Gwangi Valley - Lost Blog of the Gwangi

“Natural”. It’s thrown around every day on television and in magazines and… well, on Oprah and the like quite a lot. Mostly it’s used as a thinly veiled epithet aimed at the pharmaceutical industry. While I have no problem with bashing corporations who look more fondly on profits than on people, that does not, then, [...]

Preface: As often happens lately, it’s the podcasters at The Skeptics Guide to the Universe that get me off my butt and finally writing about something I’ve been meaning to get to. This entry is such a case. Their recent guest, Paul Offit, had a great Op-Ed piece in the NY Times regarding the controversial [...]

Stay your hand, my conservative peers, lest you pull what they used to call a ‘boner’ and, here in the future, we call a ‘fuck up’. A vote for your ‘maverick’ senator from Arizona is also a vote for his young Earth creationist running mate. A running mate who could very well end up in [...]

Well, P. Z. Myers has ended his crackerfest — although, one assumes, the overly worked-up catholics who’ve been sending him nasty un-christian sounding messages will continue on.
I won’t spoil the plot for you by telling you exactly what he did with his Jesus-flavoured cracker. You really need to read his post. Indeed, you should read [...]

P.Z Myers, a scientist, professor at UMN and noted stirrer-upper of shite with the religious right, is embroiled in a bit of a… difference of opinion with some very itchy Catholics. But let us talk about cows for a second. Sacred ones.
A sacred cow. I doubt anyone reading this has not heard the term. It’s [...]

It seems that John McCain is big on luck, chance and superstition. According to a story in the Washington Times, the senator carries 31 cents in ‘lucky change’ and won’t pick up a coin that’s tails up. And it seems to have infected his campaign staff as well.
I don’t know about you, but this both [...]

Scientists, skeptics and other rational thinkers are often accused of being “closed-minded” or “not open to new ideas” when they refute, debunk or otherwise remain skeptical of a belief or claim. And, likely just as often, the accuser is someone arguing in favour of their own brand of mysticism or pseudo-science. Or, at the very [...]

Growing up I heard a phrase that, while crass, has stuck with me. “Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one and yours stinks.”
I would add, “Quite possibly, you’re also an asshole.” Maybe that’s just me. But I often find that pure opinion, the uninformed sort in particular, can be a parsimonious and troublesome commodity in [...]

It’s an open secret that the Church of Scientology’s first defense against criticism is to attack the person criticizing and ignore the criticism (their now-dead leader L. Ron Hubbard told them to always attack, never defend). And usually this attack is aimed not at defusing the criticism, but at intimidating the criticizer so forcefully and [...]

Mistaken Premises are a lot like broken promises. They let you down in a profound way.
Today’s scrutiny falls on a fellow by the handle of Dinotheorist (http://www.dinotheorist.com). He’s a proponent of two ideas that bother me… in a profound way. The first is his assertion that dinosaurs were too heavy to walk and run in [...]