TUPAK LIVES!

Boy do I wish I was talking about this guy:

No, in fact I am talking about this guy:

As you can see, I’m not an ordinary person. Ever since I realized I have the power to predict the future, I knew that anything was possible for me, and I wasn’t wrong. I can predict things that are about to happen, and I can feel the vibrations of winning numbers in games like roulette or the lottery.

The blood of my Cheyenne ancestors runs through my veins. It has enabled me to predict my own future, and the future of the people around me. As a respected Shaman, I also have the power to transform woes into happiness, problems into solutions, and mysteries into revelations.

I found an ad for this “psychic medium” (a.k.a., scam artist) in the back-channel app that we use to tabulate site stats here at FTB. It was the name that grabbed me initially, but then I saw this:

I’m so confident of the value of what I “see” in your future, and of the advice I can give you, that I’m ready to offer you an initial “Visionary Contact Session” completely free of charge. Use it to take stock of your personal life. You’ll find it a surprisingly accurate study of your personality, of the main character traits that shape your Destiny, and increase the likelihood of experiencing certain problems. And there’s a big surprise in store for you, but I won’t say any more now. I’ll let you think about it. Just don’t think too long…

Now it goes from sad to hilarious. This guy is claiming that he will be able to see into my future, based on little more than astrology (and of course, me telling him what the biggest problem in my life is right now). Here’s the thing: as of yesterday I have a really clear picture of what the next few months/years hold for me. Unless Mr. Tupak is a blog reader (or he Googles me, which would be cheating), there’s very little chance of his prediction being anywhere near accurate. Oh sure, he might get vague things like “you are considering returning to school”, which is a common occurrence for people my age. He might even get “a career change is on the horizon” (which isn’t strictly true, but he could claim it amounts to the same thing), but again that’s entirely common for people in their 20s.

Anyone feel like submitting themselves to Mr. Tupak’s expert wisdom? I’ll bite the bullet and give him my real info, but anyone worth their salt can find out most of my pertinent details inside of 15 minutes. I’d be interested to see what happens if someone whose entire life isn’t on a website makes a request. I’ll let you know what info I get back.

Warning: Tupak is not good with refunds

Like this article? Follow me on Twitter!

CASS: Skepticism FTW

I don’t claim to understand the climate science. I am not a climatologist, I haven’t cracked the literature, and even if I did I lack the training to fully parse truth from falsehood. I am confident in accepting the scientific consensus, however, because of the advocacy by people whose opinions I have come to trust and whose credibility has been demonstrated to me. When I read the work of someone who clearly has a grasp on critiquing evidence and weighing claims based on the facts rather than elaborate conspiracy theories about a New World Order plot to ban incandescent lightbulbs, I have no difficulty accepting the fact of the human contribution to global warming. Folks like Orac, or Darksyde, or Mano – they keep my head straight when I get confused, and they’re who I refer inquisitive friends to.

There’s another group that I rely on heavily when I need some expertise outside my own background:

A group of scientists is raising alarm about “incorrect science” in a course at Ottawa’s Carleton University that was taught for three years by a climate change skeptic. “We describe a case in which noted climate change deniers have gained access to the Canadian higher education system through a course taught at Carleton University,” the Ottawa-based Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism said in a report this week.

But the course instructor, Tom Harris, denies there are any problems with the science he taught. CASS, which says its goal is to “critically [examine] scientific, technological and medical claims in public discourse,” said its audit of video lectures and course materials for the second-year course called “Climate Change: An Earth Sciences Perspective” found the course to be biased and inaccurate. [Read more…]

Empowered Health: Week 3

The Vancouver Sun hasn’t stopped publishing this series, so I will not stop critiquing it.

10 ways to evade Alzheimer’s

Anyone who has a close relative with Alzheimer’s shares the same worry: Am I next? However, a growing body of research indicates that our lifestyles — particularly what we eat and whether we’re obese — play a greater role than our genes in determining our brain health as we age. “For years, scientists thought that Alzheimer’s was primarily genetic,” said Gary Wenk, professor of neuroscience at Ohio State University. “We now believe that, while there’s a genetic component, Alzheimer’s is primarily a lifestyle disease.”

This little blurb really does give you all the information you need about this article. Gerontologists (those who study human aging) know that maintaining an active, healthy lifestyle is a key component of avoiding all kinds of chronic illnesses. Many of these diseases were thought to be the natural consequence of getting old, but as we learn more about aging and the importance of diet and exercise on human health we recognize that it plays a role in all kinds of degenerative conditions. Alzheimer’s is no exception, although the disease’s genetic cause is still a major factor in learning to treat it. This piece isn’t about curing Alzheimer’s though, it’s about steps people can take to avoid it, or reduce its impact.

Overall rating: 5/5 – nothing particularly innovative or informative here, but it doesn’t make any missteps and I’m constantly surprised by how little people know about this stuff. [Read more…]

Islamophobia exists

So I am lucky to share the FTB platform with two titans of free thought: Ophelia Benson and Maryam Namazie. I was fans of both of these women long before I ever even dreamed about being counted among their colleagues. And because of the level of fearspect I have for both of them, I am really quite hesitant to disagree with them, so I haven’t so far.

What I am talking about is their seeming denial of the existence of Islamophobia:

That’s what the term is there for – to protect Islam – from prejudice, not Muslims. Given the havoc Islamism (and its banner, Islam) are wreaking worldwide, a criticism is not just a right but a historical task and duty.

…

Yes but even though there is such a thing as stupid blanket hatred of a meaningless collective noun called “Muslims,” it still shouldn’t be called “Islamophobia.”

In all fairness, and to hopefully safeguard against accusations that I am straw-manning their argument, I think they object to the word ‘Islamophobia’ on more or less the same grounds that I object to the term ‘reverse racism‘. It is a political phrase, built on a foundation of false equivalence and poor argument. It is used almost exclusively to describe any criticism, no matter how valid, of Islam as a religion, or the activities of extremist Muslim groups (or the complicit silence of moderate Muslim groups in the face of extremism). By throwing up accusations of intolerance every time someone makes disparaging comments about a particular religion, you create a smokescreen to deflect attention from real problems. It is a trap to bait arch-liberals, who refuse to distinguish between criticism and bigotry, into attacking secular arguments for reasons of misdirection rather than actual flaw.

If the argument started and ended there, then I strongly suspect that Ophelia, Maryam and I would be all pulling in the same direction. However, I cannot join them on their blanket dismissal of the word Islamophobia, or their statements that seem to indicate belief that the word is purely fiction, created as an obfuscatory countermeasure by Islamists to discredit anyone who criticizes Islam. The fact is that there is irrational fear and hatred directed toward Muslims because they are Muslims, and not for any other reason. To wit: [Read more…]

Does stupidity make you racist?

If you read the other FTBlogs (and you should), you may have noticed discussion of a study about cognitive ability, conservative ideology and outgroup prejudice. JT talked about it, and so did Jason. Basically, to read the coverage of the study, a team of psychologists from Brock University in Ontario have demonstrated that a lower level of cognitive ability is predictive of negative attitudes toward other races and gay people, but that political conservatism plays a significant role in that pathway. In a nutshell: conservatives are a bunch of hateful dummies, and now we can prove it!

While I would certainly love for that to be the case, I have spent far too much time wading in the muck of junk science about racism to hop so readily on board. I can certainly confess to my own non-trivial amount of outgroup antipathy toward ideological conservatives. Knowing what I know about confirmation bias and the difficulties associated with measuring intelligence (and how those exact same problems have been used to justifiably discredit studies of scientific racism), I suppressed my “nanna nanna boo boo” instinct and actually took my skeptical scalpel to the paper.

A link to the article, which may be behind a paywall for some of you, is provided here. [Read more…]

Empowered Health: Week 2

So the Vancouver Sun is still forging ahead with it’s largely useless feature called Empowered Health. The general bent of the pieces seems to be that a healthy diet and an active lifestyle are good ideas (whoops, spoilers!), but as is the pattern with woo-friendly journalism, they sneak in a bunch of counterfactual nonsense in there as well under the guise of “alternative” practices. They are an alternative – an alternative to stuff that might actually work.

Let’s forge ahead, shall we? [Read more…]

Trying to tread privilege

One of the most frustrating phenomena in the realm of talking about out-group discrimination, whether that be racial or gender or otherwise, is the common appeal to “some”.

“Why do you say ‘white people’ have privilege? Not every white person has racial issues! Shouldn’t you say some white people?”

“Why do you say that men objectify and abuse women? Not every man does that! Shouldn’t you say some men?”

“Why do you say that atheists have to be more welcoming to women? Some atheists are women! Shouldn’t you say some atheists?”

It is a particularly stubborn and tedious argument to have. A large chunk of it is people’s failure to distinguish between universal and general statements. This is a very superficial explanation, though. After all, we have no problem when someone on the news says “New Hampshire went to the polls today.” There aren’t any pedants who jump up and down screaming “don’t you mean some people in New Hampshire? Not everyone in the state votes!” [Read more…]

Religious tolerance

We are led to believe that religion makes people better. That following the moral instructions laid out in this holy book or that one will provide us all with the information necessary to live decent, ethical lives. We are even told – most of the time through blind assertion – that the existence of any kind of human morality requires a deity. That without religious instruction, the world would quickly descend into amoral anarchy full of murder and sex acts so bizarre, Rick Santorum would need 5 or 6 additional surnames just to describe them all.

We also know that racism is fundamentally wrong. Prejudice based on something as arbitrary and biologically meaningless as socially-constructed ethnic groups is part of a dark chapter of the human experience that we are all working feverishly to finish and close forever.  Thanks to great strides we have made as a society, we can be confident that anyone can recognize the simple moral truth of the need to treat each other as equals, regardless of their heritage.

As a result, we might have a tough time explaining this: [Read more…]

Empower Health: Week 1

So last week I noticed, with more than a little consternation, that the Vancouver Sun has begun publishing a feature it calls Empower Health:

Better health is not a destination. Your health is a journey of small steps, things you can do to improve your mental and physical well-being.

Empowered Health is a new locally produced television program that shows you the path to better health with weekly tips on eating better, improving your fitness and navigating the minefield of the health care system and the dozens of complementary and alternative therapies and practices.

Those of you who don’t know much about Vancouver aside from the excellent work that the Vancouver Skeptics do here may be unaware that it is a city full of woo-woo nonsense. One can’t walk a city block without stumbling over a reflexologist or a chiropractor or some other snake-oil peddler trying to separate fools from their money. Because Vancouver has a large population of young, well-educated and upwardly mobile people, it has succumbed to the stereotypical west-coast syndrome of buying wholesale into “alternative” practices. Add to that a large immigrant population bringing practices from their countries of origin and a well-developed sense of fascination with anything “exotic”, and you have a perfect recipe for this kind of hucksterism.

Now, ordinarily the only thing I read the Sun for is local news and Canucks coverage, but I figured I wouldn’t be doing my duty as a local skeptic if I didn’t take a swing at the glass jaw they’re dangling out there. So I will try, every week, to digest the claims made in these articles. [Read more…]

Shuffling feet: a black man’s view on Schroedinger’s Rapist

This morning I made a reference to the fact that men are often assumed to be potential rapists as an example of how sexism negatively affects men as well as women. The argument, commonly referred to as “Schroedinger’s Rapist”, goes something like this: because you can’t know for sure if the stranger approaching you in a dark alley or other unsafe place is a rapist or not, it is generally a good idea to be on your guard. Men can enhance their interactions with women by being aware of this mindset, and adjusting their own behaviour accordingly.

I have often heard from people making an anti-feminist argument that Schroedinger’s Rapist is profoundly sexist and unfair. After all, most men do not rape – why should every man be treated like a rapist? Isn’t that discrimination? How can you claim to be opposed to sexism, yet promote a fundamentally sexually prejudicial idea? The next step is often to draw parallels to racism – is it fair to treat all black people as potential criminals simply because, statistically speaking, there are more black criminals than white ones? Isn’t that racist?

As much as I hate it when white people use anti-black racism as a cudgel with which to beat other people, I can understand the conundrum as it is expressed. The problem with it (and the reason why it’s so bothersome to hear white people talk about anti-black racism) is that it fails to address the question in a meaningful way. To demonstrate what I mean, I’d like to share a couple of personal anecdotes from my own life. I’ve never shared these stories with anyone before, and I’m not sure why because there’s nothing particularly embarrassing about them, and they’re extremely useful in this context. [Read more…]