How to cover doomsayers

If you’re disappointed in CNN, you can always turn to MSNBC…ooops, never mind, they’re solemnly reporting on the end-of-the-world nonsense from the Harold Camping Cult. They’re predicting the Rapture will come on 21 May.

I would like to propose a novel version of Pascal’s Wager for the news media. When apocalyptic cults come along and announce disaster and doom, ridicule them. Just rip into them, send your most sarcastic, cynical reporters to cover the story, and just shred all the followers as loons and gullible freaks. There will be two possible outcomes.

One, they’re right, and the world ends. Your business has nothing to gain or lose by taking them seriously before the big event — it’s going kaput no matter what. So have a grand time before the catastrophe and make money with laughter. It’s not as if listening to crazy ol’ Harold Camping will make a bit of difference in your fate.

Two, they’re wrong, and the world keeps rolling on beyond 21 May. We all win! It means your coverage was spot on perfect, and got all the right answers, while the cultists are going to have to go glumly back to living their miserable little failed lives. Follow up with a feature on all the broken-hearted crazies. Start looking for the next mob of nuts to mock.

See? That’s how to handle it. All this sober pandering to derangement gains you nothing.

Pallacken Abdul Wahid is back!

You just can’t shut this crank up. You may recall that he earlier published a paper in an Elsevier journal claiming that all of genetics is wrong, oh, and by the way, the Quran and Bible are right because chromosomes look like ribs. He has a new paper out (only it’s actually the same old word salad, freshly tossed), Molecular genetic program (genome) contrasted against non-molecular invisible biosoftware in the light of the Quran and the Bible.

The current perception of biological information as encoded by a chemical structure (genome) is critically examined. Many features assigned to the genome are violations of chemical fundamentals. Perhaps the most striking one is that a living cell and its dead counterpart are materially identical, i.e., in both of them all the structures including genome are intact. But yet the dead cell does not show any sign of bioactivity. This clearly shows that the genome does not constitute the biological program of an organism (a biocomputer or a biorobot) and is hence not the cause of “life”. The molecular gene and genome concepts are therefore wrong and scientifically untenable. On the other hand, the Scriptural revelation of the non-molecular biosoftware (the soul) explains the phenomenon of life in its entirety. The computer model of organism also helps understand the Biblical metaphor “Adam’s rib” as chromosome, the biomemory of the cell. The Quran provides ample insight into the phenomenon of human biodiversification. It also reveals the source of biological information required for creating biodiversity in human population. The Scriptural revelation of the invisible non-molecular nature of biosoftware rules out the possibility of creating life from chemical molecules without involving a living cell (or organism) in the process. Claims of creation of “synthetic life” or “synthetic forms of life” employing living cell in the process cannot be accepted as creation of life from non-life as non-molecular biosoftware can be copied from the living cell to the prosthetic cell. Instead of chemically synthesizing a cell from scratch to prove life is a material phenomenon, biologists can as well resort to a more practical and convincing method by restoring life to a dead cell (which carries all the hardware structures including the genome but lacks the biosoftware) by chemical means. The failure of experiments to produce life through purely chemical means or to restore life to a dead cell would in fact invalidate the molecular biological program (genome) concept. More importantly, the failure would confirm the Scriptural revelation of non-particulate nature of the divine biosoftware and the existence of God.

It’s nonsense through and through, and it’s even recycled nonsense — there’s nothing new in here that you can’t find in his previous paper from Bizarro land, except this one seems to emphasize his claim that the impossibility of restarting a dead cell proves the existence of a creator.

The man is a flaming crackpot, but the real shame here is that he is regularly getting published, even if it is in bottom-tier journals. This one was in “Advances in Bioscience and Biotechnology“, which bills itself as an international journal of bioscience, very broadly defined. I suspect it’s a money-making racket. It says “A fee will be charged to cover the publication cost” (which is not at all unusual in science, and many of the very best journals charge a page fee to authors), but it also says the papers “are subject to a rigorous and fair peer-review process”, a claim clearly given the lie by Mr Wahid. This is a paper that could not have survived a cursory glance, let alone a rigorous review.

I’m sure Ken Ham is grateful

Ken Ham is humbly appreciative of the coverage his Giant Wooden Box project is getting.

We were notified late this morning that AiG’s latest project, the Ark Encounter, will be featured tonight (Monday) on ABC-TV’s evening newscast, World News with Diane Sawyer. Check your local listings for the ABC affiliate station in your area and the time of broadcast. (See the ABC-TV news site.) Also, here is a link to the article about the Ark project that appears in the New York Times today: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/us/06ark.html.

The website for the Ark Encounter is ArkEncounter.com.

We are grateful to God for all this media coverage.

And well he should be. I looked at the NY Times coverage, and was appalled.

I have to explain something to the Times. Some guy building a little theme park in Kentucky is not news. It’s something for the state and local news, sure, but not something that warrants a good-sized spread and a big image of the proposed park in the N freaking Y frackin’ Times.

So why is it given that much space and a purely vanilla description of the events and people involved, as if it is simultaneously a big deal deserving national attention and a weirdly blasé occurrence that requires no investigation — how can it be both controversial enough to warrant attention and so uncontroversial that the reporter can’t even be bothered to mention how ridiculous and anti-scientific this endeavor is?

It is an astonishingly insipid article. The only good (?) thing about it is that finally the NY Times breaks its bad habit of “he said, she said” journalism and didn’t even bother to contact a scientist to get the “other” side. You know, the rational, accurate, honest, scientific side.

I don’t have much hope for the Diane Sawyer story going on the air tonight, either. Anyone want to bet on whether Ham gets pitched some softballs and the park that encourages children to be stupid is treated as purely an economic development issue?

It’s Wikileaks Day

Today, Wikileaks begins releasing a huge collection of US embassy cables, and we’re about to discover the degree of skullduggery that’s been going on.

The cables show the extent of US spying on its allies and the UN; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in “client states”; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for US corporations; and the measures US diplomats take to advance those who have access to them.

This document release reveals the contradictions between the US’s public persona and what it says behind closed doors – and shows that if citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what’s going on behind the scenes.

Every American schoolchild is taught that George Washington – the country’s first President – could not tell a lie. If the administrations of his successors lived up to the same principle, today’s document flood would be a mere embarrassment. Instead, the US Government has been warning governments — even the most corrupt — around the world about the coming leaks and is bracing itself for the exposures.

It is to be hoped that every major newspaper with some respect for its job has got people going over these documents carefully. The description above is correct: if we’re to deserve the title of democracy, we must have an informed citizenry.

Bad move, A&E

The A&E Channel has a new show coming up: Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal. Sounds awful already, doesn’t it? But it’s worse than you think: they’re looking for disturbed kids who think they’ve got magic powers, and then they’re flying in “professional psychics” to coach them in dealing with their awesome powers, i.e., indulge their delusions, get off on feeling superior to unhappy kids, and collect a paycheck for psychic child abuse.

They’re putting kids in the hands of a creepy skeevo like Chip Coffey, all for your entertainment.

This is quite possibly the most loathsome thing I’ve ever seen on TV, and my cable gives me access to the Trinity Broadcast Network, so that’s saying a lot.

Skepchicks are mobilizing the skeptic hordes. Call or write to A&E and let them know that their schlock has reached a new and despicable low.

I mentioned that I have cable…but there’s almost nothing on. The quality has been on a steady decline for years; cable stations like A&E, TLC, the History Channel, and the Discovery Channel were all set up with the noble goals of providing good educational/informative programming, and they’ve all sold out to provide little more than dreck ala Psychics with Serious Mental Illnesses Hunting Hitler’s Ghost While Driving A Big Truck with Their Freakish Family. It’s cheap, it’s easy, the ‘talent’ they hire are all boring nobodies with only their disturbed personalities as a selling point — these are modern freak shows, plain and simple — and audiences eat them up.

Meanwhile, look here: somebody has a petition begging someone, anyone to pick up Richard Dawkins’ thoughtful and intelligent documentaries. They’re done, they’re just sitting there, they’re begging to be broadcast…but I guess he just doesn’t have the charisma of a hammy metaphysical child abuser.

What madness will the NY Times take seriously next?

I’ve noticed that the bad practice of “he said, she said” journalism so common at the NY Times disappears when the subject is religion. There, instead, the standard role of the journalist becomes one of the credulous, unquestioning observer. It’s evident in this new article on the revival of Catholic exorcisms, being discussed at a conference.

The purpose is not necessarily to revive the practice, the organizers say, but to help Catholic clergy members learn how to distinguish who really needs an exorcism from who really needs a psychiatrist, or perhaps some pastoral care.

That’s not a quote from one of the participants in the conference, it’s straight from the reporter, Laurie Goodstein. Does she really think there are patients who really need an exorcism rather than psychiatric care? Is demonic posession a real problem? Maybe Homeland Security should be involved, if we actually have an ongoing invasion by demonic creatures from Hell.

No critical thinking is presented in the article, and I was rather disappointed: the usual journalistic substitute for critical thinking is to scurry off and find some random person who disagrees, in order to toss one or two contrary quotes on the page. That’s what they’d do if the subject is evolution or climate change, for instance, and that’s the way so many cranks can get their words in major newspapers. We don’t even get that much here, though: just quotes from various people who think it’s perfectly ordinary for the Catholic Church to be promoting the idea of the Devil instead of dealing with the idea of, you know, real human people and real illness.

I would like to have seen at least one sentence suggesting that it’s nuts to be training witch doctors, but nope…this is the closest we get:

“What they’re trying to do in restoring exorcisms,” said Dr. Appleby, a longtime observer of the bishops, “is to strengthen and enhance what seems to be lost in the church, which is the sense that the church is not like any other institution. It is supernatural, and the key players in that are the hierarchy and the priests who can be given the faculties of exorcism.

“It’s a strategy for saying: ‘We are not the Federal Reserve, and we are not the World Council of Churches. We deal with angels and demons.’ “

OK, so the Catholic Church deals only with the unreal and nonexistent. Now if only we had media that dared to point out that angels and demons don’t exist.

“The ordinary work of the Devil is temptation,” he said, “and the ordinary response is a good spiritual life, observing the sacraments and praying. The Devil doesn’t normally possess someone who is leading a good spiritual life.”

In any other subject, if someone made a specific claim like that, I’d expect a good journalist to ask, “how do you know that?” and try to track down a credible source for such a claim about an individual. When the subject is the Devil, though, anything goes. You can say any ol’ crazy thing about Satan, and the reporter will dutifully write it down and publish it without ever stopping for a moment to wonder, “Hey, is my source just making shit up?”

Oh, well. It’s important news, I guess. “Catholics are crazier than we imagined!” should have been the front page headline.

This is news?

This is billed as a special news report: do angels exist?. I remember using “special” in exactly that way in grade school, too. Do Fox News reporters also ride the short bus to work?

I suppose I should be grateful that they brought in one skeptic to moderate it a bit, but otherwise…it’s an excuse to quote the Bible a bunch of times and drag in some truly stupid people to testify. Joey Hipp ought to be in jail: after being told, he says, that his wife’s spine was so mangled she might not be able to walk, he strolls up to her hospital bed, takes her hand, and makes her stand up…what kind of dangerous moron would do that? That she isn’t crippled now is due to luck and medicine, not her husband’s demented faith.

I’m also left feeling a bit peeved at angels. That tall, handsome angel in the silver corvette who helped some lady not be late for Bible study should have been off warning Joey Hipp to slow down on his motorcycle before he killed his wife.

But yes, O you fortunate people in distant lands, this is the American news media. I bet you also didn’t realize that Mike Judge’s movie, Idiocracy, was a documentary.

Time to revoke Disney’s ownership

Disney has always been aggressive about extending their copyright to the various Disney characters — they keep going to congress and getting more years tacked on. It’s clearly past due that we should revoke all that (come on, Ol’ Walt died when I was in 4th grade, and I don’t care if his cryogenically frozen head is occasionally revived to dispense marching orders and consume baby brain smoothies). As evidence, I present to you the latest atrocity from the Disney channel, “Disney Blam!” What they do is take classic old Disney cartoons from the 40s, 50s, and 60s and ‘update’ them by adding obnoxious voiceovers. The narrator yells out grating descriptions of what’s going on visually, shouts “BLAM!” too frequently, and adds slo-mo instant replay to scenes where characters get bonked on the head. Really. It has to be seen to be believed.

Don’t you feel dumber for having watched that? Or at least, that Disney Corp. thinks you’re an idiot?

Why, in my day, I remember when we could expect five year olds to be able to watch these with comprehension, without some jerk on the soundtrack pointing out “BLAM! He got hit in the head with an anvil!” It’s not as if these things were ever intellectually subtle, you know.

Stop the disease before it spreads to Tex Avery and Chuck Jones! The Idiocracy will have arrived when the media overlords decide that Roadrunner cartoons need a play-by-play for their audiences to appreciate them.

(via Jhonen Vasquez)

Curl up and die already, HuffPo

Jebus, but I despise that fluffy, superficial, Newagey site run by the flibbertigibbet Ariana. I will not be linking to it, but if you must, you can just search for this recent article: “Darwin May Have Been WRONG, New Study Argues”. I don’t recommend it. It sucks. Read the title, and you’ve already got the false sensationalism of the whole story down cold.

It’s actually an old and familiar story that doesn’t upset any applecarts at all. There is a well-known concept in evolutionary theory of an adaptive radiation: a lineage acquires a new trait (birds evolve flight, for instance), or an extinction removes all competition and creates an opportunity for expansion (the dinosaurs are wiped out and mammals expand rapidly into vacant niches), and presto, new species and diversity abounds. For a really obvious example of this phenomenon, look to Darwin’s finches: one or a few species are storm-blown to an isolated chain of islands, and they gradually speciate to take on many roles.

See? No shock, no strike against evolution, or even against Darwin’s version of evolution. To claim otherwise is simply stupid.

Now the paper in question seeks to quantify the expansion of taxonomic diversity with the appearance of large-scale ecological opportunities, and concludes that competition and refinement by natural selection has not been the major driver of diversification, but that reason we have thousands of species of mammals and even more species of birds is more a consequence of chance and opportunity than strong competition. It’s a reasonable result, but not cause for a revolution; lots of us have been advocating for the importance of chance in evolution for many years, and it’s unsurprising that non-selective mechanisms of evolution will generate new diversity from a single species in an open, competition free field.

Bugger the awful Huffpo. One of the scientists, Sarda Sahney, has a nice blog with a sensible discussion of the paper. Read that instead.