The Philadelphia Experiment

Alternate title: Brain Dunning and The UFO Hunters Agree!

While aimlessly surfing the web, I stumbled upon not one but two videos about the Philadelphia experiment. I could only take it as a sign. Time to finally put up a new blog post. One was posted by Brian Dunning as part of his new video podcast series, inFact, the other was put up by the History Channel's UFO Hunters. What is most interesting is that both of them agree, the Philadelphia experiment was a hoax. Well, either a hoax or just a delusion. You can watch the two video clips and come to your own conclusion. While it was easy to imbed the inFact video, you will have to follow the link to the History channel video here: UFO Hunters — The Philadelphia Experiment — History.com Videos



It should come as no surprise, I agree with the two videos. Now while the government certainly would have done something like the Philadelphia experiment if it could, the technology was not there during WWII and it is not there today (or is it?). The Philadelphia experiment made for an interesting sci-fi film but it has no basis in reality.

Alien Abduction behind the Zion curtain

While I may not be a loyal reader of the Salt Lake City Weekly newspaper, I had to pick up a copy when I noticed three big headed gray fellows on the cover along with the headline, "Touched By An Alien." The cover story starts off with a trio of anecdotes shared by people who believe they were abducted by aliens. Next, some quotes from a representative of the Mutual UFO Network are plugged into the story. So far so good, I haven't been convinced that people are, seemingly at random, being abducted by aliens from their homes and cars but nothing in the article is wildly offensive either. Then the article introduces a hypnotherapist who, "prefers," to work with people who, "wish to explore their extraterrestrial experiences."

Now, it would have been nice if the author of the article had taken the hypnotherapist to task about the appropriateness of this approach. I guess hypnotherapy uses and abuses could be a story for another day. Personally, I find it odd that there are hypnotherapist who uncover repressed memories of alien abduction, others who find ritualistic cult abuse and others who tap into past life experiences. I am still waiting to hear from the practitioner of hypnotherapy who has stumbled onto all of them. What seems more likely, that these unexplained phenomena are going on and are discovered only by hypnotherapists who specialize in in aliens or cults or that suggestible people are being led down a primrose path by unscrupulous individuals? Then we can get into the whole topic about the nature and accuracy of human memory and it gets more complicated from there.

All bashing of hypnotherapy aside, back to the article. To bring some balance to the story, a skeptic and an atheist got to share four paragraphs toward the end of the article. Kudos to Partick Orlob, president of Salt City Skeptics (who knew such an organization existed?) for bringing up the alternative explanation of sleep paralysis without coming across as snarky or condescending. Also, bonus points to Joel Layton of Atheists of Utah (again, who knew) for getting a Carl Sagan quote into the article, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," says Cosmic Carl. I would have been alright with the skeptic and atheist getting less space in the story since it looked like they were going to get the last word in, but the last three paragraphs switch back to the alleged abductees sharing tales of extraterrestrial intercourse and post-coital alien goo, quite the final image for the article to leave you with.

While after reading the article for the first time I felt it wasn't so bad, upon a closer look it is disappointingly uncritical. The MUFON person isn't challenged about the vast number of UFO sightings they claim are taking place all the time and the applications of hypnotherapy are not taken to task. I am alright with the alleged abductees not being challenged or interrogated. These are people who think that something bizarre and unsettling has happened to them and ridiculing them accomplishes nothing. Equal time for skeptics would have been nice, even though I think the little space they were given in the article was persuasive.

As always, questions, comments or allegations I am part of the vast government cover up of the awful truth are welcome.

The Skeptic Mix Tape 2009

Normally, I wouldn't think it was worthwhile to just point toward something that another person had put up on the 'net but this is an exception. The critical thinkers over at skeptic magazine have created a skeptic mix tape. After checking out the tracks, a few of them grabbed my attention.

Dr. H. Paul Shuch, also known as Dr. SETI, contributed a track called Cosmic Carl. Now I am not usually a big fan of acoustic guitar folk music, but a song about Carl Sagan merits an exception. If you don't know why they keep singing, "Billions and Billions," watch Cosmos already. . . uncultured savage.

A group called the Bad Detectives, belittle patent medicines with the tune, Rattlesnake Oil. Nothing like some upbeat rockabilly to remind us all that some claims have not been substantiated by the FDA.

The Canadian bluegrass group, Dirty Dishes, remakes an old school parody tune about patent medicines called Lily The Pink. It's an amusing enough tune, but it does make one wonder how much things have changed in the century plus that the Pure Food and Drug Act has been in effect.

Okay, one more and I'll stop carrying on about the artists on the mix tape. Coco Love Alcorn (you've got to appreciate a name like that) contributed a track called thinking cap. That song was cool but if you wander over to her website, you can check out some youtube videos she has up including a video for a song of hers called Intellectual Boys:

Guys, before you go running off to the great white north to throw yourself at her feet yelling, "Take me, take me now nerd lover, I'm so freakin' yours!" Check out the size of the ring on her left hand in the video. Seems another intellectual boy got to her first. Anyway, in the future I'll try and have more original content for this blog and not just link to the cool work that other people are doing.

Social media, the good and the unexceptional

When I heard that the website mashable was sponsoring the summer of social good and were going to do it though social media, I was intrigued. However, after finding out what their plan was, I was less than impressed. They are using twitter, facebook, blogs and the like to raise money for the humane society of the United States, Oxfam America, the world wildlife fund and the Lance Armstrong foundation. Now, as far as I know, all four groups are worthy organizations doing good work. My real issue is that they couldn't find anything more original to do with all this great 21st century technology than to beg for money online? Come on guys, is there any way to make social engaged people feel unvalued and disregarded faster than saying, "give us some money and leave doing good deeds to the professionals?"

I am much more impressed with the application being developed by The Extraordinaries that allows people to engage in on-demand volunteerism by mobile phone. Now that is using technology in a new and unique way. How often do you get to throw around fun terms like crowdsourcing and actually have it be relevant? If somebody is motivated to donate money by the summer of social good, that's fine, but I think it's more engaging and ultimately more useful to have applications like the one offered by The Extraordinaries. Then again, maybe I've just been solicited for charitable donations a few million times too many.

To wiki or not wiki

That is the question, or at least a question. Running in the circle of graduate students and university professors, I hear a lot about how bad wikepedia is and how little value it has as a resource. However, I recently got to hear some rather die hard music fans discuss wikipedia and they had a much different opinion of the site. In general, they were impressed with the depth of information available on the site, how fast errors get corrected and how potentially inaccurate information get the, "citation needed," tag to raise a red flag for viewers of the page.

So, why the discrepancy between the two points of view? I suppose you cold write it off as the difference between some ivory tower intellectual snobs on one hand and a bunch of uncritical fanboys on the other. I do not think it is that simple. The academics are looking for by lines and some form of accountability for the content they view online. The music fans are interested in finding out more about their favorite bands and getting a more complete picture of the people in those bands. The different goals lead to much different views of the value of wikipedia.

When all else fails, look to motive. The academics are looking to pad their CV and to secure positions in academia. Contributing to or using wikipedia is not going to help them in their quest. On the other side, looking to fanboys for motive is missing the point. Look to the bands they are following, they have a motive to get their image and music out there as much as possible. A wealth of online content could help them in that endeavor.

The mixed motive behind commercially oriented wikis like wookieepedia and other large wikis hosted by wikia.com may indeed be inadequate. There is a serious component that is just that there are people out there who love to discuss their hobbies. Be it marvel comics, recipes, genealogy or that massive time waster world of warcraft, some people just love to carry on about the things that occupy their spare time.

The idea behind wikis has been put to some good use to create collaborative history projects and school related wikis for various purposes. Also, some wikis have been set up for groups that are not great in number or media access, such as a neopagan wiki or a traditional witchcraft one. So with all this wiki rambling, is there any kind of conclusion I can draw from this? I would say that wikis can be used as a learning tool, a way for virtual communities to come together and for commercial properties to promote themselves. For a more serious version of wikipedia, check out citizendium. Personally, I think that wikis are good sources for information that you are curious about, but it really doesn't matter if the answer is right.

Summer reading

Okay, the days are getting longer, discussions of global warming have started heating up again and the under served students in public schools around the country are getting closer to the end of their 180 days of standardized test preparation. Those things can only mean that summer is here yet again. With summer comes the obligatory recommendations for summer reading. It is in that spirit that I offer up a couple of selections, something to relax with while on a summer vacation or while taking shelter from the oppressive heat, someplace air conditioned.

First up is The The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan. For those of you who have been following this blog from it's initial entry, you know I wanted to call it candles in the dark, so clearly I found this book influential. If you happen upon a copy in a library or book store, I recommend turning right to chapter 12, The Fine Art of Baloney Detection. In this chapter Mr. Sagan presents a baloney detection kit filled with tools for skeptical thinking. Among these tools are definitions of "the most common and perilous fallacies of logic and rhetoric." (Sagan, p. 212). Great stuff to keep i mind the next time you hear a politician talk. Sagan writes intelligently but also accessibly, so you don't need a degree in astrophysics to follow him.

Second, I recommend Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time by Michael Shermer. You might imagine that the publisher of Skeptic magazine would be a little shrill and possibly confrontational but that is not the case. Mr. Shermer comes across as a person who seeks to understand why people believe the things they do and to seek the truth whenever possible. I think one of the more profound things you can take away from his book is that skepticism is a method, not a belief. If you turn to chapter 3 of the book, How Thinking Goes Wrong: Twenty-five Fallacies That Lead Us to Believe Weird Things, you might be reminded of chapter 12 from Carl Sagan's book. They both cover similar material but do it in sufficiently different ways that I think both are worth a read.

I think that a couple of books about science, skepticism, and critical thinking are in order this summer. After all, this is the first summer since the eight year mini-dark ages that the United States had to endure. You remember, when science was scorned and sidelined, intellectuals were laughed at and dismissed, and religious fundamentalist ran wild in the streets, burning copies of The Origin Of Species and frightening the children. In short, it's time to take to heart the words of J-Bone in Johnny Mnemonic when he said, "Snatch back your brain, zombie, snatch it back and hold it!"

Ken Rand (1946-2009)

About a month ago, I was looking through some second hand books and saw a copy of Star Trek Strange New Worlds II which, I remembered, had a story by my friend, Ken Rand. Flipping through the volume, I saw his story, "I Am Klingon," on page 107 and knew I had to add the book to my steadily growing library. The find also left me wondering how Ken was doing, I knew his health had been in decline for a while. Shortly thereafter, I got the sad news that Ken had passed away on the 21st of April.
I first met Ken in Logan, Utah at CON2it, the short lived spin off of the CONduit sci-fi convention. As Ken would later recall, "You, me and the other dozen people who were there had a good time." While there were slightly more than a dozen people in attendance, it still was a rather small gathering. It was there that I first had the opportunity to hear Ken talk about the craft of writing and I purchased a copy of his book, "The 10% Solution: Self-editing for the Modern Writer." He was kind enough to autograph if for me, "Stan - I hope this helps - at least 10%!"
Ken's hope did pan out. After reading the book, I got all inspired and started writing. One of the stories that came out of that fit of inspiration was, "Drug Runner," it ended up winning the Weber State writing contest in the fiction category and got published in volume 19 of the university's literary magazine, Metaphor.
At CONduit 11, somebody was kind enough to get several copies of Metaphor and put them on the, "Freebie table," with a note mentioning my story and that I was a convention member. Right in the middle of a writing panel that guest of honor, Alan Dean Foster, was conducting, Ken saw me in the audience and, rather spontaneously, blurted out, "I read your story, it was really good." It took Mr. Foster a bit to get the discussion back on track. After the panel I got the chance to talk to Ken and tell him how much his book had helped my writing.
We continued to run into each other at conventions and even a meeting of the USS Ticonderoga Star Trek fan club. I like to think that he took some pride in his contribution to my success as a writer. One of our more interesting meetings was at the second Anime Banzai convention, when they packed the student union building of the Salt Lake Community College to the gills with over a thousand fans dressed up like characters from Naruto and Inuyasha among many, many others. Ken got a table in the dealer's room right nest to the manga guest of honor, Amy Reeder Hadley, so he got a lot of foot traffic and interest in his books. We both commented on the size of the convention, who knew it was going to double in size from it's first year? Not to mention the age of the attendees, if I remember the numbers right the mean average age of the people going to the first con was 16.5, making me more than double the average and Ken . . . somewhat more than that.
While my writing is better for having met Ken, I think that my life has been richer for the times I got to share Ken's company. Ken was a friend and a mentor, he was an original character with a great personality, he will be missed and he will be remembered. For those of you who didn't have the chance to know Ken, I recommend you go out and read, "Fairy Brewhaha At The Lucky Nickel Saloon," it should put a smile on your face.

(Photo Credit: CC from Nihonjoe)