Sorry I have not posted anything here for nearly two weeks, but we've been busy with our annual conference at Caltech. A full report on the conference will appear in an upcoming issue of Skeptic by Sheila Gibson, and video/audio tapes will be available in about a month. We had the largest turnout ever, with 442 registered attendees in Caltech's magnificant Beckman auditorium, and every speaker put on a splendid performance deserving of such a place of world class entertainment.
Anthropologist Genie Scott brought us up to speed on the creationists' latest classroom antics, paleontologist Jack Horner argued that we should abandon completely the Linnean classification system, paleontologist Donald Prothero made a powerful case for punctuated equilibrium and that there are different rules of evolutionary change at different hierarchies (genus, species, individuals, genes), philosopher Michael Ruse enlightened and entertained while explaining that the reason people are threatened by evolution is that it carries with it nonepistemic baggage, including and especially political and religious implications for changing one's world view. Yours truly argued that contingency is what really scares people about evolution, including strict adaptationists who see humans as the pinnacle of evolutionary progress.
The evening was topped off with Genie Scott receiving our Skeptic of the Year award, Randy Cassingham awarding the Dumbth Awards for the dumbest things anyone did in 1998, and Richard Milnar's absolutely delightful, thoughtful, and witty rendition of an operatic Darwin. Everyone had a great time and, as one attendee noted, he learned more about evolution in eight hours then he had in 16 years of school and college. This morning's Los Angeles Times ran an excellent story on the conference with photographs and a picture of the Skeptic magazine cover of Deepak Chopra (Vol. 6, #2).
The most tense moment came when James Randi shocked the audience with a full disclosure statement regarding a recent blackmail/extortion threat he received, related to an ongoing similar problem that has plagued him for over a decade. It was especially tense for me because the fellow making the recent threats showed up at the conference to confront Randi. I got him calmed down in the green room, frisked him and his backpack for weapons, and sat next to him throughout Randi's public disclosure; but just in case there were three rather large, muscular, and well-armed Caltech security guards waiting in the wings to pounce if necessary. The event passed without incident, thankfully, and the day continued (this was just after the lunch break). The man apologized to me for any inconvenience he might have caused us or Randi, and appeared to be withdrawing his threats (that if Randi does not turn over the million dollar prize he would disclose certain unpleasant accusations about Randi to the general public--but with Randi's public disclosure there is nothing left for a blackmailer/extortionist to disclose). Let's hope this whole thing blows over without further incident.
The rest of this posting includes the following items I have been accumulating the past couple of weeks. I hope you enjoy them:
NEXT ISSUE OF SKEPTIC VOL. 7, #1
The next issue of Skeptic magazine, Vol. 7, #1, is being mailed out today. If you are not already a subscriber you can log on to www.skeptic.com and click to our shop cart program and sign up instantly and with complete security. You can also phone (626/794-3119), fax (626/794-1301) or e-mail your name, address, phone, and Visa or mastercard number and expiration date. The issue includes:
FRAUD IN SCIENCE: THE BALTIMORE CASE TESTS CONGRESS'S POWER
SPECIAL SECTION ON INFLUENCE
How the PR Industry Compromises Science
The Hidden Secrets of Communication
The Evolution of Credulity
Hypnosis Reconsidered
Shermer on the Knowledge Filter
PLUS:
Interview with Carol Tavris
Randi Addresses Congress
The Alt Med Wars
Christian Science Flunks Quantum Physics
JR. SKEPTIC
How Fortunetelling Really Works
Science and Superstition
You Too Can Be a Psychic!
Astrology Put to the Test
The Mad Man of Magic Bob Friedhoffer
SKEPTICS FEATURED ON DILBERT AND THE END OF THE WORLD
Las night on the History Channel I was featured on a program on the End of the World. It was well produced and trotted out the usual end of the world doomsayers.
Last night on Dilbert the Skeptics Society, James Randi, and even Stephen Hawking were featured. Here is a summary from Dave Palmer, dpalmer@magicdave.com:
The episode opens with Dilbert and Dogbert visiting a dumbed-down museum, the "North American Museum of Second-Tier Exhibits." There's an exhibit that shows space aliens helping the Egyptians to build the pyramids. Dilbert is skeptical. "If aliens built the pyramids, where are they, did they just go away?" The next exhibit shows the pyramids now completed, and the Egyptians barbecuing and eating the aliens. "History is written by the winners," Dogbert says.
They visit the planetarium, where a bored announcer tells the crowd "and above you, you see the billions of stars that make up our galaxy...or so we thought. Now we know they are the lights of an alien space armada on their way to destroy Earth. Any questions?" Somebody asks what a black hole is. "Well, my career would be one example," the announcer says. "Best not to ask him about Uranus," Dogbert advises.
Back at work, Dilbert is in a meeting where the boss announces that they've sent out Dilbert's new product, the Gruntmaster 6000, for consumer field testing. Dilbert protests that it's just a prototype, and the technology hasn't even been lab tested. "Just the graviton generator alone is very delicate," he warns. The boss shrugs off his concerns. "What's the worst that could happen?" he asks. Cut to a shot of Stephen Hawking lecturing at Cambridge. "If anyone were foolish enough to build a graviton generator," Hawking says, "it would create a giant black hole that would destroy the entire solar system."
The Gruntmaster is delivered to a trailer trash family in Texas, who promptly cause it to generate a black hole, which starts sucking everything in.
The boss has recently gotten a head injury, and it causes him to doze off regularly and talk in his sleep. Most of it is just nonsensical babbling, but occasionally, he says something that seems to be a psychic prediction. Alice doesn't buy that, and she says she's going to call the Skeptics Society to see what they have to say about it.
The phone call is answered by a character who bears a very strong resemblance to James Randi. He answers the phone by saying, "this is the woman I met at the Skeptic Society dinner, isn't it?" Alice is dumbfounded. "How did you know?" she asks. "Just a simple magic trick," he assures her. "you're calling because you want me to debunk your boss' alleged psychic behavior, right?" Again, he assures her it's just a magic trick, but he can't reveal the method because of the "magician's code."
Alice asks "how soon can you get here?" and he appears in her cubicle in a puff of smoke. More simple conjuring tricks, he says. "A skilled magician can recreate any feat of the so-called psychics...like this." He opens up a file drawer, and a tiger leaps out and chases Asok.
Alice takes him to the boss' office, where some of the workers have now formed a cult to get enlightenment from the boss' predictions. Alice introduces the skeptic as The Amazing Rudolph (""you can call me "The."). Rudolph assures everyone that the alleged predictions are just a trick, but says he can't reveal the method. He makes an eagle appear, which proceeds to rip the face off one of the cult members. The cult accuses him of being a witch, and decide to take him to Texas and throw him in the black hole.
Dilbert and Dogbert travel to Texas to try and deal with the black hole. The media are only interested to know if any celebrities have had sex near the black hole. Dogbert takes a side trip to England to pick up Stephen Hawking. Hawking assures everyone that, as long as the singularity is undisturbed, it will grow very slowly. Just then, the cult shows up and throws Rudolph into the hole. "We're screwed," Hawking says. The cult then gets sucked into the hole, and Dilbert decides he has to go in and try and fix things. He's trying to work up the nerve to jump in, and Dogbert sends Hawking's chair up behind him to bump him in.
Dilbert finds himself back in time, in the original meeting where the boss announced the Gruntmaster was being sent out for testing. Dilbert runs out and locks up his lab, so the delivery men can't get it. Crisis averted.
DECONSTRUCTING JERRY SPRINGER
"I have a philosophical secret!" The Lowest-Rated Jerry Springer Show Ever:
Crowd: Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jerry: Today's guests are here because they can't agree on fundamental philosophical principles. I'd like to welcome Todd to the show.
Todd enters from backstage.
Jerry: Hello, Todd.
Todd: Hi, Jerry.
Jerry: (reading from card) So, Todd, you're here to tell your girlfriend something. What is it?
Todd: Well, Jerry, my girlfriend Ursula and I have been going out for three years now. We did everything together. We were really inseparable. But then she discovered post-Marxist political and literary theory, and it's been nothing but fighting ever since.
Jerry: Why is that?
Todd: You see, Jerry, I'm a traditional Cartesian rationalist. I believe that the individual self, the "I" or ego is the foundation of all metaphysics. She, on the other hand, believes that the contemporary self is a socially constructed, multi-faceted subjectivity reflecting the political and economic realities of late capitalist consumerist discourse.
Crowd: Ooooohhhh!
Todd: I know! I know! Is that infantile, or what?
Jerry: So what do you want to tell her today?
Todd: I want to tell her that unless she ditches the post-modernism, we're through. I just can't go on having a relationship with a woman who doesn't believe I exist.
Jerry: Well, you're going to get your chance. Here's Ursula!
Ursula storms on stage and charges up to Todd.
Ursula: Patriarchal colonizer!
She slaps him viciously. Todd leaps up, but the security guys pull them apart before things can go any further.
Ursula: Don't listen to him! Logic is a male hysteria! Rationality equals oppression and the silencing of marginalized voices!
Todd: The classical methodology of rational dialectic is our only road to truth! Don't try to deny it!
Ursula: You and your dialectic! That's how it's been through our whole relationship, Jerry. Mindless repetition of the post-Enlightenment meta-narrative. "You have to start with radical doubt, Ursula." "Post-structuralism is just classical skeptical thought re-cast in the language of semiotics, Ursula."
Crowd: Booo! Booo!
Jerry: Well, Ursula, come on. Don't you agree that the roots of contemporary neo-Leftism simply have to be sought in Enlightenment political philosophy?
Ursula: History is the discourse of powerful centrally located voices marginalizing and de-scribing the sub-altern!
Todd: See what I have to put up with? Do you know what it's like living with someone who sees sex as a metaphoric demonstration of the anti-feminist violence implicit in the discourse of the dominant power structure? It's terrible. She just lies there and thinks of Andrea Dworkin. That's why we never do it any more.
Crowd: Wooooo!
Ursula: You liar! Why don't you tell them how you haven't been able to get it up for the past three months because you couldn't decide if your penis truly had essential Being, or was simply a manifestation of Mind?
Todd: Wait a minute! Wait a minute!
Ursula: It's true!
Jerry: Well, I don't think we're going to solve this one right away. Our next guests are Louis and Tina. And Tina has a little confession to make!
Louis and Tina come on stage. Todd and Ursula continue bickering in the background.
Jerry: Tina, you are... (reads cards) ... an existentialist, is that right?
Tina: That's right, Jerry. And Louis is, too.
Jerry: And what did you want to tell Louis today?
Tina: Jerry, today I want to tell him...
Jerry: Talk to Louis. Talk to him.
Crowd hushes.
Tina: Louis... I've loved you for a long time...
Louis: I love you, too, Tina.
Tina: Louis, you know I agree with you that existence precedes essence, but...well, I just want to tell you I've been reading Nietzsche lately, and I don't think I can agree with your egalitarian politics any more.
Crowd: Wooooo! Woooooo!
Louis: (shocked and disbelieving) Tina, this is crazy. You know that Sartre clarified all this way back in the 40's.
Tina: But he didn't take into account Nietzsche's radical critique of democratic morality, Louis. I'm sorry. I can't ignore the contradiction any longer!
Louis: You got these ideas from Victor, didn't you? Didn't you?
Tina: Don't you bring up Victor! I only turned to him when I saw you were seeing that dominatrix! I needed a real man! An Uber-man!
Louis: (sobbing) I couldn't help it. It was my burden of freedom. It was too much!
Jerry: We've got someone here who might have something to add. Bring out...Victor!
Victor enters. He walks up to Louis and sticks a finger in his face.
Victor: Louis, you're a classic post-Christian intellectual. Weak to the core!
Louis: (through tears) You can kiss my Marxist ass, Reactionary Boy!
Victor: Herd animal!
Louis: Lackey!
Louis throws a chair at Victor; they lock horns and wrestle. The crowd goes wild. After a long struggle, the security guys pry them apart.
Jerry: Okay, okay. It's time for questions from the audience. Go ahead, sir.
Audience member: Okay, this is for Tina. Tina, I just wanna know how you can call yourself an existentialist, and still agree with Nietzsche's doctrine of the Ubermensch. Doesn't that imply a belief in intrinsic essences that is in direct contradiction with the fundamental principles of existentialism?
Tina: No! No! It doesn't. We can be equal in potential, without being equal in eventual personal quality. It's a question of Becoming, not Being.
Audience member: That's just disguised essentialism! You're no existentialist!
Tina: I am so!
Audience member: You're no existentialist!
Tina: I am so an existentialist, bitch!
Ursula stands and interjects.
Ursula: What does it [bleep] matter? Existentialism is just a cover for late capitalist anti-feminism! Look at how Sartre treated Simone de Beauvoir!
Women in the crowd cheer and stomp.
Tina: [Bleep] you! Fat-ass Foucaultian ho!
Ursula: You only wish you were smart enough to understand Foucault, bitch!
Tina: You the bitch!
Ursula: No, you the bitch!
Tina: Whatever! Whatever!
Jerry: We'll be right back with a final thought! Stay with us!
Commercial break for debt-consolidation loans, ITT Technical Institute, and Psychic Alliance Hotline.
Jerry: Hi! Welcome back. I just want to thank all our guests for being here, and say that I hope you're able to work through your differences and find happiness, if indeed happiness can be extracted from the dismal miasma of warring primal hormonal impulses we call human relationship.
(turns to the camera)
Well, we all think philosophy is just fun and games. Semiotics, deconstruction, Lacanian post-Freudian psychoanalysis, it all seems like good, clean fun. But when the heart gets involved, all our painfully acquired metaphysical insights go right out the window, and we're reduced to battling it out like rutting chimpanzees. It's not pretty. If you're in a relationship, and differences over the fundamental principles of your respective subjectivities are making things difficult, maybe it's time to move on. Find someone new, someone who will accept you and the way your laughably limited human intelligence chooses to codify and rationalize the chaos of existence. After all, in the absence of a clear, unquestionable revelation from God, that's all we're all doing anyway. So remember: take care of yourselves -- and each other.
Announcer: Be sure to tune in next time, when KKK strippers battle it out with transvestite omnisexual porn stars! Tomorrow on Springer!
PARAPSYCHOLOGY CONFERENCE-UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
The Association for Skeptical Enquiry (ASKE) and Goldsmiths College present a free conference
PARAPSYCHOLOGY: CURRENT STATUS AND FUTURE PROSPECTS
VENUE: Room MB185 (The Small Hall), Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London SE14. This is located in the main campus building. For a map see
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/gcexp/cmapfrm.html.
Queries to
k.holden@gold.ac.uk (0171 919 7051)
DATE: 16th July 1999.
SPEAKERS:
13:00 Wayne Spencer (ASKE): Introduction
13:05 Dr. Chris French (Goldsmiths College): Many Happy Returns? Investigating Reincarnation Claims in the Lebanon
13:45 Dr. Victor Stenger (University of Hawaii): Quantum Theories of Psychic Phenomena
14:25 Dr. Caroline Watt (University of Edinburgh): A Replicable Psi Effect? Research Using the Ganzfeld Technique
15:05 Break
15:20 Dr. Stanley Jeffers (York University, Toronto): Claims for Anomalous Effects Related to Consciousness - A Critical Appraisal
16:00 Dr. Richard Wiseman (University of Hertfordshire): Investigating Psychics - A Skeptical Perspective
16:40 General question and answer session and concluding remarks.
17:00 Finish
Bookstalls will be operated on the day by Mike Hutchinson and Lee Traynor.
ASKE: http://aske.mo.man.ac.uk/