SATs, STDs, and school prayer

Yesterday, we saw one example of mistaking correlation for causation -- that being a skeptic (or materialist, or rationalist) is why two prominent skeptics had apparent serious moral lapses.  Today, we'll look at a second -- a group that is claiming that the elimination of school prayer is why student SAT scores have dropped in the United States.

The American Family Association of Kentucky currently has a petition out asking people to vote on whether or not prayer should be allowed in public schools.  First, we have the following photograph, to put us all in the right frame of mind:

And then, there's the meat of the argument, if I can dignify it with that term:

Prayer was in our schools for over 200 years before the anti-God forces took it out in 1962. After prayer was removed from our schools, teen pregnancy went up 500%, STD’s went up 226%, violent crime went up 500% and SAT scores went down for 18 years in a row, opening the door for the AIDS epidemic and the drug culture.

WE NEED PRAYER BACK IN SCHOOLS!

We need to do this, the author of the petition (Frank Simon) says, in order to "return God's protection to America."

Wow.  Where do I start?

First off, if someone is claiming that two things are not only correlated, but exist in a causative relationship, the first thing to do is to determine if there really is even a correlation.  So I looked up the Commonwealth Foundation's breakdown of SAT results state by state.  If god really does care about SAT scores, to the point where he awards the best scores not to the kids that are the smartest or the hardest working but to the kids who pray the most, there should be a correlation between the most religious states and the highest scores, right?  Interestingly, in three states that are pretty solidly Christian -- Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana -- only 4%, 8%, and 9% of qualified high school students even took the SATs last year, although admittedly the average scores of the students who did take it land those states solidly in the middle of the pack.  And I guess even god can't give you good scores on an exam you didn't take.

So what about teen pregnancy?  Once again, if you think the spread of atheism has caused this supposed 500% increase in teen pregnancy, you should see the godly states having lower rates than the ungodly ones, right?  So I looked at the National Campaign to End Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy's page on state data, and guess where Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi fell?  14th, 8th, and 2nd worst (i.e. highest teen pregnancy rates) overall.  Other states in the top ten were Tennessee, Georgia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas, also so-called "Bible-Belt" states.

Hmm.  I guess that when it comes to preventing teen pregnancy, sex education and availability of birth control work better than praying.  Whoda thought?

And because I'm nothing if not thorough, I decided to check STD rates state-by-state, so I went to the Center for Disease Control's Data Atlas, and guess where the most new cases of STDs in 2012 were?  Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.  In that order.

Well, well.

I think what bothers me most about this, though, is the way these people are framing this as a religious freedom issue -- the subtitle on the petition page says, "Restore Student Religious Liberty."  One of my first mentors, when I started teaching, was a wonderful science teacher who was also a devout Christian.  I was discussing religion with him one day, and he said something that was very interesting.  "I never bring up religion in class," he said.  "My own beliefs are irrelevant in the classroom.  But more than that; teachers need to keep in mind that they are talking to captive audiences made up of kids of diverse backgrounds and beliefs.  Because of that, you have to be extremely careful when discussing anything that has bearing on political or religious issues.  The best teachers challenge all of their students, not just the ones they disagree with."

So, the bottom line is, students are free to pray in their churches.  They are also free to pray, silently, during class, or any other time during the day.  (I suspect a lot of prayer goes on prior to my administering exams.)  On the other hand, it is not ethical for teachers or administrators to lead prayers in public schools.  At that point, it is no longer an issue of religious liberty, it is an issue of forced proselytization.  And that, actually, is the opposite of liberty.

Retrying the Lord

New from the Well, If It Makes You Happy department, we have a story about a lawyer in Kenya who is trying to have Jesus' conviction overturned.  [Source]

Dola Indidis, a former spokesperson for the Kenyan judiciary, is petitioning the International Court of Justice at The Hague to give Jesus a posthumous pardon.  "The selective and malicious prosecution (of Jesus) violated his human rights," Indidis said, adding that Pontius Pilate was guilty of "judicial misconduct, abuse of office, bias and prejudice."

This isn't the first time Indidis has attempted this.  In 2007, he brought his case to the Kenyan High Court, but they threw it out, claiming that they "lacked jurisdiction."

Now, I'm no expert in international law, but it does strike me as a bit of a legal quagmire, given that (1) all of the people involved in the trial have been dead for almost 2,000 years, (2) the only documents referring to the case are in the New Testament, which even true believers can't claim to be an unbiased source, and (3) the governmental body by which Jesus was tried doesn't, technically, exist any more.  The Roman Empire itself more or less ceased to be 1,500 odd years ago, so it's not like there'll be any possible response from them.

My gut reaction has always been that posthumous pardons are a little... pointless.  It's not that they're uncommon; the convictions of the Salem "witches" were overturned one by one, the last ones in 1992 (and honestly, it surprises me that it took that long).  Joan of Arc was retried in 1456, only 25 years after her execution, and found innocent of heresy -- the first step that would lead to her eventual canonization in 1920.  Even poor Alan Turing, convicted of homosexual acts in the United Kingdom in 1952 and "chemically castrated" with female hormones (a treatment that many believe contributed to his severe depression and ultimate suicide in 1954), stands a good chance of receiving an official pardon this year.  And while I certainly think that the motivation for these pardons is good, and I can understand the desire of family members to clear their relatives' unfairly besmirched names, it doesn't do the victims much good in the here-and-now.

Might make better sense to work on improving the justice system we currently have, to make sure such injustices don't continue to happen, don't you think?

Be that as it may, Dola Indidis' quixotic quest to secure a retrial for The Son of God opens up the far thornier problem of whether the religious folks in the world want Jesus to be pardoned.  As far as I understand it, the whole point of the New Testament is that Jesus died for our sins, and God The Father sent him down here specifically so he would die.  Right?  So wouldn't pardoning him kind of be... counterproductive, salvation-of-humanity-wise?

Now, I have to admit that I have never understood this whole point, and even though I'm an atheist I've read a good bit of what various Christian apologists have to say about it.  It seems to boil down to god sending himself to be tortured and executed for crimes he didn't commit in order for him to forgive us for sins we did commit, which makes no sense whatsoever.  After all, if god wanted to forgive us, why didn't he just go ahead and do it without all of the unpleasant flogging and crown of thorns and crucifixion business?  I don't really see what was gained by the whole episode other than generating hundreds of thousands of pieces of really grotesque statuary, suitable for scaring Christian children lo unto this very day.

Indidis, himself a Roman Catholic, doesn't seem to see any problem with this, but the whole thing has clearly shaken up the powers-that-be in Kenya.  Father Maloba Wesonga, spokesperson for the diocese of Nairobi, seemed to be uncertain how to respond, when he heard about Indidis' idea.  "As we know it, the trial had to happen," Wesonga said to reporters.  "We must understand that Jesus was not vulnerable and nobody can do justice to God."

Which puts him in the odd position, as a Catholic priest, of saying he is in favor of sustaining Jesus' conviction and execution.

You have to wonder how the Catholics are going to reconcile that stance.

I'm guessing that the International Court of Justice will probably refuse to hear Indidis' case, given that they have plenty of better things to do with their time.  So this whole issue will probably fizzle, which honestly is kind of a shame.  I'd love to see how they'd decide the case, because any way it came out, it'd be hard to predict how the Christians would spin it.  As far as Indidis goes, he really should find a new hobby, like putting his mind to seeing that justice is done for people who are still alive.  He could start with his own country, which hasn't exactly had a sterling track record, especially in its turning a blind eye to child prostitution.  Seems to me that this would be a better use of time, energy, and money than trying to determine whether a guy who lived and died almost two millennia ago should receive an official pardon.

Hark, hark, the shark

I guess it was bound to happen.

It started decades ago, with Jaws.  Then you had the hyped-up "documentaries" of the 80s and 90s featuring lines like, "Let's put the bikini-clad Baywatch wannabee in the giant metal cage, lower it into the water, and throw around bleeding fish parts, and see what happens."  But things ramped up considerably when the Discovery channel started "Shark Week."  Then we had the following, which made a lot of us science types shake our heads and say, "Um... really?":

Oh, if only it were "enough said."  Because you know it's not.  It is never enough said, once the ball gets rolling, especially if the ball has teeth and fins.  Because just a few days ago we had a new "documentary" on Discovery, one that upped the ante even further, by claiming that one of the largest seagoing predators that has ever lived... is still alive.

 Called Carcharodon megalodon, or just "Megalodon" for short, this thing was, to put it bluntly, freakin' huge.  Fossils have been found that indicate that the biggest ones could reach 18 meters in length (for reference, the largest great white sharks get to be about 6 meters long).  So, this was one scary-ass beast, the likes of which would make me hesitant to set foot in the ocean again.

If it still existed.  Which it doesn't.  Scientists are in agreement that Megalodon went extinct about 1.5 million years ago.  But of course, given the foolishness that has appeared on Discovery (remember Finding Bigfoot?  and The Haunted?  and, most germane to our discussion here, Mermaids: The Body Found?), I shouldn't really be surprised.

Oh, but there's a poll!  Because scientific truth is determined by public consensus, evidently.  You can vote that "YES! The evidence for Megalodon can't be ignored! The monster shark lives!" or "Maybe.  95% of our oceans remain unexplored, so it's possible that Megalodon is still out there."  Or (and I imagine this choice accompanied by a sad shake of the head), "No.  The scientists are right."  So, anyway, I voted (guess which way?), mostly so I could see what the results were, and was unsurprised that 32% of the respondents voted "yes," and 48% "maybe," leaving the poor scientists in the dust with a paltry 20% of the vote.

Of course, given that a common attitude is that public school biology curricula should eliminate the teaching of evolution "because lots of people don't believe in it," I shouldn't be surprised that (1) the public is easy to hoodwink into believing nonsense, and (2) there's a sense that science is a democracy.

Now, don't misunderstand me.  I love the ocean, and I think sharks are really cool.  And there's no doubt that charismatic megafauna are big sellers, explaining why you see lots of calendars and framed prints and greeting cards and tattoos with images of wolves, lions, and jaguars, and far fewer with wombats, possums, and naked mole rats.  I get why there's never been a film called Rabbitnado, although I have to admit I would watch it, especially if the bunnies turned out to be like the Beast of Caer Bannog:

But that's just me.  And since these media outlets exist to make money, not to promote good science, it's no wonder they jump on the bandwagon.

Sharon Hill, in her wonderful blog Doubtful News, did a piece on Megalodon recently, and expressed hope that "Shark Week" and other dubious attempts at nature documentary would raise awareness of shark conservation.  Me, I'm less sanguine.  When the movie Jaws came out in 1975, there followed a senseless slaughter of sharks of all sorts, including the completely harmless gray nurse shark.  Just as people don't get that science is done based on evidence, not on voting in a poll, they also don't tend to respond rationally when an irresponsible media outlet has ramped up the fear.

Anyhow, that's today's exercise in futility.  Given that Megalodon got "record ratings," I'm doubtful that anything I say is going to have an effect.  Maybe I should make my own documentary, you think?  You can't beat 'em, join 'em.  How about Hopping Mad: Is Australia's Carnivorous Kangaroo Still Alive in the Outback?  Start with some photographs of fossil skeletons:

Follow up with some scary drawings:

Hire a scientist or two to weigh in on how we can never be sure that an animal is extinct, because the Coelacanth, you know, and so on.  Then have a poll.   Sure fire winner, right?

Of course, right.

Seeing stars

I am endlessly amused (or endlessly frustrated, depending on my mood) by the way the same piece of information can be interpreted by different woo-woos to support each of their varying, and in many cases mutually contradictory, views of the world.  All of them take the same bit of data, and put their own spin on it, so that it becomes some kind of purportedly incontrovertible support for whatever they already believed in.

In short order, you have a multilayered rainbow-colored cake of craziness, with nuts.

Take, for example, the curious photograph that is currently zinging its way around the Internet, an image from Google Maps taken by satellite of a spot near Lisakovsk, Kazakhstan:

The thing is real, not a photoshopped image; type the coordinates 52°28’46.86″N 62°11’7.68″E into Google Earth to see it for yourself.  But of course, once you know it's real, what is it?

You can bet that the fundamentalist Christians have an answer to that.

The upside-down pentagram is well known as a sign of Satan, and this cadre has accompanied the photograph with a dire-sounding message that the Time Of The Antichrist Is At Hand.  This version of the story is also accompanied by a claim that the pentagram appeared near a pair of towns called "Adam" and "Lucifer," a statement that is supposed to be significant somehow but for which I could find no corroboration.  And frankly, that part sounds a little spurious to me.  Most of the towns in Kazakhstan that I could find on a map have names like "Zhezkagan" and "Stepnogorsk."  "Adam" and "Lucifer" sound a little... anglo to me to be place names in that part of the world.

And, after all, New York has an Adams County and a Lucifer Falls, and I haven't seen any giant pentagrams appearing around here, so there's that.

Another thing, though, is that whether this looks like an upside-down pentagram depends on the angle from which you view it.  Turn the photograph around, or (in fact) rotate it by 36° in either direction,  and all of a sudden it becomes a right-side-up pentagram.  So just color me unconvinced that this is a sign of the End Times.

But of course, the evangelical Christians aren't the only ones who have weighed in on the curious photograph.  You also have the ones who think it's a sign from Mother Earth that we are "abusing nature" and that we need to be more considerate of our environment.  This version of the story has a piece about the pentagram being one of the "signs that we cannot continue to harm our planet without the planet letting us know about it."

These are presumably the same people who think that crop circles are a way for the Spirit of Nature to inform us to give up coal mining and take up organic farming and wear clothes woven from hemp.  And these folks think the upside-down pentagram isn't an evil symbol at all, but a positive, vital neopagan symbol that has suddenly appeared to bring us all to some kind of environmental enlightenment.

Then, you have the people who think that the pentagram is "an unfinished summer camp for the children of the Illuminati."  Because the Illuminati are just that sneaky and secretive, that they would create a structure that you couldn't ever find out about unless you happened to check out Google Maps.  According to this guy, "Kazakistan" (which is how he pronounces it throughout the entire video) is part of the "bloodline of the Illuminati."  Whatever that means.  But that's where the whole world is being controlled from, so... so... just don't let your guard down for a minute.

You know how that goes.

The speculation doesn't end there, however.  There's another group who weighed in on the topic, and they don't think the star is a symbol of Satan, the Illuminati, or Gaea, but a communiqué from... you'll never guess who.

Righty-o.  Because intelligent extraterrestrials who have expended a great amount of effort, time, and energy to get to Earth from a planet light years away would have nothing better to do than to draw a giant star on the ground and then leave.

Of course, the actual explanation turned out to be much simpler.  No Antichrist, Nature Spirits, New World Order, or extraterrestrials needed.

"It is the outline of a park made in the form of a star," archaeologist Emma Usmanova said in an interview with LiveScience about the geographical oddity.  "The star was a popular symbol during the Soviet era.  Stars were often used throughout the Soviet Union to decorate building facades, flags and monuments...  We believe that the star shape was the abandoned site of a Soviet-era lakeside campground."

And Usmanova apparently has years of experience working in the Lisakovsk area, so she should know.

Not that I expect that this will shut up the It's Aliens crew, much less the neopagans or the fundamentalists.  But that's how confirmation bias works, isn't it?  You latch on to an explanation for something because it fits what you already believed, and hang on like grim death even if there's a plausible explanation to the contrary.  Because, let's face it; when it comes to choosing an explanation, "an abandoned campground site" just doesn't have the gravitas that Satan, Mother Earth, the Illuminati, and aliens do.

The skeptic goes on vacation

Well, this will be my last post for a week and a half.  I'm off at way-too-early-o'clock tomorrow morning for the lovely city of Portland, Oregon, for the Cascade Writers' Convention, where I will be participating in workshops focusing on the other kind of writing I do (fiction).  After that, I'm home for only a day or two before going off to Dayton, Ohio for a friend's wedding.  So with all of that to-ing and fro-ing, I'm going to take a wee break from battling the woo-woos.  My next Skeptophilia post will be on Monday, August 5.

Until then, there are a few things you can do to keep your appetite for critical thinking sated.  First, you can buy my book, if you haven't already done so.  It has the creative title Skeptophilia, is a bargain at only $3.99, and is a collection of 120 of my essays on science, skepticism, critical thinking, and woo-woo-ism.  You can get it for Kindle (here) or Nook (here).   If you do decide to buy it, many thanks -- and please leave a review.

This is also a chance for you to check out some other skeptical blogs and webpages, so here are a few of my favorites:

Science, Reason, and Critical Thinking
James Randi Educational Foundation
Pharyngula
SkepChick
The Skeptic's Dictionary
The Call of Troythulu
The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason
Friendly Atheist
Quackwatch
Bad Archaeology
Bad Astronomy


If you, too, would like to take a break from thinking about all of the crazy things people believe, there's always fiction to be read.  Mine.  Yes, this is a moment of shameless self-promotion.  Besides the books linked on the sidebar, there are over a dozen other titles to choose from, which you can peruse on my Amazon author's page.  You will note that almost all of them have to do with the paranormal, an irony that my wife thinks is amusing.  Me, I just think that this is why they're filed under the heading "Fiction."  But you should still read them, because they're awesome.

If I do say so myself.

That should be enough to keep you occupied while I'm gone, don't you think?  I encourage you to continue sending me topics -- I'll be ready to sit down and write again when I get back from my travels, and would love to have some ideas of what you'd like me to write about.  Until then, keep hoisting the banner of logic!

The wrath of Herman

We have an interesting story developing in Illinois, where a church pastor has raised some eyebrows by calling down the wrath of god on a federal judge.

Herman Jackson, who is the bishop of the Ark of Safety Apostolic Faith Temple of Cicero (a suburb of Chicago), ran afoul of the law last October when he was arrested on charges of fraud, with allegations that he had been swindling state day care funds.  Jackson was already notorious for a conspicuously flashy lifestyle, with a fleet of luxury vehicles that included a Bentley, a Jaguar, and two Mercedes, and a second home in Georgia, leading non-church-members to suspect that Bishop Jackson may have other priorities than spreading the word of god.

Be that as it may, Jackson was arrested and then freed on bond, but had a directive to live in the bedroom in his church rather than returning to Georgia to be with his family.  Jackson objected to this condition, saying that he needed to drive his 15-year-old son to school, an excuse that in my opinion ranks right up there with "the dog ate my homework" in believability.

So the judge overseeing the case, Sharon Johnson Coleman, refused to let him go.  Jackson blew his stack, and said, "Because of Judge Sharon Coleman’s continual mocking of God’s ecclesiastical order and the sanctity of family and marriage, the wrath of God almighty shall soon visit her home."

One guiding principle of life in the United States is, "Threatening a federal judge is a bad idea."  Speaking with the measured tone that befits her position, she said that she "has concerns about Mr. Jackson’s ability to comply with bond conditions and to appreciate the severity and magnitude of the situation in which he finds himself."

In other words: you can take your wrath of god and stick it where the sun don't shine.

Jackson, however, didn't back down, and continues to claim that the Almighty is on his side.  "I was in prayer.  This is what God told me.  I don’t have the power.  God has the power."

You have to wonder how all of the "America is a Christian Nation" people are going to respond to this.  On the one hand, you have a federal judge, who is clearly carrying out her sworn duty in prosecuting this wingnut.  On the other hand, you have a guy who sincerely believes that he's hearing the voice of god, and that voice is fully in support of everything he does.

Because, of course, "calling down god's wrath" kind of happens all the time in the bible, and when they read these passages, most Christians seem to shrug and say, "Well, you know, god is just like that."  We have, for example, 2 Kings 23-24, where the prophet Elisha is meandering about, and some kids make fun of him:

From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!”  He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.

Well, that's edifying.   And lest you think that this is the sort of thing that only happened in the Old Testament, that by New Testament times god had upped his dosage of antipsychotic meds, we have the lovely tale of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1-11, which goes as follows:

Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.

Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land?  Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold?  And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing?  You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”

When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened.  Then some young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.

About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened.  Peter asked her, “Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?”

“Yes,” she said, “that is the price.”

Peter said to her, “How could you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord?  Listen!  The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.”

At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband.  Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.

I'll just bet it did.

So Bishop Jackson does have some basis for his actions.  Not that the wrath of god seems like it's all that easy to call down these days, for some reason.  In spite of the fact that the folks in the bible seemed to be able to get god to smite people left and right, for damn near anything, nowadays it doesn't happen nearly so often.  I know my dad used to regularly request that the wrath of god descend upon tailgaters and telemarketers, and I don't recall that in either case anyone dropped dead or got eaten by a bear.

Which is kind of a shame, now that I come to think of it.

So, I don't think that Judge Coleman has all that much to worry about.  But it'll be interesting to see how this plays out -- if she decides that what Bishop Jackson has said actually constitutes a threat.  If so, I'm guessing that even living in his church will cease to be an option, and he'll find himself being fitted for an orange jumpsuit post-haste.

So, that's our news from the wacky religious fringe.  I live in hope that even the devout Christians who hear about people like Bishop Jackson don't believe his fire-and-brimstone pronouncements, although there are dozens of biblical passages that then require some rather awkward explanation.   So keep your eye on the Chicago area.  Let me know if you hear about bears in the vicinity.  Other than these guys:

Psychic disasters

It's been a month of mixed news in the psychic world.  First, we had news that the Texas psychic who said that there was a mass grave on property belonging to a couple in Liberty County (and "bones in the house and messages written on the wall in blood") had to pay the couple $6.8 million in damages for defamation.  But it doesn't always work out that way; only a few days later, we heard that "Britain's favorite medium," Psychic Sally Morgan, had won a $193,000 award in her lawsuit against The Daily Mail after a reporter claimed that she had tricked an Irish audience by getting information from an accomplice through an earpiece.

But neither of the judgments should have been a surprise to the psychics, right?  Of course right.

Be that as it may, the psychics may be feeling a little beleaguered, of late.  At least, that's the impression I get from Ron Bard, who calls himself "The King of Psychics," who has been trying desperately to save either Japan or his reputation, depending on which version of the story you go for.

Bard, who is US-born but who has lived in Japan for some years, recently made a prediction that the country was going to be struck by a major disaster "some time before the end of 2013."  He had a press conference about it, where he told a reporter that everyone had better listen to him, for death awaits, with big, nasty, pointy teeth.

And the overall reaction he got was:

*silence*

Well, naturally, you don't get to be the King of Psychics if you're willing to take something like that lying down.  So he naturally turned to the most convincing medium for disseminating vital information, used by everyone from the Pope on down: Twitter.

Here is the series of Tweets Bard wrote (translation courtesy of Yoko Fujimoto):

To everyone in Japan, once again, hello. I have some important messages to convey to you today in Japanese. 

Last night, I was able to see into the future of Japan. I’d like to share those visions with you.

In two or three months, Japan is going to experience a natural disaster.

My message is very important. Everyone, please retweet this so that many people in Japan will know. In particular, tell your family, friends and loved ones. Please tell as many people as possible to follow me on Twitter.

This is not a joke. If you are not going to believe this message, please go ahead and stop reading now.

But if you would like to keep your loved ones and many other safe, pass my message on to as many people as possible. Or have them follow me on Twitter.

For the next couple of months, please read my tweets carefully. As the day of the disaster gets closer, I will be able to say which parts of Japan are most at risk.

As you all know, I predicted the March 11 disaster. Around the summer of 2010, it began to become clear to me. That prediction was published in the Tokyo Sports Shimbun, but it appears few people took notice of it. That’s why I want to stress the importance of my message this time.

If you want to protect your family and friends and others around you, please take my tweets seriously. And encourage people to follow me on Twitter. In this way, many people’s lives might be saved.

When it has passed, two or three months feels like a twinkling of an eye, but when there are two or three months to go, it feels like an eternity. But time is of the essence. From this moment on, you must imagine yourself in a state of emergency, and it is important that you prepare yourself mentally, as well as stocking up necessary goods.

I was raised in Christianity and Judaism, but now I believe that Japan is the source of all the world’s religions. Everyone, please pray together with me for the safety of the people of Japan. If you pray with me, perhaps we will be able to save your family, friends and loved ones.

Well, that convinces me.  Especially since if you look carefully at his claim to have "predicted the March 11 disaster" (the day of the horrific earthquake and tsunami in 2011), his actual prediction on March 8 reads, and I quote, "Before Japan reaches a major turning point, it is going to experience a great difficulty."

I'm sorry, Mr. Bard, could you be a little more vague?  Because I almost felt like I had to take action, there.

So it's not like he's exactly known for giving details.  If on March 8, he had said, "The spirits have told me that it's time to shut down the Fukushima Nuclear Reactor, because it's about to be hit by a bigass wave," I might pay a little more attention.

What's funniest about all of this is his last tweet, about how if we all pray together maybe the disaster won't happen after all.  So this makes his message sum up as follows:

1)  Please follow me on Twitter.

2)  A horrifying disaster will hit Japan in the next few months, so you need to be prepared.

3)  And follow me on Twitter.

4)  Except maybe the disaster won't happen if you pray a lot.

5)  And follow me on Twitter.

6)  So don't blame me if you don't listen and end up getting yourself killed.

7)  Which is what will happen if you don't follow me on Twitter.

Myself, I find the increasing desperation of the psychics, mediums, and other woo-woo con artists to be a good thing.  Maybe it means that finally, finally people aren't listening to them any more, and have realized that what they really excel at are two things: (1) on-stage drama; and (2) making shit up.  And I don't know about you, but I'm not paying good money for that kind of thing.  If I had my way, they'd be playing to empty rooms.

Nor will I even follow them on Twitter.