Astrology is bunk

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.

Scientific bias and the void-of-course moon

i-ccbc028bf567ec6e49f3b515a2c4c149-old_pharyngula.gif

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.

[Read more…]

Texans keep going against the stereotype

Look, Texas is supposed to be all about the Gablers and Don McLeroy and the dwarf from Pampa and George W. Bush, and then the darned atheist Texans have to show up and ruin the image. The Texas Freethought Convention is happening on Sunday, 26 October in Austin — check out the infomercial. I wish I could go — it’s a state that hasn’t worked its way onto my itinerary yet, and I keep hearing about the good people working hard against rampant idiocy down there.

And the Nobel Prize goes to…

It looks like Alex’s predictions for the Nobel Prise this year did not come to pass — although I was thinking McCulloch and Till were likely, so I was wrong, too. The Nobel for Physiology or Medicine has just been announced, and the winners are Harald zur Hausen, for discovering that HPV causes cervical cancer, and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for the discovery of HIV. It’s a viral year this time around.

One good name rescued from the trash bin

You will all be pleased to know that the Brazilian UFOnuts who named their organization after Carl Sagan have backed down and removed Carl’s name from their masthead.

They’ve named it after Galileo instead.

Oy vey. Couldn’t they name it after a more appropriate historical figure? I recommend calling it the Bozo Institute. Or if they want to be more subtle, how about the Arthur Conan Doyle Institute? He saw things that weren’t there, too.

Sally Kern’s mouth motors on

The infamous anti-gay legislator from Oklahoma, Sally Kern, was interviewed by the Oklahoma Daily. The story has some fine bon mots, like her definition of evolution:

Kern defined evolution to me as “the process of wanting to create something or have something be perfect. Get rid of that which is not healthy and strong.”

That’s a very common creationist misconception: they can’t imagine a natural process that doesn’t have wants, that is lacking that teleological impulse.

The writer sent me the outtakes from the interview. If you want more Kern uncut and uncensored, look below the fold.

[Read more…]

I pray that angels come down from heaven and heal these polls

Isn’t technology wonderful? It allows the woo-woos to spread their nonsense so much more rapidly, and to look slick and shiny and modern while they do it. Take a look at this report and polls on a site called AOL Health — AOL Quackery is more like it — which describes a survey that says 16% of Americans claim to have experienced a “miraculous healing”, as if that somehow increases the credibility of the experience. It does not. All it means is that the gullible have been primed with an explanation that they will regurgitate when queried.

Do they think this through? No. They even cite that “Pentecostals and African-American Protestants were far more likely than other groups, such as mainline Protestants or Catholics or Jews, to say they have either witnessed or experienced a miraculous healing firsthand.” If reporting were equivalent to actual intervention by a deity, wouldn’t that mean god favors Pentecostals and Protestants with darker skin color?

A silly article must be accompanied by silly polls. This one has two!

Do you believe in miraculous healing?
Of course: 79%
Absolutely not: 12%
I’m not sure: 9%

Have you experienced a miracle?
I believe so: 73%
Not that I know of: 19%
I don’t believe in miracles: 8%

Those numbers sure look wacky. Do you think they will have magically, miraculously changed for me by the morning?

A little comparison

This new movie, Religulous, is doing reasonably well on its opening weekend, bringing in about $3.5 million. This is comparable to what Expelled brought in (about $3.7 million). There are a few differences, though.

  • Religulous hasn’t had much of an advertising campaign. Remember all the Expelled commercials everywhere, including The Daily Show? Maher’s movie has only relatively recently been getting plugged. It’s ads are more intelligently targeted, though.

  • Religulous only opened on 500 screens, compared to Expelled‘s 1000.

  • Religulous is coming off its opening weekend with great word of mouth and good critical reviews. Expelled attendance plummeted steadily from the first day onward.

  • One to think about, and maybe this isn’t a difference: Expelled had a built-in base of evangelical Christians to draw on (although many were disgusted by it, too). Does Religulous also draw upon a base of freethinkers? Is there a neglected audience for more godless entertainment? Will advertisers and investors figure this out?

They also have something in common. I’ve seen neither. I don’t think Bill Maher would throw me out of the theater if he spotted me in line, though. Or maybe he would — it was such great PR for Mark Mathis and company, wasn’t it?