darthsunshine pointed me toward a piece on the ABC News website regarding a study that demonstrated positive placebo effect even when the patients knew it was a placebo. This absolutely fascinates me, because this is a research direction that could lead to figuring out how to trigger the body's capacity to heal without need for medication or surgery. ( Read more... )

http://www.gocomics.com/culdesac/2008/12/12/

Which is why you have to have a kid say it in the comic.

http://www.gocomics.com/culdesac/2008/02/07/

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I wish I could start every day this positively:

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Found via Ze Frank.

It was right here. Props to y'all non-belongers ( Read more... )

The Christian Dominionists (mostly the Christian Right, but I don't think all of them fall into that group) are trying to restore God as the infallible source and displace Discourse. The Liberal Elites are mostly secular and represent the group that won power with the bourgeoisie in the 1700's by setting up Discourse in God's place. Over the 1800 ( Read more... )

"Earlier I cited pop nihilist storytellers as vanguard perpetrators of the genocide of the imagination. But there are other culprits as well: the fundamentalists. I'm not referring to just the usual suspects - the religious fanatics of Islam and Christianity and Judaism and Hinduism ( Read more... )

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/feb/22/mps-verdict-homeopathy-useless-unethical

Something I've been working on a lot lately is remembering that there is no One Right Way. Maybe other people don't have problems with this, but for me, it's a real source of trouble. I tend to get locked into a single perspective, methodology, or discipline, and try to assume that it's going to work best in every situation ( Read more... )