Click here if your browser does not support embedded videos to see the Yotube page.

Some Background:

You can also read more about this by searching Google News for the numerous stories this has generated.

If you are at all involved in the skeptic, atheist or science advocacy movement, there’s a good chance you’ve received some communications from a man by the name of Dennis Markuze. He sometimes goes by the name David Mabus and has been sending out various threats, hate messages and just spam for almost twenty years. Now 36, it seems Markuze started in the early days of the internet, spamming bulletin boards and mailing lists, before the web was even established.

His targets include anyone associated with skepticism, atheism or who he believes has somehow come out against his rather twisted belief system. He’s a rather big fan of Nostradamus who he seems to believe has predicted the end of Western Society. He’s also at least something of a doomsday “end-is-near” believer. He commonly talks about events like the attacks of 9/11 as being some kind of indictment against modern society.

His spam seems to come in waves on this site. He often will send dozens of messages. Most of these are blocked by the automatic spam guards, as mentioned here. He also sporadically e-mails me and sends tweets addressed to me. He does this to almost anyone who’s email address he can get and who he associates with skeptics or atheists. This includes prominent skeptics like Phil Plait, PZ Meyers and James Randi, but also people indirectly associated with them, such as James Randi’s former office manager and people who have mentioned these individuals favorably in blog posts.

He actually started spamming me after I wrote an article which was published by the JREF in which, amongst other things, I called Nostradamus vague and unimpressive. He didn’t like that, and upon seeing that I trashed psychics and other such phenomena on my page decided to go add me to his spam list.

Markuze’s basic belief is that he is part of some kind of propaganda war with skeptics and those who dismiss prophets and psychics. He believes he is a gifted prophet who has an important role in proving that Nostradamus and others are 100% correct.   He believes those who speak ill of them are committing blasphemy and must be stopped.

(more…)

Tonight the ABC News program Nightline Primetime will be featuring a segment called Beyond Belief: Psychic Power.

I happened to have the opportunity to go to attend the taping of a portion of this program. It’s actually a bit of a long story but they needed 12 men to participate in a psychic evaluation. I volunteered but it turned out they had more than 12 as it was (additional persons were called in case someone could not make it.) Thus I became an “alternate” and ultimately was not used for their evaluation group.

However, I still did get to hang around and help out a bit in the psychic evaluation, which was done by the James Randi Educational Foundation as part of their Million Dollar Challenge. Several self-proclaimed psychics were tested to see if they could read the test subjects accurately. I can’t actually tell you if any won the million dollars. You will have to watch to find out.

I’m really looking forward to seeing this show. Although it’s hard to tell what it will be after it is finally edited, the producers and reporters were generally very friendly to the skeptical side of the story. It’s a rarity to have skeptic organizations made a part of any media report on the paranormal and when they are, they usually are only given a chance for a token comment. In this case, skeptics were a major part of the production and the producers were extremely accommodating of the JREF’s protocol to assure the tests were valid and properly controlled.

I feel very privileged to have been a part of this production.  You *might* even see me in the background when the psychics are being lead into their interviews.  I don’t know if the footage with me in the background is actually going to be used.

The show will be airing at 10 PM Eastern, 9 Central in the US.

Check local listings outside these time zones.  If you are outside the US, the episode will likely be available after it airs.

Finally, for what it’s worth, if anyone happens to come out and claim the psychic tests were rigged, then all I can say is that I’ll attest to the fact that they were not.   Documentation of this can be provided, of course, but I’ll also say that I was there, I saw the items being places in envelopes and the sequestering of the test subjects.   Everything was double and triple checked, agreed upon protocols were followed to the T.

There is a segment of the show where a psychic works with pictures of persons in sealed envelopes.   Each picture was placed in two folders and then in the envelope.   *I* personally put them in the envelopes.  This was witnessed and verified by an ABC news producer, production assistants and members of the JREF staff.   They were then sealed and placed in a secure area until they were used.   This is how the challenge is always done:  extreme measures are taken to make sure it’s unquestionably valid.

Regular readers may have noticed that there have not been as many fresh posts recently.   Unfortunately, this may continue for a few more days.   Having returned from Las Vegas just a week ago, I’m now in the middle of moving to a new apartment.   That seems to be occupying the majority of my time.   There are things at my parents house they want out, after I stored them there for many years, and now they have to be transported to the bigger place I now have.   There are boxes to be packed and unpacked, a few trips to Ikea and then there’s the internet and utilities to set up.   There are also change of address forms to be filled out at the bank, the DMV and elsewhere.

And then I also have a day job on top of that.

So my apologies if I don’t have the time for new content for a few days.   I haven’t forgotten about the site, there are just other things to do.

Note:  I’m trying something new here.   Thus far all the posts you’ve seen on this site have been written by me, Stephen Packard.    Recently I got an email from someone interested in authoring a post on the production of gasoline.  He thought this site would be a good venue for such an essay.   So here it is.

How it’s Made – From Pipeline to Pump

by, Jeremy Fordham

(more…)

If you happen to be at involved at all in the organized skepticism community, then you likely know about “elevatorgate.”   Basically it’s a rather unfortunate series of events involving Rebecca Watson, Richard Dawkins and others.    I’m intentionally not linking to the quotes (you can find them easily on Google if you so choose) but I will paraphrase the situation:

Watson was at a hotel for some conference she spoke at.  She stayed out late, going to the bar or whatever.  Then, at 4 AM she went back to her room, taking an elevator.   Some guy from the conference was on the elevator.   He tried to strike up a conversation.  He said he found her interesting and suggested she might want to come back to her room for a cup of coffee.  She declined.   They exited the elevator and that was that.

Now according to Watson this made her very uncomfortable.  It was an elevator, which is the quintessential (if not factually supported) place for rape to occur.  She was a woman and he a man and our society is one in which women are most often the victim of sexual assault and men most often the aggressors.   It was forward and the act of inviting a woman back to your room in a hotel has some obvious undertones (even if it didn’t necessarily mean anything other than he actually wanted to have some coffee.)

Richard Dawkins took Watson to task on this with some rather sarcastic comments which seem to be intended to point out that she really wasn’t a victim of anything and in a world where women are having their genitals cut in Africa, can’t drive cars in much of the Middle East, are sold into slavery in the Middle East and Southeast Asia and where many places still operate in a near-feudal manner, Watson is not really in that bad of shape and should just get over the fact that someone asked her an awkward question in an elevator, which probably was not the best venue.

What followed was a lot of really far-out feminists coming to Watson’s defense and attacking Dawkins.  They said he didn’t understand because he was a heterosexual Caucasian male from a privilege background, while Watson is a … heterosexual Caucasian female from a privilege background.   They repeatedly said how men “Just don’t get it” – that women live in a world of terror where every guy they encounter is a potential rapist and where the very act of making a social invitation means they must fear that you are planning on assaulting them.   Some either didn’t get Dawkin’s sarcasm and disgust for the culture of victim-hood that has permeated western society or thought he was somehow putting down women who actually do suffer horrible acts of violence by asking those who were asked to coffee to grow some thicker skin.

Of course, I’m a man so I can’t ever understand this.  Somehow others can know what I can understand but I can’t understand what they can.   Somehow they know what my background is and my life experiences but I don’t know there experiences.   And also, apparently every woman knows “what it’s like to be a woman” because there is only one single experience of being a woman, it’s not like, they are all different or anything, or like there is no one ‘anywoman’ who can tell you what the experience is for all XX chromosome members of humanity.

Oh and if you see a paradox here, that just proves you’re already a bigot and a rapist.

But before going into this any further, there’s a question nobody seems to have asked:  DO RAPES ACTUALLY HAPPEN IN HOTEL ELEVATORS?

Sure, they have happened.  In the history of human race and the billions of hotel stays that have been made, they have happened.   But lets get something straight:  people have also been struck by meteors on at least two occasions.

As Wattson suggested, if you Google “Hotel Elevator Assault,” you will find plenty of pages, but then take a closer look.  Many of them are about how to avoid it, some of them are about her and others simply have all three words together in the same page, such as “Kobe’s accuser said after the assault, she went to the hotel elevator” or “The alleged attacker was seen on a security camera exiting the elevator on the 11th floor.”

But what about actual occurrences of women being raped or assaulted in hotel elevators.   Is it common?   Sure, it’s commonly feared.   People fear dying because of nuclear power plant accidents too.  People fear having their throat slit by an intruder in their bed at night.   Yet these are pretty small risks.

(more…)

I recently got an email and I figured I might as well share it.   It relates to this posting:
Panic and madness in a radiophobic world

Subject: Blog posting March 18th

My name is Emily Peck. I am writing to you in reference to a blog posting from March 18th called “Panic and madness in a radiophobic world” in which you unfairly judge me based on one article you read. If living 4 kilometres from 6 nuclear reactors during a 9 earthquake causes me to panic or be worried does that make me an attention seeker? Does being upset about losing all my possesions including my car make me an attention seeker? Does me using the media to help raise $70,000 for my community in Japan and not a cent for myself make me an attention seeker?

You cannot possibly understand what we went through on March 11 and the days after. If you were standing for 6 hours outdoors 4kms from 3 reactors approaching meltdown would you not get checked out at the hospital? I suppose the post traumatic stress myself and the residents of my town must be attention seeking too?

I have returned to Japan and am living as a nuclear refugee in the hotels with the other refugees as we cannot return home and we possibly never can. I am eating Fukushima produce and drinking the water. I still live in Fukushima with my community but live in a different location. I returned to Japan to cheer up the children who have had such a terrible time and I work with them everyday at their school but I suppose that makes me an attention seeker too?

I am asking you very nicely to please remove that blog entry – not the whole thing just the unfair, nasty comments about me and that article. If you have a heart, I am sure you will as my friends in Japan and I have been through enough without having unfair judgements cast upon our fear of the nuclear power plant and what might happen next. My friend pointed me in the direction of this blog and I kind of wish he didnt due to the angst it has caused me, so please consider my request.

Thanking you in anticipation
Emily Peck

My response:

(more…)

If that headline sounds a bit grandiose , it’s because it is.   We’ve achieve a victory, a big one.   By the ingenuity and effort of mankind a tiny destructive organism that recently existed by the trillions has been wiped from the face of the earth.   This hasn’t happened many times before, but when it does, it’s a huge victory, and one which we hope to repeat many more times.

In this case what has been eradicated is not a human disease but one that decimated livestock.   Rinderpest, or the “German Cattle Plague” was a virus related to measles but attacking bovines, such as cattle and some related species.   At times outbreaks had decimated both meat and dairy herds around the world.  It has destroyed herds since at least Roman times and even in the later half of the 20th century, it was causing billions of dollars in damage.   It ruined farmers and herders and epidemic levels in Africa contributed to famine in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

For centuries, the battle to control Rinderpest met with some success through quarantine and inspection for the disease.   Yet the threat continued to exist.  Various vaccines were developed, with early experiments going back as far as the 1700’s.   Sir Arnold Theiler is credited with producing the first fully effective general purpose vaccine for Rinderpest in the early 20th century.   More advanced vaccines would be developed throughout the century.   Organized international efforts toward eradication began in 1920 when the World Organization for Animal Health was formed with the specific goal of controlling Rinderpest.

And now it’s gone!

VIA CNN:

Deadly animal disease that shaped history is eradicated
- It decimated herds and caused disaster, devastation and death associated with the fall of the Roman Empire, the French Revolution and the colonization of Africa.

But after years of global efforts, rinderpest — German for cattle plague — doesn’t exist anymore. It is the first animal disease to be eradicated and only the second disease ever, after smallpox in 1980.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization declared Tuesday that the world was rid of rinderpest.

“This is of tremendous benefit to people and is also a relief for a lot of animal suffering,” said Peter Cowen, an associate professor of epidemiology and public health at North Carolina State University.

“The eradication of rinderpest in the animal health world is every bit as courageous an effort and as creative an effort as was the eradication of smallpox,” he said.

Rinderpest is not exactly a household name. For starters, it did not exist in America. And it affected only cloven-hoofed beasts — cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, yaks.

Animals don’t have silly ideas about vaccines causing autism or being made by the evil corporations that spread chemtrails and try to use microwave weapons to make us buy transfat-containing irradiated GMO products from Haliburton and the Freemasons.   Most farmers know a thing or two about animal health and realize how important protecting their herds are.   So there are no issues with eradicating these diseases by vaccination as there are in humans.

But we *can* do this with human diseases.  We did it with Small Pox and we can do it with Polio, and Measles and Mumps and Rubella and others.

As mentioned on this site before…

It’s really no surprise.   Aside from a few really really wacked out fundamentalists and the commenter named “anonymous” – who pretty much believes the sky is falling all the time, it would seem that predictions of the end days are not coming true.

Now to be perfectly fair, the 21st is not entirely over and they were a little vague on what time this would all go down.   According to some sites it’s 6 o’clock PM, but others just seem to say it’s May 21.      Then there’s the little issue of time zones.   Obviously the world does not experience May 21 at exactly the same time.   In fact, as of this writing, may 21 is already over for much of the Pacific, as May 22 dawns across the International Dateline.

According to Harold Camping, the old fool who came up with this idiocy it actually will follow the time zones.

Via the Times Union (quoting Camping):

I have learned that Judgment Day will begin in one part of the world, when they arise on May 21, about six o’clock Standard Time. And then every time another city or an area of the world comes to May 21, at about six o’clock, they will be in the Day of Judgment. And so the rest of the world that has not arrived there yet will know that it is occurring, many hours before it comes to their nation. On May 21, beginning at the International Date Line, the moment that first earthquake happens, the whole world will know that Judgment Day has come. It will follow the sun, from east to west.

(more…)

Only on rare occasions do I ever take down a post that I have made on this site. This is one of them.

While I continue to stand by the conclusion of the post, that workers at Fukushima face a small risk of increased cancer and that there is a low likelihood that any will die as a result, I had to reconsider the quality of the post.

Simply put: There was at least one basic mathmatical error in it, and many of the estimates and numbers given were just too hazy.  Too many of the “best guesses” were not good enough and the avaliable data was too sparse to go very far with.  

Upon giving the issue more thought, I simply decided that the post was too speculative, too vague and not of a high enough quality to put out there, especially with the potential that it could be cited by others and spread information which may ultimatey be proven false.

I apologize to readers for publishing something that, upon better consideraton, probably should never have been published.  I have been quick to critisize the media for over-speculation in areas where there is not enough data avaliable.

That said, I hipe to have a similar post on the risks to Fukushima workers in the near future.  It will require substansially more research and consideration than the previous one.

Of all the individuals I have crossed paths with in my life, few have left an impression greater than Alison Smith.  In addition to being one of my closest and best friends, Alison is one of the most remarkable ladies you may ever meet.   She has contributed enormously to the empirical skepticism movement, initially by exposing a number of misrepresentations of the popular show “Ghost Hunters” and later as a staff member of the James Randi Educational Foundation.   She has also worked as a private investigator, security guard and written for skeptical organizations.

Alison is an amazingly talented writer who has finally broken into the mainstream with the publication of her first Kindle-downloadable story. It was considerably harder than you might think to actually get the story to be accepted and published on the platform, but it will not be the last great work of this author.

You can download it here for $2.99:

187 eBook by Alison Michelle Smith

‘187′ is the story of Jimmy, an ex-cop turned gun runner living in Las Vegas who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. As Jimmy struggles to reconcile his actions with his philosophies on life, he searches for connections in religion, pop culture, and numbers.

$2.99 might seem like a lot for a single short story, but I assure you it’s worth it. Not only will it be supporting the budding writing career of a young author, but the story is actually very good. It’s extremely good. It’s surprisingly good.

I have little doubt that Alison Smith will go onto write many more gripping stories and likely eventually novels.   Therefore if you buy this story, you will likely be able to look back and say you bought the first work of an amazing author before she was well known.   It could be as great an honor as having purchased the first edition of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.

Don’t have a Kindle?   Don’t worry.  A reader application is available for PC’s and for a wide variety of mobile devices, including iPhones, iPads, Android phones and other devices.