I’ve recently made arrangements to come speak at the University of Ireland in Galway in early February. Hooray! I’ve been looking forward to visiting Ireland for some time, so it’s going to be great.

And then I discover that not all the Irish are sane. There are crowds listening to ‘psychic’ prophets and standing in churchyards to stare at the sun until their eyeballs are all wobbly and semi-toasted, and then declaring that the fact that they can’t see straight is a miracle! From God! Hallelujah to a creator who would make a delicate energy sensor friable!

I was planning on giving a couple of serious talks, but now I’m cleverly thinking…if I just hand out ball-peen hammers to the audiences and tell them to bang themselves on the head until they see stars and angels and Jesus himself looking like Bono and singing lullabies, I’ll have a little more time to sneak out and get all touristy.

Except that the people who’d come to listen to me would probably be more critical than the ones who’d listen to a self-proclaimed ‘clairvoyant’ like Joe Coleman. Darn. Preaching reason and autonomy and rebellion from the dictates of mystical authority does have its downsides.

Bill Maher doesn’t believe in vaccines at all? Man, you’ve have got to be utterly nuts to make Bill Frist look good.

The first part is pretty good, where Frist gives Maher a lesson in vaccines; the last bit is rather annoying, as they find common cause in agreeing that we don’t need to make modern medicine available to more, because “we have the best health care system in the world” (baloney), and our bloated health care budget is simply a consequence of bad food and obesity.

Oh, boy. As many of you already know, the big AAI conference is taking place in LA at the end of this week — I’ll be there! — and they are giving Bill Maher an award. This is a problem. Maher made a provocative movie about religion this year, Religulous, and that’s the kind of thing we want to acknowledge and encourage, but at the same time…Maher is as loopy as they come on medical matters. He’s a conspiracy theorist who blames Big Pharma for controlling health care, thinks modern medicine is a failure, and promotes ‘alternative’ therapies that don’t work. It is a serious embarrassment.

I think it is an excellent idea to ask difficult questions and put Maher on the spot, as Orac has proposed, and the last thing any skeptic or rationalist should do is ask critics to be silent. However, we have a couple of small problems here.

One is that some people (not Orac) have been threatening to disrupt the proceedings at the meeting. Nope, not good: there is a difference between asking hard questions and interfering with the event so no one gets to ask questions. Let’s nip this one in the bud: do not show up at the meeting with the intent of turning it into something equivalent to those townhall teabagger shouting matches. I think you’re entirely right to be pissed off at Maher, but that doesn’t justify disruption.

Another problem is that Maher is going to be well insulated. He’s showing up for the award ceremony, which will NOT have time scheduled for a Q&A, and I think he’ll be vanishing right afterwards. We’re not likely to have an opportunity for discussion.

And yet another problem: people are barking at Richard Dawkins. Dawkins does not support quackery. This isn’t an issue on which he’ll disagree with any of you, but he’s also there to talk about his exciting new book, not about fake cancer cures. I suspect he’s not looking forward to a lot of time-wasting headaches over this issue, and if it sounds like it’s going to eat up all of his time with the public, he’ll probably do the rational thing and cut back on spending time with the public. This is not to be encouraged.

I have some suggestions.

I’m going to be printing out Orac’s excellent complaint, and if you’re going, you should, too. I’ll keep an eye on the comments in the next few days for more good questions.

If we get an opportunity in an open forum to pin Maher down on these questions, let’s do it. Let’s do it politely and according to the rules of the session. That’s fair game.

If you find yourself with a chance to ask Richard Dawkins questions, though, please stick to issues that interest him. If you ask him about acupuncture, he’s going to be as dismissive as all of us other skeptics, so there really isn’t much point to going on about it. Don’t waste an opportunity to converse with Dawkins on a bunch of annoying noise. OK?

However, I’ve probably got a greater likelihood of getting a shot at a private conversation with Richard Dawkins than most readers here; maybe, and this is a very thin maybe, I’ll even get an opportunity to collar Maher. I may also get a chance to talk with some of the other organizers of the conference. If that happens, I’ll pass along the complaints, and I’ll try to drill down and get some good answers for you…which, of course, I’ll post here.

I think that’s your best strategy for actually getting answers to the questions Orac is asking, rather than simply triggering a shouting match. While shouting matches are fun, we should want something a little more thoughtful out of these fellows.

In 2002, Thomas and Manju Sam had a very sick child: their daughter Gloria was suffering from a life-threatening case of eczema, and essentially screamed herself to death by painful suppuration. That’s a ghastly tragedy, and we’d normally feel for the parents who suffered that loss. My sympathies are all for their daughter, however, since her parents watched her die…and treated her with homeopathy.

Oh, wait. “Treated” is the wrong word. They neglected her with homeopathy.

I can’t call it good news, but at least it’s a small measure of justice. Thomas and Manju Sam have been convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 years in prison between them. Now if only we could punish all the other peddlers of quack nostrums who contribute to human suffering…

The HuffPo is once again a source of gross misinformation. Don’t worry about swine flu — it’s benign. If you really must protect yourself, take vitamins, eat garlic, get herbal supplements, and trust in homeopathy.

It’s patent quackery.

Really, people: boycott the HuffPo. I never read that slurry of watery dog crap anymore unless you cruel readers send me a link — it’s not worth it.

That’s a disturbing logo for Skepticon II: my eyes are whited out. It reminds me of The Village of the Damned, that creepy movie about alien-human hybrid children. We will be taking over Missouri on 20-21 November, infecting the entire population with the curse of doubt. It will be fun!

They have a good lineup of speakers, but the one thing they lack is money. One of the problems with being godless is that we have failed to institutionalize a means of gouging money out of people…no tithing, no offering plates, no thugs in clerical collars telling you you’ll go to hell if you don’t include us in your wills. That means they’re reduced to paypal and puppy-dog-eyed, quivering-lipped begging for a pittance. If you can, donate a little to the organizers. It’s a good cause, they’re shipping in snarling godless skeptics to one of the most pious corners of the country, you know.

Orac seems shocked that the University of Toronto is hosting a conference of autism kooks. Universities are not entirely benign institutions dedicated to honest scholarship — they have their fair share of grasping administrators who look for short term financial gain, and they are often beholden to wealthy donors who are usually more interested in chucking money into their favorite sport or other hobby horse, rather than serious intellectual endeavors. And more often than not, the biggest quacks are affiliated with the medical schools…not necessarily because doctors are suckers, but because the quacks are drawn to them, and want the authority of medicine.

Toronto might be getting an embarrassing one-shot show of pseudoscience, but I have to live with a university that has a Center for Spirituality and Healing. It’s bogus ‘therapies’, magical thinking, and sloppy inanity every day, all year round. And look! They’re bringing in Deepak Chopra in October!

It’s humiliating. If I were president of the university (something with no chance of ever happening), the first thing I would do is shut down that den of frauds.