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*Phew*, for a second there I thought it was the other type of 'speaking in tongues' also referred to as glossolalia which it a totally bogus. If someone comes up to you asking you to attend there church group to learn how to speak in tongues tell them to get lost.

No, it leads to the question. It does not beg the question.

They're not called "nazca lines", they are drawings that are located in the Nazca plains, in Peru. I'll admit they're surprising, but not necesarily supernatural or alien in origin. For a good, rational point of view go here

CSICOP Press Release Responding to Crop Circle and Disney's Signs

Yes, you are quite correct.

Also of interest is that having parts of your head too large/small can cause you to murder people, as has been proven with other modern information sources such as phrenology.

Might I bring a caliper to your house one day and prove your genius for you?

The expression is " post hoc ergo propter hoc " (link to the entry in the excellent Skeptic's Dictionary.

The expression is " post hoc ergo propter hoc " (link to the entry in the excellent Skeptic's Dictionary.

Funny what people believe, isn't it?

"This is owing to the fact that bands/artists with technically savvy fans will have a lot of fans who will end up downloading music or burning CDs where as less tech-savvy fans will end up buying their CDs."

(mod me down, the thread's offtopic, whatever, I just can't help it sometimes.)

Hi! You're the victimized right-wing-whiner of the day! Nothing personsl, god knows you're not the best or only one to use a +2 bonus to bitch about how oppressed you are by the hippies around here, but you're a good enough example.

Lessee... your sig? Flamebait, and you know it. The post you got modded down as flamebait for? Yep, flamebait. You know, if you're really too high to realize that " Boo-hoo! Instead of beating Microsoft in the marketplace, it appears now that Ralph and his band of merry socialists want to use the heavy hand of Government to manipulate the OS market" is flamebait, and that getting modded for it doesn't mean that there's a socialist cabal on /., then I feel sorry for you.

Actually, I do anyway, you seem like a very bitter and unhappy person. It's been very strange to me, the way that right-wingers in the last 10 years have managed to convince themselves that despite being constant apologists for the status-quo, they're somehow victims of society too, because people disagree with them. Certainly it's easier to believe that everyone else is stupid and deluded, than to believe that you might be wrong, or that your own lack of social skills could accont for the fact that people don't like you. It's just not very logical. But don't let that stop you.

Obviously, it would be pointless to argue that your free-market-fundamentalism has no relevance in a monopolized market, that argument is made every day on slashdot, and ignored assiduously by people like you. On the other hand, the fact that you apparently think that snide remarks about "environmentalist scientists like Sting and Bono", and a link to junkscience.com in your profile, adds up to a political position, deserves some attention.

What makes a corporate lobbyist more credible than Nader? Why should the agenda of an apologist for whichever company's paying his bills, be worth any consideration at all? (I realize the links I've provided could be seen as partisan, I'm not claiming otherwise, although the skeptic's dictionary seems pretty levelheaded. That's the difference though, I'm not trying to claim that I'm a lone voice bravely defending rationality.)

But obviously, it's all about money, and I must be a crazy socialist to ask who's paying for the propaganda. If they have money, they must be right, right? Of course they are. Might makes right, right? Too bad for you it isn't the other way around, or else maybe you wouldn't be so upset about being modded down for posting recycled Limbaughisms, 'cos you'd have better things to do with all that power.

I can't remember all the people who were involved, but Rene Blondlot claimed to have found a phenenomenon which he called N-rays. But there was a lot of difficulty in reproducing the experiments elsewhere. An American scientist Robert Wood travelled to France to see the apparatus of the team who claimed the discovery.

The experiment took place in a darkened room and a trained observer called out the readinings he saw. Unfortunately, our scientist hero had removed a metal prism which was said to be a critical part of the apparatus. Under their theory, they should not have detected the readings that the observer "saw".

This experiment demonstrates that science is done by *disproving* things as much as it is my *proving* things.

You decide that you will not use Product A at all, because copying it is morally, ethically and legally wrong. If it's not worth $10 to you, then why would you want a copy?

If it's not worth $10 to you, why are you making a copy? What possible value could that copy have to you?

I bet you go to car dealerships and drive cars off the lot that are 'too expensive' for you to

But this begs the question...

Actually, it doesn't. It raises the question. Begging the question is something entirely different.

Ok...I know I'm lame for posting something like this, but this kind of thing bugs me.
$ mv ~curunir/karma /dev/null

Amway was found to be responsible for what it's suckers do. I belive that the basis was that Amway knew what the suckers were doing, and were lending support, even though it was offically against the policy.

Sorry -- just a peeve: Begging the question does not mean that something is begging to be asked. It is a debate term. It means to use your conclusion as a premise for your argument. From The Skeptic's Dictionary:

"If one's premises entail one's conclusion, and one's premises are questionable, one is said to beg the question.

The following argument begs the question:

We know God exists because we can see the perfect order of His Creation, an order which demonstrates supernatural intelligence in its design.

The conclusion of this argument is that God exists. The premise assumes a Creator and Designer of the universe exists, i.e., that God exists. In this argument, the arguer should not be granted the assumption that the universe exhibits intelligent design, but should be made to provide support for that claim.

How exactly does it beg the question?

I've seen this "analysis" before (that Napster boosted CD sales and that its shutdown caused the recent decline in profits), and I'm not sure I buy it. It smacks of the usual after this, therefore because of this thinking. It's like the hemline theory. Someone noticed that stock prices and the length of womens' hemlines seemed to track together. Look! The stock market is determined by how long skirts are!

It's possible that Napster had a hand in both driving up revenues and then later driving them back down. But without more evidence other than "See! See! They happened at the same time!" I'm going to remain skeptical.

You may have bitten, but I think it was more that you can chew...

None of these theories can be seriously compared to that of global warming due to the greenhouse effect. For the most part, they are the work of a few publicity-craving scientists...in the case of global warming, we're talking about something that has been studied extensively over the past two decades, by dozens (if not hundreds) of scientists. Comparing those fringe theories to global warming is a little bit like comparing the current black hole theory (which may indeed turn out not to be true) to something like Edmund Halley's Hollow Earth theory.

What I really meant is, what other contemporary serious threats are there, i.e. ones that have as much impact as global warming and with as much body of research about it?

> Please, you idiots making fun of these people, you are true idiots and it is becouse you are not complaining on the companies instead. They should create products not transmitting harmful radiation. They should find alternative methods of doing same things that doesnt HARM humans.

There are some real problems with this. Creating products that don't create harmful radiation (based on this fellow's definition of "dangerous") would require them to build devices that don't use electricity, since he's complaining about any radiant EM field, and these fields are induced by electric current. Needless to say, few people (in the modern world, anyway) are willing to give up the use of electricity to protect themselves from EM fields.

> And becouse, you are the #1 on the list to become electricsensitive. And many of you are that already Your ears getting hot? It feels like sand in your eyes? Dry skin? And many more things that are signs of electricsensitivity.

The problem here is that of all of the sysmptoms listed, none of them (and no combination of them) seems exclusive to the condition. Moreover, the only backing information cited was a vague reference to a Swedish study, and the facts from the only study data the Swedes ever published stated that people who claimed to be electrically sensitive could not detect and were not demonstrably affected by EM fields in double blind tests. This would tend to refute Mr. Firstenburg's claims, but strangely the web site makes no mention of the results, only the study. This leads me to believe that more proof is needed about the causal link of bad health and EM exposure before it makes sense to start in on lifestyle changes.

Virg

Skeptics' dictionary

Post Hoc Ergo Proptor Hoc, anyone?

They're junk. Have fun, kids!

I'd definitely go along with killing off social security, but I want back the money that I've paid into it.

Oh, wait - The government already spent that years ago. Don't you just love government sanctioned Ponzi schemes?

[...] Is there any evidence that the polygraph is really able to detect lies? The machine measures changes in blood pressure, breath rate and respiration rate. When a person lies it is assumed that these physiological changes occur in such a way that a trained expert can detect whether the person is lying. Is there a scientific formula or law which establishes a regular correlation between such physiological changes and lying? No. Is there any scientific evidence that polygraph experts can detect lies using their machine at a significantly better rate than non-experts using other methods? No. There are no machines and no experts that can detect with a high degree of accuracy when people, selected randomly, are lying and when they are telling the truth. [...]

I thought everything happened because of a cause.

Perhaps a reference to the post hoc fallacy would clarify my point.

I'm sorry, but there is a science which studies this kind of thing, and it is called economics. You are contradicting centuries of accummulated scientific knowledge of economics. You are treading lightly where giants have exercised utmost care.

The consumer loses because competition based on cost requires the elimination of additional value in the supply chain. Quality, customer service, guarantees, product returns, post-sales service, what-have-you: it all is eliminated when the lowest price guarantee becomes the requirement for survival.

If the consumer can't correctly judge the value of different choices in the market, and goes for the "cheapest" (but seriously devalued) product, then he wholly deserves it when he gets fucked. Market economies don't just make demands of producers and laborers; they also make demands of consumers.

...Gravity is less strong in India...

So *this* explains the Indian Rope Trick!
:-)

The Dark Winter scenario apparently was based on some screwy statistics regarding rates of infection. Steven Milloy of Junkscience fame wrote an editorial on the subject.

That may or may not be the case, but I certainly wouldn't take Steven Milloy's word for it. Milloy is a conservative ideologue who doesn't seem to actually give a damn about good or bad methodology. If it leads to policy suggestions he doesn't like, then it's Junk Science (TM). There's a good debunking of this hypocrite at The Skeptic's Dictionary.

Hmm, should we dangle a crystal over the official's hand too, and see whether it swings in a circle or a straight line? Maybe we ought to make sure the shape of his head isn't that of a probable criminal.

Many people are of the opinion that the polygraph isn't too far above some of these other methods. Personally, I'd expect it not to be very effective against politicians since most of them probably believe their own BS most of the time.

Nice idea, though.

Post hoc logic is a great thing. Using post hoc logic I can make statements like: Last year the Tabiban stopped poppy production thus causing a rise in the price of smak. Then Bush Administration didn't like this so they set out to destroy the Taliban so that they could get their fix on the cheap.

Really this is just about as plausible as the oil thing.

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OK, that's enough. You can probably find more yourself. Bottom line: Lots of people would love to believe it works, but despite many years of investigation, the evidence that it works is scant. One would think that if acupuncture was as effective as its proponents claim, the evidence would fall solidly in favor of acupuncture. The fact that it does not ought to tell you something.

True art gets interpreted differently by each individual viewer

Does that mean Rorschach ink blots are art?

The phrase "begging the question" has never meant "asking the question". "Begging the question" is a name for a specific logical fallacy. Please see http://skepdic.com/begging.html

Ugh.

Such illogical drivel. Trying to find meaning in the meaningless and trashing rationality in the process.

Notice how you tried to make a consistent point but conveniently ignored the inconsistency that would have destroyed your so-called "order": all of the numbers you derived were found by adding the numbers of the flight numbers _except_ for the first one. You took that one without modification simply because it seemed to support your hypothesis and would not have if you were consistent in adding the numbers of all flights.

See http://skepdic.com/numology.html for interesting look at the fallacy of "numerology".

"When you get your reading, you may find yourself ignoring the parts that don't fit you at all, and focusing on those parts that do seem to fit. They may actually fit you or they may fit your image of how you would like to be. No matter; if they fit, you may fall for it."

• Xinoehpoel backwards is Leo Pheonix
• According to this, Xinoehpoel has been posting via a dialup account to os1.com, an ISP named Option One Communications, in Sacramento, California.
• Apparently a fan of "Sollog", a.k.a. John Ennis, a man who claims to be God and delights in making Nostradomus-esque apocalypse predictions
• He mentions here, here, and here, that he has been arrested before, and then here finally explains a recent arrest.
• Email address is supposedly tesnal@psl.moc, which appears to be some sort of anagram of lanset.com, which is the web site for LANSET Communications, which is apparently the USENET host he is posting to, as determined by the message ids of his postings. Perhaps his real email address is along the lines of psl@lanset.com, or lsp@lanset.com?
• He suggests moving away from major cities and the coast, to deserted regions, due to a global warming catastrophy he predicts to occur in 2006-2007, which he also claims will not really be due to global warming, but instead will be an act of God. This may be related to Sollog predictions of bombings of major cities with nuclear weapons in suitcases (causing a global warming effect?).
• here he requests that someone register Xinoehpoel.com at which to publish his prophecies, and that any potential "followers" go out to the Arizona desert and build an adobe commune, which he will later email to find the location of, and go to. He claims here and here that he is going away ostensibly because he is broke and is being kicked out of his house, and will not be heard from again. He mentions here that he might read printed newsgroups postings "on the road".

"Xinoehpoel" is probably John Ennis himself, who apparently does have some mental problems (I reserved judgement until I saw random references to UFOs and aliens...which was a bizarre departure from the rest of his already bizarre posts; drinking urine by the way, although it sounds disgusting is completely healthy, and understandable in cases in which clean water is not available, which probably wasn't the case in his jail episode anyway). Also his quote about being forced to breath harmful chemicals, in light of his refusal to drink anything but filtered water might indicate some obsessive/paranoid behavior. The events of Sept. 11 are probably completely coincidental. I guess we'll just have to wait and see if Bill Clinton dies in November, or if some catastrophy occurs in 2006/2007.

since we do find this evidence for life, we need some sort of explanation for why we see this sign but not that sign of life

We're probably basically in agreement. However, we need more than an explanation.

It is not sufficient for a theory to account for a set of fact. If it were, you could never decide between competing theories. Generally theories should predict something that is verifiable.

In this case, the theory is that the discoloration is caused by photosynthesis, which would predict the presence of oxygen.

While you can explain the absence of oxygen by the resort to other theories, you are, in effect, substituting theories for evidence. At some point you have to come up with evidence, not theories.

For instance, before considering the theory that the surface of Mars absorbes oxygen at high enough rate, that theory should predict something as a test to see if it has any merit at all.

How ever one shores up a theory with more theories, at some point you have to come up with a prediction that matches some facts. The discussion should start there, at the prediction and the fact.

As a philosopher, I feel like I should be offended by this, but the philosopher's stone was historically the substance that allowed transmutation of metals, notably lead into gold.

But that doesn't seem very philosophical -- how is wisdom served by increasing the amount of gold around?

So not only am I not offended, but it seems this might actually be a better title -- far more the stone of sorcerors than philosophers!

There is a good definition here in the Skeptics Dictionary, though there are some funny RL examples here.

Phillip.

Here's a list of some skeptical sites that I visit regularly or on occasion. They're, in my opinion, very useful in refining one's own baloney detection sense. (Re, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection" by Carl Sagan.)

The Skeptic's Dictionary. An A to Z of mythical, supernatural, and other bizarre topics, but looking at them from the point of view of, "Is this shit for real?" (Hint: the site basically debunks every mystical supernatural piece of BS you ever heard of.)

The Committee for the Scientific Inquiry into Claims of the Paranormal. A great general site with articles, references, links, etc. CSICOP basically keeps a watch out for people making paranormal or supernatural claims, and then investigating them scientifically to see if they stand up. (Strangely, they never do... maybe this tells us something about paranormality in general?)

The James Randi Educational Foundation. Similar to CSICOP, but headed by James Randi, a long-time debunker of the supposedly mystical and magical.

Also, go and read everything Carl Sagan ever wrote; it's a pity we lost him a few years ago, for he was one of the best skeptics the world had.

• The Secular Web set themselves up as a non-profit charity and collect on-line donations with PayPal, and they have banner ads and Amazon associations.
• The Skeptic's Dictionary uses those Amazon deals too.
• The Skeptic's Annotated Bible sells TShirts, CDROMS, books, etc as a way of funding their website.

Those are about all the non-corporate websites or non-corporate-sponsored websites I visit.

Maybe you should visit these and other sites and just ask... "Hey... how do you afford all this?" Never hurts to ask.

Ryan T. Sammartino

Don't let's forget The Skeptic's Dictionary, which contains hundreds of entries on everything from the Bermuda Triangle to Amway, Zombies, Ghosts, UFOs, pyramid power, etc. One of the best skeptical sites on the web.

est is the entire word. It mostly consisted of seminars conducted by Werner Erhart to "elevate human potential". The Skeptics Dictionary has a nice article on it. They also have a ton of additional links which I won't reproduce here. The first est seminar was in 1971, and the last was in 1991, and about 700,000 people took the seminars.

For a good list of scams try this

It seems compelling, I'll admit, but it's hardly conclusive. Friedmann is basically arguing from ignorance.

Ryan T. Sammartino

Even if that were true, it would be as useless as most such broad statements. There's no reason a space-based society would be more free just because it would be out of reach of existing authorities. First, it would not be out of reach. Second, space is a nasty place that takes requires a lot of planning and organization by people who want to live there -- which implies an extremely hierarchical and unfree society.

and now, the world is only a limited number of steps away from UN domination in this area, which has been strongly pro-business and anti-person.

If you're going to worry about internationalistic dictatorships, pick something relatively realistic, like the Elders of Zion or the Illuminati. They, at least, have not been shown to be incompetant bureaucracies that can't even collect their memebership dues, and go into political meltdown every time a serious decision needs to be made.

By the way, our Men in Black department doesn't have your address on file. Could you supply it? Thanks.

__________________

Even if that were true, it would be as useless as most such broad statements. There's no reason a space-based society would be more free just because it would be out of reach of existing authorities. First, it would not be out of reach. Second, space is a nasty place that takes requires a lot of planning and organization by people who want to live there -- which implies an extremely hierarchical and unfree society.

and now, the world is only a limited number of steps away from UN domination in this area, which has been strongly pro-business and anti-person.

If you're going to worry about internationalistic dictatorships, pick something relatively realistic, like the Elders of Zion or the Illuminati. They, at least, have not been shown to be incompetant bureaucracies that can't even collect their memebership dues, and go into political meltdown every time a serious decision needs to be made.

By the way, our Men in Black department doesn't have your address on file. Could you supply it? Thanks.

__________________

For those of us who use all of reasoning skills, a good resource is the Skeptic's Dictionary. Here's some authoritative debunking of auras.

http://www.skepdic.com/auras.html

Fantastic site - a great resource. I read up a bit on one of the links, and I think this is the crux of the matter (from http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-05/i-files.html:

Although the Kirlian aura was claimed to present information about the "bioplasma" or "life-energy" of the object, actually it is only "a visual or photographic image of a corona discharge in a gas, in most cases the ambient air."
Moreover, experiments have failed to yield any evidence that the coronal pattern is related "to the physiological, psychological, or psychic condition of the sample," but instead only to finger pressure, moisture, and other mechanical, environmental, and photographic factors (some twenty-two in all). Skeptics observed that even mechanical objects, such as coins or paper clips, could yield a Kirlian "aura" (Watkins and Bickel 1986).

This is what I originally suspected that auras were, hence the UV comment. That is, your body generates em radiation, and that means electrons shifting orbits, and electrons shifting more orbits than average causes UV radiation, so you are emitting a small amount of UV. This would excite the air around you slightly, which could be perceived as a corona of glowing air. As the equilibrium of electrical activity that is your brain changes state, changes might be perceived to the aura; this group seems to have decided it didn't change, but I guess I'd have to read the methodology of their study to make a decision on that. It is always possible that changes are detectable, but it is difficult to gather any useful information from it other than whether the person is alive or dead.

I'm as skeptic as anyone else here of what usefulness auras are - but apparently some people can see them all of the time, and can tell things from them. What of that women who had tetrachromic vision reported recently? I wonder whether it was UV or IR that she saw, or whether she simply had a colour quadrilateral in the visible region. I wonder exactly how well the cornea transduces UV light; some say it's UV opaque, but I bet it's not completely.

I like to read even a "skeptic's" web site as a skeptic - scientists are well known for their ability to toss away figures in an experiment that are so wildly wrong that they don't fit their model. They seem to be working under an assumption that the universe is governed by a small set of rules, which seems to be true - but you never know. I think making assumptions is always dangerous.

http://www.skepdic.com/auras.html

-Ben

Ok, there are a few things which are troublesome here, which no one seems to have acknowledged. First, the technology, which I do know off the top of my head, is EEG Electro-Encephalo-Gram, and Nasa did/does use it. the problem is, EEG is the analogous to poking about in a goat's innards. the same technology (little electrodes on your head) is used in the much more fruitful ERP (event related potential research). However this involves a rigourous experimental design, and a computer to breakdown, usually fourier transforms, the signals in response to specific stimuli in the millisecond range. Additionally, you need someone who can understand the data (sorry, a computer can't do this yet), this person need to know enough about neuroanatomy and cognition to decide just how meaningful the results are. for example, these folks The Sackler Institute . To honestly expect to be able to teach your kids to focus by having them play video games with an 800$ helmet? It is really quite sad actually. Basically, the people and technology involved in meaningfully researching in this domain are a not going to come with this helmet, which in effect is pricey, do-it-yourself phrenology .