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    The Unscientists 2010 Awards
    By Patrick Lockerby | April 6th 2010 03:24 AM | 3 comments | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
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    Retired engineer, 60+ years young. Computer builder and programmer. Linguist specialising in language acquisition and computational linguistics....

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    The Unscientists 2010 awards



    Shamelessly stealing the Festival Of Idiots central theme and with no proper credit given to its originator, The Rugbyologist, the Chatter Box proudly announces

    The Unscientists 2010 Awards
    .


    The rules, hereinafter known as 'the rules':

    Now be it known that:

    Whereas this award, hereinafter known as 'the award' has been announced and,

    Whereas awards should be given only to the most deserving persons or groups:

    Therefore be it enacted by my awesome powers as a scientific blogger that:

    By these rules shall ye nominate candidates, and by none other:

    Whereas any journalist, blogger, politician, or other person hereinafter known as a 'presumed sapient life-form' shall have demonstrated to the satisfaction of Patrick Lockerby, hereinafter known as 'the judging panel', that:

        by the use exclusively or mainly, of:

            a) repetition of an already debunked argument, and or,
            b) logical fallacies, and or,
            c) self-aggrandising puerile prosey posturing

        the candidate has demonstrated a belief, hereinafter known as 'an unscientific conclusion',
        that he or (rarely) she is right and scientists are wrong;

    Wheretoforatsince: any person may, by posting hereunder such nomination as the judging panel shall decide to be within the remit of the judging panel, nominate any presumed sapient life-form for inclusion in the judging panel's list of candidates for The Unscientists 2010 Awards.

    Promulgated by the judging panel this 6th day of April in the year of the holocene 2010.

    -------------------------------------------
    1st Grand Nomination Ceremony:

    Today, I nominate Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal for his persistent denial of anything and everything to do with climate science.  The grounds for nomination:

    Most recently published drivel:
    global warming is dead, nailed into its coffin

    Pleas in unmitigation:
    desmogblog-bret-stephens...

    Comments

    Jim Quinn (a Pittsburgh radio talkshow host) has been harping about the racial implications of the "tanning bed tax" in the health care reform bill. At first, I thought he was just satirizing the tendency of some people to see racism everywhere, but he has kept at it.His basic thesis is that this tax was aimed specifically at white people. His reasoning (unsubstantiated by facts) is that only white people use tanning booths... or at least they use them substantially more than people with naturally darker skin.He repeatedly states that there is no other possible explanation for this tax.Problems with his logic:1) Other explanations: tanning is frivolous and potentially damaging to health.2) Who tans?: Dark skin people do tan (physiologically) and have been known to intentionally seek tans. Also, some very light skinned people go to great lengths to avoid UV light. 3) Who runs the government?: Not dark skinned people. Even if we limit our consideration to the Democrats, their congressional caucuses are overwhelmingly light skinned, and I'm pretty sure that the majority of Democratic voters would be labeled as "white" by a racist.

    Follow up: This apparently originates from a guy who substituted for Glenn Beck on one show
    http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201003300011

    It's hard to tell how serious he's being, or if this was just some one-off satire (unlike Quinn who has harped on it).

    Most articles about the tax make a reference to this as a tax on "cosmetic" procedures (it replaced the Botox Tax, after lobbying from the affected groups), and also refer to the connection between tanning booths and skin cancer.

    http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/24/news/economy/tanning_tax/

    I'm not saying it's a good tax, but calling it racist is "unscientific" and idiotic.

    logicman
    Meshon said the average customer spends about $15 to $20 per visit, and
    a typical tanning session lasts about 10 minutes, which is roughly the
    equivalent of thirty minutes in natural sunlight.

    Anonymous: I need to write about the 'more and faster' economy.  It's the promoters of sunbeds who are unscientific.  Burning fossil fuels to give a 3 to 1 boost over natural sunlight is stark staring bonkers.  In the UK we have unsupervised coin operated tanning salons.  Self-service self-immolation.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7899199.stm

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