At TAM6 I participated in the following demonstration:

(click here if the video doesn’t embed)

My brother and I, though, are so far in the back you can’t make us out. We did bend the spoons though, and the trick worked nicely.

I normally don’t care about celebrity news but this clip of Sylvia Browne being so wildly off concerning Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony is priceless:

Click here if you can’t see the video

Found this video on the Skepchick Blog.

I know I’m not the first to post about this, but after watching the commercial last night I was too angry not to post. As someone who has five dogs, two of which would be considered senior dogs, I’m very concerned with making sure our dogs are comfortable. Luckily, through a good diet, exercise, and weight maintenance, none of our dogs have had any real issues, but it’s something we always consider.

The commercial for Dr. Frank’s Pet Pain Spray shows a bunch of obese dogs struggling to move around, and after they drink water with some of this homeopathic spray added, they magically start running around. The key word in all of this is: homeopathic. Homeopathic “treatments” are in plentiful supply in just about any store that sells medicine. A lot of people assume that homeopathic treatments are all about natural herbs and substances. That’s not what homeopathy is about at all.

Simply put, the idea with homeopathy is that you first find the substance that is causing distress. For the sage of argument, let’s say that carrot juice causes irritable bowel syndrome. The homeopathic solution would be to take 1ml of carrot juice and dilute it with 1000 ml of distilled water. Then you take that, and shake it back and forth 10,000 times. Next, you take 1 ml of that, and dilute that with 1000 ml of distilled water. Shake again. Take that 1ml of that, and dilute it again, and so on, and so on. In the end, you get something that is 99.999% likely to contain zero molecules of carrot juice. Some how the carrot juice is supposed to imprint it’s “vibrations” on the distilled water, which will in turn, eliminate the irritable bowel syndrome.

This is, of course, nonsense. If you don’t believe me, go to the store, buy 20 boxes of homeopathic sleeping pills, and then take them all at once. You’ll be fine, trust me. There isn’t a shred of scientific evidence to show that homeopathy works. There isn’t even a defined mechanism for how homeopathy works. It’s all just blather.

Now it’s annoying when people try homeopathy, but at least humans can think for themselves and report to you if something is or isn’t helping. A pet cannot communicate to you directly. It will suffer in pain while one gleefully sprays distilled water into its water. In fact, you might even hurt the pet more if you make him do something his old joints can’t, because you believe the spray is working.

So don’t ever, ever use Dr. Frank’s Pet Pain Spray and think you’re helping your pet. If you want to keep your pet as healthy as can be, buy premium dog food, feed him some vegetables now and then, keep the weight low, and regularly walk him. If you do think he’s having problems ask your vet perhaps for some anti-inflammatories. And if your vet suggests anything homeopathic, time to find a new vet.

This week, while violating the establishment clause of the United States Constitution, Governor Sonny Perdue decided to make a public spectacle of himself, praying to “God” for rain. You see, Georgia is suffering from a bad drought, and apparently, if I’m to understand ol’ Sonny, “God” won’t help you unless you get on your knees and whimper for relief. Some “God”, eh?

All snarkiness aside, why would prayer work? Does God not care about you unless you pray? Is there minimum level of prayer needed to effect change? What if people in other states decide to pray for Georgia to not have rain? Whose prayer wins out? Do you get brownie points for praying even if God ignores you? Is God up there laughing at the prospect of people in Georgia running out of water?

Now of course, at some point, it will rain in Georgia. It’s the law of averages, but there will be those who claim God’s intervention was the reason. I tend to think, though, it will just be a case of things returning to the mean. After an extended period of time without rain, people get desperate and start praying, rain dancing or maybe even giving themselves over to Satan. However, at some point, the end of the dry period and the period of panic overlap, leading some people to see a causal relationship between prayer and rain. I hope the majority of Georgian’s see how stupid praying for rain is, and maybe think about actual solutions a state could do to prevent shortages of water in the future.

Skeptics were kind of worried when the show “Phenomenon” was announced as collaboration between Criss Angel and Uri Gellar. Most people who know anything about Gellar know he’s an obvious fraud, and Angel has always been upfront about being only a magician. Were both NBC and Angel selling out for money. Well, the jury is still out for NBC, though it should be noted “Phenomenon” is billed as a search for a great mentalist. Mentalists freely admit what they do is a trick. Banachek is also involved, and he’s well known for being a great mentalist (I saw his act in Vegas and he is amazing at what he does.).

During the last episode, a guy named Jim Callahan who claims to be a “paranormalist” did his act to try to impress Gellar and Angel. You can see the whole act right here:

(link to it here: Awful Mentalism Act)

Now, I’m not expert on how to do a mentalism act, but I can tell you that Callahan’s performance was awful. It looked like a bad high school actor’s performance. It was the type of act you tell your kid a white lie about it being good. It wasn’t that good. Gellar, somehow, was impressed. I think (hope) people who see how incredulous Gellar is, will see how full of shit he is. How could the self-proclaimed greatest paranormalist in the world be taken in by such an awful act?

Angel, of course, calls both Gellar and Callahan out, by asking them to tell him what is inside his envelope. If they can tell him, Angel would give them a million dollars of his own money. They both, of course, ignore the challenge as is common when two bit hacks are challenged by a magician with greater skill. Angel knows they are both frauds, called them out on national television, and I think has pretty much ended any speculation (if there was any) that any of the contestants have real powers.

For some reason the incident is being reported as an altercation. I don’t think there was a chance at a physical altercation. I think Callahan stepped toward Angel for dramatic effect and Angel just got out his chair to meet him. I doubt any punches would be thrown. I think this incidence makes up for Angel working with Britney Spears (or nearly working with her) and now makes him a strong skeptic voice (though probably unintentionally so) with regards to psychics and paranormalists.

Shout out to the Skepchick blog for alerting me to this episode.

The New York times has a story about the desire of some in the field of evolutionary biology to have a paradigm shift.

Is Darwin due for an upgrade? There are growing calls among some evolutionary biologists for just such a revision, although they differ about what form this might take. But those calls could also be exaggerated. There is nothing scientists enjoy more than the prospect of a good paradigm shift.

This story will give Intelligent Design pimps (ID’ers) a couple conflicting issues to deal with. ID’ers love to claim how rigid and unchanging scientists are concerning evolutionary theories, and this article highlights the desire of many scientists to change the theory. Of course, it could also lead ID’ers to now claim there is a real “controversy” within the evolution community. The article, to me, clearly outlines the technical differences all within the context of Darwinian evolution. It highlights the greatness of science: the constant pursuit of knowledge without superstition. If this is ever what ID’ers mean by “teaching the controversy”, I might be for it.

Recently, William Dembski, the tireless crusader against scientific rigor, and Michael Shermer, one of my favorite authors, were involved in a debate at Bridgewater College, a small liberal arts school affiliated with the Church of the Brethren. It was hostile territory for Michael Shermer, who is used to being outnumbered. I remember quite well his taking on four different guests on Coast to Coast AM, debating each of them on some psuedoscientific nonsense.

While I didn’t get to be there, of course, I thought it was interesting to see two different takes on the debate.

Panda’s Thumb has a nice write up here: Shermer and Dembski in Bridgewater

And on the ID side, we have a writeup from Dembski’s blog “Uncommon Descent”: “Bill Dembski is world famous” says creationism’s prodigal son Michael Shermer

The second day of TAM 5, was the first day of speakers. It was quite a day.

Hal Bidlack opened the day, as usual. He informed us that people from all over the world were attending. A group of people from both New Zealand and Australia made it here. One gentleman spent three days flying from Kabul, Afghanistan just to be here.. As usual, Bidlack was funny and very comfortable in front of the crowd. He is now retired from the Air Force after twenty five years, and, as he put it, is now able to speak candidly about President Bush. Much laughter from the crown ensued.

James Randi made an unscheduled appearance next. The show is named after him, so he can pretty much do what he wants, and I mean that in the most respectful way. He updated the crowd on his health issues for the past year. He had a double bypass soon after TAM4, and spent much time recovering. There are two months of his life that he basically has no recollection of. He thanked everyone for their kind words and support over the year he was recovering.

Daniel Dennett, who was a speaker at TAM 4, also suffered some health problems this year and is still recovering. Randi read a quote from Dennet, where Dennett, thanks, not God, but goodness. “Goodness” is the help and support he received from doctors and well wishers. One need not thank god, for all the help people here on Earth gave.

Randi’s famous Million Dollar challenge is undergoing some revisions this year. The vast number of applications from people unable to effectively articulate what they can do, is swamping JREF resources. So to fix this, the Challenge is being revised. Also, the JREF would like the challengers to be more high profile.

In the future, applicants to the challenge must meet two requirements: 1) They must have a substantial media profile 2) They must have their claim endorsed by a qualified third party. In addition, the JREF will be issuing formal challenges to Uri Gellar, Sylvia Browne, John Edward, and James Von Praagh. There will be subsequent press releases to inform the public about the progress. Also, the JREF will be pursuing legal action against those who defraud the public. Expect class action suits.

Michael Schermer was up next, and his walk was on “Evolution Economics” and why it is okay to be a libertarian (small ‘l’), just like it’s okay to be an atheist. It was a very good talk, and I couldn’t keep very good notes, because I was so interested in the material. Schermer puts forth the idea that evolution and economics are analogous systems, both derived from the idea of complex adaptive systems. His new book on this subject should be very interesting.

I know Eugenie Scott from the Point of Inquiry podcast. I thought she was one of the best guests on that long time running podcast. Her talk was focused on the media, and how it reports stories She broke it down into the following categories: It’s gonna kill you, It’s gonna cure you, mad scientist story, bad scientist, anything having to do with religion or abortion. She focused somewhat on evolution and the recent story about a creationist book in the book stores of the Grand Canyon. She also gave a quick background presentation of creationism and intelligent design. One problem with the media, as she sees it, is that the media focuses on narratives and conflicts, and often times injects a controversy where none really exists. Scott was very interesting, and it was a good presentation.

James Randi came back on to tell us that he will be on Anderson Cooper tonight, and that Nick Gillespie and Ron Bailey from Reason magazine have been rescheduled until tomorrow.

I’ll continue in my next post tomorrow.

For the third time, I attended Jame Randi’s Amaz!ng Meeting. I was at the very first TAM in 2003, but missed TAM 2 and 3. Last year, as with this year, I attended with my brother Josh who generously donated his timeshare points to the cause.

We both flew into Vegas around the same time, both arriving a few minutes late. We rushed to the Riviera, where the conference was being held, and registered. I also picked up tickets for the Banachek show that night. We didn’t have time to stay for the opening ceremonies, but came back later for the Banacheck show.

My brother was not familiar with Banachek, and my only knowledge of him came from the Criss Angel show “Mindfreak” as well as reading about him and the Project Alpha hoax. It was an amazing show. Knowing that he possesses no psychic abilities whatsoever, makes the whole show more amazing. His first trick was to pick four random people from the audience, tell them to pick a card, and then guess what their card was. He guessed four out of four. The whole show was filled with amazing mentalism tricks that I have no idea how he accomplished. At some points, I thought that the audience members just had to be in on it, it was so well done. It was one of the most entertaining shows I’ve ever seen. A great way to start off the TAM experience.