Me either. I do get annoyed when they try to push them on me whenever I have some sort of crisis, though.
Yes, I’m sure Jesus/EST/Jack Daniels/huffing paint/etc gives you all sorts of comfort when times are hard, and that’s fine. I don’t want any, am sick of arguing the point, and since I’m grieving/anxious/imperiled right now I resent having to spend the energy trying to persuade you that (although I have every confidence that heroin is just like a warm blanket that makes everything just fine,) I’m not about to suddenly be persuaded that it’s a good idea now, just because I’m particularly vulnerable at the moment.
Even if it’s not funny, the guy deserves some points for being right. If he has a sick family member, I’ve recently been where he was, and I’m satisfied with nodding my head in agreement instead of laughing.
Agreed with that last part.
And let’s not forget the obvious reference…
If you start this thread, let me know. Because I do believe in both science and an Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent God
I liked today’s XKCD. I printed a copy and put it up on my office wall.
I edited out the word “bitch”, though.
And I didn’t include the mouseover.
I don’t think today’s strip was anything more than a relieved fist-pump after a very bad time.
Almost all scientists who lived before the late 20th century believed such a thing (including the greats - Newton, Galileo etc, even Darwin for most of his life). Indded, many were not just conventionally religious, but enthusiastically and passionately so. You would be hard pressed to find a scientist who was even an agnostic before Huxley in the mid 19th century.
I am not sure how many scientists today would profess to be followers of one or other of the religions that believe in an omnipotent (etc) God (Christianity, Islam, Judaism), but I am sure it is a very high proportion, and probably a good majority.
The mouseover was by far the best part.
I agree with those who found the cartoon itself preachy.
I think that for me it is, as others have pointed out, not the first time he has referred to it. I get he is going through a rough time and is a little obsessed with it - but after you see the point more than once it starts to feel preachy.
I was entertained with the previous one labeled Postive Attitude.
I agree with this one’s sentiment, but I also found it a little preachy. I can live with a certain amount of preachiness in a comic if it’s counterbalanced by humor, but that wasn’t the case here.
Then I got distracted and wasted an hour making a list of my favorite xkcd’s:
Edited to add: Don’t forget to read the mouseover text.
I think that what kaylasdad calls the “prequel” is the key to understanding what Munroe is getting at with the “science” strip.
My wife has been chronically ill for many years. We can’t count the number of well-meaning people during this time who have taken it upon themselves to offer her “answers” that will fix what’s going on. Typically these answers involve diets, vitamins, positive thinking, and so on; virtually none of them are medically-based as we would understand the term.
Some of these people are ardent churchgoers; others find it a matter of personal pride that they do not belong to any kind of traditional religion. What they all have in common, though, is a certainty that the doctors don’t know it all–indeed, probably don’t know much of anything–and that the answer to my wife’s problems OF COURSE lies outside the field of traditional medicine altogether.
My wife is a committed Christian, a former Sunday school teacher and youth group leader at our church, someone who absolutely believes in God. She is also scientifically minded, intensely skeptical of claims about the way the world works that are based on anecdotal “evidence” rather than on hard data (“But my aunt’s neighbor’s cousin tried it and her symptoms were gone in two weeks! I guess you just don’t WANT to get better”), and has had it up to here with folks who keep trying to push this stuff on her. Whether they’re Christians, or New Age spiritualists, or people who look down on scientific thinking for whatever reason (they’re too creative for science, or something), or folks who believe that the way to help a friend in need is to harangue them for not “wanting” to get well…well, it gets old fast, and it’s annoying at best and really pernicious at worst. Without modern medicine, she would be dead. And she does not want to deal with people any more who seem to reject this reality. And I don’t blame her at all.
So I don’t see the cartoon as being antireligion, or preachy–just a frustrated reference to the fact that when someone is sick, there is (among Americans at least) a very pronounced tendency to steer them away from medical/scientific solutions to what ails them, and that this is seriously unhelpful.
Sorry about your wife’s illness, Ulf.
The thing that really bugs me about the alternative medicine crowd are the people who seem to think that doctors don’t actually care about helping people. Not that long ago I saw Borders had a big display of that book “Natural Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About”. “They” being the evil cabal that controls western medicine, I guess. :rolleyes:
I know a few doctors, and one thing they all have in common is they really seem to like it when their sick patients get better.
This was the most recent thread I found for a search of “XKCD” in the thread title, other than one devoted mostly to Sluggy Freelance. I nominate this as the permanent XKCD appreciation thread.
Anyway, today’s (02-04-11) strip: I just had to point out that the military alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.) all appear to qualify as trochees.
Many are but there are numerous exceptions, Hotel (hoh-TELL), India, Juliet, Mike, November, Papa (pah-PAH), Quebec (keh-BECK), Romeo, Sierra, and Uniform.
Edit: The correct pronunciation of “X-ray” is given as ECKS-RAY with equal stress on both syllables but it seems close enough to a trochee when pronounced by most people to qualify.
Edit2: “Correct pronunciation” being that given in the Airway Manual.
There are plenty of doctors whose motives are nothing to do with helping. Like the pediatrician we had whom when I took my son in because he had a purple mass appear on his back accused us of child abuse and refused even to give us a reference to another doctor who could better diagnose the mass, and then made it difficult as hell to get his medical records from her office. Later I found that we were not the only parents she did this too. The staff at the hospital we had him diagnosed at said they had seen over a dozen others she had done this to. Maybe she was scared that I would sue for her telling me not to worry when he had large cafe au lait spots all over him and showed asymmetrical development and his resting position was a tight sideways C. She cost us months in finding that he had a tumor. It could have been imaged months earlier. Maybe she was just lazy and could not be arsed to care for any child who could not be handled in exactly the same method as all of her other patients.
Many are not scum, like the all the others who diagnosed his condition and are continuing to monitor him. Like the doctor who biopsied his mass, like the doctor who figured out what tests to run, including the urine test that ruled out the worst of the possible cancers.
Others are controlling assholes who just love people dependent on them and only them, like the nurse who berated me for researching my son’s illness and tried to forbid me from looking into what was going on with him myself. It was very satisfying to hear the doctor correct her in front of us and then discuss with us what we found, including what the odds meant in the context we were dealing with.
No single doctor has all the answers and there are plenty who would gladly hide the cure for cancer if it meant more power and money for them or even just one less form to fill out. Fortunately, there are many more who do want to help and there are scientists who do the research so they can.
Today’s comic (and the mouseover) scare me a little, and I like it. 