Fire and brimstone

There are times that I believe that whoever is running the universe has a wicked, wicked sense of humor.

Many of you will remember virulently anti-LGBT pastor James David Manning, of the Atlah World Missionary Church, who won the World Championship Weird Diatribe Award in 2014 by saying that no good Christian should patronize Starbucks because they put the "semen of sodomites" in their cappuccinos.  So the guy obviously has a screw loose, but that doesn't stop him from having parishioners flock to his church, nor did it prevent his getting a national venue for defending his epithet-laden, spittle-flecked screeds on Hannity & Colmes.

So I read with interest a new development regarding Manning and Atlah; he stands a good chance of losing his church building because of non-payment of creditors.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Manning, of course, isn't going to take this lying down.  His first response was, "We don’t owe the taxes.  We’re tax-exempt.  We’re a church, for crying out loud!"  Illustrating that he not only has odd attitudes toward sexuality and morality, he evidently doesn't understand the difference between "paying your debts" and "paying your taxes."

But according to Manning, the fact that he owes over a million dollars to various people and agencies is not why his building is being foreclosed.  "This foreclosure is a bogus foreclosure," he said, "inspired by the [New York City Mayor Bill] de Blasio administration, probably prompted by Obama, to finally try to shut up my very strong voice against this wicked and immoral activity of sodomy."

So you can imagine what he thought when he found out that the first agency in line to buy the building if he loses it is an organization...

... that helps homeless LGBT youth.

When I heard this, I tried to put myself in Pastor Manning's shoes.  And I think he... I mean, he must be...  it must be such a terrible... um...

BA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA *falls off chair*

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.  This is simply too perfect.  I know that as a staunch, if unorthodox and rather single-minded, evangelical Christian, he doesn't believe in karma.  But seriously.  It's almost like things were set up so as to give his particular sensibilities a painful twist.

Predictably, Manning himself was outraged.  When he found out about this, he held forth with a curse that is bizarre even by his standards:

The next time you get poked in the butt, a flame, when that man pulls that penis out of you, a flame will shoot out of you!  I got the word in my mouth!  You think AIDS was bad?  You ain’t seen nothing yet!  Thus sayeth the lord!  I’m the lord’s servant!  I’m the sodomite slayer!  You gonna see, it’s gonna be a wonder to behold!  You’re gonna see the power of God fall upon Harlem!  Tell these faggots, either they get outta town or flame and fire gonna come outta their butthole.  And anybody that sympathizes with ’em, they gonna have a flame shooting outta their vagina.  You gonna need asbestos panties!  God has sent the word!  Ye shall be justly afflicted!  God will destroy you!

Now I don't know about you, but I think the ability to shoot flames out of your ass isn't an affliction, it's a superpower.  Just think of what that could do!  If some bigoted jerk starts hurling epithets at an innocent gay guy, all he has to do is turn around, drop trou, and toast the sucker.

And I won't even get into how a vaginal flamethrower would be a serious deterrent to rape.

So anyway.   Manning was unhinged to begin with, but at this point it sounds like he's completely lost his grip.  The foreclosure hearing is supposed to occur later this month, so stay tuned.  Because I think that no matter what happens, we're in for some fireworks.

Literal or metaphorical.

Knowing the score

New from the "Merciful Heavens, Please Tell Me We're Not Fighting This Nonsense Again" department, officials at the New York State Department of Education are proposing using student scores on AP exams and the SAT test as a means for evaluating teachers and administrators.

How many times does it need to be said?  Standardized test scores are not a measure of teacher effectiveness.  Okay, if I was completely incompetent, my AP Biology students would probably all tank the exam.  But beyond that, my students' scores are far more indicative of their ability to comprehend technical material, their curiosity, and their work ethic than it is of anything I happen to be doing.  I have had years where every single student in my class has gotten a score of 3 or above (usually sufficient to obtain college credit).  Other years, I have not had a single 5 (the highest score) and a commensurately high number of 1s and 2s.  What happened?  Was I competent one year and completely ineffective the next?

Add to that the fact that the College Board, in their infinite wisdom, completely restructured the exam four years ago, and I don't think the scores actually mean much of anything from the standpoint of what I am doing in class.

The SATs are even worse.  I used to teach SAT math prep courses in the evening until I became so frustrated by the "learn how to game the test" approach of most of the curricula we used that I decided to make extra pocket money a different way.  My considered opinion is that your SAT exam score tells you exactly one thing -- how well you did on the SAT test.  A study two years ago found little correlation between SAT score and success in college.  More troubling still is the fact that the one of the strongest correlations of SAT exam scores is with parental income; on average, students from the wealthiest families outperformed the students from the poorest families...

... by 400 points.

So is the idea here to further penalize teachers and administrators who work in schools in high-poverty areas?  Because that's sure as hell what it sounds like.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

New York State education officials are either unaware of these problems or else are ignoring them.  Ira Schwartz, Assistant Commissioner of Education, said in a memo, "The proposed changes would recognize efforts to encourage student participation and success in college preparation courses."

And unfairly penalize schools and teachers where other factors interfere with student success in these measures.  So Schwartz and Mary Ellen Elia, the State Commissioner, are either being disingenuous or else are once again proposing using standardized test scores as a way of instituting a top-down micromanagement approach that stifles creativity, destroys morale, and virtually eliminates local control.

"In December, the state’s education policymaking body suspended the use of those tests in teacher evaluations for the next four years," wrote Monica Disare in Chalkbeat New York.  "The moratorium is meant to give the education department time to redo the evaluation system.  This announcement, especially the references to SAT, AP, and other exams, offer early signs of how state officials will sort out that task and which new metrics they are exploring."

Also some early signs that what we're looking at is more of the same.  Evidently the Test 'Em Till They Can't See Straight approach, both here and in other states, has not been diminished despite objections from educators and the increasingly powerful opt-out movement.  You have to wonder what would make a difference.  Perhaps when they realize that they're driving experienced teachers from the profession, and discouraging college students from pursuing education as a career.

Or maybe that will just give them the impetus to gut the public school system completely, and replace it with corporate-run for-profit schools designed on the factory model.  Which is increasingly seeming like what they want.

Jones vs. Beck vs. reality

It's always amusing when two conspiracy theorists go for each other rather than spending their time calling the rest of us sheeple.

This time it is Glenn Beck and the fortunately inimitable Alex Jones, who have come to verbal blows -- no physical ones yet, at least that I am aware of -- over the presidential race.

First, we had Beck throwing down the gauntlet when he reacted angrily to political commentator Matt Drudge photoshopping Marco Rubio to look like a midget.  "I don't know what the hell has happened to Matt Drudge," Beck said.  "Ever since he started hanging out with Alex Jones, he's gone to this weird conspiratorial place where you can't even trust the news coming from him any more."

Notwithstanding that Beck himself is a complete fruit loop who appeared in a Huffington Post article three years ago entitled "The Top 9 Glenn Beck Conspiracy Theories," which featured such gems as:

• Obama advisor Cass Sunstein is a Nazi who is going to create a "Second Bill of Rights," so we all need to buy guns right away.
• Don't use Google, because They are watching everything you do and you'll end up getting arrested.
• The Entertainment Industry Foundation -- presumably including honorary board member Rupert Murdoch -- are "Maoists" who are taking over all media to push a communist agenda.
• President Obama is going to release Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, currently in prison for his involvement in 9/11, as a way of appeasing his Muslim friends in Egypt.
• The Department of Education, through a secret protocol called "System X," is deploying sensors in chairs in public school classrooms -- and also portable MRI machines -- as a way of collecting information on students for thought control.

Have you noticed a commonality between all of these?  Besides the fact that in order to believe any of them, you'd have to have a quarter pound of Laffy Taffy where the rest of us have a brain?

That's right: none of them actually happened.

But Glenn Beck is too smart to let a little thing like a zero batting average discourage him.  So he has now accused Matt Drudge of taking his marching orders from Alex Jones to discredit Beck's favorite presidential candidates (Rubio and Cruz).

And far be it from Alex Jones to take that lying down.  Especially given that he thinks that Donald Trump represents the Second Coming of Christ at the very least.  So he responded with a diatribe that even by his standards is pretty extreme.  Here's an excerpt:

The cult leader, Glenn Beck, he is now an official religious cult leader.  He’s the false prophet and his messiah is Ted Cruz...  Beck is a cynical, twisted, weirdo who will end up destroying himself. He is an egomaniac, super-narcissist, probably psychotic, in my view, and he’s insane and wants to be a cult leader. 

Moses has returned, you didn’t know?  The two prophets of Revelation, it’s Ted Cruz and Glenn Beck, you didn’t know?  He says it’s a priesthood he’s starting.  Oh yeah?  Oh really?  The liberal, hardcore shock jock that was hired right before 9/11 and gotten ready to come out to be the synthetic Alex Jones?  I’ve been told that by the executives involved where they sat — and he’s an actor — and watched weeks of my videos and shows and said, "Take this and mix it with Oprah." That’s what I was told by the executives that used to run his operation.  He’s a mixture of Oprah Winfrey and Alex Jones, all in a big, weird doughboy’s body.  A cult leader.  A Nellie high priest.  Scared to death, by the way, dozens of security people.

So I guess that told Beck a thing or two.

Me, I find the whole thing hilarious, given that my contention is that they're both a few fries short of a Happy Meal.  After all, do the adjectives Jones used to describe Beck -- egocentric, super-narcissist, probably psychotic -- sound like anyone else you can think of?

Hello, Pot?  This is the kettle...

So anyway.  While the rest of us sit back with a bowl of popcorn to watch the hilarity, two of the conspiracy world's inadvertent comic geniuses do their best to tear each other limb from limb.  Like I said: fine with me.  The more time they spend doing that, the less time they'll have to try to convince anyone else.

Different strokes

So once again, a member of the extreme evangelical fringe of Christianity has launched a campaign against our taking pleasure in something which we are biologically hard-wired to find pleasant.

Mack Major, a Christian writer from Philadelphia who owns the site Eden Decoded, has written an article that claims we shouldn't masturbate because masturbation can "summon a sex demon."

Here's a direct quote, in case you think I am making this up:

There are such things are sex demons.  And the danger in masturbating is that one could inadvertantly [sic] summon a sex demon to attach itself to you through the act of masturbating.  And once that demon attaches, it is difficult to get it to leave.  It will drive you to masturbate, even when you don’t want to. You’ll be hit with urges to play with yourself so powerful that only an orgasm will allow you some temporary relief.

Notwithstanding the fact that if this were true, the millions of teenage boys worldwide would be keeping the sex demons busy 24/7, Major seems convinced that by engaging in what a friend of mine calls "shaking hands with the unemployed" you are writing yourself a one-way express ticket to hell.

Major is also vehemently against any use of gadgets for increasing your enjoyment, even if those are used with a partner.  Erotic toys provide yet another means of ingress for those pesky sex demons:

Many of you who are reading this have sex toys in your possession right now.  And whether you want to accept it as fact or not: those sex toys are an open portal between the demonic realm and your own life.  As long as you have those sex toys in your home, you have a doorway that can allow demons to not only access your life at will, but also to torment you, hinder and destroy certain parts of your life as it relates to sex and your relationships.

Which highlights yet again my disagreement with the devoutly religious over the definition of the word "fact."

Besides the scary sex demons, it turns out that pleasuring yourself can also cause volcanic eruptions, and he's not using that in its justifiable metaphorical sense.  He means literal volcanic eruptions.  He tells us all about the pornographic scenes found on the walls of Pompeii, many of which involved the god Priapus, who was depicted as a naked dude with an enormous hard-on.  And he links that directly to what happened:

He [Priapus] was really popular in the ancient city of Pompeii… The walls of many of the homes and palaces were painted with detaield frescos of very graphic pornographic sexual scenes… Keep in mind that Pompeii was suddenly destroyed and thousands of lives were wiped out in an instant.

So yeah, that was a really unhappy ending.  Be that as it may, it's hard to see the pyroclastic flow from Vesuvius as having anything to do with jacking off, or there'd be a major explosion underneath every adult theater in the United States every single night.  And the headquarters of PornHub would right now simply be a giant smoking crater.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The exasperating thing about all this is that masturbation is 100% normal, nearly everyone does it, it relieves stress, helps you sleep, and (for men) decreases the risk of prostate cancer.  What we have here is simply another way for the extremely religious to make everyone feel guilty, uptight, and anxious over something entirely harmless, and to maintain their control by convincing their followers that they're hellbound if they don't follow the leader's advice to the letter.

Major ends by telling us one last cautionary note:

When we imagine having sex with another via masturbation, we are actually summoning the power of the spirit realm to manifest the thing we are imagining.

Which is patently ridiculous, because if this were true, Kate Beckinsale and Liam Hemsworth would never have a free moment.

So anyway.  My advice is: in the privacy of your own home, do what comes naturally, enjoy it, and find something else to fret about.  I'm guessing that even if there is a supreme deity, he/she/it has much better things to do in Universe Management than keeping track of what you do in your "Alone Time."

Debate debacle

I have a particular aversion to seeing people humiliate themselves.  I remember as a kid watching sitcoms on television, and when I knew a character -- even one who richly deserved it -- was going to be put in an embarrassing situation, I often couldn't bear to watch it.

Still, there are certain exceptions.  I have to admit to experiencing an emotion that can only be described as "glee" when I heard that Sarah Palin was going to debate Bill Nye on the topic of climate change.

What, it wasn't bad enough that Ken Ham had his ass handed to him in a debate with Nye?  Ham at least is somewhat articulate, even if he doesn't seem to understand the concept of "evidence."  Palin, on the other hand, often seems to be speaking in some weird dialect that involves replacing every third word with a randomly chosen noun or verb.

Either that, or she does her speeches while drunk.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So a Nye vs. Palin debate would basically be Godzilla vs. Daffy Duck.  It would be worth watching purely for the comedic value.

However, I did wonder what Nye thought he stood to gain by debating her.  When your opponent has a fourth grade vocabulary and thinks that saying "You betcha" followed by a finger-gun constitutes a valid talking point, there's nothing much you can do that will have any effect.  Especially given that the topic is science.

So it was with combined disappointment and relief -- along with saying, "Aha.  That makes better sense" -- that I found out that Nye isn't actually debating Palin.

Palin is debating clips from speeches on climate change Nye has made.

So in effect, she'll have a cardboard cutout of Bill Nye standing there, play some carefully chosen sound bites, state her rebuttals, and declare victory.

The whole spectacle is set to coincide with the release of the petroleum-industry-sponsored propaganda piece Climate Hustle, which will be about as scientifically valid as Andrew Wakefield's anti-vaxx film Vaxxed that caused such a kerfuffle when it was pulled from showing at the Tribeca Film Festival.  The difference is that the anti-science climate change deniers and Tea Party right wingers like Sarah Palin are being funded by people like the Koch brothers, who have considerably deeper pockets than the anti-vaxxers do, and therefore far more influence.

Despite my reluctance to watch a long exercise in self-humiliation, I might watch the Sarah Palin climate change "debate."  If for no other reason, to pick up a few more lines like the following, part of a speech in 2011 in which she was trying to talk about the bravery of Paul Revere:

He who warned, uh, the British that they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms, uh, by ringing those bells, and um, makin' sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed.

Yeah!  Right!  What?

So I wonder what she'll have to say about anthropogenic climate change.  And whether she can pronounce "anthropogenic."  My advice: tune in on May 2.  When else will you have the opportunity to watch the spectacle of a person being defeated in a debate by someone who isn't, technically, there?

Vaccination vitriol

If you react to people challenging your beliefs by calling them frauds, shills, or sellouts, it's a pretty good indication that you're on shaky ground yourself.

The topic comes up because of the response the anti-vaxxers had to the shift in allegiance of a woman named Carmit, whose decision not to be vaccinated for whooping cough resulted in her newborn contracting the disease.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Carmit realized her role in her infant's illness, and made a plea for pregnant women to receive a whooping cough booster so that others would not have to go through what she and her daughter did.  "I wish I could turn back time," she said.

Her widely-publicized video brought the anti-vaxxers howling out of the woodwork.  Here's a sampling of the vitriol Carmit had thrown her way.

From someone who evidently has never heard of the No True Scotsman fallacy (or punctuation):

[I]f she's a true anti-vaxxer she'd know about viral shedding from a recently vaxxed person coming too close to her baby It's a RED HERRING The PR trolls must be getting desperate to stoop to this crap You can almost see them sitting around their table working out their next strategy to divide and conquer the "troops"

Well, to start with, whooping cough is caused by a bacteria (Bordetella pertussis), not a virus.  And even with a vaccine for a viral disease, you don't "shed" live virus after being vaccinated.  But why bother with science, right?

Then we have someone saying that there's no way that an honest person could have evaluated the facts and changed her mind:

What a crock of crap.  No anti vaxxer upon learning the truth, there is no going back... ever. 

Then she started to have accusations of being a fake, someone hired by the hospital or the pharmaceuticals industry to hoodwink people:

This woman looks so familiar im [sic] trying to find out from where...  I know I jave [sic] seen her before and thats [sic] a bit sus [sic] as i too think it might all be made up

I just wonder if it's a made up story and she's a paid pharma actor.  Can anyone get her image and use google image search to see if you can find her real name. 

Shill!  She should be ashamed of herself!

Then we heard about how the hospital set the whole thing up:

So many weeks in hospital, sleep deprived, you can be brainwashed to believe anything and they push hard at you with multiple doctors.  My suspicion is that they gave the baby antibiotics which makes whooping cough worse and they have taken advantage of her and got her to read from a script. 

After that, the accusations became even wilder -- including that Carmit's daughter in the video was actually a doll:

GC health is running a campaign to increase pregnant mum vaccines.  The lady is a paid actor with a doll.  It's going ballistic and makeing [sic] people think pregnant women need a shot to save their baby from whooping c.

I'm 95% sure she's holding a doll. 

The kids [sic] neck looks like it's about to break and you never see it move or breath during the whole video.  The lady really does have a baby but this may just be a fake to scare us all. 

Sweetie this is a fake prop baby.  I've been in the film industry for over 25 years.  She is an actress and that is a doll.  Jeez. 

Others chimed in with suggestions for what she could have done instead:

That's Bullshit she doesn't need willing [sic] cough vax she just needs to build up immune system with colloidal silver.

Right.  Colloidal silver.  Which besides being generally useless, has as a side effect turning your skin blue-gray -- permanently.

And then we hear that this is a false flag to distract us from discredited anti-vaxx researcher Andrew Wakefield's film Vaxxed, which came out on the same day as Carmit posted her video:

This story came out on the same day that Vaxxed was released.  The biggest load of crap propaganda.  Have you watched the video?  Obviously an actor.  And her "baby" doesn't move or even breathe.  I call bullshit.

And finally, we reach Conspiracy Theory Nirvana, wherein we find out that the entire story is made up -- neither Carmit nor her baby is real:

That whole story is made up.  It's part of the pro-vax campaign.  Campaigns are organised, so this story is too.  The story is full of contradictions and other absurdities.  Even if you don't know anything about the topic then still it's a very strange story that should raise a lot of red flags.

The whole thing is nauseating.  It's appalling that someone would be so desperate to cling to their counterfactual stance that they would respond to a challenge with slander, accusations of lying, and even doubts that the challenger exists.  What, are you so sure of yourself that you can't imagine anyone looking at the facts and coming to a different conclusion?

Or are you just aware you're on such thin ice that you lash out at anyone who points it out?

In any case, I'll end with a wish for continued good health for Carmit and her daughter.  I'm deeply sorry that on top of illness, you're having to put up with threats, accusations, and libel.  But at least this shows up the anti-vaxxers for what they are; anti-science, anti-fact, and more concerned with their preconceived notions than they are with truth or compassion.

Here comes the sun

If you needed further evidence of why we need sound science education -- and what happens when we don't -- look no further than "Sun Gazing: Why I Stare At the Sun," over at the site in5d Esoteric, Metaphysical, and Spiritual Database.

And in case you're thinking, "No... that headline can't really mean what it sounds like it means," unfortunately it does.

[image courtesy of NASA]

Right out of the starting gate, we're told that all of the stuff we've been told about sun exposure causing skin cancer, skin damage, and sun blindness is wrong.  "All of these things," the author tells us, "have little to do really with the sun."

In fact, the opposite is true.  Sun exposure heals melanoma.

So then, what causes skin cancer and sun blindness?  Respectively, the answers are: toxins (of course), and...

... glasses.

Lest you think I'm making this up, here's the relevant passage:

Your skin is your largest eliminatory organ, whereby unprocessed toxins are released through the skin’s pores. Interactions between the toxins and the sun’s rays, bring about what we know of, as skin cancer. 

Skin damage, such as leathering of the skin, is caused by lack of EFA’s in the diet. Sun blindness or damage to the eyes, is caused by the use of corrective lenses. Glasses, and contact lenses both, cause an unnatural glare on the eyes, when exposed to the sun. This can cause serious damage to the eyes over time.

EFAs are never defined in the article, but I found out that it stands for "essential fatty acids," i.e., linoleic acid and alpha-linoleic acid.  So apparently if you consume enough of those, sunburn isn't a problem.

We're also told that sunscreen causes cancer.  So use sesame oil instead.  Presumably that way you'll hear a nice crackling sound as you sit in the sun, similar to chicken wings hitting the oil in a deep fat fryer.

Then we get to the main gist of the article, which suggests that we spend up to fifteen minutes a day staring at the sun.  It has to be near sunrise or sunset, though:

The practice entails looking at the rising or setting sun one time per day only during the safe hours.  No harm will come to your eyes during the morning and evening safe hours.  The safe hours are anytime within 1-hour window after sunrise or anytime within the 1-hr window before sunset.  It is scientifically proven beyond a reasonable doubt that during these times, one is free from UV and IR rays exposure, which is harmful to your eyes.

Righty-o.  It is "scientifically proven" that the sun waits for an hour after rising to switch on its ultraviolet and infrared rays, probably after it's had its second cup of coffee.

Then we're given a variety of puzzling statements and directives:

• Food makes us commit the maximum pain to others and exploit others. 
• You have to walk barefoot for 45 minutes for the rest of your life. 
• The sun energy or the sunrays passing through the human eye are charging the hypothalamus tract, which is the pathway behind the retina leading to the human brain.  As the brain receives the power supply through this pathway, it is activated into a brainutor.  One of the software programs inherent in the brain will start running and we will begin to realize the changes since we will have no mental tension or worries.
• 70 to 80% of the energy synthesized from food is taken by the brain and is used up in fueling tensions and worries.
• The Pineal gland has certain psychic and navigational functions.  Navigational means one can fly like the birds.
• After 6-months of sungazing you will start to have the original form of micro food, which is our sun.  Additionally, this can avoid the toxic waste that you take into your body while you eat regular food.
• Photosynthesis, which we misunderstand, does not in fact need chlorophyll.

So science be damned, apparently.  But that won't matter to you, because after nine months of staring at the sun, "you have become a solar cooker."

And no, I did not make that statement up, either.

It's kind of funny that despite the fact that the author is unequivocal about how wonderful sun gazing is, (s)he seems to be aware that this article is 100% unadulterated horseshit.  At the beginning of the article is the following disclaimer:

PLEASE NOTE: This sungazing information is for educational purposes only. We do not recommend sungazing to anyone. If you are considering sun gazing, please research this as much as possible.

I dunno, sure as hell sounded like you were recommending it to me.  But in case we were uncertain about that point, it's reiterated at the end:

Disclaimer: The information on this web site is presented for the purpose of educational and free exchange of ideas and speech in relation to health and awareness only. It is not intended to diagnose any physical or mental condition. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice and treatment of a licensed professional. The author of this website is neither a legal counselor nor a health practitioner and makes no claims in this regard.

I'm no legal expert either, but what does the statement "After 3-6 months of sun gazing, physical diseases will start to be cured" sound like to you?

As far as I can see, you can't just give people bogus medical advice and then get away with it by saying at the end, "Please note: This bogus medical advice is not actually medical advice!"

I'd like to think that no one is gullible enough to fall for this, but you just know that there will be people who are.  Right now there are probably people out there staring at the sun in order to activate the higher vibrations of their chakras, or some such nonsense, and will spend the rest of the day walking into walls because they've burned a hole directly through their retinas.

At this point in writing this blog, I'm beginning to lose my sympathy for the people who are getting suckered.  There are laws in place to protect people from being prey of fraudulent medical advice, but at some point you just have to learn enough science to protect yourself.  There will always be charlatans out there trying to sell the newest variety of snake oil, not to mention well-intentioned people who are (to put not too fine a point on it) insane.  So arming yourself with a little bit of science is really your best bet.

That, or a good pair of sunglasses.