Enlightning Bolts – 03.08.2010

There’s a new podcast and it’s for skeptical parents! I’m not a skeptical parent (yet) but it’s still an interesting podcast: The Podcast Beyond Belief.

One of many sad examples of where failure to immunize kills. On the positive side of things, 85 million African kids will be getting the polio vaccine.

Ouch! The psychic Oscar predictions I posted the other night only guessed 2 correct out of 10 picks. This non-psychic did much better.

This New York Times article highlights some of the abuses of the Church of Scientology, as described by people who escaped the cult.

One of my favourite shows, Community, and one of the few shows that I can think of featuring a positive atheist character (and a female one to boot!) has been picked up for a second season. Watch their reaction to the news here.

Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about how lame hollywood aliens are. Except for the Blob. That one is A-O-K.

5 Bits of Woo I Wish Were True and 5 I’m Glad Aren’t True

The Top 5 Bits of Woo I Wish Were True:

5. Santa Claus – When I was a kid my parents told me that on Christmas Eve a jolly old man in a red suit would come down our chimney and leave me toys that his magical elves made me at the North Pole. How cool would that be?! And now as an adult, I’m thinking that Christmas could be a whole lot more fun if Santa did my shopping for me.

4. Free Energy – There’s always somebody pimping their perpetual motion machine, telling you they’ve got the solution to the energy crisis, but unfortunately they’re either con artists, deluded, or breaking the laws of thermodynamics. Alas! I guess I’ll just have to keep paying the heating bill and filling up that pesky gas tank.

3. The Afterlife – It would be so comforting to know that my loved ones are living on after they’ve passed away, and to know that I would be meeting them again soon. Also, since I became an atheist, I’ve started getting really bad anxiety every time I get in a car. I desperately don’t want to die, because I know this is the only life I get. If I knew that there was an afterlife I would be a lot more relaxed about taking risks, and I certainly wouldn’t be such an annoying back seat driver!

2. UFOs – Imagine if aliens actually visited Earth? Hopefully they wouldn’t be of the anal-probing variety…but it would surely be the highlight of my life to encounter a being from another solar system. I highly doubt the possibility of humans achieving inter-stellar travel in my lifetime, so to have a creature that’s seen the universe from a completely different perspective come to us would be…just…wow.

1. The Power of Prayer – If I thought I could relieve someone’s pain or bring world peace or solve complicated problems by appealing to a higher power, you’d better believe I would be down on my knees every second of every day.

The Top 5 Bits of Woo I’m Glad Aren’t True:

5. Psychic Powers – It creeps me out to imagine a world where certain people could read your thoughts and see your future. My thoughts are private, and I choose what I share with people. To not have the ability to own my most personal feelings would suck. And I have no desire to see my future. That would take the adventure out of life! Althought I wouldn’t mind winning the occasional lottery…

4. 9/11 and Moon Landing Conspiracy Theories – These ideas sicken me because they assume that the government is able to dupe people on a massive scale, and that they are in no way accountable to the people they represent. Politicians have their problems and often do crooked things, but they don’t have nearly the amount of control over the population as these two theories would require if they were true. Plus, humans have been on another freaking world! How jaded do you have to be to deny that???

3. Ghosts – I like the idea of an afterlife, but if I had to spend it walking up and down stairs, making howling noises, and causing loopy psychics to feel cold, I’d rather just be dead.

2. The Dangers of Vaccines – Vaccines save lives, and have helped nearly eliminate certain painful childhood illnesses. Yet there are certain people who, for whatever reason, have decided to ignore the evidence and blame vaccines for everything that’s wrong in the world. I think they should take a stroll through an old graveyard and count the number of babies burried there.

1. Hell – Eternal torment…what a brilliant idea thought up by authority figures to keep their people in line. Nobody should be punished eternally for any mistake they made on Earth. It’s a horrible thing to threaten someone with. Thankfully it doesn’t exist…unfortunately some people genuinely live in fear of fire and brimstone. Sad.

Search Terms: “best telescope for sighting mother ships”

I’m always curious to see how people ended up at my blog, so I like reading the different search engine terms that lead people here. Because I’ve made posts about different conspiracy theories and wacky beliefs, I always see some…er, interesting searches that people type in. Mostly stuff about aliens on the moon or Kevin Trudeau, but today someone got here by typing in probably my favourite search terms yet:

“best telescope for sighting mother ships”

I wonder why they’re only interested in the mother ships? Or maybe they already have the best telescope for sighting the regular ships.

Things I Want to See Before I Die (Part 1)

For some reason I’ve been thinking about my mortality a lot lately, maybe because I recently celebrated a birthday. Since I abandoned my wishful thinking of an afterlife I’ve become more okay with death.  I don’t have irrational fears of hell, I can just shut my eyes and that will be the end.

But the thought that the end is truly the end is also a really sad thought, because we live a time of so much innovation, and I would like to be around to witness it.

I decided that I’m going to make a list of discoveries and advancements that I’d like to see in my lifetime. I hope I can check some of them off soon, and I’ll try to update the list as I think of things…which is why I’m calling this post Part 1.

Here’s the list so far:

1. The discovery of the Higgs-Boson particle
2. Humans back to the Moon
3. Discovery of alien life, hopefully intelligent but bacteria would be cool too!
4. Figuring out what the heck dark matter is
5. Space tourism
6. Nuclear power to replace coal
7. AIDS vaccine

I’ll start off with 7, that’s a pretty ambitious list! Unfortunately I won’t be taking part in discovering or implementing any of these things, but I will idolize the scientists who do so. And I do hope to take part in some space tourism in my lifetime, how awesome would that be?!

What would be on your list?

What Would You Say to the Aliens?

The SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute wants to know!

If SETI detects a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization, what would you want to say to them? Or should we even reply?

Click here to let SETI know what you think we should say to the aliens!

Kookiness

When I was looking for information on putting a base on the moon that I talked about in the previous post, I came across a fun bit of kookiness.

Proof of aliens on the moon

Here are some people who believe that there are alien structures and artifacts on the moon:

“Is there an “Alien Base” on the Moon? More and more people are coming forward with stories that might prove this is true. Rumors say that there is an Alien Moon Base on the far side of the moon, the side we never see from Earth.
Did you ever wonder why the Moon landings stopped and why we have not tried to build a Moon Base? It does seem like a better and easier idea than a floating space station with no access to any raw materials or supplies? According to the NASA Astronaut Neil Armstrong the aliens have a base on the Moon and told us in no uncertain terms to get off and stay off the Moon! ”

“Sound far fetched? Milton Cooper, a Naval Intelligence Officer tells us that not only does the Alien Moon Base exist but the U.S. Naval Intelligence Community refers to the Alien Moon Base as “Luna,” that there is a huge mining operation going on there, and that is where the aliens keep their huge mother ships while the trips to Earth are made in smaller “flying saucers”. ”

“LUNA: The Alien base on the far side of the Moon. It was seen and filmed by the Apollo astronauts. A base, a mining operation using very large machines, and the very large alien craft described in sighting reports as mother ships exist there.” -Milton Cooper

How fun!

There is also an accompanying video on the website that provides a ton of examples of pereidolia, as someone has pored over pictures of the moon and imagined every smudge or line or geometric line to be evidence of civilization on the moon.