Woo-woos and Wawas

Woo-woo ideas, like many things, are subject to fads.  There are a few things that seem to be "in" at the moment (conspiracy theories, mermaids, anti-vaxxer nonsense) and a few that are "out" (Ouija boards, Tarot cards, the Loch Ness Monster).  These fads create a positive feedback effect on the media, both on (supposed) non-fiction documentaries and on movies and television (in fact, a current discussion on the r/skeptic subreddit is, "Were alien hybrid theories popular before The X Files?").

Bigfoot is big now, and has been for quite some time.  This has led to sightings of our alleged hairy cousins, once confined to the Pacific Northwest, a swampy bit of Arkansas, and the Himalayas, coming in from just about everywhere -- there have been reports of Sasquatches (Sasquatchi?  Sasquatchim?  Surely there has to be a better plural) showing up in places as unlikely as heavily-populated southeastern England.  And more new ones come in daily, as other places jump on the bandwagon as having their own version of the world's most popular cryptid.

A recent extension of the range of proto-hominids was brought to my attention last week by a regular reader and frequent contributor to Skeptophilia, who sent me an article from Cuenca (Ecuador) High Life called "Another Monster Sighting in the Cajas Mountains: British Hikers and Guide Debating Whether to Release Photos."  In it, we hear about the rather amusingly named "Wawa Grande" -- which translated from Quechua and Spanish, respectively, means "big baby."  Wawas (Wawae?) apparently live exclusively in the high peaks of the Andes, which explains why they're so seldom seen, unless there's another explanation, such as that they don't exist.

Of course, that's not what Cuenca High Life would have you believe.  "A Quito television station reported three weeks ago that two British hikers and their tour guide spotted the elusive creature in Cajas National Park during a three-day trek," the article states.  "The trio claimed to have observed the over-sized humanoid animal for several minutes in a remote area of the park in early April."

We then get to hear from Sean Worthington, one of the hikers who made the report.  "I have no idea what it was other than to say it was quite large, with light colored fur and had human characteristics. It was able to stand on two legs but also came down on all fours," Worthington told reporters. "I am a scientist by training and not prone to make fanciful claims, but I cannot deny seeing the thing."

The return of Blobsquatch.

Apparently, like our own Bigfoots (Bigfeet?  Dammit) of North America, the "Wawa Grande" has been around in legend form for some time -- two hundred years, the article says.  It became more widely known in 1988 when a Scottish hiker, who is named (I am not making this up) Robert Burns, was "mauled by Wawas" when he took shelter in a cave while on a hike.

If I ever start an alternative rock band, I'm going to name it "Mauled By Wawas."

And of course, you can't have a cryptozoological claim without allegations of a coverup.  An unnamed "retired park service biologist" is quoted in the article as stating that the powers-that-be in Ecuador are engaging in a policy of denial.  "It does not exist," the biologist said, when asked about the official policy regarding the Wawa Grande.  "That is what we told anyone who asked about it.  There was a U.S. television show called Monster Quest that kept asking for help, but we refused.  We told them there was nothing up there and no reason to do a TV show." Nevertheless, the biologist said, he knows the Wawa exists -- because he's seen one.

The current popularity of Bigfoot probably explains why he's made his way not only onto shows like Monster Quest and Finding Bigfoot (which, thus far, has not lived up to its title), but onto commercials.  Jack Link's beef jerky, in particular, has made use of the hirsute hominins in its advertisements, using the tag line "Messin' With Sasquatch," in which humans play various practical jokes on Bigfoot (all the while eating beef jerky).  The practical jokes never end well, and in various iterations of the commercial, the jokers end up thrown through the air, having their cars and boats smashed, having their arms ripped off, and getting pissed on.

Despite the fact that the Sasquatch always gets the last laugh in the commercials, last week this series of ads was roundly criticized by a Canadian anti-bullying group as "promoting bullying."  Because, presumably, children who are dumb enough not to notice that the practical jokers in the commercials always get violently dismembered are also dumb enough not to know that Sasquatch doesn't, technically, exist.

So, anyway.  That's the latest on our furry family members, who are apparently damn near everywhere.

A coincidence?  I think not.  (And I have to point out for the record that this store is in Mahwah, New Jersey, making this the "Mahwah Wawa," which is fun to say.)

Some thoughts about demons

C. S. Lewis' famous book The Screwtape Letters chronicles the tempting of a young British man (known only as "The Patient") by a junior demon, Wormwood, who is under the guidance of a senior devil named Screwtape.  The Patient experiences pulls and pushes from various sides, some (in Lewis' worldview) positive, i.e. toward god; others negative, toward hell and damnation.  A particularly interesting passage comes in Letter #10, where Lewis throws a barb at us skeptics and atheists (if you haven't read this book, recall that it's from the devil's point of view, and therefore "The Enemy" is the Christian God):

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

I was delighted to hear from Triptweeze that your patient has made some very desirable new acquaintances and that you seem to have used this event in a really promising manner. I gather that the middle-aged married couple who called at his office are just the sort of people we want him to know - rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly sceptical about everything in the world. I gather they are even vaguely pacifist, not on moral grounds but from an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men and from a dash of purely fashionable and literary communism. This is excellent. And you seem to have made good use of all his social, sexual, and intellectual vanity. Tell me more. Did he commit himself deeply? I don't mean in words. There is a subtle play of looks and tones and laughs by which a Mortal can imply that he is of the same party is those to whom he is speaking. That is the kind of betrayal you should specially encourage, because the man does not fully realise it himself; and by the time he does you will have made withdrawal difficult.

No doubt he must very soon realise that his own faith is in direct opposition to the assumptions on which all the conversation of his new friends is based. I don't think that matters much provided that you can persuade him to postpone any open acknowledgment of the fact, and this, with the aid of shame, pride, modesty and vanity, will be easy to do. As long as the postponement lasts he will be in a false position. He will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent. He will assume, at first only by his manner, but presently by his words, all sorts of cynical and sceptical attitudes which are not really his. But if you play him well, they may become his. All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. This is elementary. The real question is how to prepare for the Enemy's counter attack.

It is clear that Lewis, although he meant The Screwtape Letters as a fictional allegory, believed in the reality of demons and their capacity for tempting humans into sin.  In the preface to Screwtape he writes,

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.

What I find interesting about all of this is two things; first is why, if demons actually exist, they don't tend to bother atheists like myself -- wouldn't we be easy targets for possession?  (Lewis, I suspect, would respond to this objection that I am so far gone in my disbelief that the demons have already added me to their Ledger Book -- there's no further need to tempt me, as I'm already damned.)  Be that as it may, it's interesting that the only people who seem to be troubled by demons are Christians who already thought they were real beforehand.

The second interesting thing is how generally embarrassed Christians seem to be by the idea of demons, although it is clearly scriptural in origin (recall the passage in Matthew 8 where Jesus casts some demons out of a couple of guys, and the demons possess a bunch of pigs, who proceed to drown themselves in a lake).  Despite this, and with the exception of the fundamentalist sects of Christianity, a lot of Christians kind of turn red and change the subject when you bring up demons and possession.

As evidence of the latter, look at the dithering that came from the Vatican last week after Pope Francis did an impromptu exorcism on a guy in St. Peter's Square.  A television station showed a video clip that had captured the incident, and the announcer stated that it was "certainly an exorcism" given that the man had opened his mouth wide, convulsed, and then slumped to one side when the pope put his hands on his head.  Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi responded with some apparent unease that of course the pope hadn't performed an exorcism; "rather," Lombardi said, "as he frequently does with the sick or suffering who come his way, he simply intended to pray for a suffering person."

Not everyone shared Lombardi's trepidation on the topic.  After the incident in St. Peter's Square, and the media flurry that followed, Father Gabriele Amorth of Rome stated that despite Lombari's claim, the pope had clearly performed an exorcism.  How does Amorth know?  Because he is the head of the International Association of Exorcists, and over his career has expelled 160,000 demons.

That, my friend, is a crapload of demons.

Amorth himself is completely convinced that it works, and went on record in 2010 as saying that "bishops who don't appoint exorcists are committing a mortal sin."

So it's clear that there's some disagreement here, which only got weirder yesterday when the man Pope Francis either did or did not exorcise told the press that it hadn't worked, he was still possessed.  "I still have the demons inside me, they have not gone away," the man, who was identified as a father of two from Michoacán, Mexico named Angel V.  Angel V. has been possessed, he says, since 1999, and has had thirty unsuccessful exorcisms, including one...

... by the head of the International Association of Exorcists, Father Gabriele Amorth.

I couldn't make all this up if I wanted to.  The Mexican priest who accompanied Angel V. to Rome said, in all apparent seriousness, "the demons that live in him do not want to leave."

Or, maybe, it could be that Angel V. has a mental illness that could be treated by modern medicine.  There's always that.

In any case, that's our odd story of the day.  I still have to say that I wonder why the demons aren't after me.  I've been a non-believer for close on twenty years, and I've had nary a single demon come up and shake my hand in congratulations.  (It must be said that I never saw one before that, either, not even during my church-going days.)  So my general conclusion, given the complete lack of evidence, is that demons don't exist.

But I'm sure that Father Amorth would disagree.  "The principle responsibility of the exorcist is to free man from the fear of the devil," he told reporters.  Well, I guess that's a second reason I don't need him.  I'm not afraid of the devil at all.  There's no reason to be afraid of something that doesn't actually exist.

Canine chakra cleansing

After having dealt, in the last few days, with problems with the oversight of public education, the ongoing effort to force the teaching of Intelligent Design in biology classrooms, and the attitudes of the religious toward atheists, it's time to turn to a much more pressing issue, to wit: Do dogs have chakras?

Chakras, you may know, are "energy flow centers" in your body, and are connected with the "meridians" that are the basis of a lot of alt-med modalities, including acupuncture, reflexology, and tapping.  The idea, apparently, is that human diseases are caused by having clogged chakras.

The Skeptic's Dictionary says about chakras, "According to kundalini yoga, a chakra (pronounced chuckrah and meaning wheel or circle in Sanskrit) is a center of prana or energy. It is said that there are several of these that begin at the base of the spine and end at the top of the head... The alleged energy of the chakras is not scientifically measurable, though some have tried to connect the chakras with physical organs such as the pineal gland and the thymus."  The wonderful site Skeptics South Australia is blunter still: "The fact that, even amongst so-called ‘chakra experts’ there are so many different opinions as to their numbers, and locations, strongly suggests that chakras exist only in the imagination of believers, that they are nothing more than a metaphysical belief that has no substance in reality."

Now, of course, we should never let a little matter like whether something actually exists stop us from blathering on about how it might manifest in other species.  Which brings us to an inadvertently hilarious article on the site The Blissful Dog called, "Dogs Have Chakras, Too!"

The chakras can have various levels of activity. When they’re open, balanced or aligned the Chakras are considered working as they should. Ideally, all chakras would be balanced. Instincts would work with our feelings and thinking. However, this is usually not the case. Some chakras are not open enough (being under-active), and to compensate, other chakras are over-active. The ideal state is where the chakras are completely balanced. This is as true for your dogs as it is for you! Especially since they pick up and take on so many of our emotions.

Mostly what my dogs seem to pick up is dropped food, but maybe that's just because their TableScraps Chakra is over-active.

Then we hear about how despite Skeptics South Australia's pointing out that hardly anyone agrees about where these mysterious (i.e. nonexistent) forces reside, everyone really agrees, especially with regards to dogs:

Most agree that there are seven major Chakras and for simplicity’s sake, we will work with that system for now for our dogs. I do feel that additional Chakras are located in their paws, tails (or tail area) and in their noses, in my humble opinion and will share information as I gather it.

 
One specific example will suffice, but I strongly recommend that you go to the website and read them all.  I will not be responsible for damage to your computer screen if you are drinking anything while you do so:

Third Eye Chakra – Color: Indigo Stone/Crystal: Sapphire, tourmaline, sapphire, sodalite, azurite and clear quartz. The Third Eye chakra is about insight and visualisation. When it is open and balanced, your dog will be intuitive and well balanced between the world of people and that of dogs. If it is under-active, your dog will not be not very good at thinking for herself, and you [sic] may tend to rely on you too much and might even get confused easily.

This clearly sounds like the problem with my dog Grendel, who is very well-meaning but who seems to have about three active synapses in his brain, two of which are devoted to the concept of "Let's play tug-of-war with this rope toy."  He is a very sweet dog, but his facial expression can best be summed up by the word, "Derp?"  I guess I'd better balance his Third Eye using sapphire, or something.

So, the important question is: what do you do for your dog if his chakras are unbalanced?  Turns out it's simple:

Your dog may fit some of the patterns discussed above and you want your beloved one to be BALANCED! There are a few things you can do quite easily… You can also spend more time alone, in a quiet space with your dog. Pet them, even a brief massage and just concentrate on THEM for 10-15 minutes a day. This can be pretty miraculous in itself…the intention is the focus, isn’t it?

Well, I'm sure that both my dogs would be completely in favor of that.  Petting could happen for 24 hours a day, and they would both still be of the opinion that it was Insufficient To Meet Their Needs.

But this all raises a more important question: if dogs have chakras (The Blissful Dog says, "... why not?  They are energetic beings!"), do other animals?  Does a cockroach have chakras?  How about a tapeworm?  Or a jellyfish?  Doing acupuncture on a jellyfish sounds downright messy.  What about possums?  I'll be damned if I'll give a possum a massage.  Those things creep me right the hell out.  They're just going to have to continue to waddle around the back yard with misaligned meridians.

So, anyhow, the bottom line is: spend more time petting your dog.  This is actually good advice, even if you take the whole chakra thing out of it.  I know when I have a hard day, it always makes me feel better to sit on the floor and snuggle with Grendel for a while.  And it always warms my heart when, after I've spent some time scratching his ears, he looks up at me with a searching expression in his big brown eyes, as if to say, "Hey, rope-toy?  Whatcha think, huh?  Derp?"

How not to evaluate educators

In his talk "The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" (which you can, and should, watch in its entirety here), Daniel Pink describes how the micromanagement and punishment-and-reward system built into the American workplace model simply don't work.  Pink, who worked as an aide to Labor Secretary Robert Reich and who was listed as one of the fifty most influential management thinkers in the world, describes several studies that have findings that are astonishing -- including one that found that in tasks that require engagement and creativity, reward-and-punishment strategies lead to poorer performance.

But what interests me most comes in the middle of the talk, where he describes an Australian software company, Atlassian, that instituted a policy that runs completely counter to the usual business model.  Once a month, every employee at Atlassian is given an entire day to do whatever they'd like to -- in Pink's words, "you can work on whatever you want, with whoever you want, but you have to show us the result in 24 hours."

"In that one day of pure, undiluted autonomy," Pink states, "this has led to a whole array of fixes for existing software, and a whole array of ideas for new products that otherwise would never have emerged."

Autonomy, then -- up to a point, certainly, but far beyond what most businesses are willing to try -- increases productivity, engagement, motivation, and morale.  We do our best, most creative work without someone breathing down our necks.

Which brings me to the latest from the New York State Department of Education.

Some of you may remember from previous posts that the most recent brainstorm from NYSED is that this year the teachers are getting numerical grades.  Yes, folks, in a month or so, I'm going to be getting a report card!

Only fair, you might say, given that I do the same to my students.  And honestly, I have no problem with accountability; I welcome being observed and evaluated.  There is nothing to be gained by a policy that allows inadequate teachers to continue indefinitely in the same job.

The problem is the way the grade is calculated.  Part of it is based on observations by an administrator; but 40% comes from how well students meet "SLOs" -- "Student Learning Objectives" -- based on their performance on standardized tests.  To determine whether the students met their SLOs, an exit exam is administered, and used to see if the student met or exceeded a "target" score based on scores on a pre-assessment.

Let me give you an example from my own class that will illustrate why this is a statistically spurious method.

I teach, amongst other things, AP Biology.  It's a notoriously tough subject, full of technical terms and difficult concepts.  For this class, the "pre-assessment" used is the average of the students' scores on the Regents (Introductory) Biology and Regents Chemistry exams.  Now, the problem is, these are both dramatically easier classes and exams; most of the students who made it to AP Biology scored in the 90s on the Regents Biology exam and at least in the 80s on the Regents Chemistry exam.  So the students walk in with, most of them, a "pre-assessment" score of around 90.

Then, at the end of the year, they hit my cumulative, college-level final.

I can say that almost without exception, everyone scores lower on that exam than they did on their "pre-assessment."  In fact, this year, 12 out of 23 students who took my final did not meet their "state target scores" -- in other words, in New York State's eyes, the students, and I, have failed.  From the point of view of the people at NYSED, it looks like the year my students spent in my class actively made them stupider.

But it gets better.  Because just yesterday, we received a communiqué from Ken Slentz, the Deputy Commissioner of Education in New York State.  The message stated that students who are not eligible to take the science Regents exams because they did not turn in enough labs during the school year -- New York has a requirement that high-school-level science students do a minimum of thirty hours of labs to get credit -- are counted as zeroes against the teacher's score.

You read that right.  A student who was out for medical reasons, and who is on home tutoring and cannot do labs -- which three of my students were, this year, for months at a time -- not only is penalized by not being allowed to take the final exam, but that zero is counted as a failure of the teacher's.  Students who simply disengage, and decide that they have no particular interest in turning in anything, are also counted against the teacher's evaluation score.  "It is the responsibility of the teacher to ensure that all students meet lab requirements so that they are able to sit for the Regents exam," Slentz wrote in an email that was sent to every high school science teacher in New York.  "The Department recommends that districts... create processes that ensure students have opportunities to make up lab requirements."

As a student put it, when I discussed this policy in my Critical Thinking classes, "Wow.  First, teachers have an incentive to give easy final exams.  Now they have an incentive to lie about whether we turned in our lab reports."

In the case of the teachers in my school, I have to say that virtually all of them have responded with indignation.  "I'll be damned if I'll compromise the integrity of my course for some bullshit rule," one said.  "If the state wants to grade me down because of things that are outside of my control, they can knock themselves out."

But what it has done is to destroy morale.  More and more teachers I know are actively looking for other jobs.  One, a friend of long standing who has young children in the school, is looking into finding a way to take her own children out of the public school she teaches in -- a stinging vote of no confidence in the direction public education is going.

My fear, though, is that this trend of turning everything -- students and teachers alike -- into numbers is only beginning.  Micromanaging b-b stackers like Deputy Commissioner Slentz, who evidently don't have the vaguest idea of the reality of classroom teaching, will accomplish nothing by these new mandates but driving those of us who actually care about educating children into other jobs.

As for me: I'm not too far from retirement, and would be eligible for a buy-out (should one be offered) in three years.  I can stick it out that long.  How much longer I'll be able to keep my morale up is another matter.  But after all, given the mediocre grade I'm likely to get on my Report Card this year, it's probably better that I start thinking about getting a job where my evaluation is actually based on my level of performance.

Choosing an intelligent designer

Here we go again.

Last week, the Springboro (Ohio) City Community School District announced that they are considering a policy that would "encourage students to 'think critically' about 'controversial' issues like evolution, abortion, climate change, UN Agenda 21 and sustainable development. The policy directs teachers to fully explore 'all sides' of these issues."

To take the two pieces of the proposed policy that I actually know enough to comment on, there is no controversy in scientific circles about evolution and climate change -- a point I have made often enough that I don't see the need to defend it further here.

What makes this situation interesting was something that appeared on Reddit yesterday -- a back-and-forth email exchange between an Ohio resident who is outraged by the policy, and Kelly Kohls, president of the Springboro School Board.  I quote the posted emails below:

Ms Kohls et al,

As someone who grew up in Cincinnati during the 70s and 80s, I well remember the attempts to bring religious teachings into the classroom. As it has been ruled clearly unconstitutional many times, you are merely wasting time and resources better spent on actually helping children of your school district. Please keep religion at home or in your houses of worship. It has no place in a science classroom. There is no scientific controversy with respect to Evolution except within the ranks of the fundamentalists.
In case you or your board are unsure about the legal precedents, please see:
Epperson v. Arkansas (1968)
Segraves v State of California (1981)
McLean v Arkansas BOE (1982)
Edwards v. Aguillard (1897)
Webster v New Lenox (1990)
Peloza v Capistrano (1994)
Freiler v Tangipahoa Paris BOE (1997) - this one SPECIFICALLY mentions "critical thinking" by the way, and calls it what it is, a ruse.
Kitzmiller v. Dover (2005)
There are more but I think you get my point.
Please, please, please...focus on facts. You are educators. You should act like it.
Thank you for your time,

Stuart Thomas

Ms. Kohls responded as follows.  I would run out of "sics" so you'll just have to keep in mind that this is verbatim:

Please read the rulings, they are not saying unconstitutional or illegal. Please also go to the Discovery Institute and view the science the blows gigantic wholes in Evolution. I also went to school in the 70's and 80 and and do not agree with you.

Please focus on the facts and read the rulings for yourself.

Kelly Kohls

The original poster, in apparent bafflement at getting a response from a school board president that barely qualified as English, wrote back the following:

Ms Kohls,

I'm, first of all, surprised that you would actually cite The Discovery Institute, which is clearly a heavily biased lobbying group and advances only one view, the completely unscientific concept of creationism.

Second, you ask me to "read the rulings", which I have. I would not have cited the cases if I hadn't. Granted, in some cases, it may have been a lower court ruling which may not be citable in a higher court but, and I know you know this, the Circuit Court or the Supreme Court cases clearly define constitutionality. In no case did creationists prevail. This should be of particular interest and goes back to my earlier point that this attempt to inject religion into a secular environment is futile at best, and ultimately harmful to the students in your district.

Let me address your points one by one, and, while I grant that not every case was lifted to the Supreme Court, creationism was never upheld and religious rights were never violated by the teaching of evolution:

"they are not saying unconstitutional or illegal"
I'll just start at the first three...
Epperson v. Arkansas - The U.S Supreme Court found that, ultimately, it was unconstitutional. The Arkansas Supreme Court ruling was overturned by the US Supreme Court. "The vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools." Please note the use of the word "constitutional".
Segraves v State of California - Summarized as "learning about evolution in public schools does not infringe upon the free exercise of religion." Your First Amendment rights are not violated. Note that if you teach the Christian version, you then automatically violate the rights of people of other religions.
McLean v Arkansas - "the Act was passed with the specific purpose by the General Assembly of advancing religion," which violates the First Amendment.

"I also went to school in the 70's and 80 and and do not agree with you"
Whether or not you agree with me is not the issue here. The issue is Constitutionality. On this point, you are already at a disadvantage. I am unclear why you think you can overturn decades of previous rulings.
Would you like me to continue or do you understand that your "facts" are not, in any way, facts.

"blows gigantic wholes in Evolution"
Honestly, I'm appalled that in your reply, you, as an educator, did not even know the difference between "whole" and "hole". Now, I know this is not a specific refutation of your argument and normally I would have overlooked it, but you are on the Board of Education. By now, I would have hoped that the simple act of proof-reading would have been second nature.

This is a battle which you will not win. Again, you are welcome to your beliefs, but keep them out of the classroom unless you are willing to allow scientists into your church to "teach the controversy".

Regards,

Stuart Thomas

At this point Ms. Kohls had evidently had enough of Mr. Thomas and his damn logical, rational thinking, because she sent back a one liner:

Thanks for your opinion and I respectfully disagree.

 I, too, thought it was interesting that she would immediately blow her cover and mention the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based "think tank" (although I use that phrase with some reluctance) that has championed forcing Christian intelligent design and climate change denialism into public school curricula.  They are adamant especially about the former, and more than one of the posts on the Institute website tears into the idea of abiogenesis, stating that the origins of life required a "skilled technical chemist" -- i.e., a deity who got life going.

Fine.  God started life, did he?  I'll be sure to teach that next year in my biology classes.  The problem is, which Scientific Theory of God do you want me to use?  Intelligent designers abound in the mythology of humanity.  We have more than a few to choose from:

The first humans were generated by the Sky (Marduk) having sex with the Earth (Tiamat).  [Babylonian]

The Earth is made of the dead body of a frost giant, and the first humans were carved out of logs.  [Norse]

Dry land was formed by a deity (Izanagi) stirring the Celestial Sea with his spear.  The first humans were the children of Izanagi by his wife (Izanami), but she had also previously given birth to a leech, a floating island, and a child who was on fire, which musta hurt like hell.  [Japanese]

The first people were made out of rocks and minerals by a god called "Black Hactcin."  [Jicarilla Apache]

The first life was created out of pond muck by a guy named Obatala.  Some of the weirder-looking creatures in the world were made while Obatala was drunk, which I would expect accounts for the duck-billed platypus.  [Yoruba]

So, anyhow.  I'd guess that Mr. Thomas is right, and that this latest assault on science is doomed to fail, but for cryin' in the sink, it does get tiresome fighting the same battles over and over again.  In any case, keep your eye on Ohio.  As for me, I'm off to go prepare my lesson on how the different races of humans came about because a god named "Kche Mnedo" didn't bake some of them long enough, and the half-baked ones came out as white people.

The coolness of Pope Francis

The Roman Catholic world is buzzing because of an announcement made at morning mass last Wednesday by Pope Francis.

"The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone,” the pope said.  "'Father, the atheists?' Even the atheists. Everyone!  We must meet one another doing good. 'But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!'  But do good: we will meet one another there."  [Source]

This isn't the first time that the new pope -- just installed as the church's leader -- has weighed in on us nonbelievers.  Shortly after his election, he told a crowd,

[W]e also sense our closeness to all those men and women who, although not identifying themselves as followers of any religious tradition, are nonetheless searching for truth, goodness and beauty, the truth, goodness and beauty of God.  They are our valued allies in the commitment to defending human dignity, in building a peaceful coexistence between peoples and in safeguarding and caring for creation.

As an atheist, I think that all of this is nice to hear, and I have to say that Pope Francis seems like a pretty cool guy.  And this kind of statement is a refreshing change from what we secularists usually hear.  After all, being told over and over that you're going to burn in horrible agony for all eternity is a little off-putting, even if you don't technically believe that hell exists.  Especially given how happy the folks who say those things seem to be about it.  You can take schadenfreude too far, in my opinion.

But of course, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the Catholic world questioned Francis' statement.  The powers-that-be need to remind the world that they're still an exclusive club, however welcoming the pope was trying to be.  Reverend Thomas Rosica, a Vatican spokesperson, clarified Pope Francis' statement by saying that "every man or woman, whatever their situation, can be saved.  Even non-Christians can respond to this saving action of the Spirit.  No person is excluded from salvation simply because of so-called original sin."  On the other hand, Rosica said that people who are aware of the Catholic church "cannot be saved" if they "refuse to enter her or remain in her."

So, anyhow, I'm of two minds about all of this.  On the one hand, I think that being treated with more respect by the religious is pretty awesome, and I'm impressed with the fact that Pope Francis has reached out his hand to us atheists.  In no way do I want to be seen as scorning what was, honestly, an unprecedented and kind gesture.

But on the other hand, the implication is still, "... even though you're wrong about the most important question in the universe."  Now, to be fair, we all kind of start out from that stance -- that we have the answers, and anyone who disagrees is very likely to be mistaken.  Obviously, I wouldn't consider myself an atheist if I thought the pope et al. were right.  But isn't his approach kind of curious, when you think about it?  The pope seems to be saying, "Hey, atheists, we recognize that you can be nice people and do good stuff.  So why don't you just accept that god exists and start coming to church?"  You have to wonder why he thinks that's an appealing offer, given that by definition, we atheists see no particular reason to tie up our Sunday mornings worshiping a god that we are pretty sure isn't there, and asking for forgiveness for a bunch of things that mostly are just basic human nature.

In any case, it's all a step in the right direction.  I'm all for dialogue, mutual understanding, and treating each other nicely.  We don't all have to agree, after all, but it's just so much nicer if we just get along and tolerate one another.  It'd be wonderful if some of the other religions on Earth would follow Pope Francis' lead, and move toward acceptance of people of other beliefs -- or no belief at all.

Yeah, I'm looking at you, Muslims.

Wand waving and hand waving

Consider four general truths about your average human.

First, people are attracted to novelty.  Look at how often "New and Improved!" shows up on product labels -- although I've always wondered how something can be "new" and "improved" simultaneously.

Second, the idea of curing chronic pain is a pretty attractive proposition to a lot of us.  Many people deal with pain sufficient to change our lifestyles, and in some cases bad enough to trigger thoughts of suicide.  All of us know someone whose life has been plagued with chronic pain.  Because of this, tremendous amount of (legitimate) medical research goes into developing therapies to manage, treat, or mitigate pain.

Third, we have the sad fact that most folks don't have much background in real science, so anything with science-y words is going to sound impressive, even if on analysis those words don't turn out to mean much.

And fourth, it's pretty obvious that money is a powerful motivator.

Add these four things together, and you have the makings of a scam of mammoth proportions.

Meet the Amega Amwand -- a device that uses "minerals and crystals" that have been treated with an "amized fusion process" (the details of which are, of course, a proprietary secret) to treat pain.  The minerals and crystals are encased in a steel sleeve the size of a ballpoint pen.  To treat the pain, all you basically do is to wave the wand around over the painful area, and the pain miraculously goes away.

How can this possibly work, you may be asking?  They say that the wand accesses "zero-point energy" and then uses that to stimulate your body's "bioelectric fields" and it promotes healing.  Of course, we also have the disclaimer that the wand "is not intended to treat, prevent, cure, or diagnose any medical condition," which makes me wonder what exactly "Improves body’s ability to self-regulate – more harmonized bodily functions like never before!" means.

Oh, and a video interview with a guy who sells the things says it'll also make your wine taste better.  Your food, too.  Why?  Because it "oxidizes" it.  Now, in case you're curious, burning something is also oxidation.  And my general experience with burnt food is that it doesn't, in fact, make it taste better.  But maybe that's just me.  (You should definitely watch this video, which ends with an interview with a physicist that debunks the whole claim.)

I haven't told you yet how much these things cost.  The website I linked above has wands priced at $370 each -- $704 for one that has "activated rubies" in it.

Add this to the fact that the Amega brand is a multi-level marketing (pyramid) scheme -- and this explains why Sam Adams, who is identified in the video as being one of the top "generations" of the company, is allegedly making $3,600 a day from this stuff.

So, here's the central point: could this thing actually work?

The simple answer is: no.  There's no way that a magic wand filled with minerals can have any effect on your body.  It's not "shooting out energy" (as the site claims); it's not "inducing homeostasis" any more than your body's systems already were; and it's not stimulating anything in you except the placebo effect.  The whole hand-waving "explanation" given on their website basically amounts to throwing out some technical-sounding jargon and making extravagant promises, including the inadvertently humorous statement that "this Zero Point Energy Field, gives a ginormous amount of Life Giving Energy to the body and reminds it’s [sic] cells where they came from."

Oh, and by the way: the idea of "accessing the zero-point energy" is bullshit.  Zero-point energy is a real thing, defined as the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical system could have.  If you could "extract energy" from it, then it wouldn't be the lowest possible energy, you know?  To quote the Wikipedia article directly:

As a scientific concept, the existence of zero-point energy is not controversial although the ability to harness it is.  Over the years, there have been claims of devices capable of extracting usable zero-point energy.

In quantum theory, zero-point energy is a minimum energy below which a thermodynamic system can never go.  Thus, none of this energy can be withdrawn without altering the system to a different form in which the system has a lower zero-point energy.

Current claims to zero-point-energy-based power generation systems are in contradiction with known physics laws and have the status of pseudoscience.

So there you go, then.

I live in perpetual amazement that people fall for something like this, especially given how pricey these things are.  I mean, if I were in chronic pain, I might risk twenty bucks on something that was a little sketchy -- but $370?  $704 for the special, ruby-enhanced version?  I suppose pain could motivate people to try something out of desperation -- which makes what these hucksters are doing even more reprehensible.  Because getting rich by selling a steel sleeve full of snake oil is also, for the unethical, a strong motivator.

After all, it's no new thing that a fool and his money are soon parted -- nor that there's a sucker born every minute.