Text by Michael Shermer, editor of “Sceptic Magazine” and author of “Why Darwin Matters”:

“To convey the logical absurdity of trying to squeeze the round peg of science into the square hole of religion, I penned the following scientific revision of the Genesis creation story. It is not intended as a sacrilege of the poetic beauty of Genesis; rather, it is a mere extension of what the creationists have already done to Genesis in their insistence that it be read not as mythic saga but as scientific prose. If Genesis were written in the language of modern science, it would read something like this.”

The BBC programme Horizon decides to see if they can win the James Randi Educational Foundation prize of US $1,000,000 by proving that homeopathy works. And let’s not flit about the question. They failed in proving anything.

And even though the programme is shown, chances are people will still believe in homeopathy. Why people persist in believing that all those quack-tales are anything but faith- and hope-based is beyond me. Delusional and irrational hope that there’re some magical quick-fix for life and death?

One of the more interesting parts:

atbarnes: how do you explain the posative results, in the two earlier experiments, shown in the documentary ?

James Randi: I strongly suspect that there might have been unknown and unrecognised influences brought to bear. Recent experiments on homeopathy done in the United States have shown that when one certain person was actively involved in the experimentation, they were always positive. When that person was absent, that experiment showed no results. This is an interesting thing to think about. I am also curious about why Dr Ellis changed her mind about participating in the Horizon experiments.

 
 
And his brilliant finishing statement:

James Randi: I was not surprised by the results of the Horizon experiments, but I remain willing to observe and consider any and all other tests that are done under similarly precise conditions. I do not expect that homeopathy will ever be established as a legitimate form of treatment, but I do expect that it will continue to be popular.

 
 
This man is my hero, and I’ll finish with this amazing angle on homeopathy. I couldn’t stop laughing when I first saw it. I still can’t.

Wow, who’d have thought a nose could look that cool.

The Shock Doctrine – If you don’t bother checking out any links that I’m posting here, I seriously recommend this one at the least. There’s a fragrance of truth in it. She forgot to spell out clearly for people that “Some people will take advantage of any situation”.

Then to the second most interesting link I could find, the iPod one. In this case it’s the iPod Touch, and I present it in two different versions; the cheap one and the way more expensive one. At a glance you might think that there’s not much difference in those two prices, because who in their right mind would have such immensely differing pricing on an object readily available from the Amazon.com store? The difference in price is $458.39 vs $299.00 ( not included whatever shipping costs ). Why aren’t norwegians rushing off to Amazon.com to buy the little beauty at an incredibly lower price? Because there’s a tag that says “Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.“. Great way to handle the incredibly weak dollar?
Found this looking through Amazon to compare prices on mp3-players, and perhaps cell-phones, and I find it really annoying. What can you do though?

This one was just… odd… and I had to add it.

Edit;
The emeddage seems to wonk up things for Deandri, and I won’t bother doing that anymore.
In addition I’ve found an odd bug that makes WordPress delete stuff when I’m trying to edit my posts.
Odd day.

ComixFixes
Sinfest.net – The funniest of them all. Religion, media, anything “holy” is touched and ridiculed. I love this guy.
Striptease – Funny, serious, with a whiff of drama. Strangely funny, and I keep returning to it.
ErrantStory – Probably my favourite story-teller of them all. Funny, and creative. He might not be the best, but his style is nice and familiar by now, and he’s really good with what he’s got.
AppleGeeks – There’s something hilarious about apple-geeks with self-irony, and creating good stories with an amazing pencil.
PennyArcade – A sharp pencil, great wit and amazing skill. Hilarious fun-poking at games and the gaming-industry.
GU Comics – One man, one comic, one loooong string of good laughs. Woody Hearn deserves visits. Repeated ones at that.

ForumFixes
TheFlamingRuby.net – The site of the WoW-guild I am a member of. Nice people I wouldn’t want to be without. Been my home in WoW since March ’05 I think. Probably makes me one of the oldest active members there as well.
ElitistJerks.com – I play WoW. I want to be as good as possible, and know as much as possible. This is the place for an intelligent discourse on WoW-theorycraft.
Wowace.com – I play WoW. I use addons for WoW. This is where I get my addons for WoW.
apforums.net – One Piece is the best manga ever. Yes, it’s been said. This is where I hang to find releases and discussions about this downright brilliant manga.

NewsFixes
BBC.com – The best source for news in the world, in my opinion. They’ve always felt like the more reliable source of news.
vg.no – Shitty, full of ads, and takes an eternity to load. Still one of the biggest news-outlets in Norway amply aided by a short address.
slyck.com – Small, critical, and still in the game. It might not be the biggest, but it offers news, and a place to find it, about the p2p world.
gamespot.com – Big, bad, and clunky to load, but still the best source for news about games.
arstechnica.com – One of the better and more interesting sites about tech-news and such. It feels good atleast.
Independent Comics Site – This is partially a comixfix, but eh… news about comics is always cool *grins*

OddFix
I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER ? – I love cats, and these cats are hilarious in addition. I visit this site every now and then, and I never fail to be amused.

I should admit that I’m pretty bad at visiting blogs or sites beyond these with any regularity for reasons I’m not entirely sure about.