Walt Whitman

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nVztAUzd5cw#/watch?v=nVztAUzd5cw

“When I am old I shall wear purple …

I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
and pick the flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.”

Well, I’ll give spitting a miss, but the rest sound like fun. I’ve already started with sitting down on the pavement, next comes picking flowers in other people’s gardens. Just getting into practice for when I am old …

More of the same sounds like an exciting idea. Thanks for that in advance.

I look forward to seeing more.

Also add my thanks for Shakespeare quotes. We would have better scientists if more understood language and metaphor not just as an occasional, grudging practitioner but rather as a lover of poetry and prose.

Thanks to you and the other contributors for producing such endlessly fascinating and engaging content.

(FWIW, It’s not a neckbeard exactly. I’m wearing a turtleneck. I do want one of the beardhats, though. That way I could blend into the crowd at my favorite coffee roaster’s shop. Participant observation and all that.)

I knitted a beard hat for one of my grandsons, but it covers the face under the nose and the chin (as well as the head, of course). I thought maybe this is some term I am too old to be aware of so I went to Urban Dictionary where in addition to the obvious hair on the neck definition, I found this:

“Talkative, self-important nerdy men (usually age 30 and up) who, through an inability to properly decode social cues, mistake others’ strained tolerance of their blather for evidence of their own charm.
Stop being such a neckbeard.”

I don’t get it. I will have to text the grandchildren.

Anyway, I always look forward to your entries because in spite of the sheer fun of reading them, they offer unusual but (dare I say) rather profound insights into surrounding issues of life in general. I’m also a fan of the “s” you put on CAM, because supplements are, I bet, the most widespread useless intervention of all.

Let me take this opportunity to thank each contributor to the blog for helping to clarify, educate, and entertain me on such a consistent basis. I never thought much about (and probably made fun of the idea) of a virtual community, but seeing as how I seem to be a wooperson magnet (it must be the neckbeard), this blog (and a few others, but mostly this one) has quite literally been my salvation from complete social isolation. Luckily my family are sane and science-based or I’d probably be a recluse by now.

Happy 2013! Anyone want to bet that some kind of conspiracy will develop around the 13 part of this year? Maybe the world will end on 3/13/13?

The problem with that is that children are at the bottom of the social power hierarchy, and so must conform to what those at the top dictate. Once they get to the top with a lack of critical thinking skills, it is the collective lack of critical thinking skills that allows them to stay there.

It is like George Bernard Shaw’s unreasonable man. A reasonable man conforms himself to the world. The unreasonable man expects the world to conform itself to him. All progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Regarding “Anyone can become an expert in Bigfoot or UFO’s. It requires no special training.” Anyone who is successful in pseudoscience has at least a good intuitive understanding of salesmanship and marketing. They short circuit all that hard learning and thinking you describe by working on an emotional level. A guy like Dr. Oz confidently delivers his message using hope and fear wrapped in a slick and charismatic package. On this level, formal degrees and valid information don’t matter much. Everybody in the skeptic community can learn from the dark side!

Finally, are you coining the phrase “credulous nonsense”? Because that’s the perfect way to describe what’s happening there!

Happy New Year!