I know a lot of people that read this probably don’t read Pharyngula, but I feel appropriate in posting this because so much of the science that I’ve learned (and put into Jet-Pack Jenny) comes from Carl Sagan’s work and those that have built on his work.

Okay, if you know me, you probably know that I’m a skeptic, and while I’m not a scientist by profession, I would like to think that I’ve learned a little bit about science. However, being a skeptic doesn’t mean that you have to be a fountain of scientific knowledge. Mostly it’s a matter of understanding logical fallacies and techniques used by people promoting pseudoscience, claims of the paranormal, and conspiracy theories, or as I like to call it, bunk.

One technique most often used is the tactic of moving goalposts. Creationists tend to use this a lot, but it is definitely being used all the time by conspiracy theorists. I can best demonstrate this by using the creationist argument that “there are no transitional fossils.” Well, whenever one is presented, like a dinosaur with feathers and forearms that are useless as arms but resemble small wings, hardcore creationist spokespeople will say, “Well, this doesn’t look enough like a bird,” or something to that effect. If you meet their condiions, they change the rules, or raise the bar.

This came to light recently for me in the form of my response  to conspiracy theorists who hold to the theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and there is a conspiracy to hide this from the public. So, everyone who accepts the proof of his birth certificate and newspaper clippings of his birth announcement provide them with what they say doesn’t exist. “where’s his birth certificate?” they ask. “Well, right here it is,” is the response. They’ll see the birth certificate and say, “it’s not the long form birth certificate,” or “it’s obviously Photoshopped.” They’ll ask for corroborating evidence and dismiss the newspaper birth announcement as either a fake, or not proving anything

Well, I found my way out of this little fallacy is to simply not play it. Do you believe that Barack Obama was actually born in Kenya? Prove it. Many things will do it. Produce a birth certificate from Kenya. Produce any document supporting your claim. After all, you want to cite the law. Well, the law puts the responsibility on the plantif for the burden of proof. So, prove your claim.

Sometimes the best way to fight is to let your opponent fight themselves. When presented with an allegation, simply have them prove it with evidence. Direct evidence is the best, especially when making a very serious claim such as circumventing the US Constitution. When your opponent can produce no evidence, you can simply pull out one piece of yours and win.

Keep in mind, though that arguing with a zealot means understanding that you’re never going to convert them. You’re simply performing for those in observance, who may be swayed if you do nothing but ignore the zealots. So fight them, by all means call their accusations for what they are, bunk.  When they make an accusation, ask for proof. When they can’t provide proof ask them if they have any proof, and get them to admit, if you can, that they have no proof. Then present your evidence to the contrary. Accusations that persist without evidence are groundless accusations. Accusations  that persist despite evidence to the contrary are lies.

By the way, even if Barack Obama was born in Kenya, he would be an American Citizebn for the same reason that John McCain is an American citizen (born in Panama). He was born of an American parent. However, the point is moot, because he was born in Hawaii in 1961. I have seen proof.

I know that it’s been over a month since you last got a Jet-Pack Jenny fix, but in that time I redrew and colored strip #2, which, when one only takes 1/2 hour a day to work on it, takes a lot of time.

Currently on my drawing table is the next strip, and because the next few strips are going to very expository, I’m going to resort to Wally Wood’s 22 panels that always work. I’m not doing them in order, but I am doing them. I’ll also color this one, immediately after posting the black & white online. I’m thinking about saving a lot of the steps in order to make either a process animated gif or video.

I don’t know if anyone felt the last blog post was out of place, but like it or not, being a skeptic is something that I’m about. I’m neglecting the other blogs that I started in favor of making this my home online. I may try to incorporate them here as long as I can figure out an easy way to post them and keep them backdated to reflect the order in which they were done.

Anyway, it’s morning and I’ll need to hop in the shower in a minute. Thanks for listening.

Okay, got directed to this clip through Hardball:

Really? Dr. Edgar Mitchell is a rabid believer in paranormal and pseudoscience, and walking on the moon doen’t give you a pass to say stupid things.  Mitchell cites his sources for his priveledged information as many people, all now dead, and an unnamed high-level person at the Pentagon. We should believe him because he walked on the moon. Mitchell won’t reveal his sources so we can’t verify them.  Mitchell also believes he was remotely, psychically cured of kidney cancer, although he was never diagnosed with kidney cancer. Maybe when you’re up awake at 4 AM, with only AM Coast-to-Coast to keep you company, you’ll believe that Edgar Mitchell is always right because after all, he walked on the moon.  John Glenn was the first American in Space but he still had such poor judgement in acepting campaign donations that he became one of the Keating Five.

Would I like to think that we’ve been visited by aliens? Sure, that would be special.  Would I like to think that they’ve given us advanced technology? Sure. However that just isn’t that likely. 90% of UFO sightings are not genuine alien aircraft, as Edgar Mitchell and those that believe him would like to believe. They’re mistaken identities. Clouds, stars, Venus, reflections, and sometimes, outright hoaxes and lies. the rest remain just what their full name desribes, unidentified. To say that our scientific acheivements were done with help from extraterrestrials who gave us the technology is a slap in the face to the men and women whose research and hard work enabled Edgar Mitchell to fly through space and be one of the priveledged few that can look up in the night sky, see the Moon and “I was there.” It degrades the hard work of men and women who spend years unravelling the mysteries of our universe that may one day proove, with evidence and not heresay that we are not alone, but for right now, we are alone in this universe, but we’re working very hard to develop the means to determine for certain if we are or not. The odds are that we are probably not going to find that in Edgar Mitchell’s lifetime and we may not find it in our lifetimes, but because dilligent human beings pass on their knowledge to other men and women, instead of keeping it secret, our descendants may one day find life out there, somewhere, in the cosmos. However, for right now, we’re alone, but every wonderous step gets us closer to truth about our place in the universe.

In regards to Ryan from Seattle who wants the truth, I think Jack Nicholson said it best, “You Can’t Handle the Truth.”

Okay, boys and girls, it’s time to stretch those skeptic muscles again. General Motors announced this week the impending release of the Chevy Volt, one of the, if not the first of the mass-marketed plug-in hybrids. They also touted that the Chevy Volt would get an amazing 230 miles per gallon! Well, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and since General Motors can’t have submitted their new star for outside testing, we only have their word.

Oh, only if that were the case. This is what I found in a New York Times’ article on the Volt.

An analysis by GM-Volt.com, an unofficial site that is not affiliated with G.M., runs the numbers this way: The E.P.A. city cycle is just over 11 miles, so the Volt would run 40 miles gas free, then go through an 11-mile cycle with the gas engine running in “charge-sustaining mode.” If we assume the Volt gets 50 miles a gallon in that mode (based on the number G.M. cited for its concept vehicle in 2007), then it would use .22 gallons of gas in 11 miles, the equivalent of 231.8 m.p.g.

So based on driving a 51 mile day in the city, you’d get 231 miles to the gallon. If you drive less than 40 miles a day, then you burn no gas. So the mileage claim is based on crunching the numbers the right way.

That’s not where the skeptic muscles come in. Is it worth it for you to get a Chevy Volt? If so, how long would you need to own it in order to make it pay for itself? Well that’s just a little bit of math, and to make it work, let’s make the math easy and use a gas price of $3.00 a gallon.

So you drive 51 miles a day and we’re comparing it to a car getting 23 miles a gallon. In one year, you’ll drive 49,215 miles. paying $6,419.35. With a Chevy Volt, you’ll only spend $641.94, for a total savings of $5777.41. Let’s assume that this conventional car costs $20,000 or half of the Volt’s $40,000 price tag. We’ll round time up to allow for a slight increase in your electric bill from charging the Volt every night and a decrease in fuel efficency over time, and you can pay for the Volt with the Volt in just about four years.

All in all, not bad. Of course, if you drive more, it’ll take longer, maybe longer than you’d like to own a car. I’ve kept mine for nine years, but I’ve known people to trade cars after five years. So before committing to a car like the Chevy Volt calculate how much you drive a day, and if it’s less than 40, you’re good, if it’s significantly more, say 100-200 miles a day (don’t laugh, a lot of people in the South commute 60 miles or more to work, so they can live in a rural area) than it might not be the best economic choice for you. Go to Google Maps and calculate what you drive. I drive about 20 miles a day, so it’d be a good choice, if I could afford to drop $40,000 on a Volt, and it’d pay for itself in just over 3 years. If someone drives 125 miles a day round trip, the mileage would lessen and could be out of the range of realistically paying for itself.

However, for long car trips across states, you might want a conventional car that you don’t need to plug up to get going. That’s something not mentioned in the press release.

In conclusion, yes, it may get good mileage, just maybe not the same for everyone, and it may not be a good economic decision if you have one of those 60 mile one way commutes, it might be better to invest in a used Prius.

On my iTunes, I’ve begun a playlist titled “Skeptics Songbook” where I’m collecting a group of songs that are centered around science and skepticism. Mostly science, but in a way that is science-based and not god-oriented. Here’s what I have so far, and I’m open to new suggestions that don’t tend to center too much on one artist, since if I wanted a song list like that, I’d just go with all George Hrab or Tim Minchin.

So far, What I have is the following:

• “Apeman” by the Kinks
• “Glorious Dawn” by Symphony of Science, using Carl Sagan
• “We Are All Connected” by Symphony of Science using various scientists
• “Far” by George Hrab
• “Storm” by Tim Minchin
• “Imagine” by John Lennon
• “A Rational Response” by Greydon Square
• “Origin of Species” by Chris Smither (added 12/15/09)

Still looking to have enough to fill a CD. Any suggestions?

Thanks to Jake Mullender for sending me this link.

Lookslike I have another entry for the Skeptics’ Songbook.

As a Skeptic, and an Atheist, I really like this video from the JREF.

Here’s hoping Randi does well with his health challenges in the new year.

Tonight I actually experienced a moment of synchronicity when a line from a TV show seemed to have meaning for my particular situation. Look up synchronicity if you’re not familiar with the term.

As human beings, we have a tendency to look for meaning in certain events and then usually assign causation to those events, based upon our own philosophical outlook. Carl Jung, explored this phenomenon and named it synchronicity, although he didn’t go so far as to assign it a cause. Subsequent Jungian Psychologists have ventured into that realm as a basis for their particular belief systems. Since becoming a skeptic, I’ve had a problem with the concept of synchronicity. Psychologically, I knew there was a better term for this phenomenon, one that didn’t lead to the assumption of a causal force.

In doing some light research, and I’m hardly the type of person to be an authority, I believe what we’re actually looking at in synchronicity is cognitive bias. We simply take a lot of data and throw out everything negative and only look at the positives that reinforce our predisposed supposition. Using this method we can find meaning in just about anything, simply because we’re presented with so many instances that may not be interpretable into a supposed sense of synchronicity. We’ll only remember the hits and forget the misses.

So don’t look too much into that card you just came across from your Mom. Don’t look too much into that phrase that was in a billboard ad.  You’re simply not noticing all of the things that don’t match up. The psychology is that we look for patterns and think that they might have meaning, because the random nature of things can be overwhelming. Remembering all the data that’s thrown at us would drive us crazy, so we throw away a lot of it. It doesn’t make you stupid, it just makes you human.

This video is from that wonderful bastion of journalism, Inside Edition.

What do I think, given the research I’ve done on the issue? Desiree was faking it. She wanted attention and found a way to get it and perhaps, just perhaps could get a little cash out of it. It’s entirely possible that she was unintentionally faking it. The presence of a new accent is also suspicious, given that she didn’t have it after her keylation therapy in late October.

I am very skeptical, especially with the explanation of a new accent. Sorry, Foreign Accent Syndrome actually seems to involve brain damage. My theory, and it’s an educated guess is that Desiree just might be a hypochondriac, and reads a brief bit about a rare disease and then mimics its symptoms.

This also brings up the subject of journalism. Inside Edition shouldn’t be the one thwarting these claims that the vaccine caused this woman’s illness. When she’s latched on by people trying to discredit flu vaccines and is used by quack doctors to promote ineffective and expensive pseudo-medical procedures, that should be the area of major news investigation. Sadly, what we have now is a news system that doesn’t investigate like it used to, so we’re left with Inside Edition to do this crap, and they quite frankly, do it badly. This shit should have been on 20/20 or Frontline, but I guess looking into the alt-med industry is likely to make too many viewers mad.

All that said, get vaccinated. Stop going to quacks.