Secret Soviet Town Sold For $3.1 Million
“Latvia sold a deserted town built around a Soviet-era radar station to a Russian investor who bid $3.1 million at an unusual auction yesterday, officials said.
The town formerly known as Skrunda-1 housed about 5,000 people during the Cold War. It was abandoned over a decade ago after the Russian military withdrew from Latvia following the Soviet collapse.
A representative of a Russian investor won the bidding contest in Latvia’s capital, Riga, with an offer of $3.1 million, said Anete Fridensteina-Bridina, a spokeswoman for the Baltic country’s privatization agency.
She said the buyer was Aleksejevskoje-Serviss, a Russia-based firm, though she could not provide details.
It was not immediately clear what plans the buyer had for the 110-acre property, which is located in western Latvia about 95 miles from Riga. The town contains about 70 dilapidated buildings, including apartment blocks, a school, barracks, and an officers’ club.”
Read more at the Boston Globe
Self-Help Guru Charged With Manslaughter
“Self-help guru James Arthur Ray says it was all a tragic accident when his followers began collapsing one by one in a sweat lodge at his retreat, with three of them dying. As unfortunate as the ordeal was, he says the participants knew about the risks the ceremony presented.
Prosecutors say it’s a blatant case of manslaughter by a man who recklessly crammed dozens of people in a 400-square-foot sweat lodge and chided them for wanting to leave, even as people were vomiting, getting burned by hot rocks and lying lifeless on the ground.
The ceremony was intended to be almost a religious awakening and the highlight of Ray’s “Spiritual Warrior” retreat. About halfway through the ceremony, people began feeling ill, vomiting and collapsing. Three people who never regained consciousness died at hospitals — Kirby Brown, 38, of Westtown, N.Y.; James Shore, 40, of Milwaukee; and Liz Neuman, 49, of Prior Lake, Minn. Eighteen others were hospitalized.
The sweat lodge was built in 2008 specifically for Ray’s event and used numerous other times without incident. What happened inside of the pitch-black structure last October depends on who you ask.
Some participants said Ray highly encouraged them to stay inside, scolded them for leaving and ignored repeated pleas for help. His attorneys say participants were free to leave as they pleased and Ray was unaware of any problems until after the two-hour ceremony ended.”
Read more at The Guardian (Thanks Tammy)
Homeopathic Society ‘Misled’ MPs In Inquiry
“The British Homeopathic Association has been accused of misrepresenting scientific evidence on alternative medicine in documents it gave to a parliamentary inquiry.
The organisation claimed several scientific reviews offered support for homeopathy in material submitted to the cross-party science and technology select committee, which is holding an investigation into the products. Robert Mathie, a researcher at the BHA, said the reviews found evidence for a difference between homeopathic remedies and sugar pills, which contain no active ingredients.
But the claim has dismayed some of the scientists who wrote the reviews and angered MPs on the committee who are in the final stages of writing their report.
One review cited was written by Edzard Ernst, a scientist who investigates complementary medicine at the Penisula Medical School in Exeter. He said the BHA’s interpretation of his study was “grossly misleading” because they failed to mention important caveats published in the study. Another review, by Jean-Pierre Boissel at the Hospitals of Lyon and University Claude Bernard in France, was quoted as evidence that homeopathic treatments differ to placebos. Boissel said his conclusion was that homeopathy tended to fare worse in the best-designed studies.
“It is extremely disappointing to be fed misrepresentations of science, whether it’s deliberate or incompetence,” said Evan Harris MP, science spokesman for the Lib Dems and a member of the parliamentary committee.
Homeopathic treatments are usually made by diluting a substance so much there are no molecules of the original ingredient left. In November the chief pharmacist at Boots, Paul Bennett, told the inquiry he had no evidence that homeopathy works. At the weekend, hundreds of people took part in a “mass overdose” of homeopathic pills outside branches of Boots to protest against the company selling the products.
The row emerged as a survey for the medical journal, Pulse, found 80% of GPs want the Health Department to stop funding homeopathy on the NHS. Only 14% were in favour of the health service continuing to provide the treatments.”
Read more at The Guardian (Thanks Tammy)
The popular belief that pregnancy reduces memory is a myth
Mumnesia, preg head, baby brain. Call it what you like, but a new study says the popular belief that pregnancy reduces memory is a myth.
Published in the latest issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry, the study, led by Helen Christensen at the Australian National University, found no evidence that pregnancy or motherhood affects a women’s brain power.
According to the Times Online, the findings contradict previous studies claiming that women’s brains decline in size by up to 4 per cent while they are pregnant, potentially leading to worse performance on tests of memory and verbal skills.
“Professor Christensen’s team recruited 1,241 women aged 20-24 in 1999 and 2003 and asked them to perform a series of tasks. The women were followed up at four-year intervals and asked to perform the same cognitive tests. A total of 77 women were pregnant at the follow-up assessments, 188 had become mothers [but were not pregnant at the time of the interviews] and 542 remained childless. The researchers found no significant differences in cognitive change for women who were pregnant and those who were not.”
The Skeptic Code
“Many conspiracy theorists seem very keen on the idea of hidden messages or codes secretly embedded within ancient writings. Believers claim hidden prophecies of significant world events and disasters can be uncovered and deciphered by analysing the Bible. By simply selecting a random paragraph and taking out the punctuation and merely inserting the passage into a matrix a skeptic, if suitably motivated, and with the benefit of hindsight is easily able to uncover whatever it is they fancy. Believers see predictions of the assassination of President Kennedy and the 9/11 twin towers terrorist attack uncovered in the bible as irrefutable evidence of divine revelation even though rational thinkers can locate predictions of the death of Leon Trotsky and Princess Diana secreted within “Moby Dick”.” – [Science, Reason and Critical Thinking]
This is one of the many great posts from forgetomori – a great blog well worth following – please visit and enjoy.
UPDATE: I recently found out this was from Crispian Jago in reference to the Bible Code. You may remember Crispian for his wonderful set of Simpson’s Skeptics Top Trumps.
