Homeopathy: Diluted out of existence?

Very recently, I've had an occasion to cross swords with a close friend, a working molecular biologist, whose inexplicable belief in homeopathy flabbergasted me. I do know that we Indians have a culturally-conditioned, deep and abiding faith in many modalities of quackery, including homeopathy which is very popular in India. Nevertheless, I'd have expected someone like my friend, who has delved deep into the inner workings of cells, to naturally outgrow such infantile belief systems. Clearly, I was mistaken - but more about that later.

Reflexions - two

A couple of reflexions from my short trip home this time. Since the topics are rather disparate, I've decided to break my post into two short parts. Here's Part Two (Part One's here).

Pouring out of the woodwork?

High hilarity.

Ardent "fans" and "admirers" of Atheism and its prominent faces, such as Prof. PZ Myers, James "The Amazing" Randi, Dr. Michael Shermer amongst others, have been recently pouring out of the woodwork.

So long these "admirers" - all manners of kooks and crazies - would infest the blogs and websites of these leading proponents of sense and sanity (disclaimer: I am a long-time Pharyngula follower); pointing and laughing at their expressed kookery and craziness often provides hours of pure fun. Worthy of particular mention is the Pharyngula segment 'I get email', where PZ puts up and meticulously eviscerates some of the more egregious examples of addle-headed and vaguely threatening (which almost always contain the threat to pray for him) emails he receives.

It now appears that the "enthusiasm" of these crazies spilleth over to other websites, as well. This is a relatively new phenomenon methinks.

Reflexions - one

A couple of reflexions from my short trip home this time. Since the topics are rather disparate, I've decided to break my post into two short parts. Here's Part One; Part Two's here.

Of home labs and fun of science

A bit late to the party, I just noticed - thanks to a tweet from Noah Gray, a senior editor at Nature in NYC - an interesting write-up that the New York Times carried a couple of weeks back. It talks about the somewhat meteoric rise of home labs, dabbling in science experiments, ably aided by the availability and use of relatively low-cost tools. [click to summary if you have a tldr; moment]

A Brief Sojourn To Visit The Potomac

The spousal unit had to retire to the old country this week rather urgently - for a bit of administrative heckling (a.k.a. visa processing) and hopefully some much-needed R&R - of course, leaving me in the deep doldrums, alone and depressed on the long Christmas weekend. Thankfully, two dear friends of mine, SB-squared, decided to come over to Baltimore to ameliorate my misery. Muchas gracias, mi amigo y amiga!

In two minds... about BioEthics

I am really in two minds as I write this.

This post was prompted by a news item on Teh Grauniad this morning, brought to my attention by that esteemed daily's twitterfeed. The title and the byline goes as:

Girl, nine, benefits from UK's first IVF 'saviour sibling' therapy
Doctors treat girl with rare blood disorder by transfusing healthy bone marrow from baby brother created at IVF clinic

Intrigued, I read through the report.