Living Better Skeptically – The Blog of the Jackson Skeptical Society

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Comic Con Complete

July 3, 2010 · 2 Comments

Well, we’re back from the 2010 Comic-Con. It didn’t take long, since the convention was, quite literally, right around the corner.

And it was great! We had an impressive turnout for the Saturday panel; “The Science of Science Fiction,” which easily had significantly higher attendance than any of the other panels Saturday or Sunday. We only regret that there wasn’t more time!

We got off to a worrisome start – next year we’ll remember extension cords and get the projector and computer squared away long before the last minute.

But begin we did. Local writer and editor Tom Head started off after a mad-science introductory by Yours Truly. Tom drove home the point that any extraterrestrial life out there would be highly unlikely to look anything like us, and the only reason that such things haunted the Sci-Fi circuit was because, well – you need a guy in a suit, and you need that rubber-suited actor to have something that audiences can relate to. The character of a hive-minded insect might be fascinating, but it’s quite difficult to relate to.

Tom also presented me with a copy of this issue of Skeptic Magazine, as his collection of Carl Sagan interviews was the one featured on the cover. If we’d had more time, Tom could have gotten into the joys of working with so much Sagan material, but, alas, we had only a single hour – much to the dismay of the audience.

Even with the small amount of time, Tom got to expose those in attendance to the heady speculative work of real exobiology, and how it could sync up with the demands of fiction without losing an edge.

Since a full 3/5 of the panel seemed to be avid Star Trek fans, I felt a bit out of place with my own bit; a few minutes on The Ewok Apocalypse. While this was the first time in my life to ever have to A: Do a powerpoint presentation and B: talk about physics in front of a crowd, and C: Talk about the death of millions of Ewoks, reports from the crowd were favorable.

(I got to work this picture into my first powerpoint presentation. Thank you very much, internet.)

Then Millsaps College own Dr. Patrick Hopkins gave us a little information on teleportation. Even with his limited timeframe, he was able to quickly run down the ideas and misconceptions behind Star Trek style teleportation – even including the infamous “Heisenberg Compensator.” Though, of course, he was not able to really explain the device; even the series’ “inventor” of the device, Michael Okuda once said, when asked how the HC worked “very well, thank you.”

So I guess we couldn’t expect much more – but Hopkins did fill in the assembly on how the infamous “quantum teleportation” could have been more accurately called “replication,” but for the vagaries of science reporting and funding cycles.

This happens more than you'd think.

He then explained the problems and psychological unease most people would have with replication-teleportation – and right before the entire science enchillada wrapped itself around a sticky core of Star Trek, MSU physics instructor Josh Winter came in with a nice presentation on the malapropriation of science by 2012 Apocalypse Promotion.

(Also, SMBC has been known to explain the quantum replication-teleportation conundrum this way.)

Josh had an excellent presentation prepared – plenty of references to some silly science movies like 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, and The Core (the mere mention of which can still cause a room to chuckle and groan, apparently).

Josh reassured us that there was no reason for the Earth to explode on 2012, he laid out the mechanics behind the Equinox and Solstice, pointed out the ridiculous nature of “galactic alignments” by showing us that the sun is aligned between us and the galactic center every solstice, and should we be so unfortunate to have some shooting cosmic death-rays coming from the galactic center then, how lucky we’d be! The sun would be in the way! He also informed the unwary that we’re going to be safely within the galactic plane in 2012, so not to worry. The man was the exact opposite of reading Death From the Skies, is what I’m saying.

Josh gave us a brief rundown on the magnetic poles – how we know they migrate, and more – but before we could really settle into his entertaining lecture, the panel-mistress was giving us sterner and sterner looks.

We’ll have to get more time next year – or maybe host an event that’s not tied to the smooth operation of dozens of comic book shops.

Unfortunately, Scott Crawford didn’t get a chance to break out the really speculative science with the ideas behind a workable warp drive (available in the year 4000), but we can always hope for next year. The JSS members and the Comic-Con Crowd are a great match.

I’d like to thank the speakers in public (once again) and thank the JSS member who paid for their tickets.

The Sunday meeting wasn’t quite as exciting; nor well-attended, but we managed to amuse some people with our Science Quiz (10 questions, 11 points available) – perfect score could have gotten you the aforementioned issue of Skeptic Magazine, but one knowledgeable man by the name of Mark from Flowood won himself a one year subscription by getting 8 out of 11.

Just so you all know, the gram measures mass, not weight. More people got that one wrong than any other.

And we’re going to do a meeting this month – maybe not even one in a bar. We’ll see, soon enough.

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I’m Back – Also, Great Meeting!

March 1, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Hello, Dear Readers.

I’m back from a long absence due to personal issues, time issues, job issues, and computer issues. But fear not – the blog is not dead, the Jackson Skeptical Society is doing fine. In fact, we’ve been getting more traffic than ever, most of whom are interested in Robert Dowling (and, oddly enough – Rods of Ra?).

We just had a Skeptics in the Pub meeting that was, as usual, an absolute blast. I’d like to congratulate everyone who attended on being jovial, accommodating (the table/band situation was a bit of a challenge, but we managed to overcome) and informed.

The topics of the evening were pretty bouncy: Andrew Wakefield, the utterly stupid Texas Nurses Trial, the bad science of Dr. Arafiles and the eventual acquittal of Nurse Anne Mitchell. Orac has been all over this, and as a regular reader of Respectful Insolence, I was all over this subject. We also mentioned “Quantum Balancing Crystals” which contain “thousands of nano-scale quartz crystals that are invisible to the naked eye.” I’m sure they do.

There was plenty of beer – and the new Samuel Adams Nobel Pils was on tap at the Tavern. I recommend it if you like highly hopped lagers.

So all in all, a great meeting. There will be more posts later, I promise, but expect slowed posting for a while; things have been busy on the homefront.

Until then, you JSS members have a homework assignment. I’m working on setting up a meeting at the Eudora Welty library, open to the public, about a topic of our choosing. If you checked the Facebook Page you’ll know that the two topics on hand at the moment are 1: Psychics aren’t real (the old skepticism go-to topic) and 2: Astrology isn’t real (just as good!)

I figure that we should start on the basics, eh?

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Monday – You Know What

February 1, 2010 · 1 Comment

Well, Darwin Day is right around the corner, and (surprise!) I haven’t got a plan yet. Last year was the big double bi-centennial for Darwin and Lincoln, but this year the nearest events I can track down are in Baton Rouge. I’m still searching, so if anything interesting comes up, I’ll blag about it.

A lot of you have been asking “When is the next meeting going to be?” and pointing out things like “Hey, weren’t the meetings going to be monthly?” Well SHAZAM – February 23rd – it’s a Tuesday. Historically, it’s also the day in 1870 that the state of Mississippi was re-admitted into the United States after the Civil War, but don’t ask me why I know that. I won’t be able to answer.

This may not bring us up to the hoped-for goal of an average of one meeting per month, but we’re getting closer (we’re right at .4). It’s my fault. Promise.

Well, it’s Monday, so you know what that means: A great big ole’ stack of links.

First up: Evolution in Medicine This is an interesting article that points to a real, non-manufactured debate in the vaccination world. At hand is the problem of making sure that your vaccinations select against more virulent strains of disease rather than the less virulent ones, allowing them to survive and integrate their less-virulent genes into the viral population.

This sort of thing takes place in nature, as well. There is the “trade off hypothesis,” for instance. If a virus (or other pathogen, but viruses serve as excellent examples) kills the host organism too quickly, there is a loss of survival fitness. Allowing the host to continue to linger ensures that the host (which is an entire ecosystem, as far as the pathogenic organism is concerned) stays around long enough to keep spawning more disease.

And if there are no other hosts for the pathogen, then being less virulent is a good thing from the viewpoint of the pathogen (and the host, for that matter). Of course, this is not a universal rule (so few things are!); if an organism is not really hampered by the death of the host, or if it is highly transmissible, then the cost of virulence is much lower.

Most things in evolution have this sort of trade-off; in The Greatest Show on Earth Richard Dawkins uses the example of the gazelle legs; longer legs make you faster, allowing greater survivability, up until a point where the legs become brittle and break too easily, making you an easy meal.

Ah, on to other pastures. If you happen to be one of those “experts” from Ghost Hunters, Ghost TV, Ghostvision, Paranormal Patrol, or whatever the hell is on the History channel at the moment; Ben Goldacre has found you a new job. You’d be working for the same people who make the head lice repellent badge, and have this to say about it:

1. How does it work?
Without a comprehensive understanding of technology e.g. that used in space travel, it is not really possible to provide a very satisfactory answer.

So if you’re a rocket scientist and school nurse dealing with head lice, you should write these guys a letter.

Not that it would be as relentless and classical as this gem from Mark Twain written to a patent-medicine salesman.

Twain was a great wit of his time. His writings on religion, the tragic medicine of his time, and (my personal favorite) Christian Science show a deep skepticism about human nature, education, and authority, while revealing a man who has a bit of faith in the abilities of reason, sees them as accessible to most people, even if they don’t, perhaps, use them.

Things have changed a lot since Twains’ day, but patent medicine salesmen are still out there and education is still in a laughable state. Take, for instance, the autism-vaccination link crowd. You might have heard about this recently – Andrew Wakefield was dishonest and unethical in his research that showed the only link between autism and vaccination.

Bad science AND unethical experimentation on children, combined with a heap of undeclared conflict of interests? It makes you wonder who the anti-vaxx crowd is screaming about when they say these things about actual doctors.

On to Convergent Evolution.

You may remember this one if you tuned in to Skeptics Guide this week. Apparently, researchers in China and Michigan mapped out the gene responsible for the super-sensitive inner-ear hairs that make echolocation possible. The Chinese team was studying bats, and the Michigan team was studying dolphins. Surprise, surprise, the exact same gene was altered in both animals, a gene that made these hairs super-short and sensitive. More research is underway to see if other animals who have crude sonar systems – shrews, oilbirds, and swiftlets to name a few.

Of course, these aren’t the only single-gene convergences in biological history. One of my favorites is the case of the Northern Short Tailed Shrew and the Beaded Lizard.

These two animals have mutated versions of the same ancestral gene to create the toxic protein they employ.
Now – Get your ass to Mars! There you’ll find the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. Now you’ve doubtlessly heard this week that Spirit isn’t doing too well. By that I mean that it’s stuck. Stuck in a hole. On Mars. But it’s still going! The team at the JPL/NASA is going to shut it down for a few months so that it can survive the insane Martian winter. While it will no longer be doing any roving, it is now an immobile laboratory – on another world. The lack of focus on moving it around means that the team can get down to some more science after the winter.

Some people are upset, but Spirit is doing pretty damn well. After all, it only had a ninety day mission. In human lifespan terms, this would be like getting upset that someone only survived to be 1400 years old. The folks at the Planetary Society have more to say on the subject, and don’t seem to be too excited about the fact that NASA, not the JPL, is calling the final shot on this one. Of course, Spirit is still valuable, and they’ll be kicking her around to try and get into a survivable position, so we’ll have to wait until next year to see what’s up. One thing a stationary Spirit might be able to model quite well is the wobble of the Martian orbit – a clue to the nature of the core of the planet.

Plus, let’s not forget that Opportunity is still kicking, heading to a relatively new crater (the youngest crater examined on Mars) and is within 100 meters of it.

If only all our NASA news could be so good. The new NASA budget, which actually seems to have been crafted with an eye to a lot of astronomical complaints, is run-down in a nice manner on Bad Astronomy. The bad news: It might not pass the Congress.

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We Do Things and Read Links

January 11, 2010 · 4 Comments

Well I know it’s been a real long time since our last meeting. But I’d like to thank everyone who came out. We had five (count ‘em, FIVE) brand-new members attending, our biggest turnout of new members since the first meeting (when everyone was new).

The topic of the evening was not, in fact, 2012 as I had planned. Instead, talks of climate change led the evening. We had an actual paleoclimatological lab monkey on hand, and went through the topic over and over, before going on to other topics, returning to climate change, and ordering drinks.

The award for insightful comment of the month goes to Dennis. I’m sorry that there isn’t actually any sort of reward for this, Dennis, but if there were….

First-time attendee Jennifer asked why so many of the skeptics meetings she’s attended were well-watered with alcohol. The question bounced off a few skulls for a moment, until Dennis got to the heart of it.

“I think intoxication is part of the human condition.”

That would certainly explain a lot. It reminds me of the words of Charles Allen Smart: “I don’t think that any of us can afford to look at nature and at the major facts of the human situation while dead sober.”

And that is why we have Skeptics in the Pub, in the Pub.

Well, on to the linkings. It was great to see all of you in the flesh, and we’ll be doing it again, very very soon.

The Golden Woos are out for last year. Ah, reminds me of good times; Bill Maher, Deepak Choprah, the list is like a… well, I’d say “shower of gold,” but I think that’s something else.

CSICOP has put up a great collection of Carl Sagan writings. Carl Sagan is pretty much the only argument you need when someone says that science lacks a sense of awe or wonder.

But should you need another example of someone with a serious sense of “holy shit the universe is awesome,” look no further than Phil Plait. In this article he’s staring at Mars. I have to say that this picture is mind-blowing in that we get to see an avalanche happen on another planet. Galileo would be proud.

Of course you could always get out there and do some superscience yourself. If the weather will just get a little bit colder, you could try some of these fun experiments. Free drink to anyone who finds out if boiling water freezes before room temperature water through an experiment. No fair just reading in on the internet.

Just make sure your experiment doesn’t wind up on this website. Or, if it does, make sure no one dies.

Readers in Louisiana may have to be doing all of their science education at home and online, if the school board reviews get set up in the way that the Louisiana Family Forum (friends of Focus on the Family) is hoping. Since Louisiana was the site of the Edwards v. Aguillard case that defined creation science as religious (necessitating the turn towards “Intelligent Design”) – you’d think they’d know better.

I suppose if you’re going to Louisiana (or to talk with Dr. James Dobson) you’ll want to bone up on your debate skills. Note: Does not improve all debate skills, only against creationist claims. Not guaranteed effective against James Dobson.

Of course, to see the “Creationist Claims” list in a mere eleven minutes, you’ll have to endure some bad animation, but…

My personal favorite rebuttal for Young Earth Creationists: is this one, albeit never as hilarious as this.

Of course at the time the Sumerians weren’t the only ones doing agriculture: The lichens were doing it too. I had never known that lichens were kind of like SCOBYs.

And courtesy of reader soberguy, comes a great YouTube video about homeopathy:

He’s also provided us with a good article from Discover Blogs on the evolution of prions. You can add this to evolution of computer code to show the robust nature of evolution through (any sort of) selection as a theoretical construct. Even some cosmologists refer to it now (though who knows, it could just be biology-envy on their part).

Oh well. Here’s your random link of the day. It’s the Shakespearean version of The Big Lebowski, and I want to see it performed, ever so badly.

Zounds, man. Look at these unworthiest hands; no gaudy gold profanes my little hand. I have no honour to contain the ring. I am a bachelor in a wilderness. Behold this place; are these the towers where one may glimpse Geoffrey, the married man? Is this a court where mistresses of common sense are hid? Not for me to hang my bugle in an invisible baldric, sir; I am loath to take a wife, or she to take me until men be made of some other mettle than earth. Hark, the seat of my commode be arisen!

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Lookit Me!

December 11, 2009 · Leave a Comment

So I got the Skeptical Society onto Grassroots Skeptics, a great resource for those of you out there forming connections in the skepti-sphere.

As per request, I’m going to work up a little something on climate-gate, the latest manufactroversy to hit the public awareness. I’ve gotten some interesting details on public relations firms and the work they do for the petroleum industry, so maybe it’ll be better than I had feared.

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