Monthly Archives: November 2010
Arthur Benjamin does “Mathemagic”
Art Benjamin, in my view one of the best math instructors I know, puts the magic in mathematics with some very cool tricks and mental calculation tips.
Tribute to Julia Sweeney
Julia Sweeney takes on Deepak Chopra and the New Age co-opt of Quantum Mechanics. I had a lot of fun putting this together. From Julia Sweeney’s one-woman show “Letting Go of God.” More info at http://www.juliasweeney.com
WTF?!? Too Much Gas For Evolutionists? << Really??
More humerositude from the creationist camp with literally astronomical science gaffes that would make Carl Sagan spin in his grave with embarrassment that one of his own species would so debase himself by uttering them in all apparent seriousness. Yes, Jupiter ‘defies the explanations of Evolutionary Naturalism™’ *giggle*…this is a hunk’a burnin’ silly…
Jennifer Lin improvs piano magic
A young concert pianist and composer cuts loose wif teh mewzikal majicks…enjoy.
Symphony of Science: A Wave of Reason
This is a new release by Symphony of Science, an awesome video with a stellar autotuned cast. If I actually believed in heroes, these people would be them.
Sadly, I merely respect them, but they knew, and those still alive know, more than I. I owe a nod to Little Kitten from Podblack Cat for pointing me in its direction last Monday.
Skeptics and Atheists together in the Rationalist community are both cursed and blessed to live in interesting times indeed, for in no other era perhaps save the first Enlightenment has the world seen such a resurgence of reason and science in our global culture.
There are more organized skeptical groups, and like-minded individual grass-roots activists in the world today than at any previous point in the last couple of centuries.
And the advocates of unreason are lashing out in fear, rage, and desperation. It will be fascinating in any case to see which side comes out intact when the dust clears. But enough of my babbling–Enjoy.
“A Wave of Reason” is the seventh installment in the Symphony of Science music video series. It is intended to promote scientific reasoning and skepticism in the face of growing amounts of pseudoscientific pursuits, such as Astrology and Homeopathy, and also to promote the scientific worldview as equally enlightening as religion. It features Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, Lawrence Krauss, Carolyn Porco, Richard Dawkins, Richard Feynman, Phil Plait, and James Randi.
More science music videos can be found at http://symphonyofscience.com.
Enjoy!
~John
john @ symphonyofscience.com
Lyrics:
Russell:
When you are studying any matter
Or considering any philosophy
Ask yourself only: what are the facts,
And what is the truth that the facts bear out
Sagan:
Science is more than a body of knowledge
It’s a way of thinking
A way of skeptically interrogating the universe
If we are not able to ask skeptical questions
To be skeptical of those in authority
Then we’re up for grabs
Shermer:
In all of science we’re looking for a balance
between data and theory
Harris:
You don’t have to delude yourself
With Iron age fairy tales
Porco:
The same spiritual fulfillment
That people find in religion
Can be found in science
By coming to know, if you will, the mind of God
Krauss:
The real world, as it actually is,
Is not evil, it’s remarkable
And the way to understand the physical world
is to use science
Dawkins:
There is a new wave of reason
Sweeping across America, Britain, Europe, Australia
South America, the Middle East and Africa
There is a new wave of reason
Where superstition had a firm hold
Plait:
Teach a man to reason
And he’ll think for a lifetime
Sagan:
Cosmology brings us face to face with the deepest mysteries
With questions that were once treated only
in religion and myth
The desire to be connected with the cosmos
Reflects a profound reality
But we are connected; not in the trivial ways
That Astrology promises, but in the deepest ways
Feynman:
I can’t believe the special stories that have been made up
About our relationship to the universe at large
Look at what’s out there; it isn’t in proportion
Russell:
Never let yourself be diverted
By what you wish to believe
But look only and surely
At what are the facts
Randi:
Enjoy the fantasy, the fun, the stories
But make sure that there’s a clear sharp line
Drawn on the floor
To do otherwise is to embrace madness
Things that Irk Me Thusly
I’m going to lay out a few things that vex, annoy, irritate and to some extent mildly anger me. This will not be nice, friendly, kindly, accommodating, or seem particularly civil. In some cases I might get downright abrasive, but there are things that need to be said as frankly as I can be about them. So, I’m going to put down the things that bother me the most without actually being so egregious that they put me into a frothing rage. I’ll save that for later. I’m just as prone to dislike as anyone, perhaps even more than most, so here it is: The things that make me slightly cross, and overall, serve to darken my mood:
- I’m annoyed with people who tell me that they hope to hell that their god strikes me down, and still pretend that they are pious followers of a kind, forgiving god who loves everybody unconditionally…on the condition that they accept Him.
- I’m annoyed by those who tell me that I must believe in their invisible Devil because I don’t believe in their equally invisible God, even though I find the idea of believing in an invisible anything a comical waste of my time.
- I’m annoyed by fringe-claimants who suppress all dissent, squash all criticism on their websites, even to the point of making commenting on their sites impossible, and who get off on vilifying and demonizing their critics as intellectually and morally inferior, while whining endlessly about alleged ad hominems and perceived personal attacks.
- I’m irritated by those believers who repeatedly ignore points that their critics make, and attempt to shoot down points that they don’t, both without even bothering to read or listen to what they actually saying.
- I find myself irritated with fringe-claimants who smugly attribute faith, orthodoxy, or dogmatic fervency to their critics without even showing that they even know what these are.
- I’m annoyed by believers who accuse skeptics of faulty arguments and hair-splitting about minutae while happily committing the very same themselves.
- I’m annoyed by believers on their high-horse who smugly admonish skeptics to question their own beliefs and assumptions, having no clue that this is what skeptics generally do, without ever attempting to follow their own advice.
- I’m annoyed by intolerant ideological demagogues who insist that they alone know the Truth™ and the Right Way To Live™ and try tirelessly to mislead or force by law or violence others to believe and act as they do, yet claim the high-grounds of moral values and patriotism.
- I’m irritated by religious believers who plant literature deliberately intended for proselytizing to others in publicly funded libraries, and the employees of these libraries who allow them to do it.
- I’m annoyed by people who read implications into arguments that do not actually exist where they are seen, and who intentionally ignore what the arguer is actually saying as well as how it is said.
- I’m annoyed by willfully ignorant ideological bigots who insist that the verbatim text of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution neither says nor implies freedom from religion as well as freedom of it. Here’s a suggestion: Read the damn thing, Gomer.
- I’m irritated by paranormal believers who have to explicitly and defensively state that they are “open-minded, not closed-minded,” when they are just being credulous, and at once, very closed-minded indeed regarding the real world that they cannot accept.
- I’m annoyed by people who widen the definition of the word ‘religion’ to derisively mean anything that disagrees with their opinions, beliefs and values, broadening the term so much that it means everything and therefore means nothing at all.
- I’m irritated by pseudoscience believers who smugly assume that the limits of their intuition and personal knowledge define the limits of reality, that anything they haven’t heard of doesn’t exist or hasn’t been done, while accusing skeptics of the very same, and cluelessly thinking themselves to be well-read and wise.
- I’m annoyed with self-righteous, narcissistic people who want to drag the rest of civilization down to their level of Dark Age, or New Age, superstition while painting themselves as being on the side of life, love, truth, hope, respect, kindness, light, and right.
- I’m annoyed with people who reject or ignore the very thinking, process, and methods, indeed the very workings of science, medicine and technology while freely enjoying the fruits of the hard-won labors of research workers.
- I’m irritated by the conspiratorial thinking of cranks who look first to the supposed motivations, biases, vested interests, beliefs, attitudes and personal characteristics of their critics, and only as an afterthought, often not ever, addressing the actual arguments and evidence their critics put forth, and call it ‘skepticism.’
- I’m annoyed by those who demand that skeptics examine “all of the relevant literature” on the subject of their pet belief, to be taken seriously, when this is simply not possible due to the vast amount of literature on any given topic, most of which is garbage.
- I find irritating cutesy-talking, condescending people who refer to nonbelievers as ‘blind,’ ‘naive,’ ‘sheeple,’ ‘stupid,’ ‘pathetic,’ ‘orthodox,’ ‘doctrinaire,’ ‘stubborn,’ ‘obstructionist,’ or ‘dogmatically fervent,’ to satisfy their need to feel superior to the rest of benighted humanity.
- I get mildly angry with whiny members of religions that enjoy undue political privilege in this country who moan and bitch and play the ‘persecution card’ every time someone criticizes the hypocrisy of their leaders who can’t follow their own moral rules and get themselves into scandal after scandal because of it. If you can’t abide by your own insane Bronze Age rules, you have no right to expect everyone else to.
…and finally…
- I take exception to alleged psychics who seriously think themselves to belong to a special beleaguered subset of humanity called ‘psychic people’ and who have the nerve to get defensive about ‘X-Men’ references when they bring it up in a public forum…’Nuff said.
UPDATE: Where is the Murder Charge??? The death of Marcia Powell…. « Virginian Opinions
When I first wrote my blog for this I missed a small but rather important fact. Marcia Powell actually died in 2009. However, the prosecutor for the case didn’t decide until just recently not to prosecute the officers involved. A year has passed, so I contacted the Middle Ground Prison Reform advocacy group in Arizona to find out if any reforms other than improvements noted in other articles had come about…
