Time and Newsweek magazine covers, U.S. vs. rest of world

This recent comparison has been making the rounds:

As have a few other recent examples:

But this has gone on for many years.  A few others from a few years back:

I suspect the weekly news magazines are simply basing their cover decisions on what sells in the U.S.  Sad.

Skeptics and Bayesian epistemology

A few prominent skeptics have been arguing that science and medicine should rely upon Bayesian epistemology.  Massimo Pigliucci, in his book Nonsense on Stilts, on the Rationally Speaking podcast, and in his column in the Skeptical Inquirer, has suggested that scientists should best proceed with a Bayesian approach to updating their beliefs.  Steven Novella and Kimball Atwood at the Science-Based Medicine blog (and at the Science-Based Medicine workshops at The Amazing Meeting) have similarly argued that what distinguishes Science-Based Medicine from Evidence-Based Medicine is the use of a Bayesian approach in accounting for the prior plausibility of theories is superior to simply relying upon the outcomes of randomized controlled trials to determine what's a reasonable medical treatment.  And, in the atheist community, Richard Carrier has argued for a Bayesian approach to history, and in particular for assessing claims of Christianity (though in the linked-to case, this turned out to be problematic and error-ridden).

It's worth observing that Bayesian epistemology has some serious unresolved problems, including among them the problem of prior probabilities and the problem of considering new evidence to have a probability of 1 [in simple conditionalization].  The former problem is that the prior assessment of the probability of a hypothesis plays a huge factor in the outcome of whether a hypothesis is accepted, and whether that prior probability is based on subjective probability, "gut feel," old evidence, or arbitrarily selected to be 0.5 can produce different outcomes and doesn't necessarily lead to concurrence even over a large amount of agreement on evidence. So, for example, Stephen Unwin has argued using Bayes' theorem for the existence of God (starting with a prior probability of 0.5), and there was a lengthy debate between William Jefferys and York Dobyns in the Journal of Scientific Exploration about what the Bayesian approach yields regarding the reality of psi which didn't yield agreement. The latter problem, of new evidence, is that a Bayesian approach considers new evidence to have a probability of 1, but evidence can itself be uncertain.

And there are other problems as well--a Bayesian approach to epistemology seems to give special privilege to classical logic, not properly account for old evidence [(or its reduction in probability due to new evidence)] or the introduction of new theories, and not be a proper standard for judgment of rational belief change of human beings for the same reason on-the-spot act utilitarian calculations aren't a proper standard for human moral decision making--it's not a method that is practically psychologically realizable.

The Bayesian approach has certainly been historically useful, as Desiree Schell's interview with Sharon Bertsch McGrane, author of The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes’ Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy, demonstrates.  But before concluding that Bayesianism is the objective rational way for individuals or groups to determine what's true, it's worth taking a look at the problems philosophers have pointed out for making it the central thesis of epistemology.  (Also see John L. Pollock and Joseph Cruz, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, 2nd edition, Rowman & Littlefield, 1999, which includes a critique of Bayesian epistemology.)

UPDATE (August 6, 2013): Just came across this paper by Brandon Fitelson (PDF) defending Bayesian epistemology against some of Pollock's critiques (in Pollock's Nomic Probability book, which I've read, and in his later Thinking About Acting, which I've not read).  A critique of how Bayesianism (and not really Bayesian epistemology in the sense defended by Fitelson) is being used by skeptics is here.

Rarely-used cliche on the Token Skeptic podcast

My favorite part of the Token Skeptic podcast #76's interview with Sara Mayhew and Jack Scanlan is 28:30-28:42, where Scanlan says "everyone hates pop songs."  That's a self-annihilating sentence along the lines of "No one goes there anymore; it's too crowded."

That reminds me of Saul Gorn's compendium, "Self-Annihilating Sentences: Saul Gorn's Compendium of Rarely Used Cliches," which I have in the original hardcopy but is now available online for everyone's enjoyment.

The origins of Screaming Trees?

Here's a famous photograph of pulp fiction author and Scientology creator L. Ron Hubbard holding a tomato plant connected to an E-Meter.  Hubbard claimed in 1968 that tomatoes would "scream when sliced," as detected by the E-Meter. [UPDATE: The photo appeared in "30 Dumb Inventions" on Life magazine's website, attributed to the Evening Standard of January 1, 1968, but the claims and the photo appear to be from 1959, see below.]

Hubbard was likely inspired by Cleve Backster, who had made similar claims based on connecting plants to a polygraph starting in 1966.  Backster published his claims in the Journal of Parapsychology in 1968, and his work was subsequently popularized in the 1973 book, The Secret Life of Plants.

I wonder, however, whether the inspiration for both of these crackpots came from a piece of fiction in the September 17, 1949 issue of The New Yorker--Roald Dahl's "The Sound Machine," which is reprinted in numerous short story collections, including his volume Someone Like You (1973). In this tale, a man named Klausner, obsessed with sounds beyond the ability of human beings to hear, builds a machine to convert higher pitches into human-audible sounds.  He discovers, to his horror, that plants and trees shriek with pain when cut.

Does anyone know of any documented references from Hubbard or Backster to Dahl?  Or is there another common ancestor I've missed?

My title includes a reference to the Seattle-area grunge band, Screaming Trees, whose Wikipedia entry doesn't comment on the origin of their name--but Dahl's story seems a likely inspiration there, too.

UPDATE (6 February 2013): It looks like the Hubbard photo pre-dates Backster, and was likely taken in 1959 or 1960!  It prompted a feature titled "PLANTS DO WORRY AND FEEL PAIN." in the December 18, 1959 Garden News.

UPDATE (10 February 2013): David Hambling's "The Secret Life of Plants" in the December 2012 issue of Fortean Times (p. 18) points out that Charles Darwin's 1880 The Power of Movement in Plants suggested that plants have something like a nervous system, and that Jagadish Chandra Bose published a 1907 paper on the electrophysiology of plants.  He puts Backster before Hubbard, making the same mistake of dating Hubbard's claims by the Life magazine photo caption.

Backster, by the way, was inspired by Bose's work.  He says that he started his work with plants on February 2, 1966, as reported in the introduction of his "Evidence of a Primary Perception in Plant Life," International Journal of Parapsychology, Vol. X, No. 4, Winter 1968, pp. 329-348.

UPDATE (21 October 2021): On a 1966 episode of the Joe Pyne Show, in discussion with Lewis Marvin, Pyne asserted that it has been scientifically proven that tomatoes scream when cut, likely referencing Backster.

UPDATE (5 December 2022): Not sure how I missed including the Jack Handy "Deep Thoughts" that goes: "If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason."

Scott Atran on violent extremism and sacred values

Chris Mooney has a very interesting interview with anthropologist Scott Atran on the Point of Inquiry podcast, in which Atran argues that terrorism is not the product of top-down, radical religious extremist organizations recruiting the poor and ignorant, but of groups of educated (and often educated in secular institutions) individuals who become disaffected, isolated, and radicalized.  Much U.S. counterterrorism and "homeland security" activity assumes the former and thus is attacking the wrong problem.

He also argues that reason and rationalism are the wrong tools for attacking religion, defends a view of religion as a natural by-product of the sorts of minds we've evolved to have (very similar to Pascal Boyer's account, which I think is largely correct), and throws in a few digs at the new atheists for making claims about religion that are contrary to empirical evidence.

Some of the commenters at the Point of Inquiry/Center for Inquiry forums site seem to be under the misapprehension that Atran is a post-modernist.  I don't see it--he's not making the argument that reason doesn't work to find out things about the world, he's making the argument that the tools of science and reason are human constructions that work well at finding things out about the world, but not so much for persuading people of things, or as the basis for long-term institutions for the sort of creatures we are.  Atran shows up in the comments to elaborate on his positions and respond to criticism.

My compliments to Chris Mooney for having consistently high-quality, interesting guests who are not the same voices we always hear at skeptical conferences.

Obama conspiracy theories debunked

Yesterday I received an email that contained yet another argument that Obama's birth certificate (the PDF'd scan of the "long form" certificate) was a fake, based on erroneous claims about the name of Kenya in 1961 and the name of the hospital which were already debunked at Snopes.com four months ago.  But this prompted me to see if there were any more advocates of wild claims about the birth certificate, and I came across Douglas Vogt's alleged analysis of the birth certificate and, more importantly, a very well-done, detailed debunking of that analysis by Kevin Davidson (known on his blog as "Dr. Conspiracy"), who has done a great job of responding to numerous Obama conspiracy claims.

Check out his "The Debunker's Guide to Obama Conspiracy Theories."

Vogt, the author of the analysis which Dr. Conspiracy debunks, is also an example of "crank magnetism"--he is the author of Reality Revealed: The Theory of Multidimensional Reality, a 1978 book which looks like a classic work of crackpottery.  Vogt bills himself as a "geologist and science philosopher" who:

has funded and directed three expeditions to the Sinai desert where he was the first person since Baruch (Jeremiah’s grandson) to discover the real Mount Sinai. He discovered all the altars that Moses describes in the Torah. In addition he was the first person since Moses to see the real Abraham’s altar also located at Mount Sinai and not in Jerusalem. He has discovered the code systems used by Moses when writing the surface story of the Torah, which enabled him to decode the Torah and other earlier books of the Hebrew Scriptures.

His book features:

The first information theory of existence. explains many of the hardest phenomena in the Universe such as: the causes of the ice ages, polar reversals, mass extinctions, gravity, light, pyramid energy, kirlian photography, psychic phenomena, and more!

So in addition to a self-proclaimed expert on typography, conspiracy theorist, and "birther," Vogt is apparently a creationist, pseudo-archaeologist, Bible code advocate, and promoter of a wide variety of pseudoscience claims.

Counterfeit Dreams

Jeff Hawkins was a Scientologist and member of the Sea Org from 1967 to 2005.  He was responsible for 1980s marketing campaigns that brought L. Ron Hubbard's book Dianetics back to the New York Times bestseller lists.  Beginning in 2008, he wrote a book-length series of blog posts about his experiences which has led to many further defections from the Church of Scientology. The blog posts have been edited into a hardback book, one of several by long-time high-ranking recent defectors (others include Nancy Many's My Billion-Year Contract, Marc Headley's Blown For Good, and Amy Scobee's Abuse at the Top).

I've read the first few chapters at his blog--it's quite well-written and the comments from others who have shared some of his experiences are fascinating.

Bowlarama Fundraising Time!

I have just a few more weeks (until July 31st) to reach my fundraising goal. Please donate any amount you can - just as RESCUE saves one life at a time, we reach our goal one dollar at a time. If you are unable to make a donation, please reach out to another animal loving friend, family member or co-worker and ask them to support our efforts.

Just this morning Maricopa County Animal Care & Control announced that:

"there are more than 1,000 animals at [their] shelter. MCACC is doing everything we can to save as many lives as possible. Adoptable dogs and cats are stacked three+ deep in every available space."

Also today, RESCUE saved 6 dogs from MCACC. I've posted some of their pictures here. Helping RESCUE helps dogs and cats leave MCACC through the front door, not in a body bag.

As an incentive, a friend has made some cute dog & cat themed cards for me to give as a thank you for any donation of $25 or more. You'll get a four pack of cute cards you can use for any occasion! Please click here to donate and let me know if you'd like a pack of cards in the message section. Donations are 100% tax deductible and your donation goes directly to the animals!

Here's a few of the things your donation can do:

• $5 - will buy a martingale collar or a leash
• $10 - will buy a container of cat litter
• $20 - will buy a month supply of medication for RESCUE cat Nico
• $25 - will buy two cases of wet food for RESCUE cat Benny
• $30 - will buy a 30 lb. bag of dog food
• $60 - will buy five days of boarding for one RESCUE dog
• $100 - will pay for medications for RESCUE dog Zeke
• $150 - will pay for two weeks of boarding for one RESCUE dog

Desert Air podcast

A group of Tucson atheists and skeptics have started the Desert Air podcast, available via iTunes.  Three episodes available so far.

Skeptics and "backward masking"

Below these two videos is a post I made (perhaps to the Kate Bush fans' "love-hounds" mailing list, I don't recall) back in 1986 regarding a 1985 Christian "rock music seminar" about alleged Satanic backwards messages in rock music.  I was familiar with the claims of supposed "backwards masking" where the sounds of ordinary lyrics were interpreted to have different messages when reversed, as well as actual examples of recordings that were put into songs in reverse.  The former seemed to me to be examples of subjective validation, and I tested it myself by closing my eyes and covering my ears when the presenter gave their claims about what we were supposed to hear prior to playing the samples.  Subsequently, this became one of the first tests the Phoenix Skeptics conducted as a student group at Arizona State University in October 1985.  We invited the speaker to give his demonstrations before our group, but required him to play the samples first without explanation and have everyone write down what they heard.  The result was that on the first pass, those unfamiliar with the samples had a wide variety of responses; on a second pass, once the expectation was set, everybody heard what they were supposed to hear.

It's interesting that this demonstration, the key example of which was a sample from Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," made a comeback two decades later--being used by skeptics to show the power of suggestion and expectation, as these two videos from Simon Singh and Michael Shermer demonstrate.

Simon Singh, 2006:


Michael Shermer, 2006 TED Talk:

Date:  Wed, 5 Feb 86 15:35 MST
From: "James J. Lippard" 
Subject:  Christian Death/rock seminar
Reply-To:  Lippard@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA

Yes, I've heard of Christian Death, though I haven't heard much by them.  That
reminds me of an article I wrote in October for ASU's "Campus Weekly"
(alternative campus newspaper) about a rock seminar I went to, and here it is.
The article was never printed, as the newspaper folded.  (Note: There was
originally an additional paragraph about a fourth type of backwards
message--the kind that's at the end of the first side of "The Dreaming".)

      Druids were Satanists.
      Van Morrison reads Celtic literature.
      Therefore, Van Morrison's music is evil.

   I had hoped this kind of feeble guilt-by-association reasoning applied to
rock music by religious fanatics had died off.  No such luck.  The above was
typical of the reasoning presented at a seminar on rock music on October 21 by
Christian Life.  Not only is the first premise false, the conclusion is a non
sequitur.

   Things looked promising enough at first.  A quote from the Confucian
philosopher Mencius about how the multitudes "act without clear understanding"
was projected on the large screen in Neeb Hall before the presentation began.
When the show finally started, the speaker gave some facts about the size of
the music industry and its influence on society.

   For a while things were rational.  Since the seminar was focusing on the
seamy side of rock, it seemed reasonable to show slides of Lou Reed shooting
heroin on stage, Sid Vicious, Kiss, and so forth.  Still, the impression was
given that this was representative of the majority of rock music.  Obscure
groups such as Demon, Lucifer's Friend, and the Flesh Eaters say nothing about
rock in general.

   Apparently the writers of the seminar were aware of this, because it then
shifted to analyzing album covers of fairly popular groups.  But this analysis
was taken to a ridiculous extreme, pulling interpretations out of a hat.  If
an album cover had a cross on it, it was automatically blasphemous.  Any other
religious symbols on an album along with a cross were putting down
Christianity by calling it "just another religion."

Other symbols also drew criticism.  From the following Bible verse, Luke
10:18, it was concluded that lightning bolts are a demonic symbol:
  And He  said to them,  "I was watching  Satan fall from  heaven
     like lightning."

   Since all lightning bolts are evil, the lightning bolts in the logos of
Kiss and AC/DC show that they are in league with the devil.  Interestingly, on
the backs of many electrical appliances is a symbol which serves as a warning
of potential shock hazard--a yellow triangle containing a lightning bolt
exactly like the one in AC/DC's logo.  Surely this is a more obvious source
than the Bible for AC/DC's lightning bolt, given the electrical symbolism in
their name and many of their album titles.

   As the Jesuits knew, if you teach a child your ways early, he will likely
follow them for the rest of his life.  But to conclude from this that Led
Zeppelin is trying to influence children because there are children on the
cover of their _Houses of the Holy_ album is absurd.

   In the interest of "fair play", quotes from several artists denying any
involvement with the occult were given.  But these were shrugged off,
including the disclaimer at the beginning of Michael Jackson's _Thriller_
video which says, in part, "this film in no way endorses belief in the
occult." Michael Jackson is a devout Seventh Day Adventist, so I seriously
doubt he had any more intent in promoting the occult through _Thriller_ than
the creators of Caspar the Friendly Ghost.

   Finally, the seminar got to its most entertaining subject: backwards
messages on rock albums.  There are several types of messages commonly
referred to as "backmasking," most of which were covered.  The first is a
message recorded normally, then placed on an album in reverse.  The example
given was from ELO's Face the Music album, which says "The music is
reversible, but time is not.  Turn back, turn back..." There is little doubt
about the content of such messages.

   The second type of backwards message is where words are sung backwards,
phonetically.  On Black Oak Arkansas' live album _Raunch and Roll_, there is
no question about what they are trying to do when the singer shouts "Natas!"
The conference speaker seemed to imply that this message was unintentional,
however, when he gave an example of a song by Christian Death.  The words are
sung backwards (as seen on the lyrics sheet), but pronounced in reverse
letter-by-letter rather than phonetically.  He seemed surprised that this
resulted in nonsense when reversed.

   The third type of backwards message is where a perfectly ordinary record
album is played in reverse to produce gibberish and creative imaginations
supply the translations for supposed messages.  According to the speaker, this
must occur in one of three ways.  Either they are intentional, accidental, or
spiritual.  They can't be intentional, because creating such a message is
unimaginably complex.  They can't be accidental, otherwise we would hear
messages saying such things as "God is love" or "the elephant is on the back
burner" as often as we hear messages about Satan.  Therefore, the messages
must be spiritual (i.e., Satan caused them to occur).

   This completely ignores what has already been well-established as the
source of these messages.  Someone person plays his records backwards,
listening for evil messages, and hears something that sounds like the word
"Satan".  He then tells his friends to listen for the message, and plays it
for them.  Since they have been told what to hear, their mind fills in the
difference between the noises on the album and the alleged message.

   This explanation was mentioned, but was dismissed out of hand because, the
speaker claimed, the backwards messages are as clear as most rock lyrics are
forwards.  He played the first message, in Queen's "Another One Bites the
Dust", without telling the audience what to hear.  I heard no message, but he
told us that we clearly heard "start to smoke marijuana".  When the tape was
played again, I could hear it.

   The rest of the messages of this type played at the seminar were
accompanied by text on the movie screen telling the audience what to listen
for.  I closed my eyes to ignore the hints, and was unable to hear anything
but gibberish.  The same method was used and the same results obtained by
several other audience members I questioned after the presentation.

   In addition, an anti-rock program aired a few years ago on the Trinity
Broadcasting Network stated that there were several messages on Led Zeppelin's
"Stairway to Heaven", including "here's to my sweet Satan" and "there is power
in Satan".  The rock conference, on the other hand, combined these two into
one large message which began "my sweet Satan" and ended "whose power is in
Satan".  Having heard the TBN version first, those were what I heard when they
were played at the conference.  If the words "there is" can be mistaken for
"whose", isn't it possible that the same is true for the rest of these
messages?

   Even the transcriber of the backwards messages had problems coming up with
words to fit the message.  The slide for Rush's live version of "Anthem"
played backwards read:
  Oh, Satan, you--you are the one who is shining, walls of Satan,
     walls of (sacrifice?)  I know.

   As any ventriloquist knows, many sounds can be mistaken for many other
sounds.  An m for an n, a t for a d, a c, a z, or a th for an s.  Given that
the most frequent letters in the English language are ETAOINSHRDLU, it is no
surprise that something sounding like "Satan" is quite common.

   With enough effort, evil symbolism and backwards messages can be found
anywhere.  Try visiting a record store and finding satanic symbols on
Christian album covers, or listening to some Christian albums backwards.  I'm
sure much can be found with little difficulty.

   It is true that most rock is not Christian.  It is even true that much of
it conflicts with the Christian faith in some way.  But to bury these points
in a mire of fuzzy logic and fanaticism by engaging in a witch hunt is
counter-productive.  Before the conference, I commented to a friend that if
"Stairway to Heaven" was played backwards, the presenters would have destroyed
any credibility they had.  That, unfortunately, was the case.


    Jim (Lippard at MIT-MULTICS.ARPA)

Additional information:

ReligiousTolerance.org has a good overview with scientific references on the subject.