The American political parties get a Tarot reading

I know that many of you are concerned about the upcoming presidential election in the United States.  Even many of my readers from other countries are likely to be keeping their eyes on what happens in Washington, DC, because (like it or not) the US is a major power broker in the world.  Campaigning is getting hot and heavy, and right now the race is in a statistical dead heat -- raising the tension on both sides.

Well, it will come as a great relief to all of you to know that we now have more data from which to make an educated choice.  Some professional Tarot card readers have weighed in on the topic, and have done readings for both parties so that we can find out not only what party spokespeople have to say about the issues -- we can also find out what a bunch of randomly-dealt pieces of card stock with colorful images might indicate.

Psychic ReeNee Cummins has started a group called UPredict, whose stated goal is to do psychic readings not only for people, but for political groups and for "mysterious things going on around the planet."  So Cummins and her team decided to do readings for the Republican and Democratic Parties, asking five questions of the magic cards:

• How does this party’s platform affect America?
• Is this convention’s philosophy in touch with a majority of Americans?
• Division is a problem in America – How is this convention going to affect this?
• Will there be problems in the areas around the convention?
• What will be the net effect of the convention on the American Culture?

She then assembled seven readers, including herself, and they began to deal out the cards.  So without any further ado, let's see the results!  Cummins writes:

 The first thing that is apparent about the reading done for the Republicans is the lack of Major Arcana cards in the entire reading. There were only 13 Majors for a reading that involved over 120 cards. When there are few majors in a reading, the reader will usually ask the client if they truly understand what is going on in their lives. There is usually a sad lack of understand [sic] or a major toxic ego involved when there are this small a percentage of Majors in a reading. The readers in the room talked about how there seemed to be a nostalgic element in the Republican Party that wanted to take America back to a simpler time.

Really?  The cards told you that last bit?  Or did you just look up the word "conservative" in the dictionary?

Second, the most populous card was the knights of all suites. Knights are a young, dynamic energy; but it is an uneven energy and can be taken to extremes. Again, why the "my way or the highway attitude"? Why are these people so angry? The economy was crashed in 2008 because of bad banking decisions. However the energy of the knight say that these extremes are the energy levels being exhibited towards the current situation with no reflection on what history actually is or what part they (the Republicans may have played in it).  The Reading Room talked about the war on women and that this junior high like energy would explain why the participants refused to understand that they were hurting more than helping. Again, it also explained a hypocracy [sic] towards attending shows in strip clubs in Tampa where tents had been put up to protect the identity of customers.

Okay, so it's becoming pretty clear that most of the "Reading Room" psychics are not card-carrying GOP members.  So let's turn to what they said about the Democrats:

First, the Major Arcana cards reappeared with the Democratic reading. In fact, the Major's were heavy in this reading. Heavy Major Arcana cards mean that what is going on is very important on a spiritual level. It does not predict that this side will win, it says that they will accept the will of the people, and then fight on for the best conclusion.  The Project TAROT Moment Cards were mainly Major Arcana. The first, and most prominent was The Devil. I know, for conservatives that is enought [sic] to make them weep tears of joy; but that would only be for the ill-informed. The Devil deals with a hell of the client's own making. A mental construct that has no physical component in reality. Now who is making a living hell for this administration? Could it be the Republican's decision to make this administration a one term administration? Could their "junior high" attitude about society explain the bullying that has gone on in the media and between people? Could they have turned this President into their own Devil - only to have people discover that their reality is not the one shared by most of the country.

Myself, I find it a little ironic that these people are talking about "reality" while blathering on about a bunch of playing cards that can magically tell you what's going on behind the scenes in the US political arena.

The adults came back into the room - we had a lot of queens and kings of all suites. The idea of introspection to do the right thing and then lead the people in the manner came out strong. But the inner work of the queens was just as important as the leadership of the king. The fact that there was both kings AND queens shows that while men and women are different, there is a need for both genders and the wisdom they bring to the table. The final Project TAROT moments happened with The Justice card and The Fool. The Justice card was a welcome sight. Yes, Justice will be served, and things will be straightened out. However, the Justice card has it's [sic] sword in the air. It can cut the crap and move us forward, or it can slice and dice people who are on the wrong side of history. The last card - The Fool - back to a card of hope and change. Is that what America wants?

Oh, clearly.  You can't argue with the cards.  All-knowing, connected to the mystical energies of the universe, all that sort of thing.

Or, just maybe -- the interpretation of the cards was reflecting the hopes, desires, political leanings, and (in some cases) prior knowledge of the "readers."

This is my problem with the majority of self-proclaimed psychics -- their readings don't have any sort of scientifically-admissible controls, and yet they rail against the skeptics as being "closed-minded" and "unwilling to consider that there might be more to the universe than what the scientists tell us."  Is that so?  Are we really as blind as all that?  Is there something more affecting outcomes than the known physical components of the universe?

Well, if you want anyone to take you seriously, you have to play by the rules.  Show me that a computer, programmed with the meanings of the Tarot cards, could do a card throw for the Democrats and Republicans, and come to the same conclusions as your "Reading Room" team did.  Or even go so far as to have your "readers" do a second throw for each party, and show that it gives you substantially the same results.  Do something that will convince me that Tarot card readings aren't just clever people imposing their own slant on something that is essentially a random arrangement of pieces of card stock.

I'm guessing they'd probably refuse, however, and simply accuse me of having "a sad lack of understand" and "a major toxic ego."

The Motive Fallacy and the reincarnation of Steve Jobs

The "Motive Fallacy" is the assumption that because someone has a motive to say something, that has a bearing on the truth value of what they've said.  The canonical example of the Motive Fallacy is the child who shows his mother a drawing he's made, and asks Mom what she thinks.

"It's beautiful, honey," she says.

"No, it's not," the little boy responds.  "You're just saying that because you're my mother."

The little boy assumes that because the mom has a motive to spare his feelings, she must be lying -- when in fact, the drawing could be either brilliant or terrible, and the mom's motive for saying it's good has no effect on that one way or the other.  She could be lying; she could be telling the truth.  It's impossible to tell.  And assuming that her motive gives you more information is a fallacy.

I ran into a great example of the Motive Fallacy, not to mention a rather bizarre example of woo-woo, a couple of days ago.  The Wall Street Journal ran an article (here) describing how a group of Thai Buddhists have decided that Apple founder Steve Jobs has been reincarnated.

The whole thing apparently hit the news when Apple software engineer Tony Tseung contacted Phra Chaibul Dhammajayo, the abbot of the Dhammakaya Temple near Bangkok, to find out what happened to Jobs following his death.  So the abbot put his mind to it, and finally Tseung got his response last month.  To everyone's immense relief, it was good news.

"After Steve Jobs passed away, he was reincarnated as a divine being with a special knowledge and appreciation for science and the arts," Phra Chaibul said, in the first of a series of lectures that have been made available by the Dhammakaya Temple.  "Everything is high-tech, beautiful, and simple, exactly the way he likes it, and he is filled with great excitement and amazement."  He then went on to say that Jobs now has a full head of hair, sleeps on a floating hover-bed, and if he wants to eat, one of twenty servants immediately brings him what he would like, and if he thinks about his favorite song, it starts playing.

Well, that sounds happy enough.  I mean, my only question would be: how do you know all of this?  But so far, no one seems to be asking this.  All we have is the pronouncement, all too typical with religious leaders, that Phra Chaibul has direct and specific knowledge of something that is unavailable to the rest of us slobs.

What makes this situation more interesting is the response of Phra Payom Kallayano, a Thai religious authority.  He said that Phra Chaibul was only saying all of this as a publicity stunt, because he wanted to attract more followers to the Dhammakaya Temple, and thus more money.  Phra Chaibul, in other words, is only claiming that Steve Jobs was reincarnated because he has a motive to make that claim.

Really?  That's the only problem you see here?  Of course Phra Chaibul has a motive; the Dhammakaya Temple is one of the wealthiest in Thailand, and caters to well-educated, modern Buddhists, virtually all of whom use computers on a daily basis.  Integrating modern technology into religious beliefs is never a simple matter, and Phra Chaibul's statement that Steve Jobs has been reincarnated as a "powerful warrior-philosopher" must give some comfort to Buddhists who worry that today's electronic world bears little resemblance to Nirvana.

But stating that Phra Chaibul has a motive to make the claim is a pretty weak objection, and overlooks a much bigger difficulty, which is that there's not a shred of evidence that it's true.  Isn't it curious that no one in the temple seems to be saying, "Can you show me any proof that Steve Jobs is living in a floating glass house with twenty servants?"  Which would have been the first thing I'd have thought of.  It's what I always think when people make strange claims, even when those claims are part of a well-respected, organized religion.

Maybe the reason for this is that the Motive Fallacy points fingers at specific people, whereas the demand for evidence knocks the pins out from underneath the entire belief system.  If Phra Chaibul is making up the Steve Jobs story so that his temple will get donations, that says something about Phra Chaibul himself, but allows you to leave alone the belief in reincarnation and everything else it implies.  Once you say, "Show me your evidence that this has happened," you've changed the ground rules -- and placed a demand that can be applied to any other statement that the religion has made.  In fact, don't just show me hard evidence that Steve Jobs is living in bliss as a reincarnated warrior-philosopher; show me evidence that reincarnation happens at all.  We know you religious leaders have motives for saying what you do; however, that statement is irrelevant.  Give me some solid reason to believe that god, heaven, hell, and all the rest exist, other than pointing at a passage in a book and saying, "It says so right here."  I'm going to hold your claims to the same gold standard of evidence that I do every other claim about how the world works.

Prominent evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould famously said that science and religion were "non-overlapping magisteria" -- separate ways of understanding the world, whose methods (and thus standards for establishing truth) were different.  Science is primarily external, and verifiable; religion internal, and unverifiable.  While Gould was a great writer and a brilliant man, I've never thought this made the least bit of sense.  Science's stance -- that our understanding of how the universe behaves is discoverable, and can only be based upon hard evidence -- is really the only reliable protocol we have.  Saying that religious statements don't have to meet the same standard of evidence as scientific ones means that religious leaders can make any damnfool claims they want, and they can't be challenged to prove what they're saying.  But the weak, Motive Fallacy response that Phra Chaibul got after his bizarre public statement is an indication of how few people really want to go there.

The Great Hantavirus Pandemic Conspiracy

Since we were talking about conspiracies yesterday, I thought I'd continue in the same vein by taking a look at the recent hantavirus outbreak in Yosemite National Park.

Here are the facts -- not that those tend to matter to conspiracy theorists.

Hantavirus is an RNA virus that is carried by deer mice, and is present in their urine, droppings, and saliva.  When deer mice come into contact with human -- e.g. in cabins -- the mouse droppings dry out, and the resultant dust can be inhaled, carrying the virus into the human respiratory system.  Once a human is infected, the disease progresses rapidly, beginning with flulike symptoms, and eventually causing pneumonia and acute respiratory distress.  There is no treatment, and even with medical care, about half of infected patients die.  (Source)

The recent outbreak in Yosemite National Park, in the "Signature Tent Cabins," led to 10,000 people being exposed.  Note that this is simply the number who occupied the cabins this summer; it is unknown how many of them actually came in contact with the virus.  As of right now, six people have been confirmed to have contracted the disease, and two of the infected have died.  (Source)  The cabins were closed on August 24, and as hantavirus has an incubation period of two to four weeks, it is likely that there will be few other cases amongst the people who visited the park.

So, anyway, that's the situation.  Scary for those exposed, sad for those who have actually contracted the disease, and otherwise, it's pretty much over.  Hantavirus has never been shown to be transmissible from human to human, so that's it for the epidemic (if I can call an outbreak that sickened six people that).

But try telling your average conspiracy theorist that.

Here are a few direct quotes from conspiracy sites.  I am including only a few, because after reading these, I felt my cerebral cortex turning to cream of wheat, and I had to stop.  (Spelling and punctuation has been left intact, because that improves the overall effect.)

• This could be the new Pandemic, the worldwide killer that wipes out mankind ,in the 14th century the Black Death wiped out 25 million people and this was before planes and easy travel throughout the world, if that many people died in the 14th century imagine the destruction and devestation in the modern world where you can jump on a plane tomorrow and end up in Timbuktoo ,25 million would be like chicken feed ,make no mistake this has no cure and if it goes airborne and can be transmitted through handshakes ,coughs and sneezes ,the world will have no need to be worried about any asteroid hitting or Yellowstone erupting in 2012.

•  Remember the big rig that spilled 600 25# bags of sulfur near the entrance to Yosemite in April?  Anyone wondering if that stuff was really sulfur?  It closed the roads nearby.  Was this just an excuse to close everything up so they could spray the park with deadly hantavirus?  Just in time for summer vacations...

•  Its another false flag operation to draw attention away from what's going on at the Democratic National Convention.  Like we can't see through what their doing.

• Obama and his cronies are hiding their role in this.  Start a deadly pandemic in an election year, so that it gives you something to claim you're fighting against.  And while millions are dying, they get into office permanently.  Watch for it, sheeple.  You'll be living in a fascist dictatorship before you know it... if you're one of the survivors.

• There are now 12000 people sick with this right now and that's the ones we know about, how many more, are we being told the total truth about this, in less than a week thousands more infected, imagine a month, a year, 5 yrs from now planet earth could be the corpse planet, maybe this is why their looking at other planets that could support life.

Oh, okay!  And maybe all of these are true!  At the same time!  It's a pandemic, millions are sick and we aren't being told, because President Obama ordered the National Park Service to spray deer mice in Yosemite with hantavirus and release them in the cabins so that vacationing people would get ill during the Democratic National Convention, allowing the delegates to appoint him Supreme Dictator of the Earth without anyone noticing, and now that this has happened he will take his cronies on a spaceship to another habitable planet, leaving the rest of the Earth's population to die in agony.

Hey, it could happen.

What blows my mind about all of this is how fact-resistant these people are.  Show them press releases from the National Institute of Health, explaining that hantavirus doesn't seem to be communicable from one human to another, and stating that only six people have so far been sickened?  It's all part of the government's disinformation plan.  Tell them that the sulfur spill in April was just an accident, and was cleaned up quickly, and had nothing to do with the outbreak?  Riiiight.  Sure it was an accident.  *wink, wink*  Explain that hantavirus was already present in deer mouse populations, and there would be no need for anyone to "spray the park with the virus," even if someone wanted to do so, which no one does?  Ha.  So you say.  You poor, deluded fool, you.

You get the feeling these people love it when bad things happen, so they can have more things to blame the government for.  They don't seem to have any sense that being that we live in the natural world, bad stuff sometimes just happens.  Storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods... and disease outbreaks.  No human agency is necessary for any of this stuff, much as they would like that to be the case.

And finally, don't these conspiracy theorists give you the impression that they think that the government is a lot more powerful, and efficient, than it actually is?  My own sense is that our elected officials look more like the Keystone Kops than they do like the Men in Black.  If they even knew how to create a catastrophe, I doubt they could successfully pull it off, much less keep it quiet.

But maybe that's the point.  The people who believe in conspiracy theories find it weirdly comforting that someone is in charge, even if that someone has evil intentions.  The idea that hantavirus has shown up in Yosemite because the Evil Government put it there is easier to live with, somehow, than the idea that bad stuff just happens sometimes, because life is a risky chaotic jumble, and there is no pattern, no Grand Reason That Things Happen.

Or maybe they're just batshit crazy.

Storms, consipiracies, and divine retribution

Last night the remnants of Hurricane Isaac swept through upstate New York, bringing electrical storms and some much-needed rain to our area, and doing little damage except for scaring the absolute hell out of my neurotic border collie, Doolin, who seems to think that thunder is the Footsteps Of Monsters Who Eat Dogs.  So other than straightening up the things she knocked over in trying to get Somewhere Safe, we actually were rather fortunate.

Sadly, the residents of southern Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana (especially Plaquemines Parish) weren't so lucky, and there are thousands that are still flooded out, and tens of thousands without electricity.  The prediction that it would make landfall as "only a Category 1" storm turned out to be correct, but a Category 1 storm turns out to be capable of a lot of damage, especially if it moves slowly, as Isaac did.

The science of predicting hurricane tracks has improved vastly, but it's still a highly complex business, dependent on a great many variables that can be hard to measure.  Still, we're better off than we were in 1900, when a hurricane slammed into Galveston, Texas with very little warning, claiming an estimated 8,000 lives.

Of course, that hasn't stopped the crazies from claiming that hurricanes are not controlled by such prosaic variables as air moisture, sea surface temperature, shear, and steering currents.  Big storms being due to purely natural causes?  No, that would be way too simple.

First, we have noted meteorologist Rush Limbaugh, who claimed that the folks over at NOAA were predicting the storm's path based upon their desire to disrupt the Republican National Convention:

So this whole thing has been politicized, as the Democrats politicize everything, and that's why we are talking about it. Now, I want to remind you: All last week... And, no, at no time here am I alleging a conspiracy. At no time. With none of this am I alleging conspiracy. All last week what was the target? Tampa. What was going on in Tampa this week?

The Republican National Convention. A pretty important one, too. Introducing the nominee, Mitt Romney. It's only after the convention that Romney can actually start spending all of this money that he's raised, so this convention is very important. It's a chance to introduce Romney to a lot of people who don't know him yet. And I noticed that the hurricane center's track is -- and I'm not alleging conspiracies here. The hurricane center is the regime; the hurricane center is the Commerce Department.

It's the government.

It's Obama.

Oh, right!  Okay!  That's perfectly believable, as long as you have a single kernel of Kettle Corn where most of us have a brain.  The hurricane is Obama!  Barreling toward the Republican National Convention!  With the destructive Winds of Liberalism!  I'm certain that the storm itself cared deeply about who wins the presidential election, because, you know, that's how weather works.

Of course, Limbaugh is bush-league crazy compared to Joe Kovacs over at WorldNetDaily, who claims that god sent Hurricane Isaac toward New Orleans deliberately to screw up Southern Decadence, an annual gay pride festival:

New Orleans is still hosting Southern Decadence with open homosexuality manifesting in the streets of the city. It could be that God is putting an end to this city and its wickedness. The timing of Hurricane Isaac with Southern Decadence is a sign that God’s patience with America’s sin is coming to an end. … Let’s all watch this very closely, because if New Orleans is destroyed, it is a sure sign that the final judgment for the national sin of America has arrived.

And as additional proof, we have a quote from Alabama Senator Hank Erwin, showing that government officials are only as intelligent as the people who elected them:

America has been moving away from God.  The Lord is sending appeals to us.  As harsh as it may sound, those hurricanes do say that God is real, and we have to realize sin has consequences.

No, Senator, what those hurricanes say is that low pressure centers form over the eastern Atlantic during the summer, increase in strength during conditions of warm surface waters and low shear, and get pushed toward the Caribbean and the southern United States by the prevailing winds.  Homosexuality really has very little to do with it.

Even this doesn't end the litany of wackos who have weighed in on the cause of hurricanes.  Over at Chemtrail Planet, we hear that the path of the storm was determined by Evil Government Officials putting chemicals in jet fuel, so that the exhaust contrails could change the weather:

High on the list of suspects for deployment of “chembombs” is the fleet of Evergreen Air B-747 tankers equipped with Evergreen’s own patented aerosol deployment system capable of spraying a wide variety of aerosols depending on the mission.

The huge 20,000 gallon system was originally promoted as a new technology for fighting wildfires even though the patent claims equal capability at releasing aerosols for the purpose of "weather modofication" [sic].

Suspicions are growing that Evergreen’s fire-fighting promotion was a decoy to hide their primary mission of covert climate modification.

This is accompanied by a highly informative YouTube video that made me weep softly while banging my head against my computer keyboard.

And last, our parade of wingnuts would not be complete without a salvo from Alex Jones, who as you might expect posted a YouTube video claiming that Hurricane Isaac was created by the US government using their magical superpowers, better known as HAARP.  "We would be weird to not say it could be government-created as some type of disaster for the election," Jones said.  "That’s not outside the realm of possibility."

Which is true only in the sense that earthquakes being caused by the leaping about of Giant Subterranean Bunnies is also, technically, not outside the realm of possibility.

What always puzzles me about this sort of thing is the fact that people listen to, or read, this stuff, and at least someone must find it plausible.  In fact, in the case of Limbaugh and Jones, the evidence is that a lot of people find what they say plausible, despite the fact that much of it is blatant horse waste.  Why, I wonder, don't people look folks like this in the eye when they make their ridiculous pronouncements, and say, "May I please see your Ph.D. in meteorology or climate science?  Or, in fact, any kind of science at all?  Oh, you don't have one?  Then SHUT THE HELL UP."

But people never do, for some reason.

The return of the Baltic Sea Anomaly

So, the Ocean X Explorer Team and the Baltic Sea Anomaly are back in the news, and not because anyone has much in the way of new information about it.

Natalie Wolchover, writer at Life's Little Mysteries, has written an article (here) that claims that the "Anomaly" is a glacial deposit.  Or, to put it more bluntly, a bunch of rocks, which is what I suspected it was right from the get-go.  The most interesting thing about her article is the part that describes how Peter Lindberg, leader of the Ocean X team, contacted Volker Brüchert, an associate professor of geology at Stockholm University, and supposedly got Brüchert to agree that the "Anomaly" was unexplainable as a natural formation.

Lindberg only released one quote from his interview with Brüchert, following Lindberg's providing Brüchert with a black rock from the "Anomaly" site to study.  "I was surprised when I researched the material, I found a great black stone that could be a volcanic rock," Brüchert told Lindberg.  "My hypothesis is that this object, this structure was formed during the Ice Age many thousands of years ago."

Implying, of course, that the "Anomaly" can't be explained by science, and therefore must be (1) a crashed UFO site, (2) a sunken Nazi superweapon, (3) a remnant of the lost civilization of Atlantis, or (4) any of the other bizarre suggestions that people associated with researching the "Anomaly" have made.

Of course, it turns out that Brüchert never meant to imply any such thing.  Reporters at Life's Little Mysteries took the expedient of contacting Brüchert, and asking him in more detail what he thought.

"It's good to hear critical voices about this 'Baltic Sea mystery,'" Brüchert responded in an email.  "What has been generously ignored by the Ocean-X team is that most of the samples they have brought up from the sea bottom are granites and gneisses and sandstones."  He then goes on to state that this is exactly what you'd expect to see if the "Anomaly" is a glacial deposit, which would be no surprise given that the Baltic Sea was largely carved out by glaciers.

"Because the whole northern Baltic region is so heavily influenced by glacial thawing processes, both the feature and the rock samples are likely to have formed in connection with glacial and postglacial processes," he wrote.  "Possibly these rocks were transported there by glaciers."

So, an expert has weighed in on the subject, and has a perfectly conventional explanation, as I suspected.

The problem is, I did what I should never do, and scrolled to the bottom of the article and looked at the "Comments" section.  A sampling:

• Who's to say stories like Atlantis and the Biblical Flood aren't merely memories of such a widespread calamity?
• Being a skeptic requires no knowledge and no investigation of evidence or facts. Anyone can be a skeptic. Congrats Natalie, you are ordinary.
• What in the hell are you people trying to hide? This needs to be explored much more deeply and we need to be told what this thing really is, how it got there, and why it is still there. Frankly, we just need the truth and "glacial deposit" is certainly not it. It is plain this thing has been manufactured by someone, at someplace, at some time. It's not just a fluke of nature.
• Probably some sort of space ship the "authorities" don't wan't [sic] anyone to know about!
• This report is very misleading. The object was never ID.  People only gave an explaination [sic] how it end up there.  We still don't know what it is and where it come from !!!!
• Well if this is an accurate depiction than it has to be a design from an intelligent source man made or what ever.  There are to [sic] many perfect geometric shapes and lines, a glacier or volcanic deposit I think not.

Well, Natalie, I think we can all agree that they told you, can't we?

It's not that I don't sympathize with the sentiment that it would be cool if the "Anomaly" was something beyond what science currently can explain.  No one would be more thrilled than me if it was a downed spacecraft, or a remnant of a hitherto-unknown human civilization.  And if there really was evidence of something like that, real scientists -- the people whose day-to-day lives are spent pushing the boundaries of what we know, who live for opportunities to study things that haven't yet been explained -- would be tripping over themselves to analyze it.  The fact that a real, working geologist has taken a look at the hard evidence (a sample of the "Anomaly") and said, basically, "Meh," is pretty indicative of the likelihood that there isn't anything much there to study.

And now, I really have said all I have to say on the subject, unless Lindberg and his team unearth something a lot more earthshattering than they have done so far.  As I've said before: I am perfectly ready to eat crow and print a retraction if it turns out that there really is something weird down there.  Until that time, I'm siding with Brüchert.  Oh, and one other thing: I really need to stop reading the "Comments" sections on articles, because I don't need any further reasons to faceplant directly onto my keyboard.

Rhetoric, politics, and the freedom to remain silent

Allow me to go on record as saying that I can't wait for this presidential election to be over.

It's only the beginning of September, and already I am sick unto death of the nasty political rhetoric.  Not the stuff coming from the candidates and their sponsors; I've come to expect that, given our money-driven, whatever-it-takes-to-get-elected system.  What makes me ill, on almost a daily basis, is the ugly invective you hear and see from ordinary citizens and voters.

That sort of thing has become easier to broadcast in the past few decades.  When I was young, if you had a message (nasty or otherwise), your only free choice was to write a letter to the editor.  Otherwise, you had to purchase radio or television time, or rent a billboard.  Now, the entire internet (especially social network sites like Facebook and Twitter) have become the sounding boards for anyone with something they'd like the whole world to hear.  And in an election year, what a lot of people have to say is (1) irrational, (2) rife with overgeneralizations, and (3) just generally unpleasant.

Let me give you just the briefest sampling, from my Facebook page.  Note that the vitriol is coming from both sides of the aisle:

• The top slogan of the Democratic Party is "Bitterly Clinging To Taxes and Abortions."
• Republicans have consistently cut disaster relief in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and for big corporations.
• Please don't vote us out!  None of us can do real jobs!
• The only way you could vote Republican is if you lack a heart, lack a brain, or both.  So which are you?  The Scarecrow or the Tin Man?
• You lost a debate to a conservative? Time to yell "racism" and blame Fox News.
• The conservative agenda is to make government smaller so that the big corporations have room to move in.
• Democrats want to stick around in America just long enough to see how it ends.
• The Republican Party has no interest in protecting the rights of anyone who isn't an entitled, wealthy, white, heterosexual Christian man.

I usually try to stay out of political discussions -- it's almost always frustrating and almost never accomplishes anything -- so I generally don't respond when people post this stuff.  But I broke my own rule a few days ago, and I responded to one of the above (which one is irrelevant; they're all equally ridiculous) by saying, "Oh, come now.  This is a bit much.  You really think that 50% of the United States actually believes this?"  Within five minutes, there were three responses, to wit:

• Sounds about right to me.
• I love the sarcasm and the parody -- and the point.  This is awesome.
• This is great.  Sharing.

To which I responded:  "I give up."

I honestly do not understand the motivation that drives this stuff.  Yes, both the Democratic and the Republican Parties have a few people who are extremists, whose views are pretty clearly in the "nutjob" category.  Both have elected officials who have broken the law, who have taken bribes, who have committed sexual indiscretions.  But the vast majority of the actual voters -- the people who are the Democratic and Republican Parties, not just the officials they elect to represent them -- are ordinary people, who want the things that all of us want.  A home, a job, security, a safe place to raise their children, food on the table, the freedoms guaranteed them by the Constitution.  Most of them are decent human beings, who would be interesting to sit down and have a beer and a bull session with.  Damn few of them on either side want to "tear down America" or "sell the US to the corporations" or "turn the United States into the Soviet Union" or any of the thousand other things that the purveyors of toxic rhetoric would like you to believe.

Of course, everyone is entitled to state his or her opinion.  That is one of those "freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution" I mentioned earlier.  However, just because you're free to do something doesn't mean that you should.  You are also free not to speak when it does more harm than good, a freedom that more of us should exercise.  The poisonous messages currently flooding social media do nothing but drive people apart, break down dialogue, and spread the message that if you don't agree with me, you must be either deluded or evil.  I fail to see what positive end any of this could possibly accomplish.

Now, don't get me wrong.  By saying, "why can't we just get along?" I'm not saying, "why can't we all agree?"  Liberals and conservatives do differ, if not in what their basic goals are, in how best to achieve those goals.  There are very real points of debate on issues that deserve time, energy, and effort to resolve.  But ugly invective is not debate, and it muddies the water rather than clearing it.  So to those people who share this stuff, and thus keep it alive online, I am respectfully asking you to knock it off.

Woo-woo workshop weekends

A frequent reader and contributor to Skeptophilia sent me a note asking if I'd heard about the Exeter (New Hampshire) UFO Festival happening this weekend.  I hadn't, and (unfortunately) can't attend because I have other plans, but I thought I'd check out the website.

The home page promised great things, with a banner header showing photographs and drawings of UFOs, aliens, and prominent images of Betty and Barney Hill, famous as the first well-publicized UFO abductees.  In fact, it is certainly the Hills that explains the location; Exeter is in the same county as Portsmouth, the Hills' home at the time of the incident.

The conference itself looks like it will be awesome, if by awesome you mean "weird."  Which I suppose is to be expected.  Here is a sampler of the talks that will be given:

• Extraterrestrials: They are Here Now.  It's not just Interesting.  It's Important.
• Remote Viewing and Accessing Higher Consciousness
• UFOs for the 21st Century Mind
• ET Contact: Implications for Post-Contact Advancements in Science and Technology

So you can see that I'd fit right in, except for the fact that I'd probably get thrown out for guffawing, especially at the Remote Viewing workshop.

But I needn't be upset at missing the festival; a brief search turned up a whole host of other events I could attend.  If any of these are near enough to you, and strike your fancy, I encourage you to go and then report back here what happened:

The Atoka (Oklahoma) Cryptid Fest, on September 8.  It's being held at McGee Creek State Park, and will feature an appearance of the "professionals from the cast of The History Channel's Monster Quest."  There will be "Bigfoot excursions throughout the day."  And if anyone shows up at the event and sneaks around the grounds in a ghillie suit, it was definitely not my idea.

A Certification Course in Mayan Shamanic Healing and Crystal Therapy, on September 21-23.  It's being held at the Aquarian Book Shop in Richmond, Virginia.  Here we will be taught the "Mayan Healing Modality" wherein we will learn how to do the following:

• Cleanse your crystals properly.
• Use obsidian arrows for healing.
• Activate quartz crystals to restore health.
• Lay jade stones on the body.
• Use rose quartz for heart or emotional healing.
• Work with 20 major energy centers on the body healing.
• Do a basic diagnosis of the client.
• Stand in simple shamanic animal postures for healing

We will also learn a variety of important principles, such as Polarity As An Axis Of Energy And Manifestation.  Whatever that means.  We are also told that in preparation for the event, the shop is offering a "10% discount on pendulums."

Oh, goodie.

For my readers in the UK, you might consider The Psychic Fair and Pamper Day, on Saturday, September 29 in Colchester (Essex).  There will be ghost hunts at the beginning and end of the fair, on Friday evening and again on Saturday evening after the fair closes, and tickets for those are £ 40, but otherwise the fair itself is free.  There will be a great many booths offering services and items for sale, including:

• Angel Therapy
• Aromatherapy 
• Astrology 
• Aura Photography
• Crystal Healing
• I Ching
• Iridology
• Numerology
• Psychic Artist
• Psychic Medium Readings
• Rune Reader
• Tarot Readings
• Theta Healing

Besides this sounding like a table of contents for the New Age Nonsense category of The Skeptic's Dictionary,  this one might be well worth attending because (1) it will represent an amazing assortment of goofy stuff, and (2) it's free.  I'd definitely attend if I was in England.

So, that gives you some choices as consolation prizes if you've missed, like I have, the Exeter UFO Festival.  And that was just from September.  The availability of woo-woo workshops is limited only by your time, money, and tolerance for bizarre ideas -- and, as we've seen over and over in this blog, some people seem to be overly endowed with all three.