New anti-pseudoscience blog

Okay, it's not new, it's just new to me.

The blog is Respectful Influence, found at http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/.

I came across the blog after seeing an add on cable for Miracle Foot Patches. These things are supposed to "detoxify" your body by drawing "toxins" out of your feet. You can tell, because the patches get this dirty colour on them! It's got to be toxins, right? I mean, why else would the soles of your feet make a sticky pad of goo turn dirty?

The debunking of these things is here: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/10/
your_friday_dose_of_woo_these_boots_were_1.php

Perusing the blog I found something political that should have been noted in regular media, but really wasn't. Republican Dan Burton has been interfering in the Autism Omnibus hearings. These are hearings that were ordered to look into whether or not vaccinations cause autism. Forget the fact that science has debunked the autism/vaccination "link". Anyway, the first few test cases weren't going well in the hearings, so Burton — a believer in autism/vaccination link pseudoscience — wrote to the hearings to try and influence them.

The mainstream media might have missed it, but it's documented here: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/12/
representative_dan_burton_trying_to_use.php#more

This is going to be one of my "must go to, daily" blogs.

Moved in

It was a lot of work over the last month, but we're finally in the new apartment.

The actual move took place over U.S. Thanksgiving weekend. We got the 16 foot truck on Wednesday. We ran over to the new place with some boxes and then we loaded the truck until 11:30 at night. We were up the next morning at 7, finished the first load of the truck, and then met with Alana's supervisor's husband and son, who helped us get the first load — of heavy furniture — into the apartment. We ran back to the house for another load in the early afternoon, unpacked that, and then took the truck back to the Penske place, getting home at 11 p.m.

(Driving the truck was interesting. It was the largest vehicle I'd ever driven. The only problem I had was with stupid drivers, like the idiot on the highway that passed me on the right just before I was about to start changing into the right lane...)

Friday was Black Friday, of course. We didn't bother getting up early for it, mostly because there was very little that interested us. That's two years in a row that the sales were less than interesting. We did get out to Academy Sports around 10, and Kohl's just before 1, mostly to get me much needed clothes. We then went back to the old apartment and packed up yet more stuff!

Saturday we didn't do anything at all, taking a day off to unpack a little and just generally veg. Sunday afternoon and early evening was spent cleaning the old place. We finished that off with another four hours of scrubbing, etc. on Tuesday.

So that gets you up to speed with our life the last couple of months.

I hope to have more time to blog, though I suspect I've lost most of my audience with my silence up until now. Over the next few weeks I'll evaluate whether or not it's worth keeping the blog going.