Cheap saints

The Vatican is champing at the bit to turn Pope John Paul II into a saint, and central to their case is the story of Jory Aebly. Aebly was a young man who was mugged, shot in the head, and expected to die…but he recovered, fortunately. What’s the connection to a dead pope? Well, there isn’t much of one. In the hospital, he was given a rosary that had supposedly been blessed by the pope, and his religious family now credits John Paul II for his recovery. Never mind that the pope had been dead for four years.

What also isn’t mentioned is that Aebly’s friend, Jeremy Pechanec, who was also mugged and shot, died of his injuries. Was he an atheist or something? Does the pope’s magic only extend to people who hold this one particular rosary?

Why isn’t this magic rosary being used regularly for all brain injury victims in the hospital right now? Sometimes people can recover from horrific injuries, so one case isn’t at all persuasive…now if the hospital were slapping the super-duper magic beads into every victim’s hands as they were being rushed through the emergency room door, and they were all getting better, then I’d say there is something worth investigating going on.

I also want to know how many other people the hospital chaplain used his ju-ju beads on, and how many of them died. You’d think he’d be bragging a lot more about his success rate if they worked, but all we hear about is this one incredibly lucky fellow.

This is the world of Catholicism, though. Reason has no role in it, sense doesn’t matter, and statistics? What’s that? Dead man’s beads are going to get the credit, but not the surgery and care that contributed more to the recovery than superstition.

Putting the foxes in charge

Barack Obama’s chief economic advisor, the guy we’re all going to have to rely on to pull the economy out of the mess it is in, is Larry Summers. We cannot trust Larry Summers. He’s in the pocket of the people responsible for our problems.

Among the firms that paid Summers large amounts in speaking fees include J.P. Morgan Chase. That bank offered the former Harvard president and Treasury Secretary $67,500 for a February 1, 2008 engagement. It has received $25 billion in government bailout funds.

Citigroup, which has received $50 billion in taxpayer help, paid Summers $45,000 for a speech in March 2008 and another $54,000 for a speech that May.

Goldman Sachs, which has received $10 million in bailout funds, paid Summers $135,000 for a speech on April 16, 2008 and another $67,500 for a speech on June 18, 2008.

Summers also received about $5.2 million over the past year in salary from the major hedge fund D.E. Shaw.

I know whose side Larry Summers is on, and it isn’t the middle class or the poor.

Another question: what does a $135,000 speech sound like? I come from an academic background, where we fairly routinely bring in scientists to give lectures and spend a day talking with colleagues, and it’s fairly dense stuff, with lots of information. We generally pay travel costs (of course) and an honorarium of a few hundred to a thousand dollars. It’s very good value for the money. There are popular heavy-hitters like Richard Dawkins who can get $10,000 for a talk, but even there they may waive the fee, as we saw in Oklahoma, and even so, they can pack an auditorium with thousands of people who want to hear what they have to say.

Would thousands of people line up to buy tickets to hear Larry Summers speak? Does he really have the kind of significant information to transmit that would be worth a hundred thousand dollars for an hour of time? If so, I’d like to know more about these kinds of valuable speeches, because I’d love to pay off my entire mortgage with an afternoon’s work.

Of course, we all know that these speeches are irrelevant. It’s a way for organizations with a lot of power and money to funnel cash to individuals with a lot of influence in government…i.e., it’s a form of corruption, a kind of bribe. Even if it’s nominally legal, I hope Obama is smart enough to kick this shill for the financial empires off of his advisory team.

Glenn Greenwald has more to say on Summers. He calls the payoffs an “advanced bribe”.

Randi restored

Youtube has restored the JREF account.

I’m going to have to disagree with Randi, though. Responding to a violation by automatically yanking the whole account is not appropriate and civilized behavior, especially when it can be resolved by an amicable communication. How about communicating first, and then yanking if someone is intransigent? The problem is that not everyone has the resources or the clout of the JREF, and there have been far too many cases of individuals getting shut down on entirely bogus complaints.

Twitter is evil

James Hrynyshyn is completely missing the point. He has a post up where he tendentiously explains why twitter is evil, as if it should be a surprise. Why is the Pope Catholic? Why is the darkness dark? Why does Microsoft suck? These aren’t interesting questions: the point is that they are.

I have a Twitter account. I do not have a “My Little Pony” account. Think about it. Isn’t it quite probable that I would leap into this technology precisely because it has great potential for evil? Be seduced, and embrace the evil. It’s fun!

One hundred forty characters is exactly enough room for a “Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!”, but not enough for lengthy monologuing, the bane of villain’s plans everywhere. It’s enough to leave vague hints that has everyone wondering and guessing to what, exactly, one is up. One can easily configure it so one is only receiving tweets from a tiny number of people, who can mostly be ignored, while sending tweets that distract thousands. It is a force multiplier that can turn trivia into terrifying rumors that reverberate across Tweetopia.

Come on. You don’t think a benign force would compel people to start using ridiculous terms like “tweet” and “twitter”, do you? It’s like “blog” — a monstrosity that can corrupt a whole language.

Clucking regretfully over the phenomenon did not stop the German Wehrmacht, nor did calling them brutally efficient. Same with Twitter. It’s evil. We’re celebrating that.

Bad show, bad poll

Television once again throws away its potential with a program featuring a triumvirate of inanity: Larry King lobbing sloppy wet kisses at Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy. I might tune in, even — it seems a shame to miss what must be a rare collision of extreme stupidity.

They also have a poll. Of course.

Do you think autism can be “cured”?

Yes 47% 583
No 53% 655

Another question: can King, Carrey, and McCarthy be “cured”? It’s actually the same question: can any developmental disorder which produces a recognizable pattern of changes in the performance of the brain be cured, and should it?

A video contest!

Discover Magazine is running a contest: make a video that explains evolution in two minutes or less.

Can you communicate the most important idea in biology, and one of the most controversial ideas in our society, in a mere 120 seconds? Think you can convince even the most hard-headed creationist that Darwin was right? If so, show us–and that creationist–how it’s done.

Your task is to create a video of no more than two minutes that will get the idea and significance of evolution across to an educated lay audience. Along the way, you can touch on points like how evolution works, how we know it to be true, the evolution of humanity, and the future of evolution.

They’ve done this before, with string theory, so you can see examples. You’ve got until 1 June to come up with a scintillating and creative lesson in evolution, so get cracking!

Porn for math nerds

This recent xkcd should have you all reaching for your calculators.

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I had to look up the population density in my area…it’s 18. Not 18 thousand, just 18. When I plug that number into the formula, I got a value of 4,500 meters, almost 3 miles. The parents of our students will find that a reassuring statistic, I hope.

Of course, the formula lacks a temporal component — that mean distance is going to vary with a circadian rhythm, I would think, with peaks in the evening and early morning hours. Rather than a static number, it should be a function that measures a kind of hourly flux, with all the sexy time people hovering in close around dusk and receding during the day.

Hmmm. If XF included masturbation, that number would be much higher…

Iowa allows same-sex marriages!

That Iowa. The state south of us: rural farm country, relatively conservative (well, maybe more moderate than conservative), and yet their supreme court has surprisingly made a strong and progressive decision. The Iowa Supreme Court has struck down laws prohibiting gay marriage as unconstitutional.

Polk County District Judge Robert Hanson found that the law violated the Iowa Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, and hurt gay and lesbian couples “in numerous tangible and intangible” ways

“Civil marriage in Iowa is the only gateway to an extensive legal structure that protects a married couple’s relationship and family in and outside the state,” Hanson ruled in Des Moines.

“Iowa reserves an unparalleled array of rights, obligations and benefits to married couples and their families, privileging married couples as a financial and legal unit and stigmatizing same-sex couples.”

Wow. I am impressed with our neighboring state. Can we get this kind of sensible support for equality in place here in Minnesota, too? How about nation-wide?