DNA energy field laser frequency vibrations!

Every once in a while I'll run across a claim that is so wildly ridiculous that I question, for a time, if it is meant as a joke.  Sadly, the majority of them aren't.  As hard as it is for me to believe, given that we currently live in the most scientifically and technologically advanced society that the Earth has ever seen, there are a lot of people who believe stuff that is unrefined bullshit.

I ran into an example a few days ago, when a friend sent me this article, entitled "Scientists Prove DNA Can Be Reprogrammed By Words And Frequencies."  The word "frequency" always acts like a red flag to me, as it is for some reason a word woo-woos like a lot, and throw about in absurd ways despite its having a rigid, and not especially thrilling, definition in the scientific world (three others are "energy," "vibration," and "field").  So I read the article, and found ample fodder for faceplanting right in the first paragraph, to wit:

THE HUMAN DNA IS A BIOLOGICAL INTERNET and superior in many aspects to the artificial one. Russian scientific research directly or indirectly explains phenomena such as clairvoyance, intuition, spontaneous and remote acts of healing, self healing, affirmation techniques, unusual light/auras around people (namely spiritual masters), mind’s influence on weather patterns and much more. In addition, there is evidence for a whole new type of medicine in which DNA can be influenced and reprogrammed by words and frequencies WITHOUT cutting out and replacing single genes.

So -- DNA causes auras and clairvoyance, not to mention "weather patterns."  And here I thought weather patterns were caused by air masses moving around, and all that sort of thing.   But the author is far from done:

The Russian biophysicist and molecular biologist Pjotr Garjajev and his colleagues also explored the vibrational behavior of the DNA. [For the sake of brevity I will give only a summary here. For further exploration please refer to the appendix at the end of this article.] The bottom line was: “Living chromosomes function just like solitonic/holographic computers using the endogenous DNA laser radiation.” This means that they managed for example to modulate certain frequency patterns onto a laser ray and with it influenced the DNA frequency and thus the genetic information itself. Since the basic structure of DNA-alkaline pairs and of language (as explained earlier) are of the same structure, no DNA decoding is necessary.

Ooh, there we are -- "vibration!"  That's two down, two to go.  My favorite part of this is that "no DNA decoding is necessary."  You don't have to know anything about how DNA actually works, apparently, to experience "endogenous DNA laser radiation."  Maybe it'll grant you superpowers, you think?  If so, I want to be able to fly.  You know, big feathery wings coming from my shoulders.  It'll make fitting into shirts tricky, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

But let's not get sidetracked, here.  Back to the article:

One can simply use words and sentences of the human language! This, too, was experimentally proven! Living DNA substance (in living tissue, not in vitro) will always react to language-modulated laser rays and even to radio waves, if the proper frequencies are being used...  Esoteric and spiritual teachers have known for ages that our body is programmable by language, words and thought. This has now been scientifically proven and explained. Of course the frequency has to be correct. And this is why not everybody is equally successful or can do it with always the same strength. The individual person must work on the inner processes and maturity in order to establish a conscious communication with the DNA. The Russian researchers work on a method that is not dependent on these factors but will ALWAYS work, provided one uses the correct frequency.

"The human language" reprograms DNA?  Hmm.  I wonder if it has to be a specific language?  Russian, given that that's what the "scientist" who did this "research" speaks?  Would English do?  How about Sanskrit?  Or Swahili?  What about Pig Latin?  "This is Ordon-gay attempting to eprogram-ray your NA-Day."

But that's not all your DNA can do, when the proper "frequency" is achieved:

The Russian scientists also found out that our DNA can cause disturbing patterns in the vacuum, thus producing magnetized wormholes! Wormholes are the microscopic equivalents of the so-called Einstein-Rosen bridges in the vicinity of black holes (left by burned-out stars).? These are tunnel connections between entirely different areas in the universe through which information can be transmitted outside of space and time. The DNA attracts these bits of information and passes them on to our consciousness. This process of hyper communication is most effective in a state of relaxation. Stress, worries or a hyperactive intellect prevent successful hyper communication or the information will be totally distorted and useless.

I've been kind of stressed lately, which is probably why there have been no wormholes forming in my vicinity.

When hyper communication occurs, one can observe in the DNA as well as in the human being special phenomena. The Russian scientists irradiated DNA samples with laser light. On screen a typical wave pattern was formed. When they removed the DNA sample, the wave pattern did not disappear, it remained. Many control experiments showed that the pattern still came from the removed sample, whose energy field apparently remained by itself. This effect is now called phantom DNA effect. It is surmised that energy from outside of space and time still flows through the activated wormholes after the DNA was removed. 

Yay!  "Energy" AND "field!"  We've scored four for four with this one!  At this point, my DNA was tired of hypercommunicating at high frequencies, so I pretty much stopped reading, although I did notice further along that the article mentioned the Schumann resonance, Princess Diana's funeral, remote sensing, UFOs, "troubled children," and anti-gravity.  So they've got their bases pretty well covered, woo-woo-wise.

And yes, this article appears to be entirely serious.  As do the comments, the first one of which was, "This appears to be how Jesus performed miracles.  The power of God is within us!"  Because Jesus had lasers, and all. 

I find all of this simultaneously hilarious and discouraging.  Hilarious because the claims are so bafflingly stupid that I can't help but laugh when I read them; discouraging because there is, apparently, a large group of people who actually find them plausible.  As a science teacher, we try to provide what Carl Sagan calls "a candle in the dark" -- a way of seeing the world that gets past superstition and credulity, and bases our knowledge instead on evidence, logic, and rationality.  And to be sure, we've come a long way since the Dark Ages, when people believed that there were only four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) and frogs were spontaneously created from muddy water.  When I read stuff like this, however, it makes me realize how far we still have to go.

Camping finally apologizes. Sort of.

Ironic, given that yesterday's post was about belated apologies, that just this morning I found out (thanks to a regular Skeptophilia reader) that Harold Camping had finally apologized for misleading everyone last year about the Rapture.  (Read the story here.)

Camping, you will undoubtedly recall, is the loony evangelical preacher who convinced his followers that the Righteous were going to be carried bodily into heaven on May 21, 2011, leaving the rest of us here to be killed in messy ways by Satan.  His followers, assuming that by "The Righteous," Camping meant "us" (people always do, don't they?), began to prepare -- some even giving away tens of thousands of dollars of their savings, selling their homes, saying goodbye to friends and coworkers.  And then, on May 21, surprise!  Nothing happened.

Camping, undaunted, expressed puzzlement that his predictions had been wrong, given that he was really looking forward to Rivers Running Red With The Blood Of The Wicked and all.  But he then said that he'd just missed it by that much, that the real date was October 21, 2011, cross his heart and hope to die.

This time, of course, fewer people went along with the whole thing, and when October 22 rolled around and lo, we were all still here, righteous and unrighteous alike, Camping retreated in disarray, and has made no further public statement.

Until yesterday, when Camping had a press release that said, in part, the following:

We humbly acknowledge we were wrong about the timing.  We tremble before God as we humbly ask Him for forgiveness for making that sinful statement.

Though we were wrong God is still using the May 21 warning in a very mighty way.  In the months following May 21 the Bible has, in some ways, come out from under the shadows and is now being discussed by all kinds of people who never before paid any attention to the Bible.  Even as God used sinful Balaam to accomplish His purposes, so He used our sin to accomplish His purpose of making the whole world acquainted with the Bible.

We also openly acknowledge that we have no new evidence pointing to another date for the end of the world. Though many dates are circulating,  Family Radio has no interest in even considering another date. God has humbled us through the events of May 21, to continue to even more fervently search the Scriptures (the Bible), not to find dates, but to be more faithful in our understanding.

To which I can only say: wow.

No mention of the people who bankrupted themselves because of your "sin?"  No mention of the dangers of the abuse of power wielded by the charismatic over the weak-minded?  No mention of the damage done to the reputation of Christianity as a whole, by people who looked upon the spectacle not as a reason to become more "acquainted with the Bible," but to ridicule the entire belief system?

Of course, my own stance is that Camping is wrong about a great many things; but I think what bothers me most about this is not the fact that his failure didn't suddenly turn him into a rationalist (I'm not that much of an optimist, frankly).  What bothers me is that the whole thing, whatever his repeated use of the words "humbly" and "humbled," seems still very much to be about Camping saving face in the eyes of his followers.  I'm sure that listeners to Family Radio are down, and it wouldn't be a stretch to surmise that donations are down as well.  When someone like Camping, following in the footsteps of such luminaries as Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard, "apologizes" to his followers, it so often turns out that all it is is a thinly-disguised attempt to reingratiate himself into the minds and hearts of the people who once trusted him, and start the cash flowing again.

And the sad thing is, it so often works.  Swaggart, who was arrested for hiring a prostitute in 1988, apologized, and got arrested a second time for doing the same thing in 1991, still is a popular televangelist.  Haggard, the virulently anti-gay evangelical who was accused (and later admitted) to having hired a male prostitute and using methamphetamine, is now the pastor of a church in Colorado Springs.

So call me cynical, but I don't believe Camping's mealy-mouthed apology.  It has, all along, been about Camping's power, and keeping the money flowing to him and his radio program.  Whether he himself actually believed that the world was going to end last year remains to be seen -- but I hope that any of his remaining followers aren't duped by his self-aggrandizing attempt to reestablish himself in a leadership role.  It's ironic, given that in yesterday's post, I suggested that it might be worthwhile to apologize for past transgressions, even if it's too late to make amends -- but in this case, simply I don't believe that his apology is sincere.  And as for elevating him back into a position of trust?  He doesn't deserve it.

Best served warm

In the news today is a story about a North Carolina woman who decided, after 25 years, to return a fragment from a Roman ruin that she'd pilfered on a trip to Italy.  She said that the chunk of terracotta had sat on her shelf for years, and she felt guilty every time she looked at it -- doubly so when she read of the damage that souvenir-seeking tourists cause to important archeological sites.

This got me to thinking about the value of belated apologies.  To be sure, this situation had caused no one any decades-long angst -- no one knew the piece had been stolen until it was returned.  What, however, if the crime, sin, or offense did cause anger, grief, or emotional trauma?  Is it right to dig up buried pain, expose it to the air again, make old wounds bleed?  Does it do more harm than good?

This is the underlying theme of the 1990 film Flatliners, in which a group of medical students submit voluntarily to a procedure which has the unfortunate side effect of making the sins of their past come (literally) to life.  One character in particular, the one played by Kevin Bacon, is so haunted by his memories of tormenting a young African-American girl when he was in elementary school that he finds her (now a successful woman with a family) and apologizes for what he did.  In the movie, the woman first denies that it had had any effects on her (in fact, initially she denies even remembering), then rebuffs his attempts as a selfish means for assuaging his conscience, but finally she accepts his remorse and thanks him for apologizing.

I wonder, in real life, if such attempts would be so successful.  I suspect we all have things in our past for which we'd like to have a "redo" button, and failing that, for which we'd like to have the opportunity to make amends.  There have been several well-publicized cases in which people who committed crimes decades ago have been arrested and jailed -- the most famous being Kathleen Ann Soliah, who as part of the terrorist Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1970s had participated in a bank robbery in which a woman was shot to death.  Soliah had lived for thirty years as a respectable housewife in Minnesota before the law caught up with her.  It remains to be seen if thirty years of honorable contribution to her community counterbalances participation in a crime, but Soliah didn't argue the point.  When arrested, she apologized to her victim's family, and stated that the jail term she received was no more than she deserved.

I have no such flashy crimes in my past, nor any so serious.  My sins are mostly of the petty variety -- hurting others with words and deeds, being uncharitable, being sarcastic and downright mean to people weaker than I was.  I know there are more than just one or two people to whom I owe a heartfelt apology.  But toward what end?  Making me feel better about my angry and unhappy teenage years?  Allowing the victim, assuming they even remember the incident, to come to terms with what I did?  Probably both.

And I put in the part about "remembering the incident" deliberately.  A few months ago, a high school friend of mine who has relinked to me on Facebook apologized for throwing a book at me in chemistry class, an event that even with his prompt I have no memory of whatsoever.  (Maybe the book knocked me senseless, I dunno.)  Of course I accepted his apology readily, given that he felt so abject about it (he said it had bothered him all this time) and also how little it apparently had affected me.  But it does make me wonder how many of the offenses that I remember vividly, and with shame, have made no impact on the victim at all.

That, of course, may be partly wishful thinking.  I have more than once wanted to look up the addresses of the people I've wronged, and tell them how sorry I am for having treated them badly.  I wonder greatly how they'd react; what would I do if the person said, "you were a complete bastard to me, and I will never forgive you, not if I live to 100?"  What if they said, "you hurt me so badly that I've never trusted anyone again?"  I can hope that my offenses haven't been that serious, but the incident with the chemistry book illustrates that an event that makes no impact on one person can have deep and long-lasting effects on another.  The sad fact is that I cannot know how these inhabitants of my distant past would react, unless I were to follow through and do it.

And honestly, what is holding me back is fear.  It's not shame, or at least not in the greater part; I can face the fact that years ago, I really wasn't a very nice person (and, I'm afraid, I still have that capacity, when sufficiently provoked).  What is harder for me is the thought that I'd face down that fear, confront the individual, and then be rebuffed, or (worse) be told that my apology had done nothing but exacerbate the damage.

I know it's cowardly.  It is probably also a rationalization of that fear to state that unlike revenge, apologies are a poor meal when served cold.  But unless an opportunity suddenly arises, as it did with my high school chum, the sad fact is that I probably will never apologize to the people I wronged all those years ago.

Hawking vs. Hellyer

Paul Hellyer is at it again.

Regular readers of Skeptophilia may recall about a year ago when I wrote about the peculiarities of Canada's former defense minister (read the post here).  And by "peculiarities," I don't mean curious and charming little eccentricities you might chuckle about in our northern neighbors, such as participating in pastimes like "curling."  I mean blathering on about ideas that make me wonder if he should be medicated.

Last year, he went on record as saying that it is his belief that there is a "shadow US government" that has been in contact with aliens, and that this shadow government is selling out large parts of the world in exchange for alien super-technology.  Myself, I'm not so sure this is a bad idea.  I would happily cede (say) Iran and North Korea to the aliens, given that those countries' current governments seem determined to make things as big a mess as possible and it's hard to see how the aliens could do much worse, if in payment the aliens could give me a jet pack and a Star Trek-style transporter.  It would be worth giving up a few countries just to see the looks on my students' and coworkers' faces as I flew into school wearing my jet pack, or (better yet) simply materialized in a shimmer of sparkles just as class was about to start.

Of course, the difficulty with all of this is that the shadow government, and in fact the aliens, don't seem to exist, a point that seems to be lost on the Honorable Mr. Hellyer.  But that hasn't stopped him from taking center stage again, this time in an interview on MSNBC, to rail against physicist Stephen Hawking for "spreading misinformation."

We are, Hellyer said, on the verge of an intergalactic war.  I guess since last year, the shadow government has pissed off the aliens to the point that they're ready simply to zoom in, beat the crap out of us, and take over.  So what we should be doing is building defensive bases on the moon, because we could "see them better from there, and shoot the alien ships down if necessary."

Then, nearly in the same breath, he says that he's not really sure if the aliens are our enemies after all.

"There is no evidence that I have seen that has convinced me that they are in fact enemy," he told the interviewer, who was wearing an expression that seemed to say, "If this guy comes any closer to me, I'm getting right the hell out of here."

"What I would like to know is whether this classification of alien enemy still exists or it doesn't," Hellyer went on, "and if it exists what the evidence is on which the United States government bases its conclusion."

After all, he says, aliens have been visiting us for millennia, and have already contributed greatly to our scientific and technological knowledge.  For example, the microchip and fiber optics, Hellyer says, originated on another planet.  I don't know about that, but I think an extraterrestrial origin is clearly indicated for the phenomenon of "dubstep," which sounds to my ears like an electronic keyboard having sex with a dial-up modem, and was apparently meant to be appealing only to non-human intelligences.

Be that as it may, Hellyer has now set his sights on a fairly lofty target, and I don't mean a spaceship.  He has now levied some pretty serious criticism at renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, for abusing his position as one of the world's most famous scientists to give us the wrong ideas regarding aliens.

Hawking, in an interview, was asked what he thought about the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe, and if he thought that aliens had visited the Earth.  Hawking responded that he thought it entirely possible that there was alien life, but said that if UFOs were real, it was an indication of a technology so far ahead of ours that we could be at serious risk if they came here.  We might, he said, be ants in relation to them, intelligence-wise -- meaning that the aliens might see no particular ethical problem with wiping us out.

Now Hawking, being a scientist, is someone for whom evidence is the ultimate arbiter of truth, and was clearly speaking in the hypothetical, what-if context, consistent with the way the question had been phrased.  Hellyer, of course, didn't take it that way, because he thinks the aliens are already here, evidence be damned.

"I think he's indulging in some pretty scary talk there that I would have hoped would not come from someone with such an established stature," Hellyer said about Hawking.  "I think it's really sad that a scientist of his repute would contribute to what I would consider more misinformation about a vast and very important subject."

Well, he really told you, Dr. Hawking.  How dare you claim to have any insight into the workings of the universe, with your paltry little Ph.D. in physics.  As compared to Hellyer, for crying out loud, who is the ex-Minister of Defense for Canada!  Ha!  Top that!

Well, okay, we probably should be listening to Stephen Hawking over Paul Hellyer, frankly, especially given that the Honorable Mr. Hellyer's skull seems to be filled with cobwebs and dead insects.  Be that as it may -- if next week the aliens declare war on us, demanding their fiber optics cables back, don't say he didn't warn us. 

Sally, meet Toby.

Last October, you may recall, I wrote about "England's favorite psychic," "Psychic Sally" Morgan, who had run afoul of some skeptics when she was seen allegedly receiving information about her subjects via an earpiece.  (Read the post here.)  Psychic Sally was incensed by the accusation, and sued the reporters who broke the story for defamation of character, asking for £150,000 in damages.  This opens up the interesting question of how she would defend herself against the accusation of fraud without being required to demonstrate her "powers" under controlled conditions -- something she has been steadfastly unwilling to do.

But her troubles haven't ended.  She's still out there, doggedly doing "readings," and was playing to a sold-out crowd in Edinburgh, Scotland on February 23.  Among the people in the audience was one Drew McAdam, a reporter for the Edinburgh Evening News.  And during the evening's performance, Psychic Sally said to the audience that she was picking up the presence a spirit, but then hesitated.  It was a horrific death, she said, because the person had been killed in an explosion.

At this point, a woman stood up, and asked if it could be her son, who was killed in a suicide bombing in Iraq.  Psychic Sally said no, she didn't think it was him, and asked the audience, "Does anyone recognize the name Tobin?"

At this point, Drew McAdam's wife stood up, and said she did, and Psychic Sally said that yes, it was her!  She was the focal point for this communique from the spirit world!  So she, and her husband Drew, were invited up on stage, where Psychic Sally proceeded to tell her that she could see "Tobin" crouched over a bomb, trying to defuse it, and then it blew up and killed him, "throwing him through the air."  Psychic Sally was devastated by witnessing the horrific event, and said, "Oh, darling, I'm sorry.  What a way to die."  Mrs. McAdam admitted to having been in love with a man named Toby who had died that way, and Psychic Sally comforted her saying that Toby was still here for her, and was sending her reassuring messages from the spirit world.

Pretty impressive, no?

Well, no, and here's why.

McAdam and his wife had set Psychic Sally up, starting some weeks earlier, when McAdam had sent emails to Psychic Sally's website containing the details of the "Toby" story.  Then, before the show, he and his wife had put "love letters to Toby" in the drop box Psychic Sally has at the door at every show, placed there to collect materials she will then select from during the performance.  Clearly while up on stage, perusing the contents of the box, she recognized the story, connecting the "love letters" with the earlier emails, and realized she had a wonderful starting point for a reading.

But still... couldn't Toby's spirit really have been there that night, comforting the grieving Mrs. McAdam?

Unfortunately for Psychic Sally, the answer is no -- because "Toby" is the fictional character Toby Wren, from the 1970s British science fiction series Doomwatch.

For her part, Mrs. McAdam said she hadn't been lying about her feelings.  "I had totally fallen in love with (Toby) when I was a 13-year-old," she later told skeptic Simon Singh.  "He was played by Robert Powell.  I cried for days when Toby was blown up defusing a bomb on a pier."

Well, I don't know about you, but my reaction to all this is:  BA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA *falls off chair*

You have to wonder how Psychic Sally will deal with this new development.  Apparently Singh tried to contact her with questions about the set-up, and (surprise!) Psychic Sally hasn't responded.  (Read Singh's article on the incident here.)  McAdam, for his part, said he never expected the prank to go as far as it did -- he was just "having a bit of a lark," trying to poke fun at psychics (McAdam himself is an amateur magician, but says that he is "as psychic as a teapot").  It was quite a shock when his wife got selected, but I think he would probably agree that the results were far more wonderful than anyone could have reasonably expected.

So, Psychic Sally's long night of the soul isn't over yet, but she's showing no signs of doing what most of us would do in her situation, which is to retire in shame and humiliation to an island off the coast of Greenland, never to be seen again.  But as we've seen over and over, woo-woos are the least likely people in the world ever to give up, and will doggedly continue to defend what they're doing even when caught red-handed.

And about her psychically contacting the spirit of a deceased fictional character, I would just like to add that if Psychic Sally wouldn't mind doing me a favor, I'd love to have a chance to chat with Nick Andros from Stephen King's book The Stand.  He was an awesome character.  I cried when he died.

Sheik, rattle & roll

So now, a senior Iranian cleric, one Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, is claiming that earthquakes are due to women behaving in a promiscuous fashion and wearing immodest clothing.

"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which consequently increases earthquakes," Sedighi is quoted as saying.

It is a constant source of wonderment to me that when prominent figures say these kinds of things, their audience does not erupt in guffaws.  I realize that there is a slight disincentive to doing so in Iran, where guffawing at a cleric is probably punishable by beheading.  But still, you have to wonder how human nature doesn't take over and force people to laugh.  Perhaps the listeners survive the experience by biting chunks out of the insides of their cheeks, much in the fashion of an animal caught in a steel trap gnawing off its own paw.

Of course, honesty forces me to point out that it isn't only the Muslims that have leaders who seem to have a Hostess Ho-Ho where most people have a brain.  We, for example, have Pat Robertson, who routinely claims that homosexuality and promiscuity cause hurricanes, and also that he can bench press a Volkswagen. And lest we think that it's only religious leaders who engage in such bizarre thinking, let us not forget Lyndon LaRouche, who provides perennial and much-needed comic relief to the political stage by (for example) claiming that our current leaders are being controlled remotely by super-intelligent aliens.

Now, come on.  I may not always agree with him, but I can state with some confidence that Barack Obama is not being controlled by aliens. And given that the aliens are alleged to be super-intelligent, I doubt they're in charge of Rick Santorum, either.  (I might be willing to believe it about Nancy Pelosi, however.  Her smile definitely looks like the result of someone pressing a button that says, "Retract Lips And Expose Teeth.")

But I digress.

You have to question how people can make statements like Sedighi's.  Don't these people have a glimmer of understanding of the concept of scientific induction?  How hard is it to go through a thought process like the following:

1) Hypothesis: female promiscuity is responsible for earthquakes.

2) Fact: Teheran, one of the most earthquake-prone cities, is not known as a hotbed of immorality, largely because getting caught engaging in immoral behavior is likely to result in the public removal of critical body parts.

3) Fact: On the other hand, female promiscuity abounds in Palm Beach, especially during spring break.

4) Fact: Palm Beach has not been struck by an earthquake in recorded history.

5) Conclusion: The original hypothesis is incorrect.

You don't have to have a Ph.D. in geology to follow this line of reasoning.  You do, however, have to be able to put together thoughts in some kind of logical fashion, which is apparently something Sedighi is incapable of doing.  And the people sitting in the audience, who evidently responded by saying to themselves, "My god, he's right!  I will cease my promiscuous behavior right now, in the interest of halting plate tectonics!" must not only have inadequate logical faculties, but also be willing to swallow anything someone says, as long as he has a long beard and white robes.

Either that, or they're missing large pieces from the insides of their cheeks.

The lure of easy answers

I had a disheartening, but in retrospect rather interesting, exchange on Facebook yesterday morning.

First, let me state up front that I usually don't respond to political statements on social media.  It's not that I don't value a good discussion; it's more that this is seldom what those turn out to be.  So when people post about politics, I rarely even so much as click "Like" on the ones I agree with, and almost never object to the ones I disagree with.

Yesterday morning, however, I made an exception to my own unwritten rule, when a Facebook friend posted the following unattributed quote: "A man with good morals who falls short and becomes a hypocrite is still a far better man than a liberal who can never be called a hypocrite because he has no morals at all."

And I responded, "No liberals have morals?  None?  Hmmm..."

He shot back, "Name one."

I responded, "Me.  I'm a liberal, and I have morals."

"What morals do you have?" he asked.

I replied, "Be kind.  Tell the truth.  Don't take what doesn't belong to you.  Don't be arrogant or conceited.  Respect your elders.  Take care of those less powerful than you are.  Follow the law.  Be loyal."

His response:  "Those are all conservative morals!  You sound like you're a conservative and won't admit it!"

At that point, I gave up, which I should have before I started, frankly.

One of the things I find the most discouraging, as a teacher and (in the larger sense) as a citizen, is how intellectually lazy a lot of people are.  Always, always, always look for the easy answer, don't act as if life is complex, don't admit to gray areas.  "Liberals are socialists who want to destroy America."  "Conservatives are corporate shills who only care about the very rich."  "Atheists are amoral."  "The religious are gullible dupes."  Of course, we've been well schooled in this by the media, haven't we?  Look at Rush Limbaugh: "A woman who supports insurance coverage for contraception is a slut."  Our hunger for easy answers has the effect of absolving us of the hard work of thinking, of having to make tough moral calls in a world that is messy, complicated, full of cross purposes and contradictory motives.  How much easier it is simply to give up and believe a Rush Limbaugh or a Ted Rall.

Ceding your brain to someone else, however, comes at a cost.  (And if you don't think that that's what this is, consider that Limbaugh himself calls his followers "Dittoheads.")  First, you lose any opportunity for dialogue, because having labeled the opposing side as a bunch of morons (or anti-American, or amoral, or whatever), you stop listening to what they have to say.  And I'm sorry; no one mainstream political party is entirely in the wrong, however convenient that would be for their opponents.  Egomaniacs like Limbaugh might enjoy being surrounded by "Dittoheads," but for anyone interested in growing intellectually, the essence of learning is being challenged by those you disagree with.

Second, vilifying your opponents doesn't make you make good decisions.  Party-line voters, who state with evident pride, "I would never vote for a Republican," are implying that party identification trumps everything else -- background, qualifications, moral values, stance on particular issues.  Being a liberal, I have tended to vote Democrat, but I am under no illusion that being a Democrat makes you some kind of pinnacle of ethics.  (Nor, I would like to point out to my Facebook friend, does being a Republican.)

It all comes down to refusing to succumb to the lure of easy answers.  They may be appealing -- but they're seldom right.  Those who fall for them are being sold a bill of goods by the media, who thrive on sound bites and pithy statements, who understand all too well that being outrageous and controversial sells better than deep, thoughtful analysis.  They're perfectly happy to give their listeners what they want to hear, because they know they'll swallow it -- and end up hooked without even knowing it's happened.