Q1 2010 / public domain
* This little weblog provides notes on conspiracy theories, quack science, strange events, general madness, and the occasional musing. New postings are released weekly. NOT to be taken seriously -- I don't, and I make no comment on it outside of this page.
* WHEN I BECOME AN EVIL OVERLORD: I was thinking over the infamous Evil Overlord list and realized how applicable it is to conspiracy theories. While the Evil Overlord list basically applies to comic books and movies, conspiracy theories operate at about the same level of intellectual accomplishment, and so a somewhat customized Evil Overlord list applies very neatly. That said, when I am an Evil Overlord:
* PHANTOM TIME: It's sort of nice to be able get away from conspiracy theorists screaming at the top of their lungs to actually find out about some really wack theories that nobody cares about, and I was interested when I saw a brief video on DISCOVERY CHANNEL Online that listed a number of famous scientific hoaxes and conspiracies.
Some of them were arrests of the usual subjects -- the Cardiff Giant, the Roswell UFO tales -- but they also mentioned a "Phantom Time" hypothesis. Huh? I looked into it and it turns out that it is the contraption of a German fellow named Heribert Illig, who believes that the years 614:911 CE never actually happened. Double-huh? Apparently Illig got this idea from the fact that the Julian calendar, introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BCE, was off in its figurings of time by a little less than day per century -- but when the Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1582, it only adjusted the date by ten days. Illig figured that it should have been 13 days and so three centuries had been lost.
OK, as is usual with good "smoking guns", there's an explanation, in that for whatever reasons the reference "time zero" for the Gregorian adjustment of the calendar was not 46 BCE but 325 CE -- so no problem, right? However, having started out with a thin lead, Illig then busily shored it up by attacking dating methods and the validity of historical records, with discrepancies in the historical records being accounted for by ... wait for it ... a far-ranging conspiracy.
Apparently the years in question are a bit thinly covered by records and there are known to be falsified documents from that time, but then again historical references to astronomical events that can be validated as to their time of occurrence show no three-century jump around the seventh century, and Illig's attacks on tree-ring dating sound suspiciously like something out of creationist tracts. Of course, I don't know much about the period in question myself, so on the face of it I can't make any conclusive judgement one way or another about the historical facts. However, that being the case, then it would be pointless for someone to try to argue the historical facts with me. That is an argument with the professionals, and if Illig can carry the day with the professionals, I might be inclined to take his ideas more seriously. So far the professionals have been unimpressed.
Now it may seem unkind of me to judge Illig a crackpot, but I feel on fairly solid ground on that: I may not know much about the Middle Ages, but I am very familiar with crackpots, and I can run down the checklist on him. Enormous assertions based on thin evidence? Check. Cherry-picking evidence to support his theory? Check. Cooking up one assertion after another to make people jump through endless hoops to detail why they are wrong? Check. Invoking a huge Tooth Fairy conspiracy to deal with discrepancies? Check.
And finally: Spending major effort trying to prove something that nobody really takes seriously instead of doing something useful? Double-check.
* A BIG YAWN FOR APATHEISM: Over the past decade or so the war between fundamentalists and outspoken atheists has brewed up to a loud and shrill pitch of intensity. At times I have stumbled across the lines into the battle zone, but the more I saw of the squabble the less I wanted anything to do with it. If pressed, yes, I have to admit that I'm basically a nonbeliever, and I have as much inclination to defend religion as to hit myself in the head with a hammer. However, the war against religion seemed to amount to little more than ranting that generally left me wondering what it actually was supposed to accomplish in specific -- and more to the point, it was a bore, the same tape being played over and over again indefinitely.
It took me a while to figure exactly where I stood on the matter. I finally ran across the perfect concept for my position: apatheism. The French philosopher Denis Diderot nailed the idea neatly when, after being accused of being an atheist, he replied that he simply did not care if God exists or not. Apatheism isn't even agnosticism: an agnostic says he doesn't know if God exists or not, an apatheist isn't particularly interested in the question. To an apatheist, whether someone strongly believes in God or believes with equal conviction that there is no God is a matter of indifference: "What, you want a cookie?"
Of course outspoken atheists don't like this position, but basically that's saying: You lack the power of our convictions. "Well, for once we agree." I have a long list of other things to deal with, I have trouble finding the time to get them done, this wearisome argument doesn't make the cut. Somebody doesn't like it? "Not a problem, your approval isn't required."
Similarly, religious fundamentalists don't like it either, one telling me -- in the days when I still bothered to talk about it -- that folks like me were no different from atheists because they lived exactly the same way. After thinking that over, I had to laugh. "So," I wondered to myself, "exactly how different would my life be if I believed in God or not?" I mean, I'm a dull bookish sort, it's not like I'm living a life of crime or even wild abandon. Indeed, the only criticism most folks would have to make for my lifestyle is that it's much too boring. Sure, if I got religion I might pray or go to church, but outside of that, nobody would notice a change. Why is it supposed to be important if I believe in God or not, when it would make so little difference in anything I did from day to day? It's about as significant as whether I prefer Coke or Pepsi.
That leads to the next interesting item about apatheists, in that they are not necessarily nonbelievers under the skin. There are plenty of apatheists who are believers -- people who say they believe in God and are regular in their religious observances, but in practice religion to them is basically a club sort of activity, and one church to them is roughly as good as another. Apatheists of both inclinations tend to get along fine, since they only differ on a matter that isn't important to either of them.
Of course, the war between fundamentalists and outspoken atheists roars on noisily, but the beauty of apatheism is -- that's OK, too. If I'm not inclined to care about religion, then it's obviously of no concern to me if anyone attacks it. What's to object to? As far as I can see, outspoken atheists like to quarrel, fundamentalists like to quarrel, everybody's happy. I have no reason to begrudge them their entertainment.
As for what they might think of my attitude, that's not a problem either. I'm a nobody; I don't run things or control anything, if I drop dead tomorrow, history will roll along unchanged, and nobody honestly cares in the slightest about what I think. They may complain at me every rare now and then, but they're just idly spouting off in my general direction. I know perfectly well that they won't remember I exist an hour later, and so I take it for what it's worth, meaning nothing. As the saying goes: "The show must go on, but I don't have to stay and watch."
* One of the items that led to the current "vaccines cause autism" outcry was a 1998 paper published in the British medical journal THE LANCET by a Dr. Andrew Wakefield and colleagues, with the paper claiming the "measles, mumps, & rubella (MMR)" was linked to childhood autism. The paper might not have attracted much attention, but Wakefield put on a press conference to denounce the MMR vaccine as potentially unsafe and his views were widely distributed through the press.
In the face of the furor that the whole issue raised, THE LANCET gradually backtracked, resulting finally in the complete retraction of the paper last week. Wakefield had by no means escaped the shock waves that his paper set off. He had been confronted with accusations that he had been in the pay of lawyers pressing suits by parents who claimed their children had suffered from the MMR vaccine, as well as accusations that he was very careful to present his research in forums where he could evade criticism. In late January, he was condemned by the UK General Medical Council (GMC) for breaking research rules, with the GMC claiming he had acted "dishonestly" and had demonstrated a "callous disregard" for children. The GMC will decide later in 2010 if Wakefield will be struck off the UK medical register.
Wakefield, who now works in the USA, called the findings against him "unjust and unfounded". It is plausible that there is some prejudice against him in the medical establishment -- one wonders if Wakefield honestly understood just what a Frankenstein monster of public hysteria and controversy he was helping create with his grandstanding press conference, and just how much a threat such monsters pose to their creators. However, even disregarding the attacks on his personal integrity, his paper has been so massively trashed by later investigations that THE LANCET's repudiation of it is not only appropriate but likely past time. The journal's editors had no alternative.
In the mid-1990s, 90% of Britain's toddlers were vaccinated, but the rate has now fallen to about 70% in some places. In 1998, there were 56 measles cases in England and Wales, but there were 1,370 in 2008. The first child death from measles in over a decade was seen in 2006. It might be nice if THE LANCET's retraction helped roll back antivaxxer hysteria, but anyone familiar with the lunatic fringe knows better than to think it would, the script being completely predictable: Wakefield is being persecuted by the medical establishment! It's a big smear campaign orchestrated by the pharmaceutical industry!
And a quick look around on Google shows that prominent antivaxxers -- I will name no names, if more out of weariness than for the sake of civility -- are indeed playing this tune with the volume control turned up to the max. I feel a bit cynical commenting on this, but unfortunately it's merely a simple statement of obvious fact.
* MEGA-OVERDOSE: BBC WORLD Online reported that members of the Merseyside Skeptics Society (MSS) put on a public demonstration at various branches of the Boots pharmacy chain in the UK, obtaining bottles of homeopathic remedy pills and then gobbling the contents down to show they had no effect. The demonstration was an attempt to persuade the pharmacy to stop selling the pills and to inform the public that homeopathic medicine is ineffective. The basic logic of homeopathy is "a hair of the dog that bit you", or more precisely the faintest trace of such a hair. For example, to treat an allergy, a homeopathic remedy would consist of a highly diluted trace of the appropriate allergen.
A Boots spokesman defended the sale of homeopathic medicines -- in effect saying that people wanted to buy them, so why not sell them? The UK Homeopathic Society was of course not amused by the Boots pharmacy demonstrations, with a spokesperson saying it was "in very poor taste" and did "nothing to advance the scientific debate about how homeopathy works."
There's actually no scientific debate in progress, the only conversation being that homeopaths insist their remedies work while the science community calls them quacks and crackpots, comparing homeopathy to sympathetic magic -- voodoo. Homeopathic remedies effectively have no active ingredients; homeopaths like to play up notions like "water memory" -- temporary assemblages of water molecules -- as a justification, but even at face value water memory is very transitory and there's no way to show it has any biological effect. No studies of the effectiveness of homeopathic remedies shows they have any better effect than placebos. The United Nations World Health Organization has denounced the use of homeopathic remedies to treat serious diseases.
Homeopaths have been earnest in the defense of their work, but not very persuasive. A blog on science-based medicine cited a video lecture by a Dr. Charlene Werner, an optometrist, that made for very odd reading:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Einstein taught us that energy equals matter and light, but because matter can be condensed down to a very small space if you remove all the empty space between the elementary particles, we can mostly ignore matter. Therefore energy is light, and we are all made of energy -- not matter, or at least so little matter, you can ignore it. Stephen Hawking then came up with string theory, which tells us that all matter, which we can ignore, is made of vibrating strings. We are made of energy. All diseases are therefore caused by unhealthy energetic states, and all disease can be treated by returning the body to a previous healthy energetic states. This can be done with homeopathy, which extracts the energy out of stuff and places it in a small pill that can be used at any time.
END QUOTE
This was such a line of sheer woo-woo that I suspected the quotation was fraudulent, but I traced down the video on UToob and tried to listen through it. The quotation was by no means accurate on a word for word basis, but it certainly captured its flavor, and it was far more to the point than the actual rambling lecture. I used to know people who talked like this when I was living in Oregon in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but I learned to avoid them. I had to admit that the comments on the video on UToob, a well-known hangout for the lunatic fringe, were uniformly negative, along the lines of: "Is this satire?!" "You CAN'T be serious!" "Needs to take her lithium!" "Here's a transcript: RAPPA RAPPA DING DONG CHOO CHOO BLURPIE BLURP ..."
Despite the failure of homeopaths to demonstrate any value to their remedies, the UK National Health Service (NHS) has demonstrated some tolerance for homeopaths, likely less out of any sympathy than because of the perception of their political nuisance value. However, the tolerance does seem to be on the decline, with public-health advocates encouraging the NHS to denounce homeopathy.
* Much of Norway was treated to a spectacular lights show not long before sunrise on 9 December 2009, when a Russian submarine-launched ballistic missile fired off on a test flight malfunctioned and went into an impressive cosmic-fireworks pinwheel. The tinfoil-hat crowd proclaimed it everything from a wormhole to a manifestation of a mind-control system, and insisted the Russians were performing a "cover-up" saying it was just a missile gone wrong. Well duh, what else would the lunatic fringe say?
It does seem like Norway is getting more than its fair share of strange space phenomena lately, however. As reported by DISCOVERY CHANNEL Online, on 20 January 2010, Per-Arne Mikalsen spent some time photographing the spectacular green streamers of auroral activity from the town of Andenes in northern Norway. Mikalsen is a long-time aurora hunter, but when he looked over the images he found one that had an odd feature, like nothing he had ever seen before, something like a little ghostly green jellyfish in the sky near the aurora.
Mikalsen posted online to see if he could get clues. There was some suggestion that he was getting a reflection off the lens coating, but there was also an interesting notion that he might have got a reflection of auroral light off a polar-orbiting satellite. The Iridium low-orbit communications satellites are noted for their occasional sharp reflections of sunlight, known as "Iridium flares", but nobody's ever seen one reflecting light from an aurora before.
There's probably no way to verify that unless Mikalsen or somebody gets lucky again, but it certainly is an interesting idea, and it was definitely pretty. Incidentally, it doesn't seem the lunatic fringe made much of the sighting. I tend to spend more cycles on these guys than I should and it's something of a relief to not notice them for once.
* THERE IS NO THERE THERE: I was poking around on my website and saw a banner ad saying something about proof of God's existence. I should know better than to touch something like that, but out of curiosity, wondering what the angle was, I checked it out.
The angle was one of the obvious ones: the "teleological argument", the idea that the orderliness and structure of the Universe argue that it had to be created by a Transcendental Higher Intelligence (THI for short). I tend to find the teleological argument a very strange argument -- or more precisely, not exactly an argument at all. The fundamentalists and the atheists get into furious disputes over it, but on consideration it's hard to figure out why either side regards it as important.
What's there to fight over? Maybe there is a Higher Intelligence underlying the Universe -- or maybe there isn't. After all, on the face of it there's only three possibilities to choose from:
As far as I'm concerned, they all seem equally unfathomable and certainly unverifiable, and I have to think I've got better things to do with my time than bother with the matter. Atheists insist that the idea of the THI is preposterous. Well, I couldn't honestly argue with that even I had any motive to do so, but I have to wonder if "just happened" is any less preposterous.
Of course, on the other side of that coin, fundamentalists are equally insistent that the idea of a First Cause absolutely implies a THI, that the idea it "just happened" is preposterous. Is it? Or rather, is less less preposterous than invoking a THI? To be sure, I have to admit I can't imagine how the Universe could have "just happened", but then I can't imagine a THI in any specific way either, having never seen anything remotely like it.
* This leads to the first problem with the teleological argument: it doesn't actually provide any information. The difficulty is that it's just reasoning by analogy, claiming that because humans design elaborate artifacts, then elaborate natural systems must have been designed by a THI. Now that might be true, but the argument doesn't actually address the question of whether some purely natural process might be able to account for them as well.
The teleological argument simply leaps to an answer, claiming the answer is obvious without making any attempt to justify it. The only basis for believing it is by an analogy with human design, with its advocates so convinced by this analogy that they fail to realize they're mesmerized by a scene in a mental mirror that imposes human ways on a Universe that, as all agree, isn't run by humans. It is only the reference to human design and construction that gives the teleological argument any life; we have no other experience to tell us whether the Universe was designed or not.
The second problem with the teleological argument is that it doesn't really justify anybody's religion, despite the fact that people often invoke it as if it did. Even if the argument is accepted, that there is a THI, it gives no useful information on the nature of the THI. The only feature of the THI that it establishes is that the THI had the capability to construct the Universe, which doesn't end up being very informative: "What created the Universe?" "The THI!" "What's the THI?" "It's what created the Universe!" Ah ... okay.
If the THI is God, then which God? Yaweh or Vishnu or Zeus or Odin? Hanuman the Hindu Monkey God? Don't laugh, Indian acquaintances claim Hanuman's one of the most revered Vedic Gods. Was there one God? Several Gods? Is God still around? Is there a Next Life? Is there a Heaven? Is there a Hell? Does the THI even care much more about what happens to us than about what happens to ants? The teleological argument says nothing about any such matters one way or another. People may well have perfectly good arguments in defense of their particular religion and its doctrines, but the teleological argument isn't one of them.
* There is another issue, but it's not really with the teleological argument as such -- the inclination of creationists to use the teleological argument to criticise evolutionary science, deliberately confusing it with the notion that the Earth's organisms had to have magically poofed into existence in some unspecified way. It's a penny-stakes con job. The teleological argument is irrelevant to the sciences, since the laws of nature remain the same whether the Universe was designed or not. Scientific theories work exactly the same -- and creationism remains just as silly -- whether the teleological argument is true or not.
That leads to the thought that the teleological argument is a con job in itself. That's farther than I would think it worth my bother to go, since I remain somewhat baffled as to why anyone pays any attention to the teleological argument, much less quarrels over it. As the saying goes: There is no "there" there.
* The techno blogosphere was passing around an interesting report from THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN on one Arthur Firstenberg, who claims that the electromagnetic (EM) field of Wi-Fi transmissions makes him ill, and so is suing his neighbor Raphaela Monribot for her use of cell phones, compact fluorescent lights, and personal computers. Firstenberg claims that doctors have validated his affliction -- which would actually make him of great interest to biomedical science, since all tests so far of people who claim to be sensitive to EM fields have shown them to be incapable of sensing whether electronic gear in their vicinity is on or off.
I have heard from New Mexico acquaintances that Santa Fe has a "deep left outfield" reputation, which would seem consistent with this story. Kind of reminds me of living in Corvallis, Oregon, in the 1980s and seeing people walking around with a wire pyramid for a hat. I will admit that wasn't common.
* In other "health from the fringe" news, a recent study in a medical journal found no basis for the idea that special diets have influence on autistic children. ABC NEWS reported this, and then interviewed media star Jenny McCarthy -- arguably the most famous of the vaccine critics and certainly the most heavily denounced of the "antivaxers" -- who of course dismissed it: "We're the ones seeing the real results. And until doctors start listening to our anecdotal evidence ... "
Ah, say no more, stop right there, did I hear that right? She didn't really say that, did she? I mean, certainly she had to have understood that was saying something clueless. But I doublechecked -- she DID! She DID! She DID really say that!
Now I assume that sensible people know why that statement was clueless, but just for thoroughness, I should elaborate. The history of pathology research shows it's extremely difficult work, the main reason being that correlation is not causality. Even if a child shows signs of autism after being vaccinated, that does not prove there's a link between the two -- the child might have shown signs of autism whether the vaccination had been performed or not. Similarly, if the child gets better after being given a special diet, that doesn't prove a link either -- the child might have gotten better without the diet.
Add to this the fact that it isn't always easy to accurately diagnose health problems, the tendency of researchers to see what they expect to see, and the tendency of patients to respond to placebo treatments, and it's not surprising that biomedical researchers acquired the habit of conducting double-blind controlled experiments. They do this for the real, historically validated, and inescapable reason that they have no way of knowing if they're getting anywhere if they don't. They learned this the hard way.
And that is why to claim that anecdotal evidence trumps double-blind controlled experiments is clueless. Besides, researchers ARE listening to the anecdotal evidence -- otherwise they wouldn't be conducting experiments to see if there was anything in it. McCarthy's claim is along the lines of me insisting that there's a rattlesnake in my backyard, and then shrugging off as unimportant the fact that repeated thorough searches of my backyard and its vicinity have not turned up any evidence of a snake: "The searches didn't do a good job! I know there's a snake there even if I can't show you where it is!"
As far as McCarthy and her family go, she's certainly well within her rights to believe that vaccines are dangerous. The only problem is that she's trying to convince everyone else they're dangerous, when she has no good evidence they are. Alas, argument is pointless. Anyone with sense realizes she has no clue on the matter, and that it isn't likely she'll ever get one, either. I hate to say that, I don't like to think people are clueless, but if they insist on convincing me they are, what choice do I have?
* THE DIA CONSPIRACY: I live under the flight path of Denver International Airport (DIA) along the approach from the northwest. I'm actually about an hour's drive from DIA, but I can still see my neighborhood flying in from that approach.
I was a bit startled to find out that DIA is on the conspiracy theorist hotlist. I was aware that the airport is known for its "swastika" layout. It has four sets of runways, two sets going east-west and the others going north-south. The central terminal plot is of course rectangular, and so the four sets of runways are staggered on each side of the plot -- voila, a swastika. I don't think anybody's made too much of this as anything more than a "gee whiz" observation. I vaguely recall some conspiracy theorist wondering why they chose such an "inconvenient" layout, though I would be hard-pressed myself to figure out any more space-efficient way of handing the four sets of runways.
In reality ... ah, maybe that's the wrong phrase here ... the conspiracy theorists have seized upon other items as the basis for their conspiracy theories. One item are the murals painted by artist Leon Tanguma in the baggage claim area. I don't particularly remember them, I tend not to notice public artwork unless it's something distinctive, and by most reports they're nothing particularly controversial -- just artwork on environmental and peace themes -- Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. However, the tinfoil hat brigade claims the murals are Illuminati propaganda promoting a dictatorial one-world government.
Worse, the local Freemasons had some minor involvement with the public works
part of DIA and there's a dedication marker there with the square and compass
of the Masons. Well, we all know the Masons are an Illuminati front, right?
Somehow I find this unpersuasive, wondering why a secret conspiracy would
leave clues around in public places about its existence. I mean, who's
running this outfit, the Riddler? Certainly it sounds like a ploy that
should make the Evil Overlord list:
Well, either the Illuminati have never read the Evil Overlord list, or the conspiracy theorists haven't. Going beyond the supposed clues, there are conspiracy theorists who claim that there's an enormous underground complex underneath DIA, complete with prison areas where the Illuminati plan to lock up the Resistance, and outfitted with ultrasonic generators that make people sick.
Trying to backtrack where all this came from leads, big surprise, to nowhere but to confusion. Some of the conspiracy theorists claim the amount of material used to construct the airport was far greater than the visible facilities could account for, but all factoids quoted by conspiracy theorists seemed to originate from an alternate dimension and have to be regarded accordingly. I did find a bunch of photos supposedly of the "secret places" at DIA, and as far as I could see they were of the parking garage, various back-area facilities like heating and ventilation, and the tunnels for the electric trains that shuttle between the remote and main terminals. They could have been pictures of a secret facility for all they revealed, but without signs like, say: SECRET MIND CONTROL MACHINERY DANGER KEEP OUT! -- it was hard to think much of them one way or another.
I haven't been to DIA in years -- I hate to fly, I don't mind the aircraft, I just hate to pay for the privilege of being pushed around by the security however justified the necessity -- but I liked riding the trains. They mounted little shiny plastic props on the walls of the tunnels and it's fun to watch them spin as the train whooshes past. The trains also make a pleasant chiming noise when they open the doors.
* HELPING OUT: I recently ran across some "911 Troother" stuff that I found puzzling, since it claimed that the Obama Administration was engaged in a coverup of the 911 attacks. I stared off into space for a moment, wondering: Exactly WHY would the Obama Administration try to cover up for the Bush II Administration -- instead of blowing the lid off a scandal that would put the Republicans down for a generation, if it didn't destroy them entirely?
Thinking it over made my head hurt. What makes it hurt worse is that I know if actually asked a Troother that question, I'd get answers until I got sick of listening and decided to hang up. Please, people, since when did the Demoplicans ever hesitate to put it to the Republocrats, and vice versa?
Asking crackpots questions is counterproductive; after they answered, I'd know less than I did when I started. Obama is sensible in saying the matter is closed. If he started another investigation, it would be a sucker's bet that it come up with anything but the same conclusions as the previous one. The fringe would then claim it was a coverup and demand yet another investigation. It's less effort to stay in the same place -- instead of going all the way around the board just to end up in the same place anyway. The man has better things to do.
* BEYOND THE FRINGE: I have a certain fascination with the lunatic fringe. I recognize it as bad for my health and not really very constructive, but alas I seem to be addicted to it. Instead of having it corrupt my other work, I decided to segregate comments on it into a new blog, which I present here. Along with reports on various activities on the fringe, I also intend to provide the occasional opinion piece. Opinion pieces are another bad habit -- opinions tend to be a lazy person's way of reaching conclusions without doing homework -- but they're hard to resist sometimes.
