Tomorrow night, the 29th of August, the show “Bad Universe” will premier on the Discovery Channel at 10 o’clock eastern time.  If you don’t live in the eastern US, check your local listings.   The show looks pretty cool, and it stars my friend Phil Plait, (AKA The Bad Astronomer) who is a very active member of the skeptic community and has been debunking bad science for years.   It’s really huge that Phil would get a show like this on a major television network, and it’s definitely a great way for him to help spread skepticism and good science.

More videos from the show can be found here.

One nitpick: Phil can’t actually shoot rays of energy out of his eyes. If he could, I’m pretty sure I would have been zapped by now.

Oh I just love seeing a post like this on a site like “Age Of Autism”, an anti-vaccine, anti-science site that promotes every wacky idea on how to treat autism and what causes it.

Health Fascism in Australia.

The sinister Skeptics group, agents of what used to be CSICOP now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) organised from the US and linked to the major corporate lobby groups, American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) and American Council Against Health Fraud (ACAHF), which is in turn linked to the Australian CAHF) are making ground in Australia. Supported by authoritarian ideological influences in government and Big Pharma, the Skeptics are running constant attacks on homeopathy, natural cancer treatments, those who question vaccination and those who support any form of alternative medicine.

With the present world fiscal crisis, all those linked to Big Pharma and Science are fighting a bitter battle to preserve drug company competitiveness. But where fascist influences in government and health with most force come together is in attacking anyone who speaks out about freedom of choice and expression in relation to vaccination.

Over the last year the international corporate lobby Skeptics, have been behind a campaign against the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN). In 2009, one of their trolls, a lay person with no standing in medicine or government complained about the web site of the AVN to the office of the State Government funded Health Care Complaints commission (HCCC) an organisation that accepts complaints against groups found be giving out false information about health.

The remit of the HCCC, did not actually cover parent groups which discussed the pros and cons of vaccination, so the State government slightly changed the remit to satisfy the Skeptics. The government then proceeded with a year long investigation into Meryl Dorey the woman who established and runs the AVN and the AVN itself.

Dorey was asked to answer their first 30 odd page report against her and the organisation, within a few weeks. She did this with a magnificent document that argued every point with brilliance. The complaint investigation actually argued against almost every sentence that had appeared on the AVN web site. If the AVN had said that vaccines contained toxic elements, such as mecury and aluminuim the HCCC argued with pseudo science that this was not true, giving pages of bogus evidence to support the vaccine manufacturers.

Oh how very sinister!
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Back from The Amazing Meeting 8, which was indeed Amazing, I’ve found a pile of work to get to even as I get over the modest jetlag that traveling across three time zones will cause.   Luckilly, I don’t have to describe the event all by myself because others have.   Better still, my friends at the Greater Edmonton Skeptics Society (GESS) have put together a roundup of links from other blogs and news sites describing the amazing events of the Amazing Meeting!

Check it out here

Having returned from Las Vegas and The Amazing Meeting, an annual conference on skepticism hosted by the James Randi Educational Foundaton, I’ve been very eager to start posting about my experiences at the meeting.   Unfortunately, I’ve been fairly busy, as apparently going to Las Vegas for a week tends to result in a lot of work piling up.   In general, the meeting was attended by mainstream skeptics, who may not agree on everything but tended to agree on well proven things, like the fact that the US Apollo program did indeed send men to the moon and back.

This was not quite 100%, however, as at least one conspiracy-obsessed heckler did attend, and attempted repeatedly to heckle Phil Plait and Adam Savage.   Jarrah White is about as committed to the belief that the Apollo moon landings were faked as one can be.   He’s already produced (at last count) 393 Youtube videos on the subject – all of them absolutely stunning in their lack of technical and scientific knowledge.

I recognized White’s voice from the videos as soon as he got up to question Adam Savage. That snooty, nasal, sharp whine with an Australian accent was hard not to recognize, especially as I’ve seen plenty of his videos before. Apparently he came all the way from Australia to try to get up in the face of those who he considers the conspirators behind the faked moon landing

His behavior was about as strange as one might expect. I was concerned initially that he might try to rush the stage or do something else completely crazy – after all, Apollo conspiracy theorists have been known to physically threaten astronauts and do all manner of other crazy things. I alerted the staff and security to his background to be on the safe side, but luckily he didn’t try anything too violent.

Instead, he repeatedly insisted that he get a sit-down interview with Phil Plait. Phil was quite civil, and informed him that to get scheduled interview time he would need to register as press. The Amazing Meeting does not have very exclusive standards for who is given press status – bloggers and podcasters can easily get it. When he was asked for his information on this topic, he repeatedly made a scene about not wanting to reveal his background. I’m not sure how things worked out, but eventually he got a press pass and thus could get his interview. Unfortunately for him, Phil Plait decided to decline the request. After rudely interrupting Phil, who was trying to converse with others at the conference, the Little Dude from the Moon finally started yelling at Phil that he thought his answers were dishonest and he was a liar. Phil said something about how he didn’t believe he could say anything that would change the Little Dude’s mind and that if the Little Dude felt that way, he was not interested in sitting down for an interview.

I’m just glad that no punches were thrown. As he came from Australia, it seemed a reasonable concern that he would not want to make such a trip without getting in at least one dramatic moment or big confrontation. I did challenge him openly to a debate. He never responded to this. Surprised? In fact, I only saw him around on the first day of the three-day event. No word on whether he left early or went into hiding or what.
He has also already posted at least one video from the event:

It should be noted that Adam Savage is not an absolute expert on this topic. There is actually a greater context to this. Phil Plait may have been able to answer this, but Jarrah managed to burn that bridge a long time ago.

Debunking his ridiculous claim:

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First it was Montel Williams, now another major media promoter of psychics fraud is leaving the airwaves.   Larry King has announced that he will be leaving his show on CNN.   Of course,  his mind left the show some time in the mid 1990’s.   Larry King, for those who live outside the US, is a TV show host who does a lot of interviews and generally doesn’t contribute much to them, but yet has managed to be a major force on television for many years.

Decidedly non-skeptical, Larry King has allowed his show to be used by everyone from Jenny McCarthy and her anti-vaccine movement to Sylvia Browne and other self-proclaimed psychics.   His interviews tend to pander to them, even kissing their collective asses.   Whether it be UFO’s or claims of powers to find missing persons, Larry King can’t seem to see reality from lies and lets his television show become the platform for all kinds of bull.   To skeptics… well, we’re lucky we ever get represented on his show.

In this clip you’ll notice James Randi pauses for a moment after Larry King states that Sylvia Browne “described the accused villain pretty well.”   In fact, she had not described him well at all and had said Shawn Hornesbeck was dead, despite his being found alive years later.   This interview was actually done during The Amazing Meeting 5 and as such, I was able to speak to Randi afterward.   He paused because he was waiting for the punchline, so to speak, expecting Larry King to say something more, since his statement was so absurd.   Had I been in that situating, I’m not even sure I would have known how to react.

I can offer another personal story to shed some light on what kind of pandering Larry King is prone to:
Shortly after this, Larry again hosted a “psychic” to defend Sylvia Browne. His guest stated that psychic visions are not always clear and that is why sometimes things like these errors happen.

The show took phone calls and I called in. Actually, I put the number on my speed dial and dialed repeatedly. It took more than 50 calls but I finally got through and talked to one of the producers who screened the calls.
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One week ago today I attended NECSS, the North East Conference on Science and Skepticism. The event was held in New York City and attracted several hundred local science and skepticism enthusiasts. All in all it was a great event, both for the presentations and for the general crowd and socialization which occurs between lectures and panels and after the formal event.   This was the second NECSS conference, the first one being held back in October of 2009.

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe did a live podcast to kick off the event and were followed by a number of different panels and speakers.   I was happy to see James Randi was able to make it to the event.  Mr. Randi is one of the most outspoken and iconic members of the skeptical movement.  Randi helped found what is currently the modern skeptical community back in the 1970’s, a time when a lot of questionable research was beginning to come back into vogue.

Randi is the type whose always ready and willing to attend any event that can help increase education and awareness.  Last year he had planned on attending NECSS but had to cancel and appeared only in a pre-taped video due to his health problems.   At the time Mr. Randi had just been diagnosed with colon cancer and had to have a section of his large intestine removed.   This was followed by chemotherapy for several months.   Thankfully, Mr. Randi was looking perfectly at NECSS last week and it appears that the cancer was taken care of before it could spread and become a bigger problem.

As with last year, the event was MC’ed by Jamy Ian Swiss and featured the talent of George Hrab.  D.J. Gorthe, the program director of the Center for Inquiry and president of the JREF also contributed as did Steve Mirsky of Scientific American.

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As a followup from the previous post on the fraudulent bomb detector, here’s a video from CBS news featuring one an interview with a Pentagon security expert on….. hey wait a second, I know that guy.    That’s Hal Bidlack.   Go Hal!   (Hal is a friend of this site and MC’s the annual Amazing Meeting for the JREF, among other things)

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Have you ever met someone who just keeps saying things so dumb that you can barely contain your disdain?   Sure, you might try to be polite, but after hearing someone state, with authority enough bullshit about astrology, homeopathy, conspiracy theories and other bullshit, you just can’t bite your tongue anymore.

That’s the story of Tim Michin’s “Storn,” a nine-minute spoken word piece about a dinner party in which a stereotypical empty-headed woman named “storm” spouts out enough bull to set off a storm inside any skeptic.   Michin does a great job of painting a picture of the events with his words, but now there’s one better, because out very good friend Tracy King and a dedicated staff of animators is preparing to release the “Storm Movie,” which, as the name implies, turns the piece into a film – an animated one.

At the moment only the trailer is out, as the finishing touches are being put on the full version.   Here’s a taste of it:

Perhaps it’s a bit early to critique something that’s only being shown as a preview, but if the rest of the film lives up to this then expect greatness.   In addition to being a great story, they’ve managed to achieve a very unique, yet at the same time classic style to the visuals.   It combines smooth motion and text with a kind of planned roughness and an excellent psuedo-3d layering effect.    Most who watch this kind of a thing probably won’t stop to think about how much effort goes into it, because when done properly, it just flows and you don’t even notice how well the text bounces and how the angular momentum transfers when a pill is swallowed.    However, I did, and props to all those involved!

I’m told that this was done primarily in Adobe After Effects and that most of the animation is actually individually edited frames.  Wow!   It must have taken a real lot of tweaking to make it so smooth.    I especially love how the camera shakes with a little elasticity.

But before I pick it apart any further, I’ll just stop and say that the style and flow rocks and I’m looking very forward to seeing the whole thing. After all, the Mona Lisa is best appreciated as a masterpiece and not by analyzing all the chemical components of the paint.

For those who don’t know, I just got back from The Amazing Meeting London.   I would blog about the meeting, post some photos, describe my thoughts and observations and thank the organizers and guests.   However, I’m tired and still have a bunch of things to do.   Thus I’ll just point out that the event was covered in the BBC News Magazine/Website.

Overall, the coverage looks pretty descent.   I could nitpick a few portions of the news story, for example, where it called James Randi “high priest James Randi” of the skeptic movement.   This one gets under my skin a little bit, because while I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Randi for all that he has done, it makes the movement sound a lot like  a cult.  Randi is great because he really helped found the modern movement of skepticism, getting attention way back in the 1970’s, when being a skeptic was decidedly not in vogue.   The JREF is very unique in its ability to bring together everyone from students to entertainers to research scientists, all working toward a common good and exchanging their ideas.

That said, empirical skepticism is not monolithic.  Plenty of skeptics disagree with each other and generally are very prone to be turned off by the idea of signing onto a group that demands universal agreement.   While I think Randi is great, I’ve disagreed with him quite a few times – although in the grand scheme of things, I tend to agree much more often than I disagree.

It’s also interesting that the article focuses so much on conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists.  This is an interesting area that often leads to disagreement even amongst skeptics.   Conspiracy theories are not always false, of course.  Conspiracies do happen, and therefore it’s impossible to dismiss accusations that a politician may have accepted bribes or that a corporation conspired to obstruct a criminal investigation.   There are also completely nutty conspiracy theories, but it can be very hard to know exactly where to draw the line when it comes to what is reasonable.

Like many others, I’m also not crazy about the title “skeptic.”   If anyone can think of a better one, please let me know!   The article mentions the word “rationalist,” which I suppose is okay, although it would appear to invoke Rand and her philosophy and the word “bright” which I’ve never heard before in this context.

I didn’t mention this before because it was extremely last-minute, but I’m currently in London for TAM London. I won’t be back until Tuesday at the earliest. While I do have a laptop and internet access, there’s so much to do I doubt I’ll be spending much time blogging. If you happen to live in the London area and would like to get a pint, then leave a comment and I’ll try to check them fairly regularly. My phone does not work here, unfortunately.

There’s so much to do and so many people to meet plus there is so much to see here as well, that I’d rather spend my time experiencing it than on the internet, especially given that I will be headed back on Monday night.

Also, a big thanks to everyone involved, including, but not limited to: Ben Goldacre of badscience.net, Phil Plait of badastronomy.com, Adam Savage of Mythbusters, George Hrab and of course my good friend Tracy King, who organized the event.