Central Valley Skeptics

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080826/sc_space/tvsmythbusterstacklemoonlandinghoaxclaims

http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-082608a.html

On the conspiracy theory subject, one that was brought up at the last meeting were the moon landings. So here’s an article about the Mythbusters testing this conspiracy theory. It will be airing tomorrow–I don’t have cable, but maybe someone can watch it and tell us what happens? Especially any of you who actually believe that the moon landings were faked–you watch it and give us your opinions, if you please.

Here’s a quote from a quiz on the Mythbusters website:

The answer is b: false.

Seriously, folks, the moon landing really happened. A video clip presented as an “outtake” from the filming, in which the film crew races into the shot to repair some damaged lights, contains a few clues that it was actually created after the moon landing occurred. Not only does the “astronaut” say, “… one small step for man …” — omitting the word “a” just like in Neil Armstrong’s transmission — but he can also be heard saying something to “Mr. Gorsky,” a reference to a joke that didn’t start circulating until the ’90s.

As if we didn’t have a difficult enough of a task to try and convince people of the validity of Natural Selection, it has come to my attention that the very definition of what constitutes different “species” is still up for debate. So not only do we have to show that speciation occurs, we have to prove that the two new species are actually separate species. As you all are no doubt aware, there is certainly a continuum between the time that two species become separated in some manner where they remain the same species, and, given a lack of evolutionary pressure, may remain the same, and where they become two separate species. Here, however, was an interesting article I found describing the different points of view and also describing some “modern” speciation events.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq%2Dspeciation.html

Creationists are fond of stating that we’ve never seen speciation occur so we have no proof it really happens.  Well, this is a false claim, and here’s just one example, as relayed in wikipedia:

The best-documented creations of new species in the laboratory were performed in the late 1980s. William Rice and G.W. Salt bred fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster, using a maze with three different choices of habitat such as light/dark and wet/dry. Each generation was placed into the maze, and the groups of flies which came out of two of the eight exits were set apart to breed with each other in their respective groups. After thirty-five generations, the two groups and their offspring were isolated reproductively because of their strong habitat preferences: they mated only within the areas they preferred, and so did not mate with flies that preferred the other areas. ^[9]

Diane Dodd was also able to show allopatric speciation by reproductive isolation in Drosophila pseudoobscura fruit flies after only eight generations using different food types, starch and maltose.^[10][11] Dodd’s experiment has been easy for many others to replicate, including with other kinds of fruit flies and foods.

Without resorting to gene splicing, scientists have conclusively created the very circumstances in which speciation events occur and, lo and behold, they DID occur.

More examples to follow.

It sounds as though we may be moving into the mode of discussing conspiracy theories, so, I thought I’d get the topic rolling. First off, what, is a conspiracy theory?

I’ll steal from Wikipedia here:

A conspiracy theory attributes the ultimate cause of an event or chain of events (usually political, socialhistorical events), or the concealment of such causes from public knowledge, to a secret and often deceptive plot by a group of powerful or influential people or organizations. Many conspiracy theories state that major events in history have been dominated by conspirators who manipulate political happenings from behind the scenes.

We seem to have, roughly, two camps in our organization–those who are more willing to accept conspiracy theories and those who are more willing to accept the official stories.

So that I’m not being accused of biasing this article, I’ll state my own position right off the bat. We live in a society where it is VERY difficult to keep a hold of information. Even though the American media is basically controlled by three corporations, and is thus a bit suspect in its neutrality, there are other media agencies throughout the world. Any conspiracy that would, by necessity, involve large numbers of people with knowledge of the conspiracy, is doomed to ultimately fail. Let me give you a case in point.

Watergate: Nixon ultimately fell because ONE man leaked the information to Woodward and Bernstein.

Now, the Bush administration, who I will be so pleased to see the end of in January, has been accused of many conspiracies, including having a part in the 9/11 disaster. My problem with this theory is that, A) It would require huge numbers of people involved, B) the Bush administration has shown itself to be largely incompetent at organizing anything properly whatsoever, C) how can I truly believe that Bush plotted to either make 9/11 happen or allowed it to happen when the guy couldn’t even get some black ops dropped into Iraq with some anthrax and some chemical weapons and plant them where the inspectors were going to be? I mean, then he’d have been able to tell the world, “See, I told you there were WMDs in Iraq!” and D) the official story is plausible and the evidence to the contrary is, in my opinion, scant, contradictory, and circumstantial at best.

So in short, I think that most conspiracy theories rely on shaky circumstantial evidence and a general preference to assume that, because we can find a motive for the government to do something shady, they must therefore BE doing something shady.

It isn’t that I have some sort of faith in our government–quite the opposite, but when the evidence says duck, I’m not going to say platypus until someone shows me fur and mamaries.

So all you conspiracy buffs, prove me wrong!

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/12/BAQT129NMG.DTL&tsp=1

In the words of the great Thomas Paine, ” these are the times that try men’s souls.” These are  truly times that shall question a persons existence, a meaning in a cruel and unforgiving  world. Hell and we live in the greatest country on the planet. OK, unless you are coming  over here and bringing all those inflated Euros to buy stuff that we can not afford. Then I guess it is our turn to ratchet down, tighten our belts and pray to god, oops that we do not loose what scarce  jobs that we have left. When we get older and look back   on our lives most of us shall remember the ” train wreck” of 2008. I have been noticing that when people come on hard times that they get religious, more religious or they go to the     movies and watch a show that will take how ever so temporal them away from the slings and arrows of life. 

This visit and need to go to the land of the make believe, to the metaphysical world is what Joseph Campell called the power of myth. In some kind of primordial need for our sanity and our psyches man wants to believe that  which does not exists.This can be best understood in what is known as a ” catch-22.” We do it all the time even though we know  that there is no tooth fairy, no santa claus, no big foot, no mermaids and most important no god. As the Greeks said, there is no theos. I understand that this acknowledgement of no theos in life actually frees us into realm of atheism and opens doors if we choose to enter out into the light of reality. Heidegger called this the end of the metaphysical world   and mans rising above the trees to see the forest below. In a literary sense this is what is  known as to ” mount Pegasus.” I forget who it was, Perseus, who mounted the great winged Pegasus and dared to ride him high into the sky.It was hurbris who knocked the     rider off and released Pegasus to fly and land on top of the mountain. As Pegasus was tired and thirsty he beat the ground with his hoaf. Behold from the ground come the cool water from the spring of knowlegde. This is the cool water that helps us rise above and see the   forest below.

Again is this not a ” catch-22?” Yet with free thinkers, and yes some of us our atheist, is it not important to see the myth, religion, though the fog and haze of the power of myth? If  we do not see this , then some of us our doomed to ignorance and superstition. One of the most brilliant modern thinkers, Bertrand Russell said that ” organized religion has been and still is the principle enemy of moral progress in the world.” Notice how religion is used  as a political weapon in the next great race to the white house. Looking forward in seeing   everyone tomorrow at Troys. 

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.

I have been taken a back by the fairly extreme anti corporate view, which if I understand it correctly is closely related to socialism. I have been meaning to watch the movie The Corporation per Troy’s recommendation. I always research movies like that one before I watch them and frankly the criticism of the movie that I read actually stopped me from watching the three hour movie. As a person who has not even bothered to watch the movie it seems to be a propaganda film that points out the flaws in capitalism without offering a reasonable alternative. I would really like to hear from John and Troy on this one. So go for it guys lets debate this whole anti-corporate / socialism thing I think that while it has some bearing in truth, to much corporate bashing is poor critical thinking. Set me straight guys.

Last night, some us got together at my house to watch Here Be Dragons.  A short reading list was suggested at the end of the film.

• Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Darkness
• James Randi, Flim Flam
• Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; and
• Brian Dunning, Skeptoid.

I would add:

• Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything; and
• Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion.

I’ve never been involved in a book group, but I have many friends that are. I don’t know if anyone is interested in meeting weekly to discuss a chapter in one of these books. If I can get five people interested, let’s choose one of these books and find a time.

This seems to be a technique where you put an object on a high voltage electric plate. You then take some special photograph of it and you get a small coronal discharge caused by a strong electric field that ionizes air molecules around the object. That might be slightly wrong I imagine R C will know something about this. I is claim this is scientific proof of auroras. However Randi has yet to relinquish his million dollars to a Kirlian photographer. Here is a link to the wiki page on this. Frankly it sucks maybe we can fix it.