Heavy weather

I find it puzzling how few people actually understand weather.

Partly, this puzzlement is because I've always found it completely fascinating.  I spend a lot of time on Weather Underground and the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) sites, with the result that I frequently update my wife on the status of weather systems in Nebraska.  (Her stock response: "That's nice, dear.")

I cannot, for example, fathom how people wouldn't be intensely curious about videos like the recent time-lapse series taken of a supercell system in Wyoming, which all of you should watch right now:

What surprises me is how few people get beyond the "Oh, wow," stage with all of this.  I know that the first time I saw a photograph of a supercell -- which ranks right up there with a dry microburst as the most bizarre weather phenomenon I've ever heard of -- I immediately thought, "What could cause something like that?"  And asking this question led me to all sorts of cool places, like atmospheric convection and adiabatic cooling and evaporative cooling and wind shear.

Now I realize that this stuff gets complex fast.  To quote Garrison Keillor, "Intelligence is like four-wheel drive.  It enables you to get stuck in even more remote places."

But it's still awesome.  And weather is, after all, ubiquitous.  How you could be immersed in something all the time, and not want to know how it works, is mystifying to me.

All of this comes up because of two stories this week, both of which never would have been more than meteorological curiosities if it weren't for the fact that people tend not to know much about the weather phenomena that surround them all day, every day.  The first, which involves an admittedly odd cloud pattern called a "hole-punch cloud," or "fallstreak hole," had people speculating that the seeming "hole in the sky" (check the link for photographs) was one of the following:

1. A wormhole.
2. A flaw in the Matrix.
3. A sign that we're all living inside some kind of self-contained dome, à la The Truman Show, and the hole was sort of like the can light that fell out of the sky at the beginning of the movie.
4. A gap through which an angel was about to arrive.  Why an angel couldn't just come through the clouds without there being a hole, given that clouds are basically big blobs of fog, I don't know.
5. A portal to a different dimension.

Of course, all of the furor was founded on the fact that hole-punch clouds have a perfectly natural explanation, usually that an airplane (or, much less commonly, a meteor) disrupted what was uniform cloud cover, leaving a temporary hole through the clouds.

No Matrix, wormhole, or angels required.

Second, we had a story from the wonderful site Doubtful News that blamed the unusual (and destructive) rains that have hit Serbia in the past week on none other than...

... HAARP.

Yes, we have not seen the last of the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, that favorite bête noire of conspiracy theorists -- despite the fact that HAARP closed last year and is currently being dismantled.  It's been blamed for everything from tsunamis to earthquakes to tornadoes to hurricanes, and now... floods:

Many of my contacts in Serbia have spoken of whispered accusations that the unprecedented flooding and unusual weather patterns in the last few years have something to do with the US’s HAARP system. According to one website: “A Serbian journalist was advised not to write about a HAARP installation near Belgrade. After series of texts regarding HAARP antenna system near Barajevo (Belgrade municipality) and application of this ELF system in Serbia the journalist of newspaper Pravda has received a phone call on Monday evening around 10PM from unlisted phone number. The voice on other side of the line gave the journalist a “friendly advice” to stop writing on HAARP...” 

Would it be surprising if the US, after unleashing neo-Nazis in Ukraine, unleashed flooding in Serbia? Those in the know would probably say no.

 And there's a reason for that, you know?  Like the fact that HAARP couldn't even cause floods when it was running, much less now, when it isn't?

Of course, every time there's a catastrophe, people want an Explanation, not just an explanation.  It's not enough just to talk about weather systems and frontal boundaries and atmospheric moisture; there's got to be more.

But dammit, it'd be nice if people would start with the weather systems and frontal boundaries, rather than starting from ignorance and going downhill from there.  If you want to comment intelligently on anything, it helps to know some of the science behind it first.

Okay, I'll calm down, now.  Back to my happy place.  NOAA.  I see that there's a low-pressure center over Manitoba at the moment.  Isn't that cool?  Isn't it?

That's nice, dear.

The Common Core Gay Agenda Standards

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am no apologist for the Common Core.  I've seen its implementation in my own school district, and heard all too much about how it is affecting other ones.  While the heart of the "new standards" is well-meant, its reliance on numerical metrics and high-stakes standardized tests has been nothing short of devastating.

But little did I know that there is another reason to despise the Common Core, one that I would never have thought of in my entire life, despite the fact that I spend my days steeped in wacko woo-woo bullshit.  If you had told me, "Dream up the most ridiculous argument against the Common Core you can think of.  C'mon, pull out all the stops.  It should make 'Ancient Aliens Built Stonehenge' look like rocket science," I don't think I'd have thought of this.

Ready?

A Florida state representative is claiming that we shouldn't implement the Common Core, because it will turn your kids gay.

I'm not making this up, although I wish like hell that I was.  Representative Charles Van Zant, speaking at something called "Operation Education Conference" in Orlando, had this to say, and if you don't believe me, you can watch the video on the link I provided:

Our new Secretary of Education recently appointed AIR [American Institutes for Research] to receive a 220 million dollar contract for end-of-course exam testing, to prepare those tests.  Please, go on their website.  Click the link to what they're doing with youth, and you will see what their agenda really is.  They are promoting, as hard as they can, any youth that is interested in the LGBT agenda, and even name it two-hyphen-S, which they define as 'having two spirits.'  The bible says a lot about being double-minded.  These people, that will now receive 220 million dollars from the state of Florida unless this is stopped, will promote double-mindedness in state education, and attract every one of your children to become as homosexual as they possibly can.   

I'm sorry to report that to you...  I really hate to bring you that news, but you need to know.

*brief pause to clean up coffee splatters from computer monitor*

I think my favorite part of this was when Representative Van Zant said that the test developers want children "to become as homosexual as they possibly can."  What does this even mean?  Is there some kind of gradation of homosexuality, from, say, Neil Patrick Harris all the way up through Dr. Frank N. Furter?

And how, exactly, are standardized tests supposed to accomplish this?  Will there be some kind of subliminal message in reading passages, such that, if you take the first letter of each word, it spells out, "I EMBRACE THE GAY AGENDA?"  Will there be a cryptic code on the bubble sheets, that if you decode it, reads, "I solemnly swear to abandon heterosexuality from here on, so help me Freddie Mercury?"

Or is it just that somewhere on the exam, there will be some kind of portrayal of a gay person in other than a negative light?

Can't have that, after all.

I keep thinking that sooner or later, our elected officials will run out of completely boneheaded statements to make.  I keep hoping that they will exhaust their reserves of idiocy on topics such as climate change and evolution, and stay away from other subjects.  Most fervently, I keep espousing the optimistic position that we will eventually start electing people who have IQs higher than their pants size.

To judge by Representative Van Zant, however, it appears that my hopes may be ill-founded.

Half-baked lunacy

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the fact that Cliven Bundy and his Gang o' Morons out in Nevada were a gauge of something more than just stupidity -- that it was a symptom of the galloping paranoia that has been fostered by alarmist pundits on the extreme right fringe shrieking about how America As We Know It is threatened.  Bundy, and the abortive "ten million strong protest" that conspicuously failed to materialize in Washington D. C. last week, are the leading edge of a worldview that is based in fear.

I had hoped that the collapse of Operation American Spring Epic Fail was due to the fact that most people are sensible, and realized that the self-styled "Patriots" who were organizing the thing are insane.  That, and the fact that the leaders were overestimating their support by 9,999,900 or so, an error that would be analogous to my telling a student that he had a perfect 100 in my class when in fact he had an overall average of 0.0001 percent.

You can see how that kind of glitch could happen.

But it appears that my Panglossian optimism might have been premature.  Chez Pazienza, over at The Daily Banter, has done a little digging on conspiracy websites, and has found that there's another reason that pretty much no one showed up, and it can be summed up in a famous line from The Return of the Jedi:

Yup, that's right; these people think that they're so important, so absolutely Public Enemy Number One, that they were walking into a trap -- that in Pazienza's words (which I could not possibly improve on) the powers-that be were planning on "unleashing Obama's jackbooted thugs" who were going to sweep down and arrest all ten million of them while they were together in one place.

Then, it got even weirder.  David Chase Taylor, who's so fucking crazy that even Alex Jones thinks he's nuts, stated that he had word that there'd been a security lockdown because a car was trailing a motorcade carrying President Obama's daughters.  Seems reasonable enough, right?  Well, let's see if you can do a little multiple-choice to guess why Taylor said they ramped up security when that happened:

1. Because it is important to protect the president's family, and anything unusual has to be taken seriously.
2. Because any kind of a security threat could have wider implications to the stability of the government.
3. Because during the lockdown, no one would see that the CIA was planting explosives in the White House so that it could be blown up on May 16, so that President Obama could implicate the "Patriots" in the attack.

The answer is (3), of course.  Taylor, who apparently has a single Froot Loop where most of us have a brain, is convinced that True Patriots should protest the fact that it's too dangerous to protest because the government was going to blow itself up to prove how ultra-sneaky and powerful they are, and blame the explosion on people who weren't technically there.

Or something like that.  It's hard to tell, actually.  I read enough of this stuff that I live in fear of the day when eventually some of it starts making sense.  At that point, I should probably just pack it in.  But the upshot of it is, the government is run by brilliant evil Illuminati geniuses who are simultaneously bumbling lunatics who are so stupid that a wingnut like Taylor could see right through them, post about it on the internet, and get away with it.  "Dammit," I can hear President Obama saying.  "Foiled again!  I'd have succeeded this time, if it hadn't been for YouTube!"

It's like a giant layer cake of crazy, sprinkled with nuts.  And only half-baked.

As I mentioned in Monday's post, I'm still uncertain about what the government should do in response to all of this.  On the one hand, we have armed wackos threatening violent revolution, who will admit up front that they're not afraid to shed innocent blood to accomplish their goals.  But on the other hand, to round them up just because they are blustering on YouTube and the r/conspiracy subreddit would probably be challenged on the grounds of free speech.  In the US, it's not a crime to be crazy, fortunately for David Chase Taylor and Alex Jones.  Jones himself has predicted more than once that he'd be arrested or secretly done away with, and yet there he is, still yammering on, week after week -- a better counterargument for his screeching paranoia than any I could come up with.

Anyhow, it'll be interesting to see how all of this unfolds.  My guess is that the "Patriots" who have made actual threats, including the moron who allowed himself to be photographed aiming a gun through two barriers on a highway, will very likely find law enforcement knocking on their doors sooner or later.  As for the rest, they'll probably still keep bleating about Obama and his thugs trying to take away their guns, despite that Obama has been in office for six years now and has yet to try to repeal the Second Amendment.

All I can say is, Mr. President, if you're planning on some kind of Nazi-style socialist power grab, you'd better get a move-on.  Time's a-wastin'.

(Hat tip to Chez Pazienza for today's story -- here's the link again to his piece, which you should all read, because it's awesome.)

Well, shucks.

Well, The Daily Mail Fail is at it again.

Today's headline, which in a contest would win in both the "Most Idiotic" and "Longest" categories, reads, "Is This the Skeleton of Legendary Devil Dog 'Black Shuck," Who Terrorized 16th Century East Anglia?  Folklore Tells of a SEVEN FOOT Hell Hound With Flaming Eyes."

Once you read the article that follows, though, you find out pretty quickly that it could have run just as well under a much shorter headline, such as, "Skeleton of Dog Found."  We get to the central point of the story pretty quickly, which is that some archaeologists found the bones of a largish dog in the ruins of Leiston Abbey.  But this bit -- which turns out to be the sole factual content of the article -- is buried amongst turgid prose like the following:

It roamed the countryside spreading death and terror – a giant, ferocious hell-hound with flaming eyes and savage claws. 

For centuries, the beast that came to be known as Black Shuck struck fear into the hearts of all who crossed its path. 

Just a single glimpse was enough to impart a fatal curse; the briefest encounter sufficient to suck the life from any hapless victim... 

The beast’s most celebrated attack began at Holy Trinity church, Blythburgh. A clap of thunder burst open the church doors and a hairy black ‘devil dog’ came snarling in. 

It ran through the congregation, killing a man and boy and causing the church steeple to fall through the roof.  Scorch marks still visible on the church doors are purported to have come from Shuck’s claws as it fled. 

Local verse records the event thus: ‘All down the church in the midst of fire, the hellish monster flew, and, passing onward to the quire [sic], he many people slew.’ 

Next stop was 12 miles away in Bungay, where two worshippers were killed at St Mary’s church. One was left shrivelled ‘like a drawn purse’ as he prayed.

Which is all pretty scary-sounding.  And for fans of paranormal stories, the tale of "Black Shuck" is a creepy one; a hound from hell, bursting into the holy precinct of the church and killing people as they pray.

[image courtesy of the Creative Commons]

The problem is, it seems to have no more basis in the truth than Spring-heeled Jack and the ghost dogs of Ballechin House and the tumbling coffins of Barbados -- i.e., none.  It's a folk legend, a good tale to tell on a stormy night, but not much more than that.

Yes, I know that there are historical records of the thing.  In fact, in the interest of fairness, I'll present one here myself:

For those of you who don't want to strain your eyes reading old typography, it says, "A straunge, and terrible wunder wrought very late in the parish church of Bongay: a town of no great distance from the citie of Norwich, namely the fourth of this August, in ye yeere of our Lord 1577,  in a great tempest of violent raine, lightning and thunder, the like whereof hath been seldome seene.  With the appearance of an horrible shaped thing, sensibly perceived of the people then and there assembled.  Drawen into a plain method according to the written copye.  By Abraham Fleming."

Which is all well and good.  Far be it from me to contradict Mr. Fleming's opinion that the raine was straunge, but I think it's a reach to conclude that what probably was only an unusual weather event was contrived by a giant black dog from hell.  He goes on, though, to say that there was too a big dog, and he was too black, and he didn't stop at just causing a thunderstorm:

This black dog, or the divel in such a likenesse (God hee knoweth all who worketh all), running all along down the body of the church with great swiftnesse, and incredible haste, among the people, in a visible fourm and shape, passed between two persons, as they were kneeling uppon their knees, and occupied in prayer as it seemed, wrung the necks of them bothe at one instant clene backward, insomuch that even at a moment where they kneeled, they strangely dyed.

So there's that.  Of course, if you are a student of history you know that old records are rife with claims of crazy stuff that was "sensibly perceived of the people then and there assembled" and which are nevertheless almost certainly spun out of whole cloth.  And more germane to Black Shuck, given that there are similar legends from all over Europe, and even further afield, I think what we have here is the original Shaggy Dog Story.

The Isle of Man has the Moddey Dhoo, Wales has the Cŵn Annwn, and Scotland the Cù Sìth, just to name three.  You can go here and read about sightings of Black Dogs all over the world, which makes me think that if this thing really exists, it must have a hell of a time keeping its appointment calendar straight.  "You want me to show up for a church service in Glasgow on the 14th?"  *sound of pages flipping*  "I'm sorry, I'm scheduled for a séance in Liverpool that night.  I can possibly work you in on the 17th, but we'd have to do it before 6 PM, because I've got a crossroads to haunt that evening, and I'm expecting the Archbishop of Canterbury to come by.  Opportunities like that don't happen every day.  I hope you understand."

But back to The Daily Mail... they seem to be basing their story on two things: (1) the dog skeleton found in Leiston is big; and (2) Leiston is in East Anglia.  Because, obviously, there couldn't be an ordinary big dog in East Anglia, so any large dog skeleton would have to be Black Shuck.  It couldn't, for example, be an Irish Wolfhound, a breed owned for centuries by British nobility, and which gets... pretty freakin' huge:

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

You also have to wonder, given that Black Shuck was supposedly a canine stand-in for Satan, how his skeleton would end up buried in an abbey.  You'd think that after he finished wringing the necks of honest churchgoers, he'd just vanish in a flash of sulfurous smoke, never to be seen again.

But no.  Now we have The Daily Mail further sinking their credibility (a feat I'd have thought was impossible) by asking us to believe that some random big dog skeleton proves the East Anglian legend was all true.  And I'm sure there will be people who will believe it.  Making me wish that The Daily Mail would go back to what they do best, which is writing stories on who the various royals and celebrities are sleeping with.  It may be dull as hell, but at least it has some basis in reality.

Cliven Bundy and the rule of law

A couple of days ago, we considered the conspiracy theorists phenomenon as a gauge of the "dumbing down" of America.  So many of the things they believe -- from chemtrails to the various anti-vaxx claims to FEMA stockpiling guillotines for use on American citizens -- require a dazzling array of ignorance and specious thinking.  To buy what the conspiracy theorists are peddling, not only do you have to ignore what we know about science, you pretty much have to jettison hard evidence and inductive reasoning as a means for understanding.

Today I want to consider a darker side to the whole thing -- that conspiracy theories are an indicator of something far deeper, and far worse, than simple stupidity.  Conspiracy theories come about not only from ignorance, but from fear, paranoia, and a deep-seated rage.

Consider Cliven Bundy.

Bundy, as most you probably already know, is the Nevada cattle rancher who fell afoul of the Bureau of Land Management when it came out that he'd been grazing his cattle on public land for decades without paying the requisite lease fees.  When the BLM came after him, Bundy turned it into a David-vs.-Goliath struggle, with the BLM and the federal government cast as the giant who was gonna end up with a rock to the head if they didn't watch their step.  Right wingers, especially the Tea Party, took up his anti-government cry -- despite the fact that these same politicians shriek on nearly a daily basis about "welfare cheats," who (like Bundy) are stealing from the federal coffers.

Oh, wait.  Bundy is old, white, male, wears a cowboy hat, and votes Republican.  There's your difference, then.

Be that as it may, Bundy proceeded to assemble a ragtag band of defenders, including the far-right nutjobs who call themselves the "Oath Keepers," some members of the Sovereign Citizens Movement, and various other self-styled "Patriots."  The whole thing began to shake itself apart when internal dissent in the ranks nearly had Bundy's defenders at each other's throats, not to mention when Bundy revealed himself as a racist (in an interview, he said outright that African Americans had been better off as slaves) and a liar (he claimed to have "ancestral rights" to the land dating back to the 1870s, and it turned out that land records proved that his family bought the ranch he lives on in 1948).

Bundy's reach was more pervasive than the battle over grazing rights, however.  His defiance seems to have given some inspiration to like-minded types, to judge by "Operation American Spring," a group of Bundy-clones who planned to descend upon Washington D.C. "ten million strong," intending to stay there until President Obama resigns or is overthrown.  The problem is, the estimate turned out to be off by 9,999,850 or so, because the Mall (where they had intended to stage their massive protest) was empty except for a few placard-carrying protestors who were mostly ignored by passersby.

It's easy to laugh at this -- one wag on Twitter quipped, "Drone hustling, shape-shifting Socialist/Kenyan dictators don't scare me...but that clammy drizzle was too much!"  The hashtag #AmericanSpringExcuses quickly trended, generating tweets like, "Put hood on backwards, ran into a tree which was put there by liberal fascist socialist dictators. #AmericanSpringExcuses."   And I certainly was laughing along with them.

But to laugh and then dismiss the more serious aspect of this is, I think, a terrible mistake.  Take what was said by one of the nutcases who showed up in D. C. for what turned into Operation Epic Fail: "This is the America that you all live in today, and it has to end.  I’m telling you right now, it’s going to take — in my view — a little blood, it’s going to happen, this day is coming and you better be willing to pay for it."

How is it that our leaders don't see people like Bundy and the nameless protestor in Washington for what they are -- domestic terrorists?  Look, it's not that I think the government is perfect; it can be inept, wasteful, bumbling, and occasionally cross the line into evil.  But do you really want to jettison it entirely?  Anarchy isn't pretty; ask anyone who has lived in Sudan, Ethiopia, or Somalia.  When people become "sovereign citizens" they usually respond by victimizing each other, and the strongest victimizer becomes the leader -- and you're right back to having a government, although one I doubt any of us would want to live in.  Notwithstanding its faults, our federal and state governments provide us with education, infrastructure, commerce, and security.

Could the government be better?  Of course.  Do I think things would improve in the United States if the government collapsed?

Not just no, but hell no.

By ignoring Bundy and his ilk, or just considering them inept clowns who can't even run a demonstration right, we are potentially overlooking the next David Koresh or Timothy McVeigh.  I know that officials have to act carefully, because these people don't mind spilling blood; their attitude is that if innocent people die in their attempt to achieve their goals, that is simply too bad.  And the likelihood of any misstep turning into further fuel for the fire (and any deaths amongst the militiamen being seen as martyrdom) is high.

But why is law enforcement in Nevada turning a blind eye to what these folks are doing -- acts that now include armed militia members setting up checkpoints along roads in Clark County and demanding identification from drivers proving that they live in the area?  Hotel owners in the nearby town of Mesquite received credible bomb threats when it was discovered that they had rented rooms to BLM employees during the standoff.  A federal livestock wrangler was menaced on Interstate 15, in broad daylight, by men wearing hoods and brandishing a Glock -- along with a handwritten sign saying, "You need to die."

I recognize the danger, here.  Officials in Nevada and Utah are dealing with violent lunatics who are heavily armed and unafraid to use deadly force.  They are also propelled by an ideology that is, at its basis, steeped in counterfactual paranoia, in part fostered by the divisive "America is being murdered!" rhetoric you hear from pundits on the far right.

But you reap what you sow, a lesson that the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks and Sean Hannitys and Pat Buchanans have yet to learn.  If you create a climate in which patriotic Americans feel threatened and besieged, some of them will respond with a preemptive strike.  If you continually portray the government as evil and dangerous, you will spawn individuals who consider it virtuous to overthrow it.

Order, justice, democracy, and the rule of law may not always work.  They fail, they falter, just like any other human-made institution.  But they're the best thing we have for protecting us against the baser instincts of our neighbors.  And I'll take that over the morals and ethics of the likes of Cliven Bundy any day.

Reality vs. allegory

When I was about twenty, I stumbled upon the book The Dancing Wu-Li Masters by Gary Zukav.  The book provides a non-mathematical introduction to the concepts of quantum mechanics, which is good, I suppose; but then it attempts to tie it to Eastern mysticism, which is troubling to anyone who actually understands the science.

But as a twenty-year-old -- even a twenty-year-old physics major -- I was captivated.  I went from there to Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics, which pushes further into the alleged link between modern physics and the wisdom of the ancients.  In an editorial review of the book, we read:

First published in 1975, The Tao of Physics rode the wave of fascination in exotic East Asian philosophies. Decades later, it still stands up to scrutiny, explicating not only Eastern philosophies but also how modern physics forces us into conceptions that have remarkable parallels...  (T)he big picture is enough to see the value in them of experiential knowledge, the limits of objectivity, the absence of foundational matter, the interrelation of all things and events, and the fact that process is primary, not things.  Capra finds the same notions in modern physics.

In part, I'm sure my positive reaction to these books was because I was in the middle of actually taking a class in quantum mechanics, and it was, to put not too fine a point on it, freakin' hard.  I had thought of myself all along as quick at math, but the math required for this class was brain-bendingly difficult.  It was a relief to escape into the less rigorous world of Capra and Zukav.

Read a quote from an article on quantum electrodynamics, chosen because it was one of the easier ones to understand:

(B)eing closed loops, (they) imply the presence of diverging integrals having no mathematical meaning.  To overcome this difficulty, a technique called renormalization has been devised, producing finite results in very close agreement with experiments. It is important to note that a criterion for theory being meaningful after renormalization is that the number of diverging diagrams is finite.  In this case the theory is said to be renormalizable.  The reason for this is that to get observables renormalized one needs a finite number of constants to maintain the predictive value of the theory untouched.  This is exactly the case of quantum electrodynamics displaying just three diverging diagrams.  This procedure gives observables in very close agreement with experiment as seen, e.g. for electron gyromagnetic ratio.

Compare that to Capra's take on things, in a quote from The Tao of Physics:

Modern physics has thus revealed that every subatomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction.  The dance of Shiva is the dancing universe, the ceaseless flow of energy going through an infinite variety of patterns that melt into one another.  For the modern physicists, then Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter.  As in Hindu mythology, it is a continual dance of creation and destruction involving the whole cosmos; the basis of all existence and of all natural phenomenon.  Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes.  In our times, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance.

[image courtesy of photographer Arvad Horpath and the Wikimedia Commons]

It all sounds nice, doesn't it?  No need for hard words like "renormalization" and "gyromagnetic ratio," no messy mathematics.  Just imagining particles dancing, waving around their four little quantum arms, just like Shiva.

The problem here, though, isn't just laziness; and I've commented on the laziness inherent in the woo-woo movement often enough that I don't need to write about it further.  But there's a second issue, one often overlooked by laypeople, and that is "mistaking analogy for reality."

Okay, I'll go so far as to say that the verbal descriptions of quantum mechanics sound like some of the "everything that happens influences everyone, all the time" stuff from Buddhism and Hinduism -- the interconnectedness of all, a concept that is explained in the beautiful allegory of "Indra's Net:"

Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions.  In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number.  There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold.  If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number.  Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.

But does this mean what some have claimed, that the Hindus discovered the underlying tenets of quantum mechanics millennia ago?

Hardly.  Just because two ideas have some similarities doesn't mean that they are, at their basis, saying the same thing.  You could say that Hinduism has some parallels to quantum mechanics -- parallels that I would argue are accidental, and not really all that persuasive when you dig into them more deeply.  But those parallels don't mean that Hinduism as a whole is true, or that the mystics who devised it were somehow prescient.

In a way, we science teachers are at fault for this, because so many of us teach by analogy.  I do it all the time: antibodies are like cellular trash tags; enzyme/substrate interactions are like keys and locks; the Krebs cycle is like a merry-go-round where two kids get on at each turn and two kids get off.  And hopefully, our analogies are transparent enough that no one comes away with the impression that they are describing what is really happening.  I have yet to see a student begin an essay on the Krebs cycle by talking about merry-go-rounds and children.

The line gets blurred, though, when the reality is so odd, and the actual description of it (i.e. the mathematics) so abstruse, that most non-scientists can't really wrap their brain around it.  Then there is a real danger of substituting a metaphor for the truth.  It's not helped by persuasive, charismatic writers like Capra and Zukav, nor the efforts of True Believers to cast the science as supporting their religious ideas, because it helps to prop up their own worldview (you can read an especially egregious example of this here).

After a time in my twenties when I was seduced by pretty allegories, I finally came to the conclusion that the reality was better -- and, in its own way, breathtakingly beautiful.  Take the time to learn what the science actually says, and I think you'll find it a damnsight more interesting and elegant than Shiva and Indra and the rest of 'em.  And best of all: it's actually true.

It was the best of times...

If there is a group of people I hate arguing with even more than I hate arguing with young-earth creationists, it's the conspiracy theorists.

At least the young-earth creationists just think I'm working for Satan, a charge that I can understand, considering their view of things.  Sure, we don't accept the same ground rules for proof (evidence versus revelation); sure, we have different conclusions regarding where you can apply the laws of scientific inference (damn near everywhere versus only places where it doesn't conflict with Holy Writ).

But at least we can talk.  The conspiracy theorists, you can't even have a civil discussion with.  They accuse you of either being stupid or else working for evil humans, both of which are in my opinion worse than working for Satan because stupidity and evil humans actually exist.  The worst part, though, is that they pretend to accept the principles of rational argument, but then when it comes down to the point, they don't, really.  You can bring out the best-researched study about the efficacy and safety of vaccines, the most convincing argument that 9/11 and Sandy Hook were not "inside jobs" or "false flags," the most persuasive evidence out there that HAARP has nothing to do with raising tsunamis or causing earthquakes.

And where does it get you?  They just write you off as a dupe or a shill.  It's the ultimate example of the False Dilemma Fallacy; if you don't agree with us, you're one of.... Them.

The problem in this country has gotten so bad that Kurt Eichenwald did a big piece in Vanity Fair on the topic this week, and you all should read it.  In fact, everyone in the civilized world should read it, because it's brilliant, even though it's depressing.  I'll give you a brief passage from it, but then I want you to go to the link and read the whole thing:

(W)e have become scientific and political illiterates, and no nation can survive on a bedrock of such delusional stupidity.  Of course, the 26 percent (or more) won’t believe me, if they manage to read this.  I’ll just be deemed an “elitist” for daring to suggest that demon science and data, rather than ridiculous conspiracy theories, should be used to judge reality.  So, it may be a losing battle, but we should all try.  I don’t want to be forced, someday, to stand by as the rest of the world renames our nation “America the Ignorant.”

It's a bit of a coincidence that I should come across this when I did, because it came on the heels of another article, one sent to me by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia, that details one of the most pervasive and bizarre conspiracy theories out there: that the US government in general, and FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) in particular, are laying plans to kill us all.

Apparently, the whole thing is supposed to be carried out via guillotine, which is at least creative, if messy.

And here, we find out what they have in store for us:

Code ICD 9 E 978 Makes Execution by Guillotine Legal Under Obamacare.  The specific code sent to me will make any American’s hair stand up on the back of their neck.  The code is ICD 9 E 978.  After reading this code I decided that it was my duty to investigate further and get to the bottom of why we have a medical code in the United States for “Legal Execution.”  The Jesuits are behind most conspiracies and this one is no different...  Execution by Guillotine is painless.

And I'm thinking: what the fuck does Obamacare have to do with this?  Was that just something extra to throw in, along with the Jesuits for some reason, the way that the anti-GMO crowd will throw in the name "Monsanto" as a stand-in for Hitler?

At least they tossed us the cheerful tidbit that getting your head sliced off is painless.  I'm relieved, actually, considering what other methods they could have chosen.

And any good news at all is reassuring, considering what's been going on:

Not too long ago, I received word that the information I received regarding the guillotines was not only accurate, it was actually being lobbied in Washington DC to get them legalized for governmental use!  The states I mentioned on my “current events” page a few years back was [sic] in fact GEORGIA & MONTANA as the recipients of these guillotines.  The information I had received was that 15,000 or 30,000 guillotines had been shipped to Georgia as well as Montana for safe keeping until such a time as they are needed.

Doesn't 30,000 guillotines seem a little like... overkill?  *rimshot*

But yes, they say, FEMA is "stockpiling guillotines," a phrase that I find to be funny in a gruesome sort of fashion.  Why would they need a "stockpile?"  It's not like you can only use them once, or anything.  During the French Revolution, Robespierre and his Band of Merry Men seemed to do quite well with only a few, running pretty much round the clock.

But the level of pretzel logic crosses some kind of line into "really scary" later in the article, wherein we read:

When the Democratic Underground reports that retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson tells a gathering of antigovernment “Patriots” that the federal government has set up 1,000 internment camps across the country and is storing 30,000 guillotines and a half-million caskets in Atlanta.  They’re there for the day the government finally declares martial law and moves in to round up or kill American dissenters, he says. “They’re going to keep track of all of us, folks,” Gunderson warns.

And that plays a nice little glissando on our fear-harp, doesn't it?  "They" will keep track of us.  The "dissenters" will be rounded up and done away with.  Using secret guillotines.  And our bodies will end up in secret caskets.  And worst of all, this will be done by the people who are supposed to be on our side.

Now, I hasten to add that I'm reasonably certain that none of it is true.  I'd be willing to lay money on the fact that there are no guillotines, no caskets, and that FEMA is your usual rather inept, bumbling excuse for a government agency, with no particular ill intent.  But as I said earlier; you can't convince the conspiracy theorists of that.  The fear is too high for them to admit that they could be wrong; it would require such a drastic revision of their entire worldview, their whole raison d'être, that even the thought must be painful.

Better to continue considering me a dupe, or worse, a pawn in the disinformation network.

It's tempting, sometimes, to give up trying to convince them.  The odds of overcoming such galloping paranoia seem slim.  But I agree with Eichenwald; and it seems fitting to end with another quote from him.

So, should you listen to me?  Of course not.  I’m not a scientist either.  But there is plenty of valid research, easily accessible through Google, that lays out the trends and issues surrounding the safety of vaccines and the changes in climate we experience.  But Americans, based on the PPP poll, would rather listen to celebrities.  Bottom line here is that American ignorance isn’t always just funny—it can be downright dangerous.