What? Botox might not be perfectly safe?

I'm stunned. The FDA is reviewing the safety of Botox.

Regulators said on Friday they were reviewing the safety of Allergan Inc's Botox and a competing product after reports of deaths and serious reactions in some patients.

This is incredibly puzzling. Botox might not be perfectly safe? Botox, a form of Botulinum toxin, might not be perfectly safe? Botox, made from one of the most poisonous naturally occurring substances in the world, might not be perfectly safe? Injecting small amounts of a highly poinsonous substance diectly under the skin might not be perfectly safe? Really?

Who knew.

Vaccine experts are confused and dismayed? Really?

Sometimes it seems like the world is going crazy.

AIDS vaccine researchers are worried about the future of their field after learning an experimental HIV vaccine not only does not work, but just might make recipients more susceptible to infection with the AIDS virus.

They are worried about their volunteers and the future of AIDS vaccines in general. And they are worried because they cannot understand how a vaccine would make a person more vulnerable.

Really? They can't understand why their vaccine doesn't work? Let me break it down. It's called a virus. We cannot cure viruses. We don't even have a cure for the virus that causes the common cold. We simply let it run its course (and take more vitamin C). And HIV is a whole lot more complex than the common cold virus. How could these people possibly think that they can come up with a virus in only twenty years of trying.

Don't get me wrong, I do have compassion for the sick. And it would be phenomenal for a virus to be discovered. And our country's pharmaceutical industry offers the best hope of that happening. But we're talking about a behaviourally-spread disease here. The best way to cure the disease is to not get it, and the best way to not get the disease is to not engage in behaviour that leads to it.

Global Warming/Cooling/Whatever - No one can know with certainty

Go read this article at the American Thinker. I won't even quote it. You need to go read it. It's very well written and reasoned.

O.K.

Having read that, you now are responsible. When anyone says to you that "Global Warming" or "Global Cooling" or "Global ANYTHING" is causing anything, you are responsible for telling them that they are completely and utterly wrong. There's absolutely no way they can know for certain that anything causes anything on a global scale. And it has nothing at all to do with environmental science, but everything to do with probability theory.

100 AUs

A fascinating story from the world of science. The first Voyager probe sped past the 100 AU mark this past Wednesday.

What's an AU?

AU stands for Astronomical Unit, a unit of length equal to the distance between the Earth and the Sun, or about 93 million miles. Isn't that cool? Something that we mere mortals crafted is now flying past the astronomical 9.3 billion mile marker.

Good thing it's not on a toll road.