I’m sure there’s a paradox in here somewhere

The Colorado NPR station KUNC recently ran a credulous fluff piece by some guy named Marc Ringel, touting “healing at a distance”, some sort of magic handwaving that he claims is “scientifically” supported. The Colorado skeptical community, of course, has expressed their scorn in email to the station, and also brought it to my attention. They also mentioned an excellent website reviewing the evidence for intercessory prayer.

The most interesting revelation to me: I’ve heard of tests of intercessory prayer, where people pray or don’t pray for a patient and then the outcomes are evaluated to see if it helped (it never does), but there’s another weird version of these improbable experiments.

Retroactive intercessory prayer.

It’s what it sounds like. The investigators took old hospital records, from patients who had been treated 4-10 years before, and asked subjects to pray for one group, and not pray for the other group. They then looked again at the old records to see if the patients that were prayed for now had gotten better then … and they did.

Think that through for a moment. It really is that insane.

So if ever you learn that I’ve gone into the hospital and died, I want you all to get together and pray really, really hard and change the past so I come back to life.

Oh, wait. I’m talking to the wrong people, aren’t I? I need to get a more devout readership who will have the true magic ju-ju to pull off time travel.

Media alert!

The makers of Expelled have just issued an “online media alert” in response to a critical review of their movie, as some readers have forwarded to me. It’s hysterical.

We already had our first security breech [sic] and are asking YOU now for your support to stand up for EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. Hosted by Ben Stein, EXPELLED contains a critical message at a critical time. As an underdog in Hollywood right now, we need your support.

Recently Robert Moore, a film critic from The Orlando Sentinel pretending to be a minister, snuck into a private screening, did not sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, and criticized the film the next day in his article.

Moore compared Stein, who is Jewish, to Holocaust Deniers and charge that Stein’s linking of Darwinism to the Holocaust was “despicable.” Stein states, “The only thing I find despicable is when reporters sneak into screenings by pretending to be ministers. This is a new low even for liberal reporters.”

That someone who saw their movie and panned it is now a “security breach”? That’s funny. That they set up a private screening for the religiously devout in expectation that they would receive their seal of approval is just plain pathetic. At least they aren’t pretending that their movie is anything but a desperate pander to the religious right.

If you read the review, you’ll see that Moore received an email invitation that was sent to the Orlando Sentinel, and took advantage of it. If they allowed someone to see their movie without signing an NDA, that’s their problem. They don’t get to complain and call it a security breach, especially when they built their movie around interviews obtained from me, Eugenie Scott, and Richard Dawkins, and others under entirely false pretenses. After all, if they can disguise themselves as serious documentarians to land an interview, what’s wrong with a critic attending a screening tailored for conservative ministers?

I do note Stein’s hypocrisy and lack of proportion. Joining a group of ministers to watch a movie: very despicable. Implying that Darwin and the scientists who recognize the value of his theory are responsible for the murder of millions of people and the instigation of a war that shook the whole world: not despicable. I’m probably going to go see their dreadful bit of dreck when it comes out, but now I’m tempted to commit a crime against humanity by putting on a fake clerical collar when I do so.

If only we were molluscs, we’d be safe

In a story about large snakes thriving in California, Hank Fox noticed an interesting warning.

As for other potential prey, human beings – like rodents, beavers and deer – are mammals, government scientists confirmed.

This is obviously why we pay the government scientists the big bucks: to keep hairy bipedal animals with mammary glands informed about their taxonomic status. I’m imagining some blase Californian reading the article which tells them that these pythons eat small mammals, completely unconcerned, until, like a howling siren of alarm, the paper informs them that they happen to be mammals, too, and are therefore likely to be eaten by snakes.

And it gets more amusing. The snakes are traveling to California from Florida, following a trail made by the “large population of beavers along the way” — a path that is unimpeded by the presence of few lions and tigers to eat them. After explaining that the snakes will not be found in the colder areas of the state, readers receive another terrifying nugget of information.

Such remote areas, however, could not support every panicked Californian seeking to avoid the giant snakes.

How many panicked Californians are there, anyway? Did they all read their morning paper, gasp in shock, “Holy crap, I’m a mammal? Snakes are gonna eat me!” and run for the hills?

This was apparently on the front page of the SF Chronicle…I hope the writer had fun putting it together, and that not too many readers clogged the freeways as they fled to the Sierras.

CBS’s moral lapse

Yesterday, I asked if anyone caught the offensive description of the results of the Pew study on religion on CBS. Crooks and Liars did. Here’s Wyatt Andrews’ comment on the results:

The unprecedented survey of religion answers many concerns about a secular, morally void America.

I don’t even know what that means. He seems to be linking “secular” with “morally void”, but I don’t understand what concerns it answered for him — I found the results reassuring, but I want more secularism and and don’t see it as moral problem at all.

The Fall

I’m pretty darn sure after seeing the trailer that I want to see this movie, but there’s one little fillip, one name that gets briefly dropped, that really makes me wonder what’s going to happen. It isn’t explained in the clip, unfortunately, it’s just there, so I’ll have to cough up $5 to find out.

Baby loves…disco?

Usually I’m complaining about some fresh inanity from the religious side, but I have to be fair: this is an example of secular child abuse. It’s the Baby Loves Disco franchise, that is driving parents to bring the little kiddies to a club, where they are forced to relive the horrors of the 70s, with Travolta-esque dancers and the shrill falsettos of the Bee Gees ringing in their ears.

I lived through the 70s. I was on the dating scene in the 70s. I have been to a KC and the Sunshine Boys concert; I have seen the glitter and the flash, and heard the maddening, endless beats. I would never inflict such a nightmare on my children, nor would I want to be in a room with a disco ball — it might trigger flashbacks.

Oh, well. It could be worse. It could be Christian disco (yes, there is such a thing.)