Including posts about medicine, medical discoveries, quackery, health, dieting, exersize, and so forth.
Welp, the Supreme Court upheld “Obamacare.” For the record, I’m still pissed we didn’t get a single-payer system or a public option, but this’ll do for a start. Here’s a pile of related links. The Mashable story at the beginning is particularly fun. Good job, CNN. Way to verify.
I’ve got three articles here, and in them the comments sections are just gorgeous, gorgeous piles of crazy and the poor souls desperately trying to outshout the woo.
Pseudoscience on the RationalWiki. Click to view source & definition.
Needless to say – or at least, it should be needless to say, wifi and wireless signals don’t give you cancer or memory loss or genital warts or whatever it is these folks are worried about. Look, even Wikipedia says so:
In response to public concern, the World Health Organization established the International EMF Project in 1996 to assess the scientific evidence of possible health effects of EMF in the frequency range from 0 to 300 GHz. They have stated that although extensive research has been conducted into possible health effects of exposure to many parts of the frequency spectrum, all reviews conducted so far have indicated that exposures are below the limits recommended in the ICNIRP (1998) EMF guidelines, covering the full frequency range from 0–300 GHz, and do not produce any known adverse health effect.
For future reference, feel free to file the wifi worriers alongside the people who think vaccines cause autism and magnets can cure cancer.
Quite a lot of the people in the comments sections are angry that taxpayer money is having to be wasted to defend the school from this law suit, which is definitely a good point. As my James said last night, however, “I don’t mind the money being spent. It’s a school’s job to fight the stupid.”
XOJane is an online woman’s magazine started by the same woman who used to be in charge of Sassy. Women’s magazines run toward the insipid and insulting to begin with, so I don’t really read them. I stumbled over this kerfluffle via Skepchick‘s article, XOJane’s Cat Marnell: Performance Art or Gross Idiocy?
Cat Marnell, Health and Beauty Editor of XOJane.com
Plan B is a pill you can take within 72 hours of having sex and stupidly letting your man ejaculate inside of you. Why are we still doing this? Maybe you’re not. But I AM. WHY, CAT, WHY? You are SO DUMB. There are so many other options. Such as:
[...]
SO. That leaves us with Plan B. I don’t even want to describe how Plan B works, mainly because I’m too lazy to look it up. Here, analyze this, um, diagram…
I’ll wait a minute while you go read that. Go ahead, take your time. You might want to keep Wikipedia open in another tab, so you can switch back and forth. That way, you can balance the onslaught of horrifying stupidity with something a little smarter. It helps prevent aneurysms.
To sum up the article, Marnell is apparently angry that New York is out of Plan B, which is her preferred method of birth control because eeew condoms, and birth control makes you fat and pimply. (No, it doesn’t.) Also, she would explain how birth control and women’s cycles and Plan B and whatnot works, except eeeew girlybits and OMG it’s too hard! Instead, she prefers to sleep around riding bareback and slurping down Plan B whenever she’s concerned that her victim of choice didn’t pull out in time.
I want to be clear, here. My problem with Marnell is not that she sleeps around. She’s entitled to as much sex as she cares to have, the same as anyone else. My problem is her stunning ignorance. She doesn’t know how her body works, she doesn’t know how birth control works, and she doesn’t seem to give a damn about safe sex.
Lots of people are ignorant about safe sex and birth control. There’s nothing wrong with being ignorant. Remaining ignorant, when it’s so easy to educate yourself, is wrong. Particularly when you’re the health and beauty editor of a seemingly popular woman’s magazine.
It’s a woman’s responsibility to know how her body works and what her options are when it comes to birth control and safe sex, just as it’s a man’s responsibility to know how his junk works and take the precautions available to him. If you aren’t capable of having sex in a responsible fashion, you should probably keep your fly zipped, kids.
Ladies, when it comes to birth control, it is almost literally raining options, and Plan B, despite Marnell’s stunningly stupid statement, “OK, so for the exactly three women left in this world, apparently, who don’t know what Plan B is, it is sort of the world’s greatest contraceptive,” is really not the “best” one. Gentlemen, I’m afraid your options are far fewer when it comes to birth control. Use a condom. Every single time.
When it comes to safe sex, folks, insist that your partner take all the right precautions, every time. Make it a habit, so even if you’re knock-down, drag-out drunk, you still have a chance of remembering to use condoms, dental damns, latex gloves, etc, every single time, even if it’s only out of the force of sheer habit.
And Cat Marnell? Seriously, honey, shut your mouth and keep your legs closed. You’re making the rest of us look bad.
ETA 10/17/11 10:30am: Just noticed this – Jane Pratt, HBIC over at XOJane, put up a post defending her mouth-breathing health and beauty editor, The (Possibly) Last Thing I’ll Say About That Post. In the article, she says things like,
Ms. Pratt, we aren’t pissy because you have writers with different voices and different opinions. We’re pissy because your HEALTH and beauty editor is droolingly ignorant about even the basics of feminine biology and sexual health and safety, proud of her stunning ignorance, and too damn lazy to take the five minutes it took me to Google up the information for an article.
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