It’s called Stop Jenny McCarthy. Yes. Please do.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
It’s called Stop Jenny McCarthy. Yes. Please do.
If you notice little things going wrong in your everyday life right now, it’s because Mercury is in retrograde. At least, that’s the excuse astrologers like to give, even though it’s entirely nonsensical and the apparent motion of the planets really has no effect on your life, unless you’re an astronomer. MSNBC has a fluff piece on gadgets going wrong in astrological crises, and they consulted Phil Plait on the subject. I think he blew a few raspberries through the phone at the reporter.
I used to wrassle astrologers for fun and the lulz ages ago, which is why I resurrected the previous old article, in which an astrologer made similar claims about a predictable astrological gremlin, the void-of-course moon. The void-of-course moon is even more ridiculous than the retrograde motion of Mercury — all it means is that the Moon isn’t residing within one of the 12 canonical signs of the zodiac, with consequences that are both petty and dire. We actually had a testable specific prediction from an astrologer, though, so with great joy a whole mob of skeptics rushed to test it.
You can guess what happened: the prediction failed, astrologer made a bunch of random excuses. That was the most predictable part of the exercise.
Stuart Buck persists in claiming that scientists have a bias against the supernatural, and that we dismiss it out of hand. This isn’t true; the problem is that supernatural explanations are poorly framed and typically unaddressable, so we tend to avoid them as unproductive. What one would actually find, if one took the trouble to discuss the ideas with a scientist, is that they are perfectly willing to consider peculiar possibilities if they are clearly stated. We’ll even briefly consider something as insane and worthless as astrology, which is even less credible as a field of study than Intelligent Design.
New Yorkers: you really don’t want to miss the upcoming appearance by James Randi on 10 October. He’ll be at Rockefeller University that evening, and he’s always entertaining and fun.
The rest of the country will be getting a small consolation prize. If you can’t make it to NY, you can all go to Springfield, Missouri instead, where Richard Carrier and PZ Myers will be rockin’ the house with their godless stylings at MSU that weekend. I’ll post more details on that, later.
The right wing media usually makes the most egregiously false claims about science, but I have to confess…on many science subjects, the lefty media is about as bad. I cringe when I see anything about the autism scares in print from either side, and Robert Kennedy Jr’s credibility went poof for me when I saw him peddling absurd terror tactics about thimerosal. So I was pleasantly surprised at this article on Salon that pulls no punches. It slams David Kirby and Andrew Wakefield hard.
It was pleasing to see, for a change.
Ben Goldacre, of the Bad Science weblog, has had a lawsuit hanging over his head for the past year. Ben regularly excoriates alt-medicine quacks, and one of his targets was a pill-peddler named Matthias Rath who got rich off pointless vitamin supplements with exaggerated claims of effectiveness, and most despicably, had been denouncing effective AIDS treatments in order to sell more of his useless patent medicines.
Goldacre publicly called him on his unethical behavior, and Rath in reply sued him for libel. The case has now been settled in Goldacre’s favor.
It’s great personal news for Ben, but it’s also an important victory for medical journalism, and for the people who might be getting legitimate medical advice in the future, instead of the Rath-promoted quackery.
Let us all doff our hats in astonished disbelief at the brazen arrogance of the people who have created the Carl Sagan Institute in Brazil.
That is, the Carl Sagan Institute…of UFOlogy. That’s right, a cranky gang of saucernuts have appropriated the name and likeness of Carl Sagan without authorization to flog their belief that Jesus is a flying saucer pilot. They claim that Sagan was secretly a believer in visitations by Little Green Men, who simply publicly lied, and now they want to use his dead body to beg for donations.
Anyone know a good Brazilian lawyer who’d like to fight this?
Sastra here.
I’m about halfway through, and really enjoying, Robert Price’s new book, Top Secret: The Truth Behind Today’s Pop Mysticisms.
Bob Price has an interesting background: he started out as a roaring Pentacostal Minister, gradually grew into a high-end Christian theologian, and eventually evolved to his present form as secular humanist. He’s currently teaching classes in comparative religion — and also happens to be an expert on HP Lovecraft and science fiction. I think this wide-ranging perspective gives him a particular advantage when dealing with religious topics. He’s been into almost everything, and can compare, contrast, and understand different mindsets with apparent ease. His analogies are often original, and spot on.
Even atheists are still influenced by the religious beliefs they once held. I was raised “freethinker.” Nobody at school knew what that meant, and I had a hard time explaining it, since I wasn’t sure what the alternative was. I wasn’t taught any particular religion, but it seemed to be a cultural prerequisite for having a “meaning,” so I would pick up bits and strands of things that seemed interesting to me, and try them on. I remember deciding in 5th grade to worship the Greek gods, since they would clearly be available, and very grateful for the attention. It seemed odd that they had so few current fans. But, by the time I was a teenager, I became enamored of the “psychic sciences,” and got into New Age.
Having since gotten myself OUT of New Age, I am particularly interested in books and articles that address and critique these self-proclaimed more enlightened, sophisticated, “holistic” forms of spirituality. My interest is not merely personal: such views are still held by many intelligent, well-educated, liberal-thinking people – and many of them take it all very seriously, and yield the power to have it taken seriously in secular arenas. These are not really marginal beliefs. As Price writes:
It has been announced that Phil Plait is to be the new president of the James Randi Educational Foundation. This can’t be. I’ve never been entertained by Phil doing a card trick. Besides, James Randi is supposed to go on forever.
One consolation is that everyone is going to have to escalate the obligatory Plait bashing at the next Amazing Meeting.
One of the splendid people I met in Denver told me about her attendance at a bizarre lecture a few months ago — and she sent me a link to her summary. If you want to experience a second hand glimmering of Native American woo, with UFOs, magic origins, transparent white people, anti-evolution, and quantum physics, there you go.
