Ancient Aliens Rule the World.

I have recently been watching a show called 'Ancient Aliens' on History channel. More due to lack of anything else to watch. So I have made it to the 4th episode fairly unscathed. But after struggling to the end of the 4th episode I am not convinced that I am going to make it any further.
For those that don't know, 'Ancient Aliens' works on the premise that thousands of years ago human kind was not doing so well until a bunch of Aliens came and helped us out.

Freedom Tower construction speeds up.

I looks like the construction of the Freedom Tower in Manhattan is taking a little longer than some would like. Check out the news article after the jump for city and international representatives who are looking forward to the projected completion in 2011.

New Terminator Trailer

Check out the latest Trailer to the new Terminator film.

Only in NZ - Guilty by Accusation

It is hard to believe but true that in New Zealand a new law is about to come into force that will reverse in one single swipe all that democracy and justice stands for, that is the right to innocence until proven guilty.

Judge...send them down.

After what seems like an interminable wait, the nine assholes who killed a woman during a spiritual cleansing ceremony last year are finally going to stand trial for manslaughter. This has been a long time coming, but these dickheads who get it into their thick skulls that evil spirits, demons of the netherworld or makutu can control people and needs to be cleansed through dangerous and utterly Neanderthal ceremonies, need to be educated. Especially when they take the life of someone else and try and justify it with that sickening word "religion".

Janet Moses was a 22 year old mother of two girls, 3 years and 1 year old, living in Wainuiomata with a relative, just over the hill from Lower Hutt, New Zealand. Her family were firm proponents of the Maori belief system (a mixture of christian and tribal) which included belief in a makutu or curse being able to be placed on a family or individual. Recently, a family member had been suffering ill health and the family believed that it was the result of a makutu being placed on them through a family member stealing a taonga (treasured item). The taonga in question was a stone lion statue from the front of a Greytown Hotel and it was stolen by Janet's sister. They decided to hold a curse lifting or exorcism to remove the curse, and on the evening of October 11, 2007 the family began their wailing, chanting and application of water to drive out the curse. No-one as yet knows what took place that night except the police and the family members at the house, but one neighbour reported loud noises that night "like banging on a wall".


The next day, Friday 12th October, police were called by family members to her house around 5.30pm, and Janet's body was found lying on a bed. The autopsy found that she had died through drowning and the time of death was placed at around 8am that morning. She had lain dead in the house for nearly 8 hours before the police were called. Another victim of the family insanity was one of the 14 year old cousins who was also subjected to the same cruelty, and ended up in hospital.

Well, in what one can only hope is the beginning of one of the most successful cases in police history, 9 of the family members present that fateful night have been passed in for trial after two Justices of the Peace agreed that there was a case of manslaughter to answer to. A further case of cruelty to a child was also passed on for trial for a 10th family member. Good bloody job - I hope they get the bookcase thrown at them. People such as this who value hokey beliefs stemming from the days back when they used to eat each other, over a family members life deserve to be judged very harshly.

At an earlier hearing, apparently one of the lawyers argued for name suppression because "the case involved sensitive cultural issues" and argued "the defendants faced potential public vilification if their identities were revealed". You're damn right they would! And for good reason - they killed someone for nothing! You punished the youngest member of a family for the theft of a stone statue that was taken by someone else - morons!

For those of you thinking that perhaps Manslaughter is not the appropriate charge, and perhaps murder would have been more apt, there's still a hefty price to pay if found guilty.

"The maximum penalty for manslaughter is life imprisonment. The worst cases of manslaughter are near to murder and can attract severe sentences of imprisonment. But a conviction for manslaughter may also result where someone causes the death of another person by a single blow in circumstances where loss of life was not intended, and a sentence less than imprisonment may be appropriate."
NZ Courts

The difference between murder and manslaughter is mainly around premeditation and the sentencing of someone found guilty of murder involves a mandatory non-parole period, usually of no less than 10 years. So this still leaves the judge a wide range of jail time to hand out to the morons in the dock.

In an unsurprising move, all 10 have plead not guilty, and the trial date has been set down for 22 September. Here's hoping the judge sees sense and sends them all down for a long custodial sentence, during which time they can contemplate the life they took with their stupid customs and religious hocus pocus.

Ed, please stop - you are making a fool of yourself

Ed Mitchell - astronaut, woo-merchant and grey alien lover. I guess by now everyone and their dog has heard of Ed and his amazing stories of the aliens at Roswell, New Mexico. But this is not new - he's been saying this for some time, and it was only thanks to his interview on Birmingham-based Kerrang radio where he said "that we have been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomenon is real - though it's been covered up by governments for the last 60 years or so". This has lead to some typical hysteria in the news from journo's willing to sensationalise anything to move a paper or get more visits. But I was extremely surprised when I saw John Campbell dip into this murky well of bullshit reporting last week, and interviewed Ed on his show.

Ok, I'll give it that John Campbell is not the fount of excellent journalism, and he does stray into the News of the World territory on occasion, but he's from Palmerston North (Represent! P. Nth 4 Life!) so I'll cut him a break for now. My main problem is that he is giving airtime to someone who has a hypothesis about what actually happened at Roswell, when he wasn't involved at all. He plainly says in the interview that he was a teenager at the time living in Roswell, and he doesn't really remember a whole lot about it, except some stuff in the local papers. That's not surprising in the slightest - my nephew is in the teen years and its impossible to get him interested in anything going on in the world outside his circle of friends, his job or the Playstation. Everything else is comprehensively labelled as "lame", "dumb" or the derisive "that's so gay".

But even though he was not involved, he is using his Argument from Authority and Anecdotal Evidence to try and convince the world that aliens crashed at Roswell. He says "the old timers" from Roswell who apparently were involved have passed on the vital information about 10 years ago about what they saw and heard, and this is what he bases his opinion on alien visitation. He has no evidence to prove the veracity of these claims except the word of other people that they are telling the truth which, I'm sorry Ed, doesn't count for squat. Now to give Ed his dues, he has been fooled in the past.

It was Mitchell who “discovered” spoon-bender Uri Geller when Geller was only a cabaret performer doing his run-of-the-mill “psychic” tricks for teeny-boppers in Israel, assisted by Hannah Shtrang – who later became his wife – and Shipi Shtrang, her brother, who still works as his assistant. Mitchell actually travelled to Israel and arranged for Geller to come to the USA and be studied at the Stanford Research Institute – later to be re-named SRI International. Two physicists there, apparently awed by meeting a genuine Lunar Astronaut, chose to believe that such a hero couldn’t be wrong, that Geller was therefore the real thing, and Geller’s career took off. It’s safe to say that without Edgar Mitchell’s naivety, we’d have been spared the advent of the Geller Delusion.
James Randi - Swift 31/07/2008

After retiring from the Navy in 1972, Dr. Mitchell founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences to sponsor research into the nature of consciousness as it relates to cosmology and causality. In 1984, he was a co-founder of the Association of Space Explorers, an international organization of those who have experienced space travel.

He is the author of "Psychic Exploration," 1974, "The Way of the Explorer," 1996, (Third edition, 2006) as well as dozens of articles in both professional and popular periodicals. He has devoted the last 35 years to studying human consciousness and psychic and paranormal phenomena in the search for a common ground between science and spirit.
Ed Mitchell Bio

Ok, that does run close to an Ad Hominem attack, but I think its relevant. He has shown a propensity in the past to be fooled by charlatans like Uri Geller, so who is to say that some group of people who believe what they say happened in Roswell so many years ago couldn't do the same? Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on me again.

As for the Psychic Investigations, Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy says that he is fully in support of people doing science based investigations of this sort of stuff, but I'm not too sure that's what he would be doing. If you back someone like Uri Geller without any evidence apart from watching a few parlour tricks, how credible will any scientific conclusions on similar topics be?

I guess we can only hope that the news agencies publish less of this and focus more on what Ed actually achieved - its a lot to hope for I know, but hey - a Palmy boy can dream cant he?

Sensing Even More Horseshit

Check out the Silly Beliefs website and their dissection of the Sensing Murder episode where a supposed "die hard skeptic" was turned and is now a fully fledged believer of the woo. Well it certainly helps when the so called "skeptic" rings them up and asks to be on the program.
He admits that he did approach 'Sensing Murder', not the other way around as he claims in his book. So we were right after all, but why did he fudge the truth in his book? Perhaps to suggest that he was such a famous psychologist that 'Sensing Murder' would naturally seek him out?)"
Check it out along with heaps of other good stuff.

Sensing Horseshit : Update

And here's what I was worried about when I posted the other day about this psychic crap on NZ television. The mainstream media has latched onto a statement made by police, jumbled it around to sound interesting and posted it in the "Psychics are right!" style of article. I thought Fairfax media, who run Stuff and a majority of the newspapers in NZ, might have had a shred of journalistic integrity, but it looks like I was wrong. They have an article on Stuff entitled "Psychics stir up murder mysteries" - oooooh! I had hoped it was because the title "Psychics make vague pronouncements about tragic death in vain hope of milking even more money out of gullible idiots" was too long, but after reading the article I don't think so.

What a load of crap. It starts out with the worst sentence possible - "The death of a South Otago teenager, subject of an investigation this month by psychics on the TV2 programme Sensing Murder, is being re-examined by police." Investigation? If that's an investigation I'm a monkeys bum. They wandered around looking dreamy, with bad cuts and re-enactments from actors, and said that someone as a "practical joke" threw something aflame into his car, burning it out with the young man still inside. Not exactly easy to prove, or disprove, and its the latter that is probably more telling. In the standard line of mentalists and so called psychics they pick a story that seems plausible and cannot be proven wrong on the current evidence. The police have already said that they do not know what started the fire, so that meant the clowns could say pretty much anything they like.

But what's even more annoying is the way the article is written to blatantly ignore the facts and twist the words of the police. The police said they had spoken to the Stott family (relatives of the deceased) and were looking further into some aspects of the case. The article slips the words "since the programme went to air" implying that the opinion of the entertainers on Sensing Mo' Money had something to do with it. And in a very oblique way, they did (someone contacted the police after seeing the show with some info they are looking into) but not the way you might think after reading the article.

I think the most important bits are the twisted logic used to tie the programe and the Police investigations together. Phrases like "while the case was technically closed, police would re-examine it if new information came to hand" just point to the fact that there has been no new information. And technically closed? Its closed because there's no reason to re-open it! You could use that statement to describe every single cold case in world history!

"While the case of who shot JFK was technically closed, police would re-examine it if new information came to hand"

"While the case of Hitler's final resting place was technically closed, police would re-examine it if new information came to hand"

"While the case of who shot first, Han or Greedo was technically closed, police would re-examine it if new information came to hand"

I can only take solace in the fact the the NZ police are making rational statements, like "But just because someone with a crystal ball says something. . . it's got to be something that is tangible. . . something useful." They might be asking a bit much there. That's the whole point - psychics don't give "useful" information. They use word games and tricks to make you believe you are getting information when most of the time they are merely parroting what you say back to you, telling you things they have secretly found out about you, or just making shit up.

All in all, its not true that the psychics "stirred" anything up at all - the only new information has come as a result of the show re-enacting the details known about the case on TV, perhaps jogging someone's memory. Nothing they have said in 3 seasons of this tripe has ever been proven right. It makes me wonder why people keep watching this, even when you apply the old maxim "people remember the hits and forget the misses", especially when they have had no hits whatsoever.

Sensing Horseshit

Oh FSM, I feel a wave of nausea and disgust coming upon me - what could it possibly be? Did I eat a dodgy vindaloo? Have I been drinking that vile Green Chartreuse again? Did I just catch a glimpse of The Love Guru? No, its worse than that- the new series of Sensing Money Murder is coming back on the telly, and this time I fear, even more people will be sucked into its black hole of bullshit and milking relatives of dead people for money.

Where to start? Well, back in January of 2006 the first episode of Take 'Em for All They've Got Sensing Murder aired on NZ television, and they've managed to milk it out into a second and now third season of half baked ideas, bad acting and unsubstantiated claims. The show features three Asshats Psychics with supposed paranormal skills, who are taken to locations around New Zealand, shown old case files of unsolved murders or deaths, and then proceed to divine the causes behind the deaths. Like Columbo but without the dude in the trench coat. The producers of the show claim to have the full support of the families of each of the victims, but there is evidence that once they have completed the filming and sucked them dry they refuse to speak to them and don't really give a crap whether the case is solved or not. I'd probably beg to differ on the latter point in that if by sheer fluke they managed to get at least one of the predictions correct, their ratings would go through the roof, so I'd say it is pretty important to them.

The three faux psychics (currently) are Deb Webber, Sue Nicholson, and Kelvin Cruickshank. Deb Webber was amusingly "outed" by an Aussie Investigative News show a couple of years ago, and our man Jeremy Wells on Eating Media Lunch showed this on a segment in his show called Sensing Bullshit.



Its all the same crap that we see every time one of these so called psychics gets on our telly. They spout the same wishy washy crap, vague pronouncements of eeeevil, and generally ham it right up to the point that you think only Kevin Costner could do a worse job of acting.

Recently Tony Andrews posted a challenge to the Sensing Murder team, saying that if they completed a series of tests they could get themselves $10000. The standard fob off response came back from David Baldock, managing director of Ninox Television saying he's not interested in these tests, this "circus approach". He's already tested them. When the show was developed, he auditioned 75 psychics by giving them an obscure but solved murder case to work on. Yeah - right. It was probably things like "which famous australian criminal wore a tin helmet?" or "how many fingers did the famous Wellingtonian Madman Four Fingered Jack have?".

Oh well -I guess the only thing we can hope for here is that the voice of reason is heard, this show goes down the gurgler, or the psychics take up one of the many challenges around to prove they have the powers they claim. I wont hold my breath - thats not how this works in reality. The con artists are too smart to take up those tests when it would spell the end of that particular gravy train.

Check out the article on Stuff for some more background info, and the Aussie BadPsychics site for info on Australasian Scepticism, and their line on Deb Webber.

iPhone - biggest ripoff of all time?

I'm not a big Apple fan. I thought I'd better say that from the outset just to be honest, and the reasons are not behind any overarching loyalty to the Uber corp Microsoft - I just plain don't like any of their merch. I think Apple spend far too much time on design and pricing strategies, than on creating a device that works well with everything else. And nothing has changed with the jesus phone.

My main bugbear is (as with a majority of Apple gear) the pricing. Every time we see an Apple product, its pricing boggles the mind for what you actually get. The iPod is just an MP3 player, and there a plenty of better and cheaper devices on the market. The iPhone is just a cell phone with a flashy interface, but its prices are $6000 over two years for one plan and $2000 over 18 months for another (plus calls and txts for both). The Mac is an average laptop / desktop and you can get better bang for your buck just about anywhere with other manufacturers.

Why do they do this? Who could possibly be to blame for the ludicrous pricing and unbelievable costs of even owning one of these devices? Steve Jobs? Bill Gates? Satan? No - the consumer. Yes, every shmuck who has ever fawned over the latest apple product (I love Steve Jobs - he's looking out for us!), every toadying lacky whos slobbered all over the new Mac Book air (It fits in an envelope!), and every drip who's had the indecency to own an iPod......crap that's right. I've got one. But it was given to me! I didn't have a choice! Honest!

Yes folks, its our fault for the high prices, the massive charges and the never ending line of designer electronic equipment spewing forth from Apple central. The marketing men at Apple realised early on that they had a captive audience in the Mac Fans, who saw themselves a rebels against the Evil Microsoft. And they also realised they could alter that image a bit, to be less alternative and more left of centre, and capture a serious chunk of the market. Its the difference between living in the burbs, wanting to commune with nature, and living in a caravan in a commune, out in the bush. Less hippy, more hip. They were smart enough to see new avenues of advertising in media that appealed to younger generations - viral videos, the hip but not too hip stars, product placement in the right shows, and overall a pretty looking device. I must take my hats off to the evil marketing geniuses at Apple. They've done a brilliant job.

But screw them as well - thanks to their zealous marketing and Mac-hype we have to put up with this crap - a cell phone that costs SIX GRAND (!!!!!) plus calls and txts. What. The. Fuck. Its insane that anyone would want to pay that much, and I know of a few people who were keen on getting one until the pricing from Vodaphone was released. I believe the exact words were "Holy shit, I'm not paying that much for a fucking phone!". Sanity prevailed in a few heads at least. But this will not stop those driven few - those retarded enough to not realise when they are being shucked like an oyster for their money. They will queue for days to get their grubby mitts on a new iPhone, drool all over the touch interface, short it out, and spend weeks trying to get Apple to fix it. Unless they say their name is John Mayer - in which case things will happen pretty quickly.

So what's my point? Well, we've only got ourselves to blame for this rash of overpriced consumer electronics - if we stopped buying all this crap, or at least were a little bit more savvy with our purchases, then Apple might spend more time on creating a device that performs well rather than looks good. Dreams are free I suppose. But I can't talk right now - I've got to play on my Xbox, after I've rebooted my Vista PC, and synced to my Windows Home Server.

Stuff poll stuffed with....well stuff

The lovely people over at Fairfax media ran an article over the weekend regarding creationist material being sent to schools in New Zealand, as Mr Fett alluded to in a previous post. They also ran a poll for 12 or so hours along with it and Should schools be allowed to teach 'intelligent design? was the question posed. Now, we saw some pretty feverish posting from both sides for the duration of the poll, but the final results were Yes 15479 (46.5%) and No 17814 (53.5%). I didn't realise that many people read stuff let alone cared enough to vote - WTF?

I can only suppose that after it was posted on the Pharyngula and a bunch of creationist sites that both sides of the debate went nuts with poll scripts trying to outdo each other, because over 30,000 people voting on an internet poll is pretty bizarre even for a contentious topic such as this. To give you something to compare and contrast against, here's a run down of some of the totals for other super important questions posed by Stuff "

What's your favourite season?
11264 votes and summer was the winner. Crazy I know - who'd have guessed.

Pick your worst ever cover
11103 votes. When I first read this I thought it was talking about insurance - turns out its Music Covers. Winner was Celine Dion - You Shook me all night long. I didn't even know she did a cover of that, but she would have got my vote just for the simple fact she's couldn't sing her way out of a wet paper bag.

How financially literate are you?
8048 respondents, and I must admit I have no idea what the question means. Does it mean "Can you read a bank statement?", or is it talking about the stock exchange? No idea really - winner was "somewhat" which sounds more like a question itself - Some what?

And the pièce de résistance
Will warnings about long-term use of jandals make you rethink wearing them?
Of the 8853 people who bothered answering this one, over 5000 said "No way, I love my jandals." Wow. What illuminating information. I don't know about you, but I feel changed.

These internet polls we see on so many new sites these days are much like the ones I post on this site - a load of bollocks. A majority of them either ask questions so inane it would send your caffeine and cocaine hammered druglord neighbour to sleep within seconds (How interested are you in politics? 85% say Sod off!), or are so badly worded they are not even really worth answering.

This poll about ID for instance - the question, as pointed out by Bjorn over at Pharyngula was nothing to do with the article it linked to. The article spoke about creationist material being sent to schools in an effort to get their brand of nonsense into the science class. The poll asked a different question - should it be taught? In all fairness, who am I to say what the jebus nutters teach in their churches? Its their right to teach religion in religious classes or creationism in Sunday school. I may wish they wouldn't, as its total crap, but that's their right as a religion to teach the tenets of their faith. The same goes for a science class inasmuch as only science should be discussed therein, and since ID\Creationism is not science, it has no place there.
Bjorn did point out that if he ran a class he would mention it as a "this is not science" and while I agree with his philosophy behind the argument, I probably would agree with Alison and restrict that kind of thing to the higher years of school science and university. Our standard schooling should be teaching the science framework, creating skeptical and enquiring minds, and not bombarding them with every example of bad thinking in the world.

So if I were to answer the question on its own merits, I would agree with my Bjorn Free commenter and say Yes - people should be allowed to teach it. But in the context of the article, I would say No - not in the state schools.

And my point? Internet polls are bullshit. The question can be obtuse, you can use scripts to load them (much as this one obviously did) or you can be so confused you don't answer and the results are skewed beyond all recognition. Even Stuff say "Stuff polls are not scientific and reflect the opinions of only those internet users who have chosen to participate" and that's the best description ever - they are not scientific. They are meaningless.

The problem is that this information is used by lazy ass journo's to write articles. You see them frequently now on the major news sites "according to a poll on our site last week, 42% of people want to be flogged with licorice twice a week". Or they drop the "on our site" and it becomes "according to a poll taken recently, 85% of respondents have eaten a VW Beetle".

I guess all I'm saying here is that these polls cannot be taken seriously, and we should read closely what articles say when referring to polls.

“Opinion polls measure the public's satisfaction with it's ignorance”
Unknown

"I haven't trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I've never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex."
Erma Bombeck

Las Vegas plagued by ghosts; or just the wind

Recently the James Randi foundation held the latest TAM (The Amazing Meeting) in Las Vegas, number 6 in a continuing line of excellent get togethers for those of a skeptical bent. People like Phil Plait, James Randi, Penn Gillete, Adam Savage, Richard Wiseman, the Skepchicks, PZ Myers, Michael Shermer and more attend and speak about skeptical thinking, science and other such interesting topics. And while I would have loved to have gone, I am among the many who missed out. But apparently apart from the 700 or so people who turned up, there was also 1 million ghosts. Yes, you read that right - 1 milllllllioooon. (thanks Dr Evil)

Yes, some whack job called Doc Paranormal organised a march of the paranormal - 1 million ghosts marching down Las Vegas strip. He has his own blog dedicated to all things kooky and weird - namely himself. Heres a quote :

"Who am I? Let's just say I'm a national journalist and former adjunct professor at the late, lamented Edgar Allen Poe Community College. I've been exploring the strange since Mulder was in kneepants. You can call me Doc Paranormal."

Riiiight. Lets just say you're a weirdo who can make up any shit he wants, a former professor of a made up college, a Chris Carter aficionado with a short pants fetish and doctor of bugger all.

Apparently while the conference was going on in Vegas he had called on all his mates (they were both away unfortunately) to call up as many denizens of the underworld to plague Las Vegas, doing a march down the strip to protest the meeting. And apparently if his site is to be believed, there was plenty of media coverage of the march, and no coverage of the TAM. This is despite the fact that he does not supply any links to any media coverage, I cant find any on the internet, and none of the major news sources have anything on it whatsoever.

The funniest bit is that it looks like he posts questions to himself and then answers them on his blog in a kind of Agony Aunt style. Heres a wee sample :

Hi Doc:
I live in North Las Vegas where it was 110 degrees yesterday. Yet when I got out of my car to go to my job at the Flamingo, I felt a sudden chill pass across me. And then another. Since "cold spots" are often associated with the presence of spirits, could I have encountered a ghost or two involved in the Million Ghost March?
Custodian

Dear Custodian:
Could be. I have received several reports like yours. The march appears to have already begun. It should continue throughout the day as our friends from the Other Side come and go.

He\she stepped outside, and felt a cold spot? Could this apparent "cold spot" possibly be the wind? Wow - what an amazing pile of crap.

Apparently there were several stickers on show at the TAM meeting, and this weirdo has claimed that they were there specifically to deter the marching spirits, and that Jeff Wagg wore a talisman during the meeting to ward off the supernatural. Ha! What a joke.

Pity you cant leave comments on his blog - I can imagine the ones that most people would leave if they ever visited his site.

As for the 1 million ghosts, I somehow doubt that they were the spirits flowing on the Strip in Vegas that night - probably more of the alcoholic nature were involved.

Check out the latest Swift on Randi.Org for more info.

New Zealand not Epically Doomed, unlike Louisiana.

Phil Plait over at BadAstronomy.com has been banging the drum about creationism and evolution for a long time now and I wholeheartedly agree with everything he has to say. If schools want to teach Intelligent Design or Creationism then it should be done in the correct forum, which is not the science class. Anyway, where am I going with this? Phil Plait has done a pretty good job on this argument so I am not going to go into the specifics here.
The governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindahl, has just signed has signed a new state bill called the academic freedom bill which will allow creationism to be taught alongside evolution. Evolution of course being a Theory that can be proved by scientific means and principles, creationism cannot. And now the whackjobs in NZ are having a go as well.

The floodgates have opened. www.Stuff.co.nz in New Zealand reports that, “A Christian group promoting intelligent design over evolution has sent teaching material to schools that critics say is religious propaganda and sloppy pseudoscience.”
At least the critics have a voice. The NZ Education Ministry says:
“The unsanctioned material does not breach the Education Act and there are no plans to ban its distribution. But officials stress the theory of evolution underpins the science curriculum and schools have a responsibility to teach theories that are subject to accepted scientific scrutiny.”

A groups calling themselves “Focus on the Family” (meaning of course THEIR focus on YOUR family) sent Material to 400 high schools trying to get them to teach the hack pseudo-science in class.
Waikato University sciences senior lecturer Alison Campbell said:
“The material champions creationism - the belief that God created the world as described in the Book of Genesis - claiming the universe is too perfect to have been produced by chance so must be the work of an intelligent designer.
It represented a religious viewpoint, she said, not a scientific one, and had no place in science classrooms.”

Focus on the Family's executive director Tim Sisarich said the material was intended to expose pupils to an alterative theory of cosmology.
"We're a Christian organisation so we believe that God made the planet and God made the cosmos ... Science takes a theory and tries to establish it as the truth, and that's all this is."
Education Ministry senior manager Mary Chamberlain said parents had a right to withdraw children from religious instruction.

This is amazing. I knew that NZ had a large religious community and that is totally fine, I have no problem with that. I did not think we had the same type of minds here as in the US. I suppose we are lucky that we don't as yet seem to have those types of people in power that can make the crazy mistakes as Louisiana.

If you check the article on Stuff, you will see the standard religious morons coming out of the woodwork, making the same inane arguments. "Its just a theory", "we didn't evolve from monkeys", "teach the controversy", and "why is there no half monkey/ half human" is just a random sample of the horse shit the Committee for Lying for Jesus is posting. Always with the same crap that shows more about their lack of understanding, than their intelligence. I don't think it will ever get to the same level of stupidity that it does in America, with 40% of NZ subscribing to no religion, and another 30% subscribing to religions other than christian based ones, but its still worrying to see these knobs waving their flags every now and then.

Also interesting to see this kind of crap start surfacing just before the election, with Tim Sisarich and his cronies at the Destiny Church trying to get a seat in parliament to push their evangelical nonsense. Here's hoping come election time the same thing happens as every year, and they get laughed out of the polling booth.

Theres also a poll on the Stuff hompage about teaching ID in school. Go over there right now and give them the good news!

Celebs do the zaniest things

What do we consider a celebrity? Most of the time its someone who is popular for one of the arts like singing, acting or dancing. Other times its media related (radio show hosts), internet (popular bloggers) or even just for being in the spotlight far too much (I think we all know who that is). The one thing that all of these people have is that they are just people - a common cross section of average joe's who are talented in one or two area's, just like everyone else. And because they are just a normal cross section of humanity, they contain the full spectrum of weirdo's and freaks we meet in our everyday lives.

Stephen Fry is one of the least nutty people I read about. He may be gadget obsessed, far too smart for your average bear, and a talented actor, but he's also reasonably rational, severely underestimates himself, and backs his opinions with fact a majority of the time. He is the most unusual of celebrities in that he is one who's opinion I listen to, and while I don't agree all the time, I understand the point he makes and its usually based in reality.

Unfortunately, Stephen is in the minority when it comes to logic and reason combined with celebrity. The majority of people in prime positions of public interest out there are no more than glorified sock puppets when it comes to speaking in public. They twitter inanely about UFO's, the 9/11 conspiracy, how JFK was murdered by illuminati, anti-vaccination movements, feng shui, homeopathy and crackpot religions. Most of all, they use their fame and fortunes to further these causes/dementias, to the detriment of everyone else just because they think they know better. "I am famous, so I must know more than you!"

Even worse are the blind sheep of a public who sit there day in, day out being fed this crap, lapping it up, wondering if their celebrity horoscope might tell them how to get a piece of that famous pie, or if the homoeopathy pills they choke down will really help make the golf ball sized lump they found in their balls go down. Well horoscopes are utter fantasy, and homoeopathy is an 11 letter word for water, so not likely on both those fronts. But what other weird and wonderful crap have we seen recently from our morons in superstardom, and what impact does it have on the millions of muddled souls out there?

Celeb : Robbie Williams
Wackiness : Believes in UFO's and likes to go out into the wilderness with a Spotters guide book and binoc's to see if he can tick off the notable aliens. "Robbie has been taking pals out to the woods for long weekends. He wants to live like a cowboy in a Western. He also has a fascination with UFOs and thinks he has more chance of seeing one away from Los Angeles' bright lights."
Science says : No proof as yet of any extraterrestrial contact
Possible Effects of Imitating Star : loss of income spent on chasing phantoms, loss of credibility among friends and family when you tell them what you do, and loss of brain as it melts out your ears.

Celeb : Jim Carrey
Wackiness : Jim's been brainwashed by his new missus that vaccines are bad m'kay, and we are poisoning our children by injecting them with this stuff.
Science says : Are you out of your mind? Denying children a vaccine is tantamount to signing their death warrant. There is no evidence that vaccines are even remotely bad for you in the way these idiots purport.
Possible Effects of Imitating Star : very sick children who have no immunity to disease's, possible death. One of the stupidest star-led causes I have ever heard of.

Celeb : Heather Mills
Wackiness : Says that milk is the main cause of obesity in school children. Nothing to do with the MacDonalds right?
Science says : This is a thinly veiled PETA protest against cows as herd animals. Not based on science whatsoever, and is totally a social prejudice against anyone who is not a vegan. If PETA had their way, we wouldn't eat anything.
Possible Effects of Imitating Star : sick kids again who wouldn't get some of the more essential nutrition in their diet.

Celeb : Prince Charles and other royal inbreds
Wackiness : Homoeopathy actually does anything
Science says : Its water. It doesn't do shit except for the placebo effect. You are paying millions of dollars each year for water. Well done Charlie.
Possible Effects of Imitating Star : your wallet has an amazing tendency to become lighter, yet your illness continues unabated. IF you are seriously ill, you are risking your life by believing in this snake oil.

Celeb : Madonna
Wackiness : I'm unsure exactly what she believes in - I think she's just a twit. But she does buy into this Kabbalah water crap, which is some spiritual Jewish water peddled by The Kabbalah Center, which is supposed to heal, center you, make you at one with the guiding yadda yadda yadda.
Science says : Its water. Even Jewish rabbi's say its bubkes.
Possible Effects of Imitating Star : more rapid deflation of bank account, followed by acute swelling of the "I'm a tit" gland.

Celeb : Geri Haliwell, Tom Cruise, Oliver Stone, John Travolta etc. etc. etc.
Wackiness : Scientology. A religion dreamt up by a bad science fiction writer to make money, and believers think we descended from Clams and you can spend half a millions dollars to be audited to retrieve god-like powers. Riiight.
Science says : (shrugs shoulders) There's no evidence that anything they claim is even remotely true, but this is a money making operation, not a scientific organisation no matter what the call themselves.
Possible Effects of Imitating Star : you are a loony.


I could go on writing all day. The point I am making is that these people that we as consumers of mass marketed media put on a pedestal, are no smarter or dumber than every one of us. They are just a cross section of society containing the literate, smart and logical, as well as the kooky, weird and downright nuts. The problem lies within the fact that they have a power to coerce people through their fame into causes and bullshit that have no basis in reality. We should treat them just like everyone else - show me the evidence. If you have a cause or belief, show me the evidence it is true. Otherwise, shut the hell up.

UK Papers report utter crap - no-one surprised

Terry Pratchett is a brilliant author. While some may read this and disagree, I would like to gently make the point that I'm the one writing this and you can bugger off. He has stated many times during his career how he is an atheist, and "blames god for not existing" and he was recently diagnosed with Alzheimers. If you've read any of his novels he takes the idea of gods and puts it in its proper place of comedy and ridicule. But recently my attention was drawn by Moogs to an article in the Times about TP finding god, and he asked what I thought about it. I'll admit, my first reaction was unfavourable.

I mean, the temerity of the man - how dare he! But after a few seconds I calmed down and wondered if it was indeed true - it didn't really go with everything else he has said about religion. So I did a wee bit of research, read the article on Times Online and did a search for any other bits of info surrounding TP and his conversion to god bothering. What did I find? Not much - the article points to an "unexplained experience" he had when he was first diagnosed with Alzheimers.

“I’m certainly not a man of faith, but as I was rushing down the stairs one day . . . it was very strange. And I say this reluctantly, because I am trying to deal with this situation in as hardheaded a way as I can. I suddenly knew that everything was okay, that what I was doing was right, and I didn’t know why.”

"It was a thought that all the right things are happening in the circumstances; and I thought, ‘Well, that’s all right then.’ I don’t actually believe in anyone who could have put that in my head – unless it was my dad, and he’s been dead a few years.”

“It is just possible that once you have got past all the gods that we have created with big beards and many human traits, just beyond all that, on the other side of physics, there just may be the ordered structure from which everything flows.

“That is both a kind of philosophy and totally useless – it doesn’t take you anywhere. But it fills a hole.”

Ok, time to get the deconstruction stick out.

The first point to make is that all of these statements have been made in different interviews. He said some of it an interview as reported on Times Online, and in another interview in the News Review. Two separate interviews, probably about two completely different things, and bad quote mining = stupid Times Online article.

Secondly, he doesn't ever say "I've found god, I'm off to bash some bibles". The headline for the piece in Times Online was "Alzheimers leads atheist Terry Pratchett to appreciate God", and in the Telegraph it was "Terry Pratchett hints he may have found God". No he doesn't - he says he had an unexplained experience. The closest he comes to saying god is "I'm not a man of faith". So does this mean every time someone proclaims that they are not of faith, they actually are? What sort of bizarre and twisted logic is that?

And thirdly, the phrase "unexplained experience" does not mean god. Nor does it mean the flying spaghetti monster, or Ramadama Ding Dong had anything to do with it either. In fact, usually when people use the word "unexplained" people immediately leap into the UFO category, and its surprising they didn't this time. He says that he felt "everything was ok" and that "all the right things are happening in the circumstances". So what he's saying is that he felt at peace with himself at that particular time, and happy with the way things are going. I see no god in that. I feel happy frequently, and at peace with my decisions in life - but at no time do I interpret a divine hand in my life. Just because everything is going your way, does not mean some benevolent beardy weirdy sky god has his eye on you.

Its a load of bollocks in my opinion - a sloppy peice of journalism created by some nancy in between his sessions at the boozer. And the other papers have just copied it verbatim because its mildly interesting, and they can't be bothered checking the facts. What rubbish.

As an aside, even if this were accurate (and I have no way of verifying this unless TP decides to respond to my email) who cares? I don't care if he suddenly clutches at the rosary, and heads down to the local guilt merchants for a session in "all the things he's done bad". That's his prerogative. It has no bearing on my opinion of him as a writer and I will continue to buy his books until they stop becoming good books to read. I hope he continues to write for many years to come, and his "embuggerance" of an illness goes into recession, or is cured (no thanks to the NHS). Sure, it would be disappointing to see someone with a serious brain disease succumb to religion, but again - who am I to say what he should believe in?

I think the best indicator of the veracity of these articles is something he said during the interview :

“Faith in what? If I get pushed in this corner, I believe in the same God that Einstein did. Einstein was a clever bloke."

And what did Einstein have to say on the subject?

If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
Albert Einstein, 1954, from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press

The Happening, and why it sucks balls

M. Night Shyamalan's latest flick has hit the screens and apparently nearly everyone thinks its crap. Check out the reviews its getting at Rotten Tomatoes where they think "People drop dead; remain more animated than Wahlberg". Not surprising really - all his movies except the 6th Sense have sucked in my opinion. The latest claim is that his new flick The Happening is a bare faced proponent of Intelligent Design, that lovely religious movement trying to cram the Bible into everyone's science class. But is it?

I'll go on record as saying I've never seen this movie, and I never will. M. Night Shyamalan's ability at writing good screenplays has degraded to such an extent that the endings are no longer unpredictable and subtle, but are more likened to the end to a torturous session on the toilet after 3 solid days of eating bran. His last three films Signs, The Village and Lady in the Water have all been differing degrees of awful - so much so that I ignored Lady in the Water completely after reading a synopsis.

His latest foray in movie crappiness, the Happening, is according to some people a thinly veiled attempt at endorsing ID. But is this all that surprising? It a well know fact that MNS is down with the g.o.d. and a quick look over his past films shows the themes and motivations behind all his screenplays and what they all have in common.


Praying with Anger (1992) - young man returns to home country, finds god and stops riot by preaching.

Wide Awake (1998) - 10 year old boy seeks God, has crisis of faith, finds god again.

The Sixth Sense (1999) - boy sees ghosts, Bruce Willis tries to help him sort out his life. Surprising lack of god.

Unbreakable (2000) - Bruce Willis and Sam Jackson talk a lot, and find out they are super heroes. god had nothing to do with it.

Signs (2002) - In a return to form, MNS has fellow god botherer Mel Gibson as a priest in a crisis of faith save his farm from invading aliens by believing in god.

The Village (2004) - people in olde village terrorised by boogie man (just a man in a suit, much like christianity) find out they are living in big olde theme park because of all the godlessness in the world.

Lady in the Water (2006) - MNS takes peyote, loses his freaking mind and makes a weird film about story monsters coming alive. god does not appear in this film, all though was originally on the billing, and replaced at later stage by nargles from Harry Potter. Kills film critic in movie in vain hope that life imitates art.

The Happening (2008) - MNS hires fellow god botherer Marky Mark to be a science teacher who spouts crap like "evolution is just a theory", and "spontaneous evolution". Turns out everyone is dying in the film because god is mad at us, so he makes the plants turn bad.


Oh well, lets hope he "see's the light" so to speak and makes a better movie next time. I'm not holding my breath.

Those wacky Creationists!

Ever wondered what's inside the temple of stupidity that is the Creationist Museum in Kentucky? Ever felt like having a peek but aren't willing to shell out the dolleros to fund the fundies? Well wonder no more, and don't bother going - demonbaby has done a fairly huge write up on his site, covering all the bases and checking out the gift shop too. I heartily recommend you take a visit to his blog and read what he has to say. Clear, humorous and chock full of fruits/nuts.

Exploring The Creation Museum - America's New Mecca of Fanatical Ignorance
[Currently Going To: Hell]

UPDATE : When the cubicle becomes just too much

I posted the other day about some cubicle freak going ballistic, and I mentioned that it looked quite real. Well, in another example of "don't believe everything you see on the internet" I've been told by the Internet that its a fake. Yes, irony is everywhere these days. Apparently its a viral marketing campaign for a new movie called Wanted with James MacAvoy and Angelina Jolie. Not quite sure exactly what the fuck the link between the two was supposed to be, but there you go. Obscure video links to obscure film. Who'da thought it eh.

Quack Health Part 1 : Insidious Advertising and Magnet Quackery

I normally try and ignore most advertising on the television. A majority of it holds no interest (toothpaste - it ain't that interesting), does not apply (do I really need another pair of high heels?), or is total bollocks (thanks whoever wrote the ad's for Dunedin). But tonight whilst watching the news and having a spot of dinner, I noticed an ad that has been on for quite some time and although I had noticed it in the past, I hadn't really paid much attention. But when I tuned in I realised it was an ad for good old, gen-eew-ine higgery pokery. Yes it was quack medicine from the 1800's, on prime time television.

Magnesleep, a product distributed by Body Magnetix for the duped masses all over New Zealand. Its their advertising we see most often, and certainly the one I notice the most, although I have seen others. I looked them up to see what they sold and what they claimed. Their website is decidedly unprofessional, and if I was purchasing something on this fact alone I wouldn't send them a cent. Their front page is full of good sales language - lots of descriptive words and emotion evoking, but little content or description of their actual product and its benefits. Here's a sample :

Imagine waking each day feeling better - refreshed, energized and ready to get into life. Imagine your aches and pains gone, your illnesses and injuries being eased away quickly and painlessly.

Sure - that's nice, but although they imply that's what their product does, they don't say it. Imagine this, imagine that - nice try but no substance.

It's not a dream! It's the reality you can enjoy, thanks to the amazingly effective magnetic therapy created by Magne-Sleep. We are magnetic therapy specialists, using only better quality magnets and manufacturing procedures. No short cut's - just better pain relief, better quality in every way.

Although they use the right words, they are still not really claiming to do anything other than what would be given by having a sleep in a warm bed (which is the wool part). "Magnetic Therapy specialists" = specialist in nothing. In fact, replace the word "magnetic" for "nothing" and its about right.

The next two paragraphs are much the same - no substance to the claims other than "Magnetic therapy has helped millions of people worldwide" and "Discover how magnetic therapy can make your life better, ease your aches, pains, illnesses and injuries and help you get the very best out of life". But how? Well, if you scroll past all the intro, past the prices for the products, past the guarantee (more disclaimer and refund policy) you get to a list of ailments this product is supposed to affect. here's the list :

ARTHRITIS, LOWER BACK PAIN, ASTHMA & ALLERGIES, ADHD, SKIN CONDITIONS, FIBROMYALGIA, DIABETES, SCIATICA, GOUT, MUSCLE SPASMS, LEG CRAMPS, BONE FRACTURES, INSOMNIA, STRESS & NERVOUS DISORDERS, SPORTS INJURIES, SPRAINS & STRAINS,CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME, CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME, HEADACHE & MIGRAINE, DEPRESSION LUPUS

Shit - is there anything it can't do? New Super bed blanket thing! Cures all ailments, feeds the hungry, makes you a cup of tea and leaps tall buildings in a single bound. Depression Lupus - I'm sad because I'm a werewolf? Ok - I couldn't help it. Lupus is apparently a very real condition with a lot of symptoms. I cant say I know a lot about it, so look it up on disease and medical sites if you are interested.

And what does the magic hoo-doo cost? Shitloads - from $190 for a single budget COTTON (not wool) version, and from $290 (single) to $429 (super king) woollen version. Compare that to a standard woollen underlay from a standard NZ supplier of $190 (single) to $350 (super king). And that's not the cheapest price I could find, merely the one I knew off the top of my head. So you pay an extra $70 to $100 for what? Some magnets.

If you look at any of these websites like Body Magnetix, Biomag, Biomagnetic, you will notice the same formula. There are plenty of vague claims about supposed health benefits, several key phrases like "ease your aches, pains, illnesses and injuries", "all without pills and potions" or "as viewed by leading Western medical practitioners and researchers". They use word play and advertising jargon to convince the unwary and people in pain that their product will cure their problems. They point to specific studies that back up their claims of magnetic therapy. They claim magnets increase circulation because blood has iron in it. They say things like "the magnetic force stimulates nerve-endings to improve blood flow to injured or swollen joints, causing the blood vessels to dilate". Hmm - really?

Pills and Potions
This is a standard advertising technique used by fringe medicine. If you used the word potions along with pills, it evokes negative connotations by drawing on peoples mental picture of alchemists and pre-1800 style quacks selling tonics at sideshows. Ironically, this is exactly their area of trade and they apply it to science based medicine to give it a negative spin.

"Studies have shown"
Really? Which ones? These website make major claims and don't back them up with any evidence whatsoever. I will steal a few paragraphs from the Silly Beliefs site...

The following is typical of proponents of magnetic therapy:

The positive effects of magnetic treatment have been confirmed by clinical tests and are recognized by modern medical science around the world.

Do you believe these claims, and if you do, why? What clinical tests support magnetic therapy and since when has modern medical science proscribed a treatment of magnets? Since they provide no real evidence whatsoever that their claims are in fact true, this statement is worthless, just as worthless as the following claims that I might make:

'The positive effects of treatment using Eskimo magic has been confirmed by clinical tests and is recognized by modern medical science around the world'.

Or how about this one:

'Many scientists believe the Moon is made out of green cheese, and suppressed government files support this belief'.

These examples clearly demonstrate that saying something is true does not make it so. Magnetic therapy proponents can make bogus claim after bogus claim on their websites and in their promotional brochures, but this doesn't mean there is any truth to them. They can claim that science and research supports their claims, just like I can claim Eskimo magic works and that the moon is made of green cheese, but you shouldn't believe either of us until we provide supporting evidence.

A double-blind test study - apparently.
Some sites actually refer to a study conducted at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston on which people who had suffered Polio as a child and had pain related to that illness were treated with magnetic therapy. Although the results of that one pilot study of 50 people showed a statistically significant result in favour of magnet therapy, there were several major problems with the study, and the results have never been accepted as proof of the efficacy of magnets, except by the Magnet Salesmen. The key phrase here is "pilot study" - it was never a full blown test. The authors themselves acknowledge that the study was a "pilot study." Pilot studies are done to determine whether it makes sense to invest in a larger more definitive study. They never provide a legitimate basis for marketing any product as effective against any symptom or health problem.
Every other scientific study conducted within double blind testing, and large groups has shown there is no effect from magnets of the size marketed by the woo merchants like Biomag, Magnesleep and other such conmen.

So in conclusion what more do I need to say? Its pretty clear that there's no evidence to support any of this mumbo jumbo, but it continues to be pushed onto the unsuspecting public here in NZ. I think the Government should make these guys put up or shut up - scientifically prove that what you are selling has an effect on the diseases you claim to cure, or fuck off. They fleece the unsuspecting public for millions every year, and should be subject to the same kind of rigorous testing all other medicines go through.

See these websites for an even more in depth dissection of Magnet Therapy and its false claims.

Silly Beliefs - Magnetic Therapy - Healing or Scam?
Magnetic Therapy: A Skeptical View

News Media talking crap, no suprise there

Its just about every day that I read something about a news organisation publishing or broadcasting a pile of stinking crap - usually in that faux "and in other news..." tone. And it seems today is no exception. Straight from the anals (sic) of English news comes the wonderful story of how everyone who lived in the dark ages were better off than those of us now due to our diet.

Yes, apparently if we were wallowing in the mud, being bled by the so called physicians of the time, and competing with the rats in the World Cup of disease spreading, but still getting your meat and 3 veg, it was all roses.

Big thumbs up to the Telegraph for filling another paperwebsite with crap to make up the page count.
It says that we have traded the pox, the plague and a healthy diet for heart disease, diabetes and burgers - and we're worse off for it. The main point of the article is some waffle about the average bro had a better mix of fruit, veg, grains and meat that todays keyboard pusher who subsists on a diet of Burger King, KFC and butter chicken.

I think that it fails to realise that the average lifespan of someone in Tudor times was 20 - 30 years, whereas now (in most developed countries) we can expect at least 65 - 70. It sounds like the person who did the study, a Dr Roger Henderson, may simply have been doing a diet comparison. The problem is the article makes him sound like some nutty nutritionist advocating returning to a medieval existence to save ourselves from heart disease and diabetes. Hmmm - surely the advances in medicine or better social education on health would be easier and more cost effecvtive than time travel?

Whatever - I get more pissed about the news organisation pushing this crap. Who could call themselves "Britain's No.1 quality newspaper website" and print this shit? Mind you, the headlines in the Science section are a bit on the nose as well. "To escape flu - move to the country" - more waffle about the birdflu pandemic that wasnt. If you move the the country, you are less likely to catch the flu. Well shit - really? Why would that be I wonder - maybe (and I'm going out on a limb here) because theres less people in the country so virus spread would be slower than in a city? Also, if everyone moved to the country to avoid catching the flu, wouldnt the city then be empty, therefore logically be the best place to be? TO ESCAPE FLU, TELL EVERYONE TO GO TO COUNTRY, BUT REALLY STAY HOME. Ah, but what if everyone thinks like that! Classic double bluff - tell everyone your going, fake staying behind, then go anyway! Ha - take that flu ridden neighbours!

Oh well - back to Call of Duty 4 - quality game that!