British royalty receives a long-awaited shakeup

I was so excited about this lead.

A famous Newfoundland sea monster will soon occupy a space normally reserved for Canada’s Queen.

I was even more excited when I saw a picture of the Newfie beast:

i-cf89d8d814bda126e629eca06937b13d-gloversharbour.jpeg

That’ll teach that dingleberry Charles — bypassed by a giant squid, soon to be ruler of all Britannia.

It was a major letdown to discover the details.

Glover’s Harbour’s giant roadside squid statue has been chosen to appear on a new Canadian stamp.

A fellow can still dream, though. Someone needs to drop a hint to Queen Elizabeth that a giant aquatic mollusc would do a better job on the throne than that dullard she birthed.

Jon Stewart, you let me down

Last night, Stewart interviewed Marilynne Robinson. I do not expect attack dog tactics from Stewart, ever, but I also didn’t expect him to so totally buy into her premises. It was very disappointing.

The low point came as Stewart tried to justify Robinson’s nebulous argument that science and religion need each other, and he offered stock apologetics.

The more you delve into science, the more it relies on faith.

No, it doesn’t. The less you delve into science, and the more superficial your understanding of the evidence, the more likely you are to ascribe its more difficult concepts to faith. Faith is the product of ignorance.

When Stewart strained to give an example of faith-based conclusions in science, he came up with one: anti-matter. He’s never seen it, so obviously it must not be real, but only the imagined fancy of some egghead physicist somewhere.

Unfortunately for Stewart, anti-matter exists. It’s been observed, measured, analyzed. Its existence is not a matter of faith, but of knowledge and experiment.

Marilynne Robinson was no better, of course, just mumbling the usually feeble platitudes and complaining that the atheists represent science poorly, as if she’d know. And at the end, she offered up this little jewel, unchallenged by Stewart.

We need insights from religion.

Name one. Name one insight religion has ever given us that could not have been made by secular philosophers, that was also useful and true.

HuffPo: Worse than Fox News?

At least when it comes to quackery, it is. An informal analysis of relevant stories on homeopathy reveals some sad results:

  • Fox news returned a total of 20 news stories; 5% were favorable towards homeopathy, 50% were unfavorable, and 45% were neutral.

  • NPR returned a total of 8 news stories; 12.5% were favorable towards homeopathy, 50% were unfavorable, and 37.5% were neutral.

  • The Huffington Post returned a total of 77 news stories; 68.83% were favorable toward homeopathy, 14.28% were unfavorable, and 16.88% were neutral.

Fox and NPR don’t really have a horse in this race, so their percentages (based on some small numbers) probably just reflect a casual bias in the popular culture, unfortunate as it is. HuffPo looks like they’re flogging quackery pretty hard, and almost certainly intentionally.

More on that really bad experiment by Blizzard

Blizzard, makers of the games Starcraft and World of Warcraft, is about to change their forum policies and require the display of real names, basically creating a massive privacy leak if you buy a silly game and go online to get some tech support. There’s an excellent summary of why this was a really bad idea here, and apparently Blizzard has an inkling of possible problems — they’re waffling about whether to publish employee names under their new terms. If it’s not a problem for users, why should employees get an exemption?

Also, I’ve been sent a few links to sites where people are demonstrating what can be done with names and a little information: they’re digging up all kinds of amazing info about Blizzard employees. Photos, family pictures, home addresses, financial statements, shoe sizes, wedding registries, children’s school addresses, that sort of thing. I’m not going to post those links here! Personally, I’ve been very casual about my privacy, but we have to respect people’s decision to avoid public entanglements of this sort—and buying a garish box at Electronics Boutique for some casual entertainment should not be a tacit agreement to allow stalkers to track you down.

What’s next after Expelled?

I’ve got a little inside information on Premise Media, makers of Expelled — despite all the bragging about what a successful movie they had, they still haven’t fully paid contractors they’d hired, and the company appears to be dead. It was a kind of zombie company anyway, with a fake website filled with fake projects to trick people into taking it seriously, and now it’s simply decaying. All that’s left is a collection of clips.

However, the writer, Kevin Miller, has found employment working on something even schlockier — the poor guy’s career is sinking so fast, he’s going to end up writing for Veggie Tales at some point. He’s working on a new movie with…Kirk Cameron!

The movie is called Monumental, and I dare you to puzzle out what it’s about from the description at that link. It seems to be best described as Kirk Cameron’s Vanity Show, in which a film crew follows him around as he gushes out a right-wing simplistic version of American history that emphasizes how God was on our side every step of the way. It sounds like the sort of thing they’d want to bring in the Texas board of education to consult on.

I remember the classic BBC television series, America, and it has echoes of that…except instead of a guy with class and gravitas like Alistair Cooke, their narrator is going to be a pious pipsqueak creationist with a reputation for inanity and ignorance, and it’s being written by a fellow whose last big screen effort was notorious for its dishonesty and incompetence. The Dunning-Kruger effect strikes again!

I am really tired of Paul the Psychic Octopus

I know you all mean well, but 30-40 emails a day just about the German octopus ‘predicting’ World Cup matches is wearing me out. I have to explain a few things.

Cephalopods are not psychic. Nothing is.

If this were real, it would be Paul the Precognitive Octopus. It’s telling the future, not reading minds.

Cephalopods cannot see into the future. Nothing can.

As this game is set up, there’s a simple 50% chance in any trial that the octopus will guess correctly. It has guessed correctly 6 times; there’s a 1 in 64 chance you could get the same result flipping a quarter.

Cephalopods are smart and responsive. This scenario is ripe for the Clever Hans effect, which means the handler’s knowledge about likely winners can greatly improve the odds of the observed result.

I’m sure that the aquarium housing Paul could use a little extra money. If the octopus actually does have paranormal powers, they should apply for Randi’s million dollar challenge. I’m sure they won’t, because they know that in a well-controlled experiment, Paul’s amazing abilities would suddenly disappear.

I really detest this kind of prolonged silly indulgence in a common supernatural belief by a purportedly scientific organization. Once is a lark, a joke, a funny bit of self-mockery — stretching it out turns it into an exercise in misinformation.

Psychics are lying parasites. I hate to see a beautiful cephalopod smeared with that ignoble reputation.

FREE THE OCTOPUS! IMPRISON THE DISHONEST MEDIA!

Oh, dear. Right after posting this, I got email from Brian Souter.

Hi Mr Myers
I just saw your article:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/07/i_am_really_tired_of_paul_the.php

With its:
‘Cephalopods cannot see into the future. Nothing can.’
And
‘Psychics are lying parasites. I hate to see a beautiful cephalopod smeared with that ignoble reputation.
Well Paul is proving you wrong!
Can octopi lie?
So far Pauls 100% success at the World Cup proves your scepticism is unjustified, not to mention pettily vindictive, as you see your cafully crafted world being kicked about like a jabulani ball. He does have psychic powers…and so do many if not most people. Its only the opressive rage of witch hunting sceptics, that presents this from flowering. Out in the real world…these things do happen.

Paul is luckier than most psychics tho: hes doesnt have to deal with the rage of sceptics influencing his predictions…Hes immune to the rant of the Randis.

Pauls done the world a real service! Showing that such gifts are real…And its being broadcast live… to the world!…randi the bandi can start writing that check!

What a pity to see science smeared by last ditch self-serving lying in the face of real and real world evidence…

Regards and GO PAUL!

Brian

Whoa. I guess I’ve been taught a lesson.