Author Archive for Bing

Atlanta Skeptics’ StarParty

Published
by
Bing
on September 3, 2010
.
Totally awesome.

I sort of met Dr. Rachael Dunlop, Brian Dunning, Pamela Gay, Fraser Cain, an assload of Skepchicks. George Hrab was playing "I Am the Walrus" when we left. Oh! I held Little Nommington! (And here I thought the whole time that the walrus was Paul.) I took a picture, but I can't find my damned camera cable, which sort of defeats the purpose of getting a not-junky camera, does it not?

I could have stayed longer, honestly. I'm looking forward to the Con, however.

Here's wombat combat:


HJ

Dragon*Con is almost…almost here

Published
by
Bing
on September 2, 2010
.
Tonight, the Atlanta Skeptics are hosting their Star Party. A number of luminaries will be there, shining so brightly that we won't be able to see a damned thing. The physics department at Emory is hosting the event. It is the kicking off of what promises to be a positively bonkers weekend. I am going to grab audio and just enjoy the hell out of myself this weekend.

Man, I need this.

HJ

Laundry is the work of fools…

Published
by
Bing
on September 1, 2010
.
No way am I doing laundry right now. Not a chance! Unfortunately, I'm going to have to do a week's worth tomorrow, no doubt about it. Need to have clean pants for Dragon*Con. But I can tell you right now that I am going to be stocking up on nerdy tshirts like crazy when I am there. It's what it's there for.

Tonight, I read Thomas Kuhn and refamiliarize myself with his Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I have a pretty good handle on it and could teach it cold, but after a dull-as-dirt class on Monday, I feel like I should reward my students for surviving the "deciphering my comments" lecture. And that means not only knowing my shit, but really being on top of my game.

Tomorrow, we are talking about logical fallacies, which are always a hoot. Maybe I should read How to Think About Weird Things tonight instead, because if I remember correctly the author(s?) did a good job of categorizing logical fallacies in there. We'll see.

If you have any further questions about my minute-to-minute ponderings, whereabouts or pedagogy, check back here obsessively.

HJ

My cat left me a present…

Published
by
Bing
on September 1, 2010
.
I came home and found the following item waiting for me in my printer tray:


I decided that my cat had been sitting on the printer, hit "copy," then had second thoughts and jumped down. After that, she sniffed the glass because of the strange moving light bar.

HJ

Send FoxNews the bill…

Published
by
Bing
on August 31, 2010
.
FoxNews, you twisted fucks. You are monsters.

Basic sociology and history show that when people with a public platform demonize and scapegoat, the victims become targets of violence. FoxNews is the cause, violence against Muslims is the effect.


HJ


More offensive than black face…

Published
by
Bing
on August 31, 2010
.
From Daniel at Unreasonable Faith:


If he starts on your leg, it's best to just let him finish. And don't laugh. This bastard mauled a cast member of Cats.

HJ

I have a student who is not going to learn a damned thing…

Published
by
Bing
on August 30, 2010
.
I have a bad feeling. A student of mine came up to me, the same student who said that he was spiritual and wondered if he would have a problem with the class, and asked about a comment I had made on his paper. He said said something like, "For centuries people have willingly misinterpreted the Bible." My comment was that you need to back this up with evidence to pull it out of the realm of conspiracy theory. I explained that he claimed knowledge of the inner working of minds collaborating mischievously over generations, unlikely on several counts.

He just smirked the whole time.

He's not going to learn a damned thing.

HJ



Half a million hits…

Published
by
Bing
on August 29, 2010
.
Folks, tonight this disreputable little lark of a website had its 500,000th hit, and for once the person searching was not looking for pictures of Lisa Edelstein's tits. I had been watching the hit counter for a while now in anticipation of this, but a strange thing happened tonight. My little post about biblical astronomy was on reddit and then on stumbleupon. It kept me up a little late tonight, but it was worth it to see the odometer turn over, as it were.


Thanks very much, folks. I do appreciate it.

HJ

I have always wondered whether or not blogger, useless service that it is, has a limit on how long your titles are. I mean, will it simply not acc….

Published
by
Bing
on August 29, 2010
.
Apparently it won't. I thought I would try.

My day almost completely without event. Seriously. Nothing is going on right now. I got up late, was outside for like 5 minutes, napped, and now it's drizzling just enough that I'm not gonna go for a walk. I did try to teach myself "Get Back" on the guitar, but only had moderate success. I am actually waiting to go back to it a little later. It's amazing what a little familiarity and sleep can do for your playing/practicing abilities.

I think ennui squirrel, who has been a regular at the pile of seeds I put out on my porch, has gotten into a scrape or something. He had a wicked damned slice right above his hind leg just behind the ribs. Fur was ripped away and I think it looks like an animal bite (maybe he got tossed around by a dog or something?). But he was nomming, so things can't be that bad.

So, off to look up readings for my students! Yay! By which I mean, Damn!

HJ

My students bringing me scientific evidence for the historicity of the Bible

Published
by
Bing
on August 28, 2010
.
I hate to piddle on students' parades, and I have a feeling that we will be talking about religious beliefs a lot in my current class.

At any rate, on Wednesday, we were discussing the question of how we know that something has happened. One student raised her hand and said, "Documentary evidence, like when the Bible says that there was a 3-hour eclipse when Jesus died."

Yikes, I thought.

"Well, who's your source?"

"Oh, it was in a workbook for a summer thing that I did once." I said I would need to see the evidence before I could comment.

So she brought in her workbook on her own initiative. "This is better than me just saying it in class," she said.

"No. Yeah. Great," I said as I tried to read it.

The idea was that Eusebius of Caesarea, who quoted Phlegon who lived a hundred years after the fact, said that there had been a complete eclipse in the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad, in 32/33 CE.

How accurate is that statement? Tonight, I have time to check.

Well, assuming that the eclipse mentioned in the original account was seen in Olympia, I plugged in the longitude and latitude of Olympia using the NASA eclipse predictor. Just realize that the "Eclipse Obs." value of a total eclipse would be 1.000:

Section 4: Eclipse Predictions

Solar Eclipses visible from

Latitude:37° 39' 00" N
Longitude:21° 39' 00" E
Altitude:107m
Time Zone:02:00 E

Calendar Date

Eclipse Obs.

A or T Eclipse Duration

1-Jun-10

0.042(r)

-

4-Apr-08

0.498

-

5-Mar-28

0.429

-

5-Sep-22

0.152(r)

-

6-Sep-11

0.21

-

7-Feb-06

0.049

-

17-Feb-15

0.995

-

19-Jun-21

0.63

-

20-Dec-03

0.507

-

24-Sep-21

0.605

-

25-Sep-10

0.006

-

26-Feb-06

0.588

-

29-Nov-24

0.786

-

32-Apr-28

0.161

-

33-Sep-12

0.024

-

34-Sep-01

0.342

-

39-Dec-04

0.128

-

45-Aug-01

0.366

-

49-May-20

0.621

-

52-Mar-19

0.16

-


There were no total or annular eclipses in the first 52 years following Jesus' birth that were visible from Olympia. But the Bible suggests that the eclipse was visible in Jerusalem. OK, so let's go to Jerusalem for roughly the same time period:

Section 3: Eclipse Predictions

Solar Eclipses visible from Jerusalem, ISRAEL

Latitude:31° 46' 00" N
Longitude:35° 14' 00" E
Altitude:808.9m
Time Zone:02:00 E

Calendar Date

Eclipse Obs.

A or T Eclipse Duration

1-Jun-10

0.498(r)

-

4-Apr-08

0.214

-

5-Mar-28

0.392(s)

-

5-Sep-22

0.4

-

6-Sep-11

0.096

-

17-Feb-15

0.624

-

19-Jun-21

0.583

-

20-Dec-03

0.699

-

24-Sep-21

0.184(s)

-

26-Feb-06

0.665

-

27-Jan-26

0.035

-

29-Nov-24

0.906

-

32-Apr-28

0.009

-

33-Sep-12

0.101

-

34-Sep-01

0.205

-

38-Jun-21

0.007

-

39-Dec-04

0.042

-

41-Apr-19

0.021

-

45-Aug-01

0.567

-

49-May-20

0.891

-

52-Mar-19

0.54

-


Nothing even fucking close.

I suggested to my students that they investigate the claim using astronomical software that is publicly available to see if there was a natural eclipse that occurred. We'll see if they did in class. It is important, I think, that when I talk to them, I preface the discussion with an assurance that I took what they showed me seriously enough to look it up. Better yet, I could invite the student to my office to research the question with me during my office hours.

HJ

Ready for Dragon*Con’s Skeptrack

Published
by
Bing
on August 27, 2010
.
I can hardly wait. Nervous energy. Smiles. Happiness. Yay!

So what am I most excited about? It's hard to say, really. I'm delighted that James Randi will be there. I am perfectly pleased that Fraser Cane and Pamela Gay will be there. I caught Pamela's discussion of the Big Bang last year, and it was extremely elegant and I have been hooked on their show ever since. I'd probably still be doing astronomy if the current online resources had been around when I was in high school. Of course, on the flip side, there is a good chance I would have spent my long, lonely high school years inside watching online porn. So it's kind of a wash, really.

George Hrab. Bonus. Rebecca Watson. Cool. Adam Savage will be that really awesome reddish speck off in the distance. The Skeptic Zoners...triple awesome cool with bonus accents!

Ah, so much fun. I'm going to go back and read my old Dragon*Con posts. Whee!

HJ


Vacationing in the Uncanny Valley

Published
by
Bing
on August 26, 2010
.
First, the "evil starfish," a robot that generates a representation of itself through experimentation. Watch what happens when the thing is "injured":


The next one, when it shows "mad," is all of my fears of a robot uprising embodied:


HJ

White Supremacist Poetry Slam!

Published
by
Bing
on August 26, 2010
.
I thought about directing you to the dating advice page of Stormfront, which I discovered while looking for some white supremacist poetry to slam. I decided against it on the grounds that they really are that pathetic.

That aside, as many of you know, I occasionally try to contribute to the community by offering my skills as an English teacher to people who clearly have no education, the members of Stormfront. This week, our rotten little hemorrhoid is called "Arise," and I'd rather be punched in the junk than read it again, thank you:

Click to embiggen.

HJ

This is mind-blowingly unbe-freaking-lievable

Published
by
Bing
on August 25, 2010
.
You know, in the last two weeks I have been despairing over the media's approach to the Muslim Center in Lower Manhattan, but I never once dreamed that even Fox could be so cynical or so hateful. Mindless and sociopathic like any other corporation, but this... (the snippet might not show in blogger because it's blogger):

BLOGGER SUCKS!

The Daily Show makes a point, they don't name him. This hints at evil, willful withholding of vital information.

The last time that Alwaleed bin Talal was interviewed by Fox, on 10 January of this year, Neil Cavuto somehow managed to get the memo that this guy was a shareholder:
CAVUTO: Now, I should disclose, as I did at the outset, Your Highness, that you are a big believer in News Corp, my parent company, no doubt driven by the fact that I work here, which is fine. [...]

ALWALEED: Yes. I'll confirm that I'm an investor in News Corp, the mother company of FOX News and the FOX brand. And I'm invested in it since -- (inaudible) -- years ago. And I consider my investment with Mr. Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch not an investment, as an alliance. That's a core investment that will never be sold, never be sold. This strategic investment, an alliance with the Murdoch family.
So...WTF?

So, what else has the Jesus-raping terrorist said? He's of course made proclamations against America:
CAVUTO: OK. Prince Alwaleed, three weeks ago tomorrow, on Christmas Day, we had what some feared would have be another terrorist incident, the so-called underwear bomber. And it has prompted a number of responses since. The president was slow to respond to it. That maybe in this country we ought to get back to profiling. If you look Muslim, then you're going to be pulled aside on the line. What do you think of that?

BIN TALAL: Well, you can criticize the Bush administration as much as you want, but you have to confirm that since 9/11 not a single terrorist act took place in the United States. I mean, the Bush administration was very tough on that and I believe that the United States has to continue on that path, no doubt about that.

CAVUTO: Are you saying that this president is not?

BIN TALAL: I'm not saying that. You're saying that Mr. Cavuto. What I'm saying is that...

CAVUTO: No, I just asked you about how you felt about this president.

BIN TALAL: No, I understand.

What I am saying is that this president has to prove to the United States that he is a Democrat and he is as tough as Bush. Now, this...
(CROSSTALK)

CAVUTO: Do you think he is?

BIN TALAL: Well, I mean, when it comes to national security of the United States, there is no doubt about that. No one could blink at all.

CAVUTO: Right.

BIN TALAL: At all.

And the -- this underwear terrorist, attempted terrorist act, proves that. That you cannot at all be lenient against any potential terrorist act that's in the United States.

CAVUTO: Do you think we should profile?

BIN TALAL: I'm not sure about profiling, but I think we should be very, in general, very cautious and concerned about having any terrorist act committed on the soil of the United States. You're on the verge of having terrorist act committed on U.S. soil. Thanks God it was prevented.
Holy shit. This guy is such a bad-ass terrorist, he actually wants us to profile! That's pretty cold. No...wait the other thing.

But clearly he's watching that terrorist station Al-Jazeera, where he gets his marching orders from!
MR. CAVUTO: So what do you watch? CNN or us?

PRINCE AL-WALEED: No, I watch FOX for sure, and I watch you, I watch O'Reilly, I watch Huckabee.

MR. CAVUTO: You watch O'Reilly?

PRINCE AL-WALEED: Oh, I watch everybody.
Haha! Just like Sarah Palin!
And I watch CNN also.

MR. CAVUTO: What do you think of O'Reilly?

PRINCE AL-WALEED: What?

MR. CAVUTO: What do you think of O'Reilly?

PRINCE AL-WALEED: He's good.

MR. CAVUTO: Really?

PRINCE AL-WALEED: He's like you, he's good. (Laughter.) He's a bit too extreme. I'd rather have him moderate a little bit.

MR. CAVUTO: I tell him he's a bit low key, he's got to ramp it up.

PRINCE AL-WALEED: He's low key? No, no. If he's low key, what? (Laughter.)
Fox and Friends, you are fucking disgraceful. You are the sub-shit of news. How the fuck you can look yourselves in the mirror without killing yourselves is beyond me, you hateful, vile abortions.

HJ

Darwin, Vaccinations and Mexicans

Published
by
Bing
on August 24, 2010
.
Today I was printing up the posters at the library for the Hug Me, I'm Vaccinated campaign, which will hit Dragon*Con in a mere nine days. Nine!

While I was printing, the attendant came up to me, looked at the table where the posters were drying, and asked, "Whooping cough?"

"There's an epidemic in California right now. You know, I was reading something from the 1950s the other day [not really the other day, but it was Martin Gardner and it may have been from the 1960s], and the author was talking about how polio was being destroyed and soon whooping cough too would be a thing of the past. It's sad to think that such a clearly desirable, obvious and reachable goal wasn't met."

"California," he said, apparently making an awful connection in his head, "has the highest rate of illegals in the country." I did not want to get into that. I have no idea whether or not that is true and, if it is true, whether or not the illegals are vaccinated.

"Well, what we can address is whether or not people get their shots, so we're giving them out at Dragon*Con for free and letting people know that they need to have boosters. Most people probably don't even realize that they need boosters. Eight kids have died from whooping cough in California this season."

I wanted to say that foreigners and outsiders have always been associated with disease, usually unjustly. That the "infection" and "invasion" metaphors are often interlinked in conspiracist discourse, and that the most recent (and hilarious) version of this reflexively racist sort of thinking was Lou Dobbs' assertion that 7000 cases of leprosy were somehow associated with dirty filthy fucking Mexicans:


"Eight dead?" my new friend mused. "Darwin would have liked that."

"I'm sorry?"

"Well, survival of the fittest. That's what it's all about."

"Dead children? You know, his favorite daughter died from a disease that could have been prevented by a vaccine fifty years later. I can guarantee you that Darwin would have approved of the vaccine," I said. By the smirk on the attendant's face, I realized that in his mind I had just proved Darwin was a hypocrite somehow. "That's the thing," I continued, "You can't graft morality onto a law of nature. It happens whether or not Darwin approves of its effects. It happens regardless of whether or not Darwin discovers it. Heck, it sounds more like something his cousin would have said, but he was a eugenicist, trying to intelligently design a population, and that's not science. There is nothing in evolutionary theory to suggest it should be used to guide public policy."

Nothing. He just smiled.

"Let's say, for instance, that you were right," I tried, "that it is a matter of the survival of the fittest. Evolution happens not in individuals but in populations. As an adaptive species, it increases the fitness of everyone if we develop and use vaccines."

Nothing. He just smiled. Smiling is like a force field against reason. This is why I am such dour son of a bitch.

"And, now that I think about it, the outbreak is not limited to where there are high rates of illegal immigration, since Australia, which has taken some controversially draconian immigration stances in recent years..."

"That'll be $77," he said in that upper class Southern accent that often trips my gaydar even though the speaker has a wedding ring.

Other than apparently holding completely untenable political and pseudoscientific beliefs (imagine, thought reduced to talking points!), I thought that he was very nice and helpful and misguided. Totally not interested in talking about it.

Harumph,

HJ

What the crap did I just watch?

Published
by
Bing
on August 24, 2010
.
Apparently, it's been around for a while. It's called What the Bleep Do We Know, and as far as I can tell, it is the worst thing ever filmed. It has Marlee Matlin as the world's least interesting protagonist. It's...everything awful all at once.

Words actually fail me. It was a rambling incoherent mass of bad...everything. Fuck! Five for Hell suddenly seems polished!

It's a bunch of interviews about quantum physics by people who are basically unqualified to have opinions about such things. Oh, and an alien-spirit-thing named Ramtha. I had heard of Ramtha, but I never realized how fucking ridiculous it was.

It's a cult film, not in a good sense, but a film made by cult members. Seriously. I believe the phrase "quantum flapdoodle" was invented to describe this film.

Marlee Matlin made me hate her personally in this movie. Man. MAN! Marlee plays Amanda, the world's most utterly self-absorbed borderline, no, full-fledged psychotic who goes off her meds. Some smug asshole kid on a basketball court says that basketballs are everywhere at once and her spiral into complete unwatchability begins. She has baggage, Amanda does, and not only the mildly retarded hippie roommate who needs to be punched repeatedly.

There are Polish jokes, rather a lot of them, and terminator-enabled horny teenagers and dancing burping fat cells, and CGI brain animations and cartoons and a total rip-off of the "flatland" section of Cosmos. Also, Armin Shimerman, Principle Snider from Buffy, shows up spewing total crap. Holy mother of fuck those actors must have been well-paid.

The film making was as utterly nonsensical and chaotic as the non-story and non-argument that the interviewees made. From beginning to long-delayed end, it was clearly the product for disordered minds. Totally...unfathomably unwatchable.

I'm so going to assign it to my class. :)

HJ

My first class and other interruptions…

Published
by
Bing
on August 23, 2010
.
I am eager to start teaching my new syllabus. I have an interesting, complex topic that will hurt the brains of many students. And isn't that what college is about? I know that's why I never left.

Of course, with every new class comes the jitters. I have never taught this particular class before, although that is par of the course with me. I have never taught exactly the same class twice. It keeps me interested and on my toes. Right now I am planning to teach a course in the fall unlike anything I have ever taught before. We'll see how it goes.

But, yeah, jitters. Little bit. I doubt it ever goes away.

I have my classes planned out through Labor Day weekend. Very soon after that, the job market in my discipline opens up, and I'm going to get whammed, if whammed is a word, with extra bonus work to do, most of which will likely be futile, but which is ultimately necessary. I have a lot of preparation to take care of before then. Prep for class and prep of my CV/application materials. Thus begins the endless job search.

Tonight I am taking it fairly easy. Doing a little bloggie-blog and I'll be playing my guitar later tonight. Wondering if I will be able to find a copier in the morning, which will be pretty damned necessary. I know, you're fascinated, but I recently got a new office in a new building and I don't know how the communal printer/copier works. I was on campus today and nothing happened. So, hopefully someone will show me how to do that. If I can't have a printed copy, I can at least upload the schedule I would have printed to the online course server and have the students download it from there. Isn't that nice?

Alright. Time to rock out. Got a few new effects on my guitar. May make a recording of them one day soon.

HJ

This Week in Conspiracy, the early edition…

Published
by
Bing
on August 21, 2010
.
Tomorrow, I will probably be working on my syllabus and won't be able to prepare Monday's This Week in Conspiracy, and I know this because time travelers from the future sent Nicola Tesla to tell me and deliver a superweapon of his devising.





Conspiracy Theory of the Week

This week's conspiracy fail comes from a site that has the very considerate warning:
Warning: The following article may trigger flashback. If the reader has experienced in-home or facility abuse involving possible forced RFID implanting, please read with care, preferably with a trusted significant other.
That's mighty powerful stuff! It turns out that the whackosphere is trumpeting a court case that they claim shows that a plaintiff has proved he is being assaulted mentally with an implanted chip. Here's my fair-use quotation of this daft article:
Few American doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists will break rank or brave the new world of high-tech electronic abuse some of their patients report but evidence mounts that increasing numbers of innocent citizens targeted for U.S. state-sponsored terror are being secretly brain implanted with U.S. RFID chips without their consent for no-touch torture and mind control plus experimentation. One man evidenced this in court; won his case; and now prepares for a continuation in federal court, due to be equally explosive.
So you follow the links to see the details of the case, which include some documents, and they are revealing. The judge's ruling, however, is clearly far from endorsing the view that RFID chips are being put inside people's heads.
It reads that the defendant shall not "text message, email, 3rd party contact and no contact by any electronic means." Beepers, communicator badges and Dick Tracy wrist phones are closer to the type of communication the judge is thinking about than are RFID chips. So why do the insane think that this vindicates their clinical delusions about the CIA torturing them? It's probably because the plaintiff is one of them. Notice, for instance some of the charges that he puts forward:

The way it's being spun, of course, is crazy (the link is to a WIRED article that seems willfully dumbed down). The phrase "electronic weapons" is not used, and it's not even implied, really. What I see is a mentally ill person actually being harassed by email and phone by another person. His delusions make it into the documents alongside his legitimate complaints. Of course, that has not stopped the professionally crazy from intervening:


Rep. Guest's letter is embarrassing for its lack of perspicacity. It is a document without wisdom, and he should have more than "pleas for truth" before he takes his ill-informed opinion to a court.

HJ