Christopher Hitchens has died.

You’ve probably heard; the web is lighting up with obituaries and stories about him. I didn’t know him personally — having only met him on two occasions, both times at skeptic conferences — and I didn’t come into his writings until relatively recently, so nothing I can say here would add substantively to what already exists. Instead, many people have written eloquent thoughts upon his death, so you should read those:

At Noisy Astronomer, Nicole Gugliucci recounts watching Hitchens in a debate with a theist, a situation that occurred often.

Steve Novella of course sums things up with his usual insight and sharp aim.

Kevin Murphy simply put up an interesting video of Hitchens acerbically and artfully dissecting, and then rewriting, the Ten Commandments.

And, as usual, it’s impossible to beat the amazing ability of The Onion to distill away impurities and make me smile ruefully with one simple headline.

… though of course, Zach Weiner manages to do so pretty well in both a web comic as well as a short tribute and imploration for us to do more.

There’s a series of pictures going around the web right now showing the rising Moon in the background, and people whimsically doing things to it in the foreground. It’s hard to explain, so here is a picture literally worth 28 words:

I love this series of photos, and I’ve seen people plug it on Twitter, Google+, and I’ve gotten an email or two about it as well. The thing is, the photographer who took these pictures isn’t getting any attribution in the copies I’ve seen (like, for example, on FAILblog; I’ve sent them a note about it [UPDATE: they've added a link to Laurent's page. Yay!]). The cool thing is, I know who took these images: the amazingly creative French photographer Laurent Laveder.

I knew it was him right away, because his photo of a man "painting" the Moon during a lunar eclipse took the ninth slot in my Top Ten Astronomy Images of 2006!

I think artists who create things should get credit, so I’m letting everyone know who took those shots. I like Laurent’s work quite a bit, and as it turns out he also works on The World At Night, which I just happened to write about a few days ago: it’s an effort to take photos of world landmarks against the night sky, and is supported by Astronomers Without Borders.

You can find more of Laurent’s Moon photos at PixHeaven. Check them out; they’re fantastic. He also has a book and postcard prints of them, too! And if you tweeted/G+ed or emailed someone about these Moon shots, then let everyone know who took ‘em. Laurent deserves the credit for such imagination and planning, and for creating such lovely and wonderful art.

Image credit: Laurent Laveder

Bonus points to anyone who understands the very obscure reference I made in this article’s title. You win nothing tangible, but the chuffed feeling of having shared knowledge of the greatest cartoonist of the modern age.

I recently posted a lengthy analysis of the fiscal year 2012 budget Congress and the President approved for NASA. I didn’t mention it then because it was off-topic, but in the press release for the funding bill, they list bullet points of "Important Policy Items". I took a screen grab of the last item listed, and the note below it:

Perhaps I’m the only one who sees irony in a bullet point saying Congress won’t appropriate $322M for an NOAA climate change service, while then immediately below it noting how the natural disasters that have befallen this country have required " historic levels of relief and recovery assistance", necessitating $2.3 billion in relief funds. Hmmm.

[Note: While it can be hard to pin any one natural disaster like a hurricane, heat wave, or snow storm on climate change, as we warm up we will see more things like those. I want my tax dollars to go to more scientific investigation by NOAA and other agencies. But then, I'm not funded in any way by the oil industry, and my only motivation is the open and honest investigation of the world around us since it might just save our species.]

[Note II: DeSmogBlog digs a bit deeper into this, and has some curious comments about climate-contrarian Congresscritters who kaboshed this.]

Teaching kids about science is one of the best things we can do. Children are naturally inquisitive and curious; and the methods of science, if taught correctly, can be used to engender a lifelong love of these traits.

So I’m happy when science is encouraged for kids. Still, there are times when I see examples of science education that make me cringe, and shake my head, wondering "What were they thinking?"

Enter WILD! Science. This is an apparently successful Australian company that sells science kits for kids. That’s great, and some of the kits look pretty good.

The problem is, they split some of the kits into ones for boys, and ones for girls. And that split is exactly what you think.

For example, for boys: Hyperlauncher, Joke Soap, Perils of the Deep, Weird Slime Lab.

For girls: Mystic Crystals, Beauty Spa Lab, Luxury Soap Lab, Perfect Perfume Lab.

Oh: I’ll add that the boys’ kits are marketed in blue; the girls’ in pink.

Um. Yeah.

Now, I am not a sociologist or a psychologist who studies gender roles and the differences between the sexes. It strikes me that there may be no need to separate the way we teach between boys and girls — my friend and geologist Evelyn Mervine discusses this point further — but I’ll also readily admit that there may very well be differences between the ways boys and girls see the world. If that’s the case, I have no problem with a company, teacher, or parent accepting that and using it to help the child learn. In other words, science is the same for everyone, but how we get people interested in it and learning about may vary from demographic to demographic.

But I don’t think that’s really the issue here. The problem here is these girls’ kits all are almost entirely marketed on the idea that girls should be pretty, or should try to make themselves pretty.

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Everyone has been touched by cancer in one way or another. If you haven’t had it yourself, the odds are extremely high you know someone who has, and who has died from it. I’ve lost loved ones to cancer, and it’s awful; it can take years filled with tests, hope, lack of hope, expensive therapy… and in the end the odds are what they are. It all makes for desperate times for those involved, with an emotional distress level that is beyond my ability to describe.

There are people out there who claim they can cure cancer, or have therapies that can mediate it. Some of these people are simply con artists, ready to swoop in as soon as they smell blood in the water, vermin that they are. Others are honest but wrong, thinking they have stumbled on some therapy that no one else has found. However, time and again, when these alternative methods are tested rigorously using controlled, properly done studies, they are shown not to work. In general this does not stop people from making the claims, however.

In Houston, Texas, is a man named Stanislaw Burzynski. He claims he has a method for treating cancer. He calls it antineoplaston therapy. However, according to the National Cancer Institute, “No randomized, controlled trials showing the effectiveness of antineoplastons have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.” That’s a bad sign. Furthermore, the FDA has not approved of antineoplaston therapy for use. Also telling is that “… other investigators have not been able to obtain the same results reported by Dr. Burzynski and his team”. Yet, despite this, Burzynski charges hundreds of thousands of dollars for people to get his therapy — though he has to say they’re participating in research trials, since the FDA won’t allow him to use his ideas as an actual treatment.

Those are red flags, to be sure.

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[This is my Thanksgiving post from 2008. I've made some edits to it to bring it up to date, but I still feel this way.]

Today in the United States is the holiday of Thanksgiving, one of our more deeply tradition-laden days. I suspect most people in other countries know this as the time we eat turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie (though not me, I prefer chocolate pie). And then there’s the shopping the next day, of course.

But there is also the tradition after which the holiday itself is named: giving thanks. People do it in different ways, of course. At a family dinner many years ago, my then-young niece suggested that we go around the dinner table and everyone could say what they were thankful for. It was a sweet idea, and we’ve done it many times since, when we’re all gathered.

But there’s something about it that doesn’t sit right with me, and again it’s the word itself. To give thanks, there has to be something to receive it. For some it’s God, which is their personal choice. For others it may just be fate, or happenstance. But for me… I have an appreciation for math and some basic statistics; I know that, ironically, rare things happen all the time because there are so many seconds in a day, and so many of us humans walking the Earth. Tell me that I am a one-in-a-million guy, for example, and I know reflexively there are 5999 more of me out there somewhere.

Egads. There’s a thought for you.

So sometimes things just happen. But I also know that the world is what we make of it. We make decisions, consciously and unconsciously, every second of every day, day in and day out, for all our lives. The big decisions stick with us, and maybe smaller ones that went the wrong way. But they’re our decisions.

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Geez, this again? Seriously?

Two years ago, someone hacked into a University of East Anglia server and anonymously posted thousands of emails from climate scientists. Quickly dubbed "Climategate", global warming deniers jumped on this, trying to show that these scientists were engaging in fraudulent activities. However, it was clear to anyone familiar with how research is done that this was complete and utter bilge; the scientists were not trying to hide anything, were not trying to trick anyone, and were not trying to falsely exaggerate the dangers of climate change.

I wrote about this when it happened and then again quickly thereafter, showing this was just noise. Accusations of fraud were leveled at climate scientist Michael Mann, but time and again he was exonerated: like this time, and then this time, and then this time, and of course this time, and then my favorite, this time.

Climategate was widely denounced as a manufactured controversy, except, of course, by denialists. Because they denied it. That’s axiomatic.

However, like a bacterium festering away someplace dank and fetid, Climategate is poised to infect reality once again: The Guardian is reporting that a second cache of stolen emails has been released anonymously, and once again the cries of conspiracy are being heard. However, it looks like these emails aren’t really new, and were simply from the original stolen batch, but were held back until today. Mind you, the emails from the first Climategate were released right before a big climate conference, in an obvious attempt to derail it in the media. This new batch was released days before a similar conference, in what appears to be a similar propaganda move.

[UPDATE: Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) has called on the US intelligence community to investigate who stole these emails. I think this is the right move. We still don't know who did this two years ago, and I'd be fascinated to see who was behind it. H/T Michael Mann on Twitter.]

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