The Amazing Meeting 6 summarized, part two

This is part two of my summary of The Amazing Meeting 6 (intro, part one, part three, part four, part five).

Friday, the conference gets started
More skeptics from around the world began to show up on Friday. Checking in at the registration desk entitled each person to a name badge, a folder of materials, a laser pointer/reading light (which many put to use during the conference, sometimes to the irritation of a speaker or emcee Hal Bidlack), and a copy of An Objectivist Secular Reader, edited by Dr. Edward Hudgins. The book argues for common cause between skeptics and Objectivists "and the often-related libertarian perspective." I happened to sit next to Hudgins through part of the conference, and spoke to him a bit between sessions, and found that we have some common friends and acquaintances. He said that he thinks the libertarian viewpoint does fit well with skepticism, which was a point made later in the conference by Michael Shermer by drawing an analogy between anti-authoritarianism in the religious sphere to anti-authoritarianism in the political sphere--but of course governments actually exist, so the real underlying question is what legitimizes or justifies authority, which is a question also relevant in the scientific sphere. I'll say more about this later when I summarize Shermer's talk.

Hudgins was working on a presentation for an upcoming speaking event which included statistics about changes in U.S. religious demographics over the last several decades, showing a rise in nonbelief. I asked to look at one page that showed a breakdown of U.S. religious adherents by sect, and pointed out the huge growth among Pentecostals (something I've previously written about here). This growth indicates to me that there's more to religion than dogma and doctrine, and that a purely intellectual critique of beliefs and practices that are held for reasons that involve emotion and community is doomed to failure.

I think that one of skepticism's strengths is that it is a method, not a doctrine, and that turning it into dogma or trying to link it to a specific set of conclusions about religion or politics (or science, for that matter) is an enormous mistake that serves only to limit its appeal. Skepticism is at its best when it teaches people to think critically for themselves and at its worst when it tells people what to think. I'll have more to say on this subject when I summarize Sunday's talks, which included one by Don Nyberg railing against "religious pseudoscience."

Friday morning I sat down to breakfast with a young couple from Texas, whose names unfortunately escape me. He had just completed a semester of medical school in Guadalajara, Mexico, and she had finished a degree in neuroscience. We were soon joined by Tony, an Australian who had been living with his partner in Mexico City for the last several years and was now on his way back to Australia by way of a trip around the world. There was a strong international presence at the conference, with dozens of Australians in particular, probably due to the strength of the Australian Skeptics organization.

After breakfast, I went up to the conference room to hear the end of the recording of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast which was being recorded live in the room, but somehow I completely failed to meet Steven Novella, one of the podcast's hosts, through the entire conference. I had hoped to at least say hello and introduce myself, since we were cosigners of a letter to Skeptical Inquirer back in 1999.

Hal Bidlack opens the event
The conference officially kicked off with an introduction by Hal Bidlack, who is running for Congress in Colorado Springs, CO, a part of the country which would be greatly helped by a critically thinking legislator. He mentioned that two prominent skeptics have died since the last conference, Arthur C. Clarke and Jerry Andrus. Andrus was a regular attendee of Skeptics Society conferences and JREF conferences, known for setting up his optical illusions and his willingness to explain them patiently to all.

Randi's welcome
Hal then introduced James Randi, who was looking more frail than the last time I saw him in person, though he said that his health is much better than it has been in the recent past. Randi pointed out that a light, a chair, and a table commemorating Jerry Andrus and his illusions was set up in the back corner of the conference room, and will be set up at future Amazing Meetings as well--while noting that this is for us to remember Jerry.

Randi announced that the JREF library is up to 2282 books, that this conference had about 900 attendees, and that it attracts more women and young people than any other skeptics conference. My impressions supported that conclusion. He also stated that there are UK and Dutch skeptical TV series in the works, and ended by saying that he wanted everyone at the conference to come up, greet him, and shake his hand (which I had already done on Thursday when I ran into him by the registration desk).

Ben Goldacre on homeopathy
The first official conference presentation was by Ben Goldacre, M.D. of www.badscience.net, who spoke about "squabbles about homeopathy." Goldacre described the basic arguments against homeopathy. The main argument against it is that its extreme dilutions are so extreme that a single molecule of a 30C diluted substance would be found in not an Olympic-sized swimming pool, but in ten thousand million million million million pools. A 55C dilution would be equivalent to a universe-sized sphere filled with water with a single molecule of the diluted substance in it. Goldacre observed that a label of a homeopathic remedy that says it is safe because it contains "less than 1 ppm" of the diluted substance is quite an understatement. The homeopaths respond that this is irrelevant; what makes the homeopathic remedy work is that "water has memory," and its structure has somehow changed to reflect being in contact with the diluted substance. But, Goldacre asked, why does it remember the remedy and not, say, having been in Nelson's colon or the Queen's bladder, or in contact with countless other substances? The homeopathic answer to that is that the memory only comes into effect through "succussion," when the remedy is in the water and the container is banged ten times firmly against a wooden striking board (for instance).

As homeopaths do want to present their work as scientific, they have been willing to engage with skeptics. Goldacre reported that his website was given permission to reprint papers from the journal Homeopathy on water memory, which were then critiqued in the JREF Forums, and the critiques assembled into a response which was submitted to and published in the same journal.

But Goldacre points out that the standard anti-homeopathy arguments have been made at least since John Forbes, Queen Victoria's physician, made them in 1846, but they have proven ineffective in persuading homeopaths and users of homeopathic remedies from giving them up. He says the arguments are "irrelevant," because homeopaths are persuaded that their remedies actually work. But that's just not so, he argued. While one might think that homeopathy is like anesthetics where we don't know how it works but it does, with homeopathy we have no good explanation for how it could work and we also have evidence that it doesn't work any better than a placebo.

He then went on to talk about how the placebo effect is a genuinely fascinating scientific anomaly far more worthy of interest than homeopathy. In pain relief, four sugar pills are more effective than two, salt water injection is more effective than sugar pills, and commercial packaging make placebos more effective. He argued that the extent to which homeopathy works is indistinguishable from the placebo effect, as demonstrated by a proper meta-analysis of homeopathic trials, reducing the weight of those which have flaws such as poor randomization and poor blinding.

Keynote by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Neil deGrasse Tyson, who was clearly the rock star of skepticism at the reception on Thursday night, surrounded by adoring fans (perhaps it was his hat, as P.Z. Myers suggests), gave the keynote address to the conference. When he began, many people had been shining their laser pointers on the wall above the stage, and Tyson informed the audience that he would express his "geek dominance." He instructed everyone to point their laser pointers above the door on the opposite side of the room. Once everyone had done so, he pulled out his laser pointer--shining from farther away than anyone else, since he was up on stage--and shined a large green dot that outshone all of the red dots.

Tyson's talk was called either "Adventures in Science Illiteracy" or "Brain Droppings of a Skeptic" (a title cribbed from George Carlin). He began by saying that he had something to do with Pluto's demotion from being a planet, and that anybody who didn't like it should "get over it." The rest of his talk wandered over a large range of topics that have come up in the Q&A sessions of his lectures:

UFO Sightings: When people say they've seen a UFO, be sure to remind them what the "U" stands for. Typically, those who claim they've seen a UFO start by saying it was unidentified, then end up "inventing knowledge of everything" about it being an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

Alien Abductions: Tyson said that eyewitness testimony is the lowest form of evidence in science (though it's certainly not worthless, and even the scientific literature is a form of testimony about the results of experiments). He pulled out his iPhone and said that if he had one of these 10 years ago, he'd have been burned at the stake. If you get abducted by a UFO, you should take something not of this earth in order to prove your alien contact. He showed a slide of a cover of the book "How to Defend Yourself Against Alien Abduction" and said that "I bought it, read it, and heeded its advice--and I have not been abducted."

Inept Aliens: They travel trillions of miles to get here, then crash.

Conspiracy Theory: They tend to tacitly admit insufficient data. If an argument lasts more than five minutes, both sides are wrong.

Astrology: If you read a horoscope to a group of people and ask if it describes them, approximately 2/3 will agree that it fits them. Most Scorpios are actually Ophiuchans.

Birth Rates and Full Moons: Average human gestation is 295 days; the lunar cycle is 29.5 days. Full moon birth = full moon impregnation.

Behavior and Full Moons: The pressure of an extra pillow is a trillion times greater than the tidal force on a cranium.

Surviving Terminal Cancer: If someone gets three diagnoses from physicians giving them 5-7 months to live, then lives for five years, they credit God for their survival, rather than blaming doctors for a poor diagnosis.

Swami Levitation: Tyson suggest 1,000 cans of baked beans would generate sufficient flatulence to become airborne.

Moon Hoax: Modern technology is so advanced that some people can't believe it. But if you learn the rocket equation and look at how much fuel was in the Saturn V, if the launch was fake, what was all that fuel for?

Mars "Virus": In 2003, the Earth was the closest it had been to Mars than in the previous 60,000 years, which led to multiple stories (including in subsequent years) that some virus would jump from Mars to Earth. Tyson pointed to the side and said "Japan is that way." He jumped a few feet to the side in that direction, and then said he is now as much closer to Japan as Mars came to the Earth from its average distance.

Fear of Numbers: 80% of building on Broadway in NYC have no 13th floor, due to an irrational fear of the number 13. (Yet who actually does fear 13?) And why don't we use negative numbers on elevators for subfloors? Or negative numbers in financial ledgers, instead of parentheses? (Actually, I suspect that's to avoid ambiguity with hyphens in dollar ranges, rather than a fear of negative numbers.)

Naming Rights: Tyson pointed out countries that put scientists on their money--Isaac Newton on the English one-pound note, Einstein on Israeli money. The U.S. has only one scientist--Ben Franklin--on money, on the $100 bill, but with no symbolism to represent his scientific work--no kite, no key, no lightning rod. He also pointed to Gauss and the Gaussian distribution on British money as British support of science, but Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in The Black Swan, points out that the financial field goes grossly astray by trying to using Gaussian distributions to describe phenomena that are not Gaussian. Taleb points to Gauss on British money as ironic and inept rather than pro-science.

Tyson also looked at the names of the elements, with slides of the periodic table that showed which ones were discovered when, and by which countries. While the U.S. was not the top country, it has discovered nearly all of the most recent elements. Tyson explained that Sweden has discovered so many elements because Ytterby cave was rich in undiscovered elements, and yielded the names of the elements Yttrium (39, 1795), Terbium (65, 1843), Erbium (68, 1843), Ytterbium (70, 1878), and Scandium (21, 1879).

Jury Duty I: Tyson described being called for jury duty. He was asked what he did, he said that he was an astrophysicist. When asked what he teaches, he said "a course on evaluating evidence and the unreliability of eyewitness testimony," at which point he was promptly dismissed.

Jury Duty II: Tyson was called for jury duty again, and made the first cut of jurors. The facts of the case were described--the defendant was charged with the possession of "2000 mg" of cocaine. When the jurors were asked if they had any questions, Tyson asked, "why did you describe it as 2000 mg instead of 2 g, about the weight of a postage stamp? Aren't you trying to bias the jury by making it sound like a large quantity of drugs?" At which point he was promptly dismissed.

Math?: Tyson pointed out a headline bemoaning the fact that "half the schools in the district are below average." He also pointed out an article that pointed out that 80% of airplane crash survivors had studied the locations of the exit doors upon takeoff as a suggestion that this is a good idea--but it didn't give the percentage of the nonsurvivors that had done the same. If 100% of the nonsurvivors had also studied the exit locations, would that be an argument not to do so?

Tyson responded to the common observation that the lottery is a tax upon the poor, saying that no, it's a tax on the innumerate. Similarly, he pointed to the subprime mortgage mess as a mathematical illiteracy problem.

Bayer ad in Physics Today: Tyson described an advertisement that Bayer placed in Physics Today asking how to get students interested in "why heavy things fall faster than lighter things." The ad was later changed to "why heavy things fall as fast as lighter things."

George W. Bush: Tyson said that he lives closer to Ground Zero in Manhattan than the height of the WTC towers, and showed some photographs he took on September 11. He attended a science medal presentation at the White House since he was on the presidential advisory committee; at that event Bush stated that "Our God is the God who named the stars." However, 2/3 of all stars with names have Arabic names, because from 800-1100 Islam was very supportive of math and science, giving us the names of algebra and algorithm, and the Arabic numerals. But in the 12th century, Imam Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111), the St. Augustine of Islam, stated that "manipulating numbers is the work of the devil."

There are 1.2 billion Muslims, yet they've only earned 2 of 579 Nobel prizes (one in physics, one in economics), while Jews, who are 1/80 as numerous, have earned 143 Nobel prizes, and thus have had 6,400 times the impact of Muslims on modern science. He wondered how much more contribution they would have made if it had not been for al-Ghazali's position of influence on Islam.

Intelligent Design: A 2004 SUV ad said, "In the world of SUV's, it's the survival of the fittest." In 2005, it was changed to "Its features are nothing short of a miracle."

Tyson argued that the intelligent design idea--stopping investigation with "God did it"--has historically stopped scientific inquiry. He argued that Newton could have developed Laplace's perturbation theory if he had not stopped his inquiry and appealed to God for the explanation of planetary movements that conflicted with his theory.

Stupid Design: Leukemia, vision loss with age, Alzheimer's, exhaling most oxygen we inhale, our inability to smell CO or CO2, the fact that we eat, drink, and speak through the same opening (vs. dolphin design--dolphins can't die laughing). Tyson also mentioned the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which killed 70,000 people, mostly Christians who had gathered in churches that Sunday mornings.

Religious People in the U.S.: Tyson observed that most people in the U.S. are religious--about 90% believe in God. When you look at educated people, holding a master's or Ph.D. degree, it drops to about 60%. When you look at scientists, it's about 40%. The most elite scientists--Nobel prizewinners, National Academy of Science members, etc.--it drops to 7%, with physicists and biologists as the least religious. But he pointed out that the 7% is still a substantial number of people--you cannot blame the general public for being religious if we don't understand why 7% of the most educated elite people are religious and pray to a personal God.

Bible in Science Classroom: He observed that there aren't scientists picketing in front of churches demanding equal time for science, referred to Matthew LaClair's confrontation with his history teacher for proselytizing in the classroom (a story broken by this blog), and read his letter to the editor of the New York Times about the case:

To the Editor:

People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs.

This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
New York, Dec. 19, 2006

Albert Einstein and God: Tyson pointed out the content of the recently published 1954 letter from Albert Einstein, and how religious believers who have claimed Einstein as one of their own have been in error.

Cosmic Perspective: Tyson went through a series of numbers with examples to clarify their magnitude: 1, or 10**0, a clear one. 1,000, a thousand, 10**3, kilo. 1,000,000, a million, 10**6, mega. 10**9, a billion, giga. There are 6,000 astrophysicists in 6 billion people, so astrophysicists are one in a million. (But someone observed that there were 3 astrophysicists present among the 900 attendees of the conference.) McDonald's has sold 100 billion hamburgers--which could encircle the globe 52 times, and then be stacked to the moon and back. At age 31, you will have lived for one billion seconds. 10**12, trillion, tera. 10**15, quadrillion, peta. The number of sounds emitted by all human beings who have ever lived. 10**18, quadrillion, exa. The number of grains of sand on an average beach. 10**21, septillion, zetta. The number of stars in the universe.

Tyson then made a list of the most abundant elements in the universe--hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen--and observed that, minus helium, these are also the same as the key ingredients of life.

He quoted the Bible's "and the meek shall inherit the earth and live in a world of peace"--and suggested that the correct translation should have been "geek" instead of "meek."

APS Conference in Vegas: Tyson closed by referring to a Las Vegas newspaper headline that said, "Meeting of physicists in town, lowest casino take ever."

Alec Jason on Peter Popoff and criminal forensics
Alec Jason, an independent forensic photographer and investigator, described how he helped James Randi in his investigation of the faith healer and televangelist Peter Popoff, who claimed to use the "word of knowledge" to obtain detailed information from God about the people he was healing. In fact, Popoff's wife Elizabeth was collecting the information from people before the show and transmitting it to Popoff via radio to an earpiece receiver he was wearing. Jason described how he went to Brooks Hall a day prior to the Popoff healing event to determine the normal background radio frequency broadcasts, and then scanned for traffic during the event while posing as a janitor at the facility. The device he used was an early Scanlock device, and although Popoff could have used countermeasures ranging such as frequency hopping, codes, spread spectrum, or encryption, none of these were in use and they quickly picked up the sound of footsteps and then Elizabeth Popoff saying, "Hi, Petey. I hope you can hear me, becasue if you can't, you're in trouble."

Randi exposed Popoff on the Tonight Show, and Popoff's career seemed to have been derailed, though it took months for his followers to get the message. But now Popoff is back--and while he was making $12 million a year before, he's reporting over $24 million a year today. The message was a demoralizing one for skeptics--even the exposure of a blatant fraud like Popoff's is not sufficient to keep him from continuing to take money from the gullible and live a life of luxury.

There were some technical difficulties during the first part of Jason's talk, and I found it mostly to be old hat--I've read Randi's The Faith Healers, seen his Tonight Show appearance, and viewed multiple presentations about the Popoff exposure.

The remainder of Jason's presentation was about his work in some criminal cases. In a case in Africa, a body was found with a SIG Sauer P226 pistol on its chest. The question to resolve was whether this was a suicide or a homicide--after firing, the gun remains cocked and has to be manually decocked. A photo of the crime scene was too fuzzy to see clearly whether the gun was cocked, but Jason was able to compare reflectivity hot spots of a cocked vs. a decocked gun to determine that the gun was decocked. As it turned out, this didn't show that it was a homicide, as the first officer on the scene said that he had picked up the gun and turned on the safety--there is no safety on the pistol, and what he had actually done is decocked it, and thus the gun was shown to have been still cocked when the body was found.

Jason also went into a lot of detail in the Frank Zupan case, where Zupan was found at the scene of a vehicle accident where his wife was behind the wheel of their car and dead with gunshot wounds to the head. Zupan testified that they were driving at 25-30 mph when an oncoming car approached, and he thought rocks came through the window and hit his wife, which he then attributed to gunshots. Jason showed that a gun cannot be shot at faster than 10 rounds per second, and if gunfire came from a car approaching at 20 mph, there would be 3 feet of movement per shot. Since Zupan's wife was shot twice in the head and there was no damage to the front windshield, there's no way Zupan's account made sense.

Penn & Teller Q&A session
Penn and Teller had no prepared material, but simply answered questions from the audience. They talked about a wide-ranging variety of subjects, including Penn's radio show (which may come back in a different form), Teller's short film that appears on George A. Romero's "Diary of the Dead" DVD, and the fact that their show Bullshit! is "fair and extremely biased." In response to a question about what they may be wrong about, Penn said that he has symptoms of a believer with respect to his views on art and his libertarian politics. When asked what's the line between reasonable concern for the environment and environmentalist nuttery, Penn answered "I don't know," and Teller said, "carbon credits are bullshit, modeled on indulgences."

Penn stated that he thinks Obama is very classy and positive, but that he doesn't agree with him about anything.

Teller showed a video made by Jeff Levine about cold reading, called "The Cold Reader," based on a story by Matthew Simmons.

George Hrab's music
George Hrab came onstage briefly to play a couple of songs, one titled "God is Not Great" inspired by Hitchens' book, and another about being a skeptic.

P.Z. Myers on bat wings
P.Z. Myers gave a talk that presented some actual science--he first gave a brief description of his field and his own work, and then a summary of work by Chris Cretekos on the genes that control the development of bat wings, and what happens when they are put into rats. Rather than attempt to summarize this myself, I'll point the interested reader to Stephen Matheson's description of the same work.

Richard Saunders on himself and educational materials for kids
Richard Saunders of the Australian Skeptics, author of 17 books on origami, creator of the origami Pigasus for JREF, founder of the Sydney Skeptics in the Pub group, former president and current VP of the Australian Skeptics, chief spoon bender for the Australian Skeptics, and producer of the TANK vodcast, said that he's about to be the most famous TV skeptic in Australia. He will be the skeptical judge on "The One: The Search for Australia's Most Gifted Psychic" show. After spending a lot of time talking about his past and coming achievements, he did a nice demonstration of a dowsing investigation for use by educators to teach children scientific methods. He had six volunteers from the audience as dowsers to try to find a bottle of water placed under one of six plastic bins. First he found the best dowser at detecting the bottle when it was out in the open, then did trials first blind and then double-blind.

Panel discussion on identifying as a skeptic
The day's events concluded with a panel discussion between James Randi, P.Z. Myers, Michael Shermer, Margaret Downey, Phil Plait, Hal Bidlack, and a member of the NYC Skeptics (I didn't catch the name) about skepticism and identifying as a skeptic. Shermer began by saying that we start by assuming everything is false and require evidence to demonstrate that anything is true. I'm not sure that's actually a sound methodology--it's a lot easier to dig yourself into a philosophically skeptical hole where you doubt the existence of an external world and other minds than it is to get out. Our actual belief methods start out with trust--trust in our own senses and in the testimony of others as we learn language and concepts--not with Cartesian skepticism. In my opinion, something like "trust but verify" and "determine the limits and faults in belief-forming methods, and avoid them" is a better procedure than trying to build up all knowledge from nothing or from indubitable foundational premises. In answer to a question about various kinds of deniers referring to themselves as skeptics, Phil Plait observed that skeptics demand evidence, while deniers deny evidence. Those who deny the Holocaust or that man landed on the moon are not skeptics, they are deniers.

At one point, Margaret Downey made a statement that testimony from individuals who claim remarkable experiences are not relevant because "first-hand reports are just hearsay." But this is a mistake--they may be characterized as hearsay to others, but not to those who are making the reports who have actually had the experiences. Further, reports themselves may be collected and correlated with other objective evidence and used to draw scientific conclusions. I think it's a huge mistake to reject individual experience out of hand in the manner suggested; it's generally possible to take a report of an experience and identify possible explanations for what could cause the experience (or the report of an experience and the false belief in an experience).

There was an excellent audience question about how those of us with limited scientific knowledge can come to conclusions about complex scientific topics where we lack expertise to evaluate the evidence ourselves--aren't we taking results on faith? Randi responded to the question, but I don't think he really got the point. I went and spoke with the questioner afterward, and she agreed that he seemed to be answering a different question. I made the point that in such a case we need to determine who are the reliable experts, the trustworthy authorities, and that we have a number of clues we can use to help identify them.

On to TAM6 summary, part three.

The Amazing Meeting 6 summarized, part one

This is part one of my summary of The Amazing Meeting 6 (intro, part two, part three, part four, part five).

The Amazing Meeting 6 was my first conference of the "Amazing" series of skeptics' conferences, sponsored by the James Randi Educational Foundation. I've attended a variety of other skeptical conferences over the last fourteen years, from a CSICOP conference at Stanford University in November 1984 to the most recent Skeptics Society conference at Caltech in 2006, with numerous conferences in between. I've written summaries of a few of those for skeptical publications, such as a 1990 Tucson CSICOP UFO workshop and the 1992 Dallas CSICOP conference (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4).

The attendees at skeptics' conferences are usually older white males--I was one of the youngest attendees, at 19, of the 1984 Stanford conference, by far. This conference, while still mostly older white males, was a much younger crowd with a lot more women than any other skeptical conference I've attended. At one point during the conference, a young man asked a question which began with a statement something like "At 19, I think I'm the youngest person here," at which point whoever had the microphone onstage asked for anyone present younger than 19 to raise their hands--and at least a dozen hands went up. Hal Bidlack, who was an excellent master of ceremonies for the conference, at one point made a point of publicly embarrassing a young man by observing that he was having his 15th birthday.

The conference began on the afternoon of Thursday, June 19 with a series of optional workshops, of which I paid for one, a memory workshop with Banachek. (I didn't attend the earlier workshop on skeptical investigation with Ben Radford.) Banachek's workshop was a two-hour session which gave a basic overview of a number of different kinds of memory systems, with audience participation so that we actually used the systems ourselves.

Banachek began his seminar with a demonstration where he looked at a deck of cards, then split it up into multiple pieces, had multiple people shuffle their respective parts, then reassemble it into two halves, each of which was given to a volunteer on stage. He proceeded to identify which person was holding each card of each suit in the deck, with 100% success. (He did admit that there was some trickery as well as memory to this demonstration.)

Then it was on to the memory systems. First was a loci system, where you associate the items to be memorized with different physical locations--in our case, we learned a list of object associated with different rooms of a house. By creating descriptions with some vivid features, such as a gun laying on a kitchen floor that had been fired, leaving black marks on the kitchen floor, we were all easily able to remember which objects were associated with which room. Next was a brief discussion of acronym-based mnemonics, such as "old elephants have much skin" as a way of remembering the names of the Great Lakes, from east to west.

Next was a linking system, which we spent the most amount of time on. We all learned a list of fourteen items on a grocery list by creating vivid associations between each item and the next in the series. We broke off into groups of about ten each, and each group came up with its own associations. One person from each group was then tested by asking what was the next item on the list, and describing the link they chose to use for the association. Several of us tested each other or were tested by others who were in the workshop on subsequent days of the conference with questions like "what came after tangerines?" I can still generate the full list of fourteen items from memory, as I'm sure most of the attendees of the workshop can, as well.

Finally, we spent a brief amount of time on peg systems and phonetic systems, which can be usefully combined into an extremely powerful memory system of the sort taught by Harry Lorayne. The basics of the system are to create associations between phonetic sounds (consonants only) and the numbers 0-9 (and then farther, as far as you want to go), so that words can be constructed associated with numbers and vice versa. He showed us a 74-digit number, and suggested that such a number could be learned with a phonetic system.

By creating associations between the "peg words" and items to be learned, you can remember lists of things, their relative positions to each other, as well as things like long lists of numbers or cards in a deck. Banachek then revealed that the grocery list we had learned, using the phonetic system he just described, encoded the 74-digit number--thus, by learning the phonetic system, we had already memorized it through our earlier exercise.

This was the first time Banachek had given this training, and so he was not as polished as, say, Harry Lorayne. But it was definitely a handy overview. My only criticism is that it would have been better to spend more time on the peg system if it's possible to do so in such a short time frame, as that's clearly where the most benefit is to be had.

After the workshop, I went out to dinner with some friends to a wonderful Thai restaurant--Lotus of Siam--and then returned for the conference reception. I ended up chatting briefly with Michael Shermer, P.Z. Myers, and some Denver and Ottawa Skeptics, and most significantly to me, finally meeting Reed Esau in person after an online acquaintance of about thirteen years, beginning when he created and I provided the hosting for the celebrity atheists list. Although Reed invited me to several parties, I only stayed out late one night during the conference, missing the fun, but waking up in plenty of time for morning discussions at breakfast before each day's conference events.

On to TAM6 summary, part two.

Alister McGrath scores a conversion for the other team

Christian theologian Alister McGrath, author of The Dawkins Delusion, managed to help persuade Norwegian astrophysicist Øystein Elgarøy that atheists had the better arguments. Elgarøy, formerly a liberal Christian, is now an atheist and a member of the Norwegian Humanist Association.

(Hat tip to DMB at the Talk Rational forum.)

Creationism's latest strategy

Barbara Forrest has an excellent article describing the passage of the recent "academic freedom" stealth creationism bill in Louisiana that's was just signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal and will no doubt serve as a model for other states. She discusses the Louisiana Family Forum, which is behind the bill, as well as the involvement of the Discovery Institute.

Ray Comfort concedes banana argument

I just read yesterday at the Friendly Atheist blog that Ray Comfort has conceded that the banana is not really the "atheist's nightmare," and that it's not a good argument. But he is still continuing his habit of saying incredibly stupid things, such as that light is invisible and California wildfires are punishment for same-sex marriage. I find it remarkable that he continues to pass himself off as a "master" when his blog is full of commenters who are vastly more intelligent than he seems to be, who shred his arguments in a manner more amusing, witty, and persuasive than anything he writes.

But then, maybe he's actually an atheist playing the role of an exaggeratedly dumb Christian, in the way that Stephen Colbert plays an exaggerated conservative. After all, there's clearly success to be had and money to be made by being wrong on the Internet. I've speculated in the past that some people are intentionally putting forth bad arguments just to get the traffic from corrections.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid that, despite the fact that people like Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Moore, Michelle Malkin, and the Stop the ACLU bloggers often say things that they clearly should know are false, it's not that they are being ironic parodies like Colbert, it's that they just don't care about the difference between truth and falsehood--they are bullshitters. And it's just scary that there are people who take them seriously as reliable sources of facts.

Taipei 101's 730-ton damper ball

The world's tallest building is the 1667-foot Taipei 101 in Taiwan. One of its features is a 730-ton steel ball, made of 41 steel plates, that acts as a damper against swaying motions of the skyscraper due to wind.

On May 12, 2008, the damper, which sits between the 87th and 89th floors of the building, got a workout from the earthquakes that hit China's Sichuan province. And a YouTube user was there to get footage:



(Via deputydog, which has more information about the damper. Hat tip to Dan Noland on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)

ApostAZ podcast #4

The fourth episode of the ApostAZ podcast is now out, and this time I contributed a segment on "Lucy"'s knee joint.

Episode 004: Atheism and Freethought in Phoenix- Squared by Greydon Square. Happy Freuder's Day. Inappropriate Teachers and the Children They Burn. Philly Coalition of Reason creates the Sign of the Times, wow. Science and Skepticism Segment by Jim Lippard, "Lucy's Knee Joint". Fleshing Out the Humanity of Godlessness.

Check it out.

(BTW, correction to the podcast: there's a reference to Kenneth Starr that should be a reference to Ken Lay of Enron--but he died of a heart attack, not a suicide or fake suicide like Samuel Israel III. And the quotation about "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" is from Theodosius Dobzhansky. ApostAZ talks about EquallyYoked.com, which this blog has discussed here.)

Help troubled animals, by dowsing

For some reason, I decided to Google the name of a channeler I debated on radio back in 1987, to see if she was still in the business. While I didn't come across any online references to her channeling, I did find her giving positive testimonials for a Sedona teacher of online newage courses that would be a lot funnier if they weren't serious.

The course "Dowsing to Help the Animals" covers the following topics:

How to talk with pets and wild animals
How to find lost pets
How to protect pets and wild animals from danger
How to choose the right and perfect veterinarian
How to improve your pet’s health condition
How to understand and improve troublesome pet behavior
How to remove insects and other pests from your home

AND MORE!

There's also "Help Troubled Species":

With the power of subtle energy technology, it is possible to help troubled species, both on a local and worldwide level.

Dowsing, a simple, yet powerful subtle energy management too, can be utilized to shift circumstances, to communicate with animal and plant life, and to access information on how to best help the creatures that need assistance.

There's also "Dowsing to Help Plants." These courses don't seem to have basic dowsing skills as a prerequisite, though another course, "Making Peace with Earth Energies, Cosmic Forces & More" does, noting that "You must be able to achieve a “yes” and “no” response with a pendulum, other dowsing device, or through muscle testing."

Another course that seems to be a prerequisite for a number of courses on the site is a self-help course in "Chasing the Shadow of Free Will: An Introduction to Belief Codes." This course description claims that "MOST of your troublesome thoughts were inherited from members of your family or are the result of past life experiences" and that the course will teach you to "use intuitive skills to access your subconscious mind and uncover the hidden thoughts (belief codes) that are preventing you from fulfilling your heart's desires." By "clearing belief codes," you can obtain a wide variety of salutory effects.

It sounds a lot like Dianetics, the core of Scientology--that the key to overcoming negative psychological problems is the elimination of "engrams," memory traces in the unconscious or "reactive mind" caused by negative prenatal (or evolutionary) experiences. The use of the term "clearing" is heavily used in Scientology, and the goal of Dianetics is to become "clear," by completely eliminating the reactive mind so that all behavior is voluntary and consciously chosen. (I'm not sure what Scientologists think about the autonomic nervous system--presumably they have decided that it is distinct from the reactive mind rather than something to be eliminated.)

At any rate, it appears that newage, if not channeling, is still alive and well in Sedona.

God arrested for selling cocaine near Tampa church

Offered without comment.

The Amazing Meeting 6

I've returned home after attending my first Amazing Meeting, TAM 6, and it was indeed an amazing meeting, with about 900 in attendance. There were many excellent speakers and talks, and it was a pleasure to meet and have conversations with many of my fellow skeptics at meals and between sessions.

I took nearly 50 pages of notes, which I'll use to write up a more detailed review. If any readers would like to point me to other summaries, I'll link to those as well.

The photo is of an Australian black swan at the Flamingo Hotel, where the conference was held.

Physics teacher Dean Baird has a fantastic collection of photographs from the conference.

UPDATE: Summary part one, part two, part three, part four, and part five.

Fake military for Christian evangelism

Chris Rodda reports on the United States Services Command, a Christian evangelizing "disaster relief" organization that illegally uses U.S. military-style ranks and uniforms, yet rather than being prosecuted for its criminal impersonation, receives awards, recommendations, and commendations from military officers and from President George W. Bush.

The photo Rodda links to has been deleted, but can be found here, where some real military officers express their disgust with USSC's fake soldiers.

(Hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars for the Rodda story.)

Who profits from the war on drugs?

Well, apart from those in the illegal drug business themselves, who benefit from the lack of legal competition, it looks like the big winners are government contractors--DynCorp and now Blackwater.

The real 9/11 conspiracy

Readers of Gerald Posner's Why America Slept know that there has been evidence of Saudi royal family connections to the al Qaeda 9/11 terrorism plot. The final chapter of that book, titled "The Interrogation," is about the capture and interrogation of al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan on March 28, 2002 by a team that included American Special Forces and FBI SWAT teams as well as Pakistani police and military. After he was captured, Zubaydah was subjected to interrogation by the CIA in a real "false flag" operation, where he was made to believe he had been transported to a country with a reputation for brutal interrogation. While in fact he was in Afghanistan, he was made to believe he was in a Saudi jail, and two Arab-Americans with U.S. Special Forces played the role of his interrogators.

To their surprise, Zubaydah didn't display fear, but relief. While previously he hadn't even been willing to reveal his identity, he now gave his name, said he was happy to see them, and asked the interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family, for whom he provided private home and cell phone numbers from memory. That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, a nephew of King Fahd, owner of the Research and Marketing Group, and owner of the Kentucky Derby winning horse War Emblem.

Zubaydah claimed that bin Laden had made a cooperative arrangement with Pakistani air force chief Air Marshal Mushaf Ali Mir, a military official with close ties to the pro-Islamist members of ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, and that this arrangement had the blessing of Prince Turki of Saudi Arabia. Also according to Zubaydah, Turki had made a deal to provide aid to the Taliban in Afghanistan and would not ask for extradition of bin Laden, so long as his activities were directed away from Saudi Arabia.

Zubaydah also implicated Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud and Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir as supporters of al Qaeda, and stated that Mir and Prince Ahmed had advance knowledge that there would be terrorist attacks against the U.S. on 9/11.

His interrogators were skeptical of his claims, even though information from him was successfully used to capture Omar al-Faruq, a senior al Qaeda operative in Southeast Asia. And when U.S. personnel (not posing as Saudis) confronted Zubaydah about his claims, he denied it all and said that he had made it up. CIA investigation of his claims found nothing to refute them, however, and some corroborating evidence. A report on his claims was submitted to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, each of which responded that the claims were entirely false.

On July 22, 2002, Prince Ahmed died unexpectedly of a heart attack at the age of 43, and on July 23, 2002, Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud was killed in a car accident at the age of 41. A week later, Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir was found dead, having "died of thirst" at the age of 25. Prince Turki was fired from his position as head of Saudi Intelligence on September 1, 2001, and became the Saudi ambassador to Great Britain in 2002.

On February 20, 2003, Pakistani air force chief Mir, his wife, and fifteen others were killed in a plane crash.

None of this appeared in the 9/11 Commission Report, though it might have been planned for that document. This is because the Bush administration censored 28 pages of material about Saudi connections to 9/11 from the report on the grounds of national security.

In 2004, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Bob Graham, published a book, Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of America's War on Terror, in which he claimed that Bush covered up evidence that the Saudi government was aiding at least two of the 9/11 hijackers via Omar al-Bayoumi, which Graham discussed in an interview with Salon.com.

More recently, New York Times reporter Philip Shenon's book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, raises the same point about the Saudi government's ties to Omar al-Bayoumi.

I think the full story of Saudi and Pakistani involvement in 9/11 has yet to be told.

None of this involves munitions used to collapse buildings, unmanned drones, missiles hitting the Pentagon, or the innocence of Osama bin Laden, like the crazy 9/11 truth movement's claims. It does involve U.S. political relations with nations that have been key allies in the war on terror, both of which have governments which have been close to collapse, and one of which (Pakistan) is a nuclear power and one of which is the source of most foreign oil imported by the U.S. It's clear why the U.S. would treat relations with these countries gingerly even if they did have members of their governments directly involved in 9/11, and why those countries would want to quietly dispose of the problem.

UPDATE (July 16, 2009): Greetings to Talking Points Memo readers, here because of a link in the comments from a story about a Bush/Cheney CIA assassination program apparently permitted to operate domestically. That commenter seemed to suggest that the CIA might have been behind the deaths described in the above post, which I think is highly unlikely in comparison to the speculation that the Saudis themselves might have taken care of matters.

UPDATE (April 13, 2015): Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, claimed in February 2015 that members of the Saudi royal family helped fund the 9/11 attacks. He specifically named Prince Turki al-Faisal Al Saud and Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

Phoenix 9/11 truther on hunger strike

Blair Gadsby, a 45-year-old adjunct religious studies professor at Chandler-Gilbert Community College, has gone on hunger strike until John McCain agrees to meet with him about 9/11 conspiracy theories. Gadsby thinks that the U.S. government destroyed the World Trade Center towers and Building 7 with explosives, even though he's apparently read the Popular Mechanics book on Debunking 9/11 Myths, for which McCain wrote the foreword.

In how many different ways is this guy an idiot?

1. He's bought into nonsensical conspiracy theories--his version has both Islamic terrorists flying planes into the WTC and explosives put there earlier, so he must believe something like this.
2. He apparently can't understand the refutations of them.
3. He thinks a hunger strike is a good way to meet John McCain.
4. He's an adjunct professor of religious studies.

Feel free to add to the list.

The sleaziness of Fox and Michelle Malkin

Watch in the video below as Michelle Malkin claims that conservatives have not engaged in any ad hominem or unwarranted attacks on Barack Obama's wife Michelle, even as Fox News places a caption below her, referring to Michelle Obama as "Obama's baby mama," a slang term which the Urban Dictionary defines as:

• The mother of your child(ren), whom you did not marry and with whom you are not currently involved.”
  
• “Basically a woman you had a child or children with who you didn’t marry and are no longer involved with. Usually associated with hoodrats and trailer park b***hes.”
  
• “Like herpes, it won’t go away!!!!!”

The always despicable, dishonest, sleazy, and inflammatory Michelle Malkin responded to this by trying to defend it as entirely unobjectionable, which John Scalzi vividly rebuts in his "Fox News Would Like To Take a Moment to Remind You That the Obamas Are As Black As Satan's Festering, Baby-Eating Soul." Fox has merely admitted that the caption showed "poor judgment."

(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

Oregon Gov. declares June 21 "Day of Reason"

STATE OF OREGON PROCLAMATION

OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR

WHEREAS: Application of reason offers a hope for developing and

implementing intelligent, humane, and ethical interactions among people; and

WHEREAS: Philosophies of reason were emphasized when writing the

Constitution of the United States of America and those of its several
states; and

WHEREAS: Most citizens value reason and seek to apply it in making decisions
and resolving problems in their lives; and

WHEREAS: Educational programs emphasize acquisition of

reasoning skills in preparing for one's future.

NOW,

THEREFORE: I, Theodore R. Kulongoski, Governor of the

State of Oregon, hereby proclaim

June 21, 2008

to be

A Day of Reason

in Oregon and encourage all Oregonians to join in this observance.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I hereunto set my

hand and cause the Great Seal of the State of

Oregon to be affixed. Done at the Capitol in the

City of Salem in the State of Oregon on the day,

May 29, 2008.

Theodore R. Kulongoski, Governor

Bill Bradbury, Secretary of State

(Via Serene Journal.)

Annoying song lyrics

Paul McCartney, "Live and Let Die":
In this ever-changing world in which we live in ...

Some say the last part is "in which we're livin'", but I don't think so. One blogger has pointed out that usps.gov has a password hint prompt that asks "In what city were you born in?"


Mike Oldfield, "Crises":
Crises, crises, there's gonna be a crises.

No, there may be multiple crises, but there would be a crisis.


Alanis Morissette, "Ironic" (whole song):

Inconvenience is not irony. Dealt with here.


The Flobots, "No Handlebars":
I can shoot a target through a telescope ...

Not without breaking it, you can't.


Anybody have any other song lyrics that are annoyingly ungrammatical, nonsensical, or stupid, that make you groan inwardly every time you hear them?

UPDATE (July 16, 2008): I can't believe I forgot this one, that I heard today on the way home from work:

The Beastie Boys, "Intergalactic":
... like a pinch from the neck of Mr. Spock.

This lyric is reported online as "like a pinch on the neck from Mr. Spock," or as "like a pinch on the neck of Mr. Spock," the former of which would make perfect sense and the latter of which would make some sense (perhaps referring to an action by a different Vulcan directed at Spock), but neither is what I hear the song say. Judge for yourself, it's at about 3:27 in the video.

McCain's c-bomb habit

On yesterday's "Daily Show," Jon Stewart pointed out a quote from Cliff Schechter's new book, The Real McCain, where McCain used the word "cunt." I didn't think he made it clear who McCain was referring to when he said it, however. The Raw Story has the quote from Schechter's book:

Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain's intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.

Nice. Apparently McCain was known as "McNasty" in high school for his foul-mouthed tirades. Sounds like another LBJ, in that regard.

(Previously, regarding McCain's f-bomb habit.)

Fox story on RESCUE

Fox 10 News in Phoenix did a story last night on how the mortgage crisis is resulting in more animals being turned in to the pound, and more animals being euthanized. The story featured Lisa Thomas from RESCUE, the organization we volunteer with, as well as the Corgi mix named Rascal (pictured) who we've taken out on weekends a few times. Check it out, and please consider donating to RESCUE's Bowl-a-Rama event. (Put Kat's or my name in for the bowler to encourage, and The Lippard Blog as the referrer.)

Milton Friedman's argument for illegal immigration

Will Wilkinson gives a long quotation from an argument by Milton Friedman, along with some explication. The basic argument is that free immigration to jobs is a good thing, free immigration to welfare is a bad thing, and in the absence of a separation between legal residency and eligibility for welfare, the best result is achieved by encouraging more illegal immigration:

But the important takeaway here is this: Friedman’s view is that a certain kind of unrestricted welfare state makes illegal immigration good, because it severs residency from welfare eligibility. Friedman is unequivocal about the desirability of free migration. Anyone really committed to Friedman’s stated view about welfare and immigration should by no means try to restrict immigration, but instead should try to enable illegal immigration. A devout Friedmanite should stand stoutly against every fence, every border cop, every increase in the INS budget, any proposed database check for a new workers’ legal status, etc. I think it makes more sense to argue first for a guest worker program. But if that is in fact impossible, then Friedman has it right: more illegal immigration is the best we can do.

See the fuller discussion at Will Wilkinson's blog.

UPDATE (June 13, 2008): And, of related interest, a discussion of how the benefits of remittances are really the benefits of labor migration, and how Switzerland, despite being difficult to immigrate to, has the highest percentage of foreign-born in its population of any OECD country, also both from Will Wilkinson. The latter provides further evidence for the logical separability of citizenship, residency, work rights, and welfare eligibility.

Health quackery for your car

Just like quack magnetic therapy for improving human health, Alan Archer's product claims to improve fuel efficiency for your car. According to a ridiculously skepticism-free article on ABC15's website:

The gas blaster clamps to your car's fuel line. Two powerful magnets change the molecular structure of gasoline causing it to burn cleaner and more efficient.

Archer, whose company's name isn't mentioned in the article (but it's Adaptive Energy Solutions, LLC according to their website, a company incorporated in September 2003), guarantees that the product will improve gas mileage by at least 10% or your money will be returned. He's probably banking on the fact that most people won't have carefully measured their gas mileage before using it, and the fact that a 10% gain for a car that gets 25 mpg is only 2.5 mpg, well within the range of normal mileage variability given normal variations in driving conditions. There's a quote in the news article from an individual who says "(Ten percent) is a lot when I only get ten miles to the gallon." No, it's only 1 mpg difference, and I bet his 10 mpg is already variable by more than 1 mpg.

Archer's claims for this product, an "adaptive gas blaster," are identical to claims that have been made for similar fuel line magnet products for decades. All of them that have actually been tested have been found to have no measurable effect on gas mileage, and no doubt the same is true of Archer's hokum.

What I find remarkable is that the media continue to uncritically give a forum to hucksters to promote their nonsense. In this case, ABC15 even helpfully provides a link at the bottom of the page where you can click to order a $48 (plus shipping and handling) "adaptive gas blaster."

The money-back guarantee lasts for 60 days, doesn't include the shipping and handling fee, is available for only a limited time, and requires that you have the device installed by an "ASE" (I think they mean AES) mechanic or the guarantee is only for 30 days--I suspect there's a nonrefundable installation fee if they do it for you.

Save your money--you can save gas more easily without buying a bogus product by driving less often and more efficiently.

(Hat tip to Gridman for bringing this to my attention.)

Creationist wants to "violently expel" evolutionists from U.S.

Tom Willis, the creationist responsible for the bogus claim that Donald Johanson found "Lucy"'s knee joint at a great distance from the rest of the skeleton (CC003 in Mark Isaak's Index to Creationist Claims), says that evolutionists should be "violently expelled" from the United States--or at least denied the right to vote:

The arrogance displayed by the evolutionist class is totally unwarrented. The facts warrent the violent expulsion of all evolutionists from civilized society. I am quite serious that their danger to society is so great that, in a sane society, they would be, at a minimum, denied a vote in the administration of the society, as well as any job where they might influence immature humans, e.g., scout, or youth, leader, teacher and, obviously, professor. Oh, by the way… What is the chance evolutionists will vote or teach in the Kingdom of God?

But, of course, I myself, am not deluded. "Kingdom Now" theology notwithstanding, I have no expectations that such a proposal will ever be implemented, for the simple reason that delusion is ordained by God to reign until Christ returns. (2 Thess 2:10)

Tom Willis is a fascist as well as a dishonest idiot.

Willis was also behind the Kansas science standards that removed evolution and cosmology from the curriculum in 1999. He is the president of the Creation Science Association of Mid-America.

UPDATE (June 13, 2008): Ed Brayton has awarded Tom Willis a Robert O'Brien award, and quotes more extensively from his nonsense.

UPDATE (August 24, 2008): Wes Elsberry comments on this Willis essay. In comments at Wes's blog, Jim Downard makes this observation:

FYI I majored in Civil War history in college (BA history 1974) and couldn’t resist emailing Willis asking him to specify his claim that slavery advocates used evolutionary justifications (I knew of no such instances in all my study of the issues). Willis promptly replied that while he could do so, he declined to on the grounds that his discussion would grow to book length to cover it properly. He then switched gears and went on for several pages about the Marxism/Nazism/evolution connection and even longer defending the noble qualities of Biblical servitude laws. It is often quite illuminating to ask a straightforward question of someone who can’t think clearly; their replies will usually clarify just why they can’t think clearly.

In light of Willis' more recent remarks, suggesting that evolutionists need to be put into labor camps, I think he's a nut.

Kucinich introduces articles of impeachment

Although his last attempt to introduce articles of impeachment (for Cheney) failed, on Monday, June 9, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) introduced 35 new articles of impeachment for President George W. Bush. There's no support from the Democratic leadership, of course.

The mainstream media seems to be almost completely ignoring this. Two days later, a news.google.com search for "Kucinich impeachment" gives only the Village Voice in results.

UPDATE: Looks like the Arizona Republic covered it today, as did CNN.

ApostAZ podcast #3

ApostAZ podcast #3 is now online: "Jesus Loves the Little Zygotes" written by Frank Zindler, performed by Brad. Rev Wright is All Wrong for Obama. Catholic Anti-Feminism. Nóel's story. For Love or Faith? Deity Nihilo: Proof #3 (2/50 from http://godisimaginary... ). Absurd Dunkin' Terror. God's Own Dealership. Group Events. Outro from 'Dream' Greydon Square's Album 'The Compton Effect'

Zeitgeist: The Movie

Last night I attended an event at which one of the attendees promoted "Zeitgeist: The Movie." I was prompted to finally watch this piece of pernicious nonsense back in January when a commenter at this blog made reference to it, and I forced myself to sit through the whole thing. The movie is in three segments--the first is on the origins of Christianity, in which it argues that Jesus was a myth derived from Egyptian myth, based on the work of Acharya S. The second is 9/11 conspiracy theory. The third is an argument that the U.S. Federal Reserve is a scam. It's almost entirely garbage, dependent on crackpot sources.

I posted a series of comments about the movie as I watched it, but I'll summarize those here and add a bit more.

The first part argues that Christianity is derived from Egyptian myth, primarily by pointing out parallels between them. The arguments are apparently derived from the self-published "The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold" by Acharya S (Dorothy M. Murdock) and perhaps also from Tom Harpur's The Pagan Christ, both works of pseudoscholarship based on the work of other pseudoscholars like 18th century archaeologist Godfrey Higgins, 19th century amateur Egyptologist and poet Gerald Massey, and Alvin Boyd Kuhn, a high school language teacher and promoter of Theosophy) and entirely ignores actual work in Egyptology. For example, the film draws a list of comparisons between Horus and Jesus that is just fabricated--Horus wasn't born of a virgin, he was the child of Isis and Osiris, though Isis was impregnated by Osiris through some magic after he was dead. There have been parallels drawn between Isis and Mary that are more plausible (especially in iconography), but the movie exaggerates them, too, and fails to note the considerable areas of dissimilarity. A quick look at the Wikipedia entries on Horus and Isis is sufficient to show that the comparison is strained. The significance of a December 25 birthdate is nonexistent--Christianity did acquire attributes of pagan religions later in its history, and it has clearly been a syncretistic religion, but while this is evidence of falsehood in Christian traditions, it is not a clue to its origin.

For accurate information about Christianity and the formation of the Christian tradition, virtually any mainstream academic work will be more reliable. There has been a lot discovered since the work of 19th century Theosophists, both in the form of document manuscripts and archaeology, that sheds light on the early history of Christianity. In discussions at the James Randi Educational Foundation Forums, poster GreNME wrote:

Oh, those people were mostly made of of the beginnings of the Theosophist movements (Blavatsky and the like) or people with similar stated motivations but not the same organizational structure (like Graves). Yeah, Dorothy [Murdock] cites regularly enough from these people (especially Graves and Massey), but the thrust or crux of her writing tends to be more similar to those like Allegro-- taking the message into a realm of New-Age-y attempts to center on mid-20th-century discoveries about the mystery schools.

That's why I mentioned Ehrman, by the way. I had the opportunity to send him a question on the topic of the "out of Egypt" mystery school centric literature coming out about by those like Dorothy, and his response was essentially that people who stick to that thin and shallow an interpretation of the mystery schools really don't understand the materials they're trying to work with in the first place.

I've read a few very well-worded academic arguments against a historical Jesus, but none of them rely on the mystery schools, Egyptian mythology, Krishna, or Mithras. They tend to focus on the culture of the region at the time and the unreliability of the few Roman authors who are used by apologists today. For me, all said and done, I don't much care because I'm not a Christian anyway. It's only reliably traceable back to Paul anyway, in my opinion.

So read some Bart Ehrman for a more accurate picture. The best case I've read for Jesus being a myth is in the books of G.A. Wells, though I'm not inclined to buy it. (Earl Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle has also been recommended as a strong case for Jesus being mythical, but I've not read it.) I think the Arabic text of Josephus' reference to Jesus in Antiquities of the Jews provides strong evidence that Josephus did refer to a historical Jesus and that his text was altered by later Christian interpolation rather than an insertion completely made up out of whole cloth.

Some of the same kind of errors (via dependence on sources like Harpur and Kersey Graves) that are in "Zeitgeist" are also in Brian Flemming's "The God Who Wasn't There," for which you an find a nice fair-minded critique, along with responses from Flemming and Richard Carrier, in "God Who Wasn't There: an Analysis."

The second part is standard 9/11 conspiracy theory that has been refuted in previous posts at this blog. It completely ignores radical Islam and the actual events that led up to September 11, 2001, and like all such conspiracy theories, completely fails to provide a coherent explanation that incorporates the level of detail in the 9/11 Commission Report. That report is a flawed document, to be sure, but it is still far, far more comprehensive, detailed, and accurately sourced than anything the 9/11 truthers put out. The right way to investigate 9/11 is to start with the 9/11 Commission Report, with accounts of the movements and actions of the 19 terrorists, and going back farther to the 1993 WTC bombing, Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman and the Alkifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn, the murder of Emir Shalabi, the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane by El-Sayyid Nosair, the killing of Rashad Khalifa in Tucson in 1990 and the role of James Williams and Wadih el-Hage (secretary for Osama bin Laden in Sudan), and so on.

The U.S. government's connection is that it funded the mujahideen insurgents in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, and then walked away after the Soviets were defeated, allowing rich Saudis to step in. There's no question that "blowback" has played a major role, and I'll also agree that the Bush Administration has hugely exploited the 9/11 attacks to its advantage and to expand presidential power (as the PBS Frontline on "Cheney's Law" documents, which I highly recommend watching and you can see online).

The right way to investigate 9/11 is to stick to reliable sources and accounts that attempt to be as comprehensive as possible, not bullshit stories made by collecting a few bits of data from unreliable sources and constructing elaborate fantasies of speculation. Some reliable sources I recommend are Gerald Posner's Why America Slept, James Bamford's A Pretext for War, and James Mann's Rise of the Vulcans. Specifically on 9/11 conspiracy theory, read the book of critiques published by Popular Mechanics and visit websites like 911myths.com and Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories.

Instead, Zeitgeist relies on crackpots like Michael Ruppert and Ted Gunderson, both former police officers who have a long history of promoting nonsensical conspiracy theories. Ruppert is best known for his claims to have found that the CIA was peddling drugs (itself a plausible claim, even if not well substantiated by him) while he was a narcotics detective for the LAPD; after being removed from the force in 1978, he has gone on to argue for Peak Oil and 9/11 conspiracy theory. In 2006, after facing charges of sexual harassment from a former employee whom he admits he paraded around the office in his underwear in front of, he fled to Venezuela, then moved to Canada, and then to New York and Los Angeles. Gunderson spouted nonsense about satanic ritual abuse in the 1980s and has endorsed the accuracy of phony psychic Sylvia Browne, as well as promoting wild claims of child sexual abuse by "some of America's leading politicians" including George W. Bush, which makes him sound like the crazy mind-control sex slave claimants, "Brice Taylor" (Susan Ford), Cathy O'Brien, and Kola Boof (the last of whom makes the sex slave claims without the mind control claims).

The film provides no good sources for any of its claims, and seems to contradict itself. It claims there's no evidence connecting Osama bin Laden to the attacks (despite the fact that we have people like al Qaeda member Ramzi Binalshibh, who attempted to enter the U.S. to enter a flight school but was denied a visa, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, head of al Qaeda's media committee and main plotter of the attacks, in custody), yet turns around and suggests that there's something suspicious about the Bush family connections to the bin Laden family and that two members of the bin Laden family lived in Falls Church, Virginia "right next to CIA Headquarters." Why would that connection be relevant or suspicious if Osama bin Laden had nothing to do with it?

Osama bin Laden's father had 55 children and 22 wives, and there are currently about 600 bin Laden family members--most appear to be law-abiding citizens who have disowned Osama. The two Falls Church residents, however, were two of Osama's sons, Abdallah and Omar, the latter of whom was a member of al Qaeda.

The charge of the FBI being told to "back off" from bin Laden investigations from the White House is now known to have been approved by counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, not exactly a fan of George W. Bush, whose testimony on the issue has been somewhat inconsistent. While Clarke originally claimed the plan came from top officials in the White House and was approved in consultation with the FBI, he subsequently said that he took personal responsibility for the decision to allow the bin Laden family members to leave the U.S., and that he didn't think it was a mistake, and that he'd do it again.

The third section of the movie is about the U.S. Federal Reserve, which appears to be derived from John Birch Society propaganda, with a bonus argument that the 16th Amendment to the Constitution and thus federal income tax is invalid. It argues that the Panic of 1907 was caused by (rather than, as was actually the case, ended by) J.P. Morgan, and makes no mention of the Knickerbocker Trust. It argues that the Federal Reserve Act was put into effect by a conspiracy of international bankers and the Rockefellers through Sen. Nelson Aldrich, and claims that the Federal Reserve is entirely private. But the Fed's head and board of governors is appointed by the president, which isn't mentioned by the film. Wikipedia gets theFed's legal status right, it's part of the federal government but with a fair degree of independence so that politicians can't directly manipulate monetary policy. Its status is accurately described in Bill Woolsey's October 2004 article in Liberty magazine, "Who Owns the Fed?". A number of other Federal Reserve conspiracy claims are debunked here.

It then goes off into tax evader craziness, claiming that the 16th Amendment wasn't properly ratified, but without actually discussing the evidence. That argument is made in William J. Benson and Martin J. Beckman's book The Law That Never Was, which documents errors in the ratification documents, such as typos, alternate capitalization, alternate pluralization, etc. Courts have ruled that Benson's argument doesn't work and that his selling his book as part of a tax evasion defense package constitutes fraud, and he's served time in jail for tax evasion.

As an aside, while reviewing the above I came across an even more interesting argument against income tax (not in Zeitgeist) discussed by Cecil Adams in his "Straight Dope" column. The argument states that the 16th Amendment is invalid because Ohio was not a state at the time of ratification, and William H. Taft, who was president, was therefore not legally president since he was not a U.S. Citizen. Everybody thought Ohio was made a state in 1803, but in 1953 when Ohio was preparing for its 150th anniversary of statehood, they found that Congress had defined its boundaries and approved its constitution, but failed to admit it to statehood. Ohio made an appeal for statehood (delivering it to Congress by horseback) and Congress passed a resolution granting it retroactively. Cecil Adams' description and commentary about it is worth reading.

Tax protestor claims more generally are refuted at this GWU law professor's website, and a nice case study refutation is Sheldon Richman's three-part "Beware Income-Tax Casuistry."

"Zeitgeist: The Movie" was apparently put out by "GMP, LLC", which is a company based in Port Chester, NY registered to a James Coyman, who has been claimed to be the person behind the pseudonym "Peter Joseph" credited for the writing, producing, directing, and editing of the film. Other documents online associate GMP, LLC with John Giura, former vice chairman of north Chicago company CGI Holding Corporation (now Think Partnership, Inc., traded on AmEx under the symbol THK), a company with a subsidiary, WebSourced, Inc., which is "a leader in search engine marketing (see www.keywordranking.com) and on-line dating (see www.Cherish.com)." A John Giura has directed a music video for the Nashville, TN band Clem Snide, and a John P. Giura from New York City directed a 20-min short film called "Inside Trip" shown at the 2002 Maryland Film Festival, as well as some other videos found online attributed to him and his JPG Studio in NYC. The short festival film stars former Olympic wrestler John P. Giura, who has apparently lived in Oak Park, IL and New York City. In 1986, a John Giura of Oak Park, IL who was a partner in the firm of Stein, Roe, and Farnham, was charged by the SEC for participation in a complex "kickback and payoff" scheme which victimized Teamster union pension funds in upstate New York. It's not clear which, if any, of these is associated with the GMP, LLC that put out Zeitgeist. [See update below.]

There is a movie at Google Video titled "Zeitgeist Refuted" that appears to be itself filled with bad arguments promoting Christianity. Though I've only watched a small part of it, it doesn't seem to actually respond to the claims of "Zeitgeist: The Movie."

Other responses to "Zeitgeist: The Movie" include:

The criticism section of the Wikipedia article on "Zeitgeist: The Movie"
The Web Skeptic wiki entry on "Zeitgeist: The Movie"
The site "Zeitgeist, the movie Debunked"
Jay Kinney's review of "Zeitgeist" at boingboing
Tim Callahan's, "The Greatest Story Ever Garbled," a debunking of part I of "Zeitgeist" for Skeptic magazine's e-skeptic newsletter

Henry Makow's site, which amusingly takes issue with part one but swallows whole the nonsense in parts two and three and concludes that Zeitgeist is itself the product of a conspiracy, is worth a laugh.

UPDATE (August 6, 2009): I decided to add to the main post the text of my comment from October 30, 2008 below, about "Zeitgeist Addendum":

I watched a little bit (the first 30 minutes) of the "Zeitgeist Addendum," which looks to be largely derived from "Money is Debt," another video floating around the Internet. I skimmed through much of the rest.

It's somewhat more accurate than the previous parts, but has the same flaws as "Money is Debt," most seriously in its discussion of interest. The creators of both films do not seem to understand the time-value of money, or that the expansion of the money supply doesn't create problems so long as non-monetary wealth is also expanding. No matter what you use as money, there will always be a system of credit that rides on top of it, of the sort that has been contracting rapidly in the current financial crisis. (This contraction has been *increasing* the value of the U.S. dollar this year.)

The idea that money creates slavery and that if we just got rid of fractional reserve banking, nobody would be forced to work for a living is a bit ridiculous.

Looks like part 2 of the film is based on John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hitman, which is a book I've read. His book was entertaining, but mostly unbelievable, and he's not a credible source. Note that he claims that we all have the shamanic ability to shapeshift and become invisible, for example.

Some of the stuff he talks about is correct, such as U.S. intervention using the CIA in the Middle East and South America, the history of which is told in Tim Weiner's book Legacy of Ashes.

In part III, the film suggests that we only need money because of scarcity, and that scarcity is a fiction. But scarcity isn't a fiction, scarcity exists because there is no limit to what people can want and desire--there can be scarcity even when a resource is abundant.

My impression is that the "Addendum" is just as bogus as the first three parts--it's largely lifted from other sources, and those sources are unreliable.

UPDATE (January 5, 2010): Better speculation by salvorhardin at Democratic Underground says that "Peter Joseph" is Peter J. Merola. This appears to be a correct identification if the Animation World Network's announcement of a multimedia event from May 29-June 3, 2007 is accurate:

ZEITGIEST is a unique and ambitious multimedia, musical event by P.J. Merola. This event is free and not for profit. It runs from May 29 - June 3, 2007 at 8:00-9:30 pm.

ZEITGEIST is an abstract, aesthetic exploration of personal belief and social myth -- told through a multimedia work of live solo percussion, stereo video displays and electronic music. Using animation, live performance, drama, humor, and narrative, ZEITGEIST attempts to bring its audience to a place that most likely counters what they believe as true.

Please visit http://www.zeitgeistnyc.com for a video preview and to make reservations.

The "GMP" is then "Gentle Machine Productions," as reported here. Gentle Machine Productions released a CD GMP001 titled "J.S. Bach on the Marimba," arranged by P.J. Merola, with P.J. Merola playing the marimba.

The Village Voice ran a story in 2004 about P.J. Merola and his brother Eric.

Nice case of evolution observed in the lab

Richard Lenski of Michigan State University used a single cell of E. coli to start 12 lab populations, which he observed for more than 44,000 generations. At the 31,500th generation, one of the populations suddenly developed the ability to metabolize citrate. He had saved frozen samples of each 500th population, and found that only that one of the twelve populations would re-evolve this ability, and then only when he started at the 20,000th generation or later, leading him to conclude that something had developed around the 20,000th generation of that population that provided the necessary foundation.

As New Scientist reports, "the experiment stands as proof that evolution does not always lead to the best possible outcome. Instead, a chance event can sometimes open evolutionary doors for one population that remain forever closed to other populations with different histories."

UPDATE (June 11, 2008): Michael Behe has written a commentary on this result, which Ed Brayton criticizes at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

UPDATE (June 13, 2008): Science writer Carl Zimmer has written a nice summary of this research, and the primary author of the research shows up in the comments to answer questions at comment #80.

UPDATE (June 18, 2008): Lenski responds to a letter from Andy Schlafly of Conservapaedia.

UPDATE (June 24, 2008): In a further exchange with Schlafly, Lenski politely shows Schlafly to be an idiot and a jerk. (The link edited out by Conservapaedia is to RationalWiki's article on banning at Conservapaedia.)

Venezuela moves closer to a police state

The June 7, 2008 issue of The Economist reports that Hugo Chavez issued a decree late last month which:

authorises police raids without warrant, the use of anonymous witnesses and secret evidence. Judges are obliged to collaborate with the intelligence services. Anyone caught investigating sensitive matters faces jail. The law contains no provision for any kind of oversight. It blurs the distinction between external threats and internal political dissent. It requires all citizens, foreigners and organisations to act in support of the intelligence system whenever required--or face jail terms of up to six years.

Though my employer operates in Venezuela, I think that's one South American country I'd rather not visit at the moment... I hope November's elections reduce Chavez's power and he steps down from power in 2013 as he's previously said that he would.

And Daniel Ortega has suspended elections in Nicaragua... another country to avoid.

McCain thinks the Constitution establishes a Christian nation

McCain continues to demonstrate mind-boggling ignorance of the U.S. Constitution, for someone who has already sworn numerous times to uphold it. He's clearly unfit to be president--he's either ignorant of U.S. history or being dishonest in order to pander to the religious right. (I previously reported similar remarks by McCain last October.)

The Bible and the Christian tradition do not support a limited constitutional republic--if you got your politics from the Bible or Christian tradition, you'd argue for a monarchy with virtually limitless power. That's probably part of the reason that the Bush administration has argued against any limits on executive power.



(From Atheist Media Blog by way of Pharyngula.)

Abstinence-only sex education is good for something

No, it doesn't reduce the amount of adolescent sexual activity--it merely reduces the likelihood that teens who have sex will use condoms, and thus increases the prevalence of teens with sexually transmitted diseases. This is not merely useless, it's actually harmful and counter-productive, like the Office of National Drug Control Policy's anti-drug advertisements.

But empirical evidence is irrelevant to those who are pushing their programs due to religious fundamentalism. For such people, the fact that they not only don't work but have the opposite of the desired effects just means they need to be pushed harder.

Richard Cheese concert

Einzige, Kat, and I attended the Richard Cheese show tonight, and he put on a great crowd-pleasing performance. The recorded versions of his songs don't give a complete picture--his performance is filled with a lot of audience interaction and humor, and he had quite a few special bits tailored to his hometown audience, such as the theme from "Alice" dedicated to the folks at Mel's Diner (the fictional restaurant that the TV series put in Phoenix, rather than Tucson as in the Scorsese film "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore"). After the show, Richard Cheese and the band spent about an hour signing autographs and having pictures taken with people in the first seven rows, and then there was a short period of time for him to talk to friends from grade school (me) and some friends from high school who came to his show and managed to stay up late.

He'll be performing at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas on August 29 and 31, and I recommend seeing his show if you get the chance.

Why it's dangerous to put a cell phone in the microwave

(Via jwz's blog.)

An accurate creation story

This video gives a five-minute plain-language summary of the origin of the universe that is scientifically accurate, which any actually existing God should have been able to author instead of Genesis.



(Via Pharyngula.)

Phoenix Trustee's Sale Notices for May, 2008

After I counted up May's 6416 notices of trustee's sales in Maricopa county I took a look at the graph for May of 2007 and I just had to laugh. If you'll recall, May of 2007 was Phoenix's break-out month for pre-foreclosures. It was the month when the real estate bubble showed us that it wasn't an also-ran, trouncing the dot bomb's NTR record by almost 300. Yet here we are a year later and last May's 2009 notices seem almost like something to pine for.

Notice also the Gaussian descriptive statistics I was naïvely including with my posts back then. If we were to take those number seriously - in particular the standard deviation - then we'd be forced to conclude that May 2008's number should essentially be impossible. Clearly foreclosure statistics are not Gaussian.

Liberaltarianism

Will Wilkinson has an interesting post about how his market liberal views are very like the views of Hayek, Friedman, and Buchanan, and that the libertarian-conservative alliance against a slippery slope to socialism isn't justified by what's actually occurring in the world today.

In a subsequent post, he writes about how economic regulation and tax/transfer policies are logically separable, but most people think about them as if they aren't; a comparison of levels of inequality and poverty across the EU shows that the common thought that less regulation and taxation goes hand-in-hand with higher levels of poverty and inequality (of the sort seen in the U.S. and UK) doesn't hold. Thus you could have a regime with very low levels of regulation yielding more wealth, combined with more redistribution for a better safety net and less poverty and inequality.

And in another post, he calls for greater empirical grounding for proposals in political philosophy, of the sort that has started to yield fruitful results in moral philosophy:

But shouldn’t it impossible to take seriously an argument to the effect that, say this or that policy is required in order to secure the conditions for the development of some capacity, in the absence of (a) a well-empirically-grounded theory of the nature of that capacity and its development, and (b) some kind of actual evidence that this or that policy in fact has the kind of effect on it that one hypothesizes? I wouldn’t mind so much if political philosophy arguments were more often in the form of “Hey, here’s a conjecture! I suggest somebody competent to do so try to find out if it’s true.” I would be quite happy if I saw more “Hey, here’s a conjecture, and here’s a my attempt to honestly synthesize the relevant literature in a first pass at getting the answer.” That would be terrific. But usually, the argument aims to establish something substantive with an armchair, a Joe Stiglitz op-ed, and something remembered from the Tuesday Science Times.

Let's hear it for empiricism.

An update to the pledge of allegiance

Tom W. Bell proposes the following update to the pledge of allegiance:

I pledge allegiance to the laws of the United States of America, on condition that it respect my rights, natural, constitutional, and statutory, with liberty and justice for all.

That's a pledge I could make, despite my skepticism about the use of the term "natural rights." I do think there are moral rights entailed by the combination of certain common human values and empirical facts. (This conversation between Will Wilkinson and Shaun Nichols about Nichols' book, Sentimental Rules, suggests one way of getting to moral rules I find far more plausible than the natural rights/natural law tradition.)

Dan Barker's new book

Dan Barker has a new book coming out, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists. It's available for pre-order on Amazon.com. Also check out the organization run by Dan and Annie Laurie Gaylor, the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Richard Cheese live on the radio

Richard Cheese will be performing live on the radio this afternoon on Phoenix's KEDJ, 103.9 FM, at around 4:45 p.m. Arizona time, during Tim Virgin's show. You can also listen via the Internet via a link at the radio station's website.

RESCUE Bowl-a-Rama

RESCUE's Bowl-a-Rama fundraising event is here again, and Kat and I will both be bowling for the "Leader of the Pack" team of volunteers who work with dogs. There's a competing "Rockin Bowlin Felines" team of volunteers who work with cats.

Our goal is to raise $3,000 between us for RESCUE, of which we've so far raised $220.

RESCUE is a group we've volunteered with since January 2002, which rescues dogs and cats from the euthanasia lists at the Maricopa County pound. It operates its own cat shelter, while dogs are kept in foster homes and boarded at Dog Days in Tempe, a boarding and doggie day care facility that has been a valued partner of RESCUE.

Two of our three dogs, Fred and Otto, were rescued from euthanasia by RESCUE.

Every donation helps save dogs and cats from unnecessary euthanasia--if you can give even $5, it will be greatly appreciated.

You can make donations through RESCUE's website, here. Specify "Leader of the Pack" as the team, and put Kat's or my name under "Encourage Your Bowler" or "Referrer."

The actual bowling will occur on August 2, 2008 at AMF Shea Village Lanes. In past years there have been more than 60 organizations participating, so the bowling gets divided into morning and evening shifts and the place gets packed.

Worthless stock market advice

On May 8, 2008, "An end to the economy's nose dive?", MSN MoneyCentral, Jon Markman suggests that the recession may be over or not a big deal for major company stocks:

"If Hyman is right, and StockScouter continues to highlight the right sectors and stocks to play, there is no reason for investors to fear the pressures facing big companies right now. It really may be time to go off high alert."

But just two months ago, Markman was saying that you should sell every stock you own and get out of the market, on March 13, 2008, in "Sell stocks while the selling's good":

"Yet veteran observers are swiftly coming to the conclusion that attempts to regain world financial stability could be doomed due to a stunning crash of commercial-debt financing and lack of trusted leadership, and they now believe private investors should take advantage of any rallies to purge their portfolios of most stocks and nongovernment bonds."

My advice: Don't take stock market advice from Jon Markman. The fact that he's a "technical analyst"--making predictions based on short-term patterns of stock movement using methodology that has no better support than astrology, tea-leaf reading, or palmistry--is further reason to avoid reading him for any reason other than humor value.

Heathrow security confuses the map for the territory

A man wearing a Transformers t-shirt was stopped by airport security at Heathrow Terminal 5 because the cartoon character on the shirt was depicted holding a gun.

This is about as idiotic as Michelle Malkin's opposition to Rachael Ray wearing a paisley scarf that resembled a keffiyah--even after she admitted it was a paisley scarf.

"Expelled" producers win round one on "Imagine" lawsuit

In a decision issued today, the judge in the case of Yoko Ono against Premise Media ruled against Ono's motion for an injunction against the film, on the grounds that Premise Media and its attorneys at the Stanford Fair Use Project were likely to prevail on a fair use defense. So "Expelled" will be able to be released in Canada with its excerpting of "Imagine" intact.

This is an outcome I suggested would occur, and hoped for, despite the dishonesty of the defendants in this case. It remains to be seen if Ono will continue with the lawsuit and potentially set a useful precedent for copyright law.

(Via Pharyngula.)

ApostAZ podcast #2

The second ApostAZ podcast is now available for listening at ApostAZ.org. Topics include the Virgin Mary visible on a biker's leg wound, Phoenix atheists meetup group organizer Shannon's deconversion story, an "Arizona Atheist Action" segment on the current proposal to create another anti-same-sex marriage amendment to the state constitution, and more.

Correction, guys--our sun is a Class G star, not a Class B star. (It doesn't negate your point--Class G stars are more common than Class B stars.)

Peter Gabriel's new filtering website

The Filter, officially debuting tomorrow but already available today, is a website that asks for some basic information about your tastes in film and music, and then makes recommendations about other things you'd like--music, movies, web videos, and TV. It's not clear from the CNN coverage how it compares to Amazon.com's recommendation engine or to sites like Pandora, but it looks interesting.

A Guide to Christian Cliches and Phrases

Former evangelical Christian and Bible college attendee Daniel Florien has put together a list of common Christian clichés, along with translations of the real meaning behind them, along with "acceptable" and "unacceptable" responses to each.

Florien's short description of his deconversion is also worth your time.

(Via Pharyngula; cross-posted to the Secular Outpost.)

Kiyosaki team splits up

The Arizona Republic reports that Sharon Lechter, co-author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and participant in the Rich Dad Co. joint venture with Robert Kiyosaki, is calling it quits and has filed a lawsuit in which she alleges "that her ex-business partner and his wife are enriching themselves, diverting assets and wasting money in a business that she claims to have helped build from scratch."

Lechter, a CPA in Paradise Valley, claims that she "refined and created" the original book, while Kiyosaki is merely the public face of the book. If so, that makes the book even more bogus than it already appears to be--it's already apparent that the "rich dad" of the title is a fictional character and that the book is filled with bad advice. Lechter needs to be careful how much credit she claims if she wants to have any credibility for financial acumen--but I suspect she will care more about the cash.

The Kiyosakis respond that Lechter was the editor rather than the author of the book and that she is exaggerating her contributions.

The Republic article includes some of the allegations from the Lechter suit, as well as some quotes from Kiyosaki critic John T. Reed. The most interesting point I saw was that the Kiyosakis have earned about $9 million from their Rich Dad entities, which is a lot less than I would have expected, at least if seminar income is included in that amount.

A good start

Reuters reports:

During a fund-raiser in Denver, Obama -- a former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School -- was asked what he hoped to accomplish during his first 100 days in office.

"I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution," said Obama.

That would be fantastic. Would would be even better would be if he would continue on with all standing executive orders from any president, after cleaning up the messes from the most recent one. It would be nice to see the federal government actually staying within constitutional limits of its power, but I won't be holding my breath.

(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

CIA operatives on trial in Italy

26 Americans, mostly CIA operatives, are currently on trial in absentia in Italy for the kidnapping and "extraordinary rendition" of a radical Muslim cleric, Abu Omar, who was taken to Egypt to be tortured. On Thursday, Italy's top counterterrorism official, Bruno Megale, explained in court how they identified the CIA operatives responsible for Omar's kidnapping:

Megale obtained records of all cellphone traffic from the transmission tower nearest the spot where Abu Omar was abducted, for a 2 1/2 -hour period around the time he disappeared. There were 2,000 calls.

Then, using a computer program, Megale was able to narrow down the pool by tracing the phones that had called each other, in other words, an indication of a group of people working together. Seventeen phone numbers, which showed intensifying use around the time of the abduction, were pinpointed. By following all other calls made from those phones, the investigators ultimately identified 60 numbers, including that of a CIA officer working undercover at the U.S. Embassy in Rome.

In his testimony, Megale revealed that one telephone number he recognized was that of Robert Seldon Lady, then-CIA station chief in Milan. Lady and Megale had worked together in counter-terrorism investigations. It was a number, Megale said somberly, that he and his team knew.

(Via Talking Points Memo.)

Major League Baseball misuse of IP law

I saw on The Colbert Report that Major League Baseball is telling Little League teams that they can't use the names of MLB teams unless they purchase their uniforms from MLB-authorized licensees. Nonsense--a Little League team called the A's or the Twins or the Mariners is in no danger of confusion with the MLB team, so there's no infringement.

Techdirt reports on this issue, and also that MLB is also still trying to claim ownership over game statistics, even though facts cannot be copyrighted.

Little League teams should tell MLB to take a hike.

UPDATE (June 2, 2008): The Supreme Court denied cert on MLB's lawsuit against C.B.C. Distribution and Marketing for its use of the names of MLB players and statistics for fantasy baseball, without a license from MLB. The court of appeals in St. Louis had already ruled that C.B.C. has a free speech right to use player names and statistics, which have previously been regarded as facts not subject to copyright. Some have worried that this ruling will endanger licensing arrangements regarding the use of celebrity names, but cases that involve an endorsement of a product seem to me to be clearly distinguishable from this case.

Drug war led to Chicago PD corruption

Former Chicago police officer and FBI informant Keith Herrera told "60 Minutes" that pressure to get results in the war on drugs led to police officers lying about the facts in order to get arrests, and ultimately to a corrupt ring of officers engaging in thefts from drug dealers and a plot to kill two of fellow officers who weren't with the program and were prepared to testify against them. Herrera is one of seven officers in the Special Operations Section who have been charged with robbery, kidnapping, and other crimes.

(As reported by Reuters on Yahoo.)

MediaDefender launches denial of service attack against Revision3

Anti-piracy company MediaDefender, which defends its clients' intellectual property by disrupting the content on peer-to-peer networks, launched a denial of service attack (SYN flood) against Revision3 over Memorial Day weekend. The attack was launched after Revision3 discovered that their servers were being used by MediaDefender to post spoofed BitTorrent index files and Revision3 shut off their access.

Revision3, a legitimate company that distributes HD video over the Internet using BitTorrent, was not amused, and the FBI is investigating.

Any legitimate Internet provider should refuse to provide services to companies that engage in illegal or immoral tactics to try to stop peer-to-peer piracy of copyrighted content, such as denial of service attacks or interference with services that are being used legitimately, even if they are also being used for piracy. If they don't have methods which can be targeted specifically against the copyrighted content they are authorized to protect, then their methods cross the line, in my opinion.

MediaDefender's upstream network providers are Savvis (ASN 3561), Beyond the Network (ASN 3491), WV Fiber (ASN 19151), and SingTel (ASN 7473). They all should have a problem with denial of service attacks by their customer.

MediaDefender was previously in the news in September 2007 when its security was breached by hackers and 700 MB of executive emails and the content of VoIP telephone calls from the company were leaked to the Internet. This seems to me like a company that should not be in business.