Magnetic Madness

Magnetic bracelets, wristbands, insoles, neck braces and such, have been around for a long time now and people are still fooled into buying these products. Of course, they are just another example of quackery that seems all pervasive today.

My engineering/scientific training means that magnetism is a subject I know something about and I never could – and still can’t – see how any of these things could provide any health benefits. Well, now it seems like the British Medical Journal agrees with me; they have recently issued a statement indicating that so-called magnetic therapy has no proven results and that any healing effect is likely to be small. I think they are a little wrong, I would say that any healing effect is virtually certain to be non-existent!

As usual, the purveyors of magnetic medical trinkets make no attempt to explain – in technical terms that are not hilarious – how magnetism is beneficial, it’s just the same tired old message, don’t think, just believe…and buy! If you have bought, or are thinking of buying a magnetic miracle, try this small thought experiment first.

All the blood in your body has about enough iron in it to make a small nail; the iron is distributed evenly throughout. Now, just consider exactly what could be achieved by the (tiny) magnetic effect upon this iron? The answer is not much, indeed, nothing that you could possibly notice or measure. Always keep in mind the placebo effect and the fact that most ailments are self-limiting, e.g. if you catch cold and take no medication at all, the cold will most likely run it’s course and leave.

Book: The Demon Haunted World

This is the first of many book reviews I plan to write from time to time, my reviews will not be in-depth critiques of the work, just the reasons for my recommendations of it. I first read this book immediately after its first publication in 1997; it's been reviewed hundreds of times already, but since it’s the best book I’ve ever read and the current world needs its wisdom so badly, I’m going to plug it again.

I don’t care who you are, what you are or where you come from, you need to read this book. It could serve very well as the thinking person’s bible; it is Carl Sagan’s:

“The Demon Haunted World: Science As a Candle In The Dark”

Whatever you may think of Sagan as a person, no sane reader can deny the value of this book, it’s a veritable gold mine of information and good sense written in Sagan’s elegant style showing his masterly command of the English language. Because it’s written so well, it’s an easily read work that should be made required reading for secondary school children, perhaps they could convince their parents to read it as well!

Each chapter is a gem but two stand out for special mention these are; “The Dragon In My Garage” and “The Baloney Detection Kit”. If you’re not already a critical thinker, digesting these chapters alone will set you on the right path and you’ll never fall for bullshit again.

I repeat; buy it, borrow it, steal it, do whatever you need to do to get your hands on it, it’s a must have item.

Chomsky

I didn’t “discover” Noam Chomsky until I lived in the USA but that’s the only regret I have about him. Widely regarded as one of the greatest living intellectuals, the MIT Professor Of Linguistics has a remarkable ability to see the wood in spite of the trees. Chomsky must be the most painful thorn in the flesh Bush and his cronies have to suffer, and I shouldn’t be surprised if he was top of a CIA, people-to-assassinate-if-we-could-get-away-with-it hit list.

Of Jewish descent, Chomsky seems to be disliked mostly by his own compatriots, not surprising when you hear his (correct) analysis of the Arab-Israeli situation. When you listen to him talk you are struck by the simplicity of what he says that quite apart from being logical and verifiable, has that special “ring of truth” character about it that makes you realise that of course he’s correct but makes you also wonder why you never thought of it yourself! The lecture he gave a year ago at Edinburgh University made me think for days afterward.

If you are somewhat politically naïve – as I admit I was – then you should maybe give some time to Chomsky, there are lots of multi-media presentations and lectures by him on the Web, just type “Chomsky video” into Google and he’ll pop up everywhere.

You will also find plenty of anti-Chomsky material on the Web, some of it very well written, but well written garbage is still garbage and fools only those prone to being duped by intellectual impostures - a subject I plan to blog about very shortly.

Noam Chomsky is not a young man but I hope he lives a long time yet, the world will be a much worse place without him.

Heavens Above!

How many are there do you think? One, two, three or more? Perhaps even an infinite number of heavens! Let’s face it, we’ve had to put up with hundreds of gods throughout history and I’ve heard at least three of them reside up there somewhere. I can’t imagine only one heaven shared by all the gods, after all, given the degree of violence depicted and advocated in the guide books of the major religions, it seems logical to assume that warlike deities such as Jehovah and Allah would be at each others throats if they had to share a heaven!

I suppose, of course, they could divide heaven up with clearly defined borders but that too would pose problems of encroachment just like their followers down here perpetrate. In addition, given the screw-up record of the gods here, it seems inevitable that soul transportation errors would occur. Imagine spending all your life as a devout Christian only to end up in the Allah sector of heaven! What would the policy be? Would a soul have to stay in Allah heaven until a Muslim transit foul-up happened and then be traded at some heavenly version of Checkpoint Charlie?

I don’t know…it all seems a bit dubious to me, even if each god had his very own separate heaven, there’s only one Earth so the soul-transit problem would still exist. It’s all very confusing isn’t it?

You know what…to hell with it, I think I’ll stay here.

One Last Puff

As an ex-smoker, I fully support the smoking ban in all enclosed public spaces shortly to be enacted here in Scotland. Unfortunately, smokers will still be able to puff away outdoors so we’ll still see cigarette butts littering the entrances to shopping centres and other public facilities. In my opinion, that’s as bad as the smoke so I think the ban should be extended to any public place, period, and heavy fines imposed upon the “one last puff” brigade who foul the area.

Being honest with myself, I guess my support of the ban would be less strong if I still smoked but I would not rebel against it. The most striking thing I noticed after stopping smoking myself was how much smokers stink! I remember being in my local library when a one-last-puffer came and stood at the bookshelf beside me, he positively reeked and I had to walk away repulsed.

“Holy shit!” I said to myself, “did I smell like that?” - I suppose I must have.

One thing I will never do however, is look down upon people who smoke, or try to convince them to stop. I once got into a heated argument inside a restaurant in the USA with a woman who had the stupidity to tell me that only people of low intelligence were smokers! People who know me will guess what happened next; I destroyed her feeble argument with a list of the most intelligent people who had ever lived and were also smokers, being a dimwit though, she had probably never heard of most of them.

To all you smokers, I offer this small encouragement from personal experience.  I found the hardest thing to overcome when stopping was the fear that it would be difficult, once I’d beaten that the rest was easy. Be aware that the desire to smoke never entirely leaves you, but a short while after stopping, the desire is very weak and lasts only a second or two. At least that was my experience, for you it may differ.

Dafty

I will not tell you of William Wallace, I will not regale you with a tale of nationalistic warlike fervour. I will tell you of a man nicknamed “Dafty”, and will regale you - just a little - with a tale of nationalistic intellectual fervour.

To be honest, I try not to be nationalistic because I feel that being so can be more harmful than helpful, but in this case I feel justified because poor old Dafty does not receive the recognition he deserves from his fellow countrymen. The nickname “Dafty” (for you non-Scots) is generally reserved for persons thought to be a little feeble-minded so our hero would not have been too happy about the boyhood name his school chums gave him.

Denigration of people whose behaviour is unusual seems to be a national characteristic of us Scots, especially among those from small towns who often have parochial and static attitudes, (this may also be true of other nations however). I well remember from my own schooldays more than one person who suffered that deprecating nickname, sometimes worse!

The unusual behaviour of this particular Dafty was to show a much higher interest than others in how things worked and the application of mathematics to the world around him. Fortunately for him and much more fortunately for us, the Edinburgh-born schoolboy grew up and the “Dafty” label rightly perished.

His name was James Clerk Maxwell, and he became one of the greatest scientists who ever lived.

In four of the greatest equations ever derived, Maxwell unified electricity, magnetism and light and was the first to realise that these were all manifestations of the same thing; we call that thing, electromagnetic radiation. Maxwell’s equations paved the way for the development of radio, TV, mobile phones and almost any electronic device you can think of. Sadly, today it is only students of physics and science in general who are aware of the tremendous contributions by Maxwell, of whom Albert Einstein once said:

“To few men in history has such an insight been vouchsafed”.

It probably never happened, but I harbour the slight hope that those who nicknamed Maxwell became aware of their folly in their lifetimes but if not, then perhaps they are rotating in their graves with egg on their faces! So I say to all you Scots; next time you settle down for a brain-numbing night of TV, spare a little thought for Dafty, who made it all possible.

Industry Of Deception

For a long time now, a multi billion-dollar/pound industry whose sole reason for existence is to dupe people into making mostly irrational financial decisions, has been growing steadily stronger. Personally, I find it difficult to imagine what it must be like to be an employee of this industry; people who spend their time bullshitting and lying their way through life at the behest and in the pay of, their corporate masters. Some people will do anything for money, I suppose.

A few of the leaders of this almost criminal enterprise are actually proud of their efforts at deception; they seem to think they’re being creative! Sadly, the reason for their continued expansion is the willingness of consumers to accept the bullshit and allow their thinking to be done for them. The great mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell, once said:

“People would rather die than think, and in fact they do so.”

This seems to be even truer today that it was when he first said it and this industry of deception called advertising, depends entirely upon this fact.

Imagine a world where we the consumers decided to think for ourselves and subjected products to properly conducted testing of their claims. Take anti-wrinkle skin creams aimed at aging ladies for example; testing would prove these products ineffective in their stated role. Vendors however, could simply re-label them as “brain cream” and then they may even pass tests, because there is little doubt that’s where they’re working!

Change Or Die

Change is a fundamental feature of nature, the Universe is expanding, evolution continues, the rule is simple: change or die. In spite of our own foolishness, in spite of religion’s attempt to control and hold us back, humankind has progressed and continues to progress. Unless we self-annihilate, this natural state of affairs will be the death of religion, it will die because it is static and must remain so.

The only way for any religion to live on is to change, it must meet the changing needs of its followers and keep pace with progress. Of course, this cannot happen because religious dogma would have to be altered, bibles and other guide books rewritten to be less fantastic and nonsensical, more in line with fact than fiction. For obvious reasons this will not happen and religion will therefore eventually die, a lingering death perhaps, but a certain one.

I will take some time yet – it’s been around a long time – but the signs are there already. Here in the UK, religion is virtually moribund among educated people; even young children are stating their non-belief.

Don’t be fooled by the apparent upsurge in fundamentalism in the USA, the president may be dumb enough to actually believe it, but most of his handlers and controllers will not, they know that it’s the correct political stance because it gives them “heavenly” control of the largely uneducated believers. In addition, religion helps enormously with the maintenance of the number one domestic policy rule, which is to keep the rich people happy and ensure that the poor people live in fear, either of a vengeful God or a bogeyman like Osama Bin Laden.

Frightened people are easily controlled and thinking about bogeymen keeps them from thinking about other issues the government don’t want them to consider. Creating something for the masses to fear has been a favourite diversionary tactic of power mongers and religious leaders through the ages.

Dawkins Kicks Ass: Without Even Trying!

The first of a two-part series entitled “The Root of All Evil”; featuring Prof. Richard Dawkins was screened on Channel 4 (UK) on Monday night. No, it wasn’t about money, the “evil” referred to in this case, was religion. The hour-long episode subtitled “The God Delusion”, showed Dawkins travelling to the USA and the Middle East, the two worst hotbeds of religious strife in today’s faith-flummoxed world.

I had to admire his courage as the hugely-outnumbered Dawkins had to contend with the obvious hatred he faced from a Christian fanatic and a less fanatical but no less dangerous-looking Muslim zealot. In both cases the hatred – it seemed clear to me – was born of anger, anger they felt I think, because deep inside, these men knew their dogma was wrong and they had no recourse but to vent anger when faced with logic and reason. Both were perfect examples of a description written by Dawkins some time ago, i.e. religious fanatics cannot argue rationally, all they can do is resort to violence and often murder those who disagree with them.

Had this not been on TV, I think Dawkins might have feared for his life, the American evangelical, a character by the name of Pastor Ted Haggard, was a particularly nasty-looking specimen; this man’s eyes spoke of the probably murderous thoughts running through his God-virus-polluted brain. These fanatics didn’t even have the sense to see that they were making Richard Dawkins’ case for him! Dawkins could hardly get a word in but he didn’t need to, his reputation had preceded him and the “religites” just wanted to get angry with him so they could brag to their brainless brethren.

Sorry folks, to anyone but an idiot, the score line was a resounding:

Dawkins – 2, Religious Nutcases – 0

To a reader of Dawkins works, the story lines of the program was easily predictable (I even found myself prompting Richard’s next phrase from time to time) but nevertheless definitely achieved its purpose and made Christianity, Islam and to a lesser extent Judaism, look lame and foolish.

The next episode will feature Dawkins postulation that religion can be thought of as a “virus of the mind”, even though this idea is now well known; I still think it will be compelling viewing that any open-minded person will enjoy. I’m looking forward to it!

Game Over?

As a species, there can be little doubt that our technological advancement has outstripped our general wisdom and maturity. We have used our best tool, science, to furnish us with a comfortable lifestyle, gadgets galore and artefacts that our ancestors would have considered magical. The majority of us however, still believe in a supernatural deity of one kind or another who has the ability to intervene in our daily lives, watches everything we do and promises that if we’re good, the end is not the end. The fact that not one single instance of deity intervention of any kind has ever been proven, makes no difference to irrational believers.

In the past, this almost unbelievable situation didn’t matter much. If a God-befuddled, power-mad maniac managed to get control of a country, he could threaten his neighbours but that was about it, even the latest weaponry wasn’t powerful enough for him to become globally dangerous.

That situation has changed.

We already have a God-befuddled maniac in charge of the most powerful country on earth that does have globally destructive weaponry and a few more maniacs befuddled by a different God, who either already have or soon will have, similar weapons. For the first time in the history of humankind we have the capability of self-annihilation. It could be argued that things have been this way for fifty years now and we’re still here and that’s true, but up till now only the countries adhering to the Judeo-Christian God myth, or no God at all, have had the nasty weapons. During that fifty year period, - most people don’t know this - had it not been for the actions of a Russian naval officer, nuclear war would have begun between the USA and the USSR.

The significance of religious involvement in this close call is ominous and we have a lot to thank that – probably atheistic - Russian officer for. Can you trust Bush or Blair on the Christian side of a “God” war, or any leader on the Muslim side?

I can’t, and it prevents me seeing any kind of optimistic future.

Next time we may not be so lucky and that next time is coming soon. Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but we are already involved in a God war, it has begun and it’s entirely possible that it will culminate in global nuclear devastation. It won’t be God or Allah’s doing; we will have allowed it; we will be culpable; we will have overridden Darwinism; we will have selected ourselves for extinction because of a fairy-tale.

Bush-Bin Laden: Holy Allies

What! I hear you say, Bush and Bin Laden are allies?  Yes, I say, the only difference between them is that one is Christian the other Muslim, other than that, their goals and methods are identical!

Both believe in a supernatural God entity; both indulge in violence to further their cause; both entreat their followers to do likewise; both promote and participate in terrorism to support their aims; both profess to be holy men. The aforementioned single difference between them isn’t even real; one fictitious God versus another fictitious God!

Yes, they’re allies all right, and holy allies to boot!

MIT OCW

If you like science or education in general you must visit the OpenCourseWare site run by MIT.

The physics section is where you can find more than 90 video lectures by the excellent Professor Walter Lewin.  Click my link and when you get to OCW, choose the “physics” link on the left side of the page, hours of education and entertainment await you!

This is the Web being used at its best, well done MIT!

Truisms

I don’t think I’ll ever delete any of these but I may add to the list from time to time.

• To argue against an irrationally held belief with a rational argument, is very difficult.


• If your theory disagrees with a suitably pertinent experiment, your theory is wrong.


• Science has no master and no authorities, it matters not who you are, what your name is, where you come from or what your qualifications are. If your theory stands the test of experiment, it and you, will be accepted.


• Any story, idea or belief system incapable of being tested, e.g. religion, is virtually worthless.


• It is better by far not to know, than believe in that for which there is no evidence.


• Faith can be the death of you.


• Life has no meaning other than the meaning you give it.


• If you disagree with medical animal experimentation and don’t wish to look like a hypocritical idiot, don’t seek medical assistance.


• Before you believe something that may be true, imagine how things would be if it were true.


• Capital punishment: those without the capital get the punishment!


• Religion was invented to control and hide knowledge, keep poor people in order and to prevent them murdering rich people.


• If religion doesn’t die it will likely destroy us.


• Religion is demeaning and under-values humanity.


• Don’t blame God for natural disasters, they’re not his fault - he’s not there!


• The more you believe, the less you think.


• Mother Nature guards her secrets well, but she never cheats.


• Never worry that you may be wrong, just accept that on occasion, you will be.


• Don’t fear your own death, it can only exist when you don’t!


• Time becomes more and more precious the older you get


• In nature, there is no crime.