I have a suggestion for when you're asked for the CORRECT English spelling of "Channukah:"

I suggest that the correct English spelling of the Jewish winter festival of lights is "XNWKH." This follows the UPenn coding at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/beta/key.html. Or, we could call it "Hn1vk1h", after the TLG Beta code.

Or, if we want vowels, we can spell it "X:ANUK.FH". (Notice that, when it's got vowels, it loses the vav. The word's got two spellings even in Hebrew...)

This post is about seven months too early; I hope that, when it becomes relevant, I remember where I put it, and can just link to it then rather than rewriting it. But I won't; I'm pretty sure this is the third time I've done this one.

Bad science is even more annoying than no science at all.

So, today, I encountered an idea that I'd never even heard of before. The idea is that there are four different healthy ways of eating that work for different people. So far, I'm on board; the idea that different people eat different things differently and different things happen to them when they do so seems to match my experience and several studies I've read. Whether there are "four" distinct diets, well, THAT I'd need to see a bit more about. But it's a number that doesn't seem unreasonable.

And those four diets match up to your dominant humor the controlling fire/water/air/earth element of your sun sign your Myers-Briggs personality type the suit of your signifier in the Tarot your blood type.

Okay, again, I'm still listening. It doesn't really match up to what I know about the proteins in blood types, but I'm not a doctor, nor have I had any particular interest in blood typing, except in working out ideas for mysteries in roleplaying games and sutch, and, anyway, we're really only at the beginning of figuring out how various forms of body chemistry interact, anyway. So, yeah, I crank up my skepticism a notch or two, but I'm still listening.

So I start looking into it. And I am trying to find any studies that give evidence that it works. I can find plenty of studies that say, "Well, as far as we can tell, we're not really seeing anything". And I'm finding pro-blood-type-diets that are pointing out serious, and real, flaws in those "debunking" studies.

What I'm NOT seeing are any studies that actually SUPPORT the hypothesis.

I dig further. What I'm NOT seeing is any information on how the people promoting this even came UP with the idea in the FIRST place.

And I realize: if the backstory of this was, "Peter D'Adamo was deep in meditation in the woods one day, when the Voice Of God spoke to him and told him, for this blood type, one eats that, and for that blood type, one eats this," well, I wouldn't have a problem with that. The four diets which they suggest are all solid choices, each of which could support health. I mean, we're not talking about, "Blood type O: chew broken glass. Blood type B: eat a kilogram of aspirin. Blood type AB: just don't eat." No -- they're all diets that people could do fine on.

So if it was just someone who thought God spoke to him, well, I wouldn't have a problem with that. He wouldn't be doing any harm. And for all I know, maybe God DID tell him diet tips. It's not how I understand God to work, but it's far from the weirdest conception of the Divine I've heard.

But, no. Instead, there's not even THAT much of an explanation.