts out with a Godwin, talking about mustard gas derivatives that produced the first chemotherapy drugs and then saying that the “Nazis got their hands on the technology.” Never mind that these drugs’ use as chemotherapieswasn’t actually appreciated until the postwar period. The number of lies and the sheer quantity of misinformation in this brief article is truly astonishing. I’ve covered most of it before, including the distortion that most physicians refuse to undergo chemotherapy themselves, which is completely untrue. Meanwhile, he cites a study that shows that tumor cells can secrete a protein (WNT16B) that can increase the growth and invasiveness of surrounding cancer cells. Of course, he neglects to note that this was a preclinical study and didn’t actually show that this happens in humans and that it generated hypotheses to test to increase the efficacy of chemotherapy.
All of this leads Adams to say:
Cancer clinics need not show ANY positive results from their treatments. If a patient dies from the chemo, everyone says they “died of cancer.” If the patient lives, they are heralded as a “cancer survivor,” after which they have a 95% chance of the chemo causing new cancers, resulting in yet more revenues for the cancer centers. No cancer center blames patient deaths on the poisons being dripped into their veins.
First off, as usual, Adams is wrong when he says that cancer survivors have a 95% chance of their chemotherapy causing new cancers. It’s nowhere near that high. Moreover, oncologists do not hide or deny the risk to patients. They lay it on the line and are very honest about the possibility. Indeed, there are multiple publications (like this one) that estimate the risks (which are more on the order of single digit percentages than 95%), and the frikkin’ American Cancer Society even has a large and detailed web page on the subject.
When it comes to One Crank To Rule Them All, there’s only one right now that I can think of, and it’s Mike Adams. Poor Gian Paolo Vanoli. He didn’t have a chance. In a war of woo, he only has a few weapons, such as urine therapy and claiming vaccines cause homeosexuality. Adams has mastered every form of quackery and crankery. Few are in his league, and we should be grateful for this.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Day 2



Hello beautiful world! 

You will be glad to hear, we are on Twitter. We Tweet guys! Yes, we have started speaking and this is our official twitter account. We'll be using twitter to have direct conversation with you, listen your lovely comments to our site, and yet to regularly keep you all involved with the development process. Follow us, retweet us and yet use #IQsert to tell the world that you are proud to be a part of Twitter. 

Soon we will be on Facebook as well. Till then take care! 

Take care lovelies! :P 

PS: This tweet below is our first tweet. Tell us what you feel like. 


Friday, March 22, 2013

Day 1

Hello world!

Just making sure that the blog is up and functioning properly.

This is DraftSci where I will try to keep everything on science. I believe science is interesting and teaching or learning science is itself a interesting activity. I just want to show the world that science is not a boring subject,and if you have a deep study on science of course you can have a sound life in this life and at heaven as well. :P

So stay tuned.