Friday, November 27, 2009

Sarah Palin Book Tour


Sarah Palin's positions are so vague that people are free
to see her positions as anything they want.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Facilitated Communication

Recently there's been a story regarding a man who was in a coma for 23 years. The video shows the man making astonishing claims with the aid of facilitated communications (FC). FC is a hoax. Here is the Frontline episode that debunks FC:



The facilitators are charlatans. They exploit vulnerable people. They sell lies. They are despicable.

The clergy/priest class are a lot like the FC facilitators. Their business is also based on lies. They lie to vulnerable people thinking these lies provide some form of sustenance. They even believe the lies themselves, improving their appearance of sincerity. Just as with FC, there is no real communication, just the belief that there is communication.

For more on the man in the coma, I recommend this post.

/Note: the Google video takes a while to get started.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

There's a V in Evolution

But there's no evolution in V, the new series on ABC. The visitors are from another planet but look exactly like humans. However, the visitors surely evolved, just like us, from lower form of life. The nondeterministic forces that caused the evolution of humans would be different on another planet, and hence, the outcome of the evolutionary process would also be different. It would be practically impossible for the evolutionary processes on two different planets to result in the exact same species.

I don't know if I'm going to continue watching V. If the writers avoid such an obvious plot problem as this, it can only go downhill in future episodes.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Time Shift

Falling back: my cable set top box, laptop, and wristwatch all handle the change to Standard Time automatically. The stove and microwave need to be changed manually. Why does my microwave need the day, month, and year just to change the time? Then there's the clock in my car. It's got recessed buttons that refuse to work 99% of the time. It will be weeks before the clock in my car is right.

Note: it's Daylight Saving Time, not Daylight Savings Time.