A New Year's Resolution to Keep
- with just a dollar - assuming you have not blown all
your money over the festive season. After the Bush administration, in its
short-sighted and callous way has
cut funding
for the United
Nations Population Fund, it is
worrying to think how the huge shortfall can be made up. To quote
Jane Roberts on such an uncaring attitude, ''More
women die in childbirth in a few days than terrorism kills people in a year.
Ho hum. Some little girl is having her genitals cut with a cactus needle. Ho
hum.'' If you feel you want to do something about this outrageous
situation yet feel helpless there is a very simple solution. To compensate
for the $34 million (how many bombs does that buy?) that the Bush
administration denied the international family planning group why not send a
dollar (or more!) to US Committee for UNFPA, 220 E.
42nd St., New York, NY 10017. Make it the top item in your New Year's
resolution list.
Valley of
the Skeptics When writing a short piece on
the Mother Teresa "miracle" and also the piece above for the
Weekly Glance 80 linked
to items from the Annapolis Valley
Skeptic. This mention was perhaps too cursory for such an interesting
and amusing site - particularly as the subtitle on the main page describes
it as "The Voice of Reason and Ridicule". There
is a wealth of good links and articles here, including
George Carlin's take
on religion (naturally involving much profanity),
Mormons, the
despicable Jerry Falwell,
Pope John Paul
and much more. Lest you think that the human construct that is religion is
the only target here many other luminaries get some attention, including
gullibility's everyman,
Larry King,
callous
cold-reading fakes such as
James van
Praagh and John Edward, and a great piece on the truth about
police and psychics.
In many ways this is a hard-hitting site that pulls no punches and some
subjects can be treated in no other way. For example, anyone that claims all
the world's inequities are part of some unfathomable divine plan should take
a look at this
page before spouting such arrant nonsense. Definitely a site for
bookmarking.
Gimme
That Ole Time Religion The wife of the British Prime
Minister has been a recent unwilling
subject of
newspaper headlines concerning her involvement with a fraudster. The
publicity spotlight also revealed her New Age beliefs which were widely
ridiculed - and in 80's opinion rightly so. However what was more
interesting about the press treatment was the emphasis on just the wacky
psychic/alternative therapy side of her "spirituality" when her other
beliefs are just as peculiar. The lady is described as a practising Roman
Catholic which in itself entails belief in many things just as loony as
ayurvedic medicine, acupuncture ear pins and absent healing. Check out
transubstantiation, whereby "Divine power changes
bread and wine into the real body and blood of Christ...... ", the
Perpetual Virginity of
Mary or
Purgatory. Perhaps the threat of litigation from Richard
Cranium halted the mockery of Mrs Blair's beliefs before the inanities
of "established religions" were reached?
At Last
Atlantis Some questions demand an answer otherwise they can blight
your life, quietly gnawing away at the back of your mind. So you can imagine
80's relief to discover the website Atlantis
- The Lost Continent Finally Found. Here you will find marshalled
together an impressive array of evidence, presented in a strikingly modest
and self-effacing fashion "We present, in these pages,
a novel theory on Atlantis that will, if accepted, cause a revolution in the
fields of archaeology and the human sciences, rendering them fit for the
encroaching Millennium. Atlantis was never found because we have all been
looking in the wrong places. Realizing that, we started to look for the spot
where an entire sunken continent could be hiding itself. Geology afforded
the correct, irrefutable answer: down under the South China Sea, that is
where. The rest followed quite naturally and, in fact, far more
serendipitously than we ourselves could ever have imagined beforehand.
" Now why had no one looked there before? The
FAQ page is full of information such
as "Atlantis is the source of all Religion, all
Science and all races and civilizations. " and a wonderful
explanation of why Atlantis has been "found" by others in many spots around
the planet "Atlantis created a worldwide empire, and
had colonies the world over. These colonies, as usual, attempted to
duplicate the motherland, as colonists are wont to do. " See how
clear everything becomes? Once you understand that
Indonesia is the true site of
Eden, that the Great Pyramid
represents Mount Atlas (?) it all becomes obvious. Obvious that these
pages are a complicated interweaving of cult archeology claptrap and
pseudoscience. The only place Atlantis existed was in
Plato's head -
scouring all the old myths, creating
false etymologies and
misrepresenting or wilfully misunderstanding the findings of science
does not change this. There is not one shred of evidence for Atlantis be it
in the North Sea, Indonesia, the Caribbean or anywhere else. The creator of
this site has a most impressive
curriculum vitae/resume page
where he is described as a professor of nuclear engineering with a long list
of papers including the tantalising "A Quantum
Mechanical Solution of Zeno’s Paradox ". If he is as successful in
the scientific field as the resume claims, why on earth can he not apply the
same standards of rigor and evidence to his Atlantean fantasies? Yet again
here seems to be evidence for the ability of some folk to think about
different subjects in watertight mental compartments and also a reminder
that qualifications in one field of endeavor do not necessarily mean that
the holder of such qualifications is trustworthy outside their chosen field.
Learning something of genuine archeology, history and paleontology instead
of occultism and alchemy would surely be a useful first step.
Skeptic
Commandos? Now here's a site that likes
to wear its heart on its sleeve "Kook-Watch.net
Keeping an eye on the loonies for the good of all
mankind" Politically incorrect by some standards (not 80's) this site
pulls no punches about the amazing tide of drivel the internet has made
possible and generally has a good time poking fun at some of the odd ideas
revealed in various usenet
newsgroups. Apparently, unseen and unknown by many, a vicious war is
being waged on the newsgroup battlefield. So successful was Kook-Watch
(alias Carl Wilson) at getting up the nose of one ufologist,
Jim Hickman
that after an increasingly rancorous correspondence via email he dubbed
them 'a new kind of skeptic "commando" group'.
(Sagan's Heroes, anyone?) The upshot is Hickman reveals himself to be not
only a UFO nut but an extremely touchy one to boot. Mind you, to
be identified as a kook according to
this definition
would probably get anyone mad. Yes, a lot of the debate descends to the
level of ad hominem attacks but that seems to be a conventional weapon in
this particular war and Kook-Watch's avowedly confrontational style invites
such methods. There is a great deal of interest on these pages and a good
deal of humor but after reading a few of the "rants" posted here 80 had to
retreat, ears ringing.
The
Philly Wriggle One of the targets of
Kook-Watch's ire is ZetaTalk, run by
one Nancy Lieder (see Nutty
Nancy's Doomsday Cult). It is one thing to make predictions and quite
another to stand up and admit when such predictions flop. 80 therefore finds
it very brave of ZetaTalk to have a
page looking at
the accuracy of past statements. This is a wonderful page showing by
selective quotations and manipulation, plus the odd history rewrite, that
you need never be wrong! Taken at random there is mention of the
Philadelphia Experiment,
quoting at length a debunking article from the Philadephia Inquirer where
original crew members trash the idea of any disappearance, teleportation or
whatever of a destroyer escort, USS Eldridge. However this does not faze
Nancy one bit - obviously the idea of such a thing is preposterous - in
Philly. This is because the experiment really happened in Kansas! Then how
about Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC)? ZetaTalk claims that this is "caused
by internal chemistry in the body itself, burning without oxygen." To
back this up a selected quote is offered from the BBC about the
wick effect - a
fat driven effect that can cause the human body to burn fiercely. What is
missing here is any discussion of the source of ignition. The wick effect
still requires a conventional external source of ignition whereas ZetaTalk
implies that "internal chemistry" is the cause
in itself. As for the predictions made for 2001 (2002 is not shown) there is
some quite outrageous wriggling and special pleading. After a prediction of
economic disaster in 2001 this is the answer given "Although
financial markets have had a rebound after Greenspan dropped interest rates,
this could just be a blip before the economy crashes hard." Wriggle,
wriggle. Perhaps Nancy's problem is making predictions in plain English -
the wriggle room expands exponentially if you couch your soothsaying in
something more obscure.
Nostradamus had the right idea with his strange use of language and
made-up words couched in a sort of doggerel (quatrains). This is much more
effective as you can judge by the longevity of his prophecies, good for well
over 4 centuries, and the way they can be made to fit just about damn
near anything.
Hoax
Folks Hoaxes are by no means a new
phenomenon (see Alexander
of Abonutechos for example) and the
Museum of Hoaxes does
us all a service by collecting them together for our perusal. They are
arranged in chronological galleries or by category. Amongst items that
caught 80's roving eye were
The Perambulating Skull,
The Swiss Spaghetti
Harvest and The
Materialization of John Newbegin. Disappointingly the link to
The Interfering Brassieres
was not working when 80 visited the page. The site is otherwise well laid
out and easy to navigate - much time can be spent browsing through the
collection of
Photographic Hoaxes, some of which 80 has looked at before in the very
first Weekly Glance Do You Believe? on Spirit
Photos. The
Hoax Photo Test page contains many images you will have come across in
your email. Thanks to the prevalence of programs such as Photoshop and Paint
Shop Pro it is easier than ever to doctor images and it is getting very hard
to distinguish fact from fancy - take the test and see how hard it is to get
past level one. (80 will never believe a dumb Dubya picture again - it is
better to go by what the man says.)
Great stuff - a combination of entertainment and information that is hard to
beat - thanks to Alex Boese for putting all this together and who also has a
book out called, strangely enough, The Museum of Hoaxes. The only thing 80
could wish for is more on
ancient hoaxes and hoaxers for the light they shed upon, say, the origin
of certain religions.
Miscellany This page, originally written
for the participants in a role playing game, Call of Cthulhu, on
How to be a Cultist seems to have applications beyond the author's
original intention. The advice is the sort of thing you normally never see
explained and could prove invaluable for the neophyte. For example "When
mutilating cattle, avoid the ones with testicles." and "When
a religious artifact begins emitting light, CLOSE YOUR EYES. Thousands of
cultists could be saved every year if they'd just remember this simple
safety tip." finally "Never play strip Tarot"
If you were lucky enough to
receive money as a seasonal gift and it is burning a hole in your pocket
rather than fritter it away uselessly why not spend it all uselessly in one
go with an E-Stim, a
Mind Machine or a
Colloidal Silver Generator?
Here is the Tip of the Month about the latter "At the
first sign of a cold (tickling sensation in nose/throat, etc.), snort CS
every hour or so. This often stops the spread of the rhinovirus and subverts
the disease process." So it has antiviral AND antibiotic properties
- but it also can give you the blues.
(By the way, throwing in an irrelevant mention of anthrax on the colloidal
silver page is a pretty low form of marketing.) These are just a few of the
products available online from Elixa who are just doing their little bit to
help lighten your wallet.
Failing that, how about
a new car? To make a wise choice you should take a look
here!
Naughty Bits It is not often that a
single web page has three pictures of folk of the caliber of John Edward,
Sylvia Browne and Uri Geller - and no, it is not a wanted poster but a site
well worth a visit. (You could always set your browser not to show pictures
if you have a weak stomach or are of a nervous disposition.) The
Skeptic Report
is edited by Claus Larsen, whose philosophy is this -
"Fear of
the future and what it will bring us, is deeply rooted in Man. But we will
not be released from this fear by reading animal intestines by the fire, or
casting spells in the full moonlight. We stand a much better chance with
science. We gain nothing from ignoring the vast benefits that science and
technology has brought us. We must always be looking for new ways of
thinking, new ways of improving. But we must not be so open-minded that our
brains fall out! "
Quotes
Here is one for the Apollo
Moon Hoax conspiracy idiots......
"Three may keep a secret, if
two of them are dead." Benjamin
Franklin
"The human mind treats a new
idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it."
P. B. Medawar
"Why don't you ever see the
headline: Psychic Wins Lottery?" Chris Pirillo (Lockergnome)
"Martyrdom is the only way in
which a man can become famous without ability."
George Bernard Shaw
"There is more stupidity than
hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life."
Frank Zappa
"You cannot reason a person
out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place."
Jonathan
Swift
and a thought for 2003...........
"Let us not look back in
anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness."
James Thurber
