Spelling Errors

The US Air Force Academy now allows spellcasters...

During an inter-faith discussion group, the release notes, one cadet asked Longcrier “whether Wiccans or Pagans practiced ‘black magic.’”

Sergeant Longcrier responded by citing the Wiccan credo, or Rede: “An it harm none, do what ye will.” That would seem to preclude harmful spellcraft.

However, the Rede “would not apply to a battlefield,” according to the Academy release. Which gives new meaning to the term “magic missile.”

Am I the only one facepalming over this? Here's a level of the collective (brain) power these people have:

“If I put out a healing spell — say, I wanted to heal you from pizza poisoning — if it doesn’t work for you, but it works for somebody else, does that mean it didn’t work?” one cadet asked.

First, what the fuck is "pizza poisoning?" Second, prove it was your spell that caused the relief in a way that mere time, chemistry, and digestion would not have. I'll be waiting. Third, if I give someone a spoonful of Pepto-Bismol, I'm fairly confident it won't cure the wrong person's indigestion.

And then Wired has to go and get all cutesy...

This would be an unusual conversation at any military institution. But considering the Academy had “55 complaints of religious discrimination” against non-Christians between 2001 and 2005, it’s close to miraculous — er, magical. According to according to CNN, all “9,000 cadets and faculty and staff members are now required to take a 50-minute course on religious sensitivity."

Yeah, way to gloss over a national disgrace by kowtowing to a bunch of muddle-headed wiccans.

And for my (hypothetical) readers who might say, "But the Academy is at least becoming more tolerant," I say, "But they're not becoming more rational. They're accepting another bunch of crap thinking with the rest they're guilty of. I want rational military minds--especially field commanders--who are just a tad less enthusiastic about getting their people killed because they know there's no blissful afterlife awaiting them. Otherwise, we're no better than the Taliban in that delusion."

Tell me this: how much would the air force be sensitive to the emotional needs of atheists? Because there are atheists in foxholes, just to drive the point home to the lying evangelicals out there. I have a friend serving in the Middle East right now who's an atheist and a liberal. He's heard no shortage of conversations about how "liberals have no morals" from his squadmates. And they don't even know his beliefs. He is, unsurprisingly, not in any hurry to make those beliefs known, either. I might just make a donation to MRFF in his name, now I think of it.

Via Skepchick.

Quote Of The Day

"If science disagrees with your ideological/philosophical/ethical/political viewpoint, it is science that is wrong, not your subjective opinion."
--A thoroughly sarcastic Jen McCreight on BlagHag.

I'd stopped reading her for a while, but I'm swiftly catching up and kicking myself for missing the excellence. Keep it up, Jen!

Quote of the Day

"Whoever imagines himself a favorite with God holds others in contempt."
--Robert G. Ingersoll.

An Excellent List By Which To Live

From The Redheaded Skeptic:

1. You can do or be anything, but you can’t do or be everything. Prioritize: let some things go, and keep what matters.

2. Sometimes, a picture is worth more than 1000 words.

3. Not getting what you want sometimes paves the road that gets you what you wanted more.

4. No news isn’t always good news.

5. It’s okay not to be perfect.

6. It’s okay for people to not think you’re perfect.

7. Failure does not permanently suit me: I will overcome no matter what it takes or how difficult it gets.

8. Sometimes, you think you lost something you didn’t actually lose. And sometimes what you did lose wasn’t as important as you thought.

9. Sometimes, it’s worth it to face adversity just to prove to yourself that you can do it.

10. Just keep swimming.

James Randi Prize Explained

Quote Of The Day

"The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese. And that, in erotic terms, is the Catholic church in a nutshell."
--Stephen Fry.

PZ Myers' Birthday Present To Me!

Well, OK, Wise Beard Man Mk. II didn't really give me a present. But he did do a blog post this morning full of win and awesome, so I'll take it. Money quote:

Here's how you should look at the book of Genesis. Long, long ago, a tribe of desert nomads bumped up against the more cosmopolitan culture of Mesopotamia. They learned useful skills from the city people, like writing, but at the same time, the allure of those older, more sophisticated ideas was leading to the dissolution of tribal identity, and especially to a loss of respect for the austere and demanding desert god. Who wants to worship dry old El when slinky, sexy Innini is calling?

So in a move as old as religion, almost, the desert priests slyly adopted the popular culture of their neighbors, stealing all their myths, but rewrote them to put their one great god in charge of the whole story. Genesis is an exercise in syncretism, a wholesale theft of one tradition to be repackaged with a new set of symbols. It is not about the creation of the universe. It is about resolving a conflict between two human cultures. That's interesting, sure enough, as long as you don't forget where you are and start building big pseudo-museums in Kentucky dedicated to your misconceptions.

Via Pharyngula.

Shroud Of Turin Recreated

An Italian scientist has allowed himself to be crucified, died, was buried for a weekend, and rose from the dead. In doing so, the divine aura surrounding him transformed his burial shroud into a near-exact replica of the Shroud of Tourin®.

Or maybe not.

You know, we have everything else, why not a Shroud of the FSM?

Via Pharyngula, AtAT.

Irish Skepticism

Love it.



Via Skepchick.

Louis CK Learns About The Catholic Church

NSFW



Via Pharyngula.

Sam Harris on "Real Time with Bill Maher"

Frankly, not much of an interview. He makes his usual good points, but Maher didn't do much with his line of questioning. But it's always good to see smart people talking rationally.



Via RichardDawkins.net.

New Blogs to Recommend

I've been doing some branching out recently from my usual blog sites (Pharyngula, The Daily Dish, Dispatches from the Culture Wars, etc.). And I've found a couple of gems.

Angie Jackson, blogging as Angie the Anti-Theist, or ATAT for short (apologies, George Lucas) is a very smart, funny young lady whose grandmother was a cult leader. In fact, she has a book coming out soon (excerpt here) that sounds grimly fascinating. It's the kind of cult where they believed in faith-healing and children died because of it. Angie's only been a non-irrationalist for a couple years now, tops, but she's already got game in the writing department. Angie, welcome, and keep it up.

Also, one of my favorite targets for contempt--the "Church" of Scientology--has a stupendous counterpunch: Ask the Scientologist. It's written by a couple of long-term CoS members who have come to their senses. And like me with the Catholic Church or Angie with her grandmother's cult, there's nothing like a former member to tell you what's really going on.

They're both excellent. Check 'em out.

Dara O'Briain On Pseudoscience

Leave it to an Irishman to skewer the ridiculous in such a delightful fashion. NSFW language.

The Birth Certificate

Shut up, already, birthers.

Oh, and just in case you fucktards still think it's bogus, you can be a U.S. citizen if you are "a person born outside of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents both of whom are citizens of the United States and one of whom has had a residence in the United States or one of its outlying possessions, prior to the birth of such person..."

US Code Title 8, Chapter 12, Subchapter III, Part I, Section 1401, Para (c).

Keep Libel Laws Out Of Science

If you don't know who Simon Singh is, read my previous blog post. Singh is being sued by the British Chiropractic Organization Association for libel for daring to suggest their claims of treatment not only don't hold up to scientific scrutiny, but are also actively harmful to normal, healthy patients. In solidarity, I just found the following button on Orac's blog and have decided it would fit in nicely with the rest of my decoration:



Being the passionate believer in free speech and a dreadfully rude believer that you should back up your scientific/medical claims with data and not lawyers (or if you use the latter, you'd better produce the former), I can do not otherwise.

Cheers!

Beware the Spinal Trap

I'm lifting this verbatim from Pharyngula
---

(Note: this is the infamous article on chiropractic that got Simon Singh sued. It is being reposted all over the web today by multiple blogs and online magazines.)

---

Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results - and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh.

You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that "99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae". In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer's first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying - even though there is not a jot of evidence.

I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world's first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: "Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck."

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

---

Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

Ricky Williams, Holistic Healer?

No, it's not a joke about smoking pot. From the New York Times:

"The latest milepost on what Ricky Williams calls his spiritual journey is an acupuncture and massage college tucked inside a strip mall, above a video store, next to sandwich and liquor shops.

Here, where the study hall is named after the philosopher Lao Tzu and one room contains some 300 Chinese herbs, Williams is a massage therapist in training, a running back who generally hopes to avoid contact on the football field now seeking his license to touch.

To Williams, 32, this represents another step toward a career in holistic healing and away from his self-described reputation as “the poster child for marijuana.” The process has been messy and public and shaped into an all-too-familiar narrative: superstar spits on the American dream, travels the world in search of enlightenment and returns reformed."

I have ZERO problem with a pro athlete looking ahead to his/her post-athletic career. Most of them don't, to their considerably detriment.

But holistic medicine and acupuncture? Grrr....

10 Worst Evolutionary Designs

I'd prefer the term evolutionary traits, actually. Don't give the designer dumbfucks any credibility, and all. Evolutionary design is a contradiction in terms [end rant].

You know, I think "Hyena Clitoris" or "Pseudopenis" would make great names for a rock band, but MTV would probably chicken out over having them on the air.

Via Skepchick.

Jimmy Carter Calls BS on Gender Discrimination

And he cuts right to the chase:

"The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable."

Preach on. Read the whole thing.

Via Skepchick.

Mythbusters on Moon Landing

Adam and Jamie cracking down on some of the myths about Apollo 11.