Exposing the Supernatural in India

If you enjoyed yesterday's documentary with Derren Brown exposing the tricks of faith healers, you'll be pleased to know that there is a group of people traveling through India also teaching the locals some basic critical thinking skills, and exposing in the process the cheap ploys used by scam artists who are only too happy to take advantage of the poor and the uneducated...

If you're a messenger from God, would you really need a team of bodyguards?
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Derren Brown - Miracles for Sale

It's hard to come up with many examples of practices more cruel and exploitative than faith healing because its practitioners deliberately prey on the poor and sick by taking advantage of them in their greatest time of need and desperation. If your kid is diagnosed with an incurable and terminal disease, for instance, and science-based medicine can't help, it's understandable that you might try other 'alternative' methods. What parent wouldn't be willing to try anything to help their children?

And that's precisely what faith healers are counting on. They exploit the general population's lack of critical thinking skills by poisoning the well in such a way that no matter the outcome, it will somehow 'confirm' their doctrine: if you feel immediately better because you've been touched by one of these charlatans (while all the work is really being done by a temporary rush of adrenaline coursing through your body), that counts as evidence of a miracle; but if you don't feel better, or your symptoms come back later (as they inevitably do), it's your own fault for not having enough faith. It's a win-win... for the 'healer'. It's a lose-lose for you.

What kind of purpose drives these healers? No, it's not love for their fellow man... it's greed: you have to pony up a pretty penny to show that you have the requisite faith for the holy spirit to descend upon you (and it takes cash and credit cards... no checks, though).

But the problems don't stop with the healing session itself: because faith is hammered into your head as the cause of your improvement, it wouldn't show much faith on your part if you continue to take the real medicine that medical doctors have prescribed for you. As you might imagine, people stop taking their medication and the result is that they get worse, cancers relapse, medical conditions deteriorate, and some people even end up dying...

Luckily, Derren Brown has been working really hard to infiltrate this group of disgusting con artists and expose them for the frauds they are by training an ordinary man and turning him into a 'faith healer' and unleashing him somewhere in Texas. This documentary should be mandatory in the Bible belt...

And for more, check out The Enemies of Reason.
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A.C. Grayling on Colbert

Philosopher A.C. Grayling (whom you've seen debate along with Richard Dawkins against the notion that atheism is the new fundamentalism), has just come out with a secular bible.

His book tour just had him land for a visit with Stephen Colbert, who claims that you can't have a Bible unless it's endorsed by God... or unless you're willing to kill someone else in its name :)

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A.C. Grayling
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And for an entirely different take, listen to Grayling and philosopher Patricia Churchland discuss The Machinery of Mind.
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India's Top Physicists Develop Plan to Get the Hell Out of India

A new Manhattan (or maybe London) Project is coming!

I wonder if they'll outsource their call centers :)
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The Pluto Files

People, Americans especially, have a love relationship with Pluto that borders on the bizarre. Sure, it was discovered by an American, and we like to be proud of our own, but there's not much (that we know of) that's particularly interesting about this celestial body other than the fact there's a Disney dog with the same name. And yet, when Pluto was demoted to the status of a dwarf planet, the general public, politicians and even children started protesting...

In the following documentary, Neil deGrasse Tyson traces the history leading up to the discovery of this controversial object and explains some of the points of contention that have divided astronomers trying to decide how exactly to define what it means for something to be a planet.

The best part by far, however, is the very moving and admirable story of Clyde Tombaugh, the humble man who fulfilled Percival Lowell's dream of discovering "Planet X" and gave us Pluto.

For my international friends who can't watch Hulu, see if this will work:

Watch the full episode. See more NOVA.

And that stained glass is just excellent...


Check out more documentaries, more space stuff, or more of Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
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Passover in the Google Age

This week is full of religious celebrations. The Christians are celebrating Easter, the time when Jesus sodomized the Easter Bunny and knocked him up (hence the eggs). Oh, and also something about Jesus, a carpenter, being ironically punished by getting nailed to two pieces of wood...

The Jews, meanwhile, are celebrating Passover, that time when God decided that the indiscriminate killing of thousands of innocent Egyptian babies somehow justified freeing the Israelites so that they could wander aimlessly for forty years and then end up in the one place in the Middle East where there is no oil.

Still, part of the allure of the story has to do with the obstacles that this stubborn people had to overcome. I think you'd agree with me that if the Exodus were to take place during the google/facebook age, it wouldn't seem quite as dramatic and epic...

And don't forget that The Easter Bunny Hates You! :)
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Sam Richards - A Radical Experiment in Empathy

Empathy, very simply, is the ability to place yourself in another's position and understand things from his point of view. It's a skill that we are naturally equipped with, but not one we often choose to exercise... probably because it's a lot easier and convenient not to. One could make a pretty convincing case that becoming more empathic could truly solve many of the problems that affect the world, from the personal to the political and international.

In the following powerful TEDTalk presentation, sociologist Sam Richards attempts to demonstrate that point by setting up a challenge: can we understand -not approve, but understand- the motivation of an Iraqui insurgent?

I'll just re-quote Dostovevsky:

While nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer,
nothing is harder than to understand him.

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We're All Monkeys

We are monkeys... that's right... you and me and the guy who narrates this entertaining and thought provoking little rant... and Nietzsche was also a monkey... a very smart monkey.

Technically, though, we're apes, as this hilarious rant from The Guardian hammers into our heads. The problem, though, is that, right or wrong, the word ape just doesn't roll off the tongue with the same poetic flair. Just try substituting the word ape for the word monkey in the following expressions to see what I mean: 'monkey see, monkey do', 'monkey business', 'monkey love', 'stop monkeying around', and 'that was more fun than a barrel of monkeys'.

And perhaps we should not disclose the existence of this blog to Mr. Robbins lest he develops an aneurysm :)

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David Christian - Big History

I don't know if you paid attention during history class, but if you missed some of the highlights because you were sleeping or daydreaming, you're in luck because David Christian is here to tell the story of the universe, from the Big Bang to the internet in a mere 18 minutes.

As the video description mentions, "this is 'Big History': an enlightening, wide-angle look at complexity, life and humanity, set against our slim share of the cosmic timeline."

Check out more TEDTalks.
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Saving Ryan's Privates

Over the course of the last week, you may have seen the following video starring Representative Paul Ryan (Chairman of the House Budget Committee) presenting his so-called "path to prosperity" for America.

If you're an ideological Republican (the kind easily mobilized by sound-bites instead of well-reasoned arguments, strong evidence and attention to detail), you may have creamed your pants...

Of course, painting a picture with broad strokes looks nice... until you start to look at it up close and realize that this plan is everything Republicans hated about Obamacare, plus $750 billion to fuck the poor. Maybe that's why they like it now? :)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Ryan's Private Savings - Republican Deficit Plan
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But Jon Stewart has a simpler and more efficient plan to help ease our debt :)

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I give up with these people...
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Sam Harris vs. William Lane Craig - Where Do Objective Moral Values Come From?

Whatever its perceived weaknesses (and the critics have been relentless on some technical points), Sam Harris' recent book, The Moral Landscape, has recently reinvigorated the discussion concerning the objectivity of moral values and obligations. To religious people, the answer seems obvious: if moral values are to count as objectively binding, they must be grounded in God's commands. After all, morality comes from God, doesn't it?

Philosophers since the time of Socrates have rejected this approach (known as divine command theory) on the grounds that, in the absence of any independent set of reasons, God's commands would turn out to be completely arbitrary, and hence objective perhaps -whatever that means- but certainly not moral.

The difficulty most philosophers have had upon such a realization, however, has been with figuring out what might be able to count as a positive objective standard for moral values. Sam Harris thinks that moral values can be grounded in science. William Lane Craig thinks moral values can only come from God. A fascinating and perplexing debate ensues in which Craig accuses Harris of defining morality into a tautology, while Harris accuses Craig of doing exactly the same thing. And they're both right. Go confirmation bias!

Now, while the discussion below provides lots of great food for thought worth pondering, it seems to me that by defining morality in their own particular ways (a move that's ultimately inescapable), both philosophers were probably preaching to their respective choirs, and that the chances either of them might have gained new supporters who didn't already agree with their take on the issue are probably nil.

I'd say the debate was very interesting, and even though I tend to lean more in Harris' direction, I'm not sure either speaker won the day on the basis of the relevant arguments alone...

Both managed to undermine each other's position rather well, but neither managed to overcome such blows once they were dealt, and both were more than happy to go off on tangents irrelevant to the main point of discussion while still managing to provide thought-provoking arguments.

I'd declare the debate a draw, with both participants seriously injured by the other. Perhaps it was an act of martyrdom undertaken for our sake :)

I'll be posting more interesting talks on this topic soon, but in the meantime, here is philosopher Peter Singer with some thoughts on the subject.
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Tim Minchin - Storm (animated movie)

You may have heard this awesome beat poem before, but now it's accompanied by some awesome animation, and since I already posted it before, I'll just repeat the previous introduction.

This is one of those really tough life dilemmas: totally hot chick you wouldn't mind doing at the drop of a hat, but whose sexy and curvaceous physical appeal is gradually overshadowed by the cringing sound of the repetitive, irrational, question-begging and empty clichés she spews one after another... What to do, what to do?

Tim Minchin found himself in just such a situation and, bless his soul, decided to take the high road... or maybe that's because his wife was in the same room :)

And for more, learn about the Enemies of Reason.

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Jon Stewart Nails Mike Huckabee

As you may recall from previous occasions, whenever Jon Stewart and Mike Huckabee have had a debate, their conversation has always been civil. I appreciate that, and while I disagree with Huckabee on most points, I respect a candidate who's able to engage in a respectful dialogue about differences of opinion.

Then again, I've always had the impression that Huckabee tailors his rhetoric with a perfectly good understanding of who the audience listening to him is. Yes, sly politician...

So, while he makes reasonable points to a liberal audience while talking to a progressive, he may go bat shit crazy while talking to what he would consider his more 'real' audience (like advocating the idea that the religious view of fundamentalist history distortionist David Barton be taught in public schools), but it's only a matter of time before someone like Jon Stewart calls him on his prestidigitation, and the result is some awesome ass kicking... in a civil manner, of course :)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Mike Huckabee Extended Interview Pt. 1
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Here's part 2:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Mike Huckabee Extended Interview Pt. 2
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And part 3:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Mike Huckabee Extended Interview Pt. 3
www.thedailyshow.com
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But don't worry, Mike Huckabee has the support and protection of Chuck Norris :)
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Peregrine Falcon - The Perfect Predator

Every couple of weeks, when walking through my neighborhood I encounter a rather disturbing picture somewhere on the sidewalk: a pair of dove wings (no body and no head) loosely connected by the bloody remains of some bone and cartilage. The epitome of cheeriness, I know...

There are a few possible culprits: hungry cats (they are, after all, insanely successful hunters), squirrels on meth (you would not believe how strung out they can get), or some sort of falcon.

Maybe I'll post a video of squirrels on drugs at some point in the future, but for now, here is a brief and beautiful introduction to the peregrine falcon.

I once read in a respectable math book that peregrine falcons fly in a golden spiral when attacking their prey, but I haven't been able to confirm that anywhere. Does anyone know if this is actually true?
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Philosophy Jam

I'm too busy to post any thoughtful entries at the time, so I'll just leave each of you to ponder what the hell the following philosophy jam is all about...

Warning: before you know it, this is going to be stuck in your head for days :)

And don't ask me what the footage had to do with the audio... I have no clue.
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Massive Snowstorm Leaves Thousands Without Access to Porn

So I guess that Mother Nature decided to fuck with everyone this April's Fools and snow on our parade.

Now, you may be thinking that since the internet is for porn (obviously!), a snowstorm is the perfect opportunity to stay home and watch porn all day without getting fired, but The Onion reports that the power outage that's about to ensue is going to make that just about impossible...

If I were you, I'd pay attention to Jesse Jane in more ways than one to figure out what to do :)

Do you have your porn kit ready? :)
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