Something for Carl Sagan Day, 2009…

This Week in the Real Universe

October 26th, 2009: Mars Caves Might Protect Microbes (or Astronauts)… , Report Places U.S. At the Crossroads of Human Spaceflight… , Behind the Scenes: Building NASA’s Huge, New Rocket… & NASA Photos Reveal Rare Views of New Rocket, Space Shuttle…

October 27th, 2009: Pseudo Black Hole Created in Lab… & The Strangest Moments in Space Launch History…

October 28th, 2009: How NASA Test Drives Moon Landers on Earth… , Liftoff! NASA Launches Moon Rocket Prototype on Test Flight… , NASA Hails New Moon Rocket’s Test Launch… , Violent Explosion is Most distant Object Ever Seen… & Space-Time Observations Find Einstein Still Rules…

October 29th, 2009: Simulations Show How Earth-Like Planets Can Form… , Cosmic Jewel-Box Photographed in Detail… , Space Junk Threat Delays Japanese Space Ship’s Station Departure… , Huge Explosion Was Biggest Space Rock To Strike Earth Since 1994… & New Moon Rocket Damaged In Test Flight, NASA Says…

October 30th, 2009: Ariane 5 Rocket Hauls Up Another Double Payload Stack… , 3,000 Images Combine for Stunning Milky Way Portrait… , NASA: Test Rocket Damage Caused by Parachute Failure… , Mars: A Halloween Treat in the Night Sky… & First Japanese Cargo Ship Leaves Space Station…

Astronomy Picture of the Week: October 25th-31st, 2009

Astronomy Picture of the Day: October Thirty-First, 2009

Skeptical Quote

The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its polarization: Us vs. Them — the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you’re sensible, you’ll listen to us; and if not, to hell with you. This is nonconstructive. It does not get our message across. It condemns us to permanent minority status.

–Carl Sagan

Check It! Astrology Issue

Hey, guys. This Friday’s post deals with what once was almost indistinguishable from Astronomy: the legacy of the ancient world, and most famously of Claudius Ptolemy— Astrology(from Greek αστρολογία). Considered a superstition and pseudoscience by modern astronomers, there are many different and often mutually conflicting versions of this ‘Art,’ none of which have been demonstrated to actually work in statistical studies. The basic premise is that one’s personal characteristics, and fate, are tied up with the often arbitrary alignments of celestial objects, oddly enough, only stars and planets, only those planets within our solar system, and only visible constellations, never galaxies, neutron stars, black holes, quasars or extrasolar planets for reasons thus far unexplained to my Troythuluness—aside from ad hoc rationalizations however… This post will include links to various web pages dealing with this subject, a few critical of it, and a few of them less so. Hopefully this selection will prove interesting, and give food for thought the next time someone you’ve never met asks you, ‘What’s your sign?’

• A page on Wikipedia concerning this ‘impelling of the stars…’

• Another page on the same on the Signs used in this posts subject matter…

• A more critical take on Astrology on the Skeptic’s Dictionary…

• A news item on DNAIndia.com–Poll results: Astrologers got it wrong, says ANS…

• On BadAstronomy.com, the Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes on Astrology…

• On MNSU.edu…a page on Egyptian Astrology…

• On the site of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific…Activities with Astrology…

• A YouTube video, Derren Brown Astrology (note: this video’s embedding has been disabled)

• A page on Astrology on the site of the North Texas Skeptics…

• On LiveScience: Your Astrological Sign May Not Be What You Think It Is…

The Wood Spider

This is just too funny! LMAO! NOT for arachnophobes…

Astronomy Picture of the Day

October Thirtieth, 2009

Skeptical Quote

No power and no treasure can outweigh the extension of our knowledge.

–Democritus of Abdera

Troythulu’s Fluxus Quo

• Human Evolution: Are Humans Still Evolving? I Think So…

• Paul Haggis Renounces Church of Scientology in Blistering Letter…

• A Possible Explanatory Mechanism for Near Death Experiences (NDEs)…

• A Terrific YouTube Channel for Critical Thinking Videos: QualiaSoup…

• Health Care: Even Leading Conservatives Don’t Believe What They Are Saying…

• Colbert slams racially-tinged remarks by Beck and Limbaugh…

• It’s True! Men literally lose their minds when speaking to pretty women!

• A French court convicts the Church of Scientology for Fraud…

• Taking Back the Language of Morality from the Religious and the Right…

• The American working class is angry, but they’re five years too late…

(Last Updated 20:50, 10/29/2009)

Open-Mindedness–By QualiaSoup

I couldn’t have put it better!

Astronomy Picture of the Day

October Twenty-Ninth, 2009

Skeptical Quote

Chase after the truth like all hell and you’ll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.

–Clarence Darrow

Squirrels Crossing the Street & Selective Thinking

On my way to work this last Monday I couldn’t help but notice that it seemed as if squirrels at the side of the road would wait until the van was almost upon them before rushing across the street in a mad suicidal dash.

Would it be a valid inference to conclude that the local squirrel population was hell-bent on destroying itself, or that the presence of an oncoming vehicle made them risk their lives in this manner, to become road pizza? I suspect not, fortunately for the majority of the urban tree-dwelling wildlife gene pool.

It turns out that I was engaging in a sort of self-deception known as confirmation bias, and since the sight of small animals running across the street stands out more than the vast majority that don’t rush out in front of oncoming traffic, it’s easier to notice and remember, as per the following observation by Francis Bacon:

It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives.

Events that are more cognitively significant, and forgetting, for not having paid much attention to those fauna that stay off the road, is a typical example of this error.

Confirmation bias is a form of selective thinking in which one remembers, more closely considers, or looks for observations affirmative to one’s beliefs, and forgetting, dismissing, ignoring or downplaying data that contradict one’s beliefs. It’s the human tendency to ‘count the hits and ignore the misses,’ and something we all do if we aren’t careful.

Confirmation bias is one reason for many paranormal and occult beliefs, such as that of the powers of alleged psychics, who often use cold reading techniques such as shotgunning, where a lot of random guesses, some of them highly likely to be true for almost anyone (common names, numbers, dates, etc.), are made, during which the psychic relies on his or her subject to forget or dismiss the incorrect guesses and keep in mind only the ones that subjectively seem accurate, thus seeming to the subject to possess special knowledge obtainable only by paranormal means, while really relying on verbal and non-verbal feedback cues unknowingly given by the subject.

This tendency is also responsible for belief in so-called lunar effects, such as the supposed increase in hospital admissions during nights of a full moon, such things as childbirths, or injury from accident or violence. Some hospital staff will pay more notice to those admissions during a full moon, and pay little or no mind to those times during a full moon when admissions aren’t high as being the exceptions that prove the rule.

A perusal of hospital admission records over time will reveal nothing special about these nights. So if I document my observations of the road on the way to work more carefully, and go back over them later, it speaks much better for the survival instincts of the local squirrels that they aren’t risking their lives to become roadkill as much as they seem to be through casual observation. Fnord.

(Last Updated 16:20, 10/30/2009: Grammar & Verbiage Corrections)

Astronomy Picture of the Day

October Twenty-Eighth, 2009

Skeptical Quote

Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion.

–Francis Bacon

As a Cat Person, This is Funny as Hell!

A friend of mine forwarded this to me on MySpace…(thanks, Kilroy!)

Richard Wiseman: Interactive Personality Test

Check this out. More cool stuff by the Quirkologist. Note the words at the top of the placard…

Astronomy Picture of the Day

October Twenty-Seventh, 2009

Skeptical Quote

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

–Isaac Newton

Troythulu’s Nu’z

• Geoengineering wars: another scientist teases out a surprising effect of global deforestation…

• Skeptical Tribute–Happy ( 2^5 X 3-1)th Birthday for Martin Gardner…

• Genome analysis changes diagnosis for critically ill Turkish boy…

• Galaxy cluster smashes distance record to 10.2 billion light years…

• Skeptical topic– the job of an an Exotic Psychologist…

• Is an Unknown Force in the Universe Acting on Dark Matter?…

• Editing Scientists: Science and Policy at the White House…

• Synthetic Cells Shed Biological Insights While Delivering Battery Power…

• Unraveling the Brain’s Secrets: Humility required…

• Alternative Dino-killer theory lands with a thud…

• Galileo’s Contradiction: The Scientist Who Riled the Inquisition Fathered 2 Nuns…

• Long Night Falls over Saturn’s Rings…

• Particle Beams Injected into the Large Hadron Collider…

• How City Noise is Reshaping Birdsong…

• Seeing Previously Invisible Molecules for the First Time…

• Meet future Woman: Shorter, plumper, and more fertile…

• Discordant decisions: A protective habitat is proposed for endangered polar bears, while oil drilling is approved nearby…

• Electronics ‘missing link’ united with rest of family…

• How far could you travel in a spaceship?…

• Gene therapy for inherited sight problems in the young…

Astronomy Picture of the Day

October Twenty-Sixth, 2009