Confessions of an Asshole Skeptic

Disseminating the Burzynski Plot

2011-11-29T10:53:00.001-08:00

Obviously I haven't got a lot of time for skeptical activism these days. My position on Maslow's hierarchy has shifted since becoming a father. I'm not complaining, just stating a fact. These days all I can really manage is a trip to SitP almost once a month (which is mostly social in tone) and to organize the yearly CCSS, and an occasional blog post...usually one that is largely pointing out something that should get as much attention as possible - not that my minor readership really boosts that my much.

This post is precisely that.

Perhaps you've heard about Burzynski Clinic and it's current shennanigans.

If you haven't then read this piece by Scott Gavura - yeah he gets a lot of love here - on Skeptic North. It does a pretty good job of summing up the details. Then, if you are "in" pass it on. Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+ - whatever. Just help make these bullies get their just desserts.

Who is more foolish...?

2011-10-09T13:11:00.000-07:00

Hey there, it's been a while. Life stays busy.
But I do keep thinking of things I should blog skeptically about, I just have trouble finding the time to do so.
I recently received a rather ludicrous anonymous comment on this previous post about Mike Adams. It is on one of my most popular posts, but you don't have to read the post in order to appreciate what follows. But the content of the comment (essentially a diatribe about how great Mike Adams is and how filthy-evil modern medicine is) is germane so I'll post it in it's semi-literate un-edited entirety here:

Mike Adams rocks. A little liquid silver and I have been sick but once in 7 Years. I stop taking the flu shot and got well. Strange ain't. This old Mississippi girl listens to everything Mike Adams. If you look up what the flu shots for it would scare you. Most of my family and friends read Mike thanks to me and they trust him to. My dad would not listen and guess what I buried him 2 years ago. My daughter would listen until just the other dad. We took her to the doctor and the doctor said the other doctors had made her a drug addict.Now my daughter has to detox off of the garbage to great medical doctors gave her and will be going natural now. I wish more people would read Mike Adams, Dr. Mericola , and a whole host off people that are willing to really help you get well. People like you will never will see 100 plus. Your body is design to make it way passed 100 but thanks to modern garbage most of the people won't even see 80. Such a young age to die. Most people thanks to modern medicince are sicker, can't sleep with out meds, I could go on for ever at what modern medicine is doing for the people. Just read the side effects on one bottle. Then when the have to give you more meds for the side effect read it and when you have to take anther med for those side effects read the side effect again man a people would have to been very much in the dark to not listen to Mike Adams. I listen I am 54 years old And I am one of the healths people I know. Oh how I hope one day people like you will open you eyes to the Medicine people and see they are so trying to make you sick. If you are not sick they make no money. So PLEASE for your kids and all the people who love you listen to Mike Adams. He is one of the greatest men alive and he only cares about your health. Reading him is free so he makes nothing off of it like the doctors, insurance companies, Med companies and so on. Trust Mike Adams, he won't let you down.....

I began writing a response to that, and before too long it was enough for a post in and of itself... so here we go, my response:

Not to go all broken record here, but why is it always the anonymous comments that border on illiterate? I mean, it's one thing to not proofread and then there is a level where proofreading would be pointless as the author doesn't grasp rudiments of spelling and grammar in the first place.
But simply being incapable of communicating in functional sentences doesn't disqualify one from being right. However, in this case, it seems like every sentence is burdened by a logical fallacy.

Liquid silver... has at best nominal efficacy as a disinfectant - possibly even hampering healing speed. And on top of that, there are some well-established deleterious effects to health. Funny thing, Mike Adams regularly rails against metal poisoning. Is seems that his discrimination as to which substances to fight for or against is based not upon medical value, but on the value he gains from products sold on his website. (Which I am not linking to here as to avoid giving him additional google-rank, but is easily found with any search for Health Ranger.)

Anonymous Mississippi Girl (AMG) provides a few anecdotal single data points as evidence. We are forced to take her at her word that she is being honest when she says she has not been sick in seven years. We also have to take into account whether she is being honest with herself. Is she counting an occasional seasonal-sniffle, or just knock-you-off-your-feet ailments? And does she even realize that she is filtering out the lesser illnesses if she is doing this?

I do know what is in flu shots - indeed I did a lot of work on this very subject during the Swine Flu outbreak two years ago, including the post that spawned this comment - and thanks to my ability to read and sort through scientific data in a logical fashion I am not scared of what is in flu shots. In fact I am kind of glad I don't have to live my life frightened by demons in white lab-coats.

"Most of my family and friends read Mike thanks to me and they trust him to." ...a quote by Obi-wan Kenobi springs to mind: "Who is more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows the fool?" (On a side note, it has always seemed to me that Lucas missed the mark with that quote by being too on the nose. It would have been far more elegant if the second half was "...the man who follows the fool" - if they are already a fool, then following a fool can only amplify it whereas being a potential non-fool is sullied by following a fool which is already a double-shot of dumb - not only failing to think for ones self, but by doing so in the footsteps of a fool.... but I digress.) In this case though, it appears to be fools following a fool following a fool... multi-layered recursive stupidity.

Dad died when he was somewhere north of 70 (Assuming he was 20 or so years older than AMG, who tells us she is 54 and he died 2 years ago.) Uh... so what? That is utterly meaningless. Again, it is a data point of one. How many people die before 70? Many. One more is an example of precisely nothing.

I'm not even really confident what part of the daughter's story to criticize. "We took her to the doctor and the doctor said the other doctors had made her a drug addict." Uh... so which doctor is at fault here? Okay, I am being a tad deliberately obtuse here, I know that the first doctor mentioned is the alt-med "hero" here. While I could analyze this mess in more detail, I'll sum it up by pointing out that the underlying argument here is essentially the naturalistic fallacy. "Natural" is in reality meaningless as not only are medical therapies perfectly natural but even when you break down the meaning into the meaning alt-med proponents typically mean (IE. Only un-manufactured ingredients as they are found in nature - nothing processed.) then as many so called "natural" remedies fail by those standards as not. The position simply doesn't hold up.

"People like you will never see 100 plus." Most people don't see 100 regardless of lifestyle. Indeed reports (anecdotal as they are) consistently come about surrounding just how unhealthy by the yardstick of common practice most centenarian's lifestyles have been. And really, I could care less as to how long I live if my quality of life sucks, so I'll worry about that as (and if) it approaches. Which brings us to AMG’s claim that: "Your body is design to make it way passed 100 but thanks to modern garbage most of the people won't even see 80." Which is, to not put too fine a point on it, bullshit. Before modern medicine people died much younger than they do today. Just look at the UN life expectancy numbers and it is clear that a great number of industrialized countries have a life expectancy above 80. Canada is one of them, and while the US where AMG is from is only close, the average for women is above 80. Further to the point, looking at third world countries, the averages are dramatically below 80. Really, her contention is just completely fucking laughable.

“I could go on for ever at what modern medicine is doing for the people.” Funny, I could say the same thing, except I would be saying what I mean to be saying, not the opposite. Sigh. Is it any wonder that people like this are dumb enough to fall for the crap Mercola and Adams flog?

“I listen I am 54 years old And I am one of the healths people I know.” Call me when you are 80. :-)

“If you are not sick they make no money.” True. But that does not mean their intention is to keep you sick. Quite the opposite. The mechanic who can’t or won’t fix a car has no customers. The implication that doctors could successfully operate that way is absurd.

“...listen to Mike Adams. He is one of the greatest men alive and he only cares about your health. Reading him is free so he makes nothing off of it...” Uh... wrong. AMG clearly has no idea about internet commerce. Check out Mike Adams’ Natural News website and full half of the real-estate on it is advertisement. And if I’m not mistaken, while it isn’t now, as little as two years ago you needed a subscription to his site in order to read the full version of his articles. (My memory may be faulty on this, but at least I am willing to admit to possible gaps in my position. But I seem to recall that when Adams presumed to tell the world what skeptics really think that the full post wasn't readily available to non-subscribers.) Add to that that he quite blatantly has a “store” on his site - which you can even get a discount from just by subscribing to his newsletter (again, he does not actually provide his info strictly for free.) – it is patently untrue that there is no profit motive for Mike Adams.Anyhow,

I’ve wasted enough time addressing this asinine comment. I’m out.

Effective Citizen Policing

2011-08-18T09:12:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to acknowledge the effectiveness of one of David Brin's Transparent Society observations: on-line citizen policing. (Not just on-line in his prediction, but in this case VERY on-line.)

Most skeptics will have heard of David Mabus, and probably know about the recent turns of event in his saga. But if not, Tim Farley has chronicled it very well - as he was central to it. It is a good read in terms of events in the skeptisphere and as an example of citizen policing... or hobby-level detective work (though that phrase seems a little diminishing.)

Parte Incognita

2011-08-07T21:19:00.000-07:00

For the record...

We shall see what happens in the next little while here, but I think that my head space has changed enough - or more accurately, clarified enough that wiping the slate clean here and starting over is a possibility.

I probably won't. But in the time since DBAD and in the recent blood-feud over the common-ground between skepticism and atheism, I think I need to consider taking some stuff right off the table... not that many people are reading it here, but still.

Don't get me wrong, I am still on the "we need a spectrum of voices and communication styles" side of the argument, but I think my more strident opinions are too easy to take the wrong way and I should consider striking them from the record or maybe even starting fresh. Probably not a new blog entirely, but we shall see.

These are uncharted waters for me.

People too cocky about their memory, study finds - Health - CBC News

2011-08-05T01:18:00.001-07:00

Really, truly.

Our minds are faulty. We have to keep at it to maintain discipline and good work-arounds.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2011/08/04/memory-beliefs.html?ref=rss

Placebos as Medicine: The Ethics of Homeopathy

2011-06-10T15:50:00.001-07:00

Just yesterday I was at the pharmacy for the first time since I began self-identifying as a critical thinker.

The care the pharmacist took in explaining the use and interaction of the three drugs I was prescribed thoroughly impressed me - even in the haze of sedation I was still in the middle of. Fortunately Jodie was there to retain the actual instructions, because my focus was elsewhere in my delirium.

Addled as I was, I was still capable of reason. And I found myself thinking that that attention was, in its own right, an aspect of placebo - the non-specific effects of practitioner to patient interaction, to be more precise. That led me to wonder what is new with my friend Scott Gavura, Blogger at Science Based Pharmacy, Skeptic North, and Science Based Medicine, as well as the only pharmacist I know.

I was too out of it to actually follow up yesterday. (Scott if you are reading this, I'll Tweet/Facebook soon.) But this morning, there in my RSS feed, was one of the more thought provoking articles on homeopathy, placebo-effects and ethics that I've ever read. And it was written by Scott.

Article is attached. Check it out.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/placebos-as-medicine-the-ethics-of-homeopathy/

CONTROVERSY: How to build bridges and trust with people who don't agree with you yet

2011-05-27T12:16:00.001-07:00

Some interesting perspective and commentary from Paul at Save Yourself.

So true. Confrontations are pretty unproductive. Particularly to the confronted.

ControVERSY on the other hand can be compelling, interesting and entertaining. That may well be part of why people get so easily pulled into those fetid pits of mental vacuity - conspiracy theories - without ever considering that they are little more than beliefs "unsullied" by facts.

http://SaveYourself.ca/290

The Cross Canada Skeptical Smackdown - 2011

2011-03-18T23:45:00.000-07:00

Once again the Cross Canada Skeptical Smackdown is finished for the year. (And this year it truly was Cross Canada.)

Last year it was really the “Western Canadian Skeptical Smackdown” with the only cities participating being Edmonton and Vancouver. But in 2011, seven different cities at least toyed with the idea. (Three did not actually have events for a variety of reasons, but we do hope they are all able to overcome their complications and participate next year.)

The four cities that were involved were: Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa and Halifax.

Vancouver competitors await the opening gun...

Halifax joined (making it a coast to coast event) with mere days to go, and as I understand it, the CCSS became the ice-breaker at the first ever Halifax SitP! (Haligonians please feel free to disabuse me of this notion if I am wrong.)

Vancouver’s event saw some real drama as the local lead changed back and forth more than once, and first place was determined by a mere two points. One team dropped out after the first round (having only received two points) and a table of legionnaires who had not come for the quiz, found themselves asking for spare answer sheets by the second round so they could play along.

Yours truly outlines the rules.

Quick rewind: The CCSS is a British style pub-quiz in five rounds focusing on science and skeptical subjects. 20011 was its second year and I dare say it is looking good already for year three. (If you think you might be interested in hosting an event in your city next year, do not hesitate to contact me (Send an email to my garbage email account – I check it irregularly – kgoodkey (at) hotmail (dot) com. You may need to be patient and persistent as sometimes I do go long periods without checking.)

The correct answers are announced.

If you’ve been following along… which I know is only a dozen of you… you know that last year in Vancouver we had a group of local skeptical heavy-weights banded together to make a dream team – “The Big Wang Theory.” And they kicked ass, winning the national title… which is nothing more than that – empty bragging rights. The question here in Vancouver was “were they going to reunite this year to defend their title.” It was a tightly guarded secret. Even I didn’t know until the last of them walked through the door 20 minutes to game time. Once again, they truly were the team to beat, but this year proved considerably harder. They lost the lead in the second round and didn’t get it back until the fourth, and in the final round there was real suspense - - did the upstart (and formed randomly there in the room that evening before the game!) “Everyone but Susan” manage to dethrone the champs?

As I mentioned above, it was a mere two point difference this year – the equivalent of one costly wrong answer in the fourth round – but Big Wang Theory did manage to hold on to their title locally.

The thrill of victory - Big Wang Theory

This year, unlike last year, where both events were held simultaneously, each city ran their event on a day and time of their choosing over the course of the (loosely speaking) weekend. All those events are now over and the scores have been compiled. There is some explanation worth adding at the bottom – hence the asterisks.

Big Wang Theory - 75.5 (VAN)
Everybody But Susan - 73.5 (VAN)
Chernobyl Babies – 69 (OTT)
Skeptics Not Septics - 64 (OTT)
Occam's Mach 3 - 63.5 (OTT)
Team Sexy - 60.5 (VAN)
Magnitude - 58.5 (OTT)
The Haligonians - 57 (HFX)**
Skeptical Believers - 56.5 (VAN)
Alliance of Unholy Eggheads - 56.5 (VAN)
Critical Mass - 55.5 (VAN)
13.37.Pi - 53 (EDM) *(70)
Three Wise Women and the Guy - 48.5 (EDM) *(64)
Chaos Riders - 44.5 (EDM) *(58)

*Due to time constraints the Edmonton event had to skip the fourth round (Too bad, it was my favourite!) The bracketed scores are what each Edmonton team would have finished with if they maintained the same percentage of right and wrong answers in the fourth round as they averaged in the other four rounds.

**The Haligonians – the sole Halifax team – was comprised from the entirety of Halifax SitP attendees that evening. As mentioned above it was used as an ice breaker with people coming and going throughout the event and answers being agreed upon by the ever morphing group as a whole.

The agony of defeat... Everybody but Susan narrowly misses winning the national title.

Four Dark Horsemen Brush on Past....

2011-03-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

I am amused.

Sonja McLeod has posted scientifically legitimate information on her Little Mountain Homeopathy Blog.

Whatever you do, don't tell her. She may feel the need to remove it.

Okay so quick bit of background.
Japan: Earthquake - arrrrrrgh!
Japan: Tidal Waves - Aiiieee!
Japan: Nuclear Power plants in jeopardy: Holy mother... have we learned nothing about nuclear power safety management?

So it certainly seems if you are following the news that while this situation is very un-cool (no pun intended) at Fukushima Daiichi, that the chances of serious amounts of fallout reaching our shores is currently very small, and there is every reason to expect that chance to dwindle. Now, do not conflate that statement with the idea that there will be no effect on people half a world away from the plant. No doubt someone will eventually do the math and come up with some estimate like (I am totally making this number up based on nothing more than a report I read on Chernobyl some years after it happened.) "The average lifespan on earth will be 7 minutes shorter as a result of Fukushima Daiichi."

In any case the point being that there is no current reason to be taking potassium iodide in B.C. That part she gets wrong (and if you read the comments it is because "What the CBC says is not gospel to me!" - fair enough... but she's walking up to the paranoia threshold.)

It is also clear upon reading that she is more in favour of other alternative means of preventing radiation (including x-ray) damage... of course, right at the bottom - she could not resist.... homeopathy.

Ugh.

I'm still looking for the place where he's a Dick...

2011-02-08T09:29:00.001-08:00

Interesting piece on Skeptic North this morning.
I think my headline kind of sums up my position well.
How exactly is he being a Dick? Is the simple fact he approached a relation with this argument the reason? It seems so.
I've said before that being a jerk about skepticism is best left behind when talking with those you love. Erih sucessfully does this. His argument is clear, direct, well reasoned and even tempered.
As skeptics we must be able to approach those we care about most. It doesn't mean we will be successful, but if we can't try to nudge them, the people who trust us the most, in the direction of reason, then.... I don't know what, but then something is fundamentally wrong, don't you think?
Eric does everything right here. If this constitutes being a dick, then we truly must all be dicks, or do nothing at all.

Quit boring me please!

2011-02-04T09:06:00.000-08:00

Skeptics are not scientists. There are scientists who are skeptics but skeptics are not scientists.
We are NOT doing science. Our role is to communicate science to the public - largely at a grassroots level. For the most part that means talking to people at their level, touching the message in terms that speak to them.

I've said this all before.

I just read a post by a blogger who I have some personal connection to who time after time writes the most soulless, robotic feeling posts. I don't wish to call them out personally - this isn't about that. I don't want to get petty with the in fighting.
What it is about is that my ire has been tweaked.

We are NOT communicating in scientific journals to scientists. Very few non scientists have any patience for flogging through BMJ abstracts. Skeptical outreach cannot read like that. It must entertain as much as it informs.

Many of us skeptics are outrageously enthusiastic. Enthusiasm is fun and infectious - write like that. Many skeptics are fantastically clever, capable of great wit - write like that. Many skeptics are masters of untangling mysteries. That is compelling! (How many books, films, & tv shows are about mysteries?) Write like that! People respond to values-based language. You can write like that without misrepresenting facts. Write like that!

For crap sake! Quit doing a disservice by writing in a tone intended for a minute specialized audience. I know you feel the need for precision and specificity. Newsflash: the public could not care less. The scientists have done their job. You don't have to do it over again. What you need to do is translate it. Simplify it. Make it entertaining - for a large diverse audience.

Put some life into it!

Asshole Skeptic Honour Roll #7 - Justified Disgust

2011-01-11T10:28:00.000-08:00

If you haven't heard Tracey Spicer's discussion with Meryl Dorey about anti-vaccination and the declaration by the BMJ that Andrew Wakefield is a fraud on Australian radio, you have to do yourself a favour.

So often false balance is given to the opponents of reason. You can't say that here. It feels a little dirty that Spicer cuts Dorey off, but why give her any more opportunity to publicize her website? Why give her the opportunity to gish-gallop away from the facts?

Ah... how refreshing.

For that I put Tracey Spicer on the Asshole Skeptic Honour Roll.

On a related note... check out Anderson Cooper serving Wakefield himself a nice helping of derision. Do you get the feeling that beneath his well justified ire that Anderson is enjoying the shit out of himself? "I'm not here to have you pitch your book. I'm here to have you answer questions." Tee hee.

And more... "we believe in facts here at 3-60."

Not Wakefield specifically, but more of the pastiche. You know - the FACTS.

Oh wait! Some Doctor on (no-longer a) Doctor action.

I could keep on posting links from the same series of related stories, but they are all on the same page as the videos above.

Star Wars vs. Armageddon

2011-01-03T08:07:00.001-08:00

Courtesy largely of Phil Plant, there is a habit among skeptics to malign the bad science of Armageddon.

This chart puts it in starlight relief... as bad as it's science is, Armageddon only gets as much wrong as the widely beloved Star Wars gets right.

Image from The High Definite.

Sent from my HTC

An Open Letter to Bono

2010-12-22T17:00:00.000-08:00

Hey.
So we've been having a one sided conversation for approaching 30 years now.
U2 is undoubtedly the most important band in my life, and you have been many things to me including idol and insufferable. At least you have an awareness and sense of humour about the latter. (Unlike that prat Sting who is second only to George Lucas in the degree he has ruined the piece of my youth that he also made so tremendous.)
I appreciate and even admire the work you do, but at times I do kind wish you'd just STFU - case in point, your TED Talk. Fuuuuuuuuck.
And specific to this season, I laugh overtime I hear the words "Tonight thank God its them instead of you." It always sounds just a bit meanspirited to me - which is not only out of character, but utterly opposed to the actual intent, I know.
I kind of suspect that if we were to discuss a range of skeptical subjects my opinion would descend, for at the very least your faith.
But... I just wanted to say...

THANK YOU FOR TELLING OPRAH TO STICK IT.

Holiday Christmas Shopping - Scienterrific Books!!!

2010-12-21T00:58:00.000-08:00

I mentioned previously that I was going to be a guest on Skeptically Speaking again. The live show was Friday, and is now available for download with links to all the many books discussed.

As always the show was fun to be on. I wish we could have got more discussion in than we did, but it was a very full show as it was.

I often come out the other end of these events feeling like I was at best a shotgun of information. Perhaps I had some impact if I was aimed at the appropriate target, but even then I was all over the place. So I figured I'd take a little bit of time to mention my books (as well as the books I had on my shortlist that other guests spoke about.

When I was asked to be on the show I polled some friends as to what books I should talk about. Only one made the final list, but several appeared on my shortlist and I'll touch on them below. I automatically nixed all Sagan books. I figured he was a shoe in - and sure enough two Sagan books were mentioned by other guests. Contact and Demon Haunted World. I also considered the Cosmos companion, and Broca's Brain.

First up, my actual four picks for the show:

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

I mentioned on the show that when I was asked to do the show I polled a few friends to see what they came up with. I actually didn't use a single one of their suggestions except this one - which I had already thought of. But every single one of them included this in their list. I was actually surprised that none of the other guests mentioned it.
This is totally gateway-drug territory. I don't think I've ever read a science book that covers so much in such an enjoyable fashion. It's very much 'sci-light' but that is it's charm. Since it's publication it has gone slightly out of date - as I mentioned on the show the first two chapters alone have information that has changed since the book was written, but errata for that and other mistakes is easily available on-line.
While Bryson does get into a patina of explanation of science that ranges from the beginnong of the universe to the evolution of man, the heart of this book is really the stories behind the discoveries. He delves deep into the quirks of the scientists and the history behind those who made parallel yet unheralded discoveries or those upon whose gigantic shoulders the heros of science stood upon.
It is at the same time funny and fascinating... something I'm informed that Bryson fans find to be his stock-in-trade, though I must admit that after trying several of his other books based on the promise of this one, I haven't found a single other one of his books that I've been able to finish.

The Transparent Society by Dr. David Brin

David Brin is serious man-crush territory for me. I think he is the greatest living science fiction writer, he maintains an excellent blog, and YouTube channel, has a resume that includes CalTech and the JPL, had the jam to follow in Asimov's shoes and (ulp!) contribute to the Foundation series, and building upon the thinking in the Transparent Society has become one of the world's leading voices in the on-going discussion about privacy, transparency and freedom.

I hardly know where to begin with this book. It covers a lot of territory and it's hard for me to talk about it without drifting into my own feelings about the issues herein. Some of it is scary - but that is exactly why it is important. Being over 12 years old by now there are parts of this book that are self-evident - but that is part of it's strength. You find yourself looking at the things he has got right and considering the portions that most rub you the wrong way with greater gravity.

I think this book is important to a world that is filled with citizens in denial and/or paranoia and not enough in a well reasoned middle.

Wikipedia sums it up with quotes from Brin, that the book is ultimately a proponent of a world where:

"most of the people, knowing most of what's going on, most of the time," would only be an extension of what already gave us the Enlightenment, freedom and privacy. By comparison, he asks what the alternative would be: "To pass privacy laws that will be enforced by elites, and trust them to refrain from looking at us?"

Brin is also the originator of the term "citokate" (I've lost track of whether it came from Trasparent Society or his blog first.) Which every skeptic should have in their vocabulary.

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

The thing about Arcadia that I most failed to illuminate on the show is that it is a work of such rich complexity that subsequent readings (or viewings - it is a play, after all) never fail to open up new layers of understanding.
Tom Stoppard is one of the truly most amazing playwrights of our time. While the average Jane may not be familiar with his name, they more than likely know of a film he won an Academy Award for - Shakespeare in Love. The whimsical, multi-faceted treatment he gives the Bard is akin to the reverence he gives mathematics (and thermo-dynamics, and chaos, and fluid-dynamics, and determinism, and and and....) in Arcadia.
The play actually takes place in two times (but the same place) simultaneously at a country house in Derbyshire, as a set of modern academics attempt to untie the events of roughly a 180 years previously which the audience is also party to and see unfold in tandem. All kinds of clever elements connect both times, but the favourite has got to be one of the simplest - a live pet turtle who roams freely on the desk that makes up the primary set-piece. The turtle is the same one in each time-period, simply 180 years difference in it's age.
No real spoilers here - this is a play that needs to be discovered. And should it coax you to explore the nature of re-iterative mathematics in the process, so much the better.

The Physics of the Buffyverse - by Jennifer Ouellette

Here's another excellent gateway-drug book. I suppose it's rather self-evident that being a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan is a useful prerequisite (though I suppose not entirely necessary - but one would have to ask "why would you bother?") to reading this book. In fact, a warning is certainly in order. If you are a Buffy fan who is not complete on the two TV series (the comic books do not factor) then this book will spoil key plot details right through to the final season of each, and it won't waste much time getting around to doing so, so don't even tease yourself it you are serious about not getting spoiled.

I think I may have done this book a disservice on the show. Like Brief History... it is pretty much sci-light. But Ouellette does a better job of getting into the finer points of the science science she covers than Bryson does. I know a fair bit of general science, and I learned from this book. Sometimes the Buffy-based examples actually give a perspective that helps clarify some details of physics that isn't quite so intuitive, and in other cases I simply learned some basic trivia facts that had previously passed me by - for example, I had no idea that elements above Iron were heavier than their atomic number, while those below were lighter.

In Buffy-speak: This book is big on the easy-learny.

Which brings us to the other books of note...

I included Imagining Head-Smashed-In by Jack Brink in my end-of-show honourable mentions. Very cool book. Sort of forensic archeological historic storytelling about the buffalo hunters of the Northern Great Plains - specifically at Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump.

My fellow live panellists (as opposed to the pre-recorded ones - the other possible parsing of that phrase is too much to bear) each chose a book I want to single out.

Nicole Gugliucci - the Noisy Astronomer - selected Dr. Phil Plait's Death from the Skies, which is a metric fuck-ton of awesome. It's the book that inspired Dr. Plait's TV show Bad Universe and is one of those rare laugh out loud science books. He looks at a dozen aspects of astronomy through the lens of a Hollywood conceit - "the world is going to end because of 'X'" - and then looks at the real science behind it. For a related but entirely separate taste, check out his analysis of Armageddon. Indeed I had this book on my original four list, but figured the astronomer should get to talk about the astronomy book, so I put up no fight and replaced it with Arcadia.

Dana Blumrosen chose The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, which I haven't read, but has been on a long list of "I must get around to reading that" titles since I heard about it and Henrietta Lacks on Radio Lab's (which everyone should listen to) Famous Tumors episode.

One of the pre-recorded bits featured books I had on my short list: Daniel Loxton's Evolution. It was the first book I bought my daughter. She's still too young for it at three... months. But all in good time. Last week I was in Washington DC and was at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. And there in the book store was Evolution. I took a picture and posted it to Facebook. It was the first that Daniel had heard of it being for sale there. Good news for him.

Also relating to Daniel, I disqualified one of my orignal short-list picks - Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, in part because it was fiction (Though that didn't stop me from replacing Death from the Skies with Arcadia.) and in part because Daniel recently discussed it in pretty much the same context I felt qualified it.

Once we went off the air I thought of three more books that I wish I had thought of bringing up in my honourable mentions.

As a memorial to Benoit Mandlebrot I could have mentioned Chaos by James Gleick which was pretty much the first hard science book I ever tackled (and loved and was fascinated by) and arguably resulted in me being the science advocate I am today. Most skeptics get Demon Haunted World. I get Gleick. I didn't choose it as I haven't read it in nearly twenty years and that makes me rusty enough that I didn't feel confident in my ability to talk about it for four minutes.
One book several of my polled friends came up with was Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. This has been on my "I must get around to reading that" list forever and I actually bought a copy in hopes of being able to read it in time for the show... but I only got about a quarter of the way in. It is fascinating thus far, but I didn't feel like I should champion something I hadn't really grokked.

Lastly, was another book I hadn't read, but was on the "I must get around to reading that" list. I was reminded about it on my Smithsonian trip, in this case at the Air and Space Museum. Gene Krantz's Failure is Not an Option. Krantz is ther Ed Harris character from Apollo 13 - do I need to say more? Tell me that isn't going to be an amazing auto biography.

So, there you have it. I doubt that at this late date that'll help anyone make a good Christmas gift-pick for someone... unless you're grabbing me a copy of Failure is Not an Option... but I felt like a bit more effort, detail and illumination was in order. Not just the scatter-gun effect.

Happy Jesuspalooza, everyone!

Real Vaccination Injury

2010-12-17T19:19:00.001-08:00

This is a few weeks back now...
It was time for our baby daughter's first vaccination.
Jodie joked a lot about how she wouldn't let her child be given autism by injection. Her beliefs pretty much fall in the skeptical spectrum, though she doesn't wear the badge. Fair enough. Many of us are in relationships with people who are basically skeptics but don't self-identify as such.
Anyhow...
Jodie & I got our flu shots.... which bruised her ARM for about a day, and in my case, the pain was gone about a second after the needle came back out. I admit, I'm not good with needles. Most of my pain was in the anticipation.
When it was December's (our daughter) turn, the doctor had Jodie hold her still. She is a squirmy little kid, so it was the best bet.
Three needles. Ten (if I recall correctly) vaccines.
The most trouble she had or has had since...?
Being held still for so long by Mom. Just sayin'.

A Change of Direction

2010-12-08T16:43:00.000-08:00

Obviously, this fatherhood thing is cutting well into my ability to keep up with skeptical blogging. While I do continue to consider myself an ardent skeptic, there are a host of things that I do put ahead of skepticism in my life and fatherhood has totally upset the cart in such a way that doing much more than attending SitP and reading a few scattered blog posts and listening to some podcasts when I've had time has really been all I could muster.

But when I am out and about it the world I keep seeing things that pique my skeptical instincts....

And not getting around to saying something about it has been kind of annoying me.

So it is time to do something about it!

I finally joined the smart-phone world about a week before I became a Dad... why I haven't (before now) set it up so I can blog directly from it when I have the opportunity... well I guess I just never thought of it until today.

Most of the skeptical thoughts I have I have while I am out and about in the world, so really it only makes sense! The thoughts will be freshest and if I act immediately I don't have to rely on the clearly faulty combination of my memory and a free moment at home to get the blogging done.

So here's hoping this plan works... 'cause if it doesn't it could be months or even years before I get back around to it!

Oh... and on a totally side personal skeptical note...

I'm not disappearing ENTIRELY from the community - 'cause they keep pulling me back in! Ah... but seriously... I'll be on a special episode of Skeptically Speaking on December 17th. Would you believe... of the 3 (I think) appearances I've made on Skeptically Speaking precisely zero of them thus far have been live. I'd make a joke about Desiree being scared of having me on without the ability to bleep me out, but not only is it not much of a joke, but to any degree that it is a joke, we've worn it out between the two of us already.

Ethics for Skeptics

2010-09-23T15:07:00.000-07:00

Okay. New plan.

I'm really not getting a lot of time for commentary - obviously. Fatherhood is not ridiculously taxing, but I already didn't have a lot of time.

But there is always stuff I think should be propogated, even if I haven't time for much added thought.

So I'm going to make an effort to send that stuff out - even if all I can add is a line or two of thinking.

For starters, here is a Statement of Ethical Principles for Skeptics from the Greenwood blog.

It is clearly declared to be a first draft (and even if it were we'd quickly find ourselves in the "you can't make me" territory that was part and parcel of the War Over Nice.

A few things leap out at me as being issue-worthy:

3a) Don’t overstate your case. Caveat your statements appropriately.

I'll agree with the first part for the most part - no time to get into the really nitty gritty of when entertainment value in order to maintain your audience may trump the absolute interpretation of that. But the second part... sigh... caveats are death when trying to reach the scientifically challenged. It is a sure fire way to bore the living shit out of them and thus lose them. Let the actual science speak to the precise truth - it is our job to propogate the message as far and wide as possible.

For the most part the satire, humour, use of force and personal attacks portions are all in line with my position. They may be (heh) overstated and too cautionary but as a starting point it's a good beginning.

11b) Be aware of, and in control of, your own emotions.

Again I agree completely on the surface. But I suspect that the author's intent is that we should always be calm and kind. Perhaps not, but I think that the easy interpretation of this in that manner leads us straight down the "passionless automatons" route that was at the centre of much of the early debate that followed Phil Plait's DBAD speech.

I'm just sayin'.

There's a Dick Joke in Somewhere in this Title

2010-08-27T20:16:00.000-07:00

I can't do it. I just can't.

I really wish I could be up to my armpits in what has become in my mind one of the most unlikely debates in the skeptisphere. Or more to the point, I can't believe how much vehement toothgnashing has risen over this, and I feel like I ought to be participating much more than I am.

It was my intention to put out a token response - as I did in my last post - and catch up with the results in a few weeks or months after I am acclimatized to being a father. But (due largely to being tweeted by none other than Dr. Phil and Daniel Loxton) that post single handedly became my most read post ever and the 150 minutes following it being posted was the best month for hits this blog has ever seen. So now my appetite has be whetted... and it seems I have a some time to kill before daddy-hood descends upon me, and I've got a video that is taking some time rendering, so I can't really do "real" work right now anyway... so its time for some more thoughts. (MESSAGE FROM MY FUTURE SELF - This really is just a bunch of half-assembled musings on thoughts from the last few days.)

If you check out the comments on the latest Skeptic Blog post by skepticism's civil-shepherd, Daniel Loxton it seems that the debate is shifting into the question of "what exactly is a 'dick?'" - though there are plenty of other side-battles going on. (Is PZ a dick? Did Phil mean PZ? Did PZ mean PZ? Was Phil being a dick, calling people dicks?) And I'm beginning to think that the real root of the issue falls in the word. Daniel encourages us not to get hung up on the word - and that is probably a good idea... but it's probably too late.

I get that Phil was referencing the DBAD meme as per Wil Wheaton. As he was speaking to a geek-skewed crowd that was, on the surface, a sound choice... but it seems to have backfired. Everyone seems to have their own interpretation of what "being a dick" is, and not many of them align - particularly on opposite sides of the debate. (And hey, I live the consequences of a similar choice, having made liberal use of the term "asshole skeptic.")

It has been said - just scroll through the comments to Daniel's post for examples - that Phil phailed to be specific. Not naming names is politically understandable, but has not helped. But some narrower parameters than what he did say about what he means by being a dick would have helped... a lot. He does point out in the second part of his follow up that he "talk[ed] specifically about people who are insulting and demeaning." But that has been drowned out by the word... "DICK."

We all have our own interpretation of what that entails. Some of us, as per Barb Drescher (I spoke to several people who admitted to fleeting thoughts that they had prompted this speech somehow and I could not help feeling this way myself. That is testimony to the timeliness of it.) felt, listening to it that we might be "part of the problem" (if you accept that it it a problem). Others are presumed to being looking down from their place amoungst the angels, coming up with their own uncharitable definitions. And probably most people fall into the sub-category of imagining that there is some ill-defined cadre of pooh-pooh-ers who are perched up on their higher-moral-ground casting judgement out of fingers that only point in one direction... and we are dispensing shame upon ourselves for what we imagine the consensus opinion of "being a dick" is. ...or maybe I'm just projecting. Is it any wonder people are frustrated?

But really, when it comes down to it, it doesn't matter what Phil meant, or tried to mean, 'cause clearly that message was eclipsed by what everyone else put upon it themselves and there's likely nothing he can do now, that will change that. Your definition of being a dick may be as mild as "assuming a negative vocal temperment" or "displaying sub-textual disapproval"; or as extreme as "calling someone a baby-raper to their face and not allowing them an opportunity for rebuttal." (I am not quoting anyone specifically, BTW.) But your target may have a different opinion, and a third-party observer may have a third definition. Which doesn't make reacting appropriately impossible, but it complicates things, and having to perform for the lowest common denominator is usually a recipe for mediocrity. So I guess I don't really know what we are expected to do.

For starters even the best of my better angels got their vocabulary from Guns 'n' Roses. And there is an oft mis-understood (though not amoungst skeptics of course... right?) belief surrounding the ad hominem fallacy that just because a person calls someone a bad name (like a "dick", for example) that that invalidates their argument. (Phil is NOT saying this, BTW.) The ad hominem fallacy is only a fallacy if the argument follows that a person is wrong because they are a dick (or whatever.) That's a bit of a tangent, but I think the edges of it are banging up around the perimeter of this debate.

Skepticism is frustrating territory. (Indeed, right now I'm really only writing (and by now rambling) because I am deep in the black-waters of a high "why the fuck are we having this discussion?" sea.)

Okay, reeling my thought process back in now...

Despite Phil's efforts to define and promote his definition of being a dick, the simple fact that this argument will not settle down into a definition speaks to the fact that there is a continuum of potential dickishness to be debated. Are Penn and Teller dicks? What kind of dicks? How about Crislip's not-as-scathing-as-he -thinks-but-the-intention-to-ridcule-is-there diatribes? What about that Asshole Skeptic guy? Or the second smugiest person on the planet next to Kevin Spacey, Brian Dunning? Ya know, sometimes even Evan "too nice to be a skeptic" Bernstein is a dick in some people's eyes.

With so many flavours of dick to suck on (yeah, I went there) why are we even trying to limit this to the "don't call people bad-names" definition? Like it or not, it is human nature to want to "kick the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight." I maintain that eliminating dickishness amoungst skeptics is as syssiphian as any grander skeptical goal, and that trying to do anything more than ameliorate the most egregious examples is to waste a lot of better-used effort on fruitless wheel-spinning.

Now, I'm not a scientist of any stripe. But one of the articles cited as evidence ('cause we all reached for our "wheres your evidence?" guns that ridicule is not an effective tool doesn't appear in my mind to be as damning towards "jeer pressure" (their term) as the olive branch corps would have you believe... at least not from the abstract.

Results of both experiments showed that participants who viewed ridicule of others were more conforming and more afraid of failing than were those who viewed self-ridicule or no ridicule.

That is not the same as thinking for yourself, but it does not exclude it. The abstract actually states that "Creativity was not influenced by the humor manipulation." In any case, I am a layman interpreting an abstract, and even if my incomplete, civilian interpretation of the summary is accurate, it's just one study. Perhaps someone who is qualified can better levy an interpretation?

I'm not a psychologist. But I am qualified to speak to another segment of communication. Entertainment, narrative and the role of conflict within. (For those who don't already know, I am a writer, film-maker and award-winning playwright.) One of the sub-goals of skeptics is to maintain the attention of the people we are trying to reach. Anyone who has written drama or comedy succesfully will tell you how rare it is to craft a scene that holds anyone's attention if it doesn't have conflict in it. Just try and name a film - I don't even have to qualify that with "a box-office hit" or "a film that you enjoy." There will be precious few if any. Someone might try to invalidate my point by noting that skeptical out-reach is closer to documentary... but the notion persists. The most pervasive documentaries all hold a the same commonality - conflict. "Will the funny fat-man convince GM to keep jobs in Flint?" "Can the cute penguin survive it's Odyssian journey?" "Will eating only McDonald's food kill the film's director?" "Will those brave wheel-chair athletes beat those nasty Canadians at the Para-lympics?" Conflict is compelling.

Anyhow... that is a discussion for a different day.

But I will point out that this particular increasingly ironic conflict in our ranks is definitely holding the attention of many skeptics.......or maybe I'm just projecting.

Don't Be a Dork about Being a Dick

2010-08-25T13:45:00.000-07:00

When I first heard from returning attendees about the over-arching theme that developed at TAM8 this year, largely focussed on Phil Plait's now infamous (in skeptical circles) "Don't Be a Dick" talk, my first thought was "damn it all! This was clearly NOT the year for me to miss TAM." (Though I have to admit I did miss it for the right reasons.)

Last week at Skeptic in the Pub here in Vancouver we watched the (then freshly posted) video of the talk. I was actually in the other room when skepticism's ultimate fan-boy, Fred "Nowoo" Bremmer, came out and said "you're going to want to watch this." He was right. And predictably when we were finished the first comment was directed at the "Asshole Skeptic"... "So, Kennedy...."

Before I get too deep into this I want to make something clear (again): The name of this blog is misleading. Though I began in a more strident place I have backed away from the extremities. I DO NOT advocate being a jerk to individuals on a face to face basis. Berating people is not an effective way of reaching the people you are hollering at.

From that you can probably extrapolate that my position is roughly that I agree with much of what Phil says. But think he is missing some important points and angles.

I won't get into a lot of details, as by now this part of the conversation has become well-worn. But a few things that spring to mind: the passion of a furious argument can communicate the value of the argument (more so to by-standers than to the target of the anger); we will never reach everyone by winning over people one at a time, occassionally one (preferably unreachable) credulite must be thrown under the bus in order to stop the whole vehicle from going over the cliff... which is to say you can afford to lose one person permanently if it means demonstrating to others how wrong the target is and thus winning a net-positive amount of people's rationality (how we measure that, I admit I do not know, but that in itself doesn't invalidate the practice, it merely makes it harder to assess your results); someone needs to be able to stand toe to toe and be heard above (or at least beside) those who don't argue in good faith, and speak on a level that cuts to the bottom line on skeptical issues and speaks to values, 'cause most people don't give a shit about the double-blind, randomized, controlled, peer-reviewed data (even typing it out is boring); more on boring - cutting to the chase and eviscerating an opponent's argument in a public fashion is good entertainment, and people want to be entertained... if the message that their way of thinking needs re-assesment piggy-backs on that, so much the better; if some of us make the rest of you look less "out there" (pushing the Overton window) we are ultimately moving the cause forward.
I could go on, but I'm already repeating things I have said in previous posts and things that have already come up in this specific debate.

This morning there was a bit of a snit on Twitter between Daniel Loxton and PZ Meyers. It seems to have run out of steam in the time I've been writing this. But the debate is far from over.

So, here is what I am seeing. (But keep in mind there is a LOT out there that has been written on this subject in the past five weeks - and even more this past week - so I really can't claim to have seen it all.)

To simplify things, there are two sides. The Olive Branchers are staunchly in the Don't Be a Dick camp, and the Asshole Skeptics are in the "Be a Dick When it Works" camp. Generally speaking both are doing a lot of "show me the evidence that you are right!" shouting and neither is ponying up with research of their own. Or when they do it is narrow and only marginally connected.

The Twitter-spat this morning typified a lot of what I've been seeing. The Olive Branch skeptics seem to be arguing (still) that taking people on face to face is never going to win them over. While the Asshole Skeptics are saying "nyah nyah, you can't stop us!"

Simpilfying the debate like that is a bit of a strawman, but it is a LOT of what is going on. There is plenty of detail that falls outside of those boundaries, but much of that detail is irrelevant if we can address and solve the core argument, which frankly, is a bunch of B.S.

Yes, virtually all of us agree that being a dick to someone is never going to change their mind.

As Phil asks "what is your goal?" If your goal is to win over said opponent, then yes Phil, vitriol and venom is not the right approach. But in many cases when Asshole Skeptics employ vitriol and venom, their goal is not to win over that person, it is to affect the views of those watching the exchange. Sylvia Browne is never going to give in and admit she's full of crap, but making her look abjectly foolish will help those who are curious about her see that she is a fraud.

Phil states quite clearly that his goal is to show people how to think rationally. "Teach a man to fish..." he says. And he would not be the world class educator he is if he did it by harangueing people. Conversely, I would suggest Showtime would have pulled "Penn & Teller's Super-happy Coddle the Audience's Self-image Hour" after the first season.

Phil used the metaphor of a hammer and how to use it properly or you might destroy the wall. But there are different types of hammers for different jobs. Some hammers are even designed to destroy walls. Different vocations require a different set of hammers. A jeweller would never use a sledge-hammer to cut a diamond. A renovator would never use a jeweller's hammer to take down a wall. A renovator would hopefully never take down a supporting wall, and there is some skill in determining which walls are holding up the structure.

I've said this a dozen or more times in this blog, that wielding the tools in the Asshole Skeptic toolbox is not an easy game. Most people should not be doing it, or at least need to be doing it with extreme care. I know of what I speak. I have blown it myself. I was in a yelling match with a truther at SitP once where my buttons got pushed. I'm not proud of this. I'll say that again: I AM NOT PROUD OF THIS. That person has NEVER come back to SitP. I personally lost that person. But I did learn an object lesson in how easy it is to screw up. And I'll bet that just about everyone has found themselves arguing in unproductive manners at one time or another. Every skeptic has brought the house down upon themselves at one time or another by using the wrong tool on the wrong wall.

The issue is not that some skeptics act like dicks. It is that too many people who haven't taken the time to consider how best to communicate thier message behave like dicks, because it seems like the easy path. It seems to be simpler to mouth-off in defence of rational reality than to read up and get to the core of that reality. But it isn't. Anyone can come up with a nasty sounding expletive and call Jenny McCarthy a baby-killer. It IS that easy. But that is not skepticism. It looks like skepticism, 'cause yes, you are on the same side that rational thought would bring you to.

Being an effective asshole skeptic is tough. In order to do it well you not only need to know your way around the issues you discuss (as well or better than an Olive Branch skeptic would) but you also have to have a sense of when to best turn on the Dick and when to leave it alone. I don't claim to be an effective asshole skeptic, I just claim to have been thinking about it a lot over the past fifteen months or more.

Seeing PZ and Daniel duke it out this morning kind of hurt.

PZ is going to appear near the top of anyone's list of Asshole Skeptics. And for those of us who appreciate this brand of communication, we know that he does do a pretty good job of it. His default leans towards all-asshole all-the-time, but he is so accustomed to working in that space that he is an expert of whether to use an 8lb, a 12lb or a 15lb sledge hammer. He is not the sort of person who needs to be lectured by Phil Plait or any Olive Branch skeptic. He is exactly the sort who is going to say "nyah nyah you can't stop me" back. (And indeed practically did to Daniel.) And I don't think that kind of in-fighting is necessary.

The "you can't stop me" argument is pretty much a given. And I think the Olive Branch skeptics need to cede that ground where those who accompish theior goals well with it are concerned.

Thus far in the debate there seems to me to be as much evidence that being a dick works (when wll targetted and wielded) as that it doesn't, so why are we wasting our time with this when we can be arguing people who really are responsible for (passively) killing babies, and showing them for who the really are?

When it comes to fighting the "dicks," what we need to be doing is counselling the loose-cannons who are habitually spitting vitriol for vitriol's sake. Those who are feeding their bitterness at how stupid humanity is (and there is a lot of stupidity and consequent bitterness) into a feedback loop, rather than going out and learning more about how to debate, how to apply their wit, and how to do effective research on subjects they aren't experts at. Those are the people who need to either stop being dicks, or learn how to do it much more effectively and quit getting in the way losing as many people as they win cheap "gotcha" points.

Let's use the tools we are already accustomed to wielding expertly and effectively. 'Cause seriously, if we are hell bent on first settling this internal fracas of fighting words we'll never get on to fighting the woo.

Shame on Pharmasave - Shame on Global TV

2010-07-30T19:01:00.000-07:00

No new news here, I've been out of town a lot in the past month. Indeed after this weekend (which is the forseeable end of the travelling) I will have been out of town more nights than not since the 20th of June.

So I've been playing a lot of catch up on podcasts and news so this is a few days old.

The other day Global BC News aired this 193 seconds of imaginary health science.

Where do you begin with something like that?

This is just a mess. I don't really know what is what in this news item, but it sounds as though what is happening is that actual stem-cell treatments were used. (I don't know a lot of about stem-cell treatement, but I believe that injections in ligaments and knees is in fact a genuine use - though probably one which has not been fully tested yet.) But that, emphatically is NOT homeopathy. Yet here it is being dressed up as though it is homeopathy. To say nothing of the fact that the definition of homeopathy that is given leaves all the parts of the preparation and philosophy out that would make any sane, non-fantasy-prone, intelligent person shaking their head screaming "THAT'S NOT EVEN CLOSE TO BEING REAL MEDICINE!"

So, as you can imagine if you've followed my actions in the past this kind of got my goat.

So I went to write a letter to Global... and in the process reviewed the video and discovered that the Health Headlines (on the web page at least) are sponsored by PharmaSave! So I made sure I CC'ed PharmaSave in my email. ....One step further down the rabbit hole.

I also posted the links and the emails on Facebook so that other people could voice their disgust as well. (info@bc.pharmasave.ca & viewercontact.bc@globaltv.com - FYI)

Before too long my ever-curious (yet defiantly non-skeptical) girlfriend did some poking around and discovered that not only does PharmaSave ~~deal~~ sell homopathic remedies but they actively hawk them! (And they get their medical advice from Oprah! No, I'm not kidding. Click on the link.)

So predictably when they wrote back, their response translated to "Thanks but we don't give a fuck."

Thank you for your e-mail correspondence. We are sorry to hear that the article on stem cell/Homeopathy caused you concern. Pharmasave indeed purchases advertising on the Global evening news, however please understand that we do not control content produced by Global. We will certainly forward your comments on to Global so that they are aware of the reaction of their viewers to this particular article.

Okay fine, don't give a fuck, Pharmasave. I guess you won't give a fuck if I tell a bunch of people that you - an established purveyor of health products - is more interested in the bottom line than actually providing the service you ostensibly offer. People will buy it, so they will sell it.

It's this kind of bullshit that sends people up clock towers.

So... rather than joining me in hte clock tower, can I suggest that you write a letter to PharmaSave and Global and let them know how you feel. Feel free to explain to Global just exactly how homeopathy works and how poorly vetted and fact-checked that article was. Feel free to tell PharmaSave that you are taking your dollars else where. I sure as hell am.

Okay this is pretty light-weight...

2010-07-16T12:07:00.000-07:00

I must have mentioned this already. MUST HAVE.

So I made a movie. It'a about the Ogopogo.
This past weekend it was at the Mississauga Independent Film Festival where it won Best Feature.
I KNOW! Best Feature who would have guessed?
But it's pretty cool.
Before the screening I was the feature speaker at Cafe Skeptique in Toronto. That was fun and rather skeptic-light. In the end it was more "tell me about your movie" than "fill in some blanks about crypto-zoology for me."
Next week we have our World Premiere. Yeah yeah, how do you have a World Premiere that isn't your first public screening? I'm not going to bother with the tale here, but it does make some sense in the end.
The Premiere appropriately is going to be in the Okanagan where the Ogopogo myth originates.
I'll be doing the Kelowna Skeptics in the Pub the night following that - I'll post about that separately.
I expect it will be kind of skeptic-light too.
Anyways, preparing and doing all of that has kind of sidelined my more active skepticism - heck the Mississauga screening was on the same week as TAM8, so there was no way I could be there. Did you see the line-up of speakers? No skeptic-light there!

Speaking of skeptic-light...

Have you seen this?

It's cool. It's sweet. It's a heart warming co-incidence.

A married couple discover that when they were kids they were at Disney World on the same day. Not 30 feet from one another and they have a photo to prove it.

The husband is quoted as saying "“I got chills. It was just too much of a coincidence. It was fate.”

No. It wasn't.

It was extremely unlikely for any given couple. But when you start considering the sheer number of people in the world and all the places they might have been where a camera was taking pictures, it was bound to happen somewhere sometime. Being in the same place is not that remarkable.

My ex-fiancee and I met when we were in our early 30s. But check this string of coincidences. For one year in grade one she lived in the same town as me. My best friend from then (and now) sat beside her in school. She and I were pretty confident (but there is no photographic evidence to prove it) that we were in swimming lessons together during that year. When I went to university in a totally different city, one of the coffee shops I hung out at all the time... she worked at. With another good friend of mine. Neither of us actually remembered each other, but when I was introduced to her ex-boss (a roommate and friend of hers) he took one look at me and said "you used to hang our at Java all the time." I even spent a fair bit of time (possibly not while she worked there - we never did nail that down) at another trendy restaurant she worked at. Granted, we never lived in different countries. But that seems to me to be a fairly unlikely set of coincidences - especially as we remained oblivious of one another.

Anyway - back to the Disneyland couple. It is a great story. But fate? No.

How many couples, like myself and my ex have walked within feet of one another earlier in their lives but never had a photo to commemorate it? Or have had it happen at a time that would have in anyway triggered either of their memories? The answer is plenty.

Have you ever been on the other side of the country and just bumped into someone you knew who did not live there and had no reason connected to your reason (IE. You weren't attending the saem convention.) for being there? It has happened to me three times - twice with the exact same person. It can't be that unlikely if it happens that easily - or maybe I am the outlier here.

Heck, on this trip to Mississauga and Toronto I had an unlikely pair of coincidences happen.

1) On Friday night I was at the airport about to get on the red-eye, but first I had to do an interview about the film for a Calgary based radio show I did the interview and hopped on the plane. When I got to Toronto I recieved a text from Scott Gavura of Science Based Pharmacy (and Skeptic North and Science Based Medicine) suggesting we meet up for lunch. That fell through, but he did come to Cafe Skeptique. His was the first familiar face I saw in Toronto. But get this - the segment after mine on the radio show had been Scott. Neither of us had known that the other was going to be on the show when we recorded our interviews. Weird huh?

2) It had been 15 years since I had last been in Toronto. Indeed I think it was 15 years minus a day - certainly very close - possibly even to the day. Last time I had been there I had slept on the couch of my friend Shemina in a place near The Annex. Pretty much the only neighbourhood I knew at all in Toronto, and since then I'd forgotten the specifics of street names - which was what, where. Shortly after that Shemina and I lost complete touch with one another. So when I get off the subway in downtown Toronto I was really just following google maps directions to find the place where Cafe Skeptique was going to be. When I walked outside I immediately recognized that I was in The Annex. I had walked past that same subway station dozens of times. but never gone in. My first thought was "hey, Shemina used to live around the corner from here." And that was that. I went to Cafe Skeptique and then back out to Mississauga for the screening. When I got to my hotel room I went on Facebook and there was a Freind Request from Shemina. Seriously, what are the chances of that? On my way back to the airport on Monday I stopped at her new place and had dinner with her and her husband. It was not fate.

Food for thought...

2010-06-07T11:47:00.000-07:00

I kind of assume that anyone reading this is familiar with the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. It's pretty much the flagship podcast of skepticism, and it was an important turning point in my own formal realization of my intellectual standpoint.

I'm behind by a few weeks at this point - I am working on a contract,(an awesome contract which is giving me lots of great ideas, but I'll have to wait before I get too much into it) and it's severely cutting into my listening time.

This morning I decided to treat myself and listen to an episode of SGU before getting to the grindstone.

Episode 254 has discussion of a string of articles that I think all have interesting implications for asshole skepticism. Specifically about getting scientific messages across... I.E. how we communicate to people who aren't already strong critical thinkers and/or ammenable to science.

I ultimately recommend listening to the entire episode, but if you must cut to the chase skip ahead to the 20:00 mark for a good run up to the discussion - or, if you really don't care about any kind of additional context or the natural conversational flow of the show you can start at 23:30. The conversation covers several articles and continues to just after the 35:00 point.

I particularly find Steve's comments about how people absorb the message through social pressure, not rational argument interesting and important - especially as I generally classify Steve Novella as one of the primary skeptic's who is most adept at wielding the data-tool and explaining the detail - and in so doing severely hampers his ability to appeal to values and emotions.

Who falls in between...

2010-05-26T13:13:00.000-07:00

I really should be preparing for Friday's talk.

I suppose in a sense I am, but I just had an idea as I was writing and just wanted to get it down on the blog quickly (which is what I should always be doing rather than waiting for fully formed avenues of thought.)

For quite a while when I started this blog I pretty much classified all skeptics into two categories: Asshole Skeptics, of course; and those who I eventually called "Olive Branch Skeptics."

But for nearly as long as the Olive Branch identifier has existed I've been aware that there is a continuum betwee the two, and that in fact most skeptics live there in the middle - whether it's over category or more. For now I'll just stick to a single category.

I didn't have a name for them for the longest time. Heidi Anderson noted that they tend to be those who for the most part play nice, but when it comes down to it they do not suffer fools lightly. I've always like that phrase. I even thought there was a good band name in it - "The Suffer Fools." And so quietly in my head I adopted it as my name for those skeptics in the middle. The S.F. Skeptics. Not a bad name, but a bit awkward.

Anyhow...

Today I came up with a great name for them as it has several levels of meaning (which I assume you are smart enough to figure out for yourselves)...

Drumroll please...

Ladies and gentlemen I present to you...

The Excluded Middle Skeptics!

Hmmmm... that could also be a band name.

Presentations of an Asshole Skeptic

2010-05-26T00:17:00.000-07:00

So what are my excuses this week for not blogging as much as I'd like

Well they are two-fold.

1) I am up to my ears in a contract. I'm assisting an author who is writing a book which though I haven't signed any kind of NDA for, I wouldn't feel comfortable saying much about it here except to say that I am learning a LOT about activism that I hope I can one day apply to skeptical issues and outreach.

2) I have been asked to present a talk for CFI Vancouver on... you guessed it - Asshole Skepticism. The name of the talk is "A Primer on Asshols Skepticism" and it will be held this Friday at 7pm at the SFU Harbour Centre, Canfor Policy Room (rm. 1600).

Now if you'll excuse me, I must go prepare...

Asshole Skeptic Honour Roll #6 - A Bit Closer to Home

2010-05-17T14:20:00.000-07:00

Time to add a sixth person to the Asshole Skeptic Honour Roll, and for the first time, the person in question is someone I knew before I added them to the list.

Vancouver Skeptic Jess Brydle - who I've mentioned in this blog directly and indirectly several times before, including this recent post about a childish attack against skeptics, which singled out Jesse.

Jesse was singled out in the Skeptic North Watch blog for his efforts to make a Google map of local Vancouver businesses that peddle un-proven garbage. It's a work in progress, but as a rational thinker I think it's an excellent exercise in well-earned finger-pointing.

I have always been impressed by Jesse's calm methodology but for those of use who know him or who have watched his campaigning against all flavours of woo we know that he takes quiet pleasure in knowing that his efforts have had an effect. Judging by both the attention of Skeptic North Watch (which, as an aside, it appears was little more than a one week hissy-fit) and the comments he has recieved on his own blog, Inflautas Veritas, specifically with regards to the "Bullshit Map" (and don't doubt for a second that the two are not related) Jesse has solidly hit his target and struck a nerve.

Jesse has good reason to be proud of himself and to give himself a sly pat on the back for identifying a clever way of leveraging new media in the ongoing campaign against snake-oil and psychics.

Welcome aboard Jesse. It's an honour to march with you.

Atlantis Farewell

2010-05-15T18:37:00.000-07:00

Usually if an emotional tone can be applied to my posts here, anger would be the appropriate term. But not today. Today I am sad.

I underestimated how sad I could be about this, but here we are and I feel an encroaching malaise.

The spaceshuttle Atlantis is orbiting above us today for the last time (barring a rescue mission for one of the following two final missions of the shuttle program).

I was born in the autumn of 1969, a few months after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, inspiring the space-program in ways that I, born into the era of space exploration took for granted.

I recall clearly sitting with rapt attention in the living room of a childhood friend watching as the first shuttle mission returned succesfully to earth, and we both sat down to pancakes declaring that we wanted to be astronauts.

Fast forward several years to the Challenger disaster. Many of my longest friends know my story. It is infamous about how I had what was at the time one of the most frustrating "could-anything-else-go-wrong" days a young person could have - and I managed to spend the entire day oblivious of what had happened that morning... sure enough, that evening when I saw the news, not only was my day worse, but I recieved a clear lesson that, as much as I seemed to think so at the time, the world did NOT revolve around me and indeed there were a great many people whose days had been MUCH worse.

Fast forward again to the second shuttle disaster which occurred on the day I was moving in with my then fiancee. It was not a good omen. She and I lasted about a year in our new home before our relationship fell apart at the seams - though I don't pretend it had anything to do with the shuttle disaster.

Today I am an expectant father, with a wonderful girlfriend who I know will make a fantastic mother. Atlantis is making her final journey while my daughter (indications are) gestates. She will be born into a world where the space program is in stasis. A well-meaning and ambitious stasis, but stasis none-the-less.

The period between my birth and hers spans all but a half-dozen months of the most productive time in the history of space exploration and commerce, and in November it all comes to a screeching halt, courtesy of a lack of foresight.

I'm not really accusing NASA of failure (and indeed, who am I - a Canadian - to take such a feeling of ownership of the US Space Program?) they must have done the best they could with funding that dribbled thinner and thinner as the public appetite dwindled furthere and futher on a feast of complacency. That itself is something I was oblivious of until I first saw Apollo 13, and then realized it had been going on since Armstong landed back on terra firma.

Weren't we suppose to be so much further by now? What happened? How can we have failed to such a degree where scaling back is the best way forward?

Anyhow... I'm not really sure what my point is here. I'm sad. I am mourning the fate of the space program.

I am sure that a commerce based space industry will quickly surpass what the public one could... but I can't help but thinking that it's all going to be just a bit dirty, fouled by the worst parts of consumerism.

:-(

An ironic message about evidence

2010-05-03T21:47:00.000-07:00

This cowardly screed came to my attention tonight.

I'm not even going to bother breaking it down - at least not here and now. Suffice to say that its typical in it's failure to effectively cite any of it's claims. It Godwins. It features a poorly choreographed chorus line of strawmen. And of course is accuses skeptics of being in the pay of pharmaceutical companies... geez I wish that cheque would arrive. That's just the short tour. Really I just want to point out that its pretty typical in it's plastering of the standard clap-trap of ad hominems, bad logic and failure to understand evidence.

One of the key tasks of a fledgling skeptic is to wrap their head around the hierarchy of good evidence, weak evidence, bad evidence and no evidence. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that if you have a good grasp of these notions you are a skeptic whether you self-identify as one or not.

Does this mud slinging blog provide evidence? No. It merely falls into the tired trap of accusing it's skeptical targets (oh the irony of the Are You Being Targeted By a Skeptic or Skeptic Group? Here’s what to do. post.) of being the vilest version of their opposition. As I've pointed out before, skeptics are lefty-hippies to right-wingers and fascists to left-wingers. Indeed, skeptics land on both sides of the spectrum. Yawn!

But the blog goes further.

For starters, it is anonymous. Whoever is writing has not got the courage of their convictions. They are cowards. Now, I have some theories about who they might be, but I have no definitive evidence. I understand that I don't and thus won't point fingers. That would be legally dodgy. If I were specifically targeted, as several people I know have been, then perhaps I would put some effort into uncovering better evidence - supportable evidence - as to who was defaming me. Evidence that could stand in court as to the accusations I was making.... that is if someone were to decide to take me to court.

But it is clear enough to me that the authors of this post have very little notion of the hierarchy of evidence. Let's face it, if they did, they wouldn't be supporting herbal remedies and homeopathy. Nor would they be making specious connections as equating the denunciation of herbal remedies as being ineffective as being the same as being racist towards First Nations. It's quite a leap.

Following from that, they go so far as to single out people as bigots - and (you guessed it) fail to provide any kind of proof, rational or otherwise. This is legally unsound at best. Calling someone a bigot is actionable. And should the person so defamed decide to move legally against the accusation, one would have to have good evidence that what you were saying was unassailable fact if one was to hope to successfully defend ones self.

Before I finish, one last aside - how's this for intellectual dishonesty? Check out the comments. At least they are honest about their dishonesty:

You may have to click on the image and make it full size to read it clearly.

ADDENDUM (May 4th, 12:35pm PDT):

As if the integrity of the Skeptic North Watch blog wasn't bankrupt enough...

This comment from last night...

...has (rather predictably) been deleted in accordance with the defiant irrational righteousness touted elsewhere in the blog comments.

[Addendum ends.]

Oh... and just for fun... here's my favourite quote from the blog: "[The skeptical movement] was started by pharmeceutical companies recruiting people in pubs." I had no idea Aenesidemus was under the employ of some ancient Greek equivalent of Pfizer.

Science is not Skepticism

2010-05-02T12:09:00.000-07:00

Science is not Skepticism, and yet some people seem to be determined to treat skepticism as though it is nothing more than an aspect of science - and THAT is killing skepticism.

If skepticism was analagous to science then we'd call it science and quit the seemingly endless quest for a good elevator pitch as to what skepticism is.

Skepticism cannot be given the blanket definition of being 'science' anymore than it can be defined as being 'understanding the art of illusion.' Likewise, it is not 'atheism', 'psychology' or (the simple definition I am most guilty of using) 'critical thinking.' It encompasses all of these and more, but it is not any single one of them.

Recently I have been frustrated. This has come out in my blogging. "What blogging?" you ask, "you haven't blogged in weeks!" That is pretty much true. I have sat down and begun writing several times and the results haven't been anything I cared to publish. In some cases they've run out of gas before I'm satisfied with the content - often because I've been feeling a bit of skeptical burnout lately. (Case in point: Sonya MacLeod had an outrageous post a few weeks ago. I started in on it, but just didn't have the juice to fight that fight again - just read the post. Any half-armed skeptic can dissect it easily enough.) In other cases the result was - ready for this? - TOO vitriolic for me to post.
In one specific case I had been to Skeptics in the Pub and someone asked me the wrong question. The rant-engine was fired up and I continued until I realized I needed to get out of the public space I was in. I came home and wrote. I even hit 'publish' and the post appeared on my Facebook page long enough for networked blogs to pick it up... but I removed it almost as fast. It was not something I was ready to talk about.

This past week we had the post-mortem on Vancouver SkeptiCamp III. Late in the meeting it happened again. I'm not quite sure what was said, but the can of worms was opened and Kennedy was off and running again. Glad to say that there were a number of people in the room who whole heartedly agreed with me, and that in itself calmed me down.

Where is this going? Well, for a few nights now I've pondered it as I lay in bed falling asleep and it has finally landed... or begun to, and somewhat reassuringly it relates back to the entire reason I began this blog. Scientists are ruining skepticism.

Yeah, that's a big statement, and far from true on all counts, but there is something important at the core of it. It is notable to me that in weeks of paralysing frustration that in the end I've come to see that what has me riled up to the point of uselessness has been one of my main premises from the start.

Science is important to skepticism. It is one of the most important pillars upon which skepticism is built. But it is not in and of itself all that skepticism is yet, that seems to be a default position - an unconscious one I suspect - that far too many skeptics fall into.

If you were to ask me, skepticism's core role (not to be confused with what it is) is about advocating science.

For simplicity I'll look at my main outlet - writing - in isolation.

If you look at the act of advocacy through writing alone, this is not the same as writing scientific papers. The very specific technical and precise language used in scientific papers has a purpose - to communicate the idea in as complete and as unambiguous a fashion as possible. Who reads scientific papers? Scientists. And not even all scientists - scientists in the related field(s) as the paper. These papers are dense, difficult to understand (if you don't have the foundational knowledge), and dull as hell. They are not for casual consumption.

A step up from this, you get science-specific magazines - the Scientific American ilk - which distill those papers and their ideas and mix them with some personal discussion to make the ideas as presentable as possible to the science-minded amateur and to scientists in un-related disciplines. Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer (more the latter than the former) often have articles which would be right at home in this level of journalism. Much more readable, but still not pitched for the average reader.

There seems to be a single pair of interrelated variables. The more accurate and precise an article is, the less entertaining it will be to read for the common reader, and conversely the more easily consumed the article is, the less it is capable of elucidating the finer points of the scientific matter at hand. The inverse correlation is not structly fixed. It is not as though something that is readable by anyone is doomed to be complete bullshit, but the simplification process has inevitable benefit and costs associated with it.

We need to have a spectrum of communication. We need both the journal articles and abstracts as well as the dumbed down pop-science, and everything in between. We need it all.

The simplistic articles are bait to draw people in both generally towards scientific understanding and curiosity, and specifically on whatever subject piques their fancy. The in depth articles are the detail for those who need to know more - those whose fancy has been piqued.

Yet there are those who not only pitch all their communcation at the level of scientific paper (as is their perogative) but who also take issue with anyone else trying to communicate science on a more generally accessible level. We CAN NOT afford to do that. If we don't try to share knowledge in every voice we can muster then we are guilty of keeping it to ourselves. Not consciously, but that IS what is happening. And that is how we end up in a culture of anti-intellectualism where scientists are either looked at as modern wizards, keeping arcana to themselves.

Science is so very very important to skepticism, but it is not skepticism in itself. We should not allow ourselves to look at skepticism as though it is science. Science needs the ally of skepticism - a separate entity that can do an end-run around the foolishness in the world. If skepticism is nothing but science, then it is incapable of helping science in any new way, because it has no unique tools of it's own. But skepticism DOES have unique tools of it's own. And amongst those tools are the spectrum of voices that speak out in favour of skeptical subjects and reach a wide range of demographics simply becasue they are speaking to people in ways that they are interested in listening to.

Asshole Skeptic Honour Roll #5 - The Rational Response Squad

2010-04-06T12:03:00.000-07:00

Somehow I've got myself where I'm working on three massive posts - one of which will appear on Skeptic North early next week & I may cross-post here. But whew! Are these ever throwing me off my new current goal of posting once a week. There has simply been too much research required. So instead, I end up posting much smaller token posts...

But this entry is more than the average token post...

It's time to add another name to the Asshole Skeptic Honour Roll.

I'm not sure what exactly happened, but an old Skepticality Episode interview from 2007 appeared in my iTunes queue today - perhaps it was re-posted or... well who knows. What appeared today was the un-cut interview (episode 53a) that Swoopy did with the Rational Response Squad. I recall the original episode (Episode 53), but that was from back before my views began to gel regarding the spectrum of ways which skeptics need to present themselves. In the interview, they discuss very similar notions to what I suggest (between the 10 & 20 minute marks approximately).

The Rational Response Squad has been on my radar from some time (probably since I first heard the edited version of the interview) but I guess I've got too much of my head up my ass to have really noticed that we are not only singing the same tune, but are carrying the same harmonic line.

Anyhow... hooray for the RRS and welcome to the 5th Asshole Skeptic Honour Roll inductee.

NOT an April Fools' Joke... seriously.

2010-04-01T00:09:00.000-07:00

If you are a new junkie of any of the following stripes; Western Canada, Vancouver, Anti or Pro-Vax, Infectious diseases that ought to be nearly eradicated.... You may have heard that there has been a measles outbreak in the greater Vancouver area.

It's all covered in this article.

All issues with the quality of reporting aside - which to be honest, I haven't effectively assessed - I take a certain level of solace from this article. Not because an outbreak of measles amongst the un-vaccinated serves to further the proof of the efficacy of vaccines. This is absolutely one of those cases where one hates to be right - like that hunch I had that there were no WMDs in Iraq. What pleases me is the plus/minus ratio in the comments.

Take a peek at the comments. The number of thumbs up to thumbs down on each comment can serve as a predictor of the comments.

Are the votes on the comments more than two to one thumbs up? Then the chances are that the content is (gratifyingly) based on rational thought and real science.

Are the votes on the comments more than two to one thumbs down? Then chances are the content of the comment is (written by poster 'loandtreys_mom' and) based on at least one logical fallacy and is rank and file anti-vax bullshit.

If the votes are pretty much even there is a pretty good chance that the content is incomprehensible.

I really want to take the comforting position that this means that the average joe has tuned in to the fact that vaccinations are generally good and that anti-vax propaganda tends towards unmitigated intellectual sewage. But that is kind of what standard CAM (and other magical thinking) dreams are about, isn't it? Taking the comforting explanation to an uncomfortable circumstance.

The commenters on both side of the argument are self-selected; it's hardly a scientific sampling of public opinion... but some days we critical thinkers need a sign that we're having a positive effect... even if it is a possibly spurious one. No sign at all is just too soul-sucking to consider, and only leads to skeptical burn-out.

So here we have just a little extra nitrous for the tanks.

Happy April Fools' Day, fellow skeptics.

Grammar Girl... more evidence to support my hypothesis.

2010-03-26T00:35:00.000-07:00

You may recall that some months ago I mused that Mignon Fogarty, AKA Grammar Girl, may be at least a teeny bit of a skeptic.

Well more evidence has appeared that is consistent with my hypothesis.

As it turns out, she used to be a science writer. Ah.... that makes sense!

Now it's no secret that there is a lot of un-skeptical science reporting out there - even from proper science writers, but not all.

I'm just thinking walks like a duck, talks grammatically correct, may well be a skeptic.

She actually talks about being a science writer in her latest episode - #214.

I want my damned word back, you bastards!

2010-03-19T14:05:00.000-07:00

One of the more troubling things about being a skeptic is the word itself.

"Skeptic."

I don't really even use it that much apart from the blog title and colloquially when amongst my own kind (Sounds like a coven of vampires or something, doesn't it?) say at Skeptics in the Pub. Under these circumstances it is both the accepted shorthand term, and on that turf it's not a loaded term.

But out in the real world it means something else, doesn't it?

For starters there are the general negative implications that gets associated with the word. "You don't believe anything, do you?" "Skepticism? That's just gussied up cynicism." "There's no real difference between skeptics and nay-sayers." and "Skeptics? They just want an excuse for acting like assholes." If you self-identify as a skeptic, you've probably heard variations on all of these. While I am up to challenging any of them face to face, there are far more people who I will never have the chance to change the minds of about the implications of the word.
As a result I generally try to use the terms "rationalism", "critical thinking" and their various derivatives.

One could argue that that represents my own baggage as much as anything - so be it. But there is another semantic clusterfuck that really gets my goat, and I don't think it's a measure of my insecurity. Those who know the difference refer to the transgressors as "pseudo-skeptics" - those self-identified skeptics who don't really understand the distinction between the wanton questioning of anything and everything that rubs them wrong, and the questioning of everything based on logic and evidence.
To be as fair as I can be, in most cases pseudo-skeptics think they are following the rules of logic and reason, but their notion of evidence and fallacy is broken.

Among the most notorious pseudoskeptical sub-sets are: those who are "skeptical" of big-pharma and the established scientific health industry; 9/11 truthers who are "skeptical" of the standard explanation of the attacks; moon-landing "skeptics"; and of course the dreaded "Global Warming Skeptics."

There are some very common errors made by the folk who wear these stripes. One of the most regular is a complete misunderstanding of the principle of Occam's Razor. They never quite grasp the key notion of "simplest explanation." In their minds "it was an inside job" is simpler than "a militant group of extremists exploited the weaknesses in airline security and through a combination of cunning and un-foreseen cirumstances on the part of their targets perpetrated the most viscerally stunning attack imaginable on key targets in the United States." It may be simpler to say the former, but more unsubstantiated assumptions need to be made in order for it to be the correct answer. Pseudo-skeptics also seem to have an infinite ability for not recognizing their own straw-men. To be fair, there are circumstances where it can be a very confusing fallacy to wrap your head around - it can seductively draw many a discussion off the straight and narrow. There is also often a strong reliance on proving negatives and it's bed-buddy the argument from ignorance.

Much of the motivation of pseudo-skeptics seems to stem from a brand of fear, and a desire for control - or the illusion thereof - of ones' circumstances. Look at the three sub-demographics I mentioned above and you'll notice that all of them have an element of historical distrust of authority. I don't claim that this is the only road in, but from where I stand it appears to be the predominant one.

In any case, these people call themselves "skeptics." I can't imagine that they'd ever embrace the term "pseudo-skeptics" - as if "skeptic" itself didn't bear enough negative connotations. And by taking the term "skeptic" they undermine the standing of those of us who bear it in a scientific, logic, reason and evidence based light. And if you haven't guessed, it pisses the hell out of me. But in this I am consigned to failure. They aren't the only people out there besmirching our good name, they are simply the ones who give me the best argument for avoiding using the word "skeptic" when identifying my world-view in front of the un-washed.

The erroding of the foundation of our terminology a step further are those who mistakenly identify scientific skeptics as pseudo-skeptics. I don't know if this is deliberate - as they, like me, think that adding "pseudo" to the beginning belittles the term further - or if it is out of abject ignorance. A quick trip through the google-sphere seems to show that the majority of these sorts are advocates of religion, the afterlife, and NDEs. Based on a propensity for ad hominem attacks (We are all sheeple, you do know that, right?), I'm going to go with a combination of ignorance and malice.

This is really just funny by right of accident and irony.

The link above to NDE's gives this definition of "skeptic": A true skeptic, as defined by the philosophers of ancient Greece, is a nonbeliever - a person who does not make conclusions based on evidence that is inconclusive. Errr... no. A not very complex search for the definition will quickly lead you to the original source of the Greek philosophy of skepticism - originally called pyrrhonism - which "disputed the possibility of attaining truth by sensory apprehension, reason, or the two combined, and thence inferred the need for total suspension of judgment (epoché) on things. [NOTE: Seriously. What is it with people's extreme laziness to do even a modicum of research? I was lazy and it took me about 2 minutes to find and add those 2 links. Admittedly I knew what I was looking for, so calling it "research" is a bit of a stretch.]

In actual fact the definition provided by the NDE website is actually closer to modern scientific skepticism than the original Greek definition. But there is one key error - refering to us as "non-believers." I think technically, we all have to believe in something, but that's really not my point. We DO believe in something - that truth can best be determined by following logic and evidence. Pseudo-skeptics, on the other hand, have a surface understanding of the tools of skepticism and inadequately leverage them to support their own pre-determined beliefs. I'm not pretending that that isn't an easy trap to fall into on occassion, and that IS why one should be skeptical even of their own skepticism on occassion (I emphasize "on occassion" - to go back to the beginning repeatedly can only serve to paralyse one's self intellectually.)

I think that one can make the argumment that to practice skepticism properly, one is by definition passively being skeptical about the skepticism on an on-going basis. By heading down new paths of skepticism and following new lines of inquiry you open up the doors to proving your past determinations to be false - or at least contradictory to new information. And this requires one to systematically return to the beginning of both the old and the new and try to determine a point of reconciliation. This is not the process of the pseudo-skeptic. The starting point is always the conclusion.

Two Days 'til Skepticamp.... where will YOU be?

2010-03-18T12:22:00.000-07:00

Mostly just a reminder, in case you have forgotten, or it has passed you by.

This Saturday (the 20th of March) is the third Vancouver Skepticamp.

It will be held at the Victoria Learning Centre at UBC - (Room 182) at Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, 1961 East Mall. It starts at 10am and goes 'til 6pm.

I'm going to be the emcee. I'm looking forward to it. I believe Vancouver is the first city to host a third SkeptiCamp, and they are actually getting big enough (more people are registered than actually attneded the first two events put together!) that we're having to adjust some details of the formula.

But don't fret! It'll still be the same basic idea - an informal conference on skepticism and science advocacy with an emphasis on participation.

There are a number of registered speakers that I'm really excited to hear.

If you can't be there, you can follow the tweetstream from the hashtag #vanskepticamp. ...or mark October 23rd (yes, 10/23, if you are 'in') on your calendar... as it is the pencilled in date for SkeptiCamp IV.

Wasting Effort on Utterly Stupid Argument Amongst Ourselves

2010-03-10T10:20:00.000-08:00

I'll be brief about the set up here.

Daniel Loxton wrote a book about evolution. It is a good book, it's aimed at kids.

In it he made a very brief (and in such fashion necessarily simplified) comment on the relationship between science and religion. “Science as a whole has nothing to say about religion.”

For the most part no one made a peep about it until it got Pharyngulated.

Now every Dawkins-styled militant atheist with a knee-jerk desire to burn a book has something to say about it.

This is bullshit.

Seriously guys? You'd tear that page out of the book? He's a liar?

Get a fucking grip.

We are ALL ON THE SAME SIDE HERE.

Yes, that sentence is a huge simplification of an arguable point about a single perspective of an aspect in the relationship between reason and religion. The book is for kids! It's about evolution. Whether you personally like it or not there is a direct and critical connection between evolution education and religious belief - one so obvious that Darwin himself figured out it was going to be an issue.
If Daniel had left out ANY comment on religion he would have been criticized for that. He had to say something. If someone wants to try to takle a book on theism for kids and try to wade through the task of translating Kierkegaard and Aquinas for nine year olds, then go for it. But Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be is, emphatically, not that book.

Educating kids in evolutionary basics is far more important than any imagined damage that that, frankly totally inoccuous, sentence could manage. Let. It. Go.

Let it go because it's not worth the fight.

Let it go because you didn't even notice until you read about it elsewhere.

Let it go because if you step back and look at the argument with a little perspective it amounts to: "Hey you atheist! When you were talking about atheism you said something that wasn't atheistic enough to satisfy my atheistic views."

Let it go because when taken from a limited perspective, Daniel is not wrong. (See his comments on meta-physics. Also note that in a recent post on what is out of bounds I say things that can easily be interpreted as disagreeing with Daniel's premise. I still stand by him. That's how asinine the core of this debate is.)

Let it go because we ALL have better things to do - more important issues to tackle.

Let it go because the point, as far as it matters, has been made.

Let it go because we are wasting tame and effort arguing amongst ourselves and that is just fucking stupid.

I mean seriously. CAM advocates can band together and promote mutually exclusive bullshit therapies together with one another - even make up entirely new disciplines based upon two pieces of garbage that can't logically share the same intellectual space. So why can't we agree to disagree on this? It would have been nice if we could have agree to disagree quielty, but it's far too late for that.

I am in favour of militant atheism. I haven't the energy to excercise it all the time, but I think we do need to exert our position as strongly as any believer of a religion might. But when we bear that upon our allies and ourselves we are using precious resources of time and wit to divide our own ranks. Yet we seem to think that we are the enightened ones.

Not Enough Hours in the Day

2010-03-05T13:04:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'm back.

It's been a crazy few months. Everything that was so disruptive in January carried me right into February and then all of a sudden the Olympics were on - right outside my window. I've never watched the olympics games so thoroughly. But seeing as they were actually here in Vancouver, immersing myself seemed like the right thing to do. If you haven't heard, it was pretty cool and could not imaginably have had a better happy ending.

It's taken most of the week to decompress and start getting caught up on the main parts of my life. Now I can start catching up on the secondary portions. Yes, skepticism is secondary. It's on the bubble, but when it came time to prioritizing what to catch up on this week, it was clear where in the hierarchy it fell. In that spirit I'm starting slowly back in. There are just not enough hours in the day...

You've probably heard about the Chilean earthquake last week.

Did you hear the news from NASA on Monday about what the quake has done to our planet?

One of the local free dailies had the following headline on the top of the front page: "CHILE EARTHQUAKE SHORTENS DAYS."

Going to the AP story inside, it becomes immediately clear that the headline implicitly exaggerates the truth. The day is shorter by 1.26 microseconds according to the story. You will never notice this difference (if you had any expectation that you would.) In the course of an average life the cumulative difference in days would add up around 3.5 hundredths of a second.

Take the exploration of the subject one step further and got to the actual Jet Propulsion Laboratory press release and it's clear that the 1.26 microseconds is a preliminary calculation and will be refined as more data is collected.. Furthermore, while the release leads with the information about the shortened day, it clearly notes that a more significant effect is the shift of the Earth's figure axis (the axis about which Earth's mass is balanced) - which is different from it's North South axis.

There is often a lot of talk about how the media mis-reports science, and I don't want to understate the impact of the mis-reporting of science, but I want to suggest that in the "if it bleeds it leads world of news reporting that there is a certain level at which, more than simply expecting misleading reporting, we should embrace it. I think that this case is good example.

The degree to which the popularized headline misrepresents the story is pretty nominal. On the surface it is accurate, and it is nothing if not intriguing. In order to reach the typical person who isn't specifically interested in science you need to appeal to that visceral sense. The effort it would take to make "Chile earthquake unusually effective in moving Earth's mass vertically" into an intriguing headline would necessitate an even greater divergence from the real-life implication; Eg. "Chilean earthquake spins earth off axis." Bring on the 2012 nuts.

Running down the middle between the proper science and sensationalism strikes me as the proper choice in this case. Even JPL seemed to think so and led with the viscerally intriguing part of the story - though with less embellishment and more qualifiers than the AP.

The media inherently goes for the part of the story that is most intriguing to the common man as a business decision - to get and keep your eyes on their paper. Often this is destructive. Often they get the story completely wrong, even inverting the actual findings in the process of presenting good copy. But when they don't grotesquely misrepresent the facts and manage to get people to read deep enough into an article to widen their knowledge, it is overall a win. The headline draws in readers. They go to the story and learn how the earth is spinning faster because the overall mass is closer to the centre - like a figure skater spinning faster by drawing in her arms.

The AP was hardly the only news outlet that conflated the effect. Take this report that cites 2012 in the first breath, does use the phrase "knocked the eart off it's axis" but at least it follows it up with an interview with Michio Kaku.

I'm not sure if the next video will remain the next in the queue, but right now the next video is absolutely 2012 & Edgar Cayce credulity leading from the same news item.... Seems there is no stopping stupidity. And even if there was, who has enough hours in the day to get it done in?

Sigh.

What is out of bounds?

2010-02-20T12:49:00.000-08:00

Occasionally the question arises in the skeptical community about what is and what is not a skeptical subject.

There are various opinions about what is fair game and what is not. Dividing lines that often come up include: matters of opinion; politics; and subjects where evidence is irrelevant (though there is the strong implication that the first two are the latter-most.)

There are those who simply won't touch religious topics. And not just those who happen to be theists and skeptics. I understand why that sub-set of skeptics might avoid the subject, it's the others that make me curious. I, for one, wax and wane over my interest in atheistic matters. There are a few aspects of the great debate between atheism and religion that tend to fire me up (morality and evolution education being at the top of the list) but that's another post for some other day. Point being that I don't shy from talk about religious matters when I have something to say. Sure, if I'm feeling bored of the debate I won't bother, but that is patently distinct from considering the subject verboten. Similarly, there are those amongst us who have tired of the entire discussion, but aren't philosophically opposed to commenting on it.

Atheism strikes me as possibly the biggest single vein of skeptical thought (quackery being a contender, as well) and one of the most ubiquitous aspects of our lives regardless of your position on it. Why then would admitted atheists deflect any discussion on the matter? I really have no idea on this one. If anyone has any thoughts, please enlighten me in the comments. As it stands all I can imagine is that they themselves have too many close connections to people who are themselves religious that they do not want to strain. I can hardly argue the value of that choice - indeed it is just that, a choice. I do tread lightly where my devout friends and family (not many of the fomer, even less of the latter) are concerned. There is sort of a respectful detente at work. I know they believe in the Uber-Darwin and they know I have an abiding understanding of the earthly one and all his buddies in the mythos of science. We simply don't make it a topic of conversation. I don't worry about the possibility that they might read this blog post (Hi, folks!) and take offence, and I don't get my nose out of joint over Facebook statii that thank Jesus for random and zero-sum events.

But then there are things like politics, economics, philosophy and even art. (All over-lap conveniently ignored for simplicity.) Why should critical thinking not be applied to such things?

There absolutely is a difference between the complex, occasionally unfalsifiable, and often opinion-based territory of such subjects and the quantifiable, evidence-based grounds of science - but that doesn't mean that logic and reason cannot be applied. Politics cannot alter facts, but facts can and should guide political process - I don't think there is much to argue about there. Further, a bad argument, regardless of whether it is applied to a matter of opinion or fact, is still a bad argument. Basing a position on a logical fallacy does not make the position wrong, but it does invalidate the choice to base the opinon in question on the fallacious argument being applied. Matters of aesthetic or social preference may not be reachable by logic alone, but the defence of those preferences can be girded by a liberal application of logic.

I'm not saying we all need to live our live devoid of emotional choices and responses. No, not me - ever. But that doesn't mean that our opinions and even our feelings can't, once we've experienced the visceral knee-jerk reactions that are our Human (Not Vulcan.) nature, be re-considered. Science and fact can't be determined by emotion, but that doesn't mean that we can't reconsider our reactions - particularly those that result in long ranging effects - and possibly see through the inherent errors of our position. Perhaps the choices we make are "correct" (whatever that means n the circumstances) in the first place, but by determining the weak points in the foundation of our opinions and reconsidering on the basis that our position should not be formed around a false argument, we can only serve to improve our position.

So, what is out of bounds? I would suggest that nothing should be. Absolute truths will be harder (or impossible) to reach on many paths of inquiry, but determining what is patently false will always be a valuable guide for pencilling in your provisional viewpoint.

Vancouver SkeptiCamp III - The Reckoning

2010-02-05T10:51:00.000-08:00

Do you Skepticamp? Have you skepticamped? Will you skepticamp?

WTF "skepticamp!!?!?!!"

Skepticamp is the brain child of Reed Essau.

It is a one day conference for science and reason wherein the talks are generally short, and largely presented by the participants.

Reed did the first one in Colorado in 2008. Vancouver followed suit a few months later, organized largely by Graeme Kennedy. I was one of the handful of presenters at that conference. Other cities including Atlanta and NYC have also hosted Skepticamps.

Last year Vancouver had it's second Skepticamp and on March 20th we will be having our third. If it's boast worthy, it's worth pointing out that Vancouver was the first city to have a second skepticamp, will be the first to have a third and if the planning meeting was any indication last night we will be the first to have our fourth... that one coming before the end of this year. Vancouver really seems to have taken Skepticamp to it's breast.

I had to miss the second Vancouver Skepticamp on short notice, which was disappointing, but this year I'll be participating in a big way. I may do a presentation on - you guessed it - asshole skepticism depending on the number of speakers we have, but I'm also going to be the emcee. I'm looking forward to it and expect to have a lot of fun.

If you are in Vancouver, you should be there. Get registered. Get a t-shirt.

Design by Gary Lyons

I'm coming out of the pit of work - more posts should follow more regularly soon.

oh.... and for the record "The Reckoning" - is just a joke. SkeptiCamp III has no sub-title.

Asshole Skeptic Honour Roll #4 - The Revenge of the Alt-Med Ranger

2010-01-25T10:17:00.000-08:00

Oh Mike Adams, how silly you are.
Really, truly silly.

The tale goes on and on since I last blogged about it.

Mike decided to reveal to the world what skeptics really think. So he set up an army of straw men and took 'em on like Jackie Chan... except really he managed his attack rather more like the Star Wars kid... but without the underlying innocent charm.

When we skeptics laughed outrageously at how childish, unsubstantiated, un-cited, misrepresentational and ultimately pathetic his ploy was, he posted again announcing victory - because he had "wildly infuriat[ed] skeptics across the 'net." Clearly once again Adams is falling prey to his desire to believe what makes him happy, not what is actually true.

I'm really not going to bother getting into it further myself, largely because it has already been done by... well just about everybody it seems.

But this does give me the chance to add another name to the Asshole Skeptic Honour Roll - for excellence in snark, the blogger who goes by the moniker Bing McGhandi.

Of all responses to @HealthRanger's outing of skeptical beliefs, his is my favourite.

A Sobering Reality - Living in a Surveillance Society

2010-01-24T15:11:00.000-08:00

Perhaps you’ve heard that we’re throwing a bit of a party here in Vancouver next month.

For fear of the wrath of the IOC, here is an image of the host city...

and not 5 interlocked rings.

There has been a lot of discussion about which aspects of the Olympics are ethically wrong, economically broken, or socially corrupt and which aspects aren’t. It would require a blog, not just a post, to delve into it all in any real detail. Perhaps there is a non-partisan blog out there that does, but I am not aware of it and this post is barely hanging on to proper skeptical themes in the first place, I shant be straying further than this. But there are certain elements within these Olympics-issues that do fall into the domain of rational thought, such as surveillance.

Recently, I had to sit through most of a day listening to a hysterical co-worker rant about one of the many perceived issues about the Olympics, and it struck me as representative of a much larger issue: It isn’t very hard to find someone who believes on some level that increasing surveillance in our world (Whether it's RFID chips, full-body scanners, or CCTV cameras as examples.) is leading us inevitably towards an Orwellian future. Indeed the notion is so prevalent that I’m going to hazard a guess and say that the majority of people consider it a potential at the very least. It strikes me as a concern we should heed, but one that needs to be considered on a realistic level, not the shrill “they are turning us into a police state and none of you sheeple even raise your heads to care” fashion that I was subjected to by the fore-mentioned co-worker and others.

For the Vancouver Olympics, security measures are vague as a necessity. The main focus of security is two-fold. First, as a street crime deterrent – or at least the adding of an additional tool to combat crime in high-traffic areas. (There is a much larger discussion to be had about the displacement of crime due to surveillance and whether surveillance is indeed a deterrent, but that is not at the heart of this post.) Secondly, prevention of terrorist activity. (As with street crime, displacement and efficacy are in question.) If the specifics of security measures were well outlined, they could be much more easily circumvented by those who would seek to commit acts of crime and terrorism. In the long run, the apparent benefit of surveillance is as a record – to be used later in crime solving and prosecution – and even the degree of that is not free from criticism.

For the Olympics a wide spectrum of unusual (in the sense of – not typically used every day) surveillance efforts are being employed or are believed to be being employed. One of the most visible - to use a reductionist example - is the employment of CCTV cameras. CCTVs are already a significant part of our lives, and they serve as a symbol of the surveillance society that alarmists fear, watching us with their unblinking eye, feeding the data through face recognition software and traffic pattern analysis algorithms. Vancouver had new cameras installed recently, to be monitored by the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit. Possibly many of those cameras could be permanent, despite the warnings of privacy experts – the City of Vancouver has yet to commit to a decision about maintaining the cameras after the games.

The number of cameras added to Vancouver streets is a fraction of the number added at the Beijing games, according to a report last year from the University of Alberta. The report also notes the tendency to maintain a portion of the increased surveillance as an aspect of the legacy of the games, and anti-surveillance advocates are quick to point out that big events like the games are the thin edge of the wedge.

Okay… that is more than enough context.

I pose a somewhat rhetorical question: What is being defended?

The answer for most respondents would
be privacy or perhaps the right to privacy. I’ll accept the first answer, but you may be surprised to find out there is no “right to privacy” in our society. The word “privacy” appears precisely nowhere in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – and the same goes for our neighbours in the “land of the free and the home of the brave”. There is no right to privacy in the American Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. Surprised? I was too, when it was pointed out to me some years ago. Somewhat sobering too, I’ll admit. But dragging myself back on topic... What is being defended? – Privacy.

What privacy is is not such an easy thing to determine. It means different things to different people and it affects many different aspects of our lives. I fully agree that there is a certain expectation of privacy when it comes to sensitive information – information that draws in the borders of our lives: my Social Insurance Number, my credit card information, my bank PIN, the password to my Google account, and so on. I would prefer to not be under any kind of audio-visual surveillance in my home... but at the same time I try to live my life without any shame (either in action or in self-image) so if there was, would it really bother me that much? Hard to tell.

On the streets am I willing to give up being seen going about my business amongst the throngs of other people if it means that the streets are a little safer in the moment and that if something should happen, there is a better (if small) chance that it would be brought to justice and/or prevented in the future? You may have guessed my opinion on that – yes, I am willing. But all of these circumstances are ultimately, as I have just alluded, the domain of opinion and/or personal preference – and critical thinking loses clout in these situations.

So, you ask, why am I carrying on about this under the auspices of a skeptical blog?

Because it strikes me that if we accept the premise of the extreme argument that this is all leading towards an Orwellian dystopia if we don’t stop it now, then we really need to think about things rationally, because moving forward with the emotionally fueled “we can’t allow it to go the bad way, so we must prevent it entirely” approach may well be the most destructive way to proceed.

For starters, I propose as fact that we as a race has yet to find a way, where destructive technology (or any technology) can be undiscovered. That is, barring the destruction of the society that bears the knowledge – and even this self-defeating option is unreliable. The best we can ever hope for is newer technology that renders the older obsolete by antidote or counter-measure.

High-tech surveillance is here to stay, and indeed it is only going to get more discrete. It is only a matter of time before the average person can, for a price, fly a camera and/or microphone in through an open window of your home and, PRESTO! – you are someone’s own personal reality TV show.

Yes, that will probably be highly illegal. But as the price of such technology drops lower and lower, the ability to effectively police it will become more problematic. And the act of criminalizing it – when has that ever stopped people from doing things? As with anything that has been criminalized, all that imposing such legalities upon such technology will accomplish is that only criminals and various arms of government will have access to it – either legitimately or via black market resources. We could plug our ears and eyes and scream “la la la can’t hear you” (ironic as that would be) and pretend we aren’t being watched, or we could roll with the punches, and get used to the idea.

In his non-fiction book The Transparent Society, Dr. David Brin (I have mentioned elsewhere his notion of CITOKATE as a concept that all skeptics should be aware of) suggests that a possible option for avoiding a hellish slide towards an oppressive surveillance society is to pull some social ju-jitsu on the rapidly developing surveillance technology of the world, and accept a future of near total transparency. I don’t think he or I actually believe that this is a transition of thinking that can realistically happen outside of generational turns of worldview, but the technology is advancing rapidly enough that we can only do ourselves favours by embracing it rather than fighting it.

In a transparent society, abuse of surveillance by the powers that be can be mitigated by ensuring that all non-private spaces are under the watch of the ever present eye. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the watchers?) Under this model – everyone does, indeed everyone becomes the watchers. All cameras become available to everyone. Just go to the website and check in what is going on downtown, or at the Olympic site, at police headquarters or even inside the very room where the cameras themselves are routed through to the internet. Rather that being overseen by an anonymous few, all are watched by one another from below - sousveillance, if you will.

In a sense, there is even a surprising amount of privacy in this model. When everyone is watched and available to be watched most or even all the time, then in many senses we are desensitized to not only the eyes upon us, but more importantly, our ability to make undue use of such surveillance. Think about the private conversations that you’ve had in restaurants. Are you concerned about being overheard? Not really, though there is nothing stopping eavesdropping – and undoubtedly people do eavesdrop. But do you really care? No. Not unless you are talking about something seditious!

Which of course brings up the notion that really, unless you are doing something you wouldn’t want the world to know about – say, a crime – then what does being observed, or at least potentially observed in all public areas cost you? Indeed, if anyone’s eyes can see anything, then that in and of itself also keeps the watchers in line. Police – should you be of the opinion that they are prone to brutality – are becoming more and more aware all the time that they must perform their duties with utmost respect and adherence to protocol as even now, thanks to camera-phones, we are already potentially on camera at any time.

This is all very hypothetical – make no mistake. But the implied contention that surveillance must be curtailed or we are headed towards oppression is not only a false dichotomy, but it also ignores our inability to suppress technology once it has been discovered – you cannot put the genie back in the bottle.

Is the option so broadly sketched in above the only alternate option? Probably not. It’s also hardly a comprehensive look at the internal issues that would need to be hammered out if it was the only other option. But without giving in to Big Brother, it accepts the reality that for the foreseeable future we are all being watched far more than we are immediately comfortable with, and we had better get used to it, ‘cause those eyes aren’t going away – even if we were to try to suppress it.

My original opening line of this post was “Prepare for a reality that you aren’t going to like.” I’m going back to that now, as I close. Thinking and writing about this has made me feel like I’m peeing in even my own cornflakes. But it is part of the skeptic’s role to step back from emotion and consider circumstances dispassionately and not reflexively believe the most attractive idea. Wishing surveillance out of sight is only going to achieve just that – it is not going to make it go away. At worst its a Thelma and Louise strategy. At best, its a lot of wasted effort. No matter how reprehensible we find facts, they are still facts, and thus we must explore options for working with surveillance in a positive and open society.

Mike Adams: Cheater & Hypocrite

2010-01-22T20:56:00.000-08:00

Are familiar with the Shorty Awards?

Well it seems that well known quack, Mike Adams AKA the Health Ranger, who I've blogged about before doesn't know how to read the rules!

Adams was in the forefront of the pack - for a vote that admittedly is little more than a Twitter popularity contest. It really didn't seem right that this was happening.

But if you were to google "Health Ranger" "Shorty Awards" at the time I am writing this you would get a deluge of blog posts just like this one. So I guess that explains some of it.

But then this morning these tweets came up from @Sc00ter:

"ww, there's a LOT of people voting for @HealthRanger that have next to no friends. Created to vote for @shortyaward.. I thhink so"

"got an email from the Shorty awards saying they're investigating @HealthRanger for ballot stuffing"

Well well well.

Is it possible that some one wasn't paying attention to this rule?

Voters must be active Twitter users prior to the start of the competition. Votes originating from new Twitter accounts or accounts used mainly for Shorty Awards voting will automatically be disqualified and will not count toward the rankings.

Meanwhile, Orac, PZ Meyers and others did some of their own promoting for votes for @DrRachie. Which I'll point out is EXACTLY what @healthranger was doing...except without the voting bots.

So... now, hours later, Mike Adams has been removed from the ballot for significant evidence that at he or a least his over-zealous follwers weren't playing by the rules, and Dr. Rachel Dunlop has the most votes. Yay, all is right with the universe... except there could be one more thing that would make it just about perfect: If Mike Adams threw a hissy fit and made for the triple-crown of bad-sportsmanship by being a hypocrite at the same time.

Wait for it....

Wait for it....

Okay - here.

Wow.

Okay you narcissistic jerk, let's do some of your own vanity-googling for you shall we?
At the time of this writing if I google each of '"Shorty Awards" "Health ranger"' and '"Shorty Awards" "Rachael Dunlop"' I get 506 results for the Health Ranger combo - and on the front page alone 7 of 10 hits begin with the headline "Please help the Health Ranger win the Shorty Awards for health content" - that is some seriously focussed SEO going on there! Meanwhile the Rachael Dunlop iteration gets 206 hits and on the front page I have to really look to see that 3 of the 10 are pleas for votes.

So, really Mike who is it who is pushing their voters the hardest? I mean, seriously? Why are you such a cry baby? Its not even like we beat you at your own game. We simply played by the rules. Rules - you know them, right? They are kinda like laws. Sort of like the laws of physics... oh - never mind.

So, what can skeptics do?

Well you can vote for @DrRachie from a legitimate account. And you can go to the bottom of Adam's post to his action items - specifically #2 and #5 and pass on to the people behind the Shortys that you support their actions.

And it might be worth pointing out to them that Mike has so much respect for the awards that he ends his rant with: "The contest itself doesn't matter that much." (Which is obviously why he spent so much effort trying to win and complaining about it when he was caught cheating.) He may as well have capped it off with:

"Oh yeah!?!? Well I didn't want to win anyway! ....stupid contest."

Kudos to CBC Dragons

2010-01-18T00:09:00.000-08:00

This came up in the comments section over at Skeptic North today and it's simply too good not to pass on further. A garbage medicine hawker came on Dragons' Den with a ridiculous product and a ridiculous "deal" for the Dragons.

If you're familiar with the format, feel free to skip ahead to the 25 minute mark and sit back and watch some serious deserved tongue lashing. If you aren't familiar, then watch the first part of the show just to get the feel first.

The product in question - Precious Metals Nano Water from Bruce McBurney of HIMAC Research Publishing from Niagra Falls Ontario. He undermines his presentation from the get go by asking for WAY too much money (2.5 Million) for a laughable amount of the company (25%) that is heinously over priced (10 Million dollars - based on the sales of 40 thousand dollars over several years.) Initially his presentation is amusing as it's so absurd and badly put together. He thinks he has a panacea which will cure everything from indegestion (sic) to prostrate (sic) cancer. And he offers no more than "video testimonials" and books of un-declared an questionable provenance as evidence.

He is completely full of shit. The Dragons let him have it on all fronts, they stip him down and flog him verbally and as far as I am concerned he gets off easy.

Looking at his website - which is also littered with spelling errors, like his cheap-assed presentation - he is also trying to hawk "suppressed" (Oh the conspiracy!) carbeurator technology that could (you see it coming don't you?) revolutionize the world by taking cancer causing agents out of automotive pollution and improving mileage by over 400%.

As Dragon Jim Treliving tells Bruce to his face - "Bullshit."

Where is the FUN in science?

2010-01-16T23:45:00.000-08:00

If I were to ask "where is the fun in science?" most people in the critical thinking crowd would look at me like I'm nuts and correct my implied premise; "science is fun!"

I do, in fact, agree with them. But the problem is, the people who count most - those who aren't critical thinkers - don't. Face it folks, to them we are ALL Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. They look at my Facebook page and see status updates like "Thank Heaven for Galilieo... or is it the other way around?" (From August 25th of last year.) I don't have to explain that to you guys, right? And that of course is part of the point! They see it and almost certainly don't get the significance of the date; probably don't get that it was a clever joke; and if they do see that it was a joke, they probably don't know why it is funny. Anyone who does... is one of us.

You can't simply dress science up in "fun" colours, say that it's fun, and expect people to respond. Hell if you even call it "science" anywhere before the moment your audience cries out loud in reaction, most of them are going to shut off. They must realise they are having fun, before they realise they are having science (fed to them.)

For all I know that is how I was brought into the fold. It's far too late in my life to determine whether the bug for science led me to science educational programming and reading as a kid, or if the likes of Dr. Zed and 3-2-1 Contact got me interested in science.

Science must be a stealth benefit of the entertainment - for both young and old, not the other way around. Far too much science "for your own good" is given a patina of excitement that doesn't go past the surface, and is expected by those who have gussied it up to have some sort of legs on it. I can only assume that people who actually think that efforts like these are valuable and aren't merely singing to those who already have a copy of the libretto, either socially speaking haven't got a living clue how the other half live (I invoke Sheldon again); or perhaps really do think that the knowledge is best kept by those who can handle it... and that is pathelogical (and I am sure, insanely rare, if existent at all.)

I don't really have an instant answer for this issue. I'm pretty much just thinking out loud. If I had a good formula for selling science to a big demographic without them necessarily realizing that that was what they were consuming, I can pretty much guarantee I'd be in production.... But if anyone has an idea that doesn't read like the periodic table... you know where to find me.

From the Dust of the Skeptical Smackdown...

2010-01-13T12:36:00.000-08:00

Okay, so the room was too small (as is becoming the case regularly at Vancouver Skeptics in the Pub); and we had some audio-visual issues; and we practically abandoned the Skype connection after the initial video-call to Edmonton; the Edmonton co-host got sick and didn't show up; the Edmonton host had to leave after the first round - leaving a newly appointed co-host to finish up; and we had enough people show up late in Vancouver to make up an entire new team... but I think that it was a wild success on our end.

I am talking about the Western Canadian Skeptical Smackdown which was held last night in Edmonton and Vancouver.

Desiree Schell of Skeptically Speaking was the Edmonton host, and I was the quiz-master in Vancouver.

There was definitely some learning on the organizers' part... for example, I discovered that the two or three trick questions were not a good idea... particularly when one of the rules is that the "Quiz Master is always right, even when they are wrong." The rule is in place so that we don't lose a bunch of time quibbling about answers that are almost right; or having to go on the internet to double check answers. A lot of time was put into getting the answers right, but I feel admit that there was one answer right at the end that was debatable... it came across as a trick question to those who really knew their stuff, resulting in 'wrong' answers that were still really good answers. My bad... but, c'mon - there were 88 questions! Having one debatable one seems pretty solid to me. :-P

If anyone wants me to send them the questions so that they can run their own quiz - by all means! I'll even tweak the language on the debatable question, so that there is no debate. Fair warning... while there are some questions that should be easy for any skeptical/scientific crowd & every question was answered correctly by someone... there are some really tough questions. Even the top scoring team only barely cracked 75% and roughly one third of the teams didn't get more than 50%. (Indeed, one answer sheet - from a team that placed in the top 5! - came back at the end of the night with the message "WTF guys?!? This is Hard. SRSLY!" And so it should have been - everyone had to work for every point.

There were three different cross-provincial challenges going on, as well as one in each city.

Boasting privledges go to:

- The top scoring team.

- The highest overall team score out of both cities.

- Each city's Skeptical Radio show (Skeptically Speaking and Radio Free Thinkers) challenged each other.

- Desiree and I each chose a "Champion" to represent us before we started.

As my Champion Team I chose the team that named itself "Big Wang Theory" - it was a pretty terrifying looking team from the outset, comprised of: Paul Ingraham - Skeptical (ex) Massage Therapist; Rob Tarzwell - An increasingly well known doctor and skeptic in Canada; Robert Light - whose research as a playwright into the life of Charles Darwin is truly staggering; and Fred Bremmer... who just might be skepticism's ultimate fanboy (and whose photos adorn this post).

Speaking of being represented by a champion...

Due to the quality of our video Skype connection I didn't clearly get what Des's Champion team was, but I shall update here as soon as I can confirm it with her. She did point to the literal "Far Table"... so I am going to assume that the team she picked was the one named "The Far Table" in Edmonton's results.

At the end of the first round, Big Wang Theory was ahead of all teams.

By the end of the second round (a misleading name as there was a paper-round between the two rounds) an Edmonton team had pulled into the lead by 1 and 1/2 points.

Going into round three, (by which point Edmonton had got well ahead of Vancouver as we were slowed by the added logistics of having 9 teams crowded into too small a space) Radio Free Thinkers had to get a minimum of 6 and 1/2 points to beat the Skeptically Speaking team.

When all was said and done, the final standings (out of 88 points) from both cities were as follows:

(VAN) Big Wang Theory - 67.5
(VAN) Goats on Fire (The CFI Team) - 60.5
(EDM) Climate Cover Up - 53.5
(VAN) Radio Free Thinkers - 51.5
(EDM) Skeptically Speaking - 49.5
(EDM) The Shock Collars - 49
(VAN) Still Thinking - 45
(VAN) Pacific Spirits - 44.5
(VAN) Funky Debunkers - 43
(VAN) 3 Girls and a Dummy - 40.5
(VAN) Psychic Energy - 40.5
(VAN) Can We Have a Minute? - 37
(EDM) The Far Table - 35.5

I am looking forward to the Big Wang Theory coming back to defending it's title next year... when there will hopefully be more teams from Edmonton as well as teams East of the 100th meridian involved too. Then we can drop the "Western" qualifier from the Quiz's title.

"Western Canadian Skeptical Smackdown" Champions:

"The Big Wang Theory"

Rob Tarzwell, Rob Light, Paul Ingraham, Fred Bremmer

Western Canadian Skeptical Smack-Down

2010-01-10T20:21:00.000-08:00

It’s a big week. I’ve been swamped with work leading up to it. Yesterday was the cast & crew screening of “Beast of Bottomless Lake.” Tuesday is the Western Canadian Skeptical Smack-Down. Thursday I move. And at an unspecified date following that (no more than a week later) – I begin working from home. Only two of those are of skeptical note (the film and the quiz) but it serves as a bit of an explanation for why my output has been below average lately. Once I’ve moved, things will pick up again.

I’ve mentioned the film before. I’m not going to go into great detail about the screening here as I’ve spoken about it in detail on the company blog.

The Pub-Quiz is next. Back in August – shortly after TAM7 – I suggested to Vancouver Skeptics in the Pub organizer Fred Bremmer that I would be interested in preparing a pub quiz for the first SitP of the new year. Well, here we are. The plans have grown since that initial discussion. I’ve actually forgotten how the original conversation unfolded, but back in October or November I was chatting with Desiree Schell (host of Skeptically Speaking) and she thought it would be fun to host the same quiz in Edmonton. From there it was a short step to co-ordinating the two quizzes and running them simultaneously – and skyping the quiz so that teams can be competing across provincial lines.

Indeed the technical support team of Skeptically Speaking and RadioFreeThinkers are each putting a team in competition, with a friendly challenge standing between the two.

Nearly all the details are in place – really all that is left are things that we can only deal with on the night.

If by any chance you are reading this before January 12th, and are in either Vancouver or Edmonton, come on out! Either for a team (of four) in advance, or show up and get teamed up on the night. The quiz begins at 8pm in Vancouver, 9pm in Edmonton; at The Railway Club in Vancouver and at Under Dog in Edmonton.

I’ll follow up with the results once the quiz is done. And if the quiz is a big success, I’m betting we’ll do it again next year... perhaps we won’t need the qualifier “Western” next year. And in any case, once the quiz has been done I’ll make the question set available to anyone else in the world who would like to host a quiz. (Indeed, there has already been interest expressed.)

"Science is an absolute failure!"

2010-01-04T14:38:00.000-08:00

I'm not actually quoting anyone. But that does seem to be the underlying attitude fuelling many of the past decade's advances in the forces against skepticism.

Looking back at my life, I see a promise in entertainment and popular media that life is going to be vastly better in the future.

I don't specifically target The Jetsons - the Jetsons took place in 2062, we still have half a decade before the future of robot housemaids and flying cars fails to manifest according to schedule. But somehow the Jetsons seems to symbolize the failures of the world around us to live up to fiction.

Hey, it's the future folks! It's 2010 - "The Year We Make Contact." How much of the promise of technology in that film - let alone it's predecessor, now 9 years out of date - has failed to manifest? Well, you might as well say "all of it."

This is to say nothing of the many widely mocked 50s era "World of Tomorrow" type films where for as many near hits, there are as many or more ridiculous misses, all made the more amusing by the dated aesthetics.

The institutions of science have over the decades exacerbated the feeling of disappointment by over-selling the potential of the future, making implied promises that could not be lived up to.

I am being unfair to "science" here. As much as it was the towers of research that wrote cheques that reality could not honour, it was media that over-represented it, and the common man who all too eagerly believed what they were told. Perhaps scientists and their organizations hubristically failed to correct the perceptions, and in that they are culpable in the failures. But the point is that people - everyday people - got the wrong message, and they can't be held solely responsible.

I graduated from high-school in 1987. I fully expected that by now we would have been back to the moon - indeed, maybe I'd have the opportunity to live on the moon myself. As it is, the best I could possibly do is a six minute trip beyond the Karman Line, and that only if I can dig deep in the pockets to the tune of 200 grand. I figured that by now all cars would be electric, and computer controlled. We've only barely got to the point where electric cars are at all viable. I suppose skype has provided me with a video-phone, but boy is it cranky. But even when I move into my state of the art new apartment next week I'm not going to be able to tell the (literal) home computer to turn on the lights, start dinner, give me my messages and put on my favourite TV show.

I recall with great clarity the day in grade 9 physical education, when we were doing a sit down class on anatomy my teacher, Mr Foster, informed us with absolute authority that by the time we were forty (that's this past year) that "every organ in the body will be able to be replaced except maybe the brain." Perhaps his assurance was bouyed by the news - that was the year of Barney Clark. Obviously Mr. Foster was very wrong - and of course it was silly to expect a high-school gym-teacher to be any real sort of authority on such a subject - but there was no way I was going to grok that at age 13.

Similarly, I think it's safe to say that "we" expected that cancer would be cured by now; that a meal in a pill would be viable; and that we would have extended life expectancy by 20 years.

Science has failed to live up to these expectations. It doesn't matter if they were reasonable expectations or not. It hardly matters that science minded people everywhere know how unreasonable those expectations were, or the prevailing theories as to why and realities that have prevented us from making these achievements. What has happened instead is that the expectation - or more correctly the percieved failure to meet the expectation - creates in many people's minds another unrealistic perception: that science has failed us and that therefore it is full of shit.

Science medicine hasn't cured everything therefore how can it be trusted? This serves to help the anti-vax movement, as there is a visceral instinct to buy into the faulty logic that supports the notion that science has failed us. It plays into the hands of big pharma conspiracy - "why cure a disease when you can make more money selling the drugs that alleviate teh symptoms?" It feeds the beliefs of creationists and global warming deniers alike. It coddles the hostile attitude of anti-intellectuals and keeps them warm at night.

We as skeptics are the public advocates of science. It is our duty to foster a love of science and it's accomplishments. We are living in the future, and it is our job to take every opportunity to point our the victories of science - especially the mundane victories. We have Star Trek communicators; we have the ability to shop from the comfort of our couch; virtually anyone has the ability to write a regular column on anything that they feel they have an opinion about; we can access nearly any episode of any TV show we desire on little or no notice; we have taken the teeth out of AIDS and other deadly diseases; we can get directions from anywhere to anywhere while enroute. The list goes on and on.

Staking Ground

2010-01-01T23:22:00.000-08:00

Uh, happy New Year!

I've been a bit remiss in my posting. Usually I get at least one post out per week but, this season has not been kind to me. At least not as a blogger. It has been a great holiday season for the most part - if you don't count the fact that the airline my Dad worked for for forty years burned to the ground.

The holidays were excellent and relaxing for the most part, and my New Year is promising to be busy until at least the spring. A week from now we do an invite only cast & crew screening of my Ogopogo movie; the next week I move into the latest building in Vancouver to be the 'hippest residence in the city' (a mantle it will bear until the athletes' village opens up for residency after the Olympics) and then... its the Olympics! Hopefully shortly there after there will be other cool film news. But let's face it, all of that is really only tangential to skepticism. I don't tend to get too much into the personal life here, so there's a New Year's tip of the hat into my inner world.

I really do have something to say of skeptical import though...

As the holiday season was ramping up I went for a drink with a friend of mine - my roomate at TAM 7 in fact. He mentioned something to me about asshole skepticism that had never even occurred to me.

An important aspect of asshole skepticism - the truly provocative sort of asshole skepticism - is that it contextualizes the domain of rationalism.
The olive branch skeptic has much more power in a world where there is a good sampling of asshole skeptics. The asshole skeptics push the outer boundaries of skeptical presentation and come off as the extemists of the movement. (And in a sense, we are.) Which then allows the olive branch skeptics to come off as relatively reasonable.

In a sense it becomes an effort of making the fallacy of the Golden Mean work in our favour.

The asshole skeptics dress up our rationality in strident statements that appear to be on the bleeding edge of sanity to the credulites and fundies of the world, so that when the olive branch skeptics come along and appear all reasonable (yet promoting the exact saem agenda) they have a much better chance of coming across well as they are no longer the extremists.

It's an interesting idea. And I think there is something to it, though no doubt some of the olive branchers will still curdle at the thought and toss forth the standard "attract more flies with honey than vinegar" pleas for diplomacy. And it's not that they are wrong, it's simply that the appearance of the message is all relative, and by pushing the boundaries we are making the sweetness of their version the honey, 'cause otherwise it IS the vinegar in many people's eyes.

Randi-gate Part II

2009-12-17T11:57:00.000-08:00

And the skeptical community breathes a sigh of relief... sort of.

Not surprisingly it didn't take too long after the skeptical blogosphere went pyroclastic from Randi's "AGW Denial" - which I dealt with in my last post - for Randi to follow up with a response and clarification.

Okay... whew, Randi isn't a global warming denier.

I'm actually not terribly surprised by that. I'm glad to know that the impression was a result of having whittled down his first draft to publishable size. Certainly his original post does seem consistent with that explanation.

However...

There are still issues associated with the original post.

For starters, its out there in the first place, and it came from one of the most important voices in skepticism. The deniers - the pseudoskeptics - will be happy to quote the original out of context as it serves their purposes, never including any of the important clarifications of the second part. That can't be undone. Hopefully I'm wrong about that. Hopefully the pseudoskeptics aren't that intellectually bankrupt; or aren't savvy enough to take advantage of the circumstance. (Yeah, good luck on that.) If they mention the follow up at all, I can pretty much guarantee that it'll be presented in terms of "Look what happened when he was brow-beaten by his peer-group" - a sentiment that only undermines us all.

In his follow-up Randi doesn't retract his final points of his original post - that we have more important things to concern ourselves with. I cry bullshit. I accept that it's not the sole concern of skepticism. I will accept that there is at least one issue in our domain that is of comparable concern when you consider that our real purview is science-outreach (I am thinking of Anti-Vax, BTW.) and not doing the actual science. But there is NOTHING more important than working towards getting a grasp of this issue in all it's complexities and getting the reality of the situation conveyed effectively to as many people as possible. On this level I am still muttering "Oh for fuck's sake, Randi!"

Yesterday I was trying hard to see the silver-lining. Trying to use the opportunity as a chance to demonstrate to myself at least that our skeptical idols are fallible and that the movement is - to it's strength - not in lock-step. I still think that lesson is relevant an valuable, but I have to admit that today I'm not feeling so rosy. I don't know that anything Randi could have said would have totally satisfied me. I still think that his original post was a colossal blunder.

It is one thing for a foul-mouthed buffoon like myself, with an audience of about three and no reputation to speak of, to run-off half-cocked about something I don't know enough about... and for the record, I generally try to avoid that or at least qualify it when I do. But for one of our luminaries to speak up on such an important issue - with such bad timing, what with Copenhagen being at the top of the news - it's disappointingly sloppy. If Randi were known as a loose cannon it would be something all together different. Let's face it, when Penn Gillette - who these days is even more visible than Randi - offers up a tepid "I'm just saying 'I do not know'" defense, we grumble and shrug, but it's in character, so we let it slide (a bit) and laugh it off with an "Oh that Libertarian Ideologue, Penn! Whadda-guy!" But Randi is not Penn. I just can't help myself. I still feel disappointed. Indeed, at least before he responded there was still a Shrodinger's chance that I wouldn't be disappointed by his follow up, but now the cat is out of the hermetically sealed quantum box. And clearly I am not alone.

So then, what do I walk away with this time? I don't want it to be all 'bad taste in my mouth'...

Yesterday when commisserating with fellow SN bloggers I mentioned Dr. David Brin's notion of CITOKATE. I even tried to find an appropriate way to show-horn it into yesterday's post, but it wouldn't have fit well. I knew a better opportunity would arise - and at least on an introductory level, this is it.

Citokate is an acronym for "Criticism is the only known antidote to error." It's a notion that I am surprised has yet to gain traction in skepticism. Though admittedly it does have more political ramifications than skeptical/scientific ones as it is practically an inherent part of the proper scientific process.

I don't know that citokate is provable, but it certainly rings true upon any degree of reflection and evidence suggest that it is true.

Citokate, (though not by that term) is at the core of the scientific process of discovery. The practice of peer review is itself the pure embodiment of the notion. The essential self-correcting tenets of science – where shortcomings in a theory are shored up by future discovery without a dogmatic adherence to what has been written in the books... so long as the evidence is convincing.

Pardon if a political example/metaphor fits my intent best...

The most despotic regimes of the past – from Nero, through Hitler, Stalin, Pol-Pot and Hussein – made it a central policy of their tyranny that dissent would be crushed. Presumably they believed that having cracks in their own overarching vision showed weakness and must be eliminated. To suggest an avenue for improvement was an anathema to the leadership. This cocooning of intellect was intended to vouchsafe the dictatorship from political disintegration... and it may have actually worked in the short term. But there is a critical failure in the policy – What if there really are weaknesses in the structure of the society in question? Well, political problems are more likely to compound than dissipate. Eventually the practice of "LA! LA! LA! I'm not listening to you!" allows minor issues to fester into poisonous ones, and poisonous ones to become fatal. Note that all of the examples (and admittedly specifically selected for their adherence to the needs of example) mentioned above eventually fell – all as symptoms of their own failed policy.

In some cases the Tyrant at the forefront of the regime in question would themselves never even hear the criticism – let alone ignore it. The 'yes men' of the inner circle would be accustomed to not defy their glorious leader and themselves would head off (sometimes literally) any suggestion of opposition. The leader wouldn't even get the chance to consider the value of the criticism. Any 'public' appearance would be closely controlled so that only the faithful would be in attendance – not simply for security. The media would be visciously limited – anything resembling a press conference would be peopled strictly by those 'on-side' who would ask only prepared questions. Sounds kind of hauntingly familiar doesn't it? I speak not of Randi (I shall get back to that before I am done here.), but of a recent (though not current) presidential administration - or the current Provincial leadership here at home in British Columbia. Consider it a cautionary tale.

The benefits of listening to criticism carefully are almost self-evident. A devil's advocate policy will help fine tune decisions and discoveries both in advance and as they are put in practice, making the results more reliable and open to improvement in areas where they fail.

Clearly Randi listened when we shouted. He heard the plaintif cry and acted. He asked for more learned help - significantly from Phil Plait as is evident from his post - and took a step towards ammending the perception of his position. He is taking the right path for a skeptic of his calibre - any calibre, really.

There is much left to say on this, but this post is getting absurdly long. I'm going to finish up by quoting Dr. Plait, who has finally spoken up on the matter. I recommend reading his post. He is saying much of what I have, but in more succinct fashion - and from closer to the eye of the storm.

Part of being a skeptic — and it’s a big part — is admitting when you’re wrong.

And finally, there is a really good takeaway point from this: when it comes to reality, no one and no thing is sacrosanct. If something is wrong, it gets called out. That’s what skepticism is all about. If Randi makes a mistake, he gets called on it. If scientists do, or the Pope does, or anyone, then it is up to all of us to speak up. And I think that how we do it is just as important as the content of our claims.

I'm going to try to take that to heart in the most postive of ways. 'Cause how I've been feeling is close to an intellectual equivalent of inconsolable. I'm not alone. Watching the Twitter responses to this over the past few days you would think that;

"There is no joy in Skepti-ville— the mighty Randi has struck out."

The Randi Boner

2009-12-16T12:36:00.000-08:00

The Skeptisphere is buzzing.

[Pharyngula] [Island of Doubt] [The skepTick]
[Greg Laden]

James Randi spoke up yesterday about global warming, and not many skeptics think good things of his position.

First let me be clear about my position on Anthroprogenic Global Warming (AGW): I am not a climate scientist. I DO NOT KNOW.

Now if Randi had taken that simple tack, I wouldn't be writing this. Instead his position can largely be summed up as "There is a lot of controversy and there are more important things to worry about."

On account of that sentiment people are implying that he is senile and/or a AGW denier. Maybe he is. Maybe he isn't.

Now I need to rewind to my AGW position... As I said, I do not know. I am not a scientist and the evidence both for and against is extremely complex. There IS a lot of controversy. I really have no way of reliably determining for myself whether human-kind is adding to the Global Warming trends - or even if those tends truly exist. I don't have the knowledge or know how, and neither do the vast majority of people on the planet - Randi included.

So, if we don't know, what do we do?

It's an irresponsible choice to take the "well, if I can't tell, then it doesn't matter" option.

For myself, I've made an effort over an extended period of time (read: years) to make a mental list of the voices that I trust to distill the information and percolate it down to me in various forms. I've selected this informal list my gradually assessing who consisently speaks with sound logic and whose positions consisntly correlate with either verifiable reality or, at the least, with the past positions (prior plausibility essentially) of other people who I have gradually learned I can rely upon.

This isn't a matter of realying to an appeal to authority, it's a matter of assessing concensus of authorities.

Randi is one of these authorities, and on this matter he is not falling in line with the others. That is why I have come to rely upon multiple authorities and not one divine proctor of all knowledge. Randi knows his stuff when it comes to charlatans. But – forgive the broken record – he is not a climate scientist.

Most of the sources that I trust acknowledge AGW – or at least GW – and thus I have generally speaking come down on the side of being an advocate of efforts to reduce the effect mankind is exerting upon the environment. Yes. I have doubts. Yes, I fight constantly with the seemingly innate desire to consume. But even if I were ultimately a denier I would have to acknowledge that doing nothing is a negligent fools bet.

If I am wrong and humanity has no effect upon the climate, then what has been lost? In the grand scheme of things, very little. Everyone’s quality of life would be reduced by what is ultimately a small amount (recall we used to call caves ‘home’) – with the greatest individual impacts falling upon the most successful capitalists (those who have the most head-room to lose).

If I am right, and we do nothing, the possible most extreme cost is the extinction of humanity and many many many other living species. That is your life, the lives of everyone you know, their pets, most of the living things they feed upon, the wild animals that they watch on Discovery channel specials and the descendants of every single one of those people and things forever and ever and ever. It’s considerably more than a metric fuck-ton.

So... if there is the least chance that we can affect or ameliorate climate change by tempering our actions we must do so. Not “should if it’s convenient” – we must.

It’s not really a matter of whether the logic of the science appears to be right or not – there are too many existing confounding factors that makes the issue too inscruitable to the average joe. “Average Joe” (or Jane) is who almost all of us are. We can only really act wisely upon the best gamble.

Randi is not applying logic to what would be the best gamble. Perhaps that’s got something to do with his advanced age or his lack of descendants, but the reasons aren’t really relevant. The fact remains that he has put his foot in it.

We shouldn’t expect that Randi is going to be imperfect. We shouldn’t expect him to uphold every one of our own individual values. He may be our collective hero and one of our greatest spokesman – but relying upon him alone for direction is nothing but an appeal to authority.

Perhaps in a way this is a good thing for skepticism. There are those in the world who will snidely point at our luminaries and accuse the rank and file of group-think. But here is a chance to show that we do not fall in line behind Randi – or by extension Dawkins or Shermer or Plait or Nickell. We do not follow anyone. We have great respect for those who have demonstrated their ability to filter the bullshit in the world with consistency, but we have no blind fealty to them.

Say What?!??!?

2009-12-14T11:12:00.001-08:00

Language is possibly our most amazing invention. To my understanding we had invented it long before we could be called sapient. Language can be beautiful and poetic or direct and specific. How language is used in skepticism has recently come to the fore of my mind.

On the first hand, in creating documents with other skeptics I have found that my style – which is admittedly more creative than technical – is often not the best choice. My default to emotion is very hard to marry with precision.

On the second hand over at Skeptic North we have recently seen one of our regular commenters become an annoying (to speak lightly) pedant, taking us to task over the minute nuances of word choices. Care to guess how I feel about this? While grousing about this specific commenter is not my purpose in this post, his philosophical position is totally relevant. Consider his argument:

There are a number of "skeptical" blogs in the world that are increasingly lazy about language, accuracy in word definition, correct word usage, rigourous grammar, and so forth. Some blogs even practice a form of Humpty Dumptyism -- inventing portmanteaus and claiming provenance and/or other legitimacy, or inventing a new or colloquial definition claiming universality.
If one wanted to help the skeptical movement lose credibility, such dictional errancy and laziness is a very good place to start.
Language, and words, are my speciallty. As such, I have always hoped for extra careful dictional accuracy from those who place themselves in positions of authority, especially when wearing the mantle of skeptical inerrancy and bearing the logos of the skeptical movement.

I find it hard not to point out that in MS Word, cutting and pasting his comment has resulted in a plethora of red squiggly lines – oh irony. I'd hate to see how it would appear if "Language, and words, [weren't his] speciallty."

But to my real point, I do appreciate that his essential argument is not wrong. But that sure as hell doesn't make it right. Yes, muddy language can cause an unfortunate malleability of position and/or point on the part of the reader. But it is 1) not a certainty that misunderstanding is the inevitable case; 2) not always a person's primary intention to be precise; 3) does not take into account the variability of intended audience; and 4) does not allow for the spectrum of voices that represent the quilt of humanity that make up the skeptical community.

More than anything else though, scientifically precise language is tepid and uninteresting to the layman.

Skepticism's primary goal – arguably it's only goal – is outreach. While many scientists are skeptics, not all skeptics are scientists – or doctors or IT professionals or even magicians. We cannot expect that talking to borderline skeptics in the language of any of these subsets is going to be a way of communicating effectively to these people. Worse than speaking in jargon or in concepts that go above their heads (though that all contributes) speaking in language that is too careful, stripped of unearned superlatives, laden with caveats and qualifiers; we fall deep into the danger of BORING THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF PEOPLE. ...and we can't afford to do that.

A bored audience is a lost audience – almost always permanently. And that is nothing if not a goliath fail. Skepticism only grows when we engage the people who either don't realize they are skeptics (and I suspect that the big wave of new skepticism fuelled by web 2.0 that everyone has talked about for the past two years or so is reaching its saturation point – the legions of closet skeptics are more out than not by now) or we need to reach the people who are almost skeptics and capture their imaginations by speaking to truths that they ultimately find evident in ways that entertain and interest them to explore further.

I do appreciate that there is a place for precision in science. It is a requirement that on any given subject that there be very precise scientific literature out there. But, I emphasize, we skeptics though we have scientists amongst us, are not scientists. We must not pretend to be what we are not (this applies to the other major subsets of skeptics outlined above as well as all the miscellany) and we must remember that our main goal must be to open the minds of the world as a whole to critical thinking. It is our job to instil a sense of wonder in real science; but we must leave the scientific journaling to the scientific journals and the audiences that turn to them (which does include many of us) for the hardcore science and details.

That does mean we risk openings for assumption and misinterpretation, this is true and inevitable. But the audiences we win over in our outreach efforts should not be won over by the facts, they should be won over by the philosophy – the process – of skepticism. And in so doing they will eventually, if not all at once, also embrace the values of not accepting surface interpretations and the desire to dig deeper – at which point they will turn to the appropriate science literature... just like we do.

We don't need to talk down to people in the process. I don't run away from my big vocabulary, or the sometimes too florid flourish I've developed from years of writing for theatre; I don't even think that the commenter mentioned above should shy from his penchant for specificity (though aiming his pedantry at others' writing is beyond tiresome) – to censor our styles in our own presentation would be to insult our audiences. We simply need to think of how we express ourselves as a natural conversation – whatever that means to you personally, not as a skeptic, not as a scientist (real or pretend) but as a citizen of your community. Talk to them. Don't lecture them. Engage them and inspire them. Do not push them away. Do not, whatever you do, bore them.

Ooooh! Oooh! Look at the Crazy!

2009-12-08T21:59:00.000-08:00

A couple of Skeptical Friends discovered a particularly egregious blog post by my favourite homeopath - Sonya McLeod...

One friend send a response that did not get past her moderation, so a few others went on asking questions instead - and were eventually outed.

I'm reprinting the totally fucking bananas comment thread that followed, just in case she decides to delete it all. I haven't changed a single character, except for shortening the line of dashes that got transferred in my cut and paste & a friendly redacting request which should be obvious by the series of 'X'-es...

I shant say more - sometimes the crazy just doesn't need further comment....

EDIT: Okay, it's 12 hours later and there is good reason to comment further. Judging by my blog stat tracking I am virtually positive that Ms. McLeod has found this post. I won't bore you with the specific forensic details that lead me to that conclusion, but I am confident to say "Hi Sonya."
As predicted she has deleted almost all of her comment thread, which really is just a cowardly exhibition of her inability to deal with reason... but I don't think that should be a surprise to anyone who has followed any of my other coverage of her postings.
And on top of it all she has added a pretty ridiculous ad hoc comment policy to that post. See comment #5 to this post to see the details on that.
Now back to your regularly scheduled post...
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20 Responses to “H1N1 Vaccine Miscarriages: Exclusive Interview with Connie Adams and More Reports Worldwide”
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1 Mandy
December 7, 2009 at 6:18 pm
I was 5 weeks pregnant when I got the H1N1 vaccine. I received the shot on a Thursday and was very sore and achy on Friday. I miscarried my baby on Sunday, just 3 days after receiving the shot. This was my first pregnancy and I thought I was doing the best thing for myself and my baby by getting the shot. My doctor didn’t warn me against waiting until I was further along nor was I aware of any warnings by the government. (Columbus, Ohio, USA)

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2 littlemountainhomeopathy
December 8, 2009 at 10:03 am
As with all my posts, personal attacks, sexist remarks and homeophobic attacks (as well as homophobic lol) will be deleted.

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3 Grace
December 8, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Hi LMH,

Miscarriages happen without taking this shot, so I was wondering if you knew how many happen after taking the vaccine vs not taking it at all. Any idea where we could find that info?

Thanks!

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4 littlemountainhomeopathy
December 8, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Hello Grace. Thanks for your comment. You bring up a good point, but it is very hard if not impossible to find the info you seek. The reason for this is that the mainstream press does not report these miscarriages even though they are happening. Also doctors are telling women that their miscarriages are not from the vaccine, even though the miscarriages coincide with taking the vaccine. The women believe the doctors and don’t report the miscarriage as a side effect of the vaccine.

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5 Grace
December 8, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Thanks for the quick reply!

I’m not sure what you mean about the press though… in your article you listed some news sources that were reporting them, so they are being reported, aren’t they?

Anyhow what I’m wondering is this: You said that there were 9 reported cases in europe – is that more than we would expect given the number of miscarriages that happen anyways for unrelated reasons? Like if 10% of pregnancies end in miscarriage (I don’t know if that’s the right number) then won’t 10% of pregnant women who get the shot have a miscarriage even if the vaccine is harmless?

Thanks again!

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6 littlemountainhomeopathy
December 8, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Hello Grace. Yes, a few are being reported in Europe, but even in Europe there are miscarriages from the H1N1 vaccine happening that are not being reported. In North America, the mainstream press has not reported them even though it is happening (e.g. Connie and the 7-8 who contacted her, I’m sure there are more). If we knew the true number of miscarriages then it would be possible to analyze the data, but since we don’t, it’s impossible. Doctors refuse to believe that the H1N1 vaccine is causing the miscarriage, so proper investigation isn’t even being done (e.g. autopsy). Even when investigations are done (e.g. in Europe) I believe that the conclusions are biased because if it were proven that the vaccine caused the damage then the government (taxpayers) would have to pay for those damages.

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7 Jesse
December 8, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Hi.

You said “If we knew the true number of miscarriages then it would be possible to analyze the data, but since we don’t, it’s impossible.”

If it’s impossible to analyze with the available data, then how do you come to the conclusion that H1N1 vaccines are causing more miscarriages than would occur without the vaccine (or, as Grace suggests, with a harmless vaccine)? If you don’t know the base rate of miscarriages, then it’s impossible to tell if the vaccine is causing them, isn’t it?

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8 littlemountainhomeopathy
December 8, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Hello Jesse. This is exactly why these miscarriages aren’t being investigated. If they were investigated, we would be able to conclude something. Now we are just forced to guess. I believe that the toxic ingredients in the vaccines are causing miscarriages. We don’t know for sure, but I’m putting forth the evidence that I have in this post.

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9 Jesse
December 8, 2009 at 3:18 pm
But the guess seems like a random shot in the dark. Presumably, they also drove to the clinic to get the vaccine. Does that mean that driving causes miscarriages? If you aren’t comparing the miscarriage rate to anything, then how can you make a conclusion?

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10 littlemountainhomeopathy
December 8, 2009 at 3:21 pm
In Connie and Zahra’s case, you can make the conclusion based on the fact that they felt ill after the vaccine and before getting the vaccine everything was going fine in their pregnancies. The vaccines are also very toxic which I have talked about in other posts. When you inject toxins into a pregnant woman the toxins will affect the fetus negatively, sometimes resulting in miscarriage. If the baby is carried to term perhaps it will result in birth defects, I’m sure we’ll be hearing about that in a few months.

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11 Jesse
December 8, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Aren’t there lots of pregnant women who have gotten the vaccine with no miscarriage, and no negative effects on the fetus at all? Couldn’t you use that fact to make the opposite argument?

I think what Grace was saying is that you have to compare the miscarriage rate in the vaccine group to the rate in the non-vaccine group before you can make the conclusion that the vaccine is relevant. That’s why controlled trials are important in medicine. Without the controls, do you think it is a bit irresponsible to make conclusions and recommendations?

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12 littlemountainhomeopathy
December 8, 2009 at 3:33 pm
We have no idea what the long term effects of the H1N1 vaccine will be on a fetus. There are no long-term clinical trials that have been done on the H1N1 vaccine. Therefore we have no idea about the long term effects it will have on anybody – adult, child, or fetus. Those pregnant women who got the H1N1 vaccine may feel that they did not suffer any side effects, but we cannot say what the long-term effects will be.

The irresponsible thing is to promote this vaccine to pregnant women and children yet there have been so adequate trials performed on the effect of the H1N1 vaccine on women and children. Plus the ingredients are toxic to a fetus, they are listed in this post: Update: Swine Flu Vaccine Without Adjuvant is Unsafe

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13 Jesse
December 8, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Here’s another question: if it turned out that a woman had a miscarriage shortly after a homeopathic treatment, would you say that the homeopathy likely caused it? Wouldn’t you want to make sure it wasn’t just a coincidence first? If so, then aren’t you obligated to do the same in this case?

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14 littlemountainhomeopathy
December 8, 2009 at 3:36 pm
That can’t happen, because unlike vaccines and pharmaceuticals, homeopathic medicines are completely safe and non toxic.

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15 Dominique
December 8, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Hi there. I don’t think you answered Jesse’s question. Lets say it did happen. Would you draw the same conclusion? Or would you first think to yourself “Maybe something else caused it?” or “Maybe it was some accident?”.

I only ask because many many scientists and doctors have said “That can’t happen, because the N1H1 vaccines are completely safe and non toxic.” You’re saying they are not, but you’re not giving us a reason to believe you over believing them.

Thanks!

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16 Jesse
December 8, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Also, I think you misunderstood me. A certain number of women get miscarriages normally, right? Either from something they’ve done, or just because it happens once in a while. So no matter what group you look at – including women who have gone to a homeopath – a base percentage can be expected to miscarry. I’m not saying the homeopathy would have caused it, but it could happen as a coincidence. Without carefully comparing the vaccine group to a control group, there’s no way to know if these miscarriages are just a coincidence.

If you are saying that vaccines are toxic, so of course they cause miscarriages, then OK, but that’s an assertion you’re making that isn’t based at all on the cases you cited in your post. Those cases have an emotional impact, but if it turns out that they were just coincidental, then don’t you think it’s a a bit of a manipulation? Would that be dishonest?

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17 Grace
December 8, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Thanks again for the response.

Sorry, I thought since you were sounding the alarm about this problem that you must have some info on the rates of miscarriages with the vaccine vs the rates without. You say that the miscarriages are ‘from’ the vaccine, but all we know is that they’re happening afterwards. Without information about how many are happening vs how many to expect, how do you know the vaccine is increasing the number of miscarriages?

8-9 women out of the millions who have been given the flu shot in the US seems well within the expected amount… If every pregnant woman were to take a homeopathic remedy you would expect some percentage of them to have a miscarriage afterwards – the same number as would have if they had taken plain water instead, right? Of course it wouldn’t be fair to blame homeopathy for those miscarriages, so I’m not sure how the situation with the flu shot is any different than that… can you clarify?

Sorry for all the questions, thank you for your patience.

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18 littlemountainhomeopathy
December 8, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Hello Grace, Dominique and Jesse
The H1N1 vaccine is toxic. Toxicity harms a fetus. Here is evidence of H1N1 vaccine toxicity, taken from my past blog posts:

from “Update: Swine Flu Vaccine Without Adjuvant is Unsafe” http://littlemountainhomeopathy.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/update-canadian-swine-flu-ingredients-for-pregnant-women-can-harm-your-baby/

Neomycin is an antibiotic that can cause damage to the kidneys and/or nerves. Side effects are decreased urination, hearing loss, ringing in the ears, feeling of fullness in the ears, dizziness, numbness, skin tingling, muscle twitching, or seizures which may be signs of kidney or nerve damage. Neomycin is in pregnancy category D which means it may be harmful to an unborn baby.

Polymyxin B Sulfate is also an antibiotic. It can cause serious side effects, including kidney failure. Other side effects include irritability, weakness, drowsiness, numbness in the arms or legs, or blurred vision. The safety of Polymyxin B Sulfate has not been established for use during pregnancy.

Beta-Propiolactone is a disinfectant. The CDC labels beta-propiolactone as a potential human carcinogen. In rats, acute oral administration or intraperitoneal injection of beta-propiolactone caused muscular spasms, respiratory difficulty, convulsions, and death. Acute intravenous injection caused kidney tubule and liver damage. Subcutaneous injection of beta-propiolactone in rats and mice produced cancer at the sites of administration. Single intraperitoneal injections in suckling mice produced lymphatic tumors and liver cancer. A study in 1984 in the Journal of Neurological Sciences showed that some neurological complications in young adults was caused by antirabies vaccines containing beta-propiolactone.

From “Swine flu vaccine ingredients are not safe for pregnant women and children” http://littlemountainhomeopathy.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/the-swine-flu-vaccine-is-not-safe-for-pregnant-women-and-children/

Doctors, pharmacists, and the mainstream press assure us that thimerosal is not harmful but one recent study begs to differ. A study done by UBC professor Dr. Chris Shaw published in the June 2009 edition of Toxicological and Environmental Chemistry found that thimerosal is toxic to the cells of an unborn fetus. Pregnant women are told not to eat tuna because it contains high levels of mercury, yet it is perfectly acceptable to inject mercury directly into a pregnant woman?! The US and Canadian governments assure us that thimerosal is not harmful, yet they have systematically removed thimerosal from every single childhood vaccine except for the (swine) flu vaccine. Russia, Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain, and all the Scandinavian countries have banned thimerosal from being used in any of their vaccines.

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19 littlemountainhomeopathy
December 8, 2009 at 9:48 pm
It has just come to my attention that Grace is actually XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX; “she” is a man. XXXXXXXXXX and Jesse are both members of a group called the “skeptics society.” The skeptics have a political agenda: they are anti-environmental and oppose all restrictions on business, especially biotechnology. They are avid supporters of Big Pharma. They are also men, and I believe that they have are addressing me and belittling this blog post in a sexist manner. Instead of listening to what me and these women have to say, they belittle our experiences and tell us that we are wrong. Well I have one thing to tell you: our experience is more real and true than any of your sexism and put-downs.
To read more about the political agenda behind the skeptics society go to: http://elephantsandmice.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/the-weird-beginnings-skeptic-confusion/

Coping with Copenhagen

2009-12-07T11:09:00.000-08:00

Climate change has been for some time one of skepticism's biggest internal controversies. Many notable skeptics have fallen on the side of the deniers. Michael Shermer, Penn Gillette and (I think - though I don't believe he ever clearly stated his position, I ammerely going with the impression I got reading between the lines of early SGU episodes.) Perry DeAngelis. Shermer has publically changed his position; Gillette offered an agruably tepid mea culpa at TAM7 - backing away from previous statements; and who knows what Perry's position would be today if he were alive. (If someone who actually knew Perry wishes to disabuse me of this notion, I am happy to make note for the record.) We seem to be coming to a consensus amongst ourselves that is in line witht he consensus that has come into focus in the scientific community (no real surprise there). I am baffled at how it could have taken us so long to come around. This is about all that makes this a specifically skeptical, much less, asshole-skeptical post. I wanted to make a point of talking about this important subject today, even though I have another post ready in the wings.

Today is the first day of the Copenhagen Conference. Anyone with interest in climate change has been looking ahead to this day with excitement and apprehension. Some argue that this is our last chance for change - that is definitely the extreme end of the hype, but that doesn't mean it isn't the truth. I simply do not know.

I expect that as early as when the conference is over and I can't imagine it will take more than a year from now there will be a trumpet of "we did not do enough - Copenhagen was a failure" sentiments.

Personally I think we must do something. We can't afford not to do something, but I also doubt that mankind will do anything until things get dire. Some people believe that by the time it is dire we will have passed a tipping point and that all will be doomed. I only hope that that will be wrong. No doubt the earth will carry on without us, and I am absolutely in the camp of thinking that implying otherwise, as many do, is extreme arrogance. I think it would be preferable if we can manage to save our species.

We don't seem to be hard wired to pay attention to anything short of an immediate and extreme undeniable threat. If the 'end' is not extreme, we collectively just won't heed it. If it is to take catastrophe for us to wake up it may be best if it happens sooner than later. I for one am not scared of the inevitability of oil 'drying up.' Indeed I don't think it can happen (realistically) soon enough. We are a clever bunch o' monkeys (yeah, yeah - see my next post) and I have no doubt that we will find ways of adjusting how civilization carries on without oil that don't impact terribly on our quality of life. Certainly the specifics will change, and in the process there will be upheaval, but in the long run we will be fine. But the sooner catastrophe strikes, the better the lesson will be learned.

At the same time I feel conflicting desires - I'm only human - hoping that we can find ways, perhaps through the fruits of Copenhagen, to ameliorate the extremity of the shift. It is going to be an interesting journey, and assuming a typical lifetime I may get to see a good chunk of the worst I suspect.

We aren't particularly good at weighing cost/benefit as people. Our tendency towards mis-using the practically instinctual heuristics we have evolved coupled with a built-in desire for what is best for us RIGHT NOW over what is best for us overall is a recipe for disaster. It may be better that we prepare our coping mechanisms to gird against the inevitability rather than fight against it.

With Great Power... are you prepared for the implications?

2009-11-26T14:03:00.000-08:00

It's fair to say that we've seen our first official shit-storm over at Skeptic North. I am speaking of the same issue I was writing about in my last post.
Ontario is about to follow BCs lead and give prescription rights to Naturopaths.
The idea of naturopaths prescribing is wrong on so many levels that have been covered by many other people: It flies in the face of what they claim to be their core practice; they are not sufficiently trained; the spectrum of their practice includes as much hokum as reality (I am being generous on that front.); and the arguments they are leveraging to get those rights generally speaking don't hold up.

But let's just cast that all aside, just for a minute shall we?

What if we were to simply give in? What if we threw our hands up and said "yeah sure, you can have prescriptive rights... but this one is on you when it goes bad."

Before I go further, let me be clear: What I am proposing here would be a lousy tactic for those of us in favour of reason to submit to employing. It is lazy, but it may be all we have left when the dust settles. The only version of this that results in good things comes from wearing so many pairs of rose coloured glasses as to block out the light of reason. The reality is that for this tactic to have a positive social effect, someone - and really that means "some-many" will get hurt, probably die, first.

But lets look down that road, shall we?

Some NDs are crying out that this is a necessary step towards better regulation of Naturopathy (which is, if you ask me, putting the cart before the horse, but let's take the argument at face value).

Okay - great. So how is this going to work then? Are Naturopaths going to have an oversight committee that enforces standards? That de-licenses all those sham-NDs who practice the treatments that fall into the 'bogus' territory of the ND's tool-kit? That penalizes those who are found to be using herbal remedies that have not been rigorously tested and manufactured with a strict care for consistency?
Is there going to be a tracking system put in place so that when a patient goes to an ND first, and then when the treatment they recieve fails to work and they go to Emergency, un-healed, possibly hurt, maybe even die in the hospital as a result of Naturopathic negligence that the culpability flow-chart includes the Naturopath? Make no mistake - currently a lot of people who meet their button-maker as a result of failures in Naturopathy end up doing so on the statistical report-card of the medical establishment.
Will all naturopathic remedies need to be prescribed so that people who oversee drug conflicts (pharmacists) are kept in the loop?

It may be a bit cynically Polly-Anna-ish of me, but I think in the long-game this may actually be regulated in a defacto manner by the inurance companies. They aren't dummies. Their particular gambling game is all about weighing the odds and pricing their services at a level that (god forbid) makes them money. In order to do that competitively they need to factor reality into the equation. Treating placebos as medicine will only put them out of business. With an inevitably higher incident of malpractice, the insurers will have to charge NDs higher premiums. This cost will get passed on to the user. In the end, who do you want to give your money to? The doctor whose practices work and is (relatively) cheap? Or the quack who has to financially soak you, just to stay in business?

Either way, NDs will eventually be pushed into a position of better practices. Eventually we may be able to call them doctors with out the qualifier. It happened to osteopaths, it seems to maybe happening to Chiropractors. (If so it is happening at a glacial pace.) If you want legitimacy, you gotta wear the yoke that comes with it!

This is a slow road to follow, and it will be marked by tragedy along the way. It is not the best solution. The world would be a far better place if we could bring the Grendel down at the start of it's rampage.

Really? That's the best you've got?

2009-11-24T16:17:00.000-08:00

Do you recall the Saturday Night Live sketch where Michael Dukakis is debating the future Bush 41 and he comments to himself "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy"?

Welcome to the sissyphian world of skepticism.

The ridiculously inept arguments of the 'other' side are head-smacking in their quality.

Today fellow Skeptic North blogger Scott was published in the National Post. It was an article he had written for SN that was re-posted in the newspaper.

Now, I'm not so naive as to think that naturopaths would lie down and take this criticism, but I clearly over estimated their ability to fight back cogently.

The Roberts Centre of Integrative Medicine wrote this response - which conveniently includes the response of the OAND (Ontario Association of Naturopathic Doctors); allowing me to kill two birds with one stone.
While it is reasonably literate - no classic web-fails like using 'then' when they mean 'than' - it doesn't even manage to put up a realistic fight. It is a 'nyah nyah' away from being childish. If they weren't so painfully - dangerously - wrong, it would feel like kicking a puppy to point out how fundamentally stupid their response is.

"Highly Biased" - Well it IS an opinion piece, so I'm not sure what they are complaining about. Perhaps they are taking umbrage with the use of facts to express a position of science - a tactic that they are all but incapable of utilizing? To say nothing of the fact that their response is... yes - highly biased. And in their case devoid of actual science to back it up.

They go one to make claims about "botanical and nutritional medicines... being placed on prescription-only schedules" specifically "higher dosages of Vitamin D" and utterly fail to provide a single reference (let alone link) to any of their evidence. But while we're at it, why did they ask to prescribe anti-biotics, anti-virals, and anti-inflammatories and Suzane Somer's bioidentical hormones?
I particularly love this sly ad hominem attack:

Becoming an ND requires eight years of education and training, including a university pre-med degree and a four-year naturopathic program. This compares to the five years in total required to become a pharmacist.

Wahh wahh! You wasted your time and money on a sub-par education. That doesn't make your magic work, Slytherin. A person could devote their life to studying yogic-flying (and some do) and they'd still need a trampoline to make it work. There is a reason we would prefer to be represented in court by a Harvard graduate, than by Uncle Ted, who got his degree from a matchbook. If they wanted to prescribe real medicine, perhaps they should have taken the short-cut and studied to be pharmacists!

They go right back to hypocritic (not to be confused with hippocratic - at all) ad hominem attacks that do little to advance their argument; accusing him of fearmongering and misleading the public. If they themselves had not been so direly misled, then I wouldn't even have to address the well-poisoning cartoon they add to the article. Hover your mouse over it and what will it say? "Conflict of interest." Need I point out how many NDs sell the very products they prescribe? And to add to that, they aren't even thinking straight. If NDs are given the power of pharmaceutical prescription - which they are simultaneously fighting for and making the specious argument that "conventional medicine [has a] high reliance on pharmaceuticals" - the pharmacists, including the very one they are attacking, will be filling the NDs prescriptions. The argument is ludicrous.

Here's another post that has cropped up. I wish I had time to deal with it, but there is only so much time I have for inanity.

Asshole Skepticism - Definition 2.0

2009-11-24T06:00:00.000-08:00

Way back, four months ago, when I started down the road of publically exploring the ideas I had around asshole skepticism, one of my earliest posts took a swipe at outlining what exactly it is I am working towards.

Much or most of what I talked about in that post still applies, but as far as a simple definition, it fails.

Tonight I was on my way home from Pub Quiz night (we were kicking asses and taking names until the last four questions) and thinking about content for a new post idea I had. It has been a while since I last addressed the mandate, so I was thinking about an aspect of that, when out of the blue... I don't recall precisely where (did I mention the pub?) I found myself all but blurting out what strikes me as the core of asshole skepticism. It's not that anything else I have said is wrong, but somehow I just don't think I've ever before managed to put my finger on my precise intent.

So I am hereby casting my other post aside - though it shall follow soon - and taking this opportunity to state my intention in as specific terms as I have thus far identified.

~ahem~

Asshole skepticism is the effort to state and in so doing spread the essence, sub-components and outcomes of the process of skepticism in the most forceful manner possible without a net loss of outreach.

Uh, yeah. There it is.

So shall I state that again in slightly less condensed, but possibly easier to follow terms?

"Asshole skepticism is the effort to state and in so doing spread..."

I think that that is fairly straight forward, but: The intent of asshole skepticism is to spread the gospel of skepticism... perhaps I shouldn't use the word 'gospel', but it make me laugh - and laughter is a good medium for outreach.

"...the essence, sub-components and out comes of the process of skepticism..."

Pretty much trying to encompass everything skeptical in that. "The Essence" being just about anything that any skeptic has zeroed in on as their own personal definition of what skepticism is - there are many versions and I haven't got a definitive one of my own yet. The "sub-components" being virtually any of our tools and concepts of process - be they Occam's Razor, logical fallacies, the failures of perception and memory or the scientific method. (Feel free to add to that list as necessary.) The "Out comes" being any of the conclusions of skepticism be they obvious to most - I.E. The Sasquatch is a figment of true believers' desire; or in the realm of PSAs - I.E. For Pete's sake quit listening to Jenny McCarthy and go get vaccinated.

"...In the most forceful manner possible without a net loss of outreach."

That may be the most tricky part to follow.

I believe that we should be stating our beliefs, understandings, and goals as stridently as possible - with the caveat that there is a point at which we start alienating people. But I fimly believe that far too many of our numbers severely overstate the fragility of the situation. We can and should promote our goals in the strongest manner we can, under the understanding that we will lose some people and in the spirit of triage must afford to lose some in order to help the greatest number.

Were I to invoke logic, however, logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few.
- Mr. Spock.

Yeah. Had to go there. Geek on.

It is true. Many skeptics take too much pain in trying to not offend anyone and miss the point that in so doing we are letting many people slip through the cracks in a weakly stated message. It's a tenuous position. We can't slip into a place where we are failing to present the truth. We must always promote/direct people towards accurate information and towards a state of being able to identify reality as we best understand it as a race. And that is a narrow tightrope to walk.

Weekend of Woo-xploitation

2009-11-19T16:26:00.001-08:00

It was a big weekend of woo at the movie theatres this past week. I had been looking forward to getting out to see both 2012 and The Men Who Stare at Goats so I could do reviews for Skeptic North, but life interfered. My mom was in hospital for some scheduled surgery which understandably took a well deserved chunk out of my weekend.
So I wrote a totally irrelevant article when I had the chance. And then late Sunday the clouds parted and I suddenly found myself sitting in the theatre watching The Men Who Stare at Goats and thinking that I might even get to go see 2012 before the weekend was truly over... and I did!
And now, a few days of pondering and one epic behind the scenes Skeptic North chat later I'm ready to do some review and comparison... even if it's a few days behind the curve. It's also not on Skeptic North - the 'irrelevant post' fulfills my quota over there for now, and I'm feeling like I'm neglecting this blog. Besides, doing a review here lets me use bad words and worry less about form.
There is a clear connection between these two films in that they are both of skeptical interest. Both also start stronger than they end, but that is about as far as the similarities go.
In MWSG the skeptics are right. (IMO – there is some disagreement – see below.) In 2012 the skeptics are wrong.
In MWSG the film never quite fails utterly. 2012 has squandered all its stock by the halfway point.
MWSG knows it's place in absurdity. 2012 pretends to, but is sadly misguided.
MWSG is saved by nothing less than a bravura performance by its star. 2012 has several stars ostensibly at the helm and only one even comes close... but still fails...
Okay, one at a time. I'll start with the good, 'cause the bad is more fun. Be Warned: Thar be Spoilers Beyond this Point.

The Men Who Stare at Goats is ultimately a pretty good film. It inevitably reminded me of Three Kings. Not only is Clooney going back to the Middle East for the third time (Syriana
– which he won an Oscar for, I might add) but he is doing so in a film that is quirky and had me wondering where the fuck it was going from one second to the next.
Clooney is awesome in this film. His character, Lyn Cassady is a cap-full of whack and Clooney commits to it with all the devotion that Cassady devotes to his belief in his own psychic powers.
Oh yeah... I forgot – the plot: Ewan MacGregor is Bob Wilton, a journalist who ends up in Iraq following Cassady on a mission. Cassady is a former member of the New Earth Army – a group of US soldiers recruited and trained in psychic warfare by Bill Django. Half the movie is Bob and Lyn's haphazard adventure; the other half is Lyn's back story.
MacGregor is worthy of his role, and manages to admirably not play the meta-joke of an extended conversation with Clooney wherein Lyn tries to explain to Bob what a "Jedi" is. I was giggling feverishly throughout that, and I wouldn't have if for a moment I had got the feeling that they were winking at me.
MacGregor isn't the only stunt casting in the film. Jeff Bridges plays The Dude... er no – he plays Django. Django is absolutely not The Dude, but comparisons are inevitable simply because its Bridges playing the flake.
Add in Kevin Spacey and they have a nice trio of Best Supporting bookends.
And it's all very loosely based on the book by the same name by Jon Ronson. I haven't read the book, but very seems to be the key word. Though to my understanding a straight adaptation of the book would hardly make a movie of any sort except perhaps a documentary – which is a separate discussion really. The film starts off by announcing loud and clear that "More of this is true than what you might imagine." Which despite what it is literally saying, is clearly implying that a significant part of what follows is complete fabricated bullshit.
Such delightful bullshit it is. I spent roughly the first three quarters of the film not knowing where it was going next, and loving every moment of it. I can pretty much pinpoint the moment that the fun of having no idea where the film is going ended with a bang... literally. Cassady and Wilton's fourth or fifth ride comes to an end when they hit an IED. I was not expecting that at all. I even blurted out "Whoa..." in the theatre. It was the last time the film surprised me. As my cousin stated last night when we were discussing the film, the film didn't know where it was going. I think that's fair. Perhaps more precisely, it didn't know how to wrap itself up. The film, like the car that hits the IED comes to a screeching halt. The pace in the home stretch lags, and the film tries too hard to serve both the Hollywood ending master, while not giving up its skeptical cred.
There is some argument out there that the film fails to maintain its skeptical position. One of my Skeptic North collaborators stands firm that the film sides on the position that Cassady does in fact have psychic powers. I cede that the interpretation is there to be made and is indeed the easiest choice a viewer can make. But I think the film is smarter than that.
Specifically, Cassady practices 'cloud bursting' successfully. Well, he does attempt cloud bursting and eventually the cloud breaks up... but anyone with skeptical acumen will recognize that if you stare at a cloud long enough it is going to break up. It is going to break up if you aren't staring at it too. All one has to do is wait – you'll get the 'confirmation' eventually. In the film we don't have the luxury of time. We must move on, so through the magic of editing the cloud breaks up fairly quickly. Wilton doesn't call him on his bullshit, but I'm going to play the artist card and lay down on the notion that it's far more interesting a film if we are forced to make our own conclusions and interpret his response ourselves.
Cassady successfully stares at a goat. I should clarify. He stares at a goat 'til it dies. Ultimately this is the same argument as the cloud bursting – it's merely less likely that the goat will die in any given moment. But further than this, the titular incident happens in a flash back – which though never explicitly said, is clearly the interpretation of what Cassady has told Wilton. Who knows what really happened. Even if the goat did die there are a barnyard full of possible explanations that are far more likely than Cassady's intense stare. I didn't for a moment interpret this as the gospel truth in the eyes of the storyteller.
When Cassady reveals that he has been the recipient of the 'death touch' – which has yet to have any effect on him – Wilton's response is un mistakable incredulity, and from this point onwards there is precisely zero representation of successful psychic practice (barring the bookend, which I shall deal with separately below). Indeed, when the travellers reach their destination – a military base where Cassady's former New Earth Army cohorts are involved in odd, but decidedly un-psychic or even paranormal pursuits – some nutty but very real-world ideas are all that is left of their former outfit.
Spacey's character by all appearances seems to be a charlatan (unlike the others who are true believers) and nothing he does ever falls outside the realm of sleight of hand, mentalism and/or the standard grab-bag of faux psychic tricks like cold reading employed by Sylvia Browne. Should it be a surprise that his pragmatic manipulation rises to the top of the heap and he become the new leader of the New Earth Army remnant? It all leads me to the conclusion that the film – though not outright saying so – ultimately takes the skeptical stance.
The film is bookended by two attempts at displacing one's molecules and running through a wall. In the first case Brigadier General Hopgood finds himself on his ass on the failure-side of the wall, stunned. At the end of the film Wilton keeps right on going through the wall and into the film's final credit sequence. This is the one point in the film that I feel cannot be cleanly explained by a skeptical position on the part of the director Grant Heslov. I'm not going to make the argument that it was a strong artistic choice, but I do think it is a defensible choice. Several other artist friends of mine and I believe that the audience at least wants to have the illusion of structural flourish in their art. And I do believe that this is an illusion, not actual cleverness. Bookending is a simple trick, but it is tried and true, and even when executed poorly it can go a long way towards creating a false sense of structural completeness. To that end I am led to declare that Wilton walking through the wall is, once the decision to use these scenes as the bookends, the best option. It gives a patina of 'feel good' to the movie, where MacGregor landing on his ass would simply be playing the same note over again from the beginning. Take it a step further and you can call it a metaphor. A metaphor for what? I do not have a solid answer for yet. That could be my failing, but I suspect it's the film's. But simply because I don't understand the metaphor doesn't mean it isn't a metaphor. And if it is a metaphor we can assume it doesn't really happen. Even in the world of the movie. I'm going to loft that Wilton – who embarks on his adventure in the first place in order to prove his value after losing his wife to another man – is moving on "into the next room" in his life. Yeah, it's a crappy metaphor, but I prefer it to "Wilton discovers he has psychic abilities" which seems to be at the core of the complaints of many skeptics. Shermer doesn't specifically say this, but his review is typical of the "whaa whaa, Hollywood is stomping on the truth" attitude that pervades most of the reviews I have been witness to. For Christ sakes guys, it's a movie. If it isn't a documentary – which this isn't – you can't fairly read it literally.
In the evening I decided, what the hell and headed out to the theatre again for a somewhat bifurcated skeptical double feature.
2012, to not put too fine a point on it, is a piece of shit.
I'm going to refrain from touching any of the science. Others have gone there already, and even so, this film is a skeptical washout. The film is SO scientifically illiterate that to even approach it with the pretense that you expected more if it is to reveal that you came into the theatre looking for it to fail. It fails so egregiously on the science front that it makes Roland Emmerich's last disaster-porn flick The Day After Tomorrow look like an episode of Cosmos. At least The Day After Tomorrow had internal logic and while stupid; was stupid fun. I recall fondly sitting in the exact same theatre and crying out "Run or the ice-age will catch you!" 2012 quit offering anything engaging enough after the first half hour to be inspired to such mockery.
Have you seen the preview? You know, this one:

There. Have you seen it now? You just saved $12. That was the best part of the film – the mad-dash out of Los Angeles. If you must, go and watch a few other previews – watch the ocean pour over the Himalayas and wipe out a venerable Monk and his mountain temple; see the USS. John F Kennedy wipe out the Capitol; watch the Vatican disintegrate on top of a bunch of faith-foolish creationists. Whatever you do, do not bemoan that you'll be missing the actual plot. The world ends. That is the plot. No more context is really necessary. Okay, to be fair, there is a 21^st century Noah effort, but by the time the film meanders there, it has already been thirty minutes too long and there's still far too much left.
Perhaps if the film treated the audience with a bit more respect for its intelligence, it might have earned more of its 2 and a half-hour running time. But instead we are expected to buy-in as time after time characters make illogical choices (Obstruction ahead, valley on the left, mountain on the right – which direction do you fly your plane? Answer: NOT towards the mountain. Yes, in a video game there would probably be a power-up hidden between the obstruction and the hillside – but this is (ahem) real life.); we are asked to enjoy the same basic 'action' set-up three separate times – if you watched the trailer, you've seen it – taking off in a plane while the ground disintegrates around you; and in the best of those three iterations – sadly also the first – we are presented with the ludicrous situation (watch the trailer again – it's right there) that once the plane takes off, somehow it is below the ground/city and has to dive the ensuing debris. Seriously. How the fuck does that happen? To give credit where credit is due, in the third iteration they do come up with a plausible reason for having to put the plane in a steep climb to narrowly avoid hitting the city it is below – but the same explanation is demonstrably absent in the first version. ARGH!!!
Let me rant on randomly for a bit...
You are flying across the Pacific with the intention of re-fuelling in Hawaii. It has already be clearly established that damned near everything anywhere near a coastline has sink beneath the waves, and you were just in Yellowstone Park when it turned into a super volcano... do you think maybe just maaaaaybe the infamously vulcanistic islands might not be a good plan?
So they AREN'T a good plan it turns out and now you haven't got enough fuel to make it to the mainland. The cargo plane you are in is filled with a metric fuck-tonne of cars. Does the concept of unloading weight occur to anyone? Of course not. Even if you accept that a car is necessary for the ensuing crash-landing escape, that only required one fucking car! Narratively it strikes me that any half-decent film-maker could find a reason to not unload one last car – say... the car aficionado in the group (and there was one) tearfully begs to preserve one single high-performance masterpiece – still a weak reason, but at least it has a dash of sense to it.
When the plane is finally going down (the aforementioned crash landing) rather than crash into the ocean, the dues ex machine raises its head (just an example of lazy lazy lazy plotting) and the Earth's crust has shifted by over 1000 miles – conveniently allowing them to crash land an easy drive from their final destination... what are the chances?
Okay, I'm going to stop there. The film is almost entirely crap. Emmerich seems to think that he's accomplishing something artistically valuable by upping the ante on older efforts. Rather than destroying the White House like in Independence Day, he destroys a plethora of landmarks in Washington, Las Vegas and the Vatican as well as other places with less visibility. Not content to drown New York like in The Day After Tomorrow he dumps California into the Pacific.
Allow me to stretch to find a point of light in this disastrous (by any definition) miasma... I'll watch Chiwetel Ejiofor in just about anything (though I won't watch him in this again) and I have to applaud Thandie Newton for having the cajones to step inside a movie-land Oval Office again after her totally fucking awful portrayal of Condoleeza Rice in W.

Asshole Skeptic Honour Roll #3 - Orac

2009-11-17T23:58:00.000-08:00

I admit I'm a teeny bit reticent to add skeptical celebrities to the Asshole Skeptic Honour Roll. I'd generally prefer to give unknown skeptics the thumbs up.

But Orac kinda put this one out of the park as far as I'm concerned.

Bill Maher is taking LOT of flak these days for his anti-vax position. I fully embrace the pro-vax agenda... if you haven't grokked that yet. But Maher is someone who I really want to respect. It actually annoys the living shit out of me that he is failing me (all of us - I'm simply taking this personally) on the alt-med front. I believe there is a good person in there... and I really want to believe that he might start seeing the light of reality... but so far the reality of that is painfully non-present. Maher has done a lot of good. I respect that he lost Politically Incorrect over speaking up about 9/11 politically (not to be confused with skeptically) before the dust of 9/11 had settled. I think that Religulous was a good effort if a bit flaccid in it's impact. He has a lot to offer... but damn if he ain't fucking it all up with his anti-vax/pro-alt-med stance.

Anyhow... Orac has nailed Maher on this front. Hard. And he has regularly demonstrated a particularly non-scientist-like propensity for speaking with the vehemence that such topics usually are absent of.

Hear me scientists?!? (And doctors - which is more accurately what Orac is.)

It seems to fall to me and other laymen to speak forcefully, and that lacks a certain level of authority - so where the hell are the rest of you?

To be fair - there are others than Orac who speak out forcefully, but they are rare. There are far more scientists than there are people who know what they are talking about who are willing to speak out.
So come on, scientists - be like Orac and stand up. Quit leaving it to people like me - I'm a fucking film maker with a big mouth. Should I really be anything beyond an authority on how to disseminate our position? Gah!

Go read Respectful (though not very, thank FSM) Insolence.

Oh and, apologies to Orac for implicitly calling him an asshole.

Grammar Girl - 80% Skeptic?

2009-11-17T22:14:00.000-08:00

I may be wrong about one. But I just listened to this rather old podcast by Mignon Fogarty, AKA Grammar Girl.

She definitely has an established history of good critical research on grammar related topics - and that may well be portable to skeptical topics.

But seriously - check out that podcast episode. She is very close to talking like a skeptic.

Anyhow... real posts coming soon.

What Kind of Bullshit Doctor Are You!?!

2009-11-11T22:56:00.000-08:00

Last week a couple of fellow Skeptic North bloggers, sent me this and shouted "You're it!"

I'm going to cut to the chase here. The writer of this particular pamphlet by all appearances is grade 'A' crack. You could stuff a chunk of her in a pipe and get whacked out of your fucking mind.

It may be a bit unfair to go after her too hard as I think it's not terribly unreasonable to jump to the conclusion that she is genuinely deranged. I say this in all honesty. I am not trying to unfairly disparage her. However, her 'fact sheet' redefines the word 'fact' and in the course serves to propagate information that contributes to the egregious public endangerment that the on-going anti-vaccination campaign is delighting in during these days of extreme sensitivity in the height of the first wave of the H1N1 pandemic and concurrent vaccination drive.

If you print out that PDF, close your eyes and drop your finger down on the page, you are more than likely to hit something that is demonstrably not a fact. I am not exaggerating. It is a morass of tired anti-vaxx argument, standard conspiracy theory paranoid clap and incredibly bad science. There is SO much wrong with it that I'm just not going to bother trying.

Instead, lets look a bit closer at the author.

Her website - Personocratia - practically speaks for itself. "Ghis" sees herself as a courageous spirit, fighting the oppressive powers that keep the world under their thumb. She follows her own narcissistic philosophy she calls Personocracy.

It is the reign of Personocratia, of conscious sovereign individuals who know they are the supreme authority and who only obey their conscience. They create a society in their image and likeness – Personocracy.

I'm no psychologist, but it doesn't take much to see through to the obnoxious levels of hip-deep bran-flake bull-shit narcisissm at the core of it. "Ghis" has determined herself to be a sovereign being, and apparently that absolves her from paying income tax. Her self-righteous machinations to avoid paying are childish.
She has informed the Governor General via her lawyer that her birth name Ghislaine Lanctot "will no longer be used as evidence of [her] identity." (Translated from French.) and she goes on to pull an "Artist formerly known as 'Prince'" and signs her letter with the symbol for infinity.
If there were a symbol for "rolling my eyes 'til I get vertigo and vomit" I would insert it here.
She takes issue with the fact that on her summons the phrase "every one" is used in reference to her obligation to appear in court. She cites the Canadian Criminal Code Definitions:

"every one", "person" and "owner", and similar expressions, include Her Majesty and an organization;

"organization" means:
     (a) a public body, body corporate, society, company, firm, partnership, trade union or municipality, or
     (b) an association of persons that
          (i) is created for a common purpose,
          (ii) has an operational structure, and
          (iii) holds itself out to the public as an association of persons

The laughable implication seems to be that as a sovereign being, she is not included in this definition. I might add that no where in our constitution does it say that sovereign beings have any rights what so ever. Does she really want to go down this road?

The argument by her lawyer also includes the defence that while ignorance of the law does not absolve one of the law...

...this celebrated principle of common law is not applicable to the Income Tax Law, since nobody can fully understand it, including judges, lawyers, civil servants, bookkeepers, ministers…. Some people may have a partial knowledge on specific articles, but nobody in Canada has full knowledge of this law...

Yeah. Tell that to Wesley Snipes.

The judge wasn't buying any of it. Ghislaine Lanctot has spent time in prison on this offence. She was also fined for it - $1000 for each of seven counts.
This isn't the first time she has been in trouble with the law. Once upon a time Ghislaine Lanctot was a doctor. "I sought unlimited health." Danger Will Robinson! She sketches out her journey from Phlebologist to "Idessic Being in Training" as she came to "understand the real inner workings of the health industry." She eventually wrote a book called “The Medical Mafia.”

That brought the full power of the medical establishment down upon me. It retaliated by bringing me to trial. To no one’s surprise, I was convicted and my licence was revoked for life!

Poor poor set-upon crazy lady. Thank FSM she won't be MY doctor.

If you happen to like a good crack substitute you can check out more on her site. Or, if you are really up for some fun you can write her and see what crazy shit she sends back.

I did.

I tossed her the equivalent of a slow, fat pitch right across the plate asking faux-credulous questions about some of the items on her Vaccinations 101 Fuct Sheet (typo-intentional).

1) You say that vaccinations are like giving a child a small rape to prepare them for a bigger rape. This sounds terrifying to me and I must admit I simply do not understand. Perhaps you can elaborate? How is a rape like a vaccination? I'm also really uncertain about the idea of a small rape and a bigger rape. I thought rape was kind of an absolute thing. You are either raped or you are not raped - there are no partial measures. But I digress - please clarify this for me, I find it very disturbing and scary.

2) "The efficiency of vaccines has never been proven scientifically." I'm not really certain what you mean here. Do you mean that if I were to have a needle stuck in my arm I wouldn't know whether it was going to hurt, help or do nothing to me? Or are you saying that we don't have any proof that vaccines have ever accomplished anything? I heard that small pox was eliminated with vaccines? Isn't that good? Isn't it proof?

3) "We do not die of a disease... the fear of microbes and illness knocks people out and vaccines finish them off." Now this sounds to me like you are saying that vaccines are being used deliberately as a poison or something to actively kill people. Is that really what is going on, or am I misunderstanding you? If it is what is going on, I'm not sure I understand the purpose of it. Why would the medical establishment want to kill so many people? And why wait for them to get sick from fear? What if they don't get scared? This is confusing for me, perhaps I haven't spent enough time learning about health as it relates to my spirit.

4) You start a list of "three" ingredients that are in vaccines, but I only see two in your list - though each of those two has many things, but I see your point - you are categorizing the ingredients, right? In any case I am still curious what the third ingredient is in the witches' brew. Is it possible... can you send me a link or links to your resources for what is in vaccines? I want to understand this as much as I can on my own.

She did write back. Seemingly excited by my interest, but failing to answer a single thing. Not a word. She did send me some links though.

Warning: The crazy only gets deeper out here in the middle.

First she sent me a quadruple-shot of Wayne Madsen interviews. The man has never met a conspiracy he didn’t want to hate-fuck.

Swine flu virus began life in lab.

Swine flu - Born in USA.

Kids used to test flu vaccine!

How did the H1N1 virus get into the United States?

I did send her back an email asking why she would put faith in someone who is such a nut case that he is a card carrying “Birther.” I suspect that that was when she decided to quit sending me stuff. I have heard nothing since.

But before I sent that she sent me this article on how Baxter Pharmaceutical filed for patent on H1N1 Vaccine two years before first H1N1 case was reported.

I’m going out on a limb here. I’m going to assume Baxter DID. (Note: Not quite see update below.) Because its not as if H1N1 is a new viral type. It is a new strain of the type. The main components are the same, and thus the essentials could be set in place and patented long in advance of any outbreak. Now, granted, I’m not a doctor. I am kind of talking out my ass here, and as I am writing this too late at night to call up a doctor friend (and too tired to do effective research on my own) I’m going to have to confirm this one in the morning. (Again see update below.) But I’ll get some clarification on that and update this probably within the day. In any case, assuming my layman’s (I’m a fucking layman for Christ-sake and I came up with a plausible and rational explanation – GaaaahHHH!) account of how this might have happened is correct, it calls into question what kind of crappy doctor was she in the first place? I think the answer is clear: not a very good one – or perhaps one with an unfortunate mental health issue as I previously alluded.

UPDATE: (10 hours later.) Thanks to Dr. Rob Tarzwell for his assists on this. My information was wrong, but ultimately the same essential argument remains valid - but I'll get to that.
For starters, here is the patent application. (The same document they link to in the Ahrcanum post.) It is NOT a patent on the vaccine. It is a patent on a process for making vaccines. And H1N1 is merely one of the possible flu types that it can be used to create vaccines for. The particularly galling thing about this is that it takes only the most rudimentary level of understanding to glean this from the patent application. To be clear - I can figure that out. Perverting this into "Baxter had a patent on an H1N1 vaccine before the epidemic is either complete ingnoramity; and utter failure to bother reading the document; or the willful assumption that the people who are being told the bad information aren't going to bother reading the document themselves. That in itself is pretty obscene.
On top of that, my original point about H1N1 merely being one type of flu - a variant that has been around much longer than we've been making vaccines of any sort - and thus getting a head start on the process of preparing a vaccine for it is hardly any indication of a conspiracy. We know this form of virus is out there, we can therefore be as prepared as possible to fight a new strain of it well in advance. Two years - if that were even a relevant argument anymore - is nothing. ...Fuckers.
[Update ends.]

The last link she sent was from Gloria.tv a website whose sub-title just cracks me up; “the more Catholic the better.”

Its subtitled, an hour long and, considering the rest of the information “Dr” Lanctot sent me, I expect its complete bullshit, though I was really only getting to the real garbage when I gave up watching. If anyone beats my mark of 20 minutes and 18 seconds, let me know!

Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty pseudo-scientist!

2009-11-06T12:26:00.000-08:00

NOTE: At the specific request of the party used as my primary example, there have been edits made to this post. The person in question is not named Binky McSmudgypigeon, nor are they a balloon-animal therapist, nor are they underfire from the College of Clown Surgeons. The form of the circumstances remain the same, and perhaps at some point the details will be brought to light. Ultimately this only goes to serve my point - the attacks upon Mr. McSmudgypigeon have necessitated this change. You can make your own conclusions about the actions of the College of Clown Surgeons on this matter - I think it will be clear where I stand from the context of the post.

------------------------------------------

You know what really burns my ass?

Its when some petty S.O.B. decides for whatever reason that they are justified in leveraging legal weight against reality.

This happens all the time. Take the Dover trial for example. Or the plight of Simon Singh. Or the many travailles of Steven Barrett. Science says one thing, and that thing - that fact - when publicized in whatever manner, upsets someone who turns to the legal system in hopes of hampering the propogation of fact in their own favour. Its damned near pathological.

In many cases the litigants are simply of the mistaken belief that they are correct. In some cases you have to know that the person or people launching the proceedings know damned well that they are full of shit, such as in the case of Yuri Geller. But in virtually ALL of the above cases the litigants knew/know damned well that the scientific evidence is decidedly not on their side.

Fortunately both scientific evidence and legal evidence have the same concepts at their core. Unfortunately both are corruptible by emotion and ambition. Legal evidence more so than science, but all else being equal a legal proceeding will default to falling in line with scientific fact. And what a relief that is.

But that in itself is not enough. That only counts when a trial becomes a reality, and often an actual trial is not the intention of the complainant. Often all they seek to do is to shut down the defendant. Relying on the liklihood that the defendant cannot afford to pay for their defence and at the very least hoping that an injunction will in the interim prevent the on-going publication of the truths that the litigant finds inconvenient. But fighting science with the law in this manner is cowardly and deserves to backfire in the worst of ways.

Case in point: Local BAT (Balloon Animal Therapist) Binky Mc Smudgypigeon has spent much of the past two years dealing with nuisances from the College of Clown Surgeons. In short, Binky, not unlike Simon Singh, pointed out in his professional blog that significant portions of what Seltzer-o-paths do is (my words, not his) bullshit. And that is pretty much where the science lays. But, as you can imagine, the ~~pseudo-scientists~~ seltzer-o-paths weren't too happy about this. Bad enough that someone was speaking out and calling their practices into question - doubly damning when the person in question appears on the surface to be from your own CAM bretheren. But Binky is an oddity being a skeptical/science-based balloon animal therapist - which essentially amounts to not claiming that his therapy can do anything that isn't firmly supported empirically.

The College of Clown Surgeons has spent a lot of effort trying to shut Binky up. But he is a man of integrity and has discretely refused, meanwhile behind the scenes various people including doctors, ethicists, commentators and other folks I am not at liberty to reveal have stood up behind him and assured him that in this particular bar-brawl we've got his back. Did I say 'we'? Yeah - you can be damned sure I'm not playing Gandhi in this particular fracas.

So - does this mean war? Well, no... not precisely.

But while the College of Clown Surgeons has seemingly decided to make an example of Binky, with what is ultimately a frivolous inquiry and implied threat, it is transparently the basest of manipulations. Quite frankly it's fucking shameful. They should be embarassed for themselves, not only for what is essentially a cheap, punk-ass maneuver, but for also not anticipating that there is an international legion of science advocates waiting in the wings ready to shine the bright light of scientific evidence upon them and make their petty machinations look foolish by any measure. Furthermore, they will look like knobs over this matter without the critical thinking community having to resort to hiding like crying children behind the skirt of the legal-system.

Barristers?!? We don't need no stinking barristers!!!

Mixed Feelings About My Letter to the Editor in the Vancouver Sun

2009-11-03T15:56:00.000-08:00

I suppose I should feel happy that my opinion has been acknowledged.

The Vancouver Sun published a letter of mine yesterday.

I'd like to thank The Sun for its refreshingly rational, science-based coverage of efforts to bring H1N1-prevention measures to the public. There is much confusion afoot about how best to protect ourselves and you appear to have made an effort to follow facts supporting what is most likely to be efficacious and what the realistic drawbacks are.

A popular weekly paper in Vancouver has taken to promoting practices that are demonstrably dangerous to public health, including homeopathy and vaccination denial. It's good to see that someone in the business of spreading the news is doing so responsibly.

No big secret if you've been reading along here, the "popular weekly paper" I am refering to is the Georgia Straight. I spent a fair bit of time devoted to slagging it's poor policies over a month ago. And guess what? This particular letter... was sent to the Sun back then.

In my mind, putting off publishing this letter until now kind of mis-represents the opinion I was expressing. First off, despite my reference to the Straight's homeopathy articles, it is referring to a circumstance whose immediacy is stale, and no longer in quickly available public evidence. (Though for the record, here's the original article.) It is also worth noting that the Straight later published an article with considerably better science.

But of more concern is the second issue; that in the interim, the Sun could themselves have published any number of complete bullshit articles. A cursory glance at relevant headlines... looks as though their record is probably reasonably good. So I'm probably not inadvertently giving my implicit approval of a heap of bad information. But the point is, I could have been.

I thought there was a policy of checking sources - calling me up at the phone number they requied me to include - just to make sure I am who I claim, and that I do stand behind the opinion voiced in my letter? If they had, they would have received my consent - or, at worst, a request to update my opinion to reflect the changes of circumstance; specifically the on-set of flu-season; over a dozen H1N1 deaths in B.C.; and, FSM-forbid, the on-going representation of fact by the Sun. But instead they sullied it with a fractional mis-representation, reducing the chances of me giving them a vote of support in the future.

This is really a matter of principle more than any real grievance. I'm annoyed with it at the moment, and wanted to point out the minor misrepresentation somewhere for the record. I'll cool off in the next day or two.

-----

On a side note: Through October I made a point of devoting most of my skeptical writing to the first month of Skeptic North. But now that's behind us. I'll be shifting my attention back in favour of this blog - without ignoring Skeptic North - for the next while. Eventually I'll zero in on the appropriate balance between the two.

I already have singled out the next well deserved target of my ire. That'll probably fall directly under my fire by the weekend. I'm looking forward to not tempering my tongue again.

H1N1 - The Asshole Acoustic set

2009-10-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

You know how in the middle of a big-assed concert, the drummer will come out from behind the kit and the roadies will bring out the acoustic guitars and a free-standing pair of toms and a stand-up bass and the band will 'bring it down for an acoustic set?' Today I'm turning the volume down a bit and getting a little more intimate.

I haven't really weighed in on H1N1, despite my general rage with anti-vaccination, and the obvious connection there. But right now it's the discussion du jour over on Skeptic North, and over on the related Facebook H1N1 info group. I've made my presence known over there, presenting information when I have it. But when it comes right down to it, this is not a subject - H1N1 specifically - that I as a non-medical professional know a lot of details about. And right now I am swamped with other work. Bad timing. I just don't have time to read up.

For the most part I've kept out of the discussions except for a few points that I am willing to hammer on as I am reasonably well versed in - they are anti-vax issues foremost, and not H1N1 specific - and staying away from the more complex concerns, leaving them to the pros we have in our court.

So, due to bad timing and a lack of specific information I have kept out of the detailed arguments - though I have read along. And holy smoke have some of the folk out there who are refusing the H1N1 vaccination (many of whom are not anti-vax in general) manufactured some complex arguments. I am truly not in a position to keep up right now. I'm just patiently waiting for the window for vaccination of my demographic to open up.

But it may be too late for that. This week two people who work in my office came in sick. WTF!!!??! I think that's bad news in a regular flu season. But right now? You have got to be kidding me. One of them was practically hemhorraging phlegm. Anyhow, guess what. I am not at the office today. Thanks guys, I guess I needed the day off.

But there's something a bit more disturbing happening. I may have mentioned that I have a friend who is a naturopath. She is someone who I have always been fond of, but there is a big gap in there in that she is both a ND and a Christian, so... not fond in the serious way. In spite of said fondness it's not an easy friendship due to the previously mentioned factors. We really just have to ignore our conflicting worldviews or not be friends.

Today she posted on Facebook that her boys are really sick. She was defiantly challenging H1N1 and touting the values of Vitamin C. All of a sudden I felt sicker than I am. It's never hit so close to home before, and if it is H1N1 that her boys have, this could be really serious. They of course are not vaccinated. Naturally I don't want her kids to be badly sick, but if they get better it's only perpetuating her belief system. All of a sudden the pernicious nature of that vicous cycle is really clear in an ugly way. I'm still processing this. There will probably be more no matter how this episode plays out.

Lastly...

I couldn't shoe horn this in further up in a more appropriate place.

On top of largely being on the outside of the H1N1 discussion in my immediate skeptical community - which I heartily defend, me trying to advance the cause without information would be distinctly un-skeptical and ironic - I had a series of posts for Skeptic North lined up. A two parter on hockey, which has already been posted... uh yes, a skeptical article on hockey. Yes it was silly. I felt sillier posting it in the middle of all of this. And this Sunday I've got a post ready for Hallowe'en... feels kind of lame posting this stuff when there's important things going on. I'm just saying....

Picking Your Moments

2009-10-25T23:57:00.000-07:00

One of the most important things a critical thinker can do is admit they're wrong when they are wrong. That is most important in cases where you consider the evidence and realize that the position you've been taking is in fact bunk. If you don't, then you aren't being open minded. But you can extend that to your general demeanor too... especially if you happen to be an Asshole Skeptic.

I know who I am. I believe that leading with my emotions is an important aspect of who I am and how I handle my skepticism, but there is an issue associated with that; I can at times be a bit of a loose cannon. Quite honestly, I'm not willing to temper that, and even if I were, there's a platitude about old dogs that springs to mind.
Sometimes this means I get carried away. And seeing as that isn't really going to change, I have to chose to deal with the fall out of that in other ways. Learning to apologize and/or to admit when you've gone too far is a core part of that.

I blew it this weekend. In an online discussion I got fed up with someone and had something insulting and, in my mind, amusing to say. I said it. And I contend that the recipient of my ire had it coming. He was not behaving well either. He was failing to provide evidence or citations when asked, he was deliberately poisoning an information source with his opposing worldview when it was fairly clear what the intentions of the source was. And when asked to voice his opinions in an appropriate place on the same site, he repeatedly failed to comply. He was not playing well with others and I simply had to comment upon it, though not in the most constructive of ways. He followed up with some sweeping generalizations about everyone who opposed him, when really it was me who was poking him with a sharpened verbal stick.

When the dust settled, he did start playing fair - to his credit he recognized that if I had to play nice, so did he - and he did stay in the conversation. So in the end, my actions didn't actually hurt anything except for his fragile feelings. (Honestly I think he wasn't hurt at all, but was just needing to grab on to some kind of straw.) But here's the thing - I know damned well that I got lucky on that one. All rationalization of how my action ultimately led (with intervention by an admin) to a good end, doesn't really change that I didn't pick my moment well at all.

I am convinced that this particular woo-monger will never come around, and there is a point where the only value these sorts can serve is to be the object of well placed ridicule. But this was not well placed on my part.

Upon reflection, I'm thinking that riducule is most appropriate when used generally (I.E. "Homeopaths' insistence that the known laws of the universe be changed so that their medicine can work is an un-reasonable demand from a vocal minority.") or when used against a distant individual who has gone far beyond the pale (I.E. "You would think that Sylvia Browne could have forseen the disgusting ravages that chain-smoking would have on her body - even without her psychic powers."), but not in direct engagement.

Anyhow, I know I'll blow it again someday - it's an inevitable part of the loud-mouth I inherited. But I've had some insight that will hopefully winnow the places I mis-apply my Irish.

Food for Thought

2009-10-21T19:48:00.000-07:00

I'm going to let this speak largely for itself. It strikes me as a good argument in favour of Asshole Skepticism, and a bit of perspective on the well behaved scientists in our movement.

Extremists More Willing To Share Their Opinions, Study Finds

An Open Letter to the two Navy Guys at Last Week's Vancouver Skeptics in the Pub

2009-10-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

Sorry, guys.
I hope I didn't come across as a dickhead.
I've been doing jobs for twenty years where getting recognized by total strangers is part of the deal. I've never been comfortable with that, but I know it's the way it works and I need to accept it.
From six years in a touring comedy troupe, which I quit in part because I wasn't comfortable with our growing popularity; to being stopped as I got off SeaBus and told how much "I love your work" (which co-incided poorly with an actual stalker in my life); it has always been something I have not fully embraced.
I've been telling myself for years to get over it, 'cause it's getting in the way of my career. I even had myself convinced that I am ready to deal with it... and I hope I am, what with a feature film ready to show the world and all.
But being recognised and approached on Tuesday was the first time that has happened to me in years, and it was a reminder that like it or not, I need to get a bit more accustomed to it, both as a skeptic and as an artist, 'cause the things I am doing in both realms are necessarily going to draw attention if they are going to be considered successful. That is, as I said above, part of the deal.
Anyhow, again, if you happen to be reading this, my apologies if I came across as a knob. (Oh the irony, the guy who calls himself the 'Asshole' is apologising for being a jerk.)
If we cross paths again, remind me who you are (I'm terrible with that stuff too.) and offer up a piece of proof or two like where you came from to be at SitP and how you knew who I am (I have both of those seared in my memory.) and I'll buy the first round. Despite being an asshole and coming off as a dickhead-knob, I'm not actually a jerk.

The OTHER Skeptic North

2009-10-14T13:29:00.000-07:00

I've been away for a combination of my birthday and Thanksgiving. I could blame on and off internet, but the fact is that even if I had worked out the internet angle better, I still wouldn't have got much if any posting done on any of my blogs. Today I catch up with some simple posts to hold the fort while I get to work on some of the more indepth stuff I've thought of to write about.

One of the things I did while in Victoria was meet up with the editor of Jr. Skeptic, Daniel Loxton, at his studio... Skeptic North. (I also briefly met Jim Smith, who was on his way out the door.) Daniel and I have exchanged a few emails over the past six months. I felt a need to congratulate him on his work on his major mandate publications "Where We Go from Here?" and "What Do I Do Now?" I also knew we had a mutual skeptical appreciation for cryptozoology.
He and I met briefly in Vegas at TAM7 and have had some connection over the Skeptic North blog project. When he found out I was going to be in town he invited me to drop by. We had a good discussion and he showed me the studio where Jr. Skeptic is produced - appropriately called Skeptic North.
I got to see the layout sheets for his upcoming kids book on evolution, and hold a copy of the Portugese version which is already complete.

I'm going to be curious to see how he and I interact as time goes on. We clearly have a lot in common - both being the relatively rare artists in the skeptical community; both being Canadian skeptics and more specifically BC skeptics who lived on the spoils of the forestry industry, yet ultimately fall into the category of being ecologically progressive; both having a great interest in cryptozoology... and yet, we appear to have different views of skepticism's role in society. I would say that Daniel is caught between the worlds of the classic skeptic and as he puts it "skepticism 2.0". I think it would be dishonest for me to not self-identify in the latter group, but he has been inthe movement for a much longer time. Like many classic skeptics... actually, I'm changing that term. "Classic" ought to mean at the very least, pre John Stuart Mill (I.E. Pre-scientific method) skeptics - I mean to say er... "20thC skeptics" (at least 'til I identify a better term). Like many 20thC skeptics, Daniel is also what I think of as an olive branch skeptic. A serious one. No secrets here, I am not. I see and embrace it's value, I just believe heartily in the many pronged tactical approach. He also has opinions about what skepticism can and cannot tackle - most of which I do believe is on the money, but I haven't given the whole package enough consideration to have made up my mind. No doubt I will and that I'll muse about it here when I do.

In any case. It was excellent to meet with him, I feel confident we shall exchange much thought back and forth. Whether we call that colleagueship or friendship remains to be seen, but I have little doubt that he is going to be an interesting person to know.

Canadian Wins Nobel Prize

2009-10-06T22:05:00.000-07:00

This was so cool that I had to do my second post in a single day on Skeptic North.

In fact, I almost had to arm wrestle fellow SN-blogger, Kimberly Hebert for the right to do so. Willard Boyle is from the Maritimes, so it's in her region, but the technology is key to modern film-making, so it's kinda in my domain too.

Luckily I spoke up first and called dibs. 'Cause I don't know how that arm wrestle would have worked out - my reach isn't that good.

The Epistemology of Blogs

2009-10-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

Over on Skeptic North I've got a new post in my reigned-in voice about the ways - most of which can be read as "failures" - in which blogs disseminate factual information.

Sorry to say I couldn't paint a sunny picture.

Vaccines & Autism Correlation as Explained by a non-Asshole

2009-10-05T21:48:00.000-07:00

The downside of being on the emotionally charged asshole side of the skeptical spectrum is that detailed explanations aren't really your baliwick.

So sometimes you need to piggyback on someone else's measured explanation.

This pair of videos KICKS ASS. I'm not even going to say more. Just watch:

Now that I've learned all that I have to note that there is a distinct correlation between Jim Carrey trying to play serious roles and the rise of autism.... I'm just sayin'!

Heidi Anderson - Asshole Skeptic Honour Roll

2009-10-02T11:06:00.000-07:00

Apparently Skeptic North was mentioned in the latest episode of Skeptic Zone. Haven't actually got to that part yet, but earlier in the show Kylie Sturgess interviews Heidi Anderson at DragonCon.

In the interview Heidi admits that she is an 'in your face' skeptic and that she recognizes that tag-teaming with a gentler skeptic is going to be the most effective approach to reaching people. But both sorts of activists are necessary.

I'm happy to see that someone else 'gets' it.

I have so much respect for the scientists that adhere to the measured and rationed response that marks the mind-set of their academic approach. Coming forward with the olive-branch is absolutely how to reach those people who are teetering on the brink between ration and credulity.

Hooray Heidi. You are the second person to make the Asshole Skeptic Honour Roll.

It’s Imperative to Maintain a Science of Humour

2009-10-01T15:25:00.001-07:00

I was recently listening to Richard Wiseman's podcast and the notion of skeptical-burnout was mentioned.
I'd heard of skeptical-burnout before, but it was this mention where it really penetrated my consciousness. The idea that the on-going act of banging your head against the wall of credulity can take its toll makes perfect sense. Feeling that you aren't being heard; aren't making a difference; are only singing to those who already have the libretto – that's going to wear upon you.
Some of us will have the jam to last it out and some won't. I have no idea what the stats are or even how to start measuring them. I would posit that the established explosion of the skeptical community will have a significant effect on the attrition rate, and keep more of those of us who stay active from turning bitter about 'all the rest of those fools' who we share the big blue marble with.
There must be things we can do to ward off or at least ameliorate the psychological effects of feeling like your rational efforts are falling on deaf ears. There is likely a smorgasbord of tactics we can employ for ourselves – one would hope so, it's likely we all need to concoct our own personal emotional cocktail to suit our own particular needs.
I have to think that keeping a sense of humour about it all is going to be the most effective thing I can do. I have precisely zero empirical evidence that keeping a sense of humour about it all can benefit anyone, let alone myself in this situation. I'm simply relying on my mommy instincts, and rolling with the anecdotal evidence that James Randi himself has maintained the whimsy and at 81 years old and decades of debunking he's still a firecracker for skepticism and remains the movements' pater actum*.
Randi's age is over twice what mine is and I have really only become an active skeptic in the past few years, it's a long-haul to make it that far and still have the fire burning so bright. The mere thought of it is kind of daunting. There is no telling whether I'll maintain my passion or not. I'd like to think I will. And will the approach I take today last me through or will I adjust as I go on? I expect I shall adjust, the question is to what degree and in what direction?
I can and do get spitting angry over a number of skeptical issues. For example: anti-vaccination is top of my skeptical hit list; I haven't got much time for serious 9/11 truthers; people who get in the way of science education make me so angry I find that I have to remind myself that there are some really great religious people out there – some are even in my life. There is a 'second-tier' of issues which I take pretty seriously, but typically I don't get emotionally wrought over. Things like: moon-hoaxers, Scientology, Sylvia Browne, "Quantum" spirituality, Oprah and a scatter-shot of various fear-mongering and scamming efforts. Which is not to say that I never get annoyed by anything else, but when it comes to "all the other crap" I don't think it's worth my energy to get particularly upset about it. Indeed, the more ridiculous it is the more likely I am to simply laugh at it. Cryptozoology? Is a wonderful playground for the imagination. Ghost-hunters? K-lown show! Homeopathy is so completely absurd that I really have trouble doing anything but mock it – except when it seriously impacts upon public health. UFOs, Raelians, Lizard Overlords, 2012 and the Bosnian Pyramid? ...I seriously wonder how these people even got to the invention of pottery.
I simply can't take everything with the same level of passion which I take my big three. Fact is that even with Anti-vaccination I tend to laugh a lot. I have to. It's a painful and ironic sort of laughter, but if I didn't laugh, there is no way I could carry on. I'd spontaneously combust.
J
*Do not take your latin from me I made this term up with the help of an online translator, just to sound cool. I was aiming for 'inspiring father' but that's not what you'll get if you translate it back. ("You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid.")

Skeptic North Launches

2009-10-01T00:26:00.000-07:00

I have a funny feeling that some where in the 'hood of half the people who read this blog already know this and that half of those are contributors... but...

Skeptic North is alive, Johnny 5!

The first pan Canadian Skeptical blog. I am a featured contributor as are a host of noteworthy skeptics from coast to coast.

I'm excited about (that's "aboot" for people in Ontario) the project, and I'm hoping big things come from it.

My posts there will be.... more polite... than you will typically see here, but there may be some cross posting when I can keep my tongue - errr... typing... in line.

Not much more to say that can't be better discovered by heading over there... but keep coming back here......... please. (I may never say 'please' again - so savour it.)

Happy Blasphemy Day Ya Goddamn Atheist

2009-09-30T14:10:00.001-07:00

Perhaps you don't know, it's International Blasphemy Day.
I thought I'd take a moment to reflect upon why it is I blaspheme.
In one sense, the words are meaningless to me. I don't believe in Jesus, I don't believe his book and I don't believe in his alleged patrilineage.

But I grew up surrounded by them. Let's face it curse words; goddamn, Jesus Christ, Fuck and Shit (among many others) are part of our cultural zeitgeist. I think I tend to use fuck and shit more than goddamn or Jesus – but they're all in my vocabulary. Possibly too much in my vocabulary, but I'm turning forty next week – old dog. Over the course of my life I have watched as these words become more acceptable, and I believe that the shift, from gasps of horror when my grandmother said 'fuck' one New Year's Eve, through Slash accepting a Grammy with a sentence set to inspire the seven second delay, was significant in my linguistic education. What was tantalizingly verboten has become pretty normal. I really only frown on the over use of cursing – which for me (apparently one of my first words ever was 'ship' – it was not what I was trying to say) is a pretty low bar. If I'm on SkyTrain and some potty-mouthed hipster uses 'Fuck' as verb, noun and adjective in one sentence more than once in a breath... they need to get a fucking dictionary.
But 'fuck' (oooh – I said 'buttfuck') and 'shit' aren't blasphemous really. In fact 'bloody' is more blasphemous than 'shit' is. (As an expletive 'bloody' refers to the blood of Christ.) 'Zounds' is more blasphemous than 'shit' is. ('Zounds' is a contraction of 'God's Wounds' – I didn't know that until Shakespeare classes at Theatre School.)
If the truly blasphemous words are meaningless to me, then why use them?
Because in another sense they aren't meaningless to me. I defy not god, but the existence of god with them.
I've been asked by innumerable Christians who fall in earshot of me "please don't say that" or "don't say that in front of me."
The first request is ridiculous. You are trying to SAVE my soul by advising me to adhere to the third arbitrary commandment of a petty god who I simply do not believe in? Good luck.
The second is really just asking for trouble from my contrary soul. Don't cuss in front of you? Goddamn it, I choose those words in part because it provokes you. Look! I just took the name of your lord in vain and no pillar of slat, no lightning bolt, no rain of frogs, no plague of locusts. None of that crap has ever happened to me, not from that first time I said 'ship!' Your god is either lame or lazy.

Blaspheming is, for me, an expression of my skin to marrow contempt for religious dogma, an expression that I exercise habitually. I grin and bear it when the fundies pollute my world with declarations of "Praise Jesus!" when their football team wins and "Thank You Lord!" when they win at bingo. So far as I am concerned, blaspheming is just my way of verbally urinating on a couple of fire hydrants in my little corner of the zeitgeist.

Unleash the Hounds

2009-09-29T10:07:00.000-07:00

An Open Letter to Georgia Straight Advertisers:

I am writing as one of a group of concerned citizens who have noted significant advertising by you in the Vancouver’s Georgia Straight Weekly newspaper. We have some important concerns about the Georgia Straight’s editorial policies and specific factually incorrect information that has been published which directly endangers individual and more importantly public health. We thought you might be interested that your money is being spent in tacit support of these issues. A recent article by homeopath Sonya McLeod in the Georgia Straight strongly advocates the forsaking of vaccinations against the H1N1 flu. She unequivocally recommends homeopathy – a therapy which has never shown any true efficacy in properly structured independent scientific studies. (Many studies by homeopaths have ‘proven’ an effect, but none of these have ever been placebo-controlled, double-blinded or reproduced in an experiment that was properly structured in such a fashion.) Vaccine denial is a reprehensible position which demonstrably puts the individual at risk and weakens herd-immunity amongst the public (where the overall immunity is boosted by the sheer numbers of individuals who are vaccinated).

As if this was not enough, there are questions about the editorial policies surrounding the article itself. Sonya McLeod is not only an advertiser in the Georgia Straight, she is also apparently related to the publisher, Dan McLeod. The article is in part taken, without appropriate credit, from another easily found and identified source. When discussion of the facts and editorial policies of the magazine began mounting up in the comment thread on the article, many of the critical comments that were posted failed to appear in the thread – which could simply be coincidence, but the optics are bad none the less.
Homeopathy as therapy has failed to show any level of efficacy practically from the very beginning of its history. No properly structured scientific study has even been able to find any effect, nor is there any plausible mechanic for the alleged effect. Indeed, if suddenly scientifically sound homeopathy studies began showing an effect, the most basic rules of biology, chemistry and physics would need to be rewritten.

In short, homeopathy proposes to work by treating the symptoms of a disease (as opposed to the cause) by matching the symptoms with substances that are somehow determined to create the same effect. A simple example would be to treat insomnia with caffeine. If this were not implausible enough, the caffeine is then diluted to such a huge degree that it is mathematically unlikely in the extreme that even a single molecule of the original substance even exists. For a more detailed description of homeopathy, the Wikipedia entry on homeopathy does a reasonably good job of outlining the fundamentals of the process and revealing the absurdity of the proposed ‘science’ behind it. Another good source is quackwatch.com.
It is common to defend homeopathy with the oft heard phrase ‘what is the harm?’ Conveniently there is a website - whatstheharm.net - which demonstrates that using homeopathy to the exclusion of evidence based medicine can result in injury or death.

Every one of the studies and stats mentioned by the author are studies that have been shown to have significant scientific flaws. They were either based upon self-reporting by homeopaths; were not peer-reviewed by anyone outside of the discipline; have clearly demonstrable procedural faults; or are the product of laughable misrepresentation.

Sonya McLeod goes well beyond the realm of merely advocating homeopathy. She also eschews the values of vaccination, a practice which is far more dangerous to public health - particularly with the spectre of H1N1 a.k.a. the Swine Flu looming. There is a lot to be said about vaccine denial, more than can be said concisely here. Whatstheharm.net helps illuminate the dangers. On the face of it, the bulk of the information disseminated by the anti-vaccination lobby is beyond being un-true. It is wilfully negligent, and solidly disproven. Yet the anti-vaxers continue to loft the same debunked arguments as ‘proof’ time and again. Worst amongst this is the bogus claim that vaccines cause autism – a claim has long since gone well past the point of cautious rationality into hysterical unfounded paranoia.
It is true that a small number of people have varying levels of adverse responses to vaccines. The vast majority of these are temporary effects, but even if you take all the bad reactions and put them together in one pool, the number of people who are hurt by vaccines is vastly dwarfed by the number of people who have been helped. Small pox has been eliminated from the world due to vaccinations. It was once a brutal disease. Polio was nearly eliminated too until progress was undermined by the anti-vax lobby. Other infectious diseases including measles, mumps and whooping cough similarly have been on the rise because less people vaccinate because of specious anti-vax propaganda.
Foremost amongst the public damage caused by the failure to vaccinate is the undermining of herd immunity. In short, viruses have a threshold wherein if a percentage (a large percentage) of the population is vaccinated it becomes practically impossible for a virus to spread even among the unvaccinated. For a variety of reasons there are people who cannot be vaccinated or like newborns have not been vaccinated yet – herd immunity protects them. Herd immunity has been compromised by the anti-vaccination movement.
It almost goes without saying that not being vaccinated leaves the individual susceptible to disease. Adding to that the undermining of herd immunity, and the adverse effects that has upon the public as a whole. When people do as Sonya McLeod proudly boasts that she is not vaccinating her girls she is not only putting her own children at risk, but worse; she is putting other people’s children at risk. It is extremely irresponsible for the Georgia Straight to assist in the dissemination of this false and demonstrably dangerous information; in fact if a single person were to die from H1N1 as a result of taking this bad information to heart, the paper would be (un-actionably) party to negligent loss of life. This goes far beyond a 'matter of opinion' or journalistic balance. Indeed there is no balance in their reporting on this matter - it is all one-side of an issue which should have no sides, the facts are plain at is s day. The claims made in the article point to fear-mongering about the expected pandemic, when in fact the position of what Sonya McLeod has had published is a case of fear mongering of the worst sort - scaring the public from real preventative treatment.
On top of the publically irresponsible aspects of the article there are a number of editorially questionable elements. For one, several portions of Sonya McLeod’s article are verbatim quotes from a book excerpt by book excerpt by Randall Neustaedter.
This is to say nothing of the poor referencing of alleged ‘facts’ throughout. It is perfectly reasonable to extrapolate from this that the reported ‘facts’ are not facts as primary sources are scarce and/or discredited.
Sonya McLeod is an advertiser on the Georgia Straight website – her company’s website is advertised clearly the right hand side of the page. Indeed her company has an “October Special” on Homeopathic Flu Immunizations. A clear conflict of interest. The article was not so much a news item as a thinly veiled advertisement in its own right.
Sonya McLeod appears to be the daughter of Georgia Straight publisher, Dan McLeod. On top of all issues this personal connection is a conflict of interest which makes the rest all the more egregious.
Should there be any real question remaining as to the reliability of the information Sonya McLeod presents in her articles, one should also consider the source itself. Her fourth and final graduate project in her education as a homeopath involved the use of raccoon fur as the initial ingredient in a homeopathic solution. Despite using some scientific words, the paper is extremely unscientific, delving into dream interpretation and implying that any observation within its absurdly small sample size was an effect caused by the homeopathic solution, even when the opposite effect was noted in other subjects of the study – which, of course was similarly noted as an effect of the solution.
Once the discussion of the article heated up and the advocates of science and reason began to dominate the conversation, there was a period where many commenters from the Google group on Canadian Skepticism noted that their messages were not being posted even when extra care was being made to keep comments civil. Eventually scattered comments began appearing again – presumably once the deluge of angered voices abated. Should the limiting of comments critical of the article prove to be true this represents a particularly egregious effort to limit the public voice on the issue on the part of the Georgia Straight.
We hope this information was useful to you and that you will consider it with gravity when choosing how to spend your advertising dollars. The Georgia Straight deserves a chance to clean up its act and make efforts to ameliorate the damage done by their poor representation of facts that severely effect public health and to adjust their poor editorial policies, but until they do you may want to reconsider who you are aligning yourself with and take your business elsewhere. This affects you; it affects your family; it affects your children.
If someone was so inclined, they could pass this letter or one like it to as many Georgia Straight advertisers as they so desired.
Their contact information is quite easily found.... it's public information found quite easily in the paper itself or on their website.

(NOTE: Or one could use the list of advertisers I compiled when this was still a current issue. Note that what is done with this information is ultimately up to the person who uses it, I am merely compiling information that is already publically available.)

Original list follows:

Live Nation - livenation.com - CustomerService@LiveNation.com
Freedman Shoes - freedmanshoes.com - info@freedmanshoes.com
The Public Market - granvilleisland.com - info@granvilleisland.com
Donnelly Night Clubs - dhmbars.ca - ap@dhmbars.ca
Carman Fox & Friends - carmanfox.com - carman@carmanfox.com
The Chan Centre - chancentre.com - chan.centre@ubc.ca
Luna - polyhomes.com - comments@polyhomes.com
Greens Plus - customerservice@genuinehealth.com  
Koodo Mobile - koodomobile.com - customerservice@koodomobile.com
V6A - onni.com - customerservice@onni.com
Vancouver Symphony Arts - vancouversymphony.ca - customerservice@vancouversymphony.ca
Inspiration Furniture - inspirationinteriors.ca - customersvc-bc@inspirationfurniture.ca
Biltmore Cabaret - biltmorecabaret.com - darius@biltmorecabaret.com - zak@biltmorecabaret.com
Locarno - locarno.ca - efefer@jerichowest.ca
HMV - hmv.com - enquiries@hmvgroup.com
Alexander Keith's - keiths.ca - guest@labatt.com
River Rock/Red Robinson Theatre - riverrock.com / blvdcasino.com - hblank@gcgaming.com
Rio Theatre - riotheatre.ca - info@ riotheatre.ca
O2 - englishbayliving.com - info@barcoalliance.com
Boy's Co - boysco.com - info@boysco.com
City Centre Realty - concretecondos.com - info@concretecondos.com
Dance House - dancehouse.ca - info@dancehouse.ca
Homelessness Action Week - stophomelessness.ca - info@ethosstrategygroup.com
Kitsilano Business Assn. - kitsilano4thavenue.com - info@kitsilano4thavenue.com
L2 Leone - l2leone.ca - info@L2Leone.com
Memento - ledmac.com - info@ledmac.com
Pulse - liveatpulse.com - info@liveatpulse.com
W Six - wsix.ca - info@magnumprojects.ca
Euro Furniture - info@monaeurofurniture.ca
Music on Main - musiconmain.ca - info@musiconmain.ca
Organic Meadow - organicmeadow.com - info@organicmeadow.com
Ginger - gingerliving.com - info@portedevelopment.com
Powervibe Fitness - powervibe.ca - info@powervibe.ca
Ultra X-Press - printprint.ca - info@printprint.ca
Millennium Water - millenniumwater.com - info@rennie.com
The Roxy - roxyvan.com - info@roxyvan.com
See Seven Arts - seeseven.bc.ca - info@seeseven.bc.ca
Sofa So Good - sofasogood.ca - info@sofasogood.ca
Commercial Drive - thedrive.ca - info@thedrive.ca
Cultural Olympiad - vancouver2010.com/culturalolympiad - info@vancouver2010.com
Dr. Sherri Wise - wisedental.ca - info@wisedental.ca
Griffith University - griffith.edu.au/masterofteaching - international@griffith.edu.au4
Sealed with a Kiss - presents sealedwithakisspresents.com - jason@sealedwithakisspresents.com - malcolm@sealedwithakisspresents.com
District - southmaindistrict.com - live@southmaindistrict.com
Lux Salon - sphinxexport.com - luxsalonbathrooms@shaw.ca
Maple Pictures - maplepictures.com - info@maplepictures.com
Fitness World - fitnessworld.ca - marketing@fitnessworld.ca
Flight Centre - flightcentre.ca - marketing@flightcentre.ca
Atlas Pots - atlaspots.com - nv@atlaspots.com
Club Card Printing - clubcard.ca - sales@clubcard.ca
Friends of the Environment - tdfef.com - tdfef@td.com
100.5 The Peak - thepeak.fm - thepeak@thepeak.fm
Morrey Mazda - soclosemorrey.com - vancouver@morreymazda.com
Vancouver International Film Festival - viff.org - viff@viff.org
Telus High Speed - telus.com
The Boathouse - boathouserestaurants.ca
Earls - earls.ca
Exchange - exchangeliving.com
Extreme Style - extremestyle.ca
Fabutan - fabutan.com
Integrative Healing Arts - integrative.ca
Moe's Home Collection - moeshome.ca
Steamworks - steamworks.ca
Watermark - watermarkrestaurant.ca
Alliance Films - alliancefilms.com
Besy Buy - bestbuy.ca
Durex - durex.com
Larry & Willy - jackfm.com
Pacific Boarder - pacificboarder.com
Pacific Fertility - pacificfertility.ca
HTC Phones - rogers.com
Capers - wholefoodsmarket.com
Vancity - vancity.com
Ford - bcford.ca

Bum-ble Beginnings

2009-09-28T15:00:00.000-07:00

I really had planned to get around to this on my TAM Diary, but I haven't... yet. I swear I will, I just haven't yet.

In the time leading up to TAM I found myself thinking about the ideas that would eventually coalesce into what I would, by the time I landed in Vegas be calling Asshole Skepticism.

I got in a number of excellent conversations about my ideas with people at the conference. Some people immediately recognized the value of what I was saying and were able to add to it - often citing examples from the various presentations given over the weekend. Others got their back up from the outset - which I'll address specifically some other time, but I'll admit that talking with them was as valuable in refining my thinking as speaking with those who were 'on board' from word one. Foremost of those who disagreed with me was Sid Rodriguez of the London Skeptics. We got in a dicussion at the Skepchick party - which was his defacto wedding reception... an odd debate to get into on your wedding day, but that fact that he was so game to get into it is testament to his strong character and the generally eager and open minds of skeptics in general.

Later in the night Desiree Schell of Skeptically Speaking caught me on tape in a furious rant about Asshole Skepticism - pretty much my first of any emotional charge. There were a number of people standing listening and I was on fire... excepting the part where the gift of the gab failed me and the precise word I was looking for would not come to mind - but I digress.

Shortly thereafter I was discussing in more measured volumes 'who' were notable examples of Asshole Skeptics. Penn and Teller naturally sprung to mind as a prime example (not as assholes, merely in presentation) as to a lesser degree did Brian Dunning.

Someone who was half-listening demanded "Who is that!?!" I pointed across the pool and identified Brian and his podcast, Skeptoid. To which the fellow demanded that someone write that down for him - so much for personal responsibility.

His shirt was hanging wide open in the mid-July heat of the Mojave and I happened to have the sharpie that was the conference registration gift in my back pocket. I batted his shirt aside and wrote on his chest "Skeptoid." With mock beligerence he defied me - "What the hell!?! I can't read that. It'll be backward in a mirror." There's no way he could know what my stupid human trick is. My hand writing is pretty weak - but the up shot of that is that I can write backwards almost as fast and as legibly as forward. With only the tiniest of beats to get past the one letter I have any real trouble with - 'S' - I scrawled "S-k-e-p-t-o-i-d" in mirror image below the first version.

Now everyone was paying attention. And he clearly loved the attention as much as me. Be raised the bar, continuing to pretend like he was a bit of a dick-head. "Well what..." he blustered in a good approximation of Jonah Hill-esque filth-filled verbal-effluvia, "why doesn't someone just write on my ass then!"

A voice from the crowd - "What on earth would I wrote on your ass?"

The moment could not have been more perfectly packaged for me as I knocked that on right out of the park....

"Asshole Skepticism."

I think it's safe to say that this blog was a foregone conclusion by the time I was done the rant that preceeded the incident that resulted in this video... but if there was any question left, this was how it all began.

Pony Up for Science

2009-09-26T12:33:00.001-07:00

The pockets of skepticism, despite the optics of things like the Million Dollar Challenge and the Australian Skeptics' benefactor, are quite shallow. Unlike organizations like the Discovery Institute which are funded by a variety of creationist organizations (I.E. Churches.).
One of our best avenues for public outreach has proven to be podcasts. There is a metric fuckton of skeptical podcasts out there. Some are fantastic like the mighty Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, some are extremely niche like Monster Talk, some are dubiously skeptical (at best) like Skeptiko. But even the best and mightiest of them are done on shoe-string budgets, because the money just isn't there. Do any skeptical podcast hosts or producers get paid for their efforts? No. (At least I don't think so, and in any case the vast majority don't.) The shows themselves barely get along with the meagre support of the proverbial 'people like you.'

This week and next (and don't let those dates limit you) one of my favourites Skeptically Speaking (and not simply because they are one of the ones that I've been interviewed on) is having a fund drive. To be more accurate the radio station that supports it, CJSR is having a fund drive. They can use your support.
Skeptically Speaking is unique in that it is the only skeptical call-in show, and they also have a segment called 'Speaking Up' wherein anyone can suggest something that they personally would like to talk about in the skeptical realm.
If you can afford any money in the name of skepticism and the support of science, go on-line and donate some money to the station. Make sure they know why (I.E. In support of what show.) you are donating.
I have actually asked some of the people who would normally give me birthday presents to donate money to podcasts in my name instead. But I'm not asking you to donate money for me for my birthday – I'm just showing that there are other ways of getting the money flowing.
Here's a few other shows to consider donating money to – the science & skepticism based shows on my birthday wish list, in fact:

The 800 lb gorilla amongst the options: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe
Radio Lab – the funnest science radio show ever.

What? Only two?
Well, I didn't want to post a laundry list. Nor did I want to pull too much focus from Skeptically Speaking (which technically makes three.)