The last time the Catholic church took on the witches, church leaders didn't mess around. They just burned a bunch of them at the stake, and then looked around for more. And I have to admit Exodus 22:18, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," is pretty unequivocal.
Since burning women is now generally frowned upon in polite society, the church has had to explore other avenues. The latest was just released a couple of weeks ago by Catholic Truth Press, the Vatican's official publisher in the United Kingdom. Entitled "Wicca and Witchcraft: Understanding the Dangers," by Elizabeth Dodd, it uses gentle persuasion and "shared concerns about issues such as the environment" to try to convert Wiccans to Christianity.
Dodd, interviewed by the Daily Mail last week, was asked if she thought that Harry Potter had increased the appeal of Wicca. She replied that any young person who dabbles in magic is risking long-term harm.
"The use of magic, the practice of witchcraft, offends God because it is rooted in our sinful and fallen nature," she stated. "It attempts to usurp God."
I checked to see how much Catholic Truth Press was charging for this updated version of the Malleus Maleficarum. Turns out it's only $3.12...
... but it's sold out.
I'm not sure how to interpret this. Did it sell out because people thought it was funny and wanted to have a copy to laugh at? Was it because they seriously think witches are a threat to young people, and wanted to do their part to convert them to Catholicism? Myself, if I had a choice of leaving my kids with a witch or with a Catholic priest, I'd choose the witch in about 0.0001 milliseconds.
Honestly, the Wiccans are an interesting bunch. You may not know that there is actually a Church and School of Wicca, which (in their own words) "...finds its roots in ancient ways. It has psychic connections and sympathy with those who were burnt in the medieval period, and indeed with all individuals who have been oppressed and killed in the name of religion."
Unfortunately, this isn't really all that accurate. Wicca was cobbled together from hyper-romanticized 19th century mystery cults in about 1954 by a retired English civil servant named Gerald Gardner. Gardner claimed that Wicca (which he sometimes referred to as "The Craft") represented a survival of the "knowledge of the Druids" that had been secretly remembered and practiced by initiates since before the time of the Romans, and based upon this Secret Knowledge he developed a whole body of beliefs and rituals for his followers to practice.
The problem is (well, one of many problems is) that next to nothing is known of what the Druids (i.e. the ancient Celtic priesthood) actually believed. The Celts wrote down very little -- they had a lettering system (the Ogham runes) which are poorly understood, and of which very few examples have survived. The Romans wrote down some observation of Celtic ritual, but to say that the Romans are a biased source is a colossal understatement. They thought that the Celts were barbarians (some etymologies claim that the word "barbarian" itself comes from the fact that to cultured Roman and Greek ears, the language of the Celts sounded like "bar-bar-bar-bar-bar") and therefore paid little attention to them except as the Unfortunate Prior Inhabitants of Lands the Romans Want. It probably didn't help matters that the Celts painted their bodies blue and went into battle stark naked. That sort of thing often makes an impression, but it's seldom a favorable one.
And in all of the Celtic lands, thousands of years of oppression from an occupation government, and the anti-pagan efforts of the dominant religion, effectively erased all but bits and pieces of the original beliefs of the Celts. Certain symbols have survived, (e.g. the Green Man and the Horned God), but other than a vague notion of what those represented, we really have nothing in the way of concrete knowledge of what the Celtic peoples believed prior to the Romans.
That said, I have to admit that the Wiccans are really pretty decent folks. Their basic tenet, "The Wiccan Rede," is "An it harm none, do what ye will." Other than the rather pretentious wording, it's a good basic rule for life. Reverence for, and protection of, nature is also something that will get no argument from me.
But I can't help the feeling that the whole thing is, well, vaguely silly. The bizarre, quasi-Middle-English verbiage doesn't help; why "The Wiccan Rede" isn't just "as long as you don't hurt anybody, do what you want," I couldn't say. Maybe "an it harm none" sounds more like what a Druid would say, I don't know. Actually, a good bit of their terminology falls into the unintentionally humorous department. I particularly like "working skyclad" for "running around in the woods naked." Now, I've got nothing whatsoever against running around in the woods naked, other than the problem of giving deerflies and mosquitoes unfettered access to your tender bits; but "skyclad" just sounds preposterous to me. Weddings are called "handfasting." Spells are "magick" (I know if you heard it pronounced, you could hear the "k" at the end and distinguish it from "magic," which is what David Copperfield does).
The costumes also don't help much, although (to be fair) they don't look all that much sillier than the vestments worn by Catholic priests.
Even with all this, Elizabeth Dodd and the other Catholic worrywarts are correct that Wicca is growing. There are now splinter sects (you knew it had to happens sooner or later) -- including the "Reformed Druids of North America" (named presumably to distinguish them from any Unreformed Druids who are running around skyclad in your local woods). A US government website estimates that in 2001, 134,000 individuals in in the US identified themselves as Wiccans, as compared with 8,000 in 1990. That, my friends, is a lot of Wiccans.
There has been a lot of argument over whether Wicca is actually a religion (usually this argument has erupted in the context of the US government's tax-shelter policy toward religions, and in one well-publicized case, the use of Wiccan symbols on a gravestone in Arlington Cemetery). To me, from the standpoint of having a lot of silly beliefs based upon no evidence whatsoever, and involving apparently enormous amounts of wishful thinking, Wicca is clearly a religion.
The amusing thing, to me, is that now you have people like Elizabeth Dodd claiming that the Wiccans need to become Catholics, because her set of unsupported, zero-evidence beliefs are better than their set of unsupported, zero-evidence beliefs. I find the whole thing screamingly funny. Hey, the more time they spend yelling at each other, the less time they'll have to send hate mail to me.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
Die Gedanken sind frei
The news this week contains several reports of neo-fascists. On Saturday, police in Luton, England had their hands full with a protest march by the English Defense League, who chanted anti-Muslim (and just general anti-non-British) slogans... but included shouts of "sieg heil!" and the infamous Nazi salute.
Another story comes in from Jamel, Germany, a little town in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, where a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi, Sven Krueger, has taken up residence. Krueger has brought in followers, and now Jamel has become a haven for members of the extreme right-wing National Democratic Party -- and people passing through the town have begun to see the German imperial flag flown (use of the swastika is illegal in Germany), and posters of a man smashing a Star of David with a sledgehammer.
Nearer to home, a dear friend of mine sent me a photograph she'd taken near her home, where someone had spray-painted the word "nigger" on a street sign. She posted the photograph on Facebook, and wrote beneath it, "To all who believe in social justice, equity, and decency, this is your reminder not to become complacent. Create spaces intolerant of intolerance."
It behooves government leaders to recognize, and address, the sources of xenophobia. It comes in part from people's fear of losing their jobs, or the desperation of those who already have (it will come as no surprise that Luton is a working class town with high unemployment, and the entire province of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania has the highest unemployment rate in Germany). It comes from the media exaggerating the risk of terror attacks (your actual risk of dying in a terror attack in the United States or Western Europe is about one in 9.3 million -- about the same as your risk of dying in an avalanche). It comes from the legacy of war, slavery, and oppression. It comes from a natural, if unfortunate, fear all humans have of the unfamiliar.
But it is not inevitable. And even when it is the easiest to fall into xenophobia -- when governmental leaders capitalize on it, magnify it, make it seem like a virtue -- there are those who resist, who raise their voices against those who would have us believe that one country, one ideology, one race has a god-given deed to the moral high ground.
Sophie Scholl was a student at the University of Munich during the early part of World War II. Like all children of her time and place, she was indoctrinated in Nazi ideology, and forced to join fascist youth organizations like the League of German Girls and the Hitler Youth. But unlike many young women and men her age, she questioned the basis of the Nazi philosophy, and was one of the founding members of the White Rose, an anti-Nazi political resistance movement.
Another story comes in from Jamel, Germany, a little town in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, where a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi, Sven Krueger, has taken up residence. Krueger has brought in followers, and now Jamel has become a haven for members of the extreme right-wing National Democratic Party -- and people passing through the town have begun to see the German imperial flag flown (use of the swastika is illegal in Germany), and posters of a man smashing a Star of David with a sledgehammer.
Nearer to home, a dear friend of mine sent me a photograph she'd taken near her home, where someone had spray-painted the word "nigger" on a street sign. She posted the photograph on Facebook, and wrote beneath it, "To all who believe in social justice, equity, and decency, this is your reminder not to become complacent. Create spaces intolerant of intolerance."
It behooves government leaders to recognize, and address, the sources of xenophobia. It comes in part from people's fear of losing their jobs, or the desperation of those who already have (it will come as no surprise that Luton is a working class town with high unemployment, and the entire province of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania has the highest unemployment rate in Germany). It comes from the media exaggerating the risk of terror attacks (your actual risk of dying in a terror attack in the United States or Western Europe is about one in 9.3 million -- about the same as your risk of dying in an avalanche). It comes from the legacy of war, slavery, and oppression. It comes from a natural, if unfortunate, fear all humans have of the unfamiliar.
But it is not inevitable. And even when it is the easiest to fall into xenophobia -- when governmental leaders capitalize on it, magnify it, make it seem like a virtue -- there are those who resist, who raise their voices against those who would have us believe that one country, one ideology, one race has a god-given deed to the moral high ground.
Sophie Scholl was a student at the University of Munich during the early part of World War II. Like all children of her time and place, she was indoctrinated in Nazi ideology, and forced to join fascist youth organizations like the League of German Girls and the Hitler Youth. But unlike many young women and men her age, she questioned the basis of the Nazi philosophy, and was one of the founding members of the White Rose, an anti-Nazi political resistance movement.
At great risk to themselves, the people in the White Rose published leaflets describing Nazi atrocities toward the Jews. Her father, who worked in a metallurgical plant in Ulm, was imprisoned for criticizing Hitler to a coworker; Sophie Scholl went and stood below his cell window and played "Die Gedanken Sind Frei" ("My Thoughts Are Free") on her flute. This beautiful little song, written in the seventeenth century, states, "no man can know my thoughts, no hunter can shoot them... if you would throw me into the darkest dungeon, it would all be futile, for my thoughts are still free" -- and its message so frightened the Nazis that merely whistling it was sufficient to get you shot on the spot. Scholl and her comrades embodied the message of the song, and succeeded in distributing anti-Nazi literature to tens of thousands of people.
The Gestapo, of course, became desperate to find her and the other members of the White Rose. Extreme political movements always rely on disinformation, and Scholl and her friends were bringing the horrible fact of what the German leadership was doing to the German people themselves. One leaflet said: "Since the conquest of Poland three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way … The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals … Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!"
In the end, of course, it was almost inevitable that Scholl would be captured; she, and her brother Hans, and their friend Christoph Probst, were arrested on February 18, 1943, put on trial for treason, and were all executed by guillotine a few days later. Scholl's last words were, "How can we expect righteousness to prevail, when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?"
Today, when many of our most prominent media spokespersons are encouraging us to believe in fear, to distrust what we don't understand, to rail against those who have different beliefs than we do, we should remember that those who speak the most shrilly are the ones who want to sway us by our emotions, not our rationality. The purveyors of hate don't want you to think; they want you to believe.
Scholl and her friends, who died on a chilly February day 68 years ago, remind us that we don't need to listen. We can speak with the voice of reason and compassion, even while some of our countrymen snarl hatred. We can make the risky choice of speaking on the behalf of what is right.
Die Gedanken sind frei.
The Gestapo, of course, became desperate to find her and the other members of the White Rose. Extreme political movements always rely on disinformation, and Scholl and her friends were bringing the horrible fact of what the German leadership was doing to the German people themselves. One leaflet said: "Since the conquest of Poland three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way … The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals … Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!"
In the end, of course, it was almost inevitable that Scholl would be captured; she, and her brother Hans, and their friend Christoph Probst, were arrested on February 18, 1943, put on trial for treason, and were all executed by guillotine a few days later. Scholl's last words were, "How can we expect righteousness to prevail, when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?"
Today, when many of our most prominent media spokespersons are encouraging us to believe in fear, to distrust what we don't understand, to rail against those who have different beliefs than we do, we should remember that those who speak the most shrilly are the ones who want to sway us by our emotions, not our rationality. The purveyors of hate don't want you to think; they want you to believe.
Scholl and her friends, who died on a chilly February day 68 years ago, remind us that we don't need to listen. We can speak with the voice of reason and compassion, even while some of our countrymen snarl hatred. We can make the risky choice of speaking on the behalf of what is right.
Die Gedanken sind frei.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Missing the target
While reading my latest blog post, my wife suddenly burst out laughing. Turns out, she wasn't laughing at my scintillating wittiness, however -- she was laughing at the ads clipped onto my post by AdSense.
AdSense, and other targeted-advertisement software, tries to pick up on keywords in websites, and using those cues, to choose advertisements that are appropriate for the audience. The ads on my Facebook page, for example, often have to do with scuba diving, travel, and music, three things I have identified as hobbies in my profile. This time, however, AdSense sort of backfired.
Yesterday's post, you may remember, was on how the pseudoscience of astrology is a fine example of something called dart-thrower's bias. And the ads? Yes, you've guessed it. My blog yesterday was full of ads for horoscopes ("Find your destiny in the stars!") and for equipment for darts players.
That's the problem with targeted-ad software; it only picks up on keywords, but is unable to tell the context, and (more importantly) if those keywords are being cast in a positive or a negative light. The first time I noticed this phenomenon was after I wrote a fairly virulently anti-religious post, and for the next few days was inundated with ads recommending I be born again in Christ ("visit this website to find out how!"). At first, I thought that AdSense had a pro-Christian bent and was monitoring my posts, and sending me evangelical advertisements when I went too far off the deep end. But no, it's just a function of how the software works.
You never know what the software will notice. I made a passing mention of Geordi LaForge in a recent post, and the next day, there were ads for Star Trek memorabilia. I titled a post about optical illusions "Your Lying Eyes" and got ads for classic rock recordings, including, of course, The Eagles. One of the funnier misses was years ago, when my blog was hosted on a different site, and I wrote about the USA's penchant for aggressive posturing on the stage of worldwide politics. The title of the post was "Tomcat Diplomacy."
For weeks afterwards, there were ads for subscriptions to cat care magazines and websites with humorous cat photographs.
Some of the ads, however, are just plain weird. I'm not quite sure how to take the one I saw a while back which said, "You're Not Ugly, You're Just Fat," and had a link to a diet site. I think it should be evident from my profile photo that although I may have many physical flaws, obesity isn't one of them. For a while I was getting periodic advertisements whose headline said it was "for the discerning gay gentleman." I'm not sure about the "discerning" part; and although I'm definitely male, the "gentleman" part may also be up for debate. However, I can say with some assurance that I'm not gay (though, to quote Seinfeld, "not that there's anything wrong with that!"). I haven't seen that one in a while, so whatever odd keyword the software picked up that led it to conclude that I am gay appears to be gone.
Being that this is a blog that is, at its heart, devoted to science (although I must admit that my attention wanders to other subjects rather frequently), I thought it might be interesting to use the scientific method and run an experiment to see if we can mess around with the targeted-ad software. If it works, it'll be sort of like a computerized game of free-association. I'll throw a few keywords at it, and see what ads it generates. Here goes: "wine, beer, scotch, bourbon, rum, tequila." "Weasel, wombat, aardvark, lemur, lemming, wildebeest." "Crystals, auras, energy fields, telepathy, clairvoyance, ESP."
That should do it. I predict that I should start seeing advertisements for websites detailing how you use the psychic healing power of the mind to cure alcoholic wildlife. I'll keep you posted.
AdSense, and other targeted-advertisement software, tries to pick up on keywords in websites, and using those cues, to choose advertisements that are appropriate for the audience. The ads on my Facebook page, for example, often have to do with scuba diving, travel, and music, three things I have identified as hobbies in my profile. This time, however, AdSense sort of backfired.
Yesterday's post, you may remember, was on how the pseudoscience of astrology is a fine example of something called dart-thrower's bias. And the ads? Yes, you've guessed it. My blog yesterday was full of ads for horoscopes ("Find your destiny in the stars!") and for equipment for darts players.
That's the problem with targeted-ad software; it only picks up on keywords, but is unable to tell the context, and (more importantly) if those keywords are being cast in a positive or a negative light. The first time I noticed this phenomenon was after I wrote a fairly virulently anti-religious post, and for the next few days was inundated with ads recommending I be born again in Christ ("visit this website to find out how!"). At first, I thought that AdSense had a pro-Christian bent and was monitoring my posts, and sending me evangelical advertisements when I went too far off the deep end. But no, it's just a function of how the software works.
You never know what the software will notice. I made a passing mention of Geordi LaForge in a recent post, and the next day, there were ads for Star Trek memorabilia. I titled a post about optical illusions "Your Lying Eyes" and got ads for classic rock recordings, including, of course, The Eagles. One of the funnier misses was years ago, when my blog was hosted on a different site, and I wrote about the USA's penchant for aggressive posturing on the stage of worldwide politics. The title of the post was "Tomcat Diplomacy."
For weeks afterwards, there were ads for subscriptions to cat care magazines and websites with humorous cat photographs.
Some of the ads, however, are just plain weird. I'm not quite sure how to take the one I saw a while back which said, "You're Not Ugly, You're Just Fat," and had a link to a diet site. I think it should be evident from my profile photo that although I may have many physical flaws, obesity isn't one of them. For a while I was getting periodic advertisements whose headline said it was "for the discerning gay gentleman." I'm not sure about the "discerning" part; and although I'm definitely male, the "gentleman" part may also be up for debate. However, I can say with some assurance that I'm not gay (though, to quote Seinfeld, "not that there's anything wrong with that!"). I haven't seen that one in a while, so whatever odd keyword the software picked up that led it to conclude that I am gay appears to be gone.
Being that this is a blog that is, at its heart, devoted to science (although I must admit that my attention wanders to other subjects rather frequently), I thought it might be interesting to use the scientific method and run an experiment to see if we can mess around with the targeted-ad software. If it works, it'll be sort of like a computerized game of free-association. I'll throw a few keywords at it, and see what ads it generates. Here goes: "wine, beer, scotch, bourbon, rum, tequila." "Weasel, wombat, aardvark, lemur, lemming, wildebeest." "Crystals, auras, energy fields, telepathy, clairvoyance, ESP."
That should do it. I predict that I should start seeing advertisements for websites detailing how you use the psychic healing power of the mind to cure alcoholic wildlife. I'll keep you posted.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Stars, darts, and basketballs
For those of you who are still reeling from finding out that you are not the astrological sign you thought you were, take some comfort in a study by David McCandless.
McCandless, who evidently has the patience of a saint, analyzed 22,168 horoscopes. His contention was that if there were anything to astrology, there should be a statistically significant difference between the content of horoscopes for the twelve (or thirteen, depending on who you believe) astrological signs. Using computer software, he first filtered out common and relatively meaning-free words like "and" and "the," and then arranged the remaining words on a wheel-diagram. The size of the word on the diagram represents its relative frequency. Check it out here.
As you can see, there is no difference whatsoever between the different signs. "Feel," "sure," "love," "keep," and "better," are the most common words on all of the signs. In fact, McCandless has out-horoscoped the astrologers, and has come up with a generic, all-purpose horoscope that anyone, of any sign, could read every day, and accomplish much the same thing as the "real" ones:
"Whatever the situation or secret moment, enjoy everything a lot. Feel able to absolutely care. Expect nothing else. Keep making love. Family and friends matter. The world is life, fun, and energy. Maybe hard. Or easy. Taking exactly enough is best. Help and talk to others. Change your mind and a better mood comes along."
Wow... I feel so... enlightened. This especially speaks to me, being that I was a Scorpio and now am a Virgo.
It puts me in mind of a now-famous demonstration James Randi did in a high school classroom. (You can see a video of it here.) He gave out horoscopes to the students, and told them that they were predictions based upon detailed information about the time and place of their birth. Each student was given time to read the horoscopes, and then asked to grade them on a scale of one to five, the score being assigned based upon how accurate it was, how well it applied to each of them personally.
The results were amazing. There was not a single student who gave their horoscope a grade of one or two; there was a single three; everyone else graded it at a four or five, with five being by far the most common score. So on the face of it, it seems like astrology fared pretty well, in this experiment.
Until you find out that all of the horoscopes were identical.
Astrology relies on an observational phenomenon called dart-thrower's bias -- something to which we are all prone. The name comes from a thought experiment; picture yourself in a pub, having a nice pint of Guinness with your friends, chatting about whatever. In the corner is a dartboard, and several bar patrons, all strangers to you, are having a friendly game of darts.
The question is: when do you notice the darts game?
The answer, of course, is: when one of the players scores a bullseye. Or, perhaps, misses the dartboard entirely and skewers the bartender in the forehead. The point is, we have evolved to notice outliers -- data points that are extreme. We tend to over count the hits (or wild misses), and simply ignore all of the average, background clutter.
This was brilliantly illustrated by an experiment performed some years ago, in which a large number of test subjects were asked to watch a video clip of a lone man shooting a basketball. That was all it was; just a guy shooting baskets. Sometimes he missed, sometimes he didn't. The subjects didn't know what they'd be asked about afterwards -- they were just told to watch the clip carefully.
There was a single question after the video was shown: what was the guy's hit rate?
The people who had made the clip had arranged it so that the guy had an exactly 50% hit rate -- not bad, for an amateur. What blew away the researchers was that not a single person who watched the clip -- not one -- estimated his hit rate at under 50%. Several went as high as 80%.
The explanation is that we give more weight in our memory to the times that the ball went in than the times it missed. The evolutionary reason for this is simple, and persuasive; if you are a proto-hominid on the African savanna, which is more dangerous -- to pay attention to a stimulus that may not be important (weighting the hits) or to ignore a stimulus that actually is important (weighting the misses)? Clearly it's the latter, especially if the stimulus is the sound made by a hungry lion hiding in the grass.
We're programmed to notice the hits, even when they're not really very impressive. Astrology, then, is one massive game of dart-thrower's bias. But the fact that it has no basis whatsoever in science, or even logic, doesn't stop astrologers from fleecing the gullible public for millions of dollars annually.
Not that this will probably convince anyone, because belief in astrology also relies heavily on confirmation bias -- the acceptance of any evidence, however puny, in support of an idea you already believe to be true. So I'm probably tilting at windmills, here. So whatever it is that you end up believing about astrology, do take to heart David McCandless's advice: Keep making love, and remember that family and friends matter.
McCandless, who evidently has the patience of a saint, analyzed 22,168 horoscopes. His contention was that if there were anything to astrology, there should be a statistically significant difference between the content of horoscopes for the twelve (or thirteen, depending on who you believe) astrological signs. Using computer software, he first filtered out common and relatively meaning-free words like "and" and "the," and then arranged the remaining words on a wheel-diagram. The size of the word on the diagram represents its relative frequency. Check it out here.
As you can see, there is no difference whatsoever between the different signs. "Feel," "sure," "love," "keep," and "better," are the most common words on all of the signs. In fact, McCandless has out-horoscoped the astrologers, and has come up with a generic, all-purpose horoscope that anyone, of any sign, could read every day, and accomplish much the same thing as the "real" ones:
"Whatever the situation or secret moment, enjoy everything a lot. Feel able to absolutely care. Expect nothing else. Keep making love. Family and friends matter. The world is life, fun, and energy. Maybe hard. Or easy. Taking exactly enough is best. Help and talk to others. Change your mind and a better mood comes along."
Wow... I feel so... enlightened. This especially speaks to me, being that I was a Scorpio and now am a Virgo.
It puts me in mind of a now-famous demonstration James Randi did in a high school classroom. (You can see a video of it here.) He gave out horoscopes to the students, and told them that they were predictions based upon detailed information about the time and place of their birth. Each student was given time to read the horoscopes, and then asked to grade them on a scale of one to five, the score being assigned based upon how accurate it was, how well it applied to each of them personally.
The results were amazing. There was not a single student who gave their horoscope a grade of one or two; there was a single three; everyone else graded it at a four or five, with five being by far the most common score. So on the face of it, it seems like astrology fared pretty well, in this experiment.
Until you find out that all of the horoscopes were identical.
Astrology relies on an observational phenomenon called dart-thrower's bias -- something to which we are all prone. The name comes from a thought experiment; picture yourself in a pub, having a nice pint of Guinness with your friends, chatting about whatever. In the corner is a dartboard, and several bar patrons, all strangers to you, are having a friendly game of darts.
The question is: when do you notice the darts game?
The answer, of course, is: when one of the players scores a bullseye. Or, perhaps, misses the dartboard entirely and skewers the bartender in the forehead. The point is, we have evolved to notice outliers -- data points that are extreme. We tend to over count the hits (or wild misses), and simply ignore all of the average, background clutter.
This was brilliantly illustrated by an experiment performed some years ago, in which a large number of test subjects were asked to watch a video clip of a lone man shooting a basketball. That was all it was; just a guy shooting baskets. Sometimes he missed, sometimes he didn't. The subjects didn't know what they'd be asked about afterwards -- they were just told to watch the clip carefully.
There was a single question after the video was shown: what was the guy's hit rate?
The people who had made the clip had arranged it so that the guy had an exactly 50% hit rate -- not bad, for an amateur. What blew away the researchers was that not a single person who watched the clip -- not one -- estimated his hit rate at under 50%. Several went as high as 80%.
The explanation is that we give more weight in our memory to the times that the ball went in than the times it missed. The evolutionary reason for this is simple, and persuasive; if you are a proto-hominid on the African savanna, which is more dangerous -- to pay attention to a stimulus that may not be important (weighting the hits) or to ignore a stimulus that actually is important (weighting the misses)? Clearly it's the latter, especially if the stimulus is the sound made by a hungry lion hiding in the grass.
We're programmed to notice the hits, even when they're not really very impressive. Astrology, then, is one massive game of dart-thrower's bias. But the fact that it has no basis whatsoever in science, or even logic, doesn't stop astrologers from fleecing the gullible public for millions of dollars annually.
Not that this will probably convince anyone, because belief in astrology also relies heavily on confirmation bias -- the acceptance of any evidence, however puny, in support of an idea you already believe to be true. So I'm probably tilting at windmills, here. So whatever it is that you end up believing about astrology, do take to heart David McCandless's advice: Keep making love, and remember that family and friends matter.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Alien spotting
NASA's orbiting space telescope, Kepler, has just provided data that identified 54 planets in the "Goldilocks Zone" -- the distance from their parent sun that is "just right" for life, allowing for water to be in its liquid state.
This is certainly encouraging for exobiologists such as myself. We've been waiting for years for this. Up till now, exobiologists have been a little like the Camel Spotter in the Monty Python sketch, who's been watching for a year and has spotted "almost one" camel. Now that we have conclusive evidence that small, rocky planets in stable orbits, a comfortable distance from their stars, are apparently rather common in the universe, it is only a matter of time before alien life is detected and we exobiologists can go off of our extended sabbaticals and actually have something to study.
That is, if alien life doesn't get here first. *cue suspenseful music*
First, we have a report from Glasgow, Scotland on January 17, that an amateur astronomer named Paul Brown saw a UFO over the Parkhead Forge Shopping Center.
"It was heading east and at first I looked up and thought it was helicopter spotlight," he reported. "It moved at similar speed as an emergency helicopter would if low in sky, but this was very high - as high as a jet. I watched for the lights of plane or helicopter, but nothing. It continued to travel east, shimmering like a star in winter sky, a tangerine kind of glow, round-shaped."
Unfortunately, Mr. Brown had no camera handy, and is the only one who saw it, despite the fact that it was allegedly spotted at 8 PM over a shopping center in a large city. So we apparently have to set that one aside on the basis of lack of evidence, and we hope that Mr. Brown won't take it amiss if we include a gentle suggestion that he lay off the single-malt whisky.
It's such a shame that 99% of UFO claims are made by lone individuals, and the evidence, if you can call it that, is usually no more than a single photograph or video clip of a bright light. Wouldn't it be nice if just once, a UFO could be filmed from two different vantage points at once, which presumably would be much harder to hoax?
Funny you should ask.
Just last Saturday, a pulsating ball of light was filmed, from two different points in the city, hovering over the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. (See the clip here.) From the audio, apparently the people who made the videos were even of different nationalities.
Unfortunately, there are some discrepancies with this video that make me a little doubtful. The major one is that the light from the object, which is clearly very intense, seems not to reflect from anything in the city -- including the gold-plated roof of the Al Aqsa Mosque over which the thing was supposedly hovering. Another analysis, by Benjamin Radford of Discovery News, finds that using careful measurements of the image on the clip, the object itself would have to be fairly small - "definitely no bigger than a limousine, and probably a lot smaller," Radford said. Which would make for a rather uncomfortable trip from the depths of interstellar space, unless our aliens are, like the G'Gugvuntts and Vl'hurgs in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, of a size that could be accidentally swallowed by a small dog.
Other analysts have found an anomalous amount of shudder in the second video, which is indicative of someone digitally altering the clip. Also, given that Jerusalem is a huge city, with thousands of tourists in addition to its regular residents, it's rather curious that no one reported the light over the Dome of the Rock except the people who made the video clips.
So, interesting as the Jerusalem video clip is, that one looks like it's probably a fake, too. Too bad. All of this waiting around for the actual scientists to discover life on other planets is such a drag -- it would be ever so much more convenient if the aliens would just save us the trouble and drop by for a visit. The Scottish and Israeli stories, unfortunately, don't seem to be the real deal.
I guess we exobiologists can stand down red alert, and go back to our sabbaticals.
This is certainly encouraging for exobiologists such as myself. We've been waiting for years for this. Up till now, exobiologists have been a little like the Camel Spotter in the Monty Python sketch, who's been watching for a year and has spotted "almost one" camel. Now that we have conclusive evidence that small, rocky planets in stable orbits, a comfortable distance from their stars, are apparently rather common in the universe, it is only a matter of time before alien life is detected and we exobiologists can go off of our extended sabbaticals and actually have something to study.
That is, if alien life doesn't get here first. *cue suspenseful music*
First, we have a report from Glasgow, Scotland on January 17, that an amateur astronomer named Paul Brown saw a UFO over the Parkhead Forge Shopping Center.
"It was heading east and at first I looked up and thought it was helicopter spotlight," he reported. "It moved at similar speed as an emergency helicopter would if low in sky, but this was very high - as high as a jet. I watched for the lights of plane or helicopter, but nothing. It continued to travel east, shimmering like a star in winter sky, a tangerine kind of glow, round-shaped."
Unfortunately, Mr. Brown had no camera handy, and is the only one who saw it, despite the fact that it was allegedly spotted at 8 PM over a shopping center in a large city. So we apparently have to set that one aside on the basis of lack of evidence, and we hope that Mr. Brown won't take it amiss if we include a gentle suggestion that he lay off the single-malt whisky.
It's such a shame that 99% of UFO claims are made by lone individuals, and the evidence, if you can call it that, is usually no more than a single photograph or video clip of a bright light. Wouldn't it be nice if just once, a UFO could be filmed from two different vantage points at once, which presumably would be much harder to hoax?
Funny you should ask.
Just last Saturday, a pulsating ball of light was filmed, from two different points in the city, hovering over the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. (See the clip here.) From the audio, apparently the people who made the videos were even of different nationalities.
Unfortunately, there are some discrepancies with this video that make me a little doubtful. The major one is that the light from the object, which is clearly very intense, seems not to reflect from anything in the city -- including the gold-plated roof of the Al Aqsa Mosque over which the thing was supposedly hovering. Another analysis, by Benjamin Radford of Discovery News, finds that using careful measurements of the image on the clip, the object itself would have to be fairly small - "definitely no bigger than a limousine, and probably a lot smaller," Radford said. Which would make for a rather uncomfortable trip from the depths of interstellar space, unless our aliens are, like the G'Gugvuntts and Vl'hurgs in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, of a size that could be accidentally swallowed by a small dog.
Other analysts have found an anomalous amount of shudder in the second video, which is indicative of someone digitally altering the clip. Also, given that Jerusalem is a huge city, with thousands of tourists in addition to its regular residents, it's rather curious that no one reported the light over the Dome of the Rock except the people who made the video clips.
So, interesting as the Jerusalem video clip is, that one looks like it's probably a fake, too. Too bad. All of this waiting around for the actual scientists to discover life on other planets is such a drag -- it would be ever so much more convenient if the aliens would just save us the trouble and drop by for a visit. The Scottish and Israeli stories, unfortunately, don't seem to be the real deal.
I guess we exobiologists can stand down red alert, and go back to our sabbaticals.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Jesus wept
A small religious library in Reading, Ohio is reporting that their statue of the Virgin Mary is crying.
One visitor said, "I believe it's true. They were there. I saw them. It's true. I would imagine it's a miracle."
The library has been flooded with visitors, some of whom have been so moved by the phenomenon that they've cried, too.
Cameras are not allowed in the library, so there are no images of the statue. And as you might expect, explanations of the phenomenon vary. Of the ones who believe this to be a genuine miracle, most believe that the statue began to weep when a rosary that had belonged to Reverend James Willig, a Reading priest who died ten years ago, was put into her hands. Most, however, don't seem to worry about what started it; one Reading resident who viewed the crying statue said, "You hear about it in other countries and then it's here in Reading of all places. It is a miracle."
Well, maybe.
Weeping statues, usually of Jesus or Mary, have been reported in hundreds of locations. Sometimes these statues are weeping what appear to be tears; others weep scented oil, or (in a number of cases) blood. When the church has allowed skeptics to investigate the phenomenon, all of them have turned out to be frauds.
One of the easiest ways to fake a crying statue was explained, and later demonstrated, by Italian skeptic Luigi Garlaschelli. If the statue is glazed hollow ceramic or plaster (which many of them are), all you have to do is to fill the internal cavity of the statue with water or oil, usually through a small hole drilled through the back of the head. Then, you take a sharp knife and you nick the glaze at the corner of each eye. The porous ceramic or plaster will absorb the liquid, which will then leak out at the only point it can -- the unglazed bit near the eyes. When Garlaschelli demonstrated this, it created absolutely convincing tears.
What about the blood? Well, in the cases where the statues have wept blood, some of them have been kept from the prying eyes of skeptics, like our crying Madonna in Ohio. The church, however, is becoming a little more careful, ever since the case in 2008 in which a statue of Mary in Italy seemed to weep blood, and a bit of the blood was taken and DNA tested, and was found to match the blood of the church's custodian.
Besides the likelihood of fakery, there remains the simple question of why a deity (or saint) who is presumably capable of doing anything (s)he wants to do, would choose this method to communicate with us. It's the same objection I had to the people who claim that crop circles are Mother Earth attempting to talk to us; it's a mighty obscure message. Even if you buy that it's a message from heaven, what does the message mean? If a statue of Jesus cries, is he crying because we're sinful? Because attendance at church is down? Because we're destroying the environment? Because the Saints didn't make it to the Superbowl this year? Oh, for the days when god spoke to you, out loud, directly, and unequivocally, from a burning bush...
In any case, I'm skeptical, which I'm sure doesn't surprise anyone. I suppose as religious experiences go, it's pretty harmless, and if it makes you happy to believe that Mary is crying tears of joy because she's got Father James' rosary, then that's okay with me. If you go there, however, take a close look and see if there's a tiny hole drilled in the back of her head -- which still seems to me to be the likeliest explanation.
One visitor said, "I believe it's true. They were there. I saw them. It's true. I would imagine it's a miracle."
The library has been flooded with visitors, some of whom have been so moved by the phenomenon that they've cried, too.
Cameras are not allowed in the library, so there are no images of the statue. And as you might expect, explanations of the phenomenon vary. Of the ones who believe this to be a genuine miracle, most believe that the statue began to weep when a rosary that had belonged to Reverend James Willig, a Reading priest who died ten years ago, was put into her hands. Most, however, don't seem to worry about what started it; one Reading resident who viewed the crying statue said, "You hear about it in other countries and then it's here in Reading of all places. It is a miracle."
Well, maybe.
Weeping statues, usually of Jesus or Mary, have been reported in hundreds of locations. Sometimes these statues are weeping what appear to be tears; others weep scented oil, or (in a number of cases) blood. When the church has allowed skeptics to investigate the phenomenon, all of them have turned out to be frauds.
One of the easiest ways to fake a crying statue was explained, and later demonstrated, by Italian skeptic Luigi Garlaschelli. If the statue is glazed hollow ceramic or plaster (which many of them are), all you have to do is to fill the internal cavity of the statue with water or oil, usually through a small hole drilled through the back of the head. Then, you take a sharp knife and you nick the glaze at the corner of each eye. The porous ceramic or plaster will absorb the liquid, which will then leak out at the only point it can -- the unglazed bit near the eyes. When Garlaschelli demonstrated this, it created absolutely convincing tears.
What about the blood? Well, in the cases where the statues have wept blood, some of them have been kept from the prying eyes of skeptics, like our crying Madonna in Ohio. The church, however, is becoming a little more careful, ever since the case in 2008 in which a statue of Mary in Italy seemed to weep blood, and a bit of the blood was taken and DNA tested, and was found to match the blood of the church's custodian.
Besides the likelihood of fakery, there remains the simple question of why a deity (or saint) who is presumably capable of doing anything (s)he wants to do, would choose this method to communicate with us. It's the same objection I had to the people who claim that crop circles are Mother Earth attempting to talk to us; it's a mighty obscure message. Even if you buy that it's a message from heaven, what does the message mean? If a statue of Jesus cries, is he crying because we're sinful? Because attendance at church is down? Because we're destroying the environment? Because the Saints didn't make it to the Superbowl this year? Oh, for the days when god spoke to you, out loud, directly, and unequivocally, from a burning bush...
In any case, I'm skeptical, which I'm sure doesn't surprise anyone. I suppose as religious experiences go, it's pretty harmless, and if it makes you happy to believe that Mary is crying tears of joy because she's got Father James' rosary, then that's okay with me. If you go there, however, take a close look and see if there's a tiny hole drilled in the back of her head -- which still seems to me to be the likeliest explanation.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Hogging the spotlight
So, today's the day that Americans prove once again that when given the choice between a scientific model, reached by the consensus of hundreds of climatologists and amply supported by evidence (e.g. climate change/global warming) and the prognostications of a rodent, they'll go with the rodent every time.
Today is Groundhog Day, which is the day that winter-weary northerners wait eagerly for Punxsutawney Phil, a groundhog who lives in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to emerge from his burrow. The idea is that if Phil sees his shadow, it scares him back into the burrow and we'll have six more weeks of winter.
Living in upstate New York, I've always found this grimly amusing, because up here, six more weeks of winter would be good news. This would mean that spring would arrive in the third week of March, right around the equinox. (Up here we don't call the equinox "the First Day of Spring" because all that does is call attention to how miserably cold it actually is.) In upstate New York, we still have hard freezes at night at the end of April, and I remember twice having snow on Mother's Day.
In any case, let's assume that we give up on the "six more weeks of winter" thing, and just call it "sees the shadow, long winter; doesn't, short winter." How well does it work?
Tim Roche, a meteorologist with Weather Underground, has analyzed the 99 years' worth of records of Phil's predictions, and compared them to the actual weather that occurred that year. He found that when he predicted a short winter, he was right 47% of the time; when he predicted a long winter, he was right 36% of the time.
Me, I find this significant, especially in his predictions of a long winter. Note that his predictions of a short winter are right around where you'd be if it were a completely random flip of the coin -- just what I'd expect. (Yes, I know that "long winter" and "short winter" are relative terms, and there are "medium-length winters" and so on, but just play along, okay?) But look at his predictions of long winters -- he does considerably worse than you'd do if you just flipped a coin. I haven't done the statistical analysis, and honestly probably won't bother to, but I'm guessing that that deviation from a random 50/50 split is actually statistically significant. Does it count as a paranormal phenomenon if a psychic predicts an outcome wrong far more often than you'd expect?
Be that as it may, the whole Phil phenomenon is fantastically popular, and in fact has spawned a number of spinoffs. I know of two in my own home state of Louisiana. There's Pierre C. Shadeaux of New Iberia, who is a nutria, not a groundhog (if you don't know what a nutria is, picture a huge brown rat with orange teeth, and you've got the idea; they're sort of like the Rodents of Unusual Size from The Princess Bride, only less cute). Another nutria, T-Boy, is in the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans, presumably in the "Dear God What The Hell Is That Thing?" exhibit, and he is also coaxed out of his home early on February 2 to see if he sees his enormous, hairy, fanged shadow, which in this case will give us six more weeks of nightmares.
Of course, I know the Phil foolishness is all in fun, and I'm perfectly willing to take it in that spirit. And if you're curious, this year Phil came out in the middle of one of the worst storms to hit the East Coast in the last five years, and because of the cloud cover, he didn't see his shadow. Thus we have the results: Huge Snowstorm = Short Winter.
Makes perfect sense to me.
Today is Groundhog Day, which is the day that winter-weary northerners wait eagerly for Punxsutawney Phil, a groundhog who lives in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to emerge from his burrow. The idea is that if Phil sees his shadow, it scares him back into the burrow and we'll have six more weeks of winter.
Living in upstate New York, I've always found this grimly amusing, because up here, six more weeks of winter would be good news. This would mean that spring would arrive in the third week of March, right around the equinox. (Up here we don't call the equinox "the First Day of Spring" because all that does is call attention to how miserably cold it actually is.) In upstate New York, we still have hard freezes at night at the end of April, and I remember twice having snow on Mother's Day.
In any case, let's assume that we give up on the "six more weeks of winter" thing, and just call it "sees the shadow, long winter; doesn't, short winter." How well does it work?
Tim Roche, a meteorologist with Weather Underground, has analyzed the 99 years' worth of records of Phil's predictions, and compared them to the actual weather that occurred that year. He found that when he predicted a short winter, he was right 47% of the time; when he predicted a long winter, he was right 36% of the time.
Me, I find this significant, especially in his predictions of a long winter. Note that his predictions of a short winter are right around where you'd be if it were a completely random flip of the coin -- just what I'd expect. (Yes, I know that "long winter" and "short winter" are relative terms, and there are "medium-length winters" and so on, but just play along, okay?) But look at his predictions of long winters -- he does considerably worse than you'd do if you just flipped a coin. I haven't done the statistical analysis, and honestly probably won't bother to, but I'm guessing that that deviation from a random 50/50 split is actually statistically significant. Does it count as a paranormal phenomenon if a psychic predicts an outcome wrong far more often than you'd expect?
Be that as it may, the whole Phil phenomenon is fantastically popular, and in fact has spawned a number of spinoffs. I know of two in my own home state of Louisiana. There's Pierre C. Shadeaux of New Iberia, who is a nutria, not a groundhog (if you don't know what a nutria is, picture a huge brown rat with orange teeth, and you've got the idea; they're sort of like the Rodents of Unusual Size from The Princess Bride, only less cute). Another nutria, T-Boy, is in the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans, presumably in the "Dear God What The Hell Is That Thing?" exhibit, and he is also coaxed out of his home early on February 2 to see if he sees his enormous, hairy, fanged shadow, which in this case will give us six more weeks of nightmares.
Of course, I know the Phil foolishness is all in fun, and I'm perfectly willing to take it in that spirit. And if you're curious, this year Phil came out in the middle of one of the worst storms to hit the East Coast in the last five years, and because of the cloud cover, he didn't see his shadow. Thus we have the results: Huge Snowstorm = Short Winter.
Makes perfect sense to me.
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