Health | Chaos Central

Organic Food. It’s good for the environment. Right?

Aug 1, 2017 | Health, Skepticism | 6 Comments

Better for the Environment Well, now we're getting onto firmer ground. It's pretty widely acknowledged that there is little, if any, taste or health benefit to organically grown food. While that is at odds with popular belief and personal experience (a friend wrote to tell me that "oohs" and "aahs" only happen when the food is organic and local and never when purchased through a supermarket), this seems to be a case of confirmation bias. When...

Organic food. It’s gotta be better for you. Right?

Jul 25, 2017 | Health | 3 Comments

Organic food is healthier. It stands to reason. If you don't use chemical fertiliser and pesticides the end result has simply got to be healthier - for you and me and the environment. And besides, everyone knows that organic food is just better for your body. End of story - I might as well end this post right here. But maybe we need to examine this just a bit. While the taste differences between organic and non-organic food have been...

Organic tastes better?

Jul 23, 2017 | Health | 3 Comments

Everyone knows it. It really goes without saying. Organic is just better, more wholesome, healthier, more flavourful, better for the environment. What's not to like? It's just better. No pesticides, no herbicides, nothing bad of any sort. Ever. We all know it. No one questions it. So I suppose it must be true. But, in the dark night of my skeptic dreams I wonder. Is it true? Is there any reason for it to be true? Does it actually make...

The Craig Egan/Tenpenny Mystery. The Saga Continues.

Jan 8, 2017 | Conspiracy theories, Health, Vaccination | 3 Comments

I just saw the following in a Facebook post. I just got a call at work from the FBI. The agent asked me if I knew who Dr Tenpenny was and if I was "trolling" her page. I explained the best I could and offered full cooperation. If that was me I would be describing a moment of shitting myself. The FBI. Is calling me. Why is the FBI calling me? Shit. But it turns out that writer went by the name of Craig Egan. Yesterday I suggested...

The tale of Craig Egan, the mythological scourge of the anti-vaccine crowd.

Jan 7, 2017 | Alt-med, Conspiracy theories, Health, Skepticism, Vaccination | 6 Comments

Image from http://www.cover4face.com/ Not long ago, say about 6 weeks, there was a Facebook page called Proud Parents of Unvaccinated Children (PPUC). Its purpose was to celebrate having children who were unvaccinated so as to trade suggestions and advice about how to keep kids unvaccinated. That advice ranged from merely misinformed to utterly bizarre. It was a hotbed of conspiracy theory, new age, libertarian, pseudo-science, outright lies...

Do you believe in contagion?

Jul 31, 2013 | Alt-med, Health, Vaccination | 0 Comments

I was at a workshop this last weekend. One of the attendees had a cold and announced that anyone who believed in contagion might want to avoid hugging her. And I thought, what???? Is that a joke? Can she be serious? Who could not "believe in contagion"? It's not like it's a concept that originated in the last couple of centuries with the advent of science. It's been around a long time. Doubting that diseases are communicable would...

The Immunization Initiative and the rest of it.

Aug 23, 2012 | Alt-med, Health, Vaccination | 1 Comment

I've been working on two causes at causes.com. The first one was The Anti-Anti-Vaccine Campaign. The intention was and is to encourage people to challenge anti-vaccine propaganda that shows up on their Facebook newsfeed. It's still alive but I haven't worked out how to promote it very effectively. The people at causes.com said it was too negative and appealed to too small a segment of the population for them to add it to their featured...

Once a beach ball. Now a mere football.

Aug 2, 2012 | Health | 2 Comments

Depending on your persuasion it could be a soccer ball, a gridiron ball but I'm actually thinking of an Aussie Rules ball. I don't follow Aussie Rules. They probably have a name for their ball that isn't just "football", but I don't know it. And I'm not about to ask Dr. Google. At least not today. The point being that it is no longer a beach ball and no longer a basketball. This morning I passed the 78kg mark. I'm very pleased with...

Another weighty matter

Jul 11, 2012 | Health | 3 Comments

Pretty much everyone who is reading this has likely seen some of the vaccination stuff I've been doing. I don't want to write about that again, at least for now, because this is not a vaccination blog. That wouldn't be sufficiently chaotic. However, I will ask that you go to http://redd.it/wd18j and vote up my article. It's getting a fair bit of attention, but a bit more won't go astray. This post is just a quick diet note. In the first,...

Still a diet seven days later.

Jul 1, 2012 | Health, Skepticism | 3 Comments

Been away for a couple of day. I suppose it's time to catch up. First off I thought it would be good to mention that the morning after writing my post about starting a diet I weighed myself. I weighed 81.6kg, which was down around a kilo from the day before. My weight varies that much on a daily basis, depending on what I ate the night before or my exercise decisions or something. I know it means nothing. However. I'm 181cm tall. When...

My first diet. Really.

Jun 25, 2012 | Health | 1 Comment

My BMI (Body Mass Index) is 25.2. Overweight starts at 25. So I'm now on a diet. I like to claim that I have always been thin. Mostly that's because I was thin for a very long time. But little by little I've progressed from not thin through normal through the higher end of normal and finally to being officially overweight at 64 years of age. It's clear to me that my idea of overweight is a non-event to most people. They can see that I'm heavier...

Don’t suffer anti-vaccination propaganda gladly

Jun 12, 2012 | Health, Logical fallacies, Vaccination | 4 Comments

My wife teaches yoga. I practice yoga. I make it clear that I'm a consumer of yoga and not a yogi. I don't pay attention to the philosophy or spiritual side, but I like the fact that at 64 I can touch my toes and do a few other things that I might not otherwise be able to do. As the spouse of a member of the community I know lots of other teachers. Yesterday I saw a post on Facebook by a senior yoga teacher who I've known for years and like a...

It’s usually good to talk about it

Jun 7, 2012 | Depression, Health | 2 Comments

I got a reply via email to my first post on depression that I'd like to share. This is a great article. I am one of the ones that would have come up to you during a break but over time I have raised my hand many times to the question "Who takes antidepressants" and I now comfortably say "I do and I don't have the desire to get off of them. If it is working then why rock the boat". I don't happen to enjoy being depressed. It is all over my...

Who says? And how do they know?

May 28, 2012 | Conspiracy theories, Health, Logical fallacies | 4 Comments

I'm a skeptic. While it's popular to pigeonhole skeptics as cynics who don't believe anything and will criticise everything, it's really not like that. It's really a question of not blindly accepting things as true. It's about testing ideas for plausibility and evidence. It's something that grows out of a reaction to what this skeptic perceives as the willingness of so many to believe so many silly things. While it's tempting as a skeptic...

Restless bloody legs

May 26, 2012 | Health | 0 Comments

A while back my wife Eve mentioned to a friend that I've got Restless Legs Syndrome. His response was to laugh. And he kept laughing for a while. It struck him as funny. And he's not the first person that has had that reaction. Since it's very difficult to describe the symptoms, and they don't sound, on the surface, as if they are a big issue, it's sometime hard to see RLS as a real problem. But for me it's a nasty and extremely...