Asteroid astrology

I've written more than once about astrology, a slice of woo-woo that has never failed to impress me as the most completely ridiculous model on the market for explaining how the world works.  I mean, really.  Try to state the definition of astrology in one sentence, and you come up with something like the following:

The idea that your personal fate, and the course of global events, are controlled by the apparent movement of the Sun and planets relative to bunches of stars that are at varying (but extreme) distances from the Earth, patterns which some highly nearsighted ancient Greeks thought looked vaguely like scorpions and rams and lions and weird mythical creatures like "sea-goats."

It definitely falls into the "how could that possibly work?" department, a question that is usually answered with vague verbiage about vibrations and energies and cosmic resonances.

But like I said, all of that is old territory, here at Skeptophilia.  But yesterday, thanks to a loyal reader and frequent contributor, I found out something that I didn't know about astrology; lately, astrologers have been including the asteroids in their chart-drawing and fortune-telling.

Don't believe me?  Listen to this lady, Kim Falconer,  who tells us that we should consider the asteroids in our astrological calculations -- but only use the ones we want.  There are too many asteroids, she said, to track them all; "Use the asteroids that have personal meaning to you."

Falconer is right about one thing; there are a great many asteroids out there.  Astronomers currently think there are between 1.1 and 1.9 million asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter alone, and that's not counting the ones in erratic or elliptical orbits.  So it would be a lot to track, but it would have the advantage of keeping the astrologers busy for a long time.

As far as which ones to track, though -- this is where Falconer's recommendations get even funnier,  because she says we should pay attention to the names of the asteroids.  Concerned about money?  Check out where the asteroids "Abundantia" and "Fortuna" are.  Concerned about love?  Find "Eros" and "Aphrodite."  And I'm thinking; where does she think these names come from?  All of them were named by earthly astronomers, more or less at random.  I mean, it's not like the names have anything to do with the actual objects.  For example, here's a photograph of Eros:

[image courtesy of NASA and the Wikimedia Commons]

Anything less sexy-looking is hard to imagine, especially given all of the craters and pits and warts on its surface.

But that's missing the point, from Falconer's view, and I realize that.  She and her cohort believe that when Auguste Charlois and Gustav Witt discovered the thing way back in 1898 and gave it its name, they somehow were tapping into a Mystical Reservoir of Connectedness and linked it to Quantum Energies of Love.  Or something like that.

But even so, the "choose the asteroids you like" thing seems very much like just drawing up the astrological chart you want.  Because, after all, if there are over a million to choose from, there are bound to be some that have names and positions that are favorable to whatever direction you'd like your life to take.  It's a little like drawing up your Tarot card hand by going through the deck and pulling out the cards you like, and arranging them however you want, and claiming that's your reading.

Yes, I know that the actual way Tarot cards are read is equally ridiculous.  It was just an analogy, okay?

Anyhow, that's the latest from the world of horoscopes.  But I better wrap this up, because the asteroid Hygiea is currently crossing into the constellation Horologium the Clock, which means it's time for me to go take a shower so I can get ready for work.

Skype exorcisms

Some of my regular readers may remember that a few months ago, I posted about a trio of young and extremely Christian ladies who were invading Britain to rid the country of demons that had been brought there because so many British children read Harry Potter.

One of them is named Brynne Larson.  It will come as no surprise that Ms. Larson is from an fundamentalist household; hard to imagine your believing anything that ridiculous if you didn't learn it as a very young child.  Be that as it may, Ms. Larson's father is Bob Larson, an evangelical preacher, talk radio host, and general wingnut.  Larson has been doing his dog-and-pony show for a while; I remember listening to him back in the 80s when I lived in Seattle.  I'd turn the show on when I got stuck in traffic, which was often, because I figured that the best thing to keep you from experiencing road rage is to listen to a radio show that distracts you by making you even madder at something else.

Well, Larson is still around, and just this week announced that he's out there fighting the Evil One just as hard today as he was thirty years ago.  He has, he claims, performed over 20,000 exorcisms in his life.  Doesn't that seem like a lot, to you?  It would imply that a good many of the people we meet on a daily basis are possessed, which I kind of doubt.  I don't think I've seen anyone lately who was guided by a demon, with the exception of the woman who ran a stop sign and cut me off in a Syracuse mall parking lot last weekend during a snowstorm, and I don't think she was possessed by anything but the evil spirit Dumbassimus.

But Larson begs to differ.  The demons are out there, he says; "there'll never be a shortage."  There are so many, in fact, that Larson can't keep up with the requests.  He receives so many that now he has to do his exorcisms...

... via Skype.

I don't know about you, but my first thought upon reading that was, "How could that work?"  Here you have a wicked, dangerous minion of Satan, who has latched on to some poor unfortunate soul in Hogfoot Junction, West Virginia.  And a guy shows up on Skype and says, "Get thee gone, evil spirit!" from 2,000 miles away via an internet connection, and the demon has no choice but to retreat in disarray?  If I was a demon, and Larson showed up babbling at me to Return to Hell From Whence I Came, the least I would do is to flip him off and then cause his computer to experience the Blue Screen of Death.

I mean, it can't be that hard.  My computer does that often enough without any demons being involved.

And it has to make you wonder what's next.  Will he start distributing general exorcisms through Twitter?

Get thee behind me Satan, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord Amen #ChalkAnotherOneUpForMe #IGuessThatShowedYou

What if he doesn't finish his magical incantation before he runs into the 140-character limit?

My overall impression is that he's fighting a losing battle, trying to use the internet to fight Satan.  Just considering the volume of pornography alone, out there on the 'net, I think that so far it's Larson 0, Satan 1,489,352.

Larson, of course, doesn't see it that way.  When asked in an interview with ABC15 if his Skype-your-way-out-of-hell method was nothing more than a fire-and-brimstone circus act, he said, "It’s real.  There would be no reason to theatrically stage this for any reason.  Why would anybody do that?  I have no idea."

I'll pass over the fact that he used the word "reason" twice, and that his worldview isn't exactly one in which reason, in its literal sense, is the driver.  But really, Reverend Larson?  You can't think of any other incentives for doing what you're doing, other than the need to fight the Evil One?  How about money?  Notoriety?  Being interviewed by a major news outlet?

But other than those, nothing, right?

Of course, right.

So that's the latest from the world of religious wingnuttery.  I live in hope that most Christians recognize whackjobs like Bob Larson for what they are, but the sad fact is that there are enough people still listening to Larson that his show, Talk Back, is still being aired, and his ministry still gets followers.

And he still gets people, over Skype, who are eager for him to free them of demons -- for just a small donation to support the ministry, of course.

Unreal estate

I've always wanted to spend a night in an (allegedly) haunted house.

Not alone, preferably.  It'd be nice to have someone's sleeve to clutch whenever a branch creaks against the roof.  But still.  There's nothing like direct experience.  Even though I tend to cast a wry eye at eyewitness testimony, the human memory and perceptual apparatus being what they are, having a personal encounter with the spirit of a dead guy would go a long way toward convincing me that this stuff is real.

Apparently, I'm not alone.  Not only do we have the whole ghost-hunting industry (and the television shows it's spawned), we now have people who seem to consider a resident ghost to be a selling point in real estate deals.

Just in the last week, I've seen four advertisements for houses in which hauntings were mentioned -- and none of them seemed to be the sort of mandatory disclosure statement you'd make about, for example, leaky plumbing.  All of them had the air of a brag -- "You definitely want to buy our house.  It comes with a pre-installed ghost."

First, in the UK, we have Sawston Hall, a grand Tudor manor house in Cambridgeshire.  It comes with a hundred-foot-long "great hall," a moat, an arboretum... and a disembodied spirit of a dead queen.

 The house was a favorite hideout of Queen Mary I, better known to history as "Bloody Mary" Tudor -- and it's said that she still haunts the place.  Stephen and Claire Coates, the current owners, say they've never seen her.  Still, having a royal ghost is quite a selling point, and they'd like a cool £4.75 million for the place.

If you'd like the UK but are looking for something a little more... "atmospheric"... then consider Dornoch Castle, which is a bargain at less than half of what Sawston Hall is going for -- only £2.25 million.

Consider the selling points -- an already-outfitted restaurant that seats ninety, a bar with an open fireplace, proximity to prominent whisky distilleries and golf courses, and a dead Sutherland sheep rustler.

The ghost at Dornoch is apparently one Andrew McCornish, who was hanged there in the 19th century for stealing livestock.  Which opens up an interesting question; why would ghosts linger around the place they were executed?  If I were hanged, and found myself a ghost, I would get the hell out of there.  Bad memories, you know?  But to each his own, I suppose, and I'm sure that Dornoch is charming in many other respects.

If that's still too rich for your tastes, or if you'd like something a little more subtropical, there's this lovely historic home in Punta Gorda, Florida, on the market for $1,590,000:

Vander and Natalie Wynn have this house for sale, and proudly include a 14-year-old dead girl as one of the house's selling points.

"It's a great view so it's a great place to be. And if you have a perpetual 14-year-old teenage girl playing tricks on you, kinda fun," said Wynn.  "I hear my wife walk down the stairs, and I call out her name and she says yes from a different part of the house.  There's some weird things like that you really can't explain."

"She's really not scary, she just makes noise.  Sometimes I've told her you need to be quiet," his wife, Natalie, added.

Apparently the ghost belongs to a girl who died in an unfortunate accident involving kerosene and a match back in the early 20th century, once again raising the "painful memories" question.  But you can't argue with the location.  Given that we're currently in the dead of winter in upstate New York, I'd happily move to Punta Gorda even if I had to content with a perpetual noisy adolescent.

Last, we have this lovely 19th century house in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, which is a steal at only $144,000, probably because its owners say it is only "slightly haunted:"

It does, however, make me wonder how a place can be "slightly haunted."  Either it has a ghost, or it doesn't, right?  "Slightly haunted" is like "a little bit pregnant."  And from the description, it's sounds like it's more "pretty freakin' haunted," if the owners are being straight with us:

Slightly haunted.  Nothing serious, though, e.g. the sound of phantom footsteps.  A strange knocking sound followed by a very quiet (hardly noticeable, even) scream at 3:13 AM, maybe once a week.  Twice a week, tops.  And the occasional ghastly visage lurking behind you in the bathroom mirror.  Even still, this occurs very rarely and only in the second-floor bathroom.

It also has a "study/library that has a secret door behind a moving bookcase leading into a small office," and a "large unfinished crawlspace behind a concealed door hidden in a bedroom closet."  All of which sounds like horror movie material, to me.

Oh, but the house has "tons of charm."  So there's that.

Anyhow, if you're in the market for some unreal estate, there you have it.  And I'm sure that's just scratching the surface.  A Google search for "haunted house for sale" got over 100,000 hits, so there has to be one in your area.  Make sure to find out the particulars about the ghost before you put in a purchase offer.  Caveat emptor, you know.

Diseased cannibal rat ship

In the last few days we have a new story circulating in the media, and this has led to considerable buzz on Facebook and Twitter.  Comments I've seen have included, "Yuk," "This is horrible," "Terrifying!," and "The government better do something about this, soon!"

Not once have I seen anyone post my immediate reaction, which was, "Okay, really?"

The story has appeared on various woo-woo websites, but has also made it onto Fox News and The Independent.  Here are excerpts from the version that appeared on Stranger Dimensions, entitled, "Is a Russian Ship Filled With Diseased Cannibal Rats Heading Toward the UK?"

Experts believe a derelict cruise ship that’s been missing for a year may be en route to the U.K. The problem? It’s filled with disease-ridden cannibal rats.

Built in Yugoslavia in 1976, the Lyubov Orlova was a cruise liner that had for many years transported passengers to destinations around the world. Unfortunately, in 2010, the ship was impounded in Newfoundland, Canada and deserted by her crew. Two years later, while being towed to the Dominican Republic to be scrapped, a heavy storm caused the tow-line to break, sending the Lyubov Orlova out to aimlessly wander the North Atlantic Ocean...

Now, a year later, new concerns are being raised that the ship is heading for the U.K.

It’s completely empty, save for the potentially hundreds of diseased rats aboard the ship that have most likely been forced to eat one another to survive.

Diseased cannibal rats!  By the millions!  Waiting for their chance to get onto land, and rush around swarming over and eating innocent British citizens, like a scene from the movie Willard!

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But then we hear what data these "experts" are currently going on:

Over the following months, the Lyubov Orlova was spotted at various locations in the North Atlantic. In one instance last year, satellites found an object near Scotland that may have been the ship, but subsequent searches in the area found nothing...

Discerning readers may point out that the ship’s emergency position-indicating radio beacon had activated off the Kerry coast on March 1, 2013 after presumably being submerged in water, implying that the ship had, indeed, sunk. However, authorities say some of the life-boat emergency signals have yet to activate, and the ship may still be out there, diseased cannibal rats and all.

The ship’s current position is unknown, but due to recent high winds, experts fear the ghost ship may be on a crash course for the British coastline. If they’re right, the Lyubov Orlova is likely to wind up on the west coast of Ireland, Scotland, or southern England. What happens if/when it gets there? I don’t know, but…diseased rats. Can’t be good.  

That's right; there was a beacon signal detected in March of 2013, and it was "maybe" spotted by a satellite later that year -- and no one has had a glimpse of it since then.  The ship's current position is unknown.

Remember a couple of days ago, our discussion of what the word "unknown" means?

But then what went through my mind was: even considering that the ship may be out there, how do they know about the rats?  Were they detected on the satellite, baring their decay-ridden fangs defiantly at the sky?  Okay, presupposing that any ship is gonna have rats, still... how would anyone know that they're diseased cannibal rats?  When the beacon went off, did the people who picked it up hear, in the background, the sound of hoarse, coughing squeaks, as if a diseased rat were being savagely dismembered and eaten by its pack mates?

I know that the whole thing was written for no other reason than to get people stirred up, but what bugs me is that hardly anyone seems to be questioning how the writer of the article knows all of this stuff.

Oh, but to hell with the facts; the diseased cannibal rat ship may still be out there.  And if it may still be out there, then it might be headed for England.

Even the Wikipedia article on the Lyubov Orlova has been contaminated by this silliness; the last paragraph of the article is, "Certain independent researchers and amateur salvage hunters have also stated that a population of rats are on board the vessel, and that in the absence of edible food, the rat population have turned cannibalistic.  The opportunity to study the cannibalistic rats has been welcomed by researchers."  (Although I will say that at least someone appended "citation needed" after this paragraph.)

Well, I think we can do better than this, can't we?  Let's see... back in 1950, a ship called the Phoenix went missing off the coast of Australia.  It was last seen near Darwin, but no word of it was heard from thereafter.  But it could still be out there.  Carrying a load of... cannibalistic kangaroos and feral wombats.  Experts can't be certain that this is wrong.  And maybe by now, it's drifted across the Pacific, and is on a collision course with San Francisco.  What would happen if it ran aground near the Embarcadero, depositing its cargo of hopping, waddling death into the waterfront cafés and shops filled with unsuspecting tourists?

I don't know, but it can't be good.

Laser therapy redux and retraction

About a year and a half ago, I stumbled upon a veterinary therapy that I immediately put in the "woo-woo" column; the idea of using laser light to stimulate wound healing.  It seemed completely counterintuitive, given what I know about biology.  How could the stimulation of animal cells by low-level polarized light have any demonstrable effect?

The site where I found out about this -- Dr. Kathryn Okawa's website, Healing Arts Mobile Laser Therapy -- described the benefits without explaining how it worked (although there were plenty of testimonials that it did work).  I was reminded of other times I'd come across "alternative medical" therapies that are also lauded by testimonials -- and so I went no further.  I assumed that this was in the same category as homeopathy, i.e., scientifically unsupported.

I was wrong.

Dr. Okawa contacted me yesterday, and courteously (although firmly) encouraged me to do some research and reconsider my statement.  I did so.  As a result, I have taken down my original post, and would like to apologize to Dr. Okawa and others who use this modality -- I fell prey to the cardinal sin of skepticism, which is to keep one's feet planted firmly on one's own biases.  As I've said repeatedly to my Critical Thinking students, "That sounds right" and "That sounds wrong" are really dreadful guides to what is true and false, and despite knowing this (and teaching it every year, for cryin' in the sink) I leapt right from "I don't see how that could possibly work" to "That doesn't work."

As suggested by Dr. Okawa, I did some research, and found that low-level laser therapy has been found to be effective in controlled, double-blind experiments.  (Next time, it'd be better to do the research before writing the damn post...)  If you'd like to check out the sources, here are a few I came across:

Hopkins, McLoda, Seegmiller, and Baxter, "Low-Level Laser Therapy Facilitates Superficial Wound Healing in Humans: A Triple-Blind, Sham-Controlled Study," Journal of Athletic Training, July 2004

Demir, Balay,and Kirmap, "A Comparative Study of the Effects of Electrical Stimulation and Laser Treatment on Experimental Wound Healing in Rats," Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, March 2004

Bolton, "Lasers in Wound Healing," Wounds, April 2004

Posten, Wrone, Dover, Arndt, Silapunt, and Aram, "Low-level Laser Therapy for Wound Healing: Mechanism and Efficacy," Journal of Dermatologic Surgery, March 2005


All of which is just a nice kick-in-the-pants reminder for me to be more careful, and practice what I preach re: being aware of one's own biases.

Thanks to Dr. Kathryn Okawa for setting me straight!

Retroactive prayer pay

Yesterday there was a story in News24, a media outlet in South Africa, that a Lichtenburg man, Nelson Thabo Modupe, has submitted a bill to Eskom, the South African electric company, for 250,000 Rand (about $23,000).

The reason?  There were storms during the 2010 FIFA World Cup finals, which were held in Johannesburg.  When the weather turned bad, Mr. Modupe prayed to god that there wouldn't be a power outage, and there wasn't, because by his prayers he "saved the power utility the burden and humiliation" that would have ensued had there been a loss of electricity during the game.  So he figures that Eskom owes him some big bucks for having had the foresight to pray.

[Spain vs. Portugal at the 2010 World Cup.  Image courtesy of photographer Andrew Deacon and the Wikimedia Commons]

Predictably, there has been a significant hue and cry against Mr. Modupe's case.  "I think he misunderstands the power of prayer," one person wrote, in the comments section of the News24 article. 

"(I)t seems like it's only Christianity, people use to make a quick buck," said another.  "I can give you a few quick quotes from the bible, but that won't be enough, you must know the Author, and the Author I know is not an Author of confusion."

"For money?" said a third.  "Imagine Moses charging admission fees for anyone wanting to cross the Red Sea."

Now, wait just a moment.  I can see your criticizing him for wanting to profit out of the whole thing; after all, Jesus himself had a few things to say about money, and none of them were good.  But I get the impression that most of the folks who wrote to respond to the story were religious themselves, and they were virtually unanimous in ridiculing Mr. Modupe and his FIFA World Cup Miracle.  And I was reading the comments, and thinking, "Aren't you people the ones who supposedly think that prayer works?"

I mean, I could understand it if one of us atheists made fun of the whole thing.  Whenever I hear of someone claiming, after the fact, that something happened because (s)he prayed for it, I always kind of roll my eyes a little, because it's pretty convenient to attribute to god's divine grace something that has already happened.

But why aren't the Christians cheering Mr. Modupe along?

I've thought about this before.  Back in biblical days, all sorts of weird shit happened -- donkeys talked (Numbers 22:21-39), the Earth stopped turning so that Joshua could finish fighting a battle (Joshua 10:12), and god told a man to slit his son's throat, only saying at the last moment that he was just kidding (Genesis 22).  These days, you have to wonder what would happen if someone claimed any of this stuff.  My general feeling is if someone killed a bunch of members of another religion, and then said that god had commanded him to do so (1 Kings 18:36-40), the judge -- Christian or not -- would throw the guy in jail, or worse.

So you have to wonder if the self-proclaimed bible-believing, god-obeying Christians really believe what they're saying.  If god told one of you to kill your own child, would you do it?  If he told you that you should jump off a cliff, because he would catch you with his Mighty Hand and Outstretched Arm and lower you gently to the ground, would you do it?  Why did such miracles happen every second Thursday, back in biblical times, but now people who believe such things are considered to be crazy -- even by the Christians themselves?

Kind of strange, isn't it?  Being an evidence-based kind of guy, myself, all it would take is one or two such miraculous occurrences to turn me into a True Believer, so you'd think it'd be in god's best interest to exert himself a little.  But there have been no talking donkeys, no times the Earth has stopped turning, nothing but things like "no power outages at the World Cup."

Oh, but wait.  "Thou shall not put the Lord thy God to the test."  (Matthew 4:7)  Mighty convenient, that.

In any case, I expect that Mr. Modupe will lose his lawsuit.  I mean, the power of prayer is one thing, but the power of the almighty dollar (or South African Rand, as the case may be) is another thing entirely.  But it does open up some pretty major philosophical questions, which I don't begin to know how to answer.

After all, I'm not the one who's claiming that all of this stuff works.

Lunar triangle anomaly

The UFO-and-aliens crowd (and also the conspiracy theorists) currently have their knickers in a twist over an object that showed up on a photograph of the surface of the Moon on Google Moon.  The object certainly is interesting; it shows seven evenly-spaced dots arranged along two lines at what appears to be a perfect right angle.

Certainly not something that looks... natural.

Speculation about what the object could be is running rampant.  So far, I've seen the following ideas:

• the leading edge of a crashed, and partly buried, alien spacecraft;
• a portal to another dimension;
• a secret NASA lunar base (the spots are streetlights);
• a secret alien lunar base;
• a remote signaling device of extraterrestrial origin, à la 2001: A Space Odyssey;
• or one corner of a gigantic lunar pasta strainer.

Okay, I made the last one up.  But c'mon, people; it behooves us to remember that all we really have is a photograph with an odd image on it.  At the moment, we don't know what it is.  So endless speculation about what it is is kind of pointless, because we have exactly one (1) piece of data.

Things like this always remind me of what Neil deGrasse Tyson said, when asked in a talk if he "believed in UFOs:"

Remember what the "U" in "UFO" stands for.  There's a fascinating frailty of the human mind, that psychologists know all about; and it's called "Argument from Ignorance."  And this is how it goes, you ready?  Somebody sees lights flashing in the sky.  They've never seen it before.  They don't understand what it is.  They say, "A UFO!"  The "U" stands for "unidentified."  So they say, "I don't know what it is... it must be aliens from outer space, visiting from another planet."  Well... if you don't know what it is, that's where your conversation should stop.  You don't then say it must be anything.  

Now, I know that it's only human to speculate, but what's really important is that we keep in mind that it is speculation... and that of all of the speculation we engage in, we need to be most wary of answers that seem appealing to us.  The answer that seems appealing -- that it's a downed spaceship, if you're an aficionado of UFO lore -- is going to be the one you're the most likely to accept without question, that you're likely to overlook evidence and logic against. 

As a philosophy teacher of mine once said, "Beware of your pet theories.  They'll turn on you when you least expect it."

And of course, in this case, we do have a rational (non-alien-based) explanation for the image.  Ross Davidson, a digital image specialist at the Newcastle-upon-Tyne based web development firm OrangeBus, gives the following analysis of the strange image:

Basically it's similar to the thing you get in all those 'UFO videos' you see these days from people with digital cameras - when they use digital zoom too much, you get 'artifacts' as the missing data is recreated using an algorithm which create regular shapes simply because of the nature of digital.

As such a simple point of light becomes something like this.

If he rotated the camera the shape would rotate with it...

You can get similar things with still photos when you blow them up - the moon pic shows a 'triangle' because it's digital - made up of pixels.

If you look at the dark lines in the pic they all align in the same way - it's just a shadow which pretty much aligns with the pixels and when compressed/zoomed looks perfectly triangular.

So there's that.

Not, mind you, that I wouldn't love it if it did turn out to be a crashed spaceship.  If I had to pick one thing that I would love to have evidence of in my lifetime, it's extraterrestrial intelligence.  But thus far, I don't think this is it.  Does it deserve further investigation?  Of course.  Do I think it's a spaceship, or a lunar base, or even a giant pasta strainer?

Nope.  Not yet.

Remember what the "U" in "UFO" stands for.