And I Love Her

So my lovely wife, Mutha Mae is on the KSDK Lose A Ton Challenge! There will be elimination rounds every other week, so make sure to vote to keep her on if she's up for potential elimination! She's the upper left one. GO MAE!

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Little green men about four foot, maybe they want to kick some butt

Woo news: CNN.com is more disappointing than normal in reporting on extranormal claims. Two stories headlined are "UFO 'appeared over jazz stage at Glastonbury'" and "$1M reward for pics of elusive mermaid". The headlines convey that these are facts. The stories aren't wildly better.

The UFO story does at least acknowledge that there are no confirmed instances of aliens visiting earth and that over 90% of all reports have been thoroughly disproven. The headlined Glastonbury incident involved two women who may well have been drinking who claim to have seen a UFO over the stage, though none of the hundreds and hundreds of other people there noticed it.

Part of the problem in dealing with the UFO phenomenon is one of language. Pilots, military personnel, police officers, et al use the term UFO in the most literal sense: an object in the air that at the time of sighting was not identified by the witness(es). UFO obsessives interpret the term in the least likely possible sense: aliens are visiting our planet hundreds of times per year and regularly interacting with people in large population centers and yet there's not a single bit of objective evidence.

The mermaid reports are entirely credulous. The most important point that only a few outlets seem to emphasize: small town hopes to get a tourism boost to resolve a desperate budget deficit. The town officials quoted certainly seem to believe that it's possible that there's a mermaid, and the handful of witnesses certainly do. Given that there have been hundreds of people gathering at sunset to try and get a picture for months now you would think there would have at least been an additional sighting. The only rational report is from livescience.com, which notes prominently

Of course, if the mermaid does not exist -- perhaps it is a hoax, an optical illusion, or a simple misperception of a known animal -- then the town's reward money will remain safe and unclaimed, while the economy benefits from the influx of tourists vying to get a photo that will leave them set for life.

and goes on to give a brief history of mermaid hoaxes.

I grew up an hour from the ocean. I spent a LOT of time staring out at the water. Particularly at sunset it is real easy to see all kinds of optical illusions. The light reflecting off the water, the shadows and motion of the water itself, and a wide assortment of flora and fauna all lend themselves to flights of fancy.

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We've got some work to do now

All of my daughters are much enamored of Scooby-Doo all of a sudden. There was a marathon on Cartoon Network that ran episodes from many different seasons as well as several full length movies. While it is fairly common to disparage Scrappy-Doo and point to his introduction as the jump-the-shark moment for the franchise I think he may simply be the parakeet in the coal mine. The time honored tradition of introducing a cute kid into an ailing tv show long predates Scrappy and Hanna-Barbera were simply throwing a Hail Mary to save their project. While I personally hated him even as a child and in fact completely stopped watch Scooby-Doo once he appeared I think the hatred focused on him distracts from a more important and far more deleterious change: The embrace of the supernatural.

I know what you're thinking: Duh! It's a show about GHOST HUNTING! Of course there's supernatural elements. I hear your cry. In the beginning, and even through the poorly considered guest star appearances, at the core the show was about how people can be easily fooled by other people *faking* supernatural events for personal gain or revenge. It was at heart a skeptical show. I wouldn't go so far as Velma did and say that the core message of the show was "There's no such thing as ghosts", but up until the 80's the show always demonstrated a naturalistic explanation for every observed event. It's part of why so many adult scientists are still so fond of the show.

We've been watching the first two seasons on Netflix and I'm happy to have the kids watch them, but I don't think we'll be getting any of the movies or later series. I am heartened at the description of the upcoming series which indicates that they seek to debunk paranormal events* so I've not entirely given up. There is enough magical thinking presented to them every day and in every way without adding to it. If only they were old enough to appreciate House or Monk or even the sorely underrated Psych.

*Intent to debunk is of course the wrong approach, the intent should be to determine the facts and if it ends up debunking the claim then so be it. Any single investigation will not prove that the supernatural doesn't exist, merely that it wasn't a factor in this specific case. Nor has it yet ever been demonstrated to be a factor.

Joe Nickell
Bad Pyschics
Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
James Randi Educational Foundation
Ben Radford
The Conspiracy Skeptic
Young Australian Skeptics

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I'm only wasting time

I'm working on a new project and I wanted to implement some current best practices in the world of django. What the hell has gone on in the world of software distribution? To get what I want I have to install THREE more tools and then maintain them. Every single thing you install on your computer is a security risk. From the day you install it to the day you remove it (and possibly until you wipe the computer if your uninstall doesn't remove everything) that software has the potential to give an attacker full control over your system. A hole in a calorie counter has the potential to give someone an opening without you ever knowing.

I have no interest in installing and learning git, mercurial, and bazaar just to be able to download some software tools to use. I won't use them ever again for anything, but I have to either uninstall them or keep applying security patches to them. I just want to get Fabric or South or django fabric or something, I don't care much about the delivery system. Making it a hassle for me to get your software means I'm less likely to use it. I've been getting along just fine without it so far. I'd like to use it to make my life a little easier, but it's not a 'have to have'. Just give me a damned tarball of the latest stable release.

Shade in and shut up.

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Feels like I'm talking a foreign language sometimes

Last week one of the government side CM people stopped me in the hall to talk about 508 compliance. She noticed I was wearing this shirt and asked if I knew what it said (she is from China, so she knew of course). I told her I was only able to work out a few of the specific characters, so she told me each of them and how to pronounce them (literal translation: Han not is my mother tongue). Today she sent me this excellent link to yes.com.cn to help me with teaching the kids. I'm particularly enthusiastic about the Bedtime Stories and Reading sections, as those are two areas I've not had any luck finding good resources.

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