The saddest example I see of pseudoscience is in the birth communities, medical technology has taken us out of the tragic "good old days" when 1 in 10 babies and 1 in 100 mothers didn't survive a birth. But suddenly everyone thinks it's a great idea to run away from hospitals and doctors and use untrained homebirth attendants, even for high risk pregnancy. In Australia death rates are four times higher for homebirth babies.

Having recently been pregnant and seen the "trust NATURE" mantras thrown at me again and again in online communities, I'm so afraid of who else is being mislead. But the consequences are unimaginable.

Although the "I will get into stuff" gist of the rules are good, they leave out an important trait that I think divides the technical world from the shaky and afraid: "It doesn't matter where you start". In my experience this is the biggest thing that stops people from feeling empowered to fix the world around them. There are the starters, and the blank-starers who loudly profess that they don't even know where to start. Technical people always know. Or at least, we find out. And if we guess wrong, we're not afraid to start again.

of these vehicles for sale, thousands of rednecks will still think it's a good idea to just run out on your porch. You may not be able to survive the closest tornado encounter possible, but it's free!

but everyone agrees it takes forever to find the place.

Mythbusters needs to use metric. I don't know why I didn't think of this before, because I'm a diehard pro-metric person, but this point has just redirected my campaign. Politicians don't care and haven't for years, but you're right, science media should. I'm going to complain to Mythbusters now when I see them using imperial. And Wired magazine. And Science channel. I feel good about this, and refocused.

Well, if you want a technological solution that really works for every case, we could at least make milk donation cheap & easy. Right now there are less than 20 HMBANA milk banks in North America, a lot of major cities are hours away from one. Private donation websites like eatsonfeets and milkshare often have more donors than people searching for milk, since private donation is under-publicized and depends on recipients screening milk themselves by reviewing medical records... I don't blame it for being unpopular.

Cow's milk is great but I bet we're wasting a lot of precious human milk we have, because we don't appreciate it enough to screen & pasteurize it.

This is all well and good, but it would take some seriously exhaustive studies to prove that this should be given to babies. Formula manufacturers have been trying to replicate human milk for YEARS without success. Milk is more than chemicals. It's hormones, it's enzymes, it changes based on what illnesses the mother is currently making antibodies for, it even changes from morning to night. I didn't think I'd ever become a breastfeeding militant, but it's happened... breastfeeding worked out so much better for my daughter & I than anyone ever lead me to believe, yet people still look for ways out of the "inconvenience" of, say, having to see women nurse in public (gasp!).

I love science, but if we're really smart we'd put less energy into trying to duplicate human milk, and look for more ways to support, assist, & enable nursing mothers.

That was my thought too. The flapping wings are cool but anyone who's ever taken a flying lesson knows that there's not much art to moving around in air. Landing takes incredible precision and control. I don't care what the website claims, I'll believe it when I see it.