This is a great idea for a book. Suppose Susan Blackmore told you she had an out of body experience? Or that Don Prothero had an alien abduction story for you? Or that I claimed I had once hunted down and captured a ghost? Would you believe it??? Indeed.
You would probably be skeptical if any of the 30+ established skeptics who authored chapters in this book told you that they had a paranormal, psychic, or otherwise impossible experience. But that is what this book is full of: people who don’t believe in any of these things having these very experiences.
In some cases, the teller of the True Tale of Mystery can explain their experience as a natural phenomenon. In other cases, not, but for some reason, they still believe that what happened to them was not paranormal. Why? Well, read the chapters to find out.
Experiences of this kind are more common than you think. And they happen to people you’d least expect, even notable scientists and skeptics.
This collection features personal stories and experiences of the mysterious, as told by Banachek, Susan Blackmore, Joe Nickell, Eugenie Scott, Chris French, Ken Feder, George Hrab, Brian Regal, Steve Cuno, Ray Hyman, and many others, with a foreword by James Randi and an afterword by James Alcock. These are tales about a wide range of extraordinary experiences, including ghost and UFO sightings, alien abduction, Bigfoot encounters, faith healing, séances, superstitions, coincidences, demonic possession, out-of-body-experiences, past lives, episodes of missing time and one case where time stood still. You will read about a poltergeist in a bakery, a genius baby, a haunted concert hall, a stone carving that vanishes and reappears mysteriously, a one-time palm reader, and a former Mormon missionary who once believed he healed a woman of a brain tumor.
Indeed, when Karen asked me to write a chapter for the book, and if I had any stories of this kind, several such experiences came to mind. I didn’t mention to her two UFO observations I had made as a kid (one seemingly bogus even at the time although all the adults bought it as real, the other very realistic and still a bit difficult to explain). I did have a more recent, adult-age, UFO experience that I could easily explain that I put on the initial list to consider. Also, having grown up in an old-world style religious household (not American evangelical Christian, but rather, Midlevel demonic possession poltergeisty Central European and Irish Catholic style household), I had a lot of stories handed on to me from relatives, including one harrowing story having to do with Exorcist style levitation, vomiting of green goo, and all that. And, of course, there are those non drug induced time shifting experiences and the pets that can read your mind and all that. I settled on the story about the ghost because it is the best story for the telling.
Last night, I went to an event, apparently organized by an indivisible group, in Plymouth Mass.
Plymouth is in Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District, and is represented by Congressman Erik Paulsen. Paulsen took over, years ago, from a “reasonable Republican” that even Democrats in CD03 remember fondly. But Paulsen has quietly and without fanfare served as a Tea Party Republican since being elected. During the time that he and Michele Bachmann served in the same Congress, in physically adjoining districts, Paulsen and Bachmann voted the same way on almost every bill, and the few differences were trivial, such as, one was absent, or a division on a water district resource bill, or something really minor.
Other than being a lock-step Republican, Paulsen is famous for something else: Doing or saying absolutely nothing to anyone at any time, and keeping entirely to himself. Back when he was first elected, he had a town hall meeting or two, the last of which was done electronically, as far as anyone remembers, so no one would be in the room with him. That was close to seven years ago. It is like Paulsen is pathologically unable to be in a room with constituents.
Meanwhile, the voters of the third district are a mixture of Democratic union supporters and recent immigrants who are politically active and vote, wealthy Republicans who quietly write checks and vote, and workers in the technology, medical device, or Big Ag industries whose livelihoods depend on good science policy in Congress but who are not politically active and don’t vote. This is the education district. Some of the top school districts in the state are in this congressional district. But the voters prefer to send education-killing Republicans to the State House and an anti-Education member to Congress, then compensate for their bad policies by voting yes, sometimes, on school district bonding bills. It makes very little sense that Erik Paulsen gets elected every two years.
Part of this has to do with the inability of Democrats to get their acts together. One year, two medium-strong candidates slogged it out in the primary and caucus process, but caused so much hate that a lot of Democratic voters stayed home. Several year later, in 2016, that vitriol probably kept some of the Democrats that might have elected one of those candidates, back for another try, from being elected. One year we had a good candidate who was very honest, and thus, another candidate who was less than honest in his positions was selected to run against Paulsen, and he stopped running several weeks before the election for personal reasons. One year a really good candidate emerged, but a different candidate, very well connected in the Democratic Party on the national level, shoved him aside, ran, and lost. That sort of thing.
So, the other day, I was communicating with some environmental activists about an event we’ve got coming up. Somebody said, “hey, let’s bring some flyers for our event to that thing going on Thursday down at the church.” So I looked into the thing.
It turns out that an Indivisible group had organized a Town Hall for Congressman Erik Paulsen. He never has his own, so they kindly organized one for him. He was invited, but just in case, they got a big cardboard cutout to put up in front of the room.
The event was not that well publicized. I know a lot of activists in the area who did not know about it. I learned about it at the last minute from a random mention, as noted. And, I did go.
So, I got in the car to drive the five minutes down to the church. Partway there, traffic stopped. About 25 minutes later, I got to the church, crawling along in this huge traffic jam, that was going out in all directions from the church. Five minutes after that I got a parking spot a few blocks away, and walked down to the church. So, maybe a thousand cars were in this giant traffic jam, and hundreds of people were standing around outside the church. Inside, were the 600 or so maximum occupancy, and and the cardboard cutout.
One or two thousand, maybe a little more, citizens showed up to let Erik Paulsen know that they did not appreciate his having ignored the voters for so long, and demanding to know what he will do, as a member of the House, and as a Republican, about his fellow Republican, Donald Trump.
I hear the news reporters were there, but there were no TV trucks identified as being affiliated with a station. I saw one guy from MinnPost. I see zero coverage of this event on most of the news this morning, and where there is coverage, it is minor (the Strib did something small).
If people are wondering what they can do about Trump, one thing you can do right now is to contact WCCO, KARE, FOX-9, Eyewitness 5, and the Star Tribune and ask them why they did not cover the protest with a couple thousand people at it held in Plymouth.
Which one are you for? I’ll take either. At first I didn’t want Ellison to leave MN05, but if he does, and he should if he is DNC chair, we have some excellent replacements lined up, and since MN05 is the most left leaning congressional district in the country, we don’t have to worry about it going blue.
BernieDems hate Perez because he supported Clinton, and their vitriol is greater than the hatred of Ellison, who supported Sanders in the primary and then Clinton in the general. But, if we react to BernieDem whinging and temper tantrums, we might as well get out of the game now. These videos show a fair amount of difference to the unity issue, by all of the candidates.
Nobody, including Perez and Ellison, said anything impressive. Ellison is closest to following my plan. Sally Boynton Brown is also close to my plan, but she seems to have been sidelined by being so supportive of #BLM.
Perez, on Meet the Press:
If this breaks down to Clinton wing vs. Sanders wing Democrats (Perez vs. Ellison) will that hurt the party more than it helps? I’m thinking yes, and neither Ellison nor Perez is therefore qualified to be DNC chair. But Perez does address the question, vaguely, in the above video.
From the DNC chair debate, Ellison is at 1:20 and beyond:
Ellison takes credit for Minnesota having two Democratic senators. Yes, Minneapolis (roughly, Ellison’s fifth district) made a difference in those races. No, Ellison did not turn a centrist, purple, or red district to a blue one. The Minnesota fifth district is inherently the most liberal congressional district in the country in all of history. A liberal dead cat would beat Jesus the Republican there.
Discussion of Clinton vs Sanders factions at about 3:40 in the above video, starting with Ellison. Ellison gave a good unity line.
Via Media Matters of America. Very interesting segment.
Santer talks about what is is like to be a rogue scientist in a Donald Trump administration.
The words referred to here the twelve words, were part of the 1995 Second Assessment report of the IPCC. That report is regularly updated, and forms the scientific and policy basis for our thinking about climate change at the national and international level. I highly recommend that you have handy at all times what I like to think of as the human-readable version of the most current IPCC report: Dire Predictions, 2nd Edition: Understanding Climate Change
As more and more exoplanets (at first) and earth-like exoplanets (eventually) have been discovered, the way thy are described to us has become increasingly sophisticated. Below are embeds of diverse video descriptions that have been very quickly developed and distributed given the freshness of this latest scientific discovery. Note that the practice of very clearly stating that a particular depiction of something that no human has ever seen, or will ever see, as being an artist’s reconstruction has largely fallen by the wayside. Exoplanets are no longer physical features of the universe occassionally glimpsed by astronomers with very fancy Big Science Gear. They are now stories, where almost all the details and even implications are made up.
From the Telegraph:
From the Guardian:
From NASA via CNN:
Additional small exoplanet discovered in alleyway:
How do we do from a marginal Putin stooge/Russian asset/whateverthefuck to a highly qualified and possibly super ethical choice in one fell swoop? How does someone like McMaster accept an appointment like this if there isn’t something wrong with him?
I do have a hypothesis to explain part of this: Trump’s first choices for everything, including all those that Trump’s fellow Republicans approved so gleefully, were mostly Bannon choices. That would make sense given Bannon’s stated goal of wanting to destroy the state. For the few such appointments that either self destructed or that somehow managed to not get confirmed by the Sycophants who call themselves Senators, the second choice is, simply, not Bannon’s.
Just a suggestion. If you have a better explanation, let’s hear it.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.
When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.
The seminal work of speculative fiction from the Booker Prize-winning, soon to be a Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss, Samira Wiley, and Joseph Fiennes.
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable.
Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now….
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid’s Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and literary tour de force.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Winston Smith toes the Party line, rewriting history to satisfy the demands of the Ministry of Truth. With each lie he writes, Winston grows to hate the Party that seeks power for its own sake and persecutes those who dare to commit thoughtcrimes. But as he starts to think for himself, Winston can’t escape the fact that Big Brother is always watching…
A startling and haunting vision of the world, 1984 is so powerful that it is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the influence of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of multiple generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions—a legacy that seems only to grow with the passage of time.
Below is a nice video from Move On Dot Org, as well as a link to a petition of theirs.
I would like to take this opportunity to caution everyone who is trying to figure out what is going on in the White House to avoid being misled by confusion, ignorance, or intentional misdirection. I have five points.
1) Be prepared to hold multiple competing hypothesis in mind at once. I promise you this: Whatever you think now, or come to realize over the coming months, is not a good historical description of what happened (or is happening). We can look back to Watergate to understand this. For Watergate, many, perhaps most, of the relevant conversations among the co conspirators were actually recorded and we can listen to them today. Many years after the event, a detailed description of actions, motivations, effects, etc. could be put down by historians. At the time the scandal was breaking, and the government was crumbling under the weight of the Nixon administration’s nefarious activities, no two people had the same theory of what was happening, and no one individual was as correct in their thinking as someone today who carefully studies the issue could be.
2) Eschew Occam’s razor, or at least, understand it and do not misuse it. It is almost never the case that in the affairs of humans the simplest explanation is the most likely to be correct. Given two incorrect explanations, the one that is simpler will have the smallest number of things wrong with it, but that is of little consolation if they are both wrong. (The real use of occam’s razor is to develop a testable hypothesis, not to find truth. So, you don’t have to give up the precious Occam’s razor. You just have to not use it to find truth, because that is not what it does.)
3) Recognize the fact that multiple different explanations may be based on very different premises that might not be compatible. For example, consider these two alternatives:
a) Flynn was on the phone with the Russians in order to convey information from Trump to Putin about sanctions.
vs.
b) Flynn was on the phone with the Russians in order to get orders from Putin, to convey those orders to Trump.
Both are extreme examples of Treason. Either could be true. Both may be wrong. But they are not likely both true, and in fact represent extemely different models of what is happening. So, pairs of explanations or descriptions of what is going on in the White House may not be compatible with each other if they each fall into a different presumptive model.
4) Ignore this meme, which is spreading: “The coverup is worse than the crime.”
Prosecutors will follow the Al Capone model every time. They will try to get the bad guy using any method that works (in the case of the murdering crime boss Capone, it was tax evasion), and they will avoid using methods that have even a modest chance of failure. This is one of the most under-appreciated yet critically and centrally important aspects of our criminal justice system. Think about it for a moment. You will understand so much more of what happens if you grok this, and to grok this you must ignore the mainstream media because they do not grok it even though they see it every day.
The press is fond of saying “the cover up is greater than the crime.” Sometimes that is true, but we really are more concerned with cases where the crime is more important than the normal human reaction to pretend you didn’t do it.
For example, if Flynn really was conspiring with the Russians, on behalf of Trump, to determine executive action that would benefit a foreign power because the foreign power is paying for that benefit, or has blackmail material to force it, than the worst possible form of treason occurred short of a treasonous event that kills Americans. A prosecutor may never be able to prove that in court sufficiently to get a conviction, or even make an indictment along these lines. But a prosecutor might very well be able to prove that evidence was tampered with or a federal investigator, or Congress, was lied to.
Let me underscore a key point too easily lost: Even if a prosecutor feels there is an 80% chance of getting a conviction on a higher level crime, they won’t go to court over it. They’ll settle for less or focus on the nearly 100% winnable lesser crime. So, even if all reasonable observers can walk away concluding, fairly, that the higher level crime happened, it may not ever be charged because of this self regulation by prosectors.
In the Watergate scandal, the cover up was extensive, bizarre, illegal, and winnable in court and ultimately led to jail time and fines. The Attorney General served 19 months for perjury, obstruction, and conspiracy. The President’s Chief of Staff served 19 months for conspiracy and obstruction of justice. A Chief political council pleaded nolo contendre to obstruction.
So, they lied and stood in the way of the investigation. That was the cover up, that’s what they got nailed for. But, is that what they did?
No, of course not. It is what they did after they did what they did. The big cheeses were never convicted for what they did.
What they did was to hack the election in order to win the presidency. Just like what happened this year, but instead of computer hacking and propaganda, they did it with a break-in and wire taps. And, apparently, the Russians were not involved with Watergate.
Putting this another way, the Watergate conspirators attempted, and perhaps succeed, in circumventing the Democratic process and putting their own guy in power. Then they tried to cover that up. Prosecutors were in the main only able to indict and convict over the cover up. That does not mean that these men’s attempt to overthrow the government was not worse than was the crime of pretending they didn’t.
5) Perhaps a pedantic point, but when you hear the phrase “What did he know and when did he know it” don’t assume this was a brilliant rhetorical device designed to take down Richard Nixon. It was exactly the opposite. It was a little like they were going for Occam’s Razor and ended up with a two-edged sword!
For those who don’t recognize the phrase I use in the title of this post, and that is used in the video below: Republican Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee said it first. He asked the question of Nixon’s knowledge of the Watergate break in during the Congressional investigation.
Ironically, Baker had assumed (based in a private conversation with Nixon, most likely) that Nixon either didn’t know about the break in and cover up, or could credibly claim he didn’t know. Baker was trying to protect the president. This is what he was thinking:
Baker: What did President Nixon know, and when did he know it?
Everybody else and the evidence: He knew nothing, and when he knew something, it was way later, after, like, now, or even never.
Baker: Well, OK, then, Nixon is innocent, let’s toss these other guys under the bus and move on with our Republican War to Gain Total Power, OK?
What really happened:
Baker: What did President Nixon know, and when did he know it?
Everybody else and the evidence: He knew all along and helped develop plans for the cover up itself. He was as deep in this as shit in an outhouse.
This is not the April 22 March for Science, but something more local and timed to occur with the American Association for the Advancement of Science meetings in Boston.
From the press release:
Scientists Take to the Streets to “Stand up for Science”
Scientists and impacted communities respond to attacks by anti-science forces and climate deniers in government
BOSTON – On Sunday, February 19, scientists, science advocates, community members, and frontline communities will rally at Boston’s Copley Square to call for increased vigilance to defend science against the barrage of attacks mounted by the Trump administration and Congress. The rally coincides with thousands of scientists gathering in Boston for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting, one of the first major convenings of scientists since anti-science forces and climate deniers gained unprecedented power in government.
The rally builds on the growing and historic movement of scientists fighting back against the Trump administration’s efforts to discredit science and climate research and dismantle key scientific institutions within the government. Since the election, hundreds of climate scientists rallied in San Francisco, thousands of scientists have signed open letters, rogue Twitter accounts have sprung up on behalf of governmental agencies, and some scientists may run for elected office. Sunday’s rally is the precursor to the March for Science taking place in DC and in cities around the world this April 22.
WHO: AAAS members and community supporters (full speaker list to be announced):
<li> Jacquelyn Gill, Ph.D. Asst. Prof. of Paleoecology, Univ. of Maine, Candidate for US Congress (ME-2), 2018; Host, Warm Regards Podcast</li>
<li>Kelly L. Fleming, Ph.D. AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow hosted at the US Dept. of Energy, 500 Women Scientists Leadership Board</li>
<li>Geoffrey Supran, Ph.D. Science History Post Doctoral Fellow, Harvard University</li>
<li>Astrid Caldas, Ph.D. Climate Scientist, Union of Concerned Scientists</li>
Aldous Huxley’s profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine” (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New World likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.
A while back I reviewed “Climate Change: What Everyone Needs To Know” by Joe Romm (see my review here). In that book Romm provides useful advice to help people understand the impact of climate change on them, on various aspects of their lives. For example, many people choose to retire to a specific habitat and a specific geographical location. You might want to know if a real estate investment you make now will be negatively affected when the state you move to becomes inundated by the sea or too hot to live in. Sure, you’re near retirement age so you are going to die soon anyway. But, will you die soon enough? What about the fact that you are squandering your family loot on future tepid swampland? Maybe you better think about what you are doing…
For those of you in the Twin Cities, especially in Minneapolis and its western suburbs, come on over to Maple Grove on February 27th at 7:00 PM to meet Dr. Mark Seeley, UMN climatologist and frequent guest commenter on public radio, and Mark Kudla of the Insurance Federation of Minnesota.
The presentation is called “Climate Change: Costing You Money.”
This will be at the Main Street Meeting Room of the Maple Grove Library. That’s just north of Maple Grove Dale, just south of Weaver Lake Road. You take Main Street south of Weaver Lake, or from The Dale, north from Elm Creek Blvd by the Buca di Beppo and Wild Bills, and there you’ll find the library tucked demurely behind the community center on the west side of the road.
I get a lot of “infographics” and many are quite good. But this medium has become a vehicle for commercial advertising. So, some company comes up with an info graphics, maybe makes a good one, sends it around to the bloggers and such, and thier name, somewhere down there near the bottom, gets around. I don’t mind the commercial aspect too much, but unless I’m able to vet the graphic, I can’t post it, I don’t generally have time or resources to do that, so I therefore ignore them.
But this one I’ll post because it looks interesting and is produced by a university. Also, we often discuss GMOs around here, and this is a handy dandy look at how that community sees itself, from an important perspective, at the moment.
So .. (click on it to see it in all its bigness)
Throughout history, humans have continuously made efforts to heal and eradicate diseases. In early, less modern times, this process was considered both difficult and strenuous, but with the advancement of technology and bioengineering, humans are developing faster, more effective measures for treating and eradicating diseases. To learn more, checkout this infographic sponsored by the University of California, Riverside’s
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, based on his PhD thesis.
