A “spiritual science”

Back in the dim and ancient days of usenet, I used to take astrologers apart for fun. They had such goofy ideas, and they were so serious about it. But fortunately for us, astrology is unlike creationism in that it is mostly powerless and unpersuasive, and only the deeply gullible and ignorant can fall for it any more. And it’s so darned inconsistent — even the rationale that forms the foundation of the belief doesn’t hold up. I’ve tended to ignore the irrelevancies of astrology most of the time, but the Star Tribune had a short piece on astrology, and it’s nicely dismissive — so I’ll mention it again.

“When [astrologers] say that the sun is in Pisces, it’s really not in Pisces,” said Parke Kunkle, a board member of the Minnesota Planetarium Society.

Indeed, most horoscope readers who consider themselves Pisces are actually Aquarians. So instead of being sensitive, humane and idealistic [Hey, I’m a Pisces, that’s a perfect description of me!], they actually are friendly, loyal and inventive.[Oh, wait…that’s also a perfect description of me! Maybe there’s something to this astrology mumbo-jumbo}

Or not. [I think I’m going to go with that choice]

There is no physical connection between constellations and personality traits, said Kunkle, who teaches astronomy at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. “Sure, we can connect harvest to the stars,” he said. “But personality? No.”

That’s the case. There are no good correlations even between astrology and personality, and definitely none that match the claims of astrologers. All horoscopes are is a crude form of cold reading.

The funny thing about this article is that it has smoked out a kooky astrologer, who is quite irate. He fulminates about the article, explaining that there are three kinds of zodiacal interpretations, the Sidereal, the Tropical, and the Constelllational, and while those wicked scientists may have nitpicked away at one of them, they haven’t touched his zodiac. He does medieval astrology which has its own specific set of pulled-out-of-his-ass presumptions and assertions and funky clunky rules.

And then he goes further and declares that Scientists should stay the hell out of astrology. Why? It’s hilarious. Because science doesn’t support his lunacy and works to debunk his beliefs.

Why would astrologers even CARE what modern science has to say about astrology? Modern science is almost universally hostile to astrology; and modern scientists who do have some sympathy for our Art usually are trying to “help” by proving astrology on scientific grounds. Being a Spiritual Science, if you will, astrology will never be proven correct, true, or valid to the satisfaction of the modern academy, which is still held captive by the materialist/atheist world view. I’m not suggesting that astrologers ignore everything that modern scientists say about astrology (or any other field), but why would we give it such weight? Is their goal to work with us? In most cases, their goal is to debunk astrology completely. Do you think that these scientists who “corrected” the zodiac dates actually consulted with an astrologer? Of course not! If they had, they might have realized how absolutely ridiculous their “corrections” are.

This is the attitude I recall from all the astrologers I used to argue with, and it’s the same stuff we get from any pseudoscience or theology. In the rare cases when astrologers made specific and testable claims, they didn’t work. So they demand exemption from the way the universe works; their art doesn’t actually have results that can be assessed empirically, or measured, or even seen…which makes one wonder how astrologers and theologians ever came up with their claims, and why we should care about the operation of invisible rules that simply don’t function.

But maybe some astrologer out there will try to defend his superstitions here. If they show up, try not to break them right away — they can be fun, but they’re very fragile.

Precious bodily fluids

Last night, I finished reading Paul Offit’s Deadly Choices(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), his new book about the history of anti-vaccination movements. It’s very good and very thorough and very convincing, and I found it informative because it also takes a broad view, looking everything from the campaigns against Jenner to the crazy talk of Jenny McCarthy. I had never really seen where these opponents of a simple life-saving procedure were coming from, but seeing a few centuries worth of their rhetoric lined up and put on display was helpful, and I finally realized what was wrong with the anti-vaxers.

They’ve all got Jack D. Ripper Syndrome. What drives them nuts is the idea that someone will pollute their (and worse, their children’s) precious bodily fluids with filth and contaminants and base animal substances. It’s a concern about purity and a fear of foreign substances that is amplified beyond all reason; they take a reasonable core concern about cleanliness and avoiding toxins, blow it up into a hysterical terror about a medical procedure that intentionally introduces minute quantities of a foreign substance, and then build pseudoscientific rationalizations for their fear. It’s all gotten a bit ridiculous.

For instance, all the howling about formaldehyde in some vaccines; it’s a trivial amount, a tiny fraction of the quantity your very own metabolism produces in the normal course of a day. If you’re going to get upset about trace formaldehyde in a shot you’ll get once in your life, you ought to be even more upset with your liver, which is trickling more aldehydes than that into your bloodstream every day. Here’s how Offit handles that, in his discussion of the avuncular Dr Bob Sears and his pandering to the anti-vax lobby:

Unfortunately, Sears fails to educate his reader about the importance of quantity—that is, that it’s the dose that makes the poison—and that spacing out vaccines to avoid exposure to quantities of chemicals so small that they have no chance of causing harm will accomplish nothing. For example, Sears claims that formaldehyde is a “carcinogen” (cancer-causing agent) but omits the fact that formaldehyde is a natural product: an essential intermediate in the synthesis of amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) and of thymidines and purines (the building blocs of DNA). Everyone has about two and one-half micrograms of formaldehyde per milliliter of blood. Therefore, young infants have about ten times more formaldehyde circulating in their bodies than is contained in any vaccine. Further, the quanitity of formaldehyde contained in vaccines is at most one six-hundredth of that found to be harmful to animals. It would have been valuable if Sears had informed his readers of these facts rather than scaring them with the notion that formaldehyde in vaccines could cause cancer.

We’re living in a world swarming with all kinds of gunk and goop and dirt and bugs, and some of it is bad for you…but it’s only bad if you get a dose that exceeds your body’s capacity to manage it. The stuff in a vaccine is at such a low concentration and purified to an amazing degree to minimize the quantity of nasties that it contains to a point below the amount that can do anyone harm.

If you’re going to dread a few proteins in a shot, though, I have a tale to make you quiver in disgust. I just had two carrots for lunch, and I didn’t peel them, I just gave them a quick wash in the tap. The quantity of uncharacterized filth and strange chemicals and weird biologically active agents, not to mention the scattered nematodes and bacteria and viruses colonizing the surface of that vegetable, was immense. If I get some random disease in the next day or two, should I blame the carrot farmers of America? Who knows what mysterious pathogens I took into my system via those horrible plants. Farmers raise them in dirt!

(By the way, Orac has a review of Oracian length on this same book. Check it out for the details.)

Skepticards for the hopeful godless

Those fine folks behind Skepticon are already planning ahead to the next event, and have begun fundraising so they can keep the convention cheap to attend. They are smart people. However, the way they’re trying to raise a little cash now is by selling Valentine’s Day cards. Don’t they know that godless skeptics are heartless, cold, unfeeling people who don’t know what love is?

Anyway, if you choose to buy some for amusement — you know, so you can aloofly ponder in a detached, intellectual way the strange rituals of these emotional hu-mans — you know where to go. You can put custom messages in them, or use some of their pre-designed cards. Which is where it gets a little disturbing. This is one of them.

i-e2d2db8c8b9001637f66b64a58717b8a-valentine.jpeg

Oooh, that’s not going to work at all.

  1. My wife is definitely going to outlive me. She’s inherited all these amazing Scandinavian longevity genes, plus she’s got the body of a hot 20 year old, while I’m already lurching into senescent crepitude. Now if the card suggested you were waiting for the TrophyWife™ to be freed up…

  2. The only way I’ll ever be single is if she gets fed up and leaves me, and then I’m the type of guy who’ll spend the rest of his life mooning about his lonely, empty house, pining away for his one true lost love, and my last words on my deathbed will be to whisper her name. I’ll be adding “pathetic” to “unsexy” in my résumé.

  3. It’s setting the bar rather low, don’t you think? No one in my entire life has ever found me romantically or sexually attractive, making this message rather ironic. They should also have another card with the message “Sure, you can be my valentine, at least until Quasimodo over there gets done ringing his bells.”

So please do help them out and order their Valentine’s cards, just don’t get that one. Unless there’s someone you really want to insult.

How much does woo pay, anyway?

Whoa. Naming rights to the arena for the Sacramento Kings has been bought up by a corporation — no surprise at all there — but guess who bought it?

The company that makes those cheesy and ridiculous Power Balance bracelets, those scraps of silicone with an imbedded hologram that they falsely tout as improving athletic performance. This is the same company that got slapped down by an Australian court…and they make $35 million a year defrauding the public.

We’re all in the wrong business.

There’s also a poll at the article:

Although the name change is tentative, Arco Arena is to be renamed after Power Balance bracelets. So it is possible that you’ll be going to watch the Kings at ‘Power Balance Arena’. What do you think?

I like it
11%
I’m indifferent
22%
I dislike it
67%

Hey, how can people dislike it? Maybe the company will give the home team free magic bracelets so that they’ll win all their games!

Why I hate Robin Ince

You might want to look at Ince’s web page: he’s touring in March and April, and in May he’s gathered together Brian Cox, Ben Goldacre, and Simon Singh for a “science tour celebrating the universe and many of the wonders that lie within it”. That all looks wonderful, you think, and so do I. I would like to see that.

But then, look at the venues.

To my horror, surprise, and dismay, “Morris, Minnesota” is not among them. They’re all strange little places like Glasgow and Oxford and Cambridge and of all places, London. Those places don’t need these kinds of tours. The rural midwest does. I want to see Robin Ince tour Alabama and Mississippi and Kansas and Texas. But no, he turns up his snooty European nose at us.

I’m also a bit peeved that he didn’t plan this schedule without checking my calendar. I’ll be in the UK the first week of June, and his shows are all done by then. Hmmph.

The new John Benneth policy

That loopy homeopath, John Benneth, is bragging now that he is the most widely read homeopath in the world, and that his blog has broken all previous viewership records. He’s quite proud of this “accomplishment”.

One of the last John Benneth Journal entries for 2010, IN ONE YEAR, has broken all previous viewership records and sparked more commentary and outrage amongst the pharmaceutical company stooges than any previous Journal entry, enlisting the usual fury and nasty responses.

He seems to be aware of how it happened: I linked to that one article. What he doesn’t seem to appreciate, though, is that what I giveth, I can take away, and that it doesn’t say much for homeopathy that one link from one blog can make such a dramatic difference in his traffic.

So, because he thinks it’s meaningful, I’ve added a little filter to this site: using “johnbenneth.wordpress.com” in a comment will get it held for moderation…and it won’t be approved. Bye bye, Mr Benneth.

You’ll have to look him up indirectly, as in this mention on FSTDT. Otherwise, ignore the loon.

I have a new hero

It’s Tracey Spicer, a commentator on an Australian radio show. If you do radio or TV, you must listen to her interview with Meryl Dorey, the wicked anti-vaxxer crank. There are no mealy mouthed pleasantries, there is no downplaying of the evil Dorey has promoted, Spicer simply rips into her and points out all the legal and scientific facts against her. Then, at the end, Dorey is asked about the fact that a legal judgment has been made against her requiring that she post a disclaimer on her website, which she has not done, and Dorey begins to give the address of her website instead of explaining why she’s flouting the law, Spicer cuts her off cold and kicks her off the air.

It’s beautiful.

I never listen to AM radio, and I rarely tune into television news. If we had a few announcers like Tracey Spicer over here, though, I’d actually use my radio.

Sweet justice

Power Balance is a company that prospered on gullibility: they sell overpriced silicon rubber wristbands with an imbedded hologram that do absolutely nothing, but which they claimed would enhance athletic performance. And they got suckers to shell out $60 for them.

The law caught up to them and forced them to publicly retract their claims. Here’s what you’ll find on their website now.

In our advertising we stated that Power Balance wristbands improved your strength, balance and flexibility.

We admit that there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims and therefore we engaged in misleading conduct in breach of s52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974.

If you feel you have been misled by our promotions, we wish to unreservedly apologise and offer a full refund.

To obtain a refund please visit our website www.powerbalance.com.au or contact us toll-free on 1800 733 436

This offer will be available until 30th June 2011. To be eligible for a refund, together with return postage, you will need to return a genuine Power Balance product along with proof of purchase (including credit card records, store barcodes and receipts) from an authorised reseller in Australia.

This Corrective Notice has been paid for by Power Balance Australia Pty Ltd and placed pursuant to an undertaking to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission given under section 87B of the Trade Practices Act, 1974.

I’d be jubilant, except that I expect this will make no difference at all to their scam. They’re still selling the same old garbage at the same extravagant price.

How innumerate are Americans, anyway?

I just saw a commercial peddling gold coins, going on and on about how the price of gold was soaring above $1300 per ounce, and showing this fancy glinting well-lit shiny gold coin and telling everyone the cost of gold meant the $50 price could only be guaranteed for 7 days. This coin is 14 karat 0.9999 pure gold clad! A little deeper in to the spiel, they mention that it contains 14 milligrams of pure gold.

Using their own numbers, by my calculation that means the $50 coin contains about 64¢ worth of gold.

It sounds like a tax on dumb people, to me. They’re probably snaring people who watch Glenn Beck and read the Wall Street Journal.