Politics As Usual Regarding Affordable Housing In Charlotte

"The Charlotte City Council has said building affordable housing is one of its highest priorities, especially in the wake of the civil unrest after the Keith Lamont Scott shooting.

"But a proposed taxpayer-supported development near uptown raises questions about the council’s commitment to low-income housing, and whether the city will come close to its goal of building 5,000 subsidized units in three years.

"Developer Peter Pappas is planning a $200 million mixed-use project near Pearl Street Park, just outside of Interstate 277. The project would include a 170-room hotel, retail, office and 250 apartments.
No affordable units are planned.

"And the city and county haven’t made it a requirement – despite a tentative agreement that calls for taxpayers to give the developer roughly $4.4 million in tax rebates."

Affordable housing is a city priority. Developer may get millions without including it.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article110445082.html#storylink=cpy

Playboy Model DID Die From Chiropractic Manipulation

"Playboy model Katie May died after a visit to the chiropractor left her with a torn artery in her neck, PEOPLE confirms.

"The 34-year-old model passed away in February just days after suffering a stroke, her family told PEOPLE at the time. And a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Coroner now says the star died as a result of an injury sustained during a “neck manipulation by chiropractor.”

"Los Angeles Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter tells PEOPLE that a chiropractor shifted May’s neck, tearing her left vertebral artery. The tear blocked blood flow to May’s brain and caused the stroke."

 This article gives information regarding Chiropractic's "Dirty Secret."

This "Treatment" Does Not Need Further Study

"What do you do when you’ve spent $30 million to study a highly controversial, possibly harmful treatment, only to learn that it doesn’t work?

"If you’re NIH’s alternative medicine center, you double down. More than double, actually: NIH’s NCCIH* just announced they will spend another $37 million to study chelation as a treatment for heart disease."

NIH Will Spend $37 Million On Discredited Treatment That May Harm Patients

Chiropractors Are Not Qualified For ANY Medical Practice

"Chiropractors are not qualified to act as gynecologists or PCPs. They are not qualified to treat cancer at all, much less with an untested, potentially harmful treatment. They should not be spreading misinformation about the HPV vaccine. (Incidentally, only about half of chiropractors support vaccination at all.) Freedom of speech allows LeRoy to say whatever he wants, but freedom of speech has limits: it does not allow people to start a panic by falsely crying “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Some might argue that medical fear-mongering and misinformation approach those limits."

Chiropractic Gynecologist Offers Dangerous Treatments and Misinformation

After All, The USAF Academy IS A Hotbed Of Fundamentalist Religion

"A willingness to accept poorly substantiated claims can cause consumers to waste resources and scientists to waste valuable time. In this case, the externally located MPT theory is inconsistent with the known laws of physical science, the common natural presence of titanium, and now, the results associated with a classroom experiment that removed the potential placebo effect associated with Phiten necklaces."

Scientific Reasoning at the USAF Academy: An Examination into Titanium-Treated Necklaces

Copper Bracelets & Athletic Supports Are Bogus

"There’s little to no reliable scientific evidence that the copper/compression combo does what manufacturers are claiming."

What You Need to Know About Copper Compression Sleeves and Pain Relief

Quackwear: Big Pseudoscience Wants to Sell You Wearable Metal to Improve Your Health

Therapeutic metal trinkets and infused clothing are a $1 billion-a-year business. They're also a scam.

 

Another Human Relative Found

"Bohlender isn’t the first to suggest that remnants of archaic human relatives may have been preserved in human DNA even though no fossil remains have been found. In 2012, another group of researchers suggested that some people in Africa carry DNA heirlooms from an extinct hominid species (SN: 9/8/12, p. 9)."

DNA data offer evidence of unknown extinct human relative 

More Arguments From Ignorance To Attack Evolution

"While they differ on how much real Darwinian evolution really occurred (Michael Behe, for instance, says he has no problem with “common ancestry”), and whether the Earth is old or young, the IDers are united in spending their time attacking evolutionists on nonscientific grounds as well as emphasizing the things that evolution hasn’t yet explained, all while ignoring the great sea of evidence for evolution around them."

One thing that neither the DI nor Ferguson deals with is the pervasive evidence for human physical evolution as seen in the fossil record.

Science And Post-Modernism

"Dr Kuntz blames sociologists who embrace postmodernism, a cultural and philosophical movement that the Encyclopædia Britannica describes as 'characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism' combined with 'a general suspicion of reason.' In other words, postmodernism is diametrically opposed to everything the scientific method stands for."

Scientists Should Fight Postmodern Public Values

Questionable Scientific Conferences

"New Zealand professor asked to present his work at US event on nuclear physics despite it containing gibberish all through the copy."

Nonsense paper written by iOS autocomplete accepted for conference

The Decision-Making Process

How We Decide: an Analysis of an Essential Process We Take for Granted

How We Decide: the Processes Behind Decision Making

How We Decide (And How Religion Subverts the Process)

For This Election Season: How To Say, “I Told You So”

"The answer is for you to write a shared Public Declaration. This is a short statement summarizing the facts that clearly states what one of you think will or won’t happen and the time frame. It should be unambiguous so that an objective third party could determine who was right. (Of course, you could both be partly right. Or partly wrong.)"

Commit to a public declaration

The Hawthorne Effect

"The distilled narrative of what is the Hawthorne Effect is this – the act of observing people’s behavior changes that behavior. The name derives from experiments conducted between 1924 and 1933 in Western Electric’s factory at Hawthorne, a suburb of Chicago. The experimenters made various changes to the working environment, like changing light levels, and noticed that regardless of the change, performance increased. If they increased light levels, performance increased. If they decreased light levels, performance increased. They eventually concluded that observing the workers was leading to the performance increase, and the actual change in working conditions was irrelevant. This is now referred to as an observer effect, but also the term Hawthorn Effect was coined in 1953 by psychologist J.R.P. French."

The Hawthorne Effect Revisited

What A Liberal Arts Education Can Do

"In a profile in the Washington Post, reporter Eli Saslow traces what happened after Derek, home-schooled since third grade, left West Palm Beach and enrolled in New College, a liberal arts school in Sarasota. There he met students from all over the world and took classes that shook his certainty about race and history."

I works not only on race and history, it works on politics and religion as well.

How a liberal arts education reformed a young white nationalist

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article109730262.html#storylink=cpy

Physical Therapy: The Legitimate Alternative To Chiropractic

"Each year, Americans spend more than $30 billion on "alternative and complementary" treatments. Yale University neurologist and the editor of the Science-Based Medicine blog, Dr. Steven Novella, explains why  going to the chiropractor might be just throwing your money down the drain."

A brief summary (less that 2 minutes) of Chiropractic

SMT: when chiropractic helps, they are using this

The Wisdom Of Carl Sagan

“Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge… It can tell us when we’re being lied to. It provides a mid-course correction to our mistakes.”

Carl Sagan on Humility, Science as a Tool of Democracy, and the Value of Uncertainty 

Great, Now Be Politically Active

"A new study by the Public Religion Research Institute and Religion News Service finds that the largest faith category in the United States now is people who say their religion is “none.” Apparently, this marks the first time in U.S. history for the churchless to reach top status."

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article108891567.html#storylink=cpy"

A milestone for people with no religion

Fighting Post-Modernism

"Dr Kuntz blames sociologists who embrace postmodernism, a cultural and philosophical movement that the Encyclopædia Britannica describes as "characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism" combined with "a general suspicion of reason." In other words, postmodernism is diametrically opposed to everything the scientific method stands for."

Scientists Should Fight Postmodern Public Values

An Analysis Of Decision-Making

"What Gladwell glosses over is that his chief examples are of experts in their fields—art critics looking at what purports to be an ancient Greek status but is actually a fake, or a tennis champion who went on to a long career as a coach and TV color commentator being able to predict with uncanny accuracy which of a player’s soft second serves would turn out to be double faults. These are people who have internalized their expertise into their subconscious minds. But I’ll be discussing normal de novo decisions by normal, non-expert people."

How We Decide: an Analysis of an Essential Process We Take for Granted

Natural Health Products: Let The Buyer Beware

"It is rare that a regulator acknowledges that a regulatory system isn’t working, and publicly expresses a commitment to being more science-based. There is a time-limited opportunity for the public (including all of you non-Canadians!) to provide comment on how supplement regulation could be more closely aligned around scientific principles, rather than the supplement industry’s priorities. Whether you take dietary supplements or not, we can probably all agree that consumers should have access to safe products as well as credible, relevant information about these products, in order to make informed health decisions. It will likely not surprise you that these ideas are seen as threats to supplement manufacturers, who benefit from little regulatory oversight and few restrictions on what can currently be claimed about any product’s effectiveness."

Natural Health Products: Loosely regulated, little evidence of benefit, and an industry intent on preserving the status quo

A View On Circumcision

"Reasonable people can disagree whether or not baby boys should be circumcised. However, as a new review in the journal Clinical Microbiology and Infection details, the medical benefits for some men are undeniable. And, perhaps surprisingly, women may indirectly reap the rewards, as well."

Circumcision Prevents Spread of HIV, HPV, and Possibly Herpes

A Look At Political Polling

"Savvy politicos know that not just any poll will do. Online polls, in which anybody can vote, are not legitimate. The reason is because they do not accurately reflect the voting public. Imagine, for instance, a poll on Starbucks' website asking readers if they like to drink coffee every day. In this hypothetical poll, it would not be a surprise if nearly 100% of respondents said "yes," even though only 64% of Americans drink coffee every day. The reason is obvious: People who are using Starbucks' website are probably coffee drinkers."

Polls Are Not Rigged, But They Also Aren't 'Scientific'

Vitamin D Deficiency And Depression

"While it is found in a few foods like oily fish, most people get vitamin D from a natural effect on the body caused by sunlight. Low levels are associated with bone conditions such as rickets and osteoporosis, but it can also affect muscle tissue and has been found to be associated with normal levels of dopamine, a chemical linked to mood, in the brain."

Vitamin D deficiency associated with heightened depression, study finds

A Legitimate Physician Answers A Question From A Patient In A Book

"By clinging to delusion, belief in alternative medicine denigrates the very wonder of science and medicine and the massive strides we as a species have made over the last century or so in understanding the world around us, and how our bodies work."

Dr. Richard Rawlins Reveals the Real Secrets of Alternative Medicine

The Rich USA History Of Separation of Government And Religion

Peruse through this extensive collection of statements from many of the USA's historical luminaries who have seen the benefits of separation of government and religion.

http://votesecular.org/