Uganda pastor denies miracle scam

What made me smile was the phrase;

some could be fraudsters

Aren’t all religious leaders fraudsters?

They make ludicrous claims of life after death and of an all compassionate but also all knowing and all powerful old male chauvinist in the sky.

And for their ridiculous, totally unverifiable, claims they get to live rent and tax free and are respected within the community.

Wtf?

Religion is so obviously a confidence scam it is laughable.
The sad thing is that the confidence tricksters, on the whole, believe the daft claims of their own scam.

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Bush faces eavesdropping subpoena

“Its unfortunate that congressional Democrats continue to choose the route of confrontation.”

I wonder if I am the only one who also heard the following appended to the above Whitehouse comment…

“… instead the of subservient compliance we expect”

In just the same way as David Cameron seems uninformed about the British Constitutional affairs when he demanded that Gordon Brown hold an election to get a mandate [Constitutionally the electorate elect the political party, Labour, not the PM] the Whitehouse seems intentionally ignorant that the Congress is there to hold the President to account.

Rather than gripe at the Democrat congressmen doing their obligated constitutional duty, perhaps they should gripe at the Republicans that failed to do theirs for the previous 6 years? Perhaps if they had done their job, rather than always being quietly compliant, the Republicans would still totally hold on to the reigns of power.

Or perhaps I am being to much of a constitutional literalist and not seeing the realpolitik motive behind both of these constitutionally ignorant statements.
Perhaps they were made to pander to ignorant reactionaries who are unversed in the finer points of democracy.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Washington diary: Bloomberg’s gamble
I have always complained about the poor word proofing on BBC online.
But now the editorial content is starting to annoy me.
In the above article, supposedly about the potential of Bloomberg running for president, sounds awfully like a British tabloid newspaper.

“The rumour has been tickling Washington’s political gonads for months now.”

and

“Arnie yodelled and then smiled like a split watermelon.”

and

“He was the independent candidate who ran in 1992 with a face like an extra-terrestrial and a voice like a duck.”

I know that the use of similes are somewhat more obscure than in a tabloid, but it is definitely tending in that direction.

Vatican urges end to Amnesty aid

Amnesty is quite specific in its support of political prisoners and other prisoners of conscience.

It makes perfect sense that they support the rights of people who are imprisoned or otherwise persecuted for supporting the right to choose abortion, contraceptives or other means of birth control.

Such a liberal view of supporting a persons individual liberty naturally goes against orthodox religions desire to control all aspects of a persons life. [So much for the doctrine of free will]

The Catholic Church’s primitive, backward and unsympathetic stance on contraception proves its continuing irrelevance in the fight for human rights.

How the Catholic Church, and many other Xian denominations, can claim to be supporting human rights when they actively campaign against contraception, separation of church and state and homosexuals, continues to baffle me.

but it does prove the truism

“Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” – Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize winning Physicist

After Michael Howard condemned the UEFA handling of the recent UEFA cup final, the rebuttal by the UEFA official, William Gaillard was the following;

“It is very easy to say it is not a suitable stadium, coming from the man that invented the poll tax.”

This is a classic Ad Hominen logical fallacy.

Rather than address the concerns raised by Michael Howard over the UEFA handling of the match, he decided to take the intellectually bankrupt path of attacking the person.

I guess Mr. Howard must have had some valid points as they sure hit a nerve at UEFA for them to steep so low as to use Ad Hominen in a press conference!

Now, I am not a football fan, and I am most definitely not a Conservative, but I do not like people using ivalid logic in their arguments. And Ad Hominen is the most vile and underhand.

UEFA should be ashamed.

I had a good time on Queen’s day but got burnt.

It was probably the sunniest Queen’s days I have ever experienced.

I am now suffering from a headache and am drinking lots of water and OJ to replenish what has been exfoliated from me by the Sun.
Luckily I have got 400mg of Ibuprofen with my name on it washing around in my system, and that is helping some.

Overview

If you have not heard of the phenomenon called “The Secret” then you must be new to the internet.
“The Secret” is a self help documentary, and associated books and audio products that was promoted using a heavy handed viral marketing campaign on the internet in 2006.
It is basically making the claim that the “law of attraction” is a secret passed down the generations by successful people and families.
It is, of course, like most self help ideas awash with pseudo-scientific, superstitious mumbo jumbo bullshit.
But, also like most self help ideas, it has a valid basis. [It just draws ridiculous conclusions]

Positive Mental Attitude

The secret starts by claiming that if one has a positive frame of mind and focuses on positive things then “the universe” will “manifest” good things for you.
If you focus on the negative and bad things then “the universe” will “manifest” bad things for you.

Poppycock.

However, this does seem to be what happens. [Notice the emphasis there.]
What actually happens is a perceptual shift. Our experience of reality is directly related to how we perceive it to be.
If you could shift your perception of the reality you change your experience.
This still sounds a bit mumbo-jumbo but it has been talked about by philosophers, and more recently clinical psychologists, for millennia.
They call it “subjective reality”.
Let’s use an example to understand the psychology of what happens.

After five years in a happy relationship you significant other suddenly dumps you and leaves.
Your friends noticing you are obviously distressed by the situation take you out to a singles club. [Aren't they sensitive]
Across the room you notice someone really hot smiling at you.
Which of the following thoughts do you have;

1. Hmm, I think they might be interested in me. I am going over and find out. Time to get jiggy.
2. They are laughing at me. I am worthless.

In all likelihood the second thought is more accurate.
A good thing has happened, someone hot is interested in you, but because you are upset about your situation you can not see it as a good thing.
Let’s consider an antonym situation

After five years trying for a baby, including expensive trips to medical specialists, and after you have almost given up hope, you find you are expecting.
When you get to your car parked outside the clinic you notice you have a ticket. You had unintentionally parked in a disabled space.
Which of the following thoughts do you have;

1. Damn. Just my luck. It always has to happen to me.
2. WHATEVER! We are off home to celebrate!

yet again it is more than likely to be the latter.

What is happening is that if you are in a positive mood then the impact of a negative experience is minimized, and when you are in a negative mood the impact of a positive experience is likewise minimized.
The claim in “The Secret” that there are less negative experiences for people who take a positive outlook is nonsense.
These people have the same amount of negative experiences as they did before. But the impact of these experiences is reduced.
As our experience of reality is subjective, remaining positive is a good way to effectively change our reality.
Likewise the proposals of “counting our blessings”, as espoused publicly by the christian church for over 1000 years, and seeing the best in others are neither secret, new nor non-obvious. They are used to reinforce a positive outlook.

Goal Focus and Visualization

Neither of these two points are a secret or particularly mysterious. But the secret does it’s best to associate the power of focusing on goals and objectives, and visualizing achieving those goals, to some sort of universal energy field.
Bullshit.
It makes sense that if you are focusing on your goals you are more likely to achieve them. Common sense.
If I want to have a clean apartment then visualizing how i want it afterwards then focussing on cleaning will make it happen.
Nothing mysterious there.
Cognitive scientists, the kind that avoid pseudo-scientific claptrap like the Secret like it is a plague, have found amazing things with athletes.
Athletes who visualize performing better, and then train, perform better than if they only trained.
This is interesting and warrants further study. It may be associated to the placebo effect.
Just attributing this phenomenon to “the universe” is a pathetic way of stifling scientific investigation and the authors of “The Secret” should be ashamed.

He who hesitates is lost & carpe diem

In a later part of the documentary it goes on about how after having a positive state of mind, and visualizing and focusing on your goals, you must be “ready to receive” the “manifestation” of the goals for it to happen.
This is nonsense. Yet again tying up some common sense idioms in nonsensical new age mumbo-jumbo.
What they are trying, ineptly, to say is that you have to be able to perceive the opportunities available to you and to seize them.
As described earlier, your attitude will determine how you perceive reality.
So if you are down you will not notice the cute single person smiling at you.
But this section is about if you are able to recognize the opportunity. It says you should not hesitate and should seize it.
How this “secret passed down the centuries” has remained secret when it is a common phrase, Carpe diem, baffles me.

Conclusion

All in all, The Secret has a few useful tips on how to achieve more in your life. But unfortunately it tries it’s best to associate it’s message with pseudo-science, spirituality and religion and not on verifiable scientific reasoning.
[One of the pieces talks about miracles by those that follow the ideas presented. But I have to ask if these miracles are just as miraculous as Lourdes? Where over 10 million people visit annually for the last 60 years and only 13 miracles have been recognized. In medical science that would be considered statistically insignificant to prove the effectiveness of Lourdes to produce miracles. At least Lourdes has raw data to study. The Secret does not.]
The whole piece can be summarized (sans mumbo-jumbo) as follows;

• Focus on the positive in your life:
  • Focus on the good things that happen and cast off the bad things
  • List all the things that are good in your life and read them every day
  • Find the good in others, even those that make you feel bad
  • find the good, if you can, in bad situations. [They can be seen as a learning experience]
• Focus on your goals:
  • Cut out the cruft and procrastination
  • Visualize your goals and the method of achieving them
• Cape Diem:
  • Don’t hesitate when you see something you want
  • If you see an opportunity seize it

There you go. Simple idioms, and you do not need to waste all that time talking nonsense about “the universe” of how “we are all made of vibrating energy that flows between us”.
What would have been useful would have been some tips and strategies on how to;

• Remove cruft to allow better goal focus
• How to be more open to and recognize opportunities when they arise

Guess that will be in the next book/dvd/seminar.

Because they are too busy being shot by their deepley religious comrades…

The atheist GI who was shot by his compadres in afghanistan is having his relatives decry the exploitation of his death as a propaganda effort by the Pentagon.

It is strange that the Pentagon would choose to propgandise his death as his religious and political view are not coincident with the usual pentagon image.

A Chomksy reading, Democrat voting atheist, he doe not represent the stereotypical god-fearing republican image of the military.

But perhaps the stereotype is wrong.

Perhaps the miltary is heaving with godless, liberal intelectuals?

Why oh why are people trying to link Islam to the Virginia Massacre?

The name Ismail Ax is far more likely to have a literary meaning to the killer than a religious one.
[Seeing as the guy was an English major]

And I think I have found it. [Yes, yet another blogger with yet another useless unlikely theory]

Moby-Dick!

No one doing an English language degree in the US would be unaware of Melvilles magnum opus.

The character Ishmael in the novel is often described as an obsessive character with dark suicidal thoughts.

“His primary reason for going to sea, he suggests, is to break out of this depressive cycle and obsession with death.”

It seems to describe the killer more accurately than the description of Ishmael in the Bible [oh, and incidentally also in the Koran].

People mentioned that he was a isolated young man who wrote dark pieces.

The fall back by some into a “lets blame Islam” mentality just shows them up for the reactionary bigots they are.

It is the same mentality that blames rock music and D&D for such massacres, rather than the perpetrator.
[And the right says the left is pathetic by blaming gun ownership ... They should look in the mirror before casting stones, or something]

My theory may be asinine but then most of them are.

More than likely we will never know why the killer did what he did and what his real motivations were.

But it won’t stop net bigots and net weirdos thrashing futilely around for a reason.

Hicks gets Guantanamo plea deal

It is so plainly obvious that Hicks is pleading guilty, and refuting his earlier claims of torture, to just commute his sentence and allow him to both return to Australia and see freedom before he is in his dotage.

It is sickening that the dropping of the torture claims were an integral part of the plea bargain.
It leads one to suspect that there is something behind them.
Especially when you consider that many of the previously release detainees at Guantanamo have reported likewise.

On my recent trip to the US I noticed that FOX news is trying hard to justify the use of judicial torture against suspected terrorists.

I am, of course, against the usage of judicial torture. [Full disclosure: I am a paid up member of Amnesty]
However, my objection is not on moral grounds.

If you use the mythical ticking bomb scenario then, as long as you accept the idea of a just war, you can justify torture morally.

As a just war, just as much as an unjustified war followed by lengthy, unpopular occupation, will incur innocent civilian casualties who die and the potentially guilty terrorist is tortured but does not die, anyone who can justify one must logically justify the other.

Of course moral reaction has nothing to do with logic. It is a purely emotional response.

But there is one reason why judicial torture is wrong that is not often talked about.
Not the ethicacy of torture but the efficacy of it.
It just plain don’t work.

Most children could probably work out why. It is a pity that FOX news and politicians can’t.

It is a simple application of game theory. Game theory in it’s simplest form is just the working out of a winning strategy or outcome given certain constraints.
With torture it is simply the normal desire of the victim to do something to stop it from happening to them.
The following table is a breakdown of the options available to an innocent;

As telling the truth would not be believed by the torturer the only winning strategy for an innocent person is to tell a plausible lie.
And it will not take too long for them to work out what the torturer wants to hear.

The table for a guilty person is similar, however a guilty terrorist has the additional goal of detonating his bomb;

Admittedly this is an oversimplified version of game theory, but you can plainly see that there is a single winning strategy where torture is concerned. A plausible lie

The only guarantee that torture gives someone is that the information gained by it’s use is extremely likely to be flawed.
And as good information is vital to the fight against terrorists, then anyone supporting that fight must logically be against the use of judicial torture.

In plainer language, “To support judicial torture is to support the terrorist!”

Those who disagree and believe torture is capable of extracting valid information must also believe that 15^th through 18^th Europe was infested with witches!