Updated Story: Aqsa Parvez and The Religion of Peace

In a development that happened recently on a story I mentioned before (check the archives for December of 2007), the father and brother of Aqsa Parvez both pleaded guilty on June 15 of killing her.

Listening to this guy and his son talk about what they were going to do to Aqsa is horrifying, all in the name of stupid Islam. Their mom is quoted from a police interview as saying:

Oh God, Oh God...Oh my Aqsa, you should have listened...Everyone tried to make you understand. Everyone begged you, but you did not listen....”

Right, it's her fault for not listening. How about you stand up to the psychopath you're married to and get him to a therapist? Why don't we try that? How about realizing you live in Canada where we don't...um...what's that phrase? "Kill our daughters for wearing regular clothes"? Yes, that's it. We're not a theocracy, so if you want to perform "honour" killings or keep your women subjugated in some 14th century idiocy, feel free to board a plane to one of those fabulous countries. I bet health care is great there.

Oh yeah, the son. Here's a nice bit of info about that moron:

Tow truck driver Steve Warda told police earlier that Waqas asked if he could get him a gun because he was going to kill his sister but his father would take the blame.

Can we please just deport this dickless assface? If he wants to live under Islamic rule so badly and he thinks that killing his sister because she wants to wear a skort to school will make his stupid deity happy, then off to Pakistan with you. Obviously a liberal-leaning, first-world country is not the place for you. Enjoy the caves of northern Afghanistan for a couple of years and see how many tow-truck jobs come your way, numbnuts.

I hope both these idiotic fucktards rot in jail.

(h/t - Thanks, Tony)

Good Music

Jesus christ this song is catchy. Also check out their song called Tom Jones. It'll stick right in your brain.

A YouTube Homeopath Cites POSITIVE Evidence

This guy on YouTube (I know...I know...picking the high fruit again, I am) who says he's a homeopath is trying to explain how it works. He's all up in James Randi's face and in the comments, a person calling him/herself "skeptic4life18" asks this guy (known, apparently, as either "JB" or "sloop987") to provide just one scientific study regarding homeopathy. In case you want to watch, here's the video (editor's note: the video has been "removed by the user" - perhaps he was embarrassed. I doubt it):
JB responds by citing five meta analysis and a snarky comment as follows:

Cucherat etal 2000* 16 Hi-Qt studies POSITIVE.
Linde& Melchart 1998* 32 Hi-Qt studies POSITIVE.
Lindeetal 1997* 89 studies POSITIVE.
Boissel etal 1996 15 Hi-Qt studies POSITIVE.
Kleijnenetal 1991 105 studies POSITIVE.
Will you allow your prejudice or scientific mind to win out. You have lost the argument but your prejudice is much more comfortable, isn't it?

I wanted to see if his citations actually were as "POSITIVE" as he seems to think they are so here are the studies with the links to the pages and copied conclusions for you to check out. My emphasis is throughout.

Cucherat Et Al 2000 from the European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology here:

Conclusions: There is some evidence that homeopathic treatments are more effective than placebo; however, the strength of this evidence is low because of the low methodological quality of the trials. Studies of high methodological quality were more likely to be negative than the lower quality studies. Further high quality studies are needed to confirm these results.

Linde& Melchart 1998 from the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine here:

The results of the available randomized trials suggest that individualized homeopathy has an effect over placebo. The evidence, however, is not convincing because of methodological shortcomings and inconsistencies.

Linde Et Al 1997, from PubMed via Lancet from here:

The results of our meta-analysis are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homeopathy are completely due to placebo. However, we found insufficient evidence from these studies that homeopathy is clearly efficacious for any single clinical condition. Further research on homeopathy is warranted provided it is rigorous and systematic.

Boissel Et Al 1996 was not found anywhere as JB cited. The closest I could find at PubMed was the same study as the initial one cited above where Boissel was a co-author with Cucherat. Obviously the conclusion is the same.

Kleijnenetal 1991 from the PubMed via the BMJ, here:

At the moment the evidence of clinical trials is positive but not sufficient to draw definitive conclusions because most trials are of low methodological quality and because of the unknown role of publication bias. This indicates that there is a legitimate case for further evaluation of homoeopathy, but only by means of well performed trials.

I find it amusing that every one of these says essentially, "Homeopathy might work, but these trials suck so we need more studies with better controls...oh, and the well-controlled studies we did see were negative." Not the best endorsement and hardly worthy of the label "POSITIVE".

Fabulous parting gifts for you. Thanks for playing.