Aaron Traffas

Aaron’s recent posts

Kansas skeptical community finds a home at skeptikan.com

Mason Powell’s been spearheading the creation of a skeptical movement in Lawrence. Late last week, we launched a new website at skeptikan.com. Here’s my introductory post.

I read Carl Sagan’s “The Demon-Haunted World” when I was in high school. At the time, I wasn’t aware of any formalized skeptical movement, but the concept of using science and reason to sort out the woo from the reality resonated with me and excited me. The book’s subtitle, “Science as a Candle in the Dark,” summarizes for me what skepticism is about – a reliance on the scientific method to tell us fact from fiction.

I was first introduced to the skeptical movement several years ago when I was searching for new podcasts. I came across the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, and was immediately hooked. Here was a podcast that was somehow packed full of educational content and yet also entertaining. Through the SGU, I learned that there is a movement of like-minded people who are organizing and advancing the cause of science beyond simply the science itself.

There are many other science- and skeptic-based podcasts, but the only other podcast I’ll mention at the moment is Skeptoid. A weekly series, Skeptoid’s host Brian Dunning spends about 10 or 15 minutes on a specific topic. They’re pithy, short discussions, perfectly suited to learn about any given subject, or perhaps forward to a friend or loved one who may have fallen to believe in a particular pseudoscience or purchased a scam product. Dunning also created “Here Be Dragons: An Introduction to Critical Thinking.” It’s a free, 40 minute video that’s perfect to introduce classes to the concept and importance of critical thinking.

Woo has a very large surface area, and there are many different subjects that deserve a skeptical look. There topics such as some religions and conspiracies that result mostly in a walletectomy – removal of money – from the believer. The topics that concern me the most, however, are those that can actually cause physical harm. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) such as acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, reflexology – the list goes on – can cause both a walletectomy and real damage to people who need medical treatments or cures and are instead led to believe that these woo-jobs can help. The anti-vaccination movement is also particularly troublesome to me since it directly results in an increase in mortality from vaccine-preventable diseases.

That’s all for now. On a personal note, I can’t express how excited I am to be a part of SkeptiKan. I’ve always been jealous of skeptics living in other parts of the country who have meetups and organizations to which they can belong, and now it seems that Kansas is forming its own skeptical community. I look forward to contributing both by making this website attractive, usable and accessible and by participating in the discussion. We have exciting plans for the site and the project, and I thank Mason for inviting me to be a part of it.

O’Reilly humiliates Palin on FOX

I caught this on Digg and didn’t believe the headline until I watched it. I never thought I’d say it, but given the choice I think I’d vote for Bill O’Reilly over Sarah Palin. To think how close she actually got to the executive branch makes me cringe.

What is homeopathy?

Huge thanks to my friend Kevin Rutter for sourcing this video.

Citizen journalism

My friend Carl Carter, over at overcoffeemedia.com, wrote yesterday that citizen journalism is a myth. Writing correctly that journalism is hard work, he points out the expense and overhead inherent to the filtering that permeates modern professional journalism. This filtration, he and others reason, is the reason consumers prefer to source their news from professional entities.

I think we must distinguish between the raw news and the editorializing that has woven itself into the way many modern news organizations distribute their news. I think it is actually the later that consumers prefer to acquire from the pros. The raw news is provided to us in a barrage of disparate sources throughout the day. Whether we get the headlines from Twitter or scanning aggregators like Google News or social news sources like Digg, we already know what happened.

When we get home at the end of the day, we don’t want to hear the same headlines about which we already know. We want to know why it happened and how it may affect us. The reason we turn to the professional journalists is for the back story.

Unfortunately, this trend of wanting not the facts but to know what the facts mean has relegated the truly professional journalists to the margin. Mainstream consumers are turning instead to organizations who will slant news depending on their preferred bias. CNN is experiencing very poor ratings because they are trying to be professional journalists. They’re getting crushed by Fox News – and have actually fallen behind MSNBC in primetime – because they won’t filter their content to cater to one side or the other. Whether Fox News is a source of journalism (it isn’t) or really just a lifestyle channel promoting a conservative ideal is another discussion.

True citizen journalism may be a myth, but for those of us connected enough to hear about most events as they happen, professional journalism needs to provide us with the why and not so much the what.

Tell Brownback to Denounce Lou Engle

I wish there was someone who could defeat Sam Brownback for Kansas Governor.

More here:

http://www.ksdp.org/petitionsam

traff.as

I just got my own URL shortener. I don’t know why I think it’s the coolest thing ever, but it is. Shoot me a note if you’re interested in using it – it’s pretty simple.

April

What….a productive day. Nothing like throwing up three shows to the calendar with the possibility of a fourth in April alone.

Putting ducks in a row in preparation for my yearly week-long excursion to Bloomington, Indiana. Headed to Indiana University on Saturday for auctioneer education as I have every March for the last five years. Then it’s back to focus on music – it’s going to be an exciting April full of shows, both acoustic and with the band.

The Star Trek glory shelf

Star Trek glory shelf

I’m relaxing with Diane on a Tuesday evening, working on putting the wraps on a nasty cold that kept me home from work yesterday. I’m trying to figure out if it’s possible to do my taxes before the summer comes this year. It’s six-to-five and pick ‘em as to whether it’ll happen or not.

I’ve been relatively worthless with blogging and booking. If you feel like guest-blogging or booking some shows for me, feel free.

Diane and I went down to see the Cowboy Dave Band at Longhorns last Thursday. Cowboy Dave used to front FortyTwenty, and now has a very traditional-yet-edgy western country band. We had a blast, and will look forward to the next opportunity we get to see them.

G and I are playing a show in McPherson on Friday at Z’s Club. Stop by if you’re in the area.

Tonight I became super fan of a guy named Cory Branan. Check out his performance of Miss Ferguson from Letterman.  Here are the words or you can download the whole song for free from last.fm.

Diane and I finished our bookshelf. It’s only crooked if you look at it with a tape measure. I think our next project will be a couple of matching nightstands. I’m going to build mine with a cup holder….maybe two.

Alzheimer’s

I grew up in rural Kansas. There was one house within a quarter-mile of mine, and it happened to be across the road. The hundred-yard distance in south-central Kansas was the equivalent of a neighboring apartment for someone growing up in urban America.

The inhabitants of the house were amazing people. The patron was an unquestioningly kind soul, within whose grandchildren I found friends. The matron was someone within whom I could never imagine an unkind or an inhospitable thought.

Recently, I recall marveling at the sight of the holiday parking feats which caused their yard to impersonate a car dealership. It seemed one of every make and model of vehicle was parked in neat, orderly rows for each Thanksgiving and Christmas. Their family was fruitful, and love seemed to bring all of their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren home regularly to vist.

I have a huge number of memories, all of which are pleasant and involve borrowing something from them or playing with their grandchildren on their farm equipment or stopping to visit on one of many all-too-hurried trips between my house and my grandmother’s during harvest.

My fiancee Diane and I are re-watching the West Wing. We usually average a couple of episodes each night. It’s a great TV series that deals with idealism, but one of the overriding themes is that of a president who has multiple sclerosis, a long-term and debilitating disease.

The West Wing had 156 episodes. There was one episode that dealt with a different, long-term, deblitating disease called Alzheimer’s. It’s in the middle of season four, and it’s a one-episode story arc that deals with the father of one of the regular cast memebers. It’s a truly heart-wrenching episode, and it’s what came next tonight in our one-by-one rewatching of the series.

I don’t believe in fate or providence, but it’s unnerving to watch that episode tonight knowing that I received word this morning that my neighbor passed away from Alzheimer’s. He was a beloved friend, and he and his family were never anything but unconditionally kind to me and mine. Rest in peace, Willard, you are and have been loved and will be missed.

Today’s quackery: osteopathic manipulative medicine

Image via Wikipedia

Andrew Taylor Still lived near Baldwin City, Kansas, during the time of the Civil War. There, he founded the practice of osteopathy in the 1870s after his father and three children died from spinal meningitis. He founded the American School of Osteopathy in Missouri in the 1890s. Still believed that the bone was the starting point to diagnosing pathological conditions and that he could “shake a child and stop scarlet fever, croup, diphtheria, and cure whooping cough in three days by a wring of its neck.” Right.

True osteopathic manipulative medicine, like it’s cousin chiropractic medicine, is bullshit. Claiming to cure or alleviate a pathological condition by manipulating an unrelated system is an affront to common sense. Curing a fever by manipulating the skeletal system is as ludicrous as thinking you can stop a car’s engine from overheating by rotating the tires.

This post isn’t an attack on American osteopathic physicians. As a baby, I was delivered by a DO, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t shake me. While I don’t technically have a regular doctor, I have in the past received very good care from a local doctor who is a DO.

Since it’s quack roots in the 1870s, American Osteopathy has transitioned to a practice that is essentially real, science-based medicine. Modern doctors of osteopathy in the United States are taught but no longer use osteopathic manipulative medicine – the component that is the modern derivative of Still’s baby-shaking pseudoscience. American osteopathic physicians have real degrees from real universities and have equivalent medical training to real doctors.

Unfortunately, osteopathy has a context outside of American osteopathic medicine. Osteopathy in the rest of the world has parked itself squarely in the purview of complementary and alternative medicine (CAMP). This D in the DO can stand for diploma, not doctor, and the practitioners are more skilled in bamboozling their clients than they are at practicing any kind of real medicine.

Here’s the thing. Real medicine is based on science. If something is “complimentary” or “alternative” to science, it’s not medicine – it’s crap. If something makes you feel better that shouldn’t, like chiropractic or acupuncture or homeopathy or osteopathic manipulative medicine, it’s called a placebo and it’s unethical to present it as a legitimate treatment for anything.