Surreally boring

This video from Kent Hovind starts out weird and then gets incredibly boring. Apparently he’s got a VBS class or something (I am so sorry for those kids), and then he tries something that might have been interesting. Each kid has a paper cutout of the face of some atheist or evolutionist (I’m one of them: skip ahead to 3:45), and he sets it up as if he’s going to debate us, via his students as proxies. It might actually be pedagogically useful, for whatever end you have, to try and have students take the role of a critic of the instructor’s position — It was strange to see my face waved around on a stick, but I was actually looking forward to seeing how they would present my views, especially since Hovind says he wants to debate me (ain’t happening).

But he does nothing with it. After mentioning the names of some evolutionists, he drops the whole game and just reads from the Bible for 20 minutes. That’s all.

This is just terrible teaching. It gave me flashbacks to my long-ago confirmation classes, in which I was supposed to memorize Lutheran dogma and repeat it back to the pastor. Eww, I just literally shuddered.

Come on, Kent. Your ideas are batfucking wacko, but I expect a little freaky dynamism to go with ’em, and you can’t even manage that.

Oh, good — someone else didn’t like The Keepers

I started watching this show on Netflix a while back — and it began in a way that sounds so familiar to anyone familiar with the abuses of the Catholic church. A young nun vanishes, and is later found dead, murdered. Who did it? It must have been one of the priests! And there were multiple killings! And all kinds of sordid sexual goings-on, with the accused priest being further accused of calling young Catholic school girls into his office and doing unseemly things.

But it started going all wrong a couple of episodes in. The accusations were becoming increasingly strident, the crimes ever more depraved. And then we discover that there is no actual evidence for this story (other than that yes, there were murders), and that the details are all coming from the repressed memories of Jane Doe, who was recalling all these terrible incidents decades after the fact. Or after the confabulation. Or something. None of it was unbelievable, and I gave up on the show.

Mark Pendergrast watched the whole thing, and also dug up additional aspects of the story that were conveniently left out of the show. Jane Doe (real name: Jean Wehner) has a whole elaborate mythology of incredible events that occurred in the 1970s.

Shortly afterwards, she began to retrieve her first memories of priest abuse, starting with Father Neil Magnus, whom she envisioned masturbating while he took her confession. When she discovered that Magnus was dead, Wehner switched to retrieving memories of abuse by another priest, Joseph Maskell, who had been her high school counselor. She eventually recalled vaginal and anal rape (sometimes with a vibrator), oral sex, enemas, him putting a gun in her mouth, and forced prostitution.

But Wehner’s sex abuse memories expanded dramatically beyond Maskell to include two policemen, three high school teachers, a local politician who practiced a political speech while she performed oral sex on him, three more priests (Father Schmidt, Father John, and Father Daniels), four religious brothers (Brother Tim, Brother Bob, Brother Frank, and Brother Ed), two religious sisters (Nancy and Russell), and another religious brother known only as Mr. Teeth, who read from the Book of Psalms as he had sex with her. Wehner also remembered that she herself killed an unidentified nun at her school.

Yet the millions of people who have viewed The Keepers did not learn many of these background facts. (Netflix is notorious for keeping viewer numbers secret, but Newsweek revealed that it had the top two streaming shows in 2016, both with over 20 million viewers.) What viewers see is that Jean Hargadon Wehner seems to be an attractive, sensitive, self-assured woman with a supportive, wholesome family, and that she claims to have recovered memories of abuse by Father Maskell and a few others.

None of this is how memories actually work, but it does tell us one thing: people are weird. Whether it’s lurid stories of rampaging priests or bizarre tales of pedophile rings in pizza parlor basements, people are capable of believing unbelievable things. Movie makers ought to feel some responsibility for addressing credible issues and dismissing the incredible ones, or they’re no better than Alex Jones.

Dang it, life, stop finding a way

Last year, in hopeful anticipation of a contractor finally getting around to giving us new siding, we hacked away all the brush and shrubbery and saplings sprouting all around our house. We were disappointed: he didn’t get around to us that summer (life in a small town: limited supply of available contractors, high demand).

So this year, he has promised! We gave him a giant bucket of money! He ordered all the supplies! So we took another look at the vegetation around our house.

It had all grown back.

So this morning we’ve been out with pruning shears and weed-eater, trying to destroy the jungle. I think I need a machete and a chainsaw. Or a flamethrower. Or to call in an airstrike. Thinking about exotic plant poisons, or hiring a herd of elephants.

See, this is why I was trained as a zoologist. Plants are apparently my nemesis.

Mouth-watering buffets and rich Biblical teachings

My personal vision of hell launches in March: a Caribbean cruise with Ray Comfort and Ken Ham.

If you thought that cruise with fires and sewage leaks, or the cruise with puking passengers with norovirus were nightmarish, imagine one with Comfort and Ham stalking the halls like angels of banality, haranguing you about sin and Jesus, and the fun part of the trip is handing out gospel tracts in port. It looks like a freakish combination of gluttony and sanctimony.

Fortunately, at $1500 for the cheap rooms, and $5800 for the luxury suites, it is economically impossible for me to end up on the hellboat, if I were tempted in the first place. I also would rather not be chucked over the side by my fellow passengers, as would inevitably happen.

Although…imagine Comfort+Ham+Norovirus+ruptured sewage lines. We could pray for it.

The Unraveling continues

Reince Priebus has been fired. How do I know? Trump announced his replacement in a tweet, of course.

Isn’t this administration professional?

In other fun news, Anthony Scaramucci’s wife, Deidre Ball, has filed for divorce, citing his excessive ambition and connection to Donald Trump.

It’s like everything The Donald touches turns to ashes and slime. Or is it just that ashes and slime are attracted to The Donald?

There is good skepticism, and bad skepticism

I’m down on the organized skeptical community, because I think they practice skepticism selectively. But here’s a good example of healthy skepticism on nutrition science, prompted by this ‘documentary’, What the Health. I like that the position is put right up front.

As a vegan health professional, I am sometimes mortified to be associated with the junk science that permeates our community. And as an animal rights activist, I’m disheartened by advocacy efforts that can make us look scientifically illiterate, dishonest, and occasionally like a cult of conspiracy theorists.

I’m not a vegan, but I sympathize with the movement; I’m not an animal rights activist, because I agree that there is way too much scientific illiteracy in that movement…but I do support improving care and minimizing suffering in animals. I can never support the kind of dishonesty rampant in these quack nutrition stories, like those credulously promoted in What the Health.

The exaggerated and misleading statements about animal foods and health are meant to build the case that you must be vegan if you want to be healthy. We hear, for example, that there is no evidence that consuming animal foods in moderation can turn heart disease around. Yes, there is. There is at least as much evidence that plant-based (but not vegan) diets can reverse heart disease as there is evidence indicating vegan diets can reverse heart disease.

And finally, there are the miraculous healings. The film tells us that a plant-based diet can treat lupus, multiple sclerosis and osteoporosis. (I’d love to see actual evidence for any of this.) Then we’re shown real-life examples of astonishing recoveries from illness. One woman has been diagnosed with bilateral osteoarthritis and is scheduled for two hip replacements because, as she describes it, bone is rubbing on bone. This means that the cartilage that cushions the hip joints has worn away. You can’t just grow back a bunch of cartilage in two weeks by changing your diet. Nor is there evidence that a healthy vegan diet will reverse thyroid cancer as is claimed in the film. And I hope that the woman who stopped taking antidepressants in just two weeks did so under strict medical supervision. That is not enough time to taper off of these drugs (which kind of makes me doubt her story). And to imply that people can abruptly stop taking their antidepressants when they go vegan is irresponsible and dangerous.

Kip himself says that after he changed his diet, “within a few days I could feel my blood running through my veins with a new vitality.” It immediately brought to mind Lierre Keith, ex-vegan and author of The Vegetarian Myth. She says this when she eats a bite of tuna fish after many years of veganism: “I could feel every cell in my body—literally every cell—pulsing. And finally, finally being fed.”

I’ve personally made changes in my diet to reduce animal protein, because the arguments make sense: it’s generally good to exercise moderation in your diet. I’ve been exercising more. But I don’t believe in magical rejuvenations or that I can feel my veins or cells or that eating more carrots will prevent cancer.

I think I’ll skip the movie. But I’m willing to listen to what Virginia Messina has to say about vegan diets.

Why are you still reading Skeptic magazine?

It’s trash. There’s no clearer indicator of where Shermer’s vanity magazine’s focus lies than this, A Review of Milo Yiannopoulos’s new book Dangerous by George Michael, which manages to go on and on and tell us very little about the book, but does regurgitate a massive bolus of alt-right talking points. The author seems to have very little interest in what Yiannopoulos actually says, or how he says it, but mainly wants to repeat every tired cliche of the alt-right/mens rights movement.

Like this:

It is Milo’s strident critique of this form of feminism that has gained him the most opprobrium. Although Milo does not characterize himself as part of men’s rights activism, arguably, he has emerged as the movement’s most noted spokesman. His track record displays a clear affinity for the movement. For example, he played a leading role in the 2014 “gamergate” controversy when he supported the online harassment campaign against women who decried the violence and misogyny in video games. Reminiscent of Warren Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power, Milo cites numerous indices—including disparities in life expectancy, sentencing, education, and health care—to illustrate that women have made substantial gains over the past several decades. In fact, according to these measures, women are arguably more privileged than men in America today. As Milo demonstrates, studies have found that the wage gap shrinks to nonexistence when relevant, non-sexist factors are taken into account, such as chosen career paths, chosen work hours, and chosen career discontinuity. As a group, women prefer to study people-oriented disciplines like psychology, sociology, and social work, which on average are less remuneratively rewarding than STEM fields. In medicine, females physicians are more likely to specialize in fields like pediatrics, which pay less than some other fields that male doctors gravitate toward, such as elective surgery.

Oh jebus. Not this crap again.

You cannot ignore the fact that the remuneration given for ‘women’s work’ is entirely socially constructed as well — why should sociology pay less than, say, biology? I can tell you which has more immediate impact on people’s lives, and sorry to say, it isn’t the field I’ve chosen for myself. Why should pediatrics pay less than working as a surgeon? Does one require that much more training? Is taking care of children’s health less important than cosmetic surgery? As usual, these bozos ignore the value-dependencies of the options.

I’ll also point out that one of the tactics I’ve often seen used to disparage my chosen field is that the percentage of women seeking occupations in biology is rising…therefore, biology must be less rigorous and scientific than fields that exclude women. It’s a wonderfully circular argument.

Of course, this ‘review’ cites all the usual crap: Christina Hoff Sommers, there is no such thing as rape culture, except that when there is it comes from Islam, the police are the greatest defenders of the black community, and of course, political correctness, identity politics, and cultural Marxism. It’s a totally mindless recitation of the nonsense you get on Reddit and in YouTube comments. Yes, “women have made substantial gains” — there is a steady improvement in equality since the days they were not allowed to own property or vote. It does not mean that there aren’t still serious inequalities left, and it doesn’t help that people like Yiannopoulos and Michael are desperate to end progress, all while labeling it “regressive”.

Just unsubscribe already.

I still detest him, but McCain did one good thing

The latest iteration of the health care repeal bill was presented to the senate in the dead of night, while most of us were sleeping, and put to a vote. Three Republicans — Murkowski, Collins, and McCain — voted with the Democrats to kill it. The maverick was mavericky one more time.

But still…there were 49 Republicans, and Mike Pence waiting in the wings, willing to wreck the hobbling compromise that they call Obamacare. Remember that. All those other Republican senators who have been occasionally willing to complain about the fool running the country caved and were willing to go along with this abomination: Ryan and Graham voted for it. And remember most of all that McConnell is the arch-villain who has been orchestrating it.

Remember all of them. And remind everyone else when the next election rolls around.