Yes, the holiday season is upon us. Many of us are shopping and preparing for the onslaught of family and friends who we'll be seeing this holiday season. Such preparations often include sending out holiday cards to friends and family. Usually the cards are run-of-the-mill Hallmark cards that usually say something like, "May you and yours have a warm holiday season" or something to that effect. More often than not the cards are laced with religious bits of seasons greetings. They are usually short little antiquated tidbits like, "He's the reason for the season; or And a child was born." Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the holiday season per se, I don't mind getting holiday or as some insist -Christmas- cards from friends and family.
However, and you somehow knew that this was coming, is sending out holiday cards to friends and family with religious themes, oh I don't know, pushing it a bit. Maybe I am way over thinking this, and as I said, I don't mind getting Christmas cards from friends and family, but it just seems a tad bit like a free and culturally acceptable chance to proselytize to those one knows. Or it could be a chance for that person sending the card to say Merry Christmas, we are glad we know you and have you in our lives.
The point I am getting to is, would it be acceptable for me, an avowed godless heathen, to send out Happy Winter Solstice cards? Maybe it would be alright, so long as I didn't espouse any sort of atheistic agenda within the card. Now, I have never received, at least to my working knowledge, a card that was telling me that I had to accept the Lord as my savior. So what is my deal? Why did I just spend this time writing about something that I don't necessarily have a problem with (or think is a problem) when I could have been doing something else more constructive? It's because I am fascinated with how society works (duh.....social science student here) and I don't think I have heard anyone raise the question.
What do you think? By the number of responses to previous questions I have asked I don't think I will get a response. However if you have anything to add then go for it.
D
Friday, November 27, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
I'm sorry but.......
DINOSAURS AND HUMANS NEVER COEXISTED TOGETHER. THERE IS ZERO, I REPEAT, ZERO EVIDENCE FOR SUCH A CLAIM. ANYONE WHO CLAIMS OTHERWISE IS EITHER IGNORANT OF THE FACTS, WHICH CAN BE FIXED, OR IS JUST A KOOK!
However it is possible that other such factors exist in one's decision to deny history. Usually, one's acceptance of the truth is often clouded by their professions of faith. This is unfortunate considering that the truth is the truth, and the truth of evolution is NOT incapatable with belief in God. Unfortunately there are people like Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, and others, who would have you believe such plain and utter nonsense. Please excuse me for the bold caps at the begining of this post, I was having a Lewis Black moment.
D
However it is possible that other such factors exist in one's decision to deny history. Usually, one's acceptance of the truth is often clouded by their professions of faith. This is unfortunate considering that the truth is the truth, and the truth of evolution is NOT incapatable with belief in God. Unfortunately there are people like Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, and others, who would have you believe such plain and utter nonsense. Please excuse me for the bold caps at the begining of this post, I was having a Lewis Black moment.
D
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
More 2012
Here is an interesting article from the NY Times about the 2012 doomsday.
D
Re-posted from: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/science/17essay.html?_r=1#
NASA said last week that the world was not ending — at least anytime soon. Last year, CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, said the same thing, which I guess is good news for those of us who are habitually jittery. How often do you have a pair of such blue-ribbon scientific establishments assuring us that everything is fine?
On the other hand, it is kind of depressing if you were looking forward to taking a vacation from mortgage payments to finance one last blowout.
CERN’s pronouncements were intended to allay concerns that a black hole would be spit out of its new Large Hadron Collider and eat the Earth.
The announcements by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in the form of several Web site postings and a video posted on YouTube, were in response to worries that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, when a 5,125-year cycle known as the Long Count in the Mayan calendar supposedly comes to a close.
The doomsday buzz reached a high point with the release of the new movie “2012,” directed by Roland Emmerich, who previously inflicted misery on the Earth from aliens and glaciers in “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow.”
In the movie, an alignment between the Sun and the center of the galaxy on Dec. 21, 2012, causes the Sun to go berserk with mighty storms on its surface that pour out huge numbers of the elusive subatomic particles known as neutrinos. Somehow the neutrinos transmute into other particles and heat up the Earth’s core. The Earth’s crust loses its moorings and begins to weaken and slide around. Los Angeles falls into the ocean; Yellowstone blows up, showering the continent with black ash. Tidal waves wash over the Himalayas, where the governments of the planet have secretly built a fleet of arks in which a select 400,000 people can ride out the storm.
But this is only one version of apocalypse out there. In other variations, a planet named Nibiru crashes into us or the Earth’s magnetic field flips.
There are hundreds of books devoted to 2012, and millions of Web sites, depending on what combination of “2012” and “doomsday” you type into Google.
All of it, astronomers say, is bunk. (emphasis is mine)
“Most of what’s claimed for 2012 relies on wishful thinking, wild pseudoscientific folly, ignorance of astronomy and a level of paranoia worthy of ‘Night of the Living Dead,’ ” Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory, in Los Angeles, and an expert on ancient astronomy, wrote in an article in the November issue of Sky & Telescope.
Personally, I have been in love with end-of-the-world stories since I started consuming science fiction as a disaffected child. Scaring the pants off the public has been pretty much the name of the game ever since Orson Welles broadcast “War of the Worlds,” a fake newscast about a Martian invasion of New Jersey, in 1938.
But the trend has gone too far, suggested David Morrison, an astronomer at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., who made the YouTube video and is one of the agency’s point people on the issue of Mayan prophecies of doom.
“I get angry at the way people are being manipulated and frightened to make money,” Dr. Morrison said. “There is no ethical right to frighten children to make a buck.”
Dr. Morrison said he had been getting about 20 letters and e-mail messages a day from people as far away as India scared out of their wits. In an e-mail message, he enclosed a sample that included one from a woman wondering if she should kill herself, her daughter and her unborn baby. Another came from a person pondering whether to put her dog to sleep to avoid suffering in 2012.
All of this reminded me of the kinds of letters I received last year about the putative black hole at CERN. That too was more science fiction than science fact, but apparently there is nothing like death to bring home the abstract realms of physics and astronomy. In such situations, when the Earth or the universe is trying to shrug you and your loved ones off this mortal plane, the cosmic does become personal.
Dr. Morrison said he did not blame the movie for all this, as much as the many other purveyors of the Mayan prediction, as well as the apparent failure of some people, reflected in so many arenas of our national life, to tell reality from fiction. But then, he said, “my doctorate is in astronomy, not psychology.”
In an e-mail exchange, Dr. Krupp said: “We are always uncertain about the future, and we always consume representations of it. We are always lured by the romance of the ancient past and by the exotic scale of the cosmos. When they combine, we are mesmerized.”
A NASA spokesman, Dwayne Brown, said the agency did not comment on movies, leaving that to movie critics. But when it comes to science, Mr. Brown said, “we felt it was prudent to provide a resource.”
If you want to worry, most scientists say, you should think about global climate change, rogue asteroids or nuclear war. But if speculation about ancient prophecies gets you going, here are some things Dr. Morrison and the others think you should know.
To begin with, astronomers agree, there is nothing special about the Sun and galactic center aligning in the sky. It happens every December with no physical consequences beyond the overconsumption of eggnog. And anyway, the Sun and the galactic center will not exactly coincide even in 2012.
If there were another planet out there heading our way, everybody could see it by now. As for those fierce solar storms, the next sunspot maximum will not happen until 2013, and will be on the mild side, astronomers now say.
Geological apocalypse is a better bet. There have been big earthquakes in California before and probably will be again. These quakes could destroy Los Angeles, as shown in the movie, and Yellowstone could erupt again with cataclysmic force sooner or later. We and our works are indeed fragile and temporary riders on the Earth. But in this case, “sooner or later” means hundreds of millions of years, and there would be plenty of warning.
The Mayans, who were good-enough astronomers and timekeepers to predict Venus’s position 500 years in the future, deserve better than this.
Mayan time was cyclic, and experts like Dr. Krupp and Anthony Aveni, an astronomer and anthropologist at Colgate University, say there is no evidence that the Mayans thought anything special would happen when the odometer rolled over on this Long Count in 2012. There are references in Mayan inscriptions to dates both before the beginning and the ending of the present Long Count, they say, just as your next birthday and April 15 loom beyond New Year’s Eve, on next year’s calendar.
So keep up those mortgage payments.
D
Re-posted from: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/science/17essay.html?_r=1#
Is Doomsday Coming? Perhaps, but Not in 2012
By DENNIS OVERBYENASA said last week that the world was not ending — at least anytime soon. Last year, CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, said the same thing, which I guess is good news for those of us who are habitually jittery. How often do you have a pair of such blue-ribbon scientific establishments assuring us that everything is fine?
On the other hand, it is kind of depressing if you were looking forward to taking a vacation from mortgage payments to finance one last blowout.
CERN’s pronouncements were intended to allay concerns that a black hole would be spit out of its new Large Hadron Collider and eat the Earth.
The announcements by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in the form of several Web site postings and a video posted on YouTube, were in response to worries that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, when a 5,125-year cycle known as the Long Count in the Mayan calendar supposedly comes to a close.
The doomsday buzz reached a high point with the release of the new movie “2012,” directed by Roland Emmerich, who previously inflicted misery on the Earth from aliens and glaciers in “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow.”
In the movie, an alignment between the Sun and the center of the galaxy on Dec. 21, 2012, causes the Sun to go berserk with mighty storms on its surface that pour out huge numbers of the elusive subatomic particles known as neutrinos. Somehow the neutrinos transmute into other particles and heat up the Earth’s core. The Earth’s crust loses its moorings and begins to weaken and slide around. Los Angeles falls into the ocean; Yellowstone blows up, showering the continent with black ash. Tidal waves wash over the Himalayas, where the governments of the planet have secretly built a fleet of arks in which a select 400,000 people can ride out the storm.
But this is only one version of apocalypse out there. In other variations, a planet named Nibiru crashes into us or the Earth’s magnetic field flips.
There are hundreds of books devoted to 2012, and millions of Web sites, depending on what combination of “2012” and “doomsday” you type into Google.
All of it, astronomers say, is bunk. (emphasis is mine)
“Most of what’s claimed for 2012 relies on wishful thinking, wild pseudoscientific folly, ignorance of astronomy and a level of paranoia worthy of ‘Night of the Living Dead,’ ” Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory, in Los Angeles, and an expert on ancient astronomy, wrote in an article in the November issue of Sky & Telescope.
Personally, I have been in love with end-of-the-world stories since I started consuming science fiction as a disaffected child. Scaring the pants off the public has been pretty much the name of the game ever since Orson Welles broadcast “War of the Worlds,” a fake newscast about a Martian invasion of New Jersey, in 1938.
But the trend has gone too far, suggested David Morrison, an astronomer at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., who made the YouTube video and is one of the agency’s point people on the issue of Mayan prophecies of doom.
“I get angry at the way people are being manipulated and frightened to make money,” Dr. Morrison said. “There is no ethical right to frighten children to make a buck.”
Dr. Morrison said he had been getting about 20 letters and e-mail messages a day from people as far away as India scared out of their wits. In an e-mail message, he enclosed a sample that included one from a woman wondering if she should kill herself, her daughter and her unborn baby. Another came from a person pondering whether to put her dog to sleep to avoid suffering in 2012.
All of this reminded me of the kinds of letters I received last year about the putative black hole at CERN. That too was more science fiction than science fact, but apparently there is nothing like death to bring home the abstract realms of physics and astronomy. In such situations, when the Earth or the universe is trying to shrug you and your loved ones off this mortal plane, the cosmic does become personal.
Dr. Morrison said he did not blame the movie for all this, as much as the many other purveyors of the Mayan prediction, as well as the apparent failure of some people, reflected in so many arenas of our national life, to tell reality from fiction. But then, he said, “my doctorate is in astronomy, not psychology.”
In an e-mail exchange, Dr. Krupp said: “We are always uncertain about the future, and we always consume representations of it. We are always lured by the romance of the ancient past and by the exotic scale of the cosmos. When they combine, we are mesmerized.”
A NASA spokesman, Dwayne Brown, said the agency did not comment on movies, leaving that to movie critics. But when it comes to science, Mr. Brown said, “we felt it was prudent to provide a resource.”
If you want to worry, most scientists say, you should think about global climate change, rogue asteroids or nuclear war. But if speculation about ancient prophecies gets you going, here are some things Dr. Morrison and the others think you should know.
To begin with, astronomers agree, there is nothing special about the Sun and galactic center aligning in the sky. It happens every December with no physical consequences beyond the overconsumption of eggnog. And anyway, the Sun and the galactic center will not exactly coincide even in 2012.
If there were another planet out there heading our way, everybody could see it by now. As for those fierce solar storms, the next sunspot maximum will not happen until 2013, and will be on the mild side, astronomers now say.
Geological apocalypse is a better bet. There have been big earthquakes in California before and probably will be again. These quakes could destroy Los Angeles, as shown in the movie, and Yellowstone could erupt again with cataclysmic force sooner or later. We and our works are indeed fragile and temporary riders on the Earth. But in this case, “sooner or later” means hundreds of millions of years, and there would be plenty of warning.
The Mayans, who were good-enough astronomers and timekeepers to predict Venus’s position 500 years in the future, deserve better than this.
Mayan time was cyclic, and experts like Dr. Krupp and Anthony Aveni, an astronomer and anthropologist at Colgate University, say there is no evidence that the Mayans thought anything special would happen when the odometer rolled over on this Long Count in 2012. There are references in Mayan inscriptions to dates both before the beginning and the ending of the present Long Count, they say, just as your next birthday and April 15 loom beyond New Year’s Eve, on next year’s calendar.
So keep up those mortgage payments.
More Email
The email from a supposed auditor from the Bank of Africa (BOA), promising me millions of dollars, has passed around my name to three other bankers and they want to help me out too! Apparently there is just millions and millions of dollars laying around in BOA. If I remember correctly, I could have around 60 million dollars. Champagne could be raining down from the sky, strippers, midgets, and balloons could be had for all, but, and I know you will hate to hear it, I think I am going to have to pass on all of the unclaimed BOA millions. And I think all of you should to!
D
D
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Hooray, I got my first email today! I was very excited to see some mail in the mailbox and I just couldn't wait to read it. Who could it have been from: Michael Shermer, Jerry Coyne, Phil Plait, all commending me on advancing skeptical thought? No, it was no one that important. However, I was given an offer that I would be totally crazy to not jump at
2012
No doubt that most of you have heard something about the world coming to an end on December 21, 2012. If you haven't then you may be aware of the new John Cusack movie, 2012, in which the depicts the world being destroyed by an impact of Planet X; a planet supposedly discovered by the Sumarians. While much of the 2012 nonsense has been floating about over the past year or two, it is the release of the movie 2012 that has prompted NASA to publicly debunk 2012 myths that are lurking about. So don't sell your house, quit your job, or start to whore around quite yet. But you can check out the NPR article below.
D
Re-posted from: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120436493
So, what's NASA doing about it?
"NASA has nothing to do with the Planet Nibiru, because it doesn't exist," NASA astrobiologist David Morrison tells NPR's Guy Raz. "What I am doing is trying to answer all these people who are really scared, and see if we can't get some facts out to counteract the mythology on the Internet."
Morrison writes a column called "Ask an Astrobiologist" on NASA's Web site. Some years ago, he started receiving questions from people genuinely worried about what may happen in 2012.
The questions aren't as funny as you might think. "I've had three from young people saying they were contemplating committing suicide," says Morrison. "I've had two from women contemplating killing their children and themselves. I had one last week from a person who said, 'I'm so scared, my only friend is my little dog. When should I put it to sleep so it won't suffer?' And I don't know how to answer those questions."
Morrison now maintains a 2012 FAQ, where he debunks the doomsday scenarios.
Magnetic poles flipping? "The Earth reverses its magnetic polarity once every 400,000 to 500,000 years. There's no reason to think it will happen now, [and] no reason to think it will cause a problem if it did," he says.
Dark rift? "The dark rift is just a place where there are dust clouds in the Milky Way. I can't imagine where someone decided to be afraid of that."
The only real proof for many 2012 believers will come on Jan. 1, 2013 — but Morrison says that won't be the end of doomsday hoaxes.
"The Planet Nibiru was predicted to hit the Earth in May of 2003," he says. "As far as I know, it didn't. And someone just pushed reset, and now it's coming in 2012. So I don't think we'll ever be rid of apocalyptic stories about Planet X and the end of the world."
D
Re-posted from: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120436493
Scared Of Planet Nibiru? NASA Would Like To Help
November 15, 2009
According to numerous sources on the Internet, in 2012 a planet called Nibiru will collide with Earth, resulting in the extinction of the human race. Or the Earth's magnetic poles will flip, causing the rotation of the planet to reverse, resulting in the extinction of the human race. Or the Earth will fall into something called a "dark rift" in the Milky Way — resulting in the extinction of the human race.So, what's NASA doing about it?
"NASA has nothing to do with the Planet Nibiru, because it doesn't exist," NASA astrobiologist David Morrison tells NPR's Guy Raz. "What I am doing is trying to answer all these people who are really scared, and see if we can't get some facts out to counteract the mythology on the Internet."
Morrison writes a column called "Ask an Astrobiologist" on NASA's Web site. Some years ago, he started receiving questions from people genuinely worried about what may happen in 2012.
The questions aren't as funny as you might think. "I've had three from young people saying they were contemplating committing suicide," says Morrison. "I've had two from women contemplating killing their children and themselves. I had one last week from a person who said, 'I'm so scared, my only friend is my little dog. When should I put it to sleep so it won't suffer?' And I don't know how to answer those questions."
Morrison now maintains a 2012 FAQ, where he debunks the doomsday scenarios.
Magnetic poles flipping? "The Earth reverses its magnetic polarity once every 400,000 to 500,000 years. There's no reason to think it will happen now, [and] no reason to think it will cause a problem if it did," he says.
Dark rift? "The dark rift is just a place where there are dust clouds in the Milky Way. I can't imagine where someone decided to be afraid of that."
The only real proof for many 2012 believers will come on Jan. 1, 2013 — but Morrison says that won't be the end of doomsday hoaxes.
"The Planet Nibiru was predicted to hit the Earth in May of 2003," he says. "As far as I know, it didn't. And someone just pushed reset, and now it's coming in 2012. So I don't think we'll ever be rid of apocalyptic stories about Planet X and the end of the world."
Want to Get In Touch With Me?
Probably not, but I have an email set up specifically for Skeptic Dave! All questions, comments, and weirdness can be sent to:
skepticdave@rocketmail.com
skepticdave@rocketmail.com
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skepticdave@rocketmail.com
skepticdave@rocketmail.com
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU SEND ME AN EMAIL, I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO PUBLISH ANY AND ALL CONTENTS OF ANY EMAIL SENT.
skepticdave@rocketmail.com
skepticdave@rocketmail.com
skepticdave@rocketmail.com
skepticdave@rocketmail.com
skepticdave@rocketmail.com
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU SEND ME AN EMAIL, I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO PUBLISH ANY AND ALL CONTENTS OF ANY EMAIL SENT.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
The Trials of Ted Haggard
I just watched the documentary, "The Trials of Ted Haggard". It is excellent. I actually don't know what to say at the moment. I think I need to let it sink in a bit before I comment too much. However I will say this, the church and the evangelical movement raped Ted Haggard. For a group of people who profess to believe what they believe and then turn their backs on someone who was in need. That was very Christ-like of them. So what do you think? Let me know! Also, when you click on the play button, an annoying pop-up web page is going to appear, just exit out of it. Sorry, but this was the only copy of this film I could find.
D
D
Months and Months Later, I Make No Promises
Remember how I promised I was going to be more attentive to the interwebs and this blog, well...........to no surprise, I haven't been keeping up. For some reason college takes up a lot of my time, who would have thought? Anyway, I make no more promises, but I just might be posting more......but we will see. I hope this finds all of you well! And happy Friday the 13th!
D
D
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