Fight the Power

Just a quick link today to a recent confirmation that Joe Power is still an unpleasant, bitter, cruel, spiteful, nasty little man.

Not that we needed any further reminders. Derren Brown has it covered, in particular. But still. He is quite revolting. Even for a fucking stage psychic who pretends to talk to people’s dead relatives.

Sorry to only bring you negativity today. I’m not feeling creative enough for anything more right now. I wrote over a thousand words of my novel earlier this evening, though, which isn’t too bad as excuses go.

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Captain Disillusion visits TAM 7

I’ve been lazy today, so have little of substance to say. But the latest Carnival of the Godless is up, and worth a read, so I can spare a moment to direct you there.

Also, you really need to see the latest video from Captain Disillusion. He’s always awesome anyway, and his latest long-awaited update is finally here. It’s split into five clips on YouTube, so make sure you catch it all. The stuff from The Amazing Meeting is hysterical, and he does a very cool debunking of that Derren Brown lottery prediction thing from a while back. Enjoy:

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Well, I’m convinced

If centuries of theology and philosophy and religious apologetics and dialectic debate haven’t been enough to persuade you of the totally genuine and absolutely real existence of God, then get ready for something that might finally tip the scale.

A nine-month-old child, somewhere in “southern Russian [sic]”, has been having verses of the Quran appear on various parts of his body in some sort of pink writing. They apparently turn up twice a week, and fade away over a few days. You know, similar to the way that ink might do if someone was writing things on him. This kid’s become quite the popular celebrity, with thousands of people turning up from all around to witness the miracle of words appearing on an infant boy’s body and his parents denying they put them there with a pen.

We’re told that “Local doctors have not been able to explain the phenomenon.” Now, I don’t know how many qualified medical practitioners have looked at the kid. But I’m thinking this might be true in the same way that parents have not been able to explain how Santa Claus delivers presents to hundreds of millions of children in one night. They could probably come up with one explanation, if pushed, but… well, that’d just spoil all the fun.

I really don’t get people sometimes. There’s so little inclination to question or doubt here, it’s like it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. It’s just important to believe in something.

In less crazy news, Derren Brown’s latest Science of Scams video is up. It’s about ouija boards, and has a demonstration of a test devised yonks ago by Michael Faraday, which I’d never seen before but is quite ingenious. I’m still really enjoying this series.

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A blog post about Derren Brown and Simon Singh

I tried coming up with a pun title, or at least something interestingly descriptive, but I appear to have failed, and ended up being boringly bland and perfunctory.

I shall now write the bit of my blog post that is about Derren Brown. (Sorry, snapping out of that now.)

Some of Derren’s shows in the past have been brilliant in highlighting just how easily we can be tricked, and how rational and intelligent people can fall for complete nonsense. (The séance one was a particular favourite.) But with the lottery prediction show he did recently, he encouraged the audience to “choose” between two hugely unlikely possibilities, and seemed to keep the most probable real explanation completely hidden. I’m okay with being lied to for the purposes of entertainment, but only when you’re being honest about it.

And the psychic lottery prediction was just one of a series he was doing recently called The Events. I only watched parts of the others, but the impression I got from people’s responses was that, from a critical thinking angle, they weren’t a whole lot better. I’ll try not to judge him unfairly on what I haven’t seen, but this particular chapter of his career doesn’t seem to have done his skeptical kudos any favours.

His latest project is titled Science of Scams. Over the last few months, a series of hoax videos have been posted online, purporting to be amateur footage of paranormal or otherwise inexplicable phenomena. The videos he’s now releasing on the site show the real stories behind these various illusions, which fooled many of the people who originally watched them on YouTube.

This is what we technically like to call a bit more fucking like it.

Seriously, this is one of my favourite things to do, and I love it when other people with more energy than me are proactive enough to follow it all the way through, and put together something which genuinely fools people, while carefully recording exactly how it was fabricated all along the way. It very nicely undermines most (if not all) of the reason to give any of the supposedly genuine occurrences any credence whatever.

Anyway, I’ve gone on longer than I’d planned to about that, and Simon Singh’s story is actually the one I’m more excited about.

Simon was in the Royal Courts of Justice today, where he was granted leave to appeal the preliminary ruling in his BCA libel case. That’s the ruling that was made back in May, which established the “meaning” of his article, and which really didn’t do him any favours. It wasn’t at all clear that he was going to be allowed to appeal against it, especially because when a lower court has made its decision like this, it’s uncommon for the Court of Appeal to overturn it. But he was granted full appeal on the meaning of the alleged libel, which is about as excellent a result as they could have hoped for today.

It’s not a major turning point, just one positive step in a long journey, but I like to think that this is further evidence of the general sway of things moving very much in Simon’s direction. For instance, Crispian Jago was there at the courts this morning, and paraphrases thusly the judge’s comments:

Lawyer Dude: “You’re most worthy eminence, sir, your majesty whatever etc etc. We have given you a shit load of documentation explaining why Simon should be given permission to appeal, do you want me to go through the 4 major points”

Justice Law: “Nah, I can’t be arsed to go through all that as you’ve written far too much, anyway I’ve already made up my mind to grant Simon permission for a full appeal and Simon will be allowed to re-argue it was fair comment. Now bugger off and try and write something a bit shorter for the full appeal.

And the Index on Censorship article quotes Lord Justice Laws as describing Mr Justice Eady’s original ruling as possibly being “legally erroneous”.

He went on, as reported by the Sense About Science campaign:

There is no dispute that [Simon’s original article] is in the public interest, with no suspicion of malice and there is no question of good faith

And that’s not a casual, half-remembered paraphrasing like Crispian’s was. He flat-out said that, which sounds to me like he’s kinda on our side.

Further information, and better analysis than I am able to offer, is provided by The Lay Scientist, Heresy Corner, and of course a characteristically comprehensive and accessible summary of events from Jack of Kent.

Basically, it’s good news, everyone! (I probably should’ve opened with that.)

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Can sealions predict the lottery?

I love it when a serious topic comes up for me to really get my teeth into.

Derren Brown, he of the recent psychic reveal FAIL, linked on his blog recently to another story of lottery prediction, which is about as plausible as either of the explanations he suggested. The headline reads: Did Derren Brown use sealions to pick lottery numbers?

Yes, centuries-old and deeply esteemed newspaper The Telegraph is really asking us that question.

Now, I don’t object to the odd fluff piece. Sealions are pretty lovable animals, who do some pretty adorable things, and that deserves to be mentioned sometimes. And if someone’s had the idea of giving them some footballs with numbers written on them, and basing a lottery pick on the ones they choose to play with, that’s as good an excuse as any to put some cute animals in the news.

But… this article seems to be doing more than just having a silly, jokey laugh at what is self-evidently a comical idea. After some goofy description of Biffo and Max balancing balls on their noses to choose the lottery numbers – perfectly respectable journalism that I think we can all get behind – suddenly, we get this declaration, solemn and serious enough to be given a paragraph all to itself:

They are rarely known to be wrong.

Um. Hey, The Telegraph: meet me at camera three.

Oh wait, I’m not The Daily Show. Damn.

Look, this is a fine story, with an endearingly quirky angle. It asks some silly questions about whether Derren Brown might be psychically tapping into these animals, but I don’t resent that it’s not taking a hard skeptical line. It’s just a fluff piece. And maybe it even helps, to have psychic nonsense as the standard wacky outlandish silliness to be found in fluff pieces. Whatever; most of the content I’m not objecting to.

But… these sealions who are predicting the lottery numbers… you’re saying they’re “rarely known to be wrong”. That… that kinda implies that they generally get it right.

The sealions. Predicting the lottery numbers.

Do you really understand what you’re writing here? You’re casually and off-handedly breaking the “news” that a couple of sealions can actually predict lottery numbers. You’re saying that this isn’t just some fun gimmick the zookeepers like to run, to give some context to the lovable animals splashing around and playing adorably with balls; you’re saying they can see into the future.

This isn’t some quirky thing about zoo animals telling people’s fortunes, so that the punters can chuckle to their friends, “Ooh, Tarka says I’m going to meet someone tall, dark and handsome this weekend, I hope he’s right!” And it’s not just that these sealions are interacting with people in a way that makes you feel like there’s a “real connection” there. Lottery numbers are an objectively measurable thing. And you’re saying that Biffo and Max can predict them. And they are “rarely known to be wrong”.

I just don’t get it.

Do you really think this story needs to try and convince us that sealions are psychic, for it to be worth reading? What the heck was wrong with just letting it be about animals doing something cute? When has that ever not worked as a hook?

Am I getting needlessly annoyed over this? It just seems so pointlessly unnecessary. I mean… they’re sealions. Of course they’re wrong, but who cares? Who’s going to be upset with them for not accurately predicting the future in a way never demonstrated by any known entity before in history? They’re sweet and they play with balls and splash. We’ll be happy with that. You don’t need to build their part up any further. They’re just sealions.

My feet ache because I’ve been playing sports all evening so I’m going to bed.

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The evening after

It’s an especially lazy Friday here, so just a few brief things:

– Thanks again to all the contributors to yesterday’s Skeptics’ Circle, and to everyone who’s linked to it, commented, etc. I would take a snapshot of how much my visitor numbers have spiked, but, y’know, lazy. Kris Wager is now taking submissions for the next edition. With luck, he’ll be better versed than I in the art of brevity.

– I am reading The Greatest Show On Earth. It are awesome.

– I join the rest of the world in annoyance at Derren Brown‘s big “reveal” of his lottery prediction trick. He clearly doesn’t expect us to believe that a bunch of people working together psychically foretold it, but the story about rigging the draw with heavier balls was almost as silly. I’m now leaning toward the idea that it most likely happened something like this (thanks to BoingBoing for the link). [Edit: Yep, I think this pretty much nails it.]

And because it’s something that people seem to be doing today, consider this an open thread. Talk about whatever you like in the comments. Discuss any of the above, or something completely different. Tell me something interesting. Whatever. I’m off to have some yoghurt.

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