Creationist oil drilling

More on Zion Oil and Gas, a company tied to Hal Lindsey that picks sites to drill for oil based on misinterpretations of the Bible--and they're looking in Israel. The Bronte Capital blog writes about the company as a counterexample to the claim that all oil exploration work uses mainstream old-earth geology, so now, to be accurate, you need to say that this is true of all successful oil exploration work. (I believe Uri Geller allegedly helped in some oil or mineral exploration in the past, so the former claim had already been falsified, though I think the latter still holds.)

Bronte Capital notes that since Zion can claim that it is making its decisions based on constitutionally protected religious belief, that may be a defense against accusations of stock fraud.

Zion's stock trades on the American Exchange under stock symbol ZN. It has a market capitalization of $85.17 million, and closed last week at $8.00/share, near the bottom of its 52-week range ($5.07-$17.68). The company formed in 2000 and has offices in Texas and Israel.

The company's stock is, unfortunately, not available for shorting.

Here's a Zion promotional video:





(Previously.)

Former high-ranking Scientologists speak out in SP Times

It turns out former head of Scientology's Office of Special Affairs Mike Rinder, who left the Church of Scientology in 2007, has decided to speak out after all. And so has Marty Rathbun, who was Inspector General of the Religious Technology Center, the organization that acts as agent for all of Scientology's intellectual property and was prominent in legal action against online critics.

The St. Petersburg Times is running a multi-part story on their allegations of corruption and abuse inside the Church of Scientology, confirming and expanding upon stories that have long been staples of online criticisms of the church:

• Physical violence permeated Scientology's international management team. Miscavige set the tone, routinely attacking his lieutenants. Rinder says the leader attacked him some 50 times.

Rathbun, Rinder and De Vocht admit that they, too, attacked their colleagues, to demonstrate loyalty to Miscavige and prove their mettle.

• Staffers are disciplined and controlled by a multi­layered system of "ecclesiastical justice.'' It includes publicly confessing sins and crimes to a group of peers, being ordered to jump into a pool fully clothed, facing embarrassing "security checks'' or, worse, being isolated as a "suppressive person.''

At the pinnacle of the hierarchy, Miscavige commands such power that managers follow his orders, however bizarre, with lemming-like obedience.

• Church staffers covered up how they botched the care of Lisa McPherson, a Scientologist who died after they held her 17 days in isolation at Clearwater's Fort Harrison Hotel.

Rathbun, who Miscavige put in charge of dealing with the fallout from the case, admits that he ordered the destruction of incriminating evidence. He and others also reveal that Miscavige made an embarrassing miscalculation on McPherson's Scientology counseling.

• With Miscavige calling the shots and Rathbun among those at his side, the church muscled the IRS into granting Scientology tax-exempt status. Offering fresh perspective on one of the church's crowning moments, Rathbun details an extraordinary campaign of public pressure backed by thousands of lawsuits.

• To prop up revenues, Miscavige has turned to long-time parishioners, urging them to buy material that the church markets as must-have, improved sacred scripture.

Church officials deny the accusations. Miscavige never hit a single church staffer, not once, they said.

This is likely to create a huge uproar within the Church of Scientology, and provoke more significant departures over the next few years.

The first of three parts is up at the St. Petersburg Times, which gives some highlights of the allegations, Scientology's response, and a brief history of Scientology's "Operation Snow White," David Miscavige's rise to power as head of the church, and the church's battles with the IRS, which culminated in a secret agreement that gave Scientologists tax deductions no other religions get. (They get to write off the full value of their payments for "services," not just the portion above the value received in return--though perhaps that's just an implicit acknowledgment that they have no value.)

Scientology has responded by attacking the sources in its usual manner, arguing that they had ethical problems while they were in Scientology (they agree--Rinder admits he lied to the media when he was working for Scientology) and releasing their confessions to wrong-doing from auditing sessions. They also have produced current Scientologists who deny the accounts of abuse by Miscavige, and included "a story of Miscavige spotting an injured sparrow, talking to it and checking back later to see if it lived. 'It was immensely tender.'" And they assert that this is part of an extortion campaign by the former members.

Part two will focus on the Lisa McPherson case, which was brought to the world's attention when critic Jeff Jacobsen, my co-author on "Scientology v. the Internet" for Skeptic magazine, discovered it and recognized its significance. (Also see Jeff's more recent article on "Anonymous" and Scientology.)

Part three will have more information from recent high-ranking defectors--in addition to Rinder and Rathbun, Amy Scobee of the Church's Celebrity Center network and Tom DeVocht, who oversaw the church's "spiritual headquarters" in Clearwater, Florida (where Lisa McPherson died), have spoken to the Times.

(The photo is of the Scientology "Super Power" building in Clearwater, Florida, taken on June 25, 2005.)

Technology tidbits

From the Technology Quarterly report in the June 6-12, 2009 issue of The Economist, a few articles of interest:

• Gasoline/compressed-air hybrid vehicles may prove more cost-effective than gas-electric hybrids.
• Bigelow Aerospace wins challenge against export control regulations that would have required non-U.S. passengers on space flights to be treated as recipients of technology transfers, which would have required an onerous approval and monitoring process. (Not reported in the story is that Robert Bigelow is now funding MUFON to pay UFO researchers.)
• Delay-tolerant network protocol (DTN), developed with assistance from Vint Cerf, has been tested to transfer data between NASA's EPOXI probe and earth-based stations, which will lead to an interplanetary internet that includes the International Space Station.
• The heart of the cockroach has been used as the model for a new type of low-cost artificial heart for humans.
• Researchers are devising a laser-based defense mechanism to shoot down mosquitoes rather than missiles. Funded by the Gates Foundation, the prototype cost is only about $100. We'd like one.
  

A code of conduct for effective rational discussion

John Wilkins sets out "a code of conduct for effective rational discussion," a list of principles for debate and discussion that aims at approaching truth rather than winning a rhetorical battle, at the new location of his Evolving Thoughts blog.

The list of proposed principles is:

1. The Fallibility Principle
2. The Truth-Seeking Principle
3. The Clarity Principle
4. The Burden of Proof Principle
5. The Principle of Charity
6. The Relevance Principle
7. The Acceptability Principle
8. The Sufficiency Principle
9. The Rebuttal Principle
10. The Resolution Principle
11. The Suspension of Judgement Principle
12. The Reconsideration Principle
13. Fleck’s Addendum

Check out Evolving Thoughts for discussion of each of these principles.

Evolution, religion, schizophrenia, and the schizotypal personality

Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky giving a lecture on the evolution of schizophrenia, and how schizotypal personality and its associated "metamagical thinking" may be adaptive, and a source or driver for religious belief in a community.



(Via boingboing.)

ApostAZ podcast #16

The latest ApostAZ podcast is now out:

Episode 016 Atheism and Bleep-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Special Guest August Berkshire. August Berkshire is vice-president of Atheist Alliance International (AAI), and past president of Minnesota Atheists.

He is also in the midst of a three-week tour through the midwest and southwest visiting various atheist groups along the way including our own Phoenix Atheist group. Intro: Roll with an Atheist by Charlie Checkm. Outro: Fallen on the Front Lines by Galt Aureus.

August is the owner of the “ATHEIST” license plate for Minnesota and is proud to be listed in the reference book Who’s Who in Hell.
-----------
Origin of the "Seven Deadly Sins": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_deadly_sins

Goldwater Institute hires investigative journalist

As newspapers decline and die, it's good to see other opportunities opening up to support investigative journalism. Along with wire services, which are beefing up their staffs and seeing growing profits as their content is syndicated to more and more places including websites and broadcast media, think tanks are also getting into the business. (There are also other nonprofits that support investigative journalism, such as the Center for Public Integrity.)

The Goldwater Institute has hired investigative reporter Mark Flatten from the Tribune to investigate and report on cases of government corruption, abuse, and waste. Flatten is an award-winning reporter who has covered state government for nearly 20 years in Arizona, including covering the impeachment of former Gov. Evan Mecham, the AzScam corruption scandal, and the alternative fuels fiasco.

Flatten is the only reporter who has ever been banned from the floor of the state legislature, which occurred at the order of former Arizona Speaker of the House Don Aldridge (R-Lake Havasu City) because of Flatten's reporting on links between Aldridge and Max Dunlap, who was convicted for his part in the 1976 murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles. In 1976, Aldridge was a member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, and he accompanied Dunlap to the law office of Neal Roberts on June 2, the day a bomb went off under Bolles' car, allegedly about a runway paving problem at the Mohave County Airport (as reported in the Kingman Daily Miner, June 28, 1976). On June 3, Roberts and Dunlap met at Durant's Restaurant to discuss raising $25,000 for the defense of Bolles' killer, John Harvey Adamson, who was at the time facing a minor criminal charge and had not yet been caught for the murder.

A May 10 NPR story describes the Goldwater Institute's job ad for this position and raises concerns about political bias infecting any stories produced. While I think that's a real concern, I think it's often better to have stories come from an advertised bias rather than pretend objectivity. In any case, Flatten's stories have gone after abuse regardless of party (Mecham was a Republican, the alternative fuels fiasco was caused by a Republican, and AzScam caught both Republicans and Democrats taking bribes).

I look forward to seeing what he will investigate and write about in this new role.

UPDATE (October 19, 2009): Flatten has published his first major investigative piece since being hired by the Goldwater Institute, and it's an account of how a federal program designed to provide business opportunities to the disadvantaged is being used by political insiders for their own benefit, including County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox. Wilcox obtained the Chili's Too franchise in Terminal 4 at Sky Harbor Airport as an Airport Concession Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (ACDBE), which requires that the owner participate in the day-to-day operation of the business, which she does not (though perhaps her co-owner does?). She also received a $450,000 loan from Host International which meant she didn't have to bring any money to the table, a loan which violated city policy (the City of Phoenix owns and operates Sky Harbor).

Flatten's "High Fliers" report may be found here.

David Paszkiewicz takes students to Creation Museum

David Paszkiewicz, the Kearny, NJ high school teacher who was proselytizing for Christianity and creationism and then lied about it when his student Matthew LaClair complained, only to be caught because LaClair recorded the evidence, is taking students from the school on a field trip to the Creation Museum. Paszkiewicz, who is also the advisor for the school's Christian Club, wants students to be exposed to the "science behind creationism."

Apparently the original plan was to take this field trip during school hours using taxpayer funds.

Matthew LaClair will be discussing this tonight on Equal Time for Freethought on WBAI radio 99.5 FM in NYC at 6:30 p.m. EDT, 3:30 p.m. MST (Arizona). WBAI broadcasts on the Internet in several streaming audio formats, so you don't have to be in NYC to listen.

My AHA workshop session on Thursday

I'll be giving a talk during the pre-conference workshop sessions at this week's American Humanist Association conference, which is being held June 5-7 at the Tempe Mission Palms Hotel.

My talk is on Thursday, June 4, from 4-5 p.m. in the Palm F room. While there is ordinarily a $20 charge for the pre-conference workshops, readers of this blog may attend for free (but donations to the AHA are appreciated).

My talk is entitled "Lessons learned from 25 years of battling creationists, Scientologists, and fundamentalists online."

I'll also be representing the Arizona Coalition of Reason at a press conference on Friday morning about a new billboard campaign.

More about that on Friday.

UPDATE (June 4, 2009): My presentation (Keynote format) is here, published with a Creative Commons license (noncommercial, attribution, no derivative works).

UPDATE (June 8, 2009): Friday's press conference was held by the American Humanist Association, the United Coalition of Reason, and the Arizona Coalition of Reason. Roy Speckhardt of the AHA introduced the press conference, Fred Edwords of United COR announced his new group and that it plans to start up about 20 COR groups throughout the country by the end of the year, and I spoke on behalf of ArizonaCOR. We have a billboard up at 44th St. and Washington, on the southbound route into Sky Harbor airport.

We got press coverage from ABC Ch. 15, Fox Ch. 10, and independent Ch. 3, from the Arizona Republic and New Times, and from KTAR radio. ASU's State Press will also be running a story.

Most spun the issue as a big controversy, but that seems outlandish to me. Fox's "man on the street" interviews ended up with two atheists out of five interviewed, and most didn't seem to think it was a big deal. The owner of the business near the billboard made some strange argument about how the billboard should have required special regulatory approval, since he needed to get approval for his own business's signs--but apparently didn't recognize that such approval would only be needed for the billboard itself (unless it was grandfathered), not for its content.

UPDATE (June 21, 2009): Here's my presentation, embedded via SlideShare:

UPDATE (June 29, 2009): Leslie Zukor of the Reed Secular Alliance at Reed College gives a recap of the AHA conference.

Sen. Jon Kyl's flip-flop on judicial filibustering

On May 19, 2005, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) spoke out against filibustering judicial nominations of President George W. Bush, and said he was willing to give up the tool permanently, and not block future Democratic presidential nominees:

"Republicans seek to right a wrong that has undermined 214 years of tradition - wise, carefully thought-out tradition. The fact that the Senate rules theoretically allowed the filibuster of judicial nominations but were never used to that end is an important indicator of what is right, and why the precedent of allowing up-or-down votes is so well established. It is that precedent that has been attacked and which we seek to restore....

My friends argue that Republicans may want to filibuster a future Democratic President's nominees. To that I say, I don't think so, and even if true, I'm willing to give up that tool. It was never a power we thought we had in the past, and it is not one likely to be used in the future. I know some insist that we will someday want to block Democrat judges by filibuster. But I know my colleagues. I have heard them speak passionately, publicly and privately, about the injustice done to filibustered nominees. I think it highly unlikely that they will shift their views simply because the political worm has turned."

But now he suggests he's willing to lead the filibustering against any Obama nominee who uses empathy:

The Senate's No. 2 Republican on Sunday refused to rule out an effort to block confirmation if President Barack Obama seeks a Supreme Court justice who decides cases based on "emotions or feelings or preconceived ideas."

Sen. Jon Kyl made clear he would use a filibuster, a procedural move to delay a final vote on a bill or nominee, if Obama follows through on his pledge to nominate someone who takes into account human suffering and employs empathy from the bench.

(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

UPDATE (May 28, 2009): Kyl continues to expand upon his hypocrisy on this issue:

Kyl, when Bush was in office, about the lack of necessity for long hearings on judicial nominees:

One might wonder why we would need more than just a couple of days of debate (the average of recent nominees is two to three days), especially since nothing new has been said for weeks. But, if the public has noticed anything during this process it is that senators value their right of unlimited debate.

Kyl on the need for long hearings on judicial nominees, now that Obama is in office:

"To that end, when John Roberts was first nominated on July 19, 2005, and subsequently re-nominated to be Chief Justice on September 6, 2005, Senate Republicans afforded the minority ample time to adequately examine his background and qualifications before he received a confirmation vote 73 days later.

"When Samuel Alito was first nominated on October 31, 2005, the minority was afforded 93 days before he received a confirmation vote on January 31, 2006.

"I would expect that Senate Democrats will afford the minority the same courtesy as we move forward with this process."

There's a bit of further irony here in that the delay for Alito's hearing, originally scheduled for December 2005 but moved to January 2006, was caused by Republican Senators Kyl and Mike DeWine (R-OH), because they needed the time for campaigning for re-election in their home districts.

Ian Plimer on climate change

As was mentioned last August by commenter Ktisophilos, Ian Plimer has a new book out on climate change, titled Heaven and Earth: Global Warming: The Missing Science, in which he challenges claims of anthropogenic global warming.

Plimer is an Australian professor of geology who I criticized for his methods in debate with creationists, as well as for his reliability and accuracy. He responded by criticizing me with more misrepresentation in his book Telling Lies for God, which contained numerous errors, as well as multiple cases of failure to properly quote and cite sources that he used in writing the book. (The Creation Ministries International documentary for which I was interviewed, Facing the Fire, is about Plimer's 1988 debate with Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research.)

It now appears that Plimer's latest work is also extremely sloppy and contains erroneous source attributions. Tim Lambert at the Deltoid ScienceBlog identifies a long list of problems in the book by page number, points out the facts about Plimer's misleading figure 3, which doesn't originate from the source Plimer has claimed, and about another misrepresented source and graph.

Some Christians who found Plimer to be worthless as a source on creationism as a result of my critique have nonetheless found him to be a worthwhile source on anthropogenic climate change, such as Bill Muehlenberg and some of the commenters at his CultureWatch blog. This strikes me as an inconsistent position--Plimer has demonstrated unreliability in both debates, and shouldn't be relied upon as a source for either. That doesn't mean to ignore what he says, or that everything he says is wrong--it's just that everything he says needs to be thoroughly checked for accuracy. If it checks out, then it's better to cite the original source, not Plimer.

UPDATE (May 26, 2009): Commenter Paul points out a review of Plimer's book by Barry Brook, which also includes a link to a point-by-point critique of the book by Prof. Ian Enting of the University of Melbourne (PDF). (This link has been updated as of June 1, 2009 to point to a location that will continue to maintain the most recent version of the critique, as per a comment below from Prof. Enting.)

UPDATE (May 28, 2009): Bill Muehlenberg still appears to be refusing to publish contrary opinions from me, continuing his past record. I posted the following two comments on his blog, which he has not allowed through moderation:

1. Comment submitted on the evening of May 22, 2009:

I am a critic of creationism and skeptic who challenged Ian Plimer's methods and reliability in his criticisms of creationism (cited by one of your commenters above). I am sorry to say that Plimer's methods and reliability continue to be unsound in his contribution to the climate change debate. For example, see the following two blog posts that document errors and falsehoods in his new book:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/the_science_is_missing_from_ia.php

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/ian_plimer_lies_about_source_o.php

I think that Plimer is mostly correct about creationism (it's nonsense) and mostly incorrect about climate change (there are real trends that correlate with human activity), but given his record he shouldn't be relied upon as a source in either debate without carefully checking up on everything he says.

2. Submitted on the morning of May 23, 2009:

Bill:

I do hope you will let my comments through moderation.

Here is another post from the Deltoid ScienceBlog about Ian Plimer misrepresenting one of his own sources:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/plimer_and_arctic_warming.php

UPDATE (September 2, 2009): Plimer has descended further into irrationality in his exchange with George Monbiot.

UPDATE (December 17, 2009): Plimer engaged in a debate, of sorts, with George Monbiot, on Australia's "Lateline" program. Monbiot offers his overview of how it went.

Tracking cyberspies through the web wilderness

Yesterday's New York Times has an interesting article about how security researchers at the University of Toronto have helped uncover online spy activity, apparently conducted by the Chinese government, against the Dalai Lama's office in India.

One odd comment in the article: "And why among the more than 1,200 compromised government computers representing 103 countries, were there no United States government systems?"

I find this particularly odd in that I've seen compromised U.S. government systems plenty of times in my information security career, including spam issued from military computers. I don't find it plausible that the U.S. government has recently improved the security of all of its computers and networks so that there are no more compromised systems.

In the context of the article, it's discussing more specifically compromises due to the particular spy ring being monitored. The preceding sentences point out that they weren't able to determine with certainty who was running it, and the immediately preceding sentence asks, "Why was the powerful eavesdropping system not password-protected, a weakness that made it easy for Mr. Villeneuve to determine how the system worked?"

The question should actually have asked why it wasn't encrypted, rather than "password-protected," but the possibilities suggested to me here are that (a) this particular activity is being run by amateurs or (b) this particular activity was intentionally detectible as either (i) a distraction from other, more hidden activity or (ii) to put the blame on China by somebody other than China.

Ambiguous letter in Smithsonian magazine

The April 2009 issue of Smithsonian magazine prints two letters about February's "Darwin and Lincoln" article under the heading "Twin piques." The first reads:

The only place Darwin and Lincoln are equals is in the mind of author Adam Gopnik ["Twin Peaks"]. What a stretch to weave their lives together because they share a birthday. "High peaks [that] look out toward each other"? Total hyperbole.
Rick Munsell
The Villages, Florida

Unfortunately, Dr. Munsell, a veterinarian from Florida who got his college degrees in Mississippi, doesn't tell us which reputation he thinks is exaggerated. Given his status as a southerner, he could either be a fan of the Confederacy and southern secession, or he could be an anti-evolutionist. Then again, perhaps he just thinks nobody is ever equal to anybody else...

Lippards sight flying snakes

In any event, the next Carolina sighting is only briefly detailed, sadly, since it sounds even more interesting than most. On the afternoon of 16 September 1904, in the countryside near Troutman, North Carolina, Mrs John B Lippard and her children saw "30 or more large snakes sailing through the air" over their farm. Each was about 5ft (1.5m) long and 4-5in (10-13cm) wide. "They watched the snakes sail around and alight in a piece of thickety pine woods... Most assuredly these people saw something." (Statesville Landmark, 20 Sept)

Quoted from p. 34 of Jerome Clark, "Sky Serpents," Fortean Times magazine, #248, June 2009, pp. 30-36.

UPDATE (12 September 2014):  There are, in fact, gliding snakes in the jungles of south and southeast Asia.

Who's behind the financial meltdown?

The Center for Public Integrity, an organization I support, has just published the results of an investigation into the roots of the recent economic crisis and the major players involved:

The top subprime lenders whose loans are largely blamed for triggering the global economic meltdown were owned or backed by giant banks now collecting billions of dollars in bailout money — including several that have paid huge fines to settle predatory lending charges. The banks that funded the subprime industry were not victims of an unforeseen financial collapse, as they have sometimes portrayed themselves, but enablers that bankrolled the type of lending threatening the financial system.
...

According to the analysis:

• At least 21 of the top 25 subprime lenders were financed by banks that received bailout money — through direct ownership, credit agreements, or huge purchases of loans for securitization.

• Nine of the top 10 lenders were based in California, including all of the top five — Countrywide Financial Corp., Ameriquest Mortgage Co., New Century Financial Corp., First Franklin Corp., and Long Beach Mortgage Co.

• Twenty of the top 25 subprime lenders have closed, stopped lending, or been sold to avoid bankruptcy. Most were non-bank lenders.

• Eleven of the lenders on the list, including four recipients of bank bailout funds, have made payments to settle claims of widespread lending abuses.

Check out the full report.

Greater percentage of nonreligious join religion than vice-versa

In an op-ed at the New York Times, Charles Blow offers a rebuttal to the claim that most people follow particular religions because they are raised in those religions with the following:

Maybe, but a study entitled “Faith in Flux” issued this week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life questioned nearly 3,000 people and found that most children raised unaffiliated with a religion later chose to join one. Indoctrination be damned. By contrast, only 14 percent of those raised Catholic and 13 percent of those raised Protestant later became unaffiliated.

(It should be noted that about a quarter of the unaffiliated identified as atheist or agnostic, and the rest said that they had no particular religion.)

I don't think this is particularly informative or much of a rebuttal, given that most of those "unaffiliated" were not actually raised atheist or agnostic, and that it would not be particularly surprising that someone raised in an unaffiliated-but-religious environment would end up joining a particular church that they found compatible with the views they were raised with. Without more specific data, I don't think this at all refutes the claim that most people follow the religious traditions and views they are raised with, which I think is very well supported by the geographical distribution of religious belief.

It is still interesting, however, that a majority of the unaffiliated become affiliated, and that the number one reason for that, according to Blow, is that "Most said that they first joined a religion because their spiritual needs were not being met." Blow writes:

As the nonreligious movement picks up steam, it needs do a better job of appealing to the ethereal part of our human exceptionalism — that wondrous, precious part where logic and reason hold little purchase, where love and compassion reign. It’s the part that fears loneliness, craves companionship and needs affirmation and fellowship.

Here, I think he makes a good point, though I think the label of "spiritual needs" is a misnomer. This is, I think, the same point I've made in a few posts at this blog, including one on April 29 where I wrote that an overly intellectualized understanding of human beings is a mistake that some atheists make, and one on how Pentecostalism has been tremendously successful with its focus on these other aspects of humanity.

By the way, it's important to note that even if a greater percentage of the nonreligious join religion than vice versa, that doesn't mean that a greater number of the nonreligious join religion than vice versa, and in fact we know that isn't the case from the data that shows that the "unaffiliated" group is the fastest growing group in the U.S.

Same-sex marriage in Christian history

Jinxiboo's blog reports on Saint Sergius and Bacchus, officers in the Roman army exposed as secret Christians and martyred in the fourth century:

A Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St. Catherine's Monastery on Mt. Sinai in Israel. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman ‘pronubus’ (a best man), overseeing a wedding. The pronubus is Christ. The married couple are both men.
...

Prof. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the "Office of Same-Sex Union" (10th and 11th century), and the "Order for Uniting Two Men" (11th and 12th century).

These church rites had all the symbols of a heterosexual marriage: the whole community gathered in a church, a blessing of the couple before the altar was conducted with their right hands joined, holy vows were exchanged, a priest officiatied in the taking of the Eucharist and a wedding feast for the guests was celebrated afterwards. These elements all appear in contemporary illustrations of the holy union of the Byzantine Warrior-Emperor, Basil the First (867-886 CE) and his companion John.

Such same gender Christian sanctified unions also took place in Ireland in the late 12thand/ early 13th century, as the chronicler Gerald of Wales (‘Geraldus Cambrensis’) recorded.

Same-sex unions in pre-modern Europe list in great detail some same gender ceremonies found in ancient church liturgical documents. One Greek 13th century rite, "Order for Solemn Same-Sex Union", invoked St. Serge and St. Bacchus, and called on God to "vouchsafe unto these, Thy servants [N and N], the grace to love one another and to abide without hate and not be the cause of scandal all the days of their lives, with the help of the Holy Mother of God, and all Thy saints". The ceremony concludes: "And they shall kiss the Holy Gospel and each other, and it shall be concluded".

Another 14th century Serbian Slavonic "Office of the Same Sex Union", uniting two men or two women, had the couple lay their right hands on the Gospel while having a crucifix placed in their left hands. After kissing the Gospel, the couple were then required to kiss each other, after which the priest, having raised up the Eucharist, would give them both communion.

Records of Christian same sex unions have been discovered in such diverse archives as those in the Vatican, in St. Petersburg, in Paris, in Istanbul and in the Sinai, covering a thousand-years from the 8th to the 18th century.

The Dominican missionary and Prior, Jacques Goar (1601-1653), includes such ceremonies in a printed collection of Greek Orthodox prayer books, “Euchologion Sive Rituale Graecorum Complectens Ritus Et Ordines Divinae Liturgiae” (Paris, 1667).

While homosexuality was technically illegal from late Roman times, homophobic writings didn’t appear in Western Europe until the late 14th century. Even then, church-consecrated same sex unions continued to take place.

The evangelical Christian response will likely be to either question whether these were really like "marriage" or reject them as Satan-inspired evil that shows how far astray the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches have gone.

Wikipedia has more on Sergius and Bacchus.

Unconscious decision-making

Evidence continues to mount that human decision-making occurs in the brain prior to conscious awareness of the decision, which is evidence against the common religious view of a soul, separate from the brain, which is the seat of all of our mental capacities. It's also at odds with an overly intellectualized view of human beings held by some atheists (as well as all Scientologists, who consider unconscious decision-making by the "reactive mind" or festering "body thetans" to be the cause of human unhappiness), on which we must strive to make all of our decisions based on conscious, deliberative reason. I don't think this is a very common view among atheists today, who tend to have some familiarity with evolution and cognitive science, but there are still some out there who have an overly idealized view of what a rational human being should be.

A view of human beings that focuses solely on the intellectual and reason is not only at odds with the facts about how our cognition works, it gives short shrift to the importance of social bonds and emotion, which are areas that some religions focus on to the exclusion of the intellectual--with great success in expanding their memberships, at least over the short term.

George W. Bush on the difference between democracy and dictatorship

"It's important for people to understand that in a democracy, there will be a full investigation. In other words, we want to know the truth. In our country, when there's an allegation of abuse ... there will be a full investigation, and justice will be delivered. ... It's very important for people and your listeners to understand that in our country, when an issue is brought to our attention on this magnitude, we act. And we act in a way in which leaders are willing to discuss it with the media. ... In other words, people want to know the truth. That stands in contrast to dictatorships. A dictator wouldn't be answering questions about this. A dictator wouldn't be saying that the system will be investigated and the world will see the results of the investigation."

And on the treatment of war crimes: "War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, ‘I was just following orders."

The former quote is from the video below, the latter quote is from this March 2003 CNN transcript.

(First quote via Dispatches from the Culture Wars, second quote via The Agitator.)

And, for your edification, please read Scott Horton's article, "Busting the Torture Myths."

"Fleeting expletives" FCC rule upheld

The FCC rule on "fleeting expletives," permitting massive fines even for individual occurrences of the "seven words you can't say on television," arguing that they always have sexual connotations even when used as an intensifier, was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision. The decision is noteworthy for using the terms "F-word" and "S-word" and "f***ing" and "s****" in its text, rather than spelling them out.

Clarence Thomas' concurrence in the majority, however, questioned the constitutional basis of the FCC's ability to regulate content. It should be just a matter of time before the FCC's ability to regulate indecency is curtailed, but the Supreme Court did not rule on that issue in this case.

Adam Thierer at the Technology Liberation Front has a thorough commentary:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Thierer points out that Scalia, purportedly a strict constitutionalist, in his decision has endorsed a brand-new justification for the FCC's power to regulate broadcast content. The original justification was that the airwaves were a scarce resource that needed to be protected for productive uses; the new argument is that because there are so many unregulated alternatives like cable, satellite, and the Internet, that the government needs to protect one last refuge from offensive content.

(Previously, previously.)

Obama's $100M proposed budget cut, in perspective

A nice visual depiction of what it amounts to.



(Via The Agitator.)

ApostAZ podcast #15

Whoops, forgot to report on this one when it was released last month:

Episode 015 Atheism and wheat-gluten-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! All Music from Greydon Square- CPT Theorem and Compton Effect,Group Events, Sao Paulo- Making Hard Decisions is a Crime Against the Church, Half of UK Folks Agree that Evolution Makes God Obsolete, Thunderf00t's PEARL of a Youtube vid.

Comments: The woman who claimed that someone being "dead" and resuscitated after eight minutes was miraculous is a bit off in her claim, since hearts and lungs are routinely stopped in open heart surgery for 4-6 hours, though that involves oxygenation of the blood by a heart-lung bypass machine. Perhaps more to the point are some hypothermia near-death cases, some of which have lasted for hours, like this recent case in Minnesota.

Nassim Taleb's ten principles for a black-swan-proof world

At the Financial Times (with more detail for each item):

1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small.

2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains.

3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus.

4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks.

5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity.

6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning .

7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”.

8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains.

9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement.

10. Make an omelette with the broken eggs.

(Via Will Wilkinson.)

The banker who said no

A banker who resisted the urge to invest in toxic assets during the boom is cleaning up during the bust. Andy Beal of Beal Bank in Plano, Texas "virtually stopped making or buying loans" from 2004 to 2007, leading people around him to think he was crazy. Now he's buying up loans at fire sale prices and has tripled his bank's assets to $7 billion in the last 15 months, and without government bailout money.

Beal is also known for high-stakes poker games against the top poker players in the world, in which he has lost more than he's won, but occasionally taken for a lot of money (including an $11 million win in one day).

What the laws of physics say about sustainable energy

Cambridge University physicist David MacKay's book, Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air, is available for free download or perusal in a variety of forms including HTML, PDF and PostScript, at the website www.withouthotair.com.

The ICR does law as well as it does science

The Institute for Creation Research Graduate School has filed a lawsuit in the state of Texas over its inability to advertise master's degrees in science that it is not accredited or permitted to offer in the state of Texas.

An attorney evaluates their lawsuit and finds that it's as crazy as their science, and doomed to dismissal.

(Via Pharyngula).

American Religious Identification Study 2008

The American Religious Identification Study 2008 has been published, and the only group to grow across the entire country is the "no religion" group.

Here's how Arizona's religious identifications have changed in the last decade:

1990: 24% Catholic, 57% other Christian, 3% other religions, 13% none, 3% don't know/refused to answer.

2009: 29% Catholic, 44% other Christians, 5% other religions, 17% none, 5% don't know/refused to answer.

The states with the highest percentage of persons identifying themselves as having no religion in 2008 are:

Vermont, 34%
New Hampshire, 29%
Wyoming, 28%
Maine, 25%
Washington, 25%
Nevada, 24%
Oregon, 24%
Delaware, 23%
Idaho, 23%
Massachusetts, 22%
Colorado, 21%
Montana, 21%

(Via the Secular Outpost.)

AiG/CMI dispute settled

CMI has taken down its AiG-critical material and posted a notice that reads:

CMI and AiG are pleased to inform you that the dispute between the ministries has been settled to their mutual satisfaction. Each ministry is now focused on its respective mission, having put this dispute behind them in April of 2009.

Nathan Zamprogno noted in a comment on my last blog post on this dispute that AiG still had some of its CMI-critical material about the case online, but it now appears to have been taken down as well.

Jeff Benedict and Little Pink House

This afternoon I had the pleasure of hearing writer Jeff Benedict speak about his book, Little Pink House, which is the story behind the Kelo v. New London case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005. That case, which ruled that New London did have the right to use eminent domain to seize private property and turn it over to another private entity--effectively retranslating the Fifth Amendment's use of the words "public use" into the meaning "public benefit"--was a case I thought I was familiar with. But Benedict's talk revealed that while I was aware of some of the facts relevant to the legal case, I really had no idea about the whole story. In his short talk, he conveyed some of the events and details that did not make it to the national press, but which make the story all the more interesting. The political battles between state and city government, the plan to get Pfizer to stay in Connecticut when it was looking elsewhere, and the personalities involved made for a genuinely moving talk even when we already know how the story ends.

I look forward to reading his book.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2009

There's FUD spreading about Sec. 14 of the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, maintaining that it amounts to an effective repeal of the 4th Amendment for the Internet. That's not so--the scope is restricted to "threat and vulnerability information" regarding the Internet, which I interpret to mean network service provider knowledge about compromised systems, botnets, etc., much of which is no doubt already being voluntarily shared with the government as is permissible under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, when, in the course of a provider's normal service monitoring, it becomes aware of possible criminal activity.

I expect I'll have more to say after I have a chance to read through the whole bill (PDF).

SkeptiCamp Phoenix today

Today is the big day for SkeptiCamp Phoenix, starting at about 12:30 p.m. this afternoon.

Magic Tony, one of our presenters, will be live-blogging the event at his blog, and there may also be twittering at #skepticamp. No live video this time, but there will likely be video of at least some talks put online after the event, along with photos, presentations, and recaps.

I received the t-shirts last night (the back of which is shown in the photo) and the official SkeptiCamp 2009 banner earlier in the week, and I've got boxes of Skeptic magazine, Skeptical Inquirer, and some books for distribution to participants. Thanks to the generous contributions of our sponsors, the Skeptics Society/Skeptic magazine, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry/Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and the James Randi Educational Foundation, who provided the materials and funds for the t-shirts (which will also defray a portion of our dinner tonight after the event at Tempe's Rula BulaBoulders on Broadway).

It looks like we'll have about twenty people physically present at the event, and twelve or thirteen presentations, some 30-minute presentations and some 10-minute presentations. The current list of presentations:

Tony Barnhart, Methods of the Pseudo-Psychic
Abraham Heward, What's the difference between skepticism and denial? (led discussion)
David Jackemeyer, Henry Hazlitt's Thinking as Science
Don Lacey, Words Important to Skepticism (PowerPoint 2007)
Jim Lippard, Positive Side-effects of Misinformation (SlideShare)
John Lynch, Academic Freedom and Intelligent Design (SlideShare)
Shannon Rankin, Skepticism for Dummies
David Weston, Creating Skeptical Happiness (PowerPoint)
Jack Ray, Skeptical Dating
Mike Stackpole, Practical Techniques for Street Skepticism
Charlie Cavanaugh Toft, Teaching Critical Thinking
Xarold Trejo, Why I am a Skeptic

SkeptiCamp Phoenix will be the first live-blogged SkeptiCamp event, and this is also the first day on which there will be two SkeptiCamp events in the same day--the other one going on today is SkeptiCamp Vancouver, which is occurring this afternoon at Langara College, with the sponsorship of the BC Skeptics.

UPDATE (April 2, 2009): Don Lacey of the Skeptics of Tucson, who participated in SkeptiCamp Phoenix, offers his thoughts at the James Randi Educational Foundation's Swift blog. ScienceBlogger and SkeptiCamp Phoenix participant John Lynch gives a recap at his blog.

Dan Barker's Losing Faith in Faith, in Spanish

Dan Barker's book, Losing Faith in Faith, has been translated into Spanish and is available as a free PDF download, Perder la fe en la fe.

Corrupt drug cops in Philadelphia

From the Philadelphia Daily News:

ON A SWELTERING July afternoon in 2007, Officer Jeffrey Cujdik and his narcotics squad members raided an Olney tobacco shop.

Then, with guns drawn, they did something bizarre: They smashed two surveillance cameras with a metal rod, said store owners David and Eunice Nam.

The five plainclothes officers yanked camera wires from the ceiling. They forced the slight, frail Korean couple to the vinyl floor and cuffed them with plastic wrist ties.

“I so scared,” said Eunice Nam, 56. “We were on floor. Handcuffs on me. I so, so scared, I wet my pants.”

The officers rifled through drawers, dumped cigarette cartons on the floor and took cash from the registers. Then they hauled the Nams to jail.

The Nams were arrested for selling tiny ziplock bags that police consider drug paraphernalia, but which the couple described as tobacco pouches.

When they later unlocked their store, the Nams allege, they discovered that a case of lighter fluid and handfuls of Zippo lighters were missing. The police said they seized $2,573 in the raid. The Nams say they actually had between $3,800 and $4,000 in the store.

The Nams’ story is strikingly similar to those told by other mom-and-pop store owners, from Dominicans in Hunting Park to Jordanians in South Philadelphia.

Via The Agitator. Officer Cujdik has other issues.

Immigration and jobs

Despite the common concern that immigrants to the U.S. take jobs that would otherwise go to American citizens, immigrants actually create jobs and promote innovation. Two recent articles in The Economist look at this topic. In the March 7, 2009 issue, a study by Harvard economist William Kerr and University of Michigan economist William Lincoln looked at how patent production changes in response to changes in the number of H-1B visa holders, immigrants with technical skills. When the number of H-1B visas was increased by 10%, total patenting increased by 2%, caused mostly by patent activity by immigrants. However, rather than reducing the number of patents by the native population, those also increased.

In the March 14, 2009 issue's special report on entrepreneurship, it's noted that H-1B visas are capped at 85,000/year, and a maximum of 10,000 from any one country, increasing the wait for large countries such as India and China, where the wait time is about six years. There are over one million people waiting. This issue also notes that about half of Silicon Valley's startups are founded by immigrants, and about 25% of all U.S. science and technology startups have a CEO or CTO who is an immigrant, and these companies employ 450,000 people and generate $52 billion in annual revenue. A quarter of U.S. patent applications in 2006 name foreign nationals as inventors or co-inventors.

Physical spam

On our dog walk this evening, we found that two neighborhoods to the south of us have been targeted by a new sort of marketing technique--in each yard was a bag containing a few rocks and a business card, apparently dropped by someone driving by who was too lazy to deliver them to the front door. In one neighborhood, these were like the ones pictured, in a ziploc bag with a card advertising a landscaping service. In another neighborhood, they were in twist-tied baggies with a piece of paper advertising a cleaning service.

This doesn't seem to me like a very effective method of advertising. The door hanger flyers are annoying already, but these are worse--it's like tossing trash into people's yards.

Some interesting technology

The March 7th, 2009 issue of The Economist Technical Quarterly has some items of interest:

Cool Earth Solar of Livermore, California is using balloons as solar energy collectors.

Narasimharao Kondamudi, Susanta Mohapatra, and Manoranjan Misra of the University of Nevada at Reno have found a way to turn coffee grounds into biodiesel.

David Whitten of the University of New Mexico and Kirk Schanze of the University of Florida have built "micro-sized 'roach motels'" for capturing bacteria in hospitals and on the surfaces of ships.

Nicholas Kotov and his team at the University of Michigan have come up with a way to coat cotton threads with carbon nanotubes which can be used to carry electricity, and to add an additional material that reacts with human serum albumin, in order to detect bleeding, which might be used by the military in monitoring soldiers.

The success of drug decriminalization in Portugal

Portugal decriminalized drugs in 2001, and Glenn Greenwald discusses the evidence that he says shows it has been "an unquestionable success, leading to improvements in virtually every relevant category and enabling Portugal to manage drug-related problems (and drug usage rates) far better than most Western nations that continue to treat adult drug consumption as a criminal offense."

Answers in Genesis censorship turns old-earther into young-earther

Commenter Tim H pointed me to a post at Tim Martin's Beyond Creation Science blog about another Answers in Genesis controversy. Old-earth creationist Charles Spurgeon delivered a June 17, 1855 sermon (four years before Darwin published Origin of Species) in which he stated that the earth had to be "many millions of years" old. When Answers in Genesis published that sermon on their website, they omitted that sentence, "We know not how remote the period of the creation of this globe may be-certainly many millions of years before the time of Adam."

After Martin pointed out the omission, Answers in Genesis inserted a footnote containing the omitted sentence, stating that this footnote was inadvertently omitted from their publication of the sermon. But they made no apologies for removing the sentence in question from its proper context and relegating it to a footnote.

UPDATE: AiG did more than just remove that sentence--they revised language throughout the sermon, which in some other areas also changed the intended meaning to bring it in line with young-earth creationist dogma.

The U.S. Nazi dirty bomb plot

Remember how the press was all over the story of the 29-year-old millionaire white supremacist and fan of Adolf Hitler in Maine who was building a dirty bomb that he planned to set off at Obama's inauguration, but it didn't happen because his wife shot and killed him?

Me neither, but James G. Cummings of Belfast, Maine, had (quoting Wikileaks) "four lots of one gallon containers of bomb-grade hydrogen peroxide, uranium, thorium (also radioactive), lithium metal, thermite, aluminum powder, beryllium (radiation booster), boron, black iron oxide and magnesium ribbon" which he somehow planned to set off at the inauguration. Personally, I don't think that volume of material could have been easily smuggled in anywhere near the inauguration activities without raising suspicion.

Why no press coverage of this story, apart from the Bangor Daily News?

Wikileaks has a summary; Wonkette has summarized that; the Washington D.C. Regional Threat and Analysis Center report (PDF) is here.

Pat Robertson on Christians studying the Koran

From the J-Walk blog:

Pat Robertson answers a question from a "pastor of a ministry to international college students" who asks whether his ministry leaders should be permitted to study the Koran in order to understand Islam, which he thinks is a bad idea since "there are plenty of Christian resources out there to get information on other religions."

Robertson's reply:

Kelly, it won't be wrong if somebody studies Islam, but they need guided study, because somebody needs to go along and point out the incredible inconsistencies in that book. And if you have a guided study of the Koran and see how much in there is just repetitious, how much comes out of the Old Testament and the New Testament, how much is just plagiarism from the Bible, etc.?.

If you will go through it with them, I think it would be a very helpful exercise. But I doubt very seriously by reading the Koran they're going to get converted to Islam. I wouldn't worry about it. But I think they need to see it. They need to see what is in there. Many people who are Muslim don't know what the Koran says. And when you begin to tell them, they say, "Well, I don't believe that." And you say, "Well, it's in your sacred book. It's supposed to be holy words." So it won't hurt, but guided study.

Blogger John Walkenbach responds: "Now, turn that answer around a pretend it's in response to a Muslim asking if he should study the Bible. It still works!"

Indeed, with a few small changes. (Hat tip to Dave Palmer at the SKEPTIC list for the pointer to Robertson's Q&A.)

Copyright treaty classified on national security grounds

The U.S. government is negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a treaty which imposes new controls over copyright, but refuses to let the general public know its specific content. In response to a Freedom of Information Act Request from Knowledge Ecology International, the Obama administration responded that the content is classified for national security reasons pursuant to Executive Order 12958, a Clinton order from 1995.

As Declan McCullagh points out, the executive order "allows material to be classified only if disclosure would do 'damage to the national security and the original classification authority is able to identify or describe the damage.'" He also points out that one of Obama's first acts as president was to sign a memo that said that FOIA "should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure."

The claim that this treaty cannot be disclosed for national security reasons sounds bogus, but if it's so, what's the purported damage being prevented? In the absence of a clear rationale, this treaty should be openly discussed and available to the general public.

SkeptiCamp Phoenix

On March 28, SkeptiCamp Phoenix 2009 will take place at Arizona State University in Tempe.

Participants include Mike Stackpole of the Phoenix Skeptics on "Practical Techniques for Street Skepticism," John Lynch on "Academic Freedom and Intelligent Design," and Tony Barnhart on "Methods of the Pseudo-Psychic."

The event is sponsored by the Skeptics Society/Skeptic magazine, the Center for Skeptical Inquiry/Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and by the James Randi Educational Foundation. It will be the fifth SkeptiCamp, after two in Colorado, one in Vancouver, and one in Atlanta.

For more information on the event, see the SkeptiCamp Phoenix 2009 wiki page, the SkeptiCamp Phoenix registration site, or the SkeptiCamp Phoenix Facebook page.

For more on SkeptiCamp, see Reed Esau's "The Skepticamp Bargain" in JREF's Swift and his article "Raising Our Game" (PDF) published by the Skeptics Society.

(Previously, previously, previously.)

Scientology and religious visas

Jeff Jacobsen has a new article on Scientology's use of religious R-1 visas to bring people from other countries to the U.S. to work at menial labor for $50/week (with billion-year Sea Org contracts). R-1 visas are supposed to be for religious ministers who have been working for the U.S. organization sponsoring them for at least two years, and it appears that Scientology has abused these conditions to get cheap labor. And in the process, they've brought in people like Artur Solomonyan from Armenia, who was subsequently arrested and found guilty of illegal weapons sales after trying to sell weapons including surface-to-air missiles to an FBI informant.

Legalize pot and tax the crap out of it

Today's Overcompensating makes a timely proposal. Just as the repeal of Prohibition during the Great Depression helped economic recovery and reduced associated criminal activity, repealing the drug war could do the same. Legalizing prostitution along the lines of the New Zealand model (adopted in 2003, and in 2008 in Western Australia) is also a good idea.

Now that Attorney General Eric Holder has confirmed Obama's campaign promise that the feds will not engage in drug raids against medical marijuana operations in states that have legalized such activity, the time is right.

The Arizona Republic reports:

2 fatally killed after fight near house party

by Ofelia Madrid - Feb. 28, 2009 07:51 PM
The Arizona Republic

Two men are dead after an early morning shooting in south Phoenix, police said.

Officers responded to a shooting near 36th Avenue and Broadway Road a little after midnight Friday, police said.

Officers arrived to find numerous people fleeing and were directed to a 27-year-oldman who was dead in the alley from gunshot wounds, police said.

Police later learned that another victim, a 20-year-old man, died as he was being driven to St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center.

Investigators received initial reports of a party in the area and a fight nearby.

No further information was available.

It's too bad they weren't non-fatal killings. (Perhaps an editor changed "shot" to "killed"?)

UPDATE: They changed the link to say "2 fatally shot" and on the story itself to "2 shot, killed after fight near house party."

Using the stimulus to accelerate the downturn

$10.1 billion in federal stimulus money has been released to the states by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Arizona is receiving more than $150 million of that. And what is that money to be used for, in a state where there are tens of thousands of homes for sale with few buyers (50,000+ in Maricopa county alone)?

Building more housing.

The Arizona Republic reports that

Millions of dollars more will go to state and local programs. That includes $32 million to begin construction of affordable rental housing, $22 million to prevent homelessness and $12 million to build or repair public housing across the state.

To the extent this money is used to build new homes, as opposed to repairing deteriorating ones, it's just going to accelerate the decline of home prices, putting more homeowners underwater and providing them with more incentive to walk away from their mortgages. Now, I think that a further decline in home prices is inevitable, no matter what the stimulus money tries to do, but it's ridiculous to throw additional money at accelerating that process. It makes about as much sense as using federal stimulus money to give grants to investment bankers to develop more complex collateralized debt obligations.

Now, this isn't actually quite that bad, since it does apparently focus on some particular communities--a third of the money is for Native American communities that didn't get a housing bubble of speculative buying. Some of it is also for families that need short-term help with utility bills, rent, or other expenses (something that the Modest Needs Foundation has been doing for years with private donations). And Tucson is apparently using it to improve energy efficiency of existing public housing units. Those are all much more reasonable uses of the money than building more houses.

Best Nigerian 419 scam ever

I just read this email this morning, which has to win a prize for the best Nigerian 419 scam I've ever seen:

Reply-To:
From: "Mrs. Mary S. Derrick"
Subject: Stop Contacting those people !!!
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:43:50 +0100
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
X-NetStation-Status: PASS

Attn: My Dear,

I am Mrs Mary Susan Derrick, I am a US citizen, 48 years Old. I reside here in New Braunfels Texas. My residential address is as follows. 108 Crockett Court. Apt 303, New Braunfels Texas, United States, am thinking of relocating since I am now rich. I am one of those that took part in the Compensation in Nigeria many years ago and they refused to pay me, I had paid over $20,000 while in the US, trying to get my payment all to no avail.

So I decided to travel down to Nigeria with all my compensation documents, And I was directed to meet Mr. Henshaw I. Anderson, who is the member of COMPENSATION AWARD COMMITTEE, and I contacted him and he explained everything to me. He said whoever is contacting us through emails are fake.

He took me to the paying bank for the claim of my Compensation payment. Right now I am the most happiest woman on earth because I have received my compensation funds of $1,500,000.00 Moreover, Mr Henshaw I. Anderson, showed me the full information of those that are yet to receive their payments and I saw your name as one of the beneficiaries, and your email address, that is why I decided to email you to stop dealing with those people, they are not with your fund, they are only making money out of you. I will advise you to contact Mr. Henshaw I. Anderson

You have to contact him directly on this information below.

COMPENSATION AWARD HOUSE
Name : Mr. Henshaw I. Anderson
Email: henshawanderson@sbcglobal.net
Phone: +234 802 739 4935

You really have to stop dealing with those people that are contacting you and telling you that your fund is with them, it is not in anyway with them, they are only taking advantage of you and they will dry you up until you have nothing.

The only money I paid after I met Mr. Henshaw I. Anderson was just $580 for the paper works, take note of that.

Once again stop contacting those people, I will advise you to contact Mr Henshaw I. Anderson so that he can help you to Deliver your fund instead of dealing with those liars that will be turning you around asking for different kind of money to complete your transaction.

Thank You and Be Blessed.

Mrs. Mary Susan Derrick.

She's being so honest about those other Nigerian scammers that ripped her off, so surely she must be honest about this compensation fund. The sad thing is that those who have been ripped off multiple times already will probably fall for this one, too.

Fourth stray dog of 2009

We found this dog--some kind of Spaniel?an Aussie sheepdog--at 20th St. and Euclid, where he appeared to be wanting to get into a mini-van with a group of mariachis. They just drove off and ignored him, so we stopped our dog walk to pick him up. He had a collar, no tags. This dog is a neutered male, unusual for the strays we find.

This could have been our seventh stray of 2009, but the pack of three dogs we saw running along the canal yesterday morning wouldn't let us near them.

UPDATE: We've been contacted in email by the owner; this dog's name is Woody and the owner will be going to pick him up at the pound.

Bristol Palin disproves intelligent design

The Weekly World News, now online only, looks like it's trying to become more like The Onion:

Bristol Palin held her first interview since giving birth Monday night with Greta Von Susteren. The 18 year old daughter of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin talked about her experience as a mother and her mother’s policies towards education.

“Mom says that science and stuff is too hard to force kids to learn. That the world is too complicated to have just happened by accident, and things like an eyeball show signs of a designer. She’s right, Bio is totally hard. But if you work at it, it does kinda make sense.”

She then went on a diatribe about carbon dating, genetic transference, and paleoanthropology.

Bristol held up her Lisa Frank notebook filled with equations and diagrams which categorically disprove the possibility of Intelligent Design.

“It’s a nice idea, but it’s just not realistic. I mean, Lucy? The entire pre-hominid fossil record? Hello??”

Sarah Palin, who was sitting in the room at the time, looked increasingly more uncomfortable. Eventually she broke the silence saying:

“Well now none of us were there so we can’t know for sure…”

“Omigod Mom, it’s called Gene Mapping, don’t even get me started!”

The two sat in an awkward silence until Sarah went into a speech thanking Von Susteren and the other personalities at Fox News for being the last saviors of Democracy. Bristol rolled her eyes and mumbled math equations under her breath.

Mississippi's medical forensic fraudsters

Radley Balko at Reason magazine exposes video that shows Michael West in the act of falsifying evidence used to frame someone for rape and murder, by using plaster casts of the accused's teeth to make bite marks on a toddler's corpse.

This is one of three cases in which Michael West and Steven Hayne provided evidence in the form of bite marks on a body to link a murder victim to an accused rapist and murderer--and in the other two cases, the alleged killers were subsequently freed when exonerated by DNA evidence which linked the cases to the actual murderer, who confessed when they were released.

West and Hayne belong in jail, as does the judge who claimed that the referenced video contained "no exculpatory evidence favorable to the defendant."

Hayne performed over 80% of Mississippi's autopsies for the last 20 years, and was permitted to complete a backlog of 600 autopsies even after he was terminated as the state's coroner as a result of Balko's exposure of other misconduct. This misconduct and the state's failure to hold them accountable brings every criminal case they've ever touched into question.

(Previously on Hayne.)