John Hancock 401Ks suck

Last December, when Kat got her last paycheck of the year, I noticed that her employer's payroll department had allowed a deferral $100 in excess of the IRS limits to her 401K. I've previously run into a similar problem when my employer's 401K plan failed nondiscrimination tests, and I was given a refund of part of my deferrals for a prior year. Kat immediately contacted her employer and 401K plan advisor, and we were told that the excess deferral would be paid out before April 15. In the meantime, I couldn't complete our tax return because we needed to know how much would be paid out (the amount would be different from $100, based on how much the funds it was invested in had lost or gained) and some other information in order to complete the appropriate additional paperwork.

In January, Kat invited me to attend a presentation at her company about their new 401K plan that they would be switching to in late February, through John Hancock. The investment options looked reasonable--a wide variety of funds, including international and emerging market funds, and some index funds, mostly from third parties including Dimensional Fund Advisors. Her employer still wasn't offering any matching funds, but was supposedly covering all plan expenses. A big plus was the availability of a Roth 401K option, which we selected to put all new contributions into. I was still expecting that the excess deferral would be paid out before or at the transition, but of course it didn't happen. The old plan advisor said the new one would now have to deal with it, but that the old plan would issue the 1099-R form. But not until 2009, so I'd need to collect information myself to fill out a substitute Form 4852, because this would still count as 2007 income.

In early March, we got online access to the new 401K, and we were in for a surprise. I'm used to accounting for all of our investments using Quicken, which allows downloading of stock quotes via the Internet. But strangely, none of the prices reported online via John Hancock bore anything but a slight resemblance to the stock prices of the underlying funds we had selected to invest in. Rather, John Hancock's website reported all of the funds as "subaccounts" with "units" instead of shares, and "unit values" instead of share prices. There seems to be no way to get the unit values on a daily basis, only when a transaction occurs, and then I get to enter them manually. It may be possible to import into Quicken by downloading the transaction history as a CSV document and writing a script to change its format, which I'm sure I'll pursue in due time.

If units were equal to shares, we were paying $2-$5 a share more than the market share price for every purchase. Fortunately, that doesn't appear to be quite how it works, though I'm still unsure of the details since the plan advisor had made no mention of this. The John Hancock materials and plan administrators do not seem willing to explain in any detail, beyond noting that there are additional fees hidden in these costs, and that there is a benefit in getting access to A-shares of these funds at a discount. So much for the employer covering all of the plan costs.

But we still needed to get the incorrect excess deferral refunded so that we could file our tax return. Finally, the John Hancock site showed that a check for $97.39 had been issued on March 20--but with no accounting for any subtractions of units from any of the subaccounts. The check arrived in our hands only yesterday--April 5--apparently delivered by pony express. The documentation with the check showed that there had been a further $30 transaction fee deducted from the account, eating away another third of that incorrect deferral "investment." It also, helpfully, reported a number of units for both the check and the fee, something the online transaction history left unstated. It didn't, however, show how many units were taken from each subaccount. I compared the number of units that we had purchased through all the transactions in the history, compared the difference to what John Hancock is currently reporting, and found that the difference was close to, but not identical to the sum of the units that had supposedly been taken out. This was made slightly more difficult by the fact that while the site reports on the dollar total of the Roth 401K, it only reports the units per subaccount as a combined total of the Roth and traditional 401Ks.

In attempting to check again in more detail today, I found that John Hancock's site doesn't permit users to look at transaction histories on Sundays (or before 9 a.m. ET or after 9 p.m. ET on Saturday, or between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. ET on weekdays). I could still look at total holdings, however--I'm not sure what kind of rule is being followed here with this restriction, religious or otherwise.

Doing a little searching online, I see multiple complaints about extortionately high expense ratios on John Hancock 401Ks. Apparently John Hancock is the choice of plan provider for small employers who want to minimize their costs and shift them to their employees in a relatively untransparent manner. For comparison, most index funds have relatively low expense ratios. I have some money invested in USAA's S&P 500 Members Shares Index Fund, which has an expense ratio of 0.19%. (Once I reach $100,000 in that fund, I can move it to USAA's S&P 500 Member Rewards Index Fund, which has an even lower expense ratio of 0.09%.) My 401K, through Fidelity, is mostly in Fidelity's Spartan U.S. Equities Index, another S&P 500 index, with an expense ratio of 0.09%. John Hancock's 500 Index Fund, by contrast, has an expense ratio of 0.54%, plus an apparently undisclosed "sales and service fee," which apparently goes to third party plan advisors and managers. That is ridiculously high for an index fund. John Hancock's other funds are worse. (We at least intentionally selected funds that had the lowest available expense ratios of the types we wanted, which included DFA's international, emerging markets, and small cap funds.)

I advise that you check out the 401K plan offerings of a prospective employer and weigh them as part of your decision in taking a job there. If they use John Hancock, that should be a mark against them. And once you leave a company that has a 401K through John Hancock, I recommend immediately rolling it over into an IRA with better investment options.

If any readers can shed additional light on how John Hancock's "subaccounts" and "units" work, along with any advice on how to get more transparency and accountability out of them, I'd appreciate it. Other reports of experiences with John Hancock are also welcome.

UPDATE (April 10, 2008): I can get per-day unit values from the John Hancock site, but only for the previous day's price, and there's no way to download them in an importable format except with the quarterly statements, so if I want them in Quicken I need to look them up and input them manually, or just do it once per quarter.

UPDATE (June 2, 2008): As moneyman2424's comment below indicates, John Hancock, an insurance company, sells 401K investment options that are actually annuities, which have their own expenses on top of the underlying equities. There's a good discussion of this subject at the FundAlarm discussion board.

UPDATE (July 19, 2008): The John Hancock 401K suckage continues. Their website is down all weekend for maintenance, and the second quarter of 2008 is the second quarter in a row in which there have been extortionate unexplained fees, this time wiping out all gains and then some for the quarter. There are two line items for fees, one simply labeled "fees," and the other labeled "RIA investment advisory fee." An RIA is a "registered investment advisor," but we've received no investment advice from anyone in the second quarter, or at all, for that matter. There was a presentation from someone explaining the 401K when we signed up, but he offered no investment advice worth paying for, simply explaining the funds and offering some suggested allocations which we didn't follow. He also failed to mention any fees (rather, he said that the employer would be covering all of the fees, which was obviously not true), failed to point out expense ratios, and failed to mention that we're investing in "units" in annuity "subaccounts" rather than actual shares in actual mutual funds. In short, if anything he should be paying out compensation for his omissions rather than receiving a cut.

UPDATE (July 26, 2008): Another complaint--John Hancock reports unit prices to three decimal points. With every reported purchase, there are several funds where the purchase price per unit is a tenth of a cent above the reported unit price for the day. It's just another way for them to collect a little bit more money in a non-transparent manner.

UPDATE (July 28, 2008): CNN/Money ran a story on July 23 about living with bad 401Ks.

Arizona ranks dead last in 2007 income growth

Arizona ranked #11 for income growth among the states in 2006, but dropped to dead last in 2007, primarily due to the fact that so many jobs in the state have been dependent upon real estate.

Note that one economist quoted in the cited article expressed skepticism about this result, and attributes it instead to an overestimate of Arizona population growth by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Company sued for potentially ending the world

An NPR story on a Hawaiian botanist's lawsuit against CERN to try to prevent the Large Hadron Collider from being turned on for fear that it will destroy the earth. This is worth listening to in order to hear Rudy Rucker read from one of his novels, Spaceland.

Evasion and ad hominem from Kevin Miller

Wesley Elsberry has been in an extended exchange with Kevin Miller, co-writer of "Expelled," in which Miller makes it clear that he's unwilling to look at or attempt to address any actual evidence. Instead, he falls back on supporting postmodernist claims that everything is subject to interpretation. But he doesn't give any reasons to support his purported interpretation, and ultimately descends into namecalling.

IL state legislator says it's dangerous for children to know atheism exists

Atheist Rob Sherman was at the Illinois General Assembly to argue against Gov. Rod Blagojevich's unconstitutional grant of $1,000,000 to the Pilgrim Baptist Church when this exchange took place between him and Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago):

Davis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy — it’s tragic — when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school.

I don’t see you (Sherman) fighting guns in school. You know?

I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous–

Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?

Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!

Sherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court—

Davis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.

(Via Friendly Atheist.)

UPDATE (April 6, 2008): Rep. Davis, like Barack Obama, attends the Trinity United Church of Christ, formerly led by Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

UPDATE (April 7, 2008): Pharyngula has commented on this (lots of good comments there). It's worth noting that Rep. Davis is a legislator in the Land of Lincoln, and Lincoln was the U.S. president whose religious views were closest to atheism (he may actually have been an atheist, at least for part of his life; he definitely rejected Christianity). Illinois is also the state where noted agnostic orator, Robert Ingersoll, was attorney general after the Civil War.

UPDATE (April 9, 2008): Monique Davis is ranked "worst person in the world" by Keith Olbermann.

UPDATE (April 10, 2008): Monique Davis has apologized to Rob Sherman, who accepted it.

Grade "Expelled"

Movies.go.com is another site that now lists "Expelled" with an April 18 release date, and includes a poll on how good you think the movie is likely to be. With 474 votes, the ratings are:

A - Sizzlin': 11%
B - Cool: 1%
C - Decent: 1%
D - DVD-only: 2%
F - Vile: 85%

Arizona bill to ban gay marriage fails

A bill in the Arizona legislature to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage (which failed via initiative petition in 2006, being rejected by voters) died in the state House after it was similarly amended to ban domestic partner benefits. That's the same reason the initiative, Proposition 107, failed.

More reviews of "Expelled"

Felix Salmon at Portfolio.com offers an interesting review of "Expelled" from a non-scientist.

Robert McHenry at the Encyclopedia Brittanica looks at some of the arguments of "Expelled."

And you can find more information at the NCSE's "Expelled Exposed" web page.

Mike Gravel "Helter Skelter" video

Mike Gravel has dropped out of the Democratic Party process and joined the Libertarian Party process seeking its nomination for president. Here's his latest, uh, "campaign video"...

(Via Huffington Post.)

Bush: 4th Amendment doesn't apply to domestic military operations

A 37-page October 23, 2001 memo by John Yoo titled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States" stated that the Fourth Amendment's prohibitions on unreasonable searches and seizures did not apply to U.S. military operations on U.S. soil in the name of defending against terrorism. The existence of this memo, which has not itself been released, was made public on Tuesday when a March 14, 2003 memo was released, which stated in a footnote that "Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations."

On Wednesday, the Bush administration indicated that it has disavowed the view of the October 23, 2001 memo.

The March 14, 2003 memo, also by Yoo, was obtained by the ACLU as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. That memo asserts that the President has the right to authorize torture in violation of criminal law:

If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. ... In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.

The fact that Bush wasn't impeached and convicted years ago for high crimes and misdemeanors is astounding to me.

(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list--I've not been reading TPM lately.)

More "Expelled" dishonesty

Science Blogger (and 2007 Arizona Professor of the Year) John Lynch signed up for the Tempe screening of "Expelled" which was supposed to occur at 7 p.m. last night. He received an email on April 2 telling him that it had been cancelled.

But it wasn't cancelled--it was just moved to 6 p.m. (as Lynch had been informed in an earlier email), and went on at Arizona Mills Mall as planned. Apparently the producers just decided to screen out some of the prospective attendees by lying to them, and professors who win awards for the excellence of their teaching are considered undesirables. Lynch noted that others were cc'd on both of the notices he received, and that while those with email addresses containing names like "boughtbythecross," "homeschoolma," and "covenant-dad" apparently didn't receive the bogus cancellation notice.

Lynch's post has links to some comments containing reports of the event from those who still managed to attend.

UPDATE: In Louisville, Kentucky, they also claimed that a screening was cancelled, but a screening for students and staff at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary did take place on the appointed date, and the schedule of events shows the screening as having taken place. Again, "undesirables" were screened out and not informed of the change in venue.

Life Before Death

An interesting series of captioned photographs of people shortly before and shortly after their deaths (all of people who knew they were terminally ill). Most seem to have come to terms with their impending end, but sad are those like Gerda Strech (photos 13-14), who felt she was cheated out of a long-earned retirement, and Roswitha Pacholleck (photos 15-16), who was unhappy until she became terminally ill, only to enjoy every day of her life as she was dying. She vowed that she would volunteer in a hospice if she managed to survive her cancer.

The fact is, we're all already terminal cases. Don't wait until life is near its end to start living it.

(Also via The Agitator.)

Interesting photos of abandoned Antarctic outposts

Robert F. Scott and Ernest Shackelton's Antarctic campsite cabins at Cape Evans on Ross Island have been sitting there since 1913 and 1908, respectively, and are still intact and remarkably well preserved. The Fogonazos blog has the photos.

(Via The Agitator.)

Very bad creationist research

P.Z. Myers recently offered a critique of a biology paper published on the Institute for Creation Research website that was presented at the 1998 International Conference on Creationism in Pittsburgh, by Mark H. Armitage, M.S., then of the ICR Graduate School and now with the Van Andel Creation Research Center of the Creation Research Society (which is right here in Arizona, just north of Chino Valley, named after a deceased co-founder of Amway).

Myers observed:

Notice anything missing? Right, no results. That's a metaphor for the whole creationist movement right there. There are some photos imbedded in the methods section, but it's like a random set of random photos of random parasites this guy found in his fish; there's nothing systematic about it, and the photos aren't even very good — the SEMs are way too contrasty.

Since he has no data, he has nothing to evaluate, and his discussion is a rehash of review papers he has read that highlight the complexity of the trematode life cycle (and it's true, it is complex with a series of hosts), and that every once in a while raise a pointed question, such as, "What allows this cercaria to resist digestion within the fish stomach…?", which I would have thought would be reasonable kinds of questions for a grad student to actually, you know, study. If this had been my grad student, anyway, I would have told him to knock off the pointless microphotography and focus on one of these questions and try to answer something.

...

This paper is completely unpublishable by any legitimate science journal. I doubt that it could get past an editor, who typically screen out the obvious crackpottery, and no reviewer would be fooled by it; it's experiment-free and even its few observations are incoherent and pointless. Its conclusion reveals that the author doesn't even understand the theory he claims to be criticizing.

Myers' full critique is well worth reading, and if creationists read it, they might learn something about how science actually works.

Armitage responded to Myers with a sarcastic email that didn't bother addressing any of the actual criticism, prompting Myers to completely dissect Armitage and show him further to be an arrogant ignoramus. A commenter points out that Armitage managed to get a bad geology paper published in American Laboratory in 1997 (very similar to one which he had already published in the Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal in 1994, but which he failed to reference in the 1997 paper), which has similarly been completely shredded by a real geologist.

It's amazing that there are people who think creationists like Armitage are scientists.

UPDATE (April 3, 2008): Eamon Knight mentioned Armitage's CV, a version of which can be found here.

UPDATE (April 5, 2008): Armitage cc's P.Z. Myers on a response to an email, and demonstrates further cluelessness. The guy has actually written a book titled Jesus is Like My Scanning Electron Microscope.

Another "own goal" from Michael Behe

Intelligent design advocate Michael Behe scored another "own goal" like he did in the Dover trial, this time in the law suit by the Association of Christian Schools International and Calvary Chapel Christian School against the University of California. ACSI and Calvary were arguing that the UC system was unfairly refusing to accept transfer credits from certain courses taught at Christian schools which used inadequate materials in their curriculum.

Behe testified in court on behalf of the plaintiffs that "it is personally abusive and pedagogically damaging to de facto require students to subscribe to an idea . . . . Requiring a student to, effectively, consent to an idea violates [her] personal integrity. Such a wrenching violation [may cause] a terrible educational outcome."

The judge cited this reasoning in his decision in favor of the University of California:

Yet, the two Christian biology texts at issue commit this "wrenching violation." For example, Biology for Christian Schools declares on the very first page that:

(1) "'Whatever the Bible says is so; whatever man says may or may not be so,' is the only [position] a Christian can take . . . ."

(2) "If [scientific] conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them."

(3) "Christians must disregard [scientific hypotheses or theories] that contradict the Bible."

Good job!

(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars and Pharyngula.)

Judeo-Christian means Christian

At least for Shirley Dobson (wife of James Dobson of Focus on the Family) and the National Day of Prayer Task Force, that is. On an application to be a coordinator for the Task Force, it claims:

The National Day of Prayer Task Force was a creation of the National Prayer Committee for the expressed purpose of organizing and promoting prayer observances conforming to a Judeo-Christian system of values.

Sounds open to Jews and Christians, but not Muslims, right? But when you look further at the application, you see that you must be willing to sign the following statement of belief in order to be a coordinator:

I believe that the Holy Bible is the inerrant Word of The Living God. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only One by which I can obtain salvation and have an ongoing relationship with God. I believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, his virgin birth, his sinless life, his miracles, the atoning work of his shed blood, his resurrection and ascension, his intercession and his coming return to power and glory. I believe that those who follow Jesus are family and there should be unity among all who claim his name.

(Via Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog, where one commenter points out that they are probably open-minded enough to be willing to accept anyone of any religion or even an atheist, so long as they're willing to sign that statement of belief, and another commenter suggests the alternate term "Christeo-Mormon.")

Goldwater Institute takes on Sheriff Joe

Clint Bolick, formerly the primary litigator for the Institute for Justice, is taking on some good causes as a litigator for the Goldwater Institute's new Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation. He's currently fighting against the City of Phoenix's unconscionable and unconstitutional multimillion-dollar subsidy to the developers of the CityNorth project, and now he's taking on popular Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

In an article posted today called "Who's in Charge?", Bolick points out two cases of apparent misuse of funds by Arpaio--using RICO funds to send staff to Honduras, and sending out nearly 200 deputies and "posse" members on "saturation patrols" that appear to be trespassing the jurisdiction of the Phoenix Police Department. Meanwhile, Bolick notes:

Whatever the rationale the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office had for those actions, both diverted scarce resources away from vital law enforcement duties that fall within the Sheriff’s Office’s core duties:

• Unserved warrants, including those for violent offenders, number an estimated 70,000.
• Dozens of criminal defendants have missed court appearances because deputies in charge of moving inmates were told to skip shifts due to excessive overtime.
• The Sheriff’s Office closed three regional booking facilities in Surprise, Avondale, and Mesa, forcing police officers in all 26 Maricopa County jurisdictions to book criminal suspects at the Fourth Avenue jail in downtown Phoenix. The greatly increased transportation time removes officers from the streets and induces them to simply cite and release criminals.

Arpaio has a long history of showy but useless or even counterproductive law enforcement activities, as well as costing the taxpayers millions by getting the MCSO sued repeatedly for wrongful death and injury cases as a result of abuse of inmates. But Maricopa County residents keep voting him back in, because he claims to be tough on crime and is often a good self-promoter. I hope that events like last October's arrests of the owners of New Times and now Clint Bolick going after him will finally lead to his non-reelection for County Sheriff this year.

Dan Saban, who's running against Arpaio, is saying all the right things about integrity, civil rights, and combating waste, though he also seems to take a hard line on illegal immigration (which is another area where Arpaio has taken a hard line and engaged in some theatrical activities). He looks like a marked improvement to Arpaio.

UPDATE (April 2, 2008): Looks like Goldwater lost round one today on CityNorth, a project where the city is giving $97.4 million in taxpayer subsidies to the developers of a shopping mall over the next 11 years, and claiming that it is for the 3,180 parking spaces in the parking garage the project is building, 200 of which are reserved for carpoolers using park and ride city bus services for the next 45 years. If the subsidy is considered to be for those 200 spaces, that comes out to $487,000 per space over the 45-year period, or $10,822.22 per space per year. The average parking space annual lease price in Phoenix is $684, and ASU recently estimated that a parking garage would cost $14,000 per space to build. In other words, if instead of paying nearly $100 million to CityNorth, the city instead had purchased land and built its own parking garage, the construction would have cost less than what the city is paying for the first two years worth of the 45-year lease on the 200 spaces. And that doesn't count the additional $10,000/week of taxpayer funds that has been spent on lawyers fighting for this subsidy.

The Goldwater Institute has announced that it will appeal.

UPDATE (April 9, 2008): The New York Times has editorialized that Arpaio should be subpoenaed about his anti-illegal-immigrant sweeps:

For months now, Sheriff Joe has been sending squads of officers through Latino neighborhoods, pulling cars over for broken taillights or turn-signal violations, checking drivers' and passengers' papers and arresting illegal immigrants by the dozen.

Because he sends out press releases beforehand, the sweeps are accompanied by TV crews and protesters — deport-'em-all hard-liners facing off against immigrant advocates. Being Arizona, many of those shouting and jeering are also packing guns. Sheriff Joe, seemingly addicted to the buzz, has been filmed marching down the street shaking hands with adoring Minutemen.

If this doesn't look to you like a carefully regulated, federally supervised effort to catch dangerous criminals, that's because it isn't. It is a series of stunts focused mostly on day laborers, as Sheriff Joe bulldozes his way toward re-election.

The sheriff says he is keeping the peace, but it seems as if he is doing just the opposite — a useless, reckless churning of fear and unrest.

Flying Spaghetti Monster lands outside Tennessee courthouse

A very nice sculpture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has joined other monuments outside a Cumberland County, Tennessee courthouse which is acting in good compliance with the First Amendment. (Apparently NOT an April Fool's joke--although Wired's blog posted on April 1, it was announced a day earlier at the official FSM website.)

Another liar as Attorney General

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars reports on some recent statements by Attorney General Michael Mukasey during a speech about political corruption, in which he lied about FISA's impact on wiretapping, falsely claiming that FISA law had to be violated because it would require the methods of wiretapping being used to be discussed in open court.

The mainstream media seems to be mostly giving him a pass on his falsehoods.

UPDATE (April 5, 2008): Glenn Greenwald uncovers more evidence that Mukasey is a liar, fabricating pre-9/11 events that didn't happen.

Fitna: The Film

I've put up a post at the Secular Outpost about Dutch MP Geert Wilders' new film criticizing the Koran, "Fitna," which has, unsurprisingly, resulted in governmental demands for YouTube to remove the video and calls for boycotts of Dutch goods.

Read it at the Secular Outpost.

Also see P.Z. Myers' commentary on it at Pharyngula.

March's Market Update

Maricopa County had another record month for notices of trustee's sales. 5370 pre-foreclosure notices sent out to Phoenix area home owners...

Remember that last month's figure was 5048 notices, while the number of homes sold in February was only 3448...

These numbers, not surprisingly, continue to exert downward pressure on home prices in the valley. January's median price of $220,000 fell to $213,800 in February...

Virgle: The Adventure of Many Lifetimes

Google today announced that its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have teamed up with Richard Branson of Virgin to form "Project Virgle," a project to form the first permanent human colony on Mars.

Read more.

Arizona paramedics change treatment of cardiac arrest

CNN reports that Arizona's paramedics have changed their processes for dealing with cardiac arrest victims, going against the recommendations of the American Heart Association, and the result has tripled the long-term survival rate:

Until three years ago, Arizona's success rate in cases like this was no better than most of the country. This past month, however, physicians in the state reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that a new regimen by paramedics has tripled the success rate, to more than 5 percent. Among patients whose collapse from cardiac arrest was observed, long-term survival went from 4.7 percent to 17.6 percent.

In a bold departure from standard practice, paramedics in most Arizona cities do not follow the guidance of the American Heart Association. Instead, they follow a protocol that was developed at the University of Arizona's Sarver Heart Center, largely by Dr. Gordon Ewy.

Even after cardiac arrest, Ewy said, there's enough oxygen in the body to feed the brain and keep a person alive for several minutes. But that air helps only if someone compresses the heart to circulate blood. In traditional CPR, rescuers alternate 30 chest compressions with two long "rescue breaths." Paramedics are trained to start by checking the airway, and insert a breathing tube at the start of resuscitation. These extra steps, said Ewy, waste precious time.

In Arizona, paramedics skip the breathing step. They simply alternate two minutes of pumping on the chest -- 200 compressions -- with a single shock from a defibrillator.

This is similar to a story Newsweek reported last summer, which indicated that giving oxygen to cardiac arrest patients is the wrong thing to do. It's nice to see Arizona on the cutting edge, here.

More cases of suppression missed by "Expelled"

I previously noted that none of the cases of alleged persecution of intelligent design advocates in the film "Expelled" come close to the case of political persecution of an advocate of evolution, Chris Comer, who lost her job at the Texas Education Association for sending an email announcing an academic talk by a critic of intelligent design.

Troy Britain now lists some additional cases where intelligent design advocates are the persecutors:

• Nancey Murphy of the Fuller Theological Seminary, who

  said she faced a campaign to get her fired because she expressed the view that intelligent design was not only poor theology, but “so stupid, I don’t want to give them my time.”

  Murphy, who believes in evolution, said she had to fight to keep her job after one of the founding members of the intelligent design movement, legal theorist Phillip Johnson, called a trustee at the seminary and tried to get her fired.

• In the mid-1990s, Christian biochemist Terry M. Gray also ran into problems associated with Phillip Johnson. When he wrote a negative review of the book in which he stated that humans have primate ancestors, he was charged with heresy by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and forced to write a recantation in order to maintain his membership in the church.
• Christian physicist Howard Van Till, a critic of creationism and intelligent design, was criticized by the board of trustees at Calvin College for his views. Although his career was not ended, he ultimately abandoned his faith after the repeated insistence by his critics that his views were not compatible with it. I've heard that Duane Gish, former vice president of the Institute for Creation Research, was an individual who contributed to attacks on Van Till to try to get him removed from his position.
• Troy doesn't (yet) mention this case, but Panda's Thumb has written about Richard D. Colling, a biologist at Olivet Nazarene University, who has been forbidden to teach intro-level biology classes and his book, Random Designer, has been banned from use at his school. Although trustees attempted to have Colling fired, he has maintained his tenured position with the support of the university president--but apparently that support is not sufficient to allow him to teach introductory biology classes to undergraduates or teach from his own book.
  

It seems there is quite a different movie still to be made here, about religious persecution of scientists who dare to argue for evolution.

UPDATE (April 20, 2008): Blake Stacey has put together a more extensive list.

Thinking Christian blog blocks my comment

Tom Gilson closed the comments at his Thinking Christian blog post about P.Z. Myers calling in to the presenter line on an "Expelled" event conference bridge, preventing me from posting this comment:

The claims of "Expelled" about individuals who have allegedly been persecuted are bogus--Gonzales was denied tenure because he wasn't publishing research, Sternberg wasn't persecuted at all, and Crocker simply didn't have her contract renewed (and deservedly so--she was both a bad teacher and was making horrible creationist arguments, as has been documented with her PowerPoint slides online).

On the other hand, Chris Comer really was removed from her position as Director of Science at the Texas Education Agency for simply sending out an email announcing that Barbara Forrest was giving a talk about "Creationism's Trojan Horse." The ID advocates have no case of persecution that approaches that in severity.

He also deleted a link that Norman Doering included in a comment, and banned Norman from his blog. Norman's comment was this:

Tom Gilson wrote:

The connection between Darwinism and the Holocaust is not a lie when it is understood the way thoughtful people have presented it.

Feel free to present that “thoughtful way” here:

http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2007/04/if-hitler-was-darwinist.html

But Tom deleted the link because clicking on the link first gives a content warning from Blogger. Norman's post is well worth reading, as I pointed out in a comment on Tom's blog that made it under the wire before he closed comments:

Tom: It’s too bad you deleted Norman Doering’s link to his blog post. It’s actually a quite interesting post about how the Nazis actually banned writings promoting Darwinism, and how it was creationist Edward Blyth’s ideas that led to eugenics. Norman also points out multiple passages from Hitler’s _Mein Kampf_ which look more like something written by a creationist than an evolutionist.

By the way, Gilson claims that P.Z. Myers "crashed" the conference call. In fact, he was invited to attend, as was the entire Panda's Thumb blogging crew--just not to be a presenter on the call.

Mike Rinder left Scientology

From an interesting Radar magazine article about the "Anonymous" protests against Scientology and various high-level defections (including church head David Miscavige's niece, which I've already reported here), I learn that Mike Rinder, former head of Scientology's Office of Special Affairs, defected last year. Rinder was the main public spokesperson for the Church of Scientology. Chuck Beatty, a 27-year veteran of the Church, observes in the article that Rinder leaving Scientology is like Goebbels leaving the Nazi Party.

Rinder, an Australian who joined the Scientology Sea Org at the age of 18, left the Church in the summer of 2007.

Congratulations, Mr. Rinder. Welcome back to reality. I hope you will speak out about your experiences.

(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

Scientology OT levels leaked through Wikileaks

All of Scientology's Operating Thetan (OT) levels have now been leaked through Wikileaks, which may account for considerable slowness of that website. Although at the very least large parts of these documents have previously leaked on the Internet (via Usenet) back in the mid-nineties, which led to multiple lawsuits by the Church of Scientology against those responsible, this may be the first time the entire 612-page manual of OT levels 1-8 has been circulating on the Internet.

I think it's likely that Scientology will be filing a copyright infringement lawsuit against Wikileaks, which is distributing the document in a single large PDF.

Is "Expelled" going to show up in any theaters on April 18?

[UPDATE (April 15, 2008): See the NCSE's "Expelled Exposed" website for a look at the deceptive tactics of the filmmakers and the real facts that they aren't showing you.]

[UPDATE (April 18, 2008): Further updates on "Expelled" theater counts, box office take, and ratings are here.]

"Expelled" was originally claimed to be opening in February 2008, and I recall seeing claims that it would be on 4,000 screens. Its website has subsequently been claiming an April 18 opening date ("in theatres nationwide"), and somewhere I've seen an estimate of about 1,000 screens. (UPDATE: This was said by John Sullivan, an "Expelled" producer, on the Expelled blog in December 2007, as the estimated screen count for a February 2008 release.) But for some reason, the film is not listed on April 2008 distribution schedules:

• IMDB April 18 releases
• Rottentomatoes.com upcoming releases
  
• Launchingfilms.com April 2008 releases
• Film-releases.com upcoming 2008 releases
• Popculturemadness.com April 2008 releases
  

I only found it listed with an April 18 date at AOL's MovieFone, with no photo or trailer. Movieweb.com lists it with "To Be Announced 2008" as the release date. (UPDATE: It's also at movies.go.com with an April 18 release date, and a poll to grade the movie. It's polling at 85% "F," 11% "A," 2% "D," and 1% each for "B" and "C," with 474 votes.)

Is it really going to show in theaters at all on April 18? Or are they just going to continue with these "private screenings" and then go direct to DVD, suitable for church and homeschool distribution?

The distributor for the film is Rocky Mountain Pictures (formerly R.S. Entertainment) of Salt Lake City, UT, distributor for the following films:

• Akira (1988, lots of distributors)
• Carman: The Champion (made 2001, released 2 March 2001, grossed $1,743,863, $769,080 opening weekend)
• Race to Space (2001, released 15 March 2001)
• Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 (made 2001, released 21 September 2001, grossed $5,974,653, $1,573,454 opening weekend)
• Manna from Heaven (made 2002, grossed $505,675, shown in 5 cities, made $5,340 opening weekend on 4 screens)
• Elvira's Haunted Hills (made 2001, released 31 October 2002)
• Luther (made 2003, released 30 October 2003, grossed $5,791,328, $908,446 opening weekend)
• Unspeakable (made 2002, released 27 February 2004)
• End of the Spear (2005, released 20 January 2006, grossed $11,703,287, $4,281,388 opening weekend)

These guys are clearly not a blockbuster powerhouse of distributors--their biggest film ever was back in 1988 when they were one of many distributors, they specialize in small independent films, mostly "family films" and often with an explicitly Christian theme, and they have rarely seen their films have an opening weekend of over $1,000,000. The two partners in Rocky Mountain Pictures are Ronald C. Rodgers and Randy Slaughter. Rodgers got his start in film with Sunn Classic Pictures in 1968, which made and distributed movies in the seventies and eighties like bad documentaries about Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, The Bermuda Triangle, psychics, space aliens, conspiracy theories, and Noah's Ark, several of which were written by David W. Balsiger. Balsiger was the ghost author of several fabricated autobiographies, such as those of alleged Ark-finder Fernand Navarra, phony ex-Satanist Mike Warnke, and phony faith healer Morris Cerullo. (See my 1993 Skeptic magazine article on George Jammal's Noah's Ark hoax, which Balsiger helped foist upon the American public along with a whole slew of bogus claims.) Slaughter has had a more mainstream career with bigger studios and distributors and working for a Texas theater chain.

"End of the Spear" was financed by Philip Anschutz, founder and former head of Qwest Communications who also funded "The Chronicles of Narnia" (and has also been a contributor to the Discovery Institute). "End of the Spear" received some extra publicity because lead actor Chad Allen, who plays the lead in the film, came out as gay. (He told the producers before his contract was signed in 2003, when he came out publicly, and they did the right thing and continued with him in the project anyway). I suspect "Expelled" will have trouble doing anywhere near as well as "End of the Spear," which appears to be the best Rocky Mountain Pictures has done to date.

I'll offer five predictions for "Expelled"--if it opens in theaters at all on April 18, it will (1) be on fewer than 500 800 screens, (2) will have an initial weekend box office of less than $2 million, with (3) a per-screen take of less than $2,500, (4) won't break the top ten despite it being a slow opening week, and (5) will make less than $10 million in box office take by the end of 2008 (though it may make more than that through DVD sales).

Note that Philip Anschutz owns the Regal Entertainment Group, which Wikipedia says is "the largest theater chain in North America" with "6,423 screens in 529 locations in 41 U.S. states." He may well push the film, but there's no way he's going to allow it to get in the way of making profit, but I'll adjust my prediction (1) to be fewer than 800 screens on the assumption that Anschutz might put the film into each of his theaters. (UPDATE: Chez Jake has found and commented below that Anschutz is only showing "Expelled" in 141 of his 529 locations, which he suggests indicates a 27% level of confidence in the film by Anschutz.)

(For my previous comments about a film's opening weekend, see my blog post on the film "Untraceable." In the comments there, I offered this bet to the film's insiders who showed up at my blog to defend the film: "How about a deal--if it gets a 'cream of the crop' freshness percentage above 70% at rottentomatoes.com (say, by a week after release, when there are at least a dozen or so reviews), I'll agree to watch it, if you'll agree on a percentage of below 30% to post here that you were wrong, and it really does suck. Anywhere in between, we can agree to disagree." Needless to say, I didn't have to see that movie, as it ended up with a "freshness" rating of 15%.)

UPDATE (March 28, 2008): Using Reed Esau's excellent suggestion of using the theater locator on the Expelled website, here's the current number of theaters where it's planned to be showing per state:

AK: 1
AL: 15
AR: 10
AZ: 5
CA: 52
CO: 10
CT: 3
DC: 0
DE: 0
FL: 51
GA: 11
HI: 3
IA: 6
ID: 6
IN: 19
IL: 21
KS: 4
KY: 6
LA: 2
MA: 0
MD: 0
ME: 0
MI: 11
MN: 7
MO: 6
MS: 3
MT: 5
NC: 4
ND: 1
NE: 1
NH: 1
NJ: 0
NM: 2
NV: 6
NY: 2
OH: 9
OK: 5
OR: 6
PA: 11
RI: 0
SC: 5
SD: 1
TN: 17
TX: 62
UT: 3
VA: 3
VT: 0
WA: 16
WI: 17
WV: 5
WY: 1

Total U.S. theaters: 435

UPDATE (March 28, 2008, 6:00 p.m.): The numbers have changed a bit:

AK: 2 (up from 1)
AL: 17 (up from 15)
AR: 9 (down from 10)
AZ: 7 (up from 5)
CT: 2 (down from 3)
DC: 1 (up from 0)
FL: 50 (down from 51)
GA: 17 (up from 11)
IA: 7 (up from 6)
IL: 18 (down from 21)
KS: 7 (up from 4)
KY: 7 (up from 6)
LA: 6 (up from 2)
MD: 7 (up from 0)
MI: 10 (down from 11)
MN: 10 (up from 7)
MO: 16 (up from 6)
MS: 4 (up from 3)
MT: 3 (down from 5)
NC: 17 (up from 4)
NH: 0 (down from 1)
NM: 1 (down from 2)
NY: 1 (down from 2)
OH: 13 (up from 9)
OK: 8 (up from 5)
OR: 7 (up from 6)
PA: 6 (down from 11)
SC: 10 (up from 5)
TN: 16 (down from 17)
TX: 61 (down from 62)
VA: 16 (up from 3)
WI: 14 (down from 17)
WV: 1 (down from 5)

All the others have remained the same. That's a net increase of 55 theaters to a new total of 490.

UPDATE (March 31, 2008, 2:45 p.m. PDT):

AK: 1
AL: 20
AR: 12
AZ: 8
CA: 60
CO: 11
CT: 3
DC: 1
DE: 3
FL: 58
GA: 19
HI: 3
IA: 9
ID: 6
IN: 20
IL: 23
KS: 10
KY: 7
LA: 6
MA: 0
MD: 8
ME: 0
MI: 20
MN: 13
MO: 18
MS: 6
MT: 5
NC: 35
ND: 2
NE: 1
NH: 1
NJ: 3
NM: 5
NV: 6
NY: 12
OH: 19
OK: 9
OR: 7
PA: 27
RI: 0
SC: 16
SD: 1
TN: 23
TX: 63
UT: 3
VA: 24
VT: 0
WA: 19
WI: 19
WV: 5
WY: 1

New total: 651 theaters.

UPDATE (April 4, 2008, 7:13 a.m. PDT):

AK: 1
AL: 20
AR: 12
AZ: 17 (up from 8)
CA: 65 (up from 60)
CO: 11
CT: 5 (up from 3)
DC: 1
DE: 3
FL: 60 (up from 58)
GA: 29 (up from 19)
HI: 3
IA: 9
ID: 7 (up from 6)
IN: 22 (up from 20)
IL: 29 (up from 23)
KS: 11 (up from 10)
KY: 10 (up from 7)
LA: 12 (up from 6)
MA: 2 (up from 0)
MD: 11 (up from 8)
ME: 1 (up from 0)
MI: 27 (up from 20)
MN: 23 (up from 13)
MO: 20 (up from 18)
MS: 8 (up from 6)
MT: 5
NC: 38 (up from 35)
ND: 2
NE: 4 (up from 1)
NH: 2 (up from 1)
NJ: 8 (up from 3)
NM: 8 (up from 5)
NV: 6
NY: 18 (up from 12)
OH: 24 (up from 19)
OK: 13 (up from 9)
OR: 11 (up from 7)
PA: 31 (up from 27)
RI: 0
SC: 18 (up from 16)
SD: 1
TN: 28 (up from 23)
TX: 75 (up from 63)
UT: 3
VA: 31 (up from 24)
VT: 0
WA: 23 (up from 19)
WI: 20 (up from 19)
WV: 6 (up from 5)
WY: 1

New total: 795 theaters (up 144 since March 31).

UPDATE (April 6, 2008, 12:45 p.m. PDT):

I checked again after seeing Kevin Miller claiming that the film is now set to open on 1,000 screens. There must be several theaters planning to show it on multiple screens, then.

AK: 2 (up from 1)
AL: 20
AR: 12
AZ: 17
CA: 64 (down from 65)
CO: 11
CT: 5
DC: 1
DE: 3
FL: 60
GA: 29
HI: 3
IA: 9
ID: 7
IN: 22
IL: 29
KS: 11
KY: 10
LA: 12
MA: 2
MD: 11
ME: 1
MI: 27
MN: 23
MO: 20
MS: 8
MT: 5
NC: 38
ND: 2
NE: 4
NH: 2
NJ: 8
NM: 8
NV: 6
NY: 18
OH: 24
OK: 14 (up from 13)
OR: 12 (up from 11)
PA: 31
RI: 0
SC: 18
SD: 1
TN: 28
TX: 74 (down from 75)
UT: 3
VA: 31
VT: 0
WA: 23
WI: 20
WV: 6
WY: 1

New total: 796 theaters (up by one theater since Friday).

UPDATE (April 12, 2008, 8:16 a.m. MST):

AK: 3 (up from 2)
AL: 23 (up from 20)
AR: 12
AZ: 18 (up from 17)
CA: 105 (up from 64)
CO: 19 (up from 11)
CT: 7 (up from 5)
DC: 1
DE: 3
FL: 79 (up from 60)
GA: 38 (up from 29)
HI: 4 (up from 3)
IA: 12 (up from 9)
ID: 7
IN: 28 (up from 22)
IL: 46 (up from 29)
KS: 12 (up from 11)
KY: 13 (up from 10)
LA: 14 (up from 12)
MA: 12 (up from 2)
MD: 14 (up from 11)
ME: 1
MI: 36 (up from 27)
MN: 25 (up from 23)
MO: 20
MS: 8
MT: 5
NC: 45 (up from 38)
ND: 2
NE: 4
NH: 3 (up from 2)
NJ: 24 (up from 8)
NM: 8
NV: 9 (up from 6)
NY: 26 (up from 18)
OH: 35 (up from 24)
OK: 14
OR: 17 (up from 12)
PA: 32 (up from 31)
RI: 1 (up from 0)
SC: 20 (up from 18)
SD: 2 (up from 1)
TN: 28
TX: 80 (up from 74)
UT: 14 (up from 3)
VA: 33 (up from 31)
VT: 1 (up from 0)
WA: 30 (up from 23)
WI: 20
WV: 8 (up from 6)
WY: 1

New total: 1022. They now have theaters in every state, and clearly have more than 1,000 screens, falsifying my prediction (1). At this point, I think my prediction (4) may also be falsified, but prediction (3) has probably become more likely since their audience will be diluted across a larger number of theaters and screens.

UPDATE (April 14, 2008): "Expelled" has finally shown up in the "opening" category at Rotten Tomatoes (and was never listed as "upcoming"), with a 0% fresh (i.e., 100% rotten) rating. The only review counted at the moment is Variety's review.

UPDATE (April 16, 2008, 7:00 p.m. MST):

AK: 2 (down from 3)
AL: 23
AR: 12
AZ: 19 (up from 18)
CA: 110 (up from 105)
CO: 19
CT: 9 (up from 7)
DC: 1
DE: 3
FL: 81 (up from 79)
GA: 42 (up from 38)
HI: 5 (up from 4)
IA: 12
ID: 7
IN: 29 (up from 28)
IL: 47 (up from 46)
KS: 12
KY: 13
LA: 14
MA: 16 (up from 12)
MD: 13 (down from 12)
ME: 1
MI: 37 (up from 36)
MN: 24 (down from 25)
MO: 22 (up from 20)
MS: 8
MT: 5
NC: 43 (down from 45)
ND: 3 (up from 2)
NE: 4
NH: 4 (up from 3)
NJ: 26 (up from 24)
NM: 8
NV: 9
NY: 27 (up from 26)
OH: 36 (up from 35)
OK: 14
OR: 16 (down from 17)
PA: 34 (up from 32)
RI: 1
SC: 20
SD: 2
TN: 28
TX: 81 (up from 80)
UT: 14
VA: 33
VT: 1
WA: 31 (up from 30)
WI: 19 (down from 20)
WV: 8
WY: 1

New total: 1,049 theaters, up from 1,022 despite a few states losing a theater here and there. (The big drop will come next week.) Reviews are starting to show up at Rotten Tomatoes; it's currently scoring one positive review and six negative, for a 14% freshness rating and an average rating of 2.8/10.

UPDATE (April 18, 2008, 8:10 a.m. MST): It's opening day, and further updates on theater counts, ratings, and box office will be posted here (and won't include state-by-state breakdowns). The-Numbers.com reports that "Expelled"'s opening theater count is three more theaters than Wednesday's total, 1,052.

TAM 6

I'm seriously considering attending the James Randi Educational Foundation's "The Amazing Meeting" (TAM) #6 this June 19-22 at the Flamingo in Las Vegas. I'm really not a big fan of going to Vegas, but it is nearby and relatively cheap to get to, the list of speakers is impressive, and it sounds like a few people I've known for many years online but have never met in person will be there.

Are any readers of this blog planning to attend this year?

Software awards scam

Andy Brice decided to test various download sites to see which ones would give awards (and expect a banner to be posted by the developer's website with a link back) to a piece of "software" that consisted only of a text file named "awardmestars" containing the words "this program does nothing at all" repeated several times. He submitted it to 1033 sites, of which 218 sites listed it and 421 rejected it. Of those that accepted it, 11% gave it an award (he's currently at 23 awards):

The truth is that many download sites are just electronic dung heaps, using fake awards, dubious SEO and content misappropriated from PAD files in a pathetic attempt to make a few dollars from Google Adwords. Hopefully these bottom-feeders will be put out of business by the continually improving search engines, leaving only the better sites.

He notes the following sites which wrote him to say to stop wasting their time, indicating that they actually check submissions:

www.filecart.com

www.freshmeat.net

www.download-tipp.de (German)

The author wonders whether download sites that certify software as "100% clean" actually scan submitted software for malware, but says to test it would be unethical. Actually, something very much like his test could be done, using the EICAR antivirus test file instead of his text file.

(Via Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list.)

Scientology sucks at JavaScript

The Swedish Church of Scientology's online personality test page has a very interesting test for valid zipcodes, phone numbers, and ages, as TheDailyWTF reports. The same checks could each have been done in a single line with an appropriate regular expression.

Vancouver SkeptiCamp

It looks like Vancouver, British Columbia will become the second city to host a SkeptiCamp, which will be the third to occur.

(Previously, previously.)

More "Expelled" coverage worth highlighting

* Scott Hatfield looks at the backgrounds of "Expelled"'s producers.
* Troy Britain and Jon Voisey recount the ever-changing stories of why P.Z. Myers was expelled from "Expelled."
* Ed Brayton shows that "Expelled" co-writer and funder, software multimillionaire Walt Ruloff, lied about Myers' expulsion.
* P.Z. Myers responds to today's press release from "Expelled"'s producers.

And I've been continually updating my original post about P.Z. Myers being refused admittance to the screening of the film; you can find the above links there and many, many more.

"Expelled" producers plant softball questions in screening Q&As?

Amanda Gefter, opinion editor at New Scientist Blogs, attended a screening of "Expelled" and has reported on the Q&A session with producer Mike Mathis that followed. She notes:

He began calling on others in the crowd, who asked friendlier questions. But Maggie and I quickly realised that we'd seen some of these people before - earlier that evening, in fact, working at the movie's registration table. These friendly audience members worked for the film? Had Mathis planted questioners?

Another amusing bit:

Another man in the front row wondered about the film's premise that supporters of ID are being silenced. He pointed out that a recent trial about the teaching of intelligent design held in Dover, Pennsylvania, gave supporters of intelligent design all the time in the world to make their case, but most of the 'leading lights' of ID didn't even show up.

When Mathis was responding, the guy asked another question, and the producer shot back, "How about you let me finish talking?" Then, a security guard for the film approached the calmly seated man and told him, "I may have to ask you to leave."

"Does anyone else see how ironic this is?" the guy asked.

"Shut up!" someone shouted from the back.

And she ends with:

I asked how ID explains the complexity, but he said, "I don't have time for this," and walked away.

Throughout the entire experience, Maggie and I couldn't help feeling that the polarised audience in the theater was a sort of microcosm of America, and let me tell you - it's a scary place. I also couldn't help thinking that the intelligent design folks aren't being silenced, so much as they're being silent. Because when it comes to actually explaining anything, they've got nothing to say.

Read the whole thing.

Stackpole the asteroid

Phoenix Skeptics Executive Director Michael Stackpole now has an asteroid named after him:

On March 23, 2001, David Healy and Jeff Medkeff discovered an asteroid about a mile in diameter, in the asteroid belt on the Mars side of the solar system. It was designated 165612.

Until today.

Now that asteroid is officially known as Stackpole. The International Astronomical Union approved the designation on March 21.

Also getting asteroids named after them: Rebecca Watson (Skepchick), Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy), and P.Z. Myers (Pharyngula).

Very cool!

UPDATE: And Mike Stackpole posts his reaction to learning the news.

An argument in support of Matt Nisbet

I thought I'd try to come up with an argument *for* Nisbet's general position (though I don't support the claims that all publicity is good publicity or that particular people should shut up), and came up with this (posted as a comment on Nisbet's blog):

Suppose U.S. demographics on belief and nonbelief were reversed, so that atheists made up 80%+ and those who explicitly believed in God were about 4-5% of the population (with the difference filled by agnostics, closeted believers, etc.). Suppose further that demographics of believers in science were reversed--with most physicists and biologists being religious believers, who commonly said things like "the Big Bang shows evidence of a beginning of time, started by a creator God," and "the intricate design of biology shows the hand of God."

Presumably Nisbet would tell those religious scientists that they shouldn't say things like that in public, even if they firmly believe them to be true, because they would cause the atheist majority to stop listening to the part that's actually science. And I think he'd have a point. To the extent that Dawkins and Myers go beyond the science into areas like philosophy and normative ethics, they are making non-scientific claims that are not entailed by the scientific evidence (though I happen to agree with them that atheistic views fit much better with the evidence than religious views). A division *can* be drawn, and if your goal is persuasion, *somebody* needs to draw the division and communicate with the audience that otherwise wouldn't listen without including the nonscientific parts that will turn them off.

But, contra Nisbet, that somebody doesn't need to be everybody, or Dawkins or Myers in particular.

As I've said elsewhere, I'm glad that the National Center for Science Education doesn't take a position on theism vs. atheism and involves many religious believers who support the promotion of good science.

Matt Nisbet and Chris Mooney have been getting support in their statements from people like intelligent design advocate William Dembski and "Expelled" co-writer Kevin Miller, but I suspect that they would not really agree with Nisbet's position if the demographics were reversed as above--they would be defenders of the religious version of P.Z. Myers. Their position strikes me as opportunistic rather than principled.

Which raises the question--if you support P.Z. Myers' approach and think that it's beneficial for the promotion of science, but you wouldn't support a religious counterpart's approach in the reversal scenario, does that show an inconsistency or lack of principle in your position? I don't think so, and my parenthetical comment is a start of the answer I'd give to why. (I think the underlying causes of the demographics are of relevance, and it's interesting that only Nisbet seems to have tackled that subject in this discussion.) But I'm interested in hearing what others have to say, either way. I suspect that John Lynch and John Wilkins would argue that it does show an inconsistency.

UPDATE (April 2, 2008): James Hrynyshyn at The Island of Doubt ScienceBlog offers a critique of Nisbettian framing. Somehow, I get the impression something's missing here, though. Claiming that scientists are completely objective and trained to be so is to miss the fact that Kuhn, Latour and Woolgar, and the sociologists of science aren't completely wrong about everything. (I'm still a big fan of Philip Kitcher's book, The Advancement of Science: Science Without Legend, Objectivity Without Illusions.)

UPDATE (April 3, 2008): John Wilkins offers a defense of "the f-word" in terms of simplification for the purposes of pedagogy.

Expelled screening coming to Phoenix

Although the "Expelled" RSVP page mysteriously dropped all upcoming screenings after the media coverage of P.Z. Myers being barred from a screening in Minnesota, a few cities have appeared on the list again and Phoenix is one of them. This could be a chance to see the film without giving its dishonest producers any money--I've signed up. (Free is the only way I'll bother to see this film.)

The site now explains the cancelled screenings as follows:

Due to unavoidable changes in the travel plans of the producers of “Expelled”, several of our screenings have been canceled or are being rescheduled to a new date or time.

While that may be true, I wonder if it's merely an excuse to drop all of the existing registrants and do more stringent screening of who is allowed to be admitted.

Simon Blackburn on respecting religion

Via Chris Hallquist, an interesting paper by the atheist philosopher Simon Blackburn, titled "Religion and Respect" (24pp. PDF).

Worth noting as an abbreviated summary of the paper is the H.L. Mencken quote referenced by a commenter on Hallquist's post:

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."

Julia Sweeney on Ben Stein

Julia Sweeney writes at her blog:

Ben Stein once did a Groundling show, an improv show, that I was a part of. I found him to be spectacularly ill-informed and narcissistic and weirdly devoted to his schtick and worst of all, hacky. He didn’t listen to his fellow performers and played everything outward to his friends in the audience who laughed (fake, forced) at every single thing he did. When he became known as a “thinker” – when his public persona became the “smart guy” I was astounded. So this type of film does not come as any surprise.

(Hat tip to James Redekop on the SKEPTIC list.)

Ex-terrorists turned Christian evangelists

It was only a matter of time. Where John Todd, Mike Warnke, "Lauren Stratford," and others found that they could get attention and money by claiming to be ex-Satanists/witches/Illuminati converted to Christian evangelists, we now see "ex-Islamic terrorists" turned born-again Christians and hitting the lecture circuit, and getting paid for appearances at the U.S. Air Force Academy, as the New York Times reports. The Times article ends with the most obvious question:

Arab-American civil rights organizations question why, at a time when the United States government has vigorously moved to jail or at least deport anyone with a known terrorist connection, the three men, if they are telling the truth, are allowed to circulate freely. A spokesman for the F.B.I. said there were no warrants for their arrest.

Of the three speakers, Zak Anani, Kamal Saleem, and Walid Shoebat, Anani is described as the most explicitly preaching born-again Christianity rather than providing information about Islamic terrorism. He also seems to be the one with the clearest record of making false claims about his own background:

Anani, now an evangelical Christian, claims to be an expert on the topic because he killed 223 people in Allah's name, "two-thirds of them by daggers." He even claims to have killed a man for waking him up at 3 a.m. to pray.

Anani, born in Lebanon, said he joined a militant Muslim group in the early 1970s at age 13, and made his first kill shortly after.
...

He said he was soon promoted to troop leader and formed his own regiment, but later met a Christian missionary and converted.

Anani said he was persecuted for his conversion -- even his dad hired assassins to kill him.

He said he was soon promoted to troop leader and formed his own regiment, but later met a Christian missionary and converted.

Anani said he was persecuted for his conversion -- even his dad hired assassins to kill him -- and he was technically dead for seven minutes after narrowly escaping a beheading. He fled to the West and moved to Windsor about 10 years ago. His wife and three daughters joined him three years later.

Even in Canada, Anani said he's been physically attacked, and his house and car have been burned in Windsor for speaking out against Islam.

...

Staff. Sgt. Ed McNorton said Windsor police don't have a record of physical attacks against Anani, and his house wasn't burned.

McNorton said someone did torch his car, but it wasn't for the reasons Anani has claimed.

"There is nothing in the report we have to indicate it was in retaliation to his religious beliefs," said McNorton.

Anani's bio also states he lectured at Princeton University. Cass Cliatt, Princeton's media relations manager, said that never happened. She said Anani was scheduled to lecture there in late 2005 with the Walid Shoebat Foundation. But the event was cancelled and the foundation held a news conference at a nearby hotel.

Anani has refused several requests from The Star to revisit his past in detail.

Following a sermon Thursday night from Campbell Baptist Church Pastor Donald McKay -- Anani was scheduled to speak but his lecture was cancelled -- he again refused to answer questions.

...

Anani has said he's 49 years old, which would mean he was born in 1957 or 1958, said Quiggin. If he joined his first militant group when he was 13, it would have been in 1970 or 1971. But the fighting in Lebanon did not begin in earnest until 1975, Quiggin said.

"His story of having made kills shortly after he joined and having made 223 kills overall is preposterous, given the lack of fighting during most of the time period he claims to have been a fighter," Quiggin said. "He also states he left Lebanon to go to Al-Azhar University at the age of 18, which would mean he went to Egypt in 1976. In other words, according to himself, he left Lebanon within a year of when the fighting actually started."

He also pointed to a story on WorldNetDaily in which Walid Shoebat, another ex-terrorist and friend of Anani, also claims to have killed 223 people, two-thirds of them with daggers.

"What a coincidence," Quiggin said.

Quiggin said Anani's description of himself as a Muslim terrorist also "defies logic" based on the time frame.

"Most the groups involved in the fighting in Lebanon were secular and tended to be extreme leftists or Marxists," he said.

Quiggin said religious-based terrorism as part of the warring in Lebanon didn't begin until after 1979, following the revolution in Iran, the Soviet attack on Afghanistan and the attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Sunni Muslim extremists.

Anani's claim to have survived a beheading attempt is also questionable, said Quiggin.

Jon Trott and Mike Hertenstein, can you take a look at these guys?

(Hat tip to Jeffrey Shallit.)

9/11 truthers at the University of Waterloo

Jeffrey Shallit has written a multi-part summary of an event hosted by the University of Waterloo Debate Society on March 19 on "A Forensic Analysis of September 11, 2001: Questioning the Official Theory." The event wasn't a debate, however, it was a one-sided presentation by "9/11 Truth" movement members who formulate absurd conspiracy theories and fail to look at the actual evidence. Even the moderator taking questions and answers was a 9/11 Truther who did his best to avoid taking critical questions.

Shallit's posts:

"An Evening with 9-11 Deniers" - Introduction and summary.
"The Questionnaire at the 9/11 Denier Event" - The content of a questionnaire given out at the event, which participants were supposed to fill out at the beginning and again at the end.
"An Open Letter to Richard Borshay Lee" - A letter from Shallit to the event moderator about his performance at the event.
"A.K. Dewdney at the 9/11 Denier Event (Part 1)" - A detailed summary of Dewdney's presentation at the event, part 1.
"A.K. Dewdney at the 9/11 Denier Event (Part 2)" - Part 2.
"Graeme MacQueen at the 9/11 Denier Event" - A summary of MacQueen's presentation at the event.
"The Question-and-Answer Period at the 9/11 Deniers Evening" - Summary of the Q&A.

Of particular note among the comments at Shallit's blog is a lengthy description of the details of the WTC collapses from Arthur Scheuerman, Retired FDNY Battalion Chief.

Millennium reruns

We've been watching reruns of "Millennium" on the Chiller channel, and just saw "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense," about the fictional religion of "Selfosophy." This episode was written by Darin Morgan, who also wrote "The X-Files" episode, "Jose Chung's From Outer Space," one of the best shows of that series.

Fantastic.

The opening sequence can be seen here.

One big difference between Selfosophy and Scientology--the Selfosophists give the visiting cops copies of the Selfosophy book. Scientologists would have made them pay for it.

Charles Nelson Reilly, who played Jose Chung, just died last May. I was pleased to see that they worked a clip from the crazy Sid and Marty Krofft TV series "Lidsville" into the opening story of Selfosophy. Too bad they didn't also include a reference to "Uncle Croc's Block," which inspired me to some childhood musical creativity.

Other scientists expelled from Expelled

Allen MacNeill, who teaches introductory biology and evolution at Cornell University, reports that he and Will Provine were also interviewed by "Expelled" producer Mark Mathis under false pretenses last year. Unlike P.Z. Myers, Dawkins, and Eugenie Scott of the NCSE, however, his interview was not used in the film. (Corrected: Provine was used in the film. Provine argues that evolution is evidence in support of atheism, which is probably why he was used in the movie.)

Why not?

Because they invite ID proponents to give presentations in their classrooms. Yet Mathis claimed that he was setting out to present an even-handed presentation, not propaganda.

Personally, I think it's quite reasonable to talk about ID and creationism in college-level courses, provided that you actually evaluate their arguments. I occasionally included some creationist readings in critical thinking courses I taught at the University of Arizona, as exercises for spotting fallacies.

Otto gets discovered

At RESCUE's 8th annual "Beauty to the RESCUE" fundraiser at the Mane Attraction on March 9, local artist Susan Barken spotted our dog Otto (a rescue dog himself) and thought he'd make a good subject for one of her paintings. Here are a couple of the photos she took of him on March 16. Susan donated a dog painting for RESCUE's silent auction at the fundraiser. (UPDATE: here's the painting.)

Expelled from Expelled

P.Z. Myers of Pharyngula, who is actually featured in the dishonest Ben Stein intelligent design propaganda movie "Expelled," was denied admittance to a screening and asked to leave the premises. His guest, however, was permitted to attend, and was apparently, quite astonishingly, unrecognized--Richard Dawkins. (Myers provides a few more details here.)

The New York Times contacted "Expelled" producer Mark Mathis about it, and he claimed that Dawkins was intentionally allowed in and insinuating that Myers would cause trouble at the screening. (Anyone who has met Myers in person knows this is ridiculous.)

Here's video of P.Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins describing their respective experiences.

Jeffrey Overstreet gives what appears to be the spin that will be used to respond to this event, based on the clearly mistaken description of Myers' removal from student Stuart Blessman:

I just happened to be standing directly in line behind Dawkins’ academic colleague. Management of the movie theatre saw a man apparently hustling and bothering several invited attendees, apparently trying to disrupt the viewing or sneak in. Management then approached the man, asked him if he had a ticket, and when he confirmed that he didn’t, they then escorted him off the premises. Nowhere was one of the film’s producers to be found, and the man certainly didn’t identify himself. If a producer had been nearby, it’s possible that he would have been admitted, but the theatre’s management didn’t want to take any chances.

Myers points out:

I had an invitation. I had applied through the channels Expelled set up. I applied under my own name, and was approved. I have the first email that confirmed it, and the second email reminder, all from Motive Entertainment. Wanna see them?

You were not near me when the security guard told me I was being kicked out. No one was. He first asked me to step aside, away from the line, and he told me directly that the producer had requested that I be evicted. Theater management had nothing to do with it.

I returned to my family to explain what was happening. That’s when a theater manager came along and told me I’d have to leave right away. You might have been in a position to hear something then, but it certainly wasn’t that I was not on their pre-submitted list. I was.

If you were right there, you would have noticed my wife, daughter, and her boyfriend in line too. They got reservations in exactly the same way I did. They were not kicked out. How did that happen? Did they have invitations and they just didn’t tell me?

UPDATE: Pharyngula commenter Sastra offers this hypothesis as to what "Expelled" producer Mathis might have been thinking:

Richard Dawkins writes:
Seemingly oblivious to the irony, Mathis instructed some uniformed goon to evict Myers while he was standing in line with his family to enter the theatre, and threaten him with arrest if he didn't immediately leave the premises... did he not know that PZ is one of the country's most popular bloggers, with a notoriously caustic wit, perfectly placed to set the whole internet roaring with delighted and mocking laughter?

You know, as I read this, something occurred to me regarding the reasoning behind Mathis' "bungling incompetence," as Dawkins calls it. I wonder if Mathis made a serious blunder in his assumptions on what PZ's reaction to being thrown out of the theater would be.

He just made a film where all the academics are whining and looking pathetic about being rejected, humiliated, and tossed unceremoniously out of academia and the Halls of Science. He has been surrounding himself with people playing the poor-me victim card, claiming ignominous oppression and unfair suppression.

What then if Mathis assumed that PZ Myer's reaction would not be "delighted and mocking laughter," but what he was used to -- whimpering bellyaching. And then he could use that to make a point.

PZ was to have gone to Phayngula to lick his wounds. "People, I have sad news. I am so ashamed and humiliated. I was kicked out of the theater when I went to see Expelled. I have never heard of someone doing something like that to an academic like me. It felt awful."

And then Mathis and his publicists would go in for the kill:

Ah-ha! Now the scientist knows JUST HOW IT FEELS! What has been done to other academics was done to him! And he complains, too. How ironic is THAT??"

Instead, PZ reacts with amusement. Extreme amusement. And, worse, there is the Dawkins angle, which no, Mathis had not been expecting when he decided to play a game and toss PZ out. If PZ whines, he wins on tit for tat. If PZ creates a nasty, messy scene, he wins on 'look at the immoral fascist-like atheist temper.' But instead, PZ laughs and laughs, and with Dawkins in the theater Mathis just looks like a fool.

More I think about it, the more I think Mathis underestimated PZ's sense of humor about things, and how he would not be mortified by the incident, but jubilant. He's been around too many pretentious professorial sob-sisters. He thought they were all like that.

UPDATE: Several All of the pending screenings of "Expelled" have been removed from the registration website. That includes screenings scheduled for Santa Clara, CA, Portland, OR, and Seattle, WA. It also includes Tempe, AZ, as John Lynch points out.

UPDATE: Richard Dawkins has written a review of the film. Short version: "A shoddy, second-rate piece of work. ... Positively barking with Lord Privy Seals. ... clunking ... artless ... self-indulgent ... goes shamelessly for cheap laughs."

UPDATE: "Expelled" screenwriter Kevin Miller agrees with Chris Mooney and Matthew Nisbet that the controversy over P.Z. Myers' removal is actually beneficial for the film. I think that's highly unlikely.

UPDATE: At the "Expelled" show that P.Z. Myers was not permitted to attend, Kristine Harley asked Mark Mathis during the Q&A why he told Myers, Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott, and others that he was working on a film called "Crossroads" instead of "Expelled." He answered that this was just a working title for the film. But this is apparently not true--Wesley Elsberry has pointed out that they acquired the domain name "expelledthemovie.com" on March 1, 2007, while Eugenie Scott was interviewed in April 2007, Myers in April or later 2007, and Dawkins in Summer 2007. Mathis doesn't explain why "Crossroads" was being produced by "Rampant Films" (which had a fake website with innocuous-looking films on it) rather than Premise Media.

UPDATE (March 24, 2008): "Expelled" producer Mark Mathis admits that P.Z. Myers wasn't kicked out for being unruly, but just because he wants to make him pay to see the movie. Mathis claims in Inside Higher Ed that he doesn't like Myers' "untruthful blogging about Expelled," but with no details of what "untruthful blogging" he means.

UPDATE: Ed Brayton pulls no punches when he points out that Walt Ruloff of Premise Media lied about why P.Z. Myers wasn't allowed into the film.

UPDATE: Mooney and Nisbett, supposed experts on "framing" communications about science in such a way as to be persuasive to the general public, have created a firestorm at Science Blogs and gained them the approval of William Dembski and "Expelled" screenwriter Kevin Miller, but disagreements from just about everyone else at ScienceBlogs, bloggers and commenters alike. In hindsight, I think they should conclude that they are the ones who should have remained silent this time. (Some of my favorite posts on this topic are from Orac, Greg Laden, Mark Hoofnagle, Russell Blackford, and Mike/Tangled Up in Blue Guy. Greg Laden has thoughtfully collected a bunch of links on the topic.)

UPDATE (March 25, 2008): P.Z. Myers has posted a roundup of additional coverage. Particularly noteworthy is Scott Hatfield's look at the backgrounds of the people involved with making "Expelled." Troy Britain and Jon Voisey look at the IDers' mutually contradictory accounts of the Myers expulsion incident.

Mark Chu-Carroll at Good Math, Bad Math gives a good overview of the framing debate (arguing in favor of the idea that framing is important, but that Mooney and Nisbet have made poor choices regarding framing in this recent kerfuffle.)

Sean Carroll also provides a very good analysis of the framing issue in terms of politicians and critics--Mooney and Nisbet want politicians, but Dawkins and Myers are critics.

UPDATE: "Expelled"'s producers really are a bunch of liars who keep on lying. They've issued a press release claiming that their movie, rather than their stupid action, has been the top subject of discussion on the blogosphere, falsely claim that Richard Dawkins signed up with his "formal surname" Clinton (it's his first name, not his surname, and he didn't sign up at all but was one of Myers' RSVP'd guests), falsely allege that Dawkins and Myers have "slandered" them and their film (without giving a single example), and falsely claim that Myers has asked his readers to try to sneak in to screenings of the movie.

UPDATE (March 28, 2008): The "Expelled" producers had a telephone conference call with questions by email. P.Z. Myers dialed in early, and heard "Leslie and Paul" talking, and they gave out the telephone number to the conference bridge number for presenters (all other participants are muted). So Myers hung up and dialed back in on the presenter line. After listening to the producers dissemble and answer softball questions, he interrupted:

I said, in essence, hang on -- you guys are spinning out a lot of lies here, you should be called on it. I gave a quick gloss on it, and said that, for instance, anti-semitism has a long history in Germany that preceded Darwin, and that they ought to look up the word "pogrom". There was some mad rustling and flustering about on the other side of the phone some complaints, etc., and then one of them asked me to do the honorable thing and hang up…so I said yes, I would do the honorable thing and hang up while they continued the dishonorable thing and continued to lie.

Then I announced that if any reporters were listening in, they could contact me at pzmyers@gmail.com and I'd be happy to talk to them.

The "Expelled" producers will probably now spin this as Myers having "hacked" their conference bridge or something. Personally, as much as I think this is amusing, I think Myers' actions were unethical and possibly illegal--even if someone stupidly hands out an authentication credential (in this case, the presenter access code for a conferencing event bridge) when they don't realize they're being observed, that doesn't mean that they've authorized someone else to use it.

UPDATE (March 29, 2008): Troy Britain gets to the bottom of exactly how P.Z. Myers originally signed up for the screening he was expelled from.

Wesley Elsberry reports that the "Expelled" producers are now offering financial incentives to groups that go see the movie--the five largest groups will get $1,000 each.

UPDATE (April 10, 2008): "William Wallace" argues that Myers did "gate crash" a "private screening." I don't think anyone questions that these screenings were "private" in the sense that you couldn't just walk up and attend, you had to pre-register. But the pre-registration process was openly advertised on public web pages and there was no indication that it was limited to those who were explicitly invited due to membership in a church or similar organization. In the case of the conference call, Panda's Thumb bloggers were directly invited by email as a group (and some individually as well), though Myers did not receive one directly addressed to him.

Most antiterrorism spending is wasteful

The March 6, 2008 issue of The Economist features lots of interesting articles (it includes one of the quarterly technology reviews), one of which is "Feel safer now?" This is a report on a study by economists in Texas and Alabama commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus, which looks at the effects of increased spending on counterterrorism efforts and "homeland security" globally since 2001, and the effects. They calculate that while such spending has increased by somewhere between $65 billion and $200 billion a year, the benefits are far smaller than the costs of terrorism, which were about $17 billion in 2005. While the spending may have prevented some incidents, even if this extra spending prevented 30 attacks like the July 2005 London bombings every year, it would still be more expensive than the damage from terrorism. The authors suggest that the benefits from increased counterterrorism spending have been about 5-8 cents per each dollar of spending, whereas if instead money was spent specifically on disrupting terrorist finances, $5-$15 of benefits could be obtained for each dollar spent.