You are required to watch Tim Minchin’s excellent short animated movie.

Enough said.

I have an excuse to visit Philadelphia this May: I’ll be attending the Friggatriskaidekaphobia party that Margaret Downey will be putting on on Friday, the 13th of May, along with Tom Flynn.

Meet Tom Flynn, along with PZ Myers, at the Freethought Society (FS)’s 2011 Anti-Superstition Bashon Friday, May 13, 2011 from 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM in the beautiful Corinthian Yacht Club on 300 West 2nd Street, Essington, PA (just minutes from the Philadelphia Airport). FS will host a “Friggatriskaidekaphobia Treatment Center,” which will be equipped to assist party attendees in getting over all their superstitions and starting the process of ending magical thinking. Enjoy food, dancing, drinking and camaraderie.

Get rid of your secret superstitions! Anti-superstition “nurses” and “doctors” will be on hand to cure you. Enjoy a DJ Dance Party featuring Ladder Limbo, Horoscope Trashing, Open-Your-Umbrellas, fast and slow dances, Mirror Breaking Ceremony, and more! Cash bar and free hors d’oeuvres, door prizes and free educational literature will be available!

The general admission (includes light fare) is $10 with $5 discounts available for students and seniors. Cash bar only. No BYOB. There is no charge for children under the age of 13. The Club is located at 300 West 2nd Street, Essington, PA 19029.

If you will be attending, please email tickets@FtSociety.org.

I’m a little worried about the dance party business, though. I think seeing me dance would be bad luck.

I hope there will be many Philadelphians in attendance!

I’m giving you advanced warning: the awesome science fiction convention, CONvergence, will be taking place in Bloomington, Minnesota on 30 June-3 July. You should go. Really. It will be fun, and I’m always telling atheist activists to go to a few science fiction conventions — they have mastered the art of being inclusive, interesting, diverse, and interactive. Even if you aren’t an SF fan, go to one and study the mechanics, they work.

CONvergence has another distinction, in that the Skepchicks have attached themselves leechlike to the larger con to run a skeptics’ track. So yes, you should go for the fun parties attended by strange people in exotic costumes and the panel discussions on how to survive Zombie Armageddon, but you can also sit in on entertaining and educational sessions on critical thinking and science.

Go forth and register now.

What is it with these stupid, cheap silicone wrist bands? It seems every scam artist in the country is selling these things along with claims that they have amazing magical powers, and people must be buying them. Here’s a promotional video for Energy Armor — “NEGATIVE IONS!”

This is their explanation for how these are supposed to work. I think. Somehow, a little honesty slipped into the middle of the fairy tale.

The Energy Armor wristband has taken these good ions, which are known as “negative ions”, and have found a way to infuse them into a durable silicone band. There is no secret machine that magically inserts an electrical charge into our hologram. The reason is simple; that is scientifically impossible. The Energy Armor infusing process allows the Ions to continually release Negative Ions when in contact with your body.

OK. It’s scientifically impossible. I guess that means that $25 for a rubbery little impossible miracle is a really good deal.

That’s the message the despicable John Edward and Dr Oz tried to give in a recent television program. I knew Edward was beneath contempt, but I’ve never watched Oz and had only heard second-hand that he was a woo-meister…but this show confirms it. Even worse, Oz brought in a critic, Katherine Nordal, to assess Edward’s psychic readings, and she has since complained about what the show did with her commentary.

In a letter to producers of “The Dr. Oz” show Nordal said, “I provided very balanced responses to Dr. Oz’s questions during the show’s taping, however, the editing of my responses did not capture my full comments or give viewers an accurate portrayal of my professional view on John Edward’s methods. Instead, it seems that ‘The Doctor Oz’ show intentionally edited my responses in a way that gave the appearance of my endorsement of Edward’s methods as a legitimate intervention.”

Keep that in mind, skeptics, if you’re ever asked to participate in one of these scammy shows: they want you for window dressing, to give an air of critical evaluation to their games, but they won’t hesitate to mangle your words. We already know that psychics are liars and con artists, why should we expect them to treat anyone honorably?

And then…oh, man, this is evil ghoulishness. Edward did one of his typical fishing expeditions, saying someone who had lost a child was present, and getting a gullible victim to volunteer for a little torture and exploitation.

This was unbelievable.

His next victim (patient?) was a middle-aged man who rose to his feet when Edward suggested someone had lost a son. As the reading continued, Edward informed the grief-stricken parent that the car accident that claimed his son’s life was in fact a suicide.

“I’ve never known that he committed suicide for sure,” said the grieving father, “but I believe it.”

Edward is making this stuff up as he goes along; he is taking the grief of a heart-broken parent and twisting it and making it harder, sharper, more painful. And he’s getting paid for it.

Jebus, but I hate these amoral psychopaths, these molesters of memories, these exploiters of tragedy.

And Oz is an enabler, the monster’s assistant.

Holy crap, have you seen the line up for The Amaz!ng Meeting? Everyone is going to be there, except maybe the Chinese army and a forgotten marching band in Lithuania. How are they going to schedule this monster? How many people are they going to have attend…or are they all signed up to present talks?

I know DJ told me I was supposed to give a talk, but I may only get 10 minutes on the stage at this rate. The theme this year is “TAM 9 From Outer Space”, and they’re going to focus on space science and skepticism, with a whole throng of astrophycist/astronomers getting top billing. It’s a good thing I’m going, though: I’m planning to talk about aliens and bad biology, so they need someone to bring them down to earth.

Maybe we should just stage a brawl: me against all the unemployed Klingons from the now-defunct Star Trek Experience. Oh, wait, I think they’re busy — they’re probably all signed up to present at TAM!

It’s in the works: Skepticon IV will be held in October, and the organizers are straining to bring the resources together they need to make it happen. If you’d like to donate, this is a good time, since Polaris Financial is providing matching funds for any contribution made in March.

They haven’t announced the speakers at the event, but look at the list of past speakers to see how it has grown.

Below is a news clip from our local Fox station. I feel very, very sorry for Leif Reffsgaard, who is being rewarded with a lot of attention for being gullible. He’s a third grader who claims to be able to heal his friends by waving his hands around.

There is some small hope for the poor deluded kid. Here’s what he thinks about his ‘powers’.

I just think magic is really cool…I feel like I’m a wizard using the healing spell.

Maybe someday he’ll wake up to the fact that magic doesn’t work in the real world. Or maybe about the time he reaches adolescence he’ll realize that he looks awfully dorky flapping his hands like that.

There’s probably no hope for the adults in his life who are pushing this nonsense on him. And there’s probably also no hope for those credulous television announcers, but then, they do work for Fox News, so they had to be brain-damaged or desperate before they took the job, anyway.