Monthly Archives: February 2008

Dust off that ghost!

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This is a pretty quick post, since it doesn’t seem to require much. Check out the video in this article from NBC11 in San Francisco.

I guess this kind of thing fills up space on the evening news when there can’t possibly be anything important to report on. I mean what with the war in Iraq over, ignorance finally conquered and the presidential election resolved.

Anyway, some nice lady who can’t seem to take pictures without the flash lighting up the dust in the air and IT’s NEWS???? How credulous do you have to be to buy into this stuff?

Not only is it pretty easily explained, but they don’t even ask for her to reproduce the effect. The reporters don’t even talk to anyone who might have a better explanation. Really, really sad.

It gets even better. Following the link to the nutty lady’s website http://www.irmaslage.com , might lead one to think this was more about publicity than human interest.  Irma Slage is a psychic, author and lecturer to the gullible.  Seems she’s not just a charming lady with an odd habit of taking really bad pictures.

“Don’t tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish. ”

— Mark Twain

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The World Ends in 2012! Can I have your stuff?

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In the last couple of days I’ve heard people mention the belief that the Mayan Calendar foreshadows the end of the world in 2012. They Mayan culture is long gone, why has this meme come to the surface now?

Well, there have been a spate of news articles about the end of the Mayan Calendar in 2012. The quesion, as posed by USA Today, “Does Maya calendar predict 2012 apocalypse?”.

If you hit Amazon.com looking for books and such on the subject you get quite a variety with titles like, “The Mystery of 2012: Predictions, Prophecies and Possibilities” and “The Mayan Code: Time Acceleration and Awakening the World Mind”. Some might dismiss this as typical New Age bunk, but there is always a portion of the credulous who will have anxiety after learning of apocalyptic predictions.

What makes the Mayan apocalypse any different from The Millenium, The Great Disappointment of 1844 or any other prediction of the end of the world? Well, I think it has a lot to do with some of the mystique of Pre-Columbian Meso-American cultures like the Aztec, Inca and the Maya.

Honestly, when you hear someone speak of the Maya, what is the first image that comes to mind? Is it of an long lost advanced civilization with lost knowledge we have yet to recover? Is it of ancient astronauts?

The Mayan culture was extensive and advanced, but it seems unlikely they had any prescient knowledge of the end of the world. I think it would be great if we could ask them. Unfortuntely, this advanced culture with foreknowledge of the end of the world collapsed over a thousand years ago.

So, if you are convinced the world will end in 2012…. Can I have your stuff?

“The End of the Universe is very popular, people like to dress up for it, Gives it a sense of occasion.” — Douglas Adams in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

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SKEPTOID Podcast

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I recently heard an interview with Brian Dunning on Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe and was very impressed with him, so I pulled down his podcast. I’ve now gone back and listened to all of them.

Skeptoid is a very different skepticism-oriented podcast from the rest I subscribe to. It is not a round table, it is not interview-oriented. It is just one guy, who does his research, and presents one topic per show in a straightforward intelligent manner.

His topics range from Homeopathy, and other medical buffoonery, to 9/11 conspiracies and the war on Terror. Along the way Brian sprinkles in some good education on Critical Thinking and how to spot Logical Fallacies and Fallacious Arguments.

Brian is committed to just getting clear information out. All of his podcasts are available for free, they are also reproduced as essays on his site AND now many of them are collected into his new book, SKEPTOID: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena with a foreword by none other than James “The Amazing Randi” Randi.

He doesn’t even accept donations, he only asks that you spread the word. So, in my little way…

“If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it.” — Margaret Fuller (1810 – 1850), journalist, critic, women’s rights activist

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