Surely you must be gay by now. After all, the homosexuals have been promoting their agenda and shoving their lifestyle down your throat for several decades now. If the conversion hasn’t stuck yet, well then, I guess it never will!

I was reminded of this agenda by seeing an article on Yahoo that Constance McMillen just won her court case and turned the whole country gay.

The article states:

[T]he American Civil Liberties Union won their case against the Itawamba County School District on behalf of 18-year-old Constance McMillen!

To recap, McMillen wanted to bring her girlfriend to her senior prom but was denied this right by her Mississippi high school. School staff and students then put on a decoy prom for McMillen and other “less desirable” pupils while the majority of the student body partied 30 miles away at the real prom.

Today’s ruling means that school officials are required to implement a policy banning discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and they’re paying McMillen $35,000 in damages as well as her attorneys’ fees.

Maybe $35,000 doesn’t sound like much, but you have to read between the lines. You know, like the geniuses who left comments on that article. Here are just a few:

Jesse wrote:

Thats sweet let gays go to prom. U kno wat lets let daughters be sexually active wit their fathers and bring them to prom. If i started datin someone in jail for murder robbery or watever could they let them so i could bring them to prom. They better of il get a sh*t load of money out of it. Wat if im eighteen and im attracted to 8 year olds could i bring them to prom. U cant judge me i have my rights huh. This is sick and a bad move from this selfish D*ke. Peace i hope u sleep good knowin your rewarded for having no values.

MStoneManiac said:

Another example of the Gay Agenda and how its forcing the hetero majority to accept and affirm a lifestyle that is abberant by social standards, perverse by moral standards, an abomination by religious standards and a mutation that is essentially genocide by biological standards. Thanks gay people for shoving it down our throats!

Patriot1 wrote (and you know anybody calling himself “Patriot1” is going to be a model of intelligence and tolerance):

So yet another gay/lesbian trying to force their lifestyle on everyone else, and say “accept it and okay it, or I will find a way to force you to, because I don’t like that you don’t care for my lifestyle choice.” And yet then they have the gall to call US intolerant.

I’m sorry. I’m a little confused right now. Which millennium are we in?

I’m sure you’ve heard the word “antidisestablishmentarianism” at some point in your life. It’s allegedly the longest word in the English language. This Wikipedia article tells us there are longer words, but they don’t count.

I remember looking up the definition years ago and not really getting it. I looked it up again today, and found it related to this blog. Wiktionary explains it well:

Said by Weekley to be first recorded in Gladstone’s “Church and State”, in reference to a scheme directed against the Church of England. From establishment in the sense of the ecclesiastical system established by law; the Church of England.

establish
to set up, put in place, or institute (originally from the Latin stāre, to stand)

dis- + establish
ending the established status of a body, in particular a church, given such status by law, such as the Church of England

disestablish + -ment
the separation of church and state (specifically in this context it is the political movement of the 1860s in Britain)

anti- + disestablishment
opposition to disestablishment

antidisestablishment + -arian
an advocate of opposition to disestablishment (alternatively, but less likely and quite similar in meaning, “opposed to disestablishmentarians”, depending on what “anti-” is taken to belong to)

antidisestablishmentarian + -ism
the movement or ideology of advocates of opposition to disestablishment; the movement or ideology that opposes disestablishment (simply not wanting a separation of church and state)

Whew! That’s quite word. So the official definition is:

antidisestablishmentarianism
A political philosophy opposed to the separation of a religious group (“church”) and a government (“state”), esp. the belief held by those in 19th century England opposed to separating the Anglican church from the civil government.

As you can see, it arose out of an effort to disentangle church and state in 19th century England. This definition also implies that it can be used more generally.

That means that I am a disestablishmentarian (21 letters), and my philosophy is disestablishmentarianism (24 letters). The modern fundies, therefore, advocate antidisestablishmentarianism (28 letters).

But I study the behavior of these people. You could say that what I do is antidisestablishmentarianismology (33 letters). This, of course, makes me an antidisestablishmentarianismologist (35 letters). Beat that, fundies!

Via Dogwood Tales, I came across I-Spot Annoying Fanboys. It’s a “humorous” look at the people you know who are a little too deep into their lifestyle choices. I put “humorous” in quotation marks only because it’s quite uneven. Some jokes work; others miss completely. They’re equally spotty on their facts. They do make some good points, but they totally miss the mark on others.

Just a few of the annoying fanboys are Sci-Fi Obsessives (29th), World of Warcraft Junkies (11th), Linux Geeks (9th), Audio Snobs (8th), and Bill Gates Apologists (6th).

These rankings are the result of a poll they took. Internet polls are always skewed, of course, but they do reveal something about perceptions. I think a lot of people would agree that audio snobs are more annoying than science fiction fans. Shut up! Nobody can hear the difference between a $5000 speaker and a $10,000 speaker!

So here are some of the other annoying fanboys.

Coming in 7th are Anime Aficionados.

They had this to say about them.

Coming in 2nd and 3rd are Twitter Twits and Conspiracy Theorists.

Number 1 by a wide margin is Apple Acolytes.

With a couple of accurate comments.

But here is the most interesting result. Ranked 5th, with almost 5% of the vote, is Richard Dawkins Zealots.

The first “fact” they have listed under “Did you know” is an example of their sloppy research. The whole “because it says so in a book” claim doesn’t apply to any atheist I’ve ever met.

But like I said above, in a situation like this, the facts aren’t relevant. People don’t react to facts they don’t know. People react to what they think they know about a subject. The perception here is that the vocal atheists are no different from obnoxious Christians.

PZ recently did a post on camel sex. That led me to discover Google Insight. I was curious who is the most concerned about fundies, so I typed that in. I was expecting the U.S. to be at the top of the list, since we have the biggest problem. Nope. We’re a distant second:

Brazil? Brazil? It’s a predominantly Catholic country. That causes no end of problems, but they’re usually not as bad as those caused by the American-style Protestant fundies.

Anyone know what’s going on there? I thought maybe “fundie” was Portuguese for something else (maybe “camel sex”), but Google Translate says no.

Also on the Google Insight page was this table of most-frequent search terms:

I’m not sure what those numbers represent, but it looks like I have a large share of the mindset. When people want to know more about fundies, they come here!

Troubled by fundies? Have no fear, Bay of Fundie is here! He can’t stop them, but he can piss them off so much that they whine like the mental children they are and threaten to sue.

I received an email from the “Family” Research Council (and “Family” is probably an accurate description). The email states:

When the North Carolina legislature asked Ron Baity to serve as a guest chaplain at the state house, the pastor of Berean Baptist Church said it was an honor. What he didn’t know was how short-lived that honor would be!

Short-lived? It shouldn’t have lived at all! A legislature has no business establishing a state religion, which is exactly what they are doing every time they open their session with a prayer.

During the last week of May, when Pastor Baity was scheduled to open the session in prayer, a House clerk asked to first review the text.

Well that sounds a little ominous. Why would a government bureaucrat need an advance look at the text of the prayer?

When she noticed the last line, she said, “We would prefer that you not use the name of Jesus. We have some people here that can be offended.”

It doesn’t matter to me whether Jesus is mentioned or not. I’m offended that it mentions God. So what this bureaucrat is telling us is that the state of North Carolina only worries about offending one branch or another of the Abrahamic religions. They all pray to the same god, so as long as we only talk about him, it’s OK.

Well what about non-Yahwehans? I guess the Constitution doesn’t protect Hindus, Jains, and Wiccans. They’re also ignoring the non-religious completely. After all, there are only 34 million of those in America (a mere rounding error!).

But it was Pastor Baity who was most offended.

No. It’s the scores of millions of Constitution-lovers who are the most offended.

When the clerk raised the issue with House Speaker Joe Hackney,[…] Hackney decided that the pastor could offer his prayer—but that it would be his last one. After that, Baity’s services would “no longer be needed.”

Wrong tense. Try “never were”!

But I think Baity is about to have a revelation:

A stunned Baity told Fox News Radio, “When the state tells you how to pray, that you cannot use the name of Jesus—that’s mandating a state religion. They talk about not offending other people but at the same time, if they are telling me how to pray—that’s the very thing our forefathers left England for.”

Now you get it, moron! That is why you keep religion out of government! It isn’t just so “a few people won’t be offended”. It isn’t even because mixing one religion with government imposes that religion on people of other faiths. It’s because the contamination goes both ways! The taint of religion ruins government, and the taint of government ruins religion!

Now get your taint out of my face. I’m tired of smelling it.

When I was growing up, I spent some of my summers on my grandfather’s farm in South Dakota. It was a fantastic place to run around, although my mother was convinced I’d get maimed.

She was always telling me horror stories about how dangerous a farm is. Allegedly one of her cousins or a friend of a cousin or a cousin of a friend of a cousin of a friend was eaten by pigs. Supposedly this cousin was walking on top of the fence, slipped, and fell into the pig pen. The ravenous pigs descended upon her in a piranha-like frenzy. By the time her father could chase the pigs off, all that was left of her was her hair.

Mothers are full of scary stories.

Another such tale seemed to change a bit with each retelling. She didn’t want me to get too close to the grain elevator while it was running. That’s what she called it, but I guess it was actually a hay elevator. It was a conveyor belt. One end was at ground level. The other end was above a door in the roof of the granary. You shovel the hay onto one end, and the conveyor belt deposits the hay into the loft.

She told me that when she was in school, one of the kids at one of the other farms was loading the hay elevator and he got his arm caught on the belt. Ripped his arm clear off! She saw that one-armed boy every day at school from then on.

But then there was the time she told me not to get too close to the combine. Way back when she was in school, there was this kid at one of the other farms. He had been helping harvest the crop when he got too close to the combine. It ripped his arm clear off!

Then there was the time she told me not to get too close to the windrower, and, well, you can guess the rest. I assumed that her school was populated entirely by one-armed boys.

One day I discovered an old wagon out in one of the fields. This required further investigation, so I started climbing all over it. My grandfather came by and said “What are you doing in the manure spreader?”

I ran out of that thing faster than a creationist running from an evolution book.

Speaking of manure spreaders, I came across our old friend Kevin Wirth on the internet today.

I was searching to see what sort of damage Access Research Network has been doing lately and came across this thread in a forum at the Atheist Foundation of Australia.

One of the members there, who goes by the handle “Eccles”, discovered that ARN was giving away a screensaver of Hubble images. He didn’t really scope out the ARN website too closely. He just downloaded the program and installed it on his computer. He tells us what happened next:

When I downloaded it and ran it, to my horror the images were peppered with BS about “Intelligent Design”. I immediately uninstalled that screen saver, unsubscribed from the site and sent the director, Dennis Warner a nasty e-mail.

Before long, Eccles discovered a very large turd in his email box. It was plopped there, of course, by ARN’s “Director of Turd Disbursement and Misinformation”, Kevin Wirth.

Let’s see what manure Kevin has been spreading in Australia.

I was dismayed to read your email to Dennis (which he has requested that I respond to).
…
First and foremost, we do not exist to proseltyze [sic] religion or religious views. This is a huge, but unfortunately common mistake about our mission.

The only mistake is that they weren’t able to come up with a scheme less obviously religious than Intelligent Design creationism.

Meanwhile, you should read our mission statement at ARN.ORG. Nowhere in it will you find anything about our intent to promote religion.

Duh! If they told people they had a religious agenda, they wouldn’t be able to sneak it into the schools!

Secondly, we do not knowingly promote “lies” about Intelligent Design as you claim.

Sure you do, Kevin. You flat-out claim that Intelligent Design creationism is not religious. It is by definition. The designer has all of the characteristics of God. Ergo, he is God.

While it is true that ID is consistent with many religious views, we don’t exist to promote religion of any kind.

This statement is patently absurd. My best guess is that Kevin thinks that because ID creationism is consistent with many religions, it is therefore not a promotion of religion. This is the sort of logic that leads high schools to think it is OK to have a prayer at graduation ceremonies. (“It’s a generic prayer, so it’s OK!”)

Our focus is on providing resources related to Intelligent Design, and we are frankly not terribly concerned about the religious background of those who advocate for or against this position. We’re more interested in the scientific and philosophical arguments related to this topic, and are willing to allow others to think and talk about where they think the evidence leads.

There are no significant scientific arguments for ID creationism. And of course he’s willing to let others follow wherever it leads. The purpose of Intelligent Design creationism is to give the faithful a plausible-sounding excuse for rejecting science.

Our main concern here at ARN is that you are being given an opportunity to explore information options about ID not found at very many other web sites.

You know, web sites that are about reality and facts.

But it also seems to me that that the fact of the matter is, a reliance upon the Almighty was very much a part of the founding our nation. That’s just a fact, pure and simple.

It’s true. Many of the founding fathers were religious. In fact, there was quite a diversity of Christian sects throughout the colonies in those days. That’s why the First Amendment, protecting religious freedom, was so important to them. So then why is Kevin trying to circumvent that protection by getting creationism taught in the schools?

We also make a distinction between Creation and ID. Creationists openly advocate connections to religious texts while ID prefers to focus on scientific and philosophical considerations

We’re religious. We just don’t focus on it!

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that simply because Intelligent Design is consistent with the idea of a “God of the Universe” that we are attempting to shove that thought or any other religious notion down your throat.

That’s misdirection. He doesn’t have a specific religious goal. ID creationism’s purpose is to provide cover for others to get God into the schools and other government institutions. That’s just those folks’ “academic freedom”. Guess what, Kevin. Facts and data are academic. Religious beliefs are not. Nobody has the “freedom” to inject religion into the classroom.

I’m making stew tonight, but we’re low on ingredients. Could you do me a favor and pick up some meat at Fudd’s on the way home?

(BTW, This picture makes me think that we should be worshipping Bugs Bunny instead of Jesus. That way we wouldn’t need to rely on transubstantiation during mass.)

I’ve seen the original versions of these pictures floating around the internet for quite a while now. They’re somehow supposed to “inspirational”. I find the whole idea that there’s an invisible guy following me around and watching everything I do to be quite creepy. Maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, I found these recaptioned versions over at Boredville. These captions are much more appropriate.

Update: 7/5/10

I was able to track down the original source for these drawings. They’re done by a fundie named Larry Van Pelt, who lives in Niceville (really!), Florida. You can see all of his original drawings here, although why you’d want to is beyond me.

You can find more of these great recaptioned versions over at Know Your Meme, in the “Jesus is a Jerk” sub-meme of “LOL Jesus”. You really should go over there and check out the others. Some of them are way funnier than the ones I’ve reproduced above.

I heard a great documentary on public (read: socialist) radio tonight. It’s called “The Great Textbook War”. It’s about a controversy in Kanawha County, West Virginia in 1974 about some new school textbooks. You can find the documentary’s download link in the sidebar of their website.

The whole thing sounds eerily contemporary. The one difference is that racism was one of the underlying issues of the 1974 controversy. Teabaggers aside, that is much less of an issue today.

You’ll hear the roots of our modern culture war playing out in microcosm. The textbook war of ’74 turned violent toward the end, with Christians justifying the violence with quotes from the Bible. Sadly, that was also a precursor of what we see today. Extremist fundie violence is rare in this country, but as any dead abortion doctor will tell you, it does still happen.

As for the controversy itself, listen with an open mind. The conservatives make one or two good points. I might agree that maybe the books went just the slightest bit too far. Including the writings of Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver, for example, would certainly be appropriate at the college level, and maybe even 11th or 12th grade. It isn’t clear from the documentary which grades included their writings.

Likewise, raising the issue of moral relativism is OK, even desirable, at any of the high school grades, but kids may not be equipped mentally to process such an abstract thought at a younger age. Again, the documentary does not tell us at which grades that issue was raised. (That is one of my few gripes with the documentary.)

Other than these points, I am completely on the side of the “liberal, academic, socialist elites” who tried to shove progress down the throats of a backward county in 1974. And who continue to do the same to a backward country in 2010.

BoF reader Barbara tells me that she has a new favorite web site: Tea Party Jesus. As you can tell from the above illustration, the web site brilliantly puts the very words of the brain-dead wing of the Republican party into the mouth of Jesus.

Here are my favorites just off of the first two pages. Enjoy. Then go check out the rest at Tea Party Jesus.

You’re probably aware that abandoned land mines from our species’ countless, pointless wars remain a huge problem throughout the world. The civilized world got together in 1999 and banned these barbaric weapons. The United States, of course, refused.

In Africa, that continent’s numerous civil wars have left huge tracts of land dangerously littered with land mines that continue to kill at random and without warning.

One of the charities I support is officially called APOPO, but they are marketing themselves as Hero Rat. It’s much catchier! They train the African Giant Pouched Rat (which is a bit larger than our buddies here at home) to sniff out land mines. Rats are highly intelligent and have an excellent sense of smell. They’re also too light to set off a mine if they walk over it. This combination of traits makes them ideally suited to this task.

The Economist recently put together a little slideshow about APOPO’s work:

I wonder sometimes if this blog serves any beneficial purpose at all. It probably doesn’t, you know. I should at least try to directly prevent a little misery in the world by occasionally bringing the efforts of this organization to your attention.

They’re a small foreign charity, so donating to them is actually just a tiny bit more involved than it is with larger organizations. If you’re a U.S. resident, donating directly to them is not tax deductible. Blame the IRS and our serpentine tax laws for that one. However, you can donate to them through an intermediate charity, and that is tax deductible.

You have two choices. You can go directly to their website, click the Donate button, and then follow the instructions for your country.

The simpler way is to go to Global Giving and donate to Hero Rat’s Tuberculosis project. That’s the way I do it. That’s also where the link in my sidebar will take you.

Instead of throwing up your hands in frustration at how screwed up the world is, here’s your chance to help unscrew a small part of it.

Mr. Owl, how many stains does it take to get to the lunatic center of the Republican Party?

That’s right, Mr. Owl!

You might recall that three months ago, I discovered that some stain named Orly Taitz was running to be the Republican nominee for California Secretary of State. I hadn’t heard of her at the time, but apparently she was well known as the Queen of the Birthers.

I don’t know if anybody really thought she stood a chance. You might be curious about the election results. Here is a (only slightly-tampered-with) screen capture of the official election results page:

I’m disappointed, but not at all surprised, that she polled as well as she did.

Actually, I am surprised. Surprised that only 25% of the Republican party is batshit insane.

As you’ll recall from my last post, I was trying to figure out whom to bless with my vote for Superintendent of Public Instruction. One of the candidates, Lydia Guitiérrez, sounded like she just might be a fundie. I searched the internet to find out more and discovered ElectionForum.org, a fundie website that was full of suggestions on how I should vote to support the fundie agenda.

I dropped by ElectionForum.org again today to see how well their recommendations fared. They still have the thumb-rating system. The more (white!) thumbs up a candidate receives, the more of a fundie they are:

To this they have added green/pink happy/sad lumps of human tissue, which I can only assume are aborted blastocysts:

So for example, we can scroll down to the Senate race and see what happened to their recommended candidates:

This shows us that on the Republican side, the candidacy of their favorite, Chuck DeVore, has now been aborted. Their abortion of a second-choice pick, Carly Fiorina, won the nomination.

California considers the race for Superintendent of Public Instruction to be “non-partisan”, so all of the candidates were lumped together. Since this is a primary election, the top-two vote-getters will compete in a run-off in November.

Lydia Guitiérrez, dangerous fundie, came in fourth (yay!), which means her opportunity to destroy California schools has passed, at least for the moment. Alarmingly, Lydia wasn’t the only fundie running for schools chief. Let’s check in with ElectionForum.org to see how they did:

Abortions all the way around!

As typically happens, I’m up late studying the ballot the night before the election. I’ve been reading over the candidates’ statements trying to figure out who is worthy of my vote.

I really should do more research than I have, but (like most voters) I have many demands on my time and have to jam what I can into the amount of time I can spare. That’s actually a pretty sad commentary on democracy, and it probably explains why we’re in such dire straights. (How did GW Bush get elected in 2004? Only criminal blindness on the part of voters can explain it.)

In my defense, I pay attention to the major issues for several months leading up to the election, so I am already fairly well informed. Plus, my liberal values are vastly superior to conservative values, so my worst choice would still be better than any conservative’s best choice. (I am normally opposed to the SarcMark, but that last sentence is in great need of it, lest I be quote-mined for the rest of my life.)

Anyway, the only part of the election I’m still trying to figure out at this late date is some of the lower-profile offices. Take, for example, Superintendent of Public Instruction. In California, there are 12(!) candidates vying for that position. Who the hell are all these people?

Fortunately, seven of them have submitted statements to be included in the Voter Handbook. That rules out five right there! If they can’t be bothered to submit a statement, then I can’t be bothered to vote for them. OK, so then it’s just a matter of reading the seven statements and seeing if one of them jumps out at me as profoundly better than the others. At the very least, maybe I can weed out a few more.

One of the statements that caught my attention was by Lydia A. Guitiérrez. She said a few things I liked. I thought maybe she should be on my short-list of candidates to consider. For example, she says:

Prioritize reading, math, science, and other core academic courses with highly qualified teachers and extended classroom time.

She specifically includes science as a core academic subject! She definitely has my attention. But then she says this:

Affirm accuracy in textbooks in all content areas…

Umm… What exactly do you mean by that, Lydia?

There’s no question that textbooks are imperfect. In fact some of them are quite bad. Richard Feynman talked about that problem when he was on a textbook review committee. But these days, you have to read such statements carefully to understand what the speaker really means. She continues:

…including our Founding Fathers…

Oh! She must mean how many of our Founding Fathers weren’t Christians! I’m sure that’s what she means.

…the Constitution…

Of course! She must be referring to the fact that the U.S. Constitution does not mention God even once. Our non-Christian Founding Fathers and Godless Constitution make it clear that this country was not founded on the Bible, the Ten Commandments, or other religious dogma. Smart cookie, that Lydia!

…and the sovereignty of the United States of America.

Umm… What? The only thing wrong with that statement is it’s usually conservo-speak for “OMG!!!! The United Nations! The New World Order! The One World Government! They’re demolishing the Canadian and Mexican borders! The dollar is being replaced by the ‘amero’! They’re going to vaccinate us! They’re tattooing and implanting RFIDs! The death camps! Everywhere we look we see death camps!”

Surely she isn’t one of those. Is she?

What ever did we do before the internet?

I did some Googling and found a very interesting site, which I have bookmarked. It’s called ElectionForum.org. It’s a fundie site telling you how to vote. All you have to do is look at their recommendations and vote the opposite.

For example, here’s what they say about the Senate race:

Notice how they list Democrats as well, just in case you’re one of those people who accidentally checked the wrong box when you registered to vote and didn’t discover the error until it was too late to change it for this election.

They actually manage to dredge up some tepid support for one of the Democratic candidates, although I suspect that’s just to prevent you from voting for the true Anti-Christ on the ticket.

You’ll notice there is a link there to find out a little more detail about how they arrived at their recommendations. If you click it, you’ll see:

I’m really surprised Quintana managed to eke out even one whole thumb in their recommendation list. The other two Democrats must have negative 100s for their “Conservative Christian” and “Low Tax” scores.

This is all rather amusing, but I came here to find out more about Lydia Guitiérrez. Is she really an ultra-conservative unbalanced teabagging Fox News junkie? Or am I projecting onto her my fears of California schools being taken over by Texas-school-board-style lunatics?

Let’s have a look, shall we?

Nope! Not projecting!

[In Parts 2, 3, and 4, I told you about my continuing adventures at the 2004 New Living Expo. It’s now 2010. Time for me to go again!]

They held the 2010 New Living Expo in San Francisco last month. As I previously mentioned, I hadn’t been to one of those in at least six years, so I was overdue. I also mentioned before that there can be the occasional real or interesting thing at these newage fairs, buried in among all the woo. I like ferreting out the real. I also enjoy looking at the crazy.

As is typical every time I go up to San Francisco, the adventure begins as soon as I step off of BART. The newage fair was being held at the same venue that hosted the SF Green Festival the prior month. As you’ll recall from that tale, I encountered some graffiti on the hike there. Somebody had spray-painted “Fear God” on an overpass support. This time, I noticed that somebody had appended some additional graffiti:

Why indeed?

When I arrived at the Concourse Exhibition Center, I saw that a few groups had set up tables out front. Several of them were petitions to get initiatives on the ballot or to sign up for protests against one large corporation or another.

But there was one other thing out front. A stripper! Yes! A stripper!

Well, not a human stripper. A canine one. And she already had some dollar bills stuffed in her collar:

I don’t know where that Tex Avery character came from. I’m sure he wasn’t there when I snapped the picture.

When I got inside, I saw a large sign advertising one of the big speakers of the event, David Icke. Here is just part of what the sign said. I’ve marked a few things for you to note:

If you want to know more about David Icke, just search Bing.

There were lots of vendors, of course, selling all sorts of stuff. Books, for example:

One of those authors claims to have a PhD. Since they’re giving PhDs to creationists now, that degree is clearly worthless.

I wandered around looking at the various offerings. I went up to one booth to look over their stuff, and the woman there took a plastic wand and waved it over me. This wand was pink. Barbie-pink. It was battery-operated and flashed different colors.

I was trying to be undercover. My intent was to just listen to what people had to say and then move on. Somehow words were coming out of my mouth unbidden. I heard myself say to her:

What’s that? That looks cheap. Is that a toy? That looks like some cheap plastic Barbie toy! What’s it supposed to do? Am I supposed to feel something? I’m not feeling anything. I don’t think it works!

Clearly the wand had taken control of my mind! It was making me say rude but truthful things to the ignorant! I must get away before the effect becomes permanent!

I staggered away from that booth. I can only hope I got away in time.

I continued my wandering. Thanks to that gullible creduloid Oprah, The Secret is still wreaking havoc on the minds of the fleeceable:

That sign has an obvious misprint, though. The spacing is wrong. It’s supposed to say:

Law of attraction inaction.

If you wanted, you could always stick your feet into some nasty goo:

I didn’t stick around to watch that. Looking at the full-sized version of this photograph, I can read some of what is on those banners on the wall. I guess you can tell what is wrong with you by which particular nasty consistency and color this nasty goo becomes.

Orange Sticky Substance
• Tissue Acid Waste
• Joint Toxins
White Cheeselike Particles
• Yeast/Fungus
Light Brown
• Cellular Debris from Lungs
Black Brown
• Colon Backup
Reddish Brown Glue
• Cardiovascular Toxins
Dark Green
• Gallbladder
Black Flecks
• Heavy Metals
Red Flecks
• Blood Clot Material
Black
• Liver
Smells
• Metals
• Nicotine
• Ammonia from Kidneys

I did go to a few seminars. Most of them I couldn’t sit through for more than five minutes. I did make it through about 30 minutes of one of them, but that was mostly because it took the guy so long to get to the crazy stuff:

I think he was saying something about UFOs being more common now or something. Anyway, what he was really getting at is he claims there is some super-ancient being living among us. He has been here thousands of years. He previously sent his proxy, some dude named Jesus Christ. Any day now, he’s going to come out publicly by his real name, Maitreya. As you can see in the photograph above, he is a “world teacher”. He’s going to solve all our problems for us, or something. Wikipedia has more about this whole thing, if you want to read about it. I’ve already wasted too much time on it.

The funny thing about these seminars is they all have something to sell. It’s usually books, sometimes DVDs or CDs. This guy was selling a handprint. It was Maitreya’s magical handprint. Even though Maitreya hasn’t identified himself publicly yet, this guy managed to get a handprint from him. He said we could buy a copy of it for only $10. Ten bucks! That’s cheap! And what can it do for you? Why, it’s a magical healing handprint, of course! All you had to do was stick your hand on it, tell Maitreya what you wanted healed, and it would happen! This guy told us that he has used the magical healing handprint to get healed lots of times.

Apparently Maitreya’s healing powers don’t extend to baldness.

The local skeptics’ group had actually infiltrated this event. They had planned to set up a table out front for the first two hours, to talk to people as they waited in line to buy tickets. I’m not sure what they hoped to accomplish with that. Anyway, around noon, the plan was to abandon the table and actually go inside and talk to the vendors. I was there for kicks. I’m not sure what they hoped to accomplish.

I had arrived too late to see their table out front. I did see this guy inside. He might have been part of that group:

My advice to them is to stay away from the lady with the Barbie wand. They might say something inappropriate.

There were posters hanging in the seminar rooms listing the upcoming speakers, what time their talk would be, and which booth they were in if you wanted to go buy their crap. Here’s a detail from one of the schedules (Sorry for the back-lighting. It was hanging on a window.):

I think if the people in Booth 1017 just take a look at Booths 715 and 118, they’ll have their answer.

Overall, I was severely disappointed. This newage fair just wasn’t as fun as the last one.

For one thing, I couldn’t find anything that had any legitimate value. One of the hypnosis vendors who was there last time used to sell CDs for relaxation and the like. This year, all they were selling was hypnosis CDs for astral projection and past-life regression. The legitimate, clinical uses have been replaced by illegitimate and worthless mumbo jumbo.

It also seemed like there were more scientific buzzwords in use. “Quantum” and “tachyon” and “neutrino”, etc. I guess the public has gotten wise enough to not fall for snake oil when you call it snake oil. But if you invoke some scientific words that most people don’t know the meaning of, they’ll just accept on faith that there is some science behind it.

The place was lousy with “psychics”, maybe even more than last time. I was unable to get any free readings, though. Very few booths offered them. The few that did had a line (I hate lines. I wouldn’t stand in line for the first coming of Christ.).

So it wasn’t such a fun time. Are these people beginning to bore me? Or has my underlying disgust with what they’re doing overwhelmed my sadistic ability to laugh at the self-deluded?

I may not return.

[In Part 3, I told you about my continuing adventures at the 2004 New Living Expo. Among other things, I had a past-life regression. But earlier in the day, I agreed to try a $50 aura-healing pendant, in exchange for getting a Kirlian photograph made.]

Toward the end of the day, it was time to go back to the snake-oil peddler, return the pendant, and get my Kirlian photograph out of hock.

I had been thinking about that photograph during the day. They pass an electrical current through your body and onto the photographic film. The corona that appears corresponds to the areas the current was able to escape through. Obviously, then, if you have a better electrical contact between the skin and photograph, you’ll get a better corona. If you have a worse electrical contact, the corona will be less distinct.

What could improve the contact? Maybe oil? Like fingerprint oil?

So what would happen if I washed my hands thoroughly right before making the next photograph?

So I did.

Then I went back to the booth and told him that I had been wearing the pendant all day, and I was eager to make the After photograph to find out how effective it was.

He had me stick my hand back into the tube and press down onto the Polaroid film. Then, once again, he put his hand on top of the tube and pressed down on my hand to make sure contact was solid.

He pressed hard. A lot harder than he had this morning. It’s almost as if he wanted to ensure a better photograph!

Now all I had to do was touch the exposed electrode, so we could—

ZZAAAAPPP!!!

Jesus F—ing Christ! That hurt! I don’t think I like making Kirlian photographs.

The vendor then pulled the Polaroid film out of the Kirlinator and waved it around for a bit to assist the developing. I waited in anticipation. Would I be right? Does the skin oil facilitate the effect? Would my hand-washing sabotage work? Would his extra-hard pressure counteract my sabotage? Hell, would the stupid pendant actually have an effect? (OK, that last one wasn’t really a contender.)

He pulled the backing off of the Polaroid…

…to expose…

Nothing!

Actually, it was almost nothing. You could see a couple of weak deci-circles from two of my fingertips. The others were completely M.I.A.

Yes! In your face, you fraud! I out-tricked the trickster! Science triumphs over psuedo-science! Explain that result, you defrauder of the gullible!

He looked at the Kirlian photograph. He picked up my Before picture and stared at the better (but still imperfect) coronas partially encircling every fingertip.

Every fingertip in the Before picture.

Only two in the After picture.

And he said to me:

“You have a healing crisis! Your aura is in much worse condition than we thought. You’ll need to wear the pendant for several weeks to completely heal your aura!”

You slick charlatan! You have a line for everything, don’t you? You’d make P.T. Barnum proud.

Anyway, I told him that I wasn’t convinced and I wanted to return the pendant. He took it back without complaint. He then handed me my credit card slip and both Kirlian photos and let me go on my way.

At least he was an honest charlatan.

When I got home, I looked at both Kirlian photographs again. Now that I had gone through the experience of making them, they didn’t seem mysterious at all. I always knew there was some sort of scientific principle behind the imaging, even if the interpretation of those images by the psychic crowd was ludicrous.

I was let down. Again. There is always so much less to this UFO/ESP stuff once you actually look into it. It’s usually desperate people searching for something to give their desperate lives a little meaning, or a little wonder, or a little excitement.

But why make this stuff up? Why create a cheap, shallow self-delusion?

We live in an amazing universe, filled with real wonders and truly marvelous things! Just open your eyes to the real world! It will blow you away!

So I looked at my cheesy Kirlian photographs. The true wonder here was the physics of electricity. The chemistry of photography. The marvel of our ability to study the world around us and figure out how it all works.

That was the wonder here. Not some ignorant misinterpretation of the resulting image.

I took one last look at the photographs, sighed with disappointment, and threw them in the garbage.

[Tomorrow: I go to the 2010 newage fair.]

[In Part 2, I told you about my adventures at the 2004 New Living Expo. I had a Kirlian photograph made, but it (and my $50) was being held hostage at one of the vendor booths.]

I wandered around the newage fair for the rest of the day. There were panels on UFOs and ghosts and aligning your chakras and astral projection and just about anything else you could imagine. Likewise, there were vendors selling stuff on all of those topics, and gobs more. How could I not be entertained?

I remember the presentation given by the woman and her angel advisor. Both were on stage. Allegedly. The woman stood just a little bit to the right of center stage, so her angel advisor could stand next to her. As the presentation went on, the woman would sometimes stop talking and look a little bit to the side (as if she’s listening, you see), and then she would tell us what her angel just said. I’d never been to a lecture by an angel before.

There were lots of alleged psychics at the fair, of course. All of them were offering psychic readings, for a fee. A few of them offered short free readings, in the hope that you would then plunk down $20 to hear more.

Well, heck, if they want me to have it for free, I wouldn’t want to insult them by not taking it, would I? I’m ever so polite, you see.

There weren’t many free readings, but I managed to find two. One was some sort of assembly-line gang-reading being done by a Berkeley psychic school. They had 10 or 12 chairs lined up in two rows, facing each other. One row was occupied by “psychics”. The other row by suckers patrons. There was a short line, so I got into it. All you had to do was wait your turn. Then when one of the chairs opened up, you’d sit down in front of the “reader” and get psychically violated.

I sat down in front of a spacy-looking karma-dharma-spouter. I was determined to be as poker-faced as possible, just to mess with her. Since this was a cold reading, I figured she’d be trying to read my face. I was wrong.

She said she had to go into a trance, so she closed her eyes for the entire reading. I didn’t think I was that hideous. I don’t remember much of what she said. She was mostly firing blanks. You know, lady. Cold reading can make you a lot of money. You should learn it.

I continued my wanderings, hoping to find, among other things, a much better cold reading. I found one at the other side of the hall.

It was a tiny booth off in the corner. It was probably cheaper there. The woman stood alone in her booth, watching people milling past. I saw the sign for the free psychic reading, so I stopped and inquired. She told me that she offered a free five-minute reading, so I took her up on the offer.

I sat down in front of her. She asked if I wanted a love-life assessment or a past-life regression. Since I didn’t want to be responsible for her dying of laughter, I chose the latter.

She stared into my eyes (See?! Some people are able to do it without retching!). She told me that my soul goes back. Way back! Way, way back! To the time of the Pharaohs! (No way!)

She sees me. I’m standing there next to the Pharaoh! That’s it! She tells me that I am a high-level advisor to the Pharaohs!

Makes you want to treat me with a bit more respect, doesn’t it?

She’s right! I can see it now, too! Yes! I am there! I can hear myself talking to the Pharaoh, advising him. I hear myself saying:

Look, Ramses. Letting Moses and the Jews go was a huge mistake. You’d better send your army out to retrieve them. Trust me. What could possibly go wrong?

[Tomorrow: The end (of the day) is nigh! It’s time to storm the castle and rescue my Kirlian photograph! (and my $50)]

I’m running two anti-spam plugins on this site, and I’m still getting overwhelmed by it. You might have noticed that I’m averaging two spam comments a day that get through. I delete them as soon as I can.

The worse problem is that I end up with about 80 spams a day in the spam bucket. The filter unfortunately is a little too aggressive and sometimes throws real comments in there. I’ve been scanning the spam bucket at least twice a day, but I’ve been missing some lately.

Even worse, the filter seems to have an agenda against certain readers. Lately, it has decided that everything Jeff Eyges writes shouldn’t see the light of day. Whether you agree with that idea or not, that’s my decision to make, not the spam filter’s.

Reluctantly, I have decided to add captchas. I find them inconvenient, so I didn’t want to inflict them on you guys. Worse, sometimes I come across one that is so hard to decipher that it takes me several attempts to get it right.

Anyway, you can thank the spammers that you now have the inconvenience of passing a captcha test in order to comment. If you have any problems with it, let me know via the Contact form.

[In Part 1, I told you how I enjoy exploring the fringes. Sometimes I actually discover something that works (Hypnosis. Hubba hubba!).]

The first time I went to the newage fair was in 2003 or 2004. As I mentioned yesterday, it was partly to see if I could find the little bit useful among the very much crap. It was mostly, however, to have a laugh or two.

I used to watch a lot of paranormal TV back in the 1970s. UFOs were all the rage back then, but there was other crap too. One piece of raging crap was Kirlian photography. Allegedly it shows your aura and whatever else its promoters could dream up to con the gullible. Nevertheless, it fascinated me. I wasn’t sure what was really going on there.

Lo and behold, what did I see at the newage fair in one of the vendor booths but a bunch of Kirlian photographs! Sweet! I had to check that out. They had a couple of gadgets there that people were sticking their hands into, then the vendor pulls the Polaroid out of the gadget, waves it around to make it develop faster, and then voila! They had themselves a Kirlian! Me! Me! Me! Do me! I want a Kirlian photograph!

It turns out it was part of a sales pitch (wouldn’t you know it!). The guy at the booth directed my attention to the numerous photographs hanging in the booth. It turned out they were all pairs; a Before and an After. The Before pictures were all poor images. The corona around the fingertips was incomplete or totally missing. The After pictures were all beautiful. The coronas were complete and easy to see.

The guy told me that I was looking at photographs of these people’s auras. The Before pictures showed that their auras were sick (Oh no! I sure hope my aura isn’t sick!). The After pictures show that their auras are all now strong and healthy after wearing his magical pendant for just a few hours (He didn’t call it a magical pendant. He had some pseudo-sciency quantum-mechanical string-theoretical boson-strange-attractor name for it.). Lucky for me, he still had a few quantum-boson pendants left, and I could buy one for the low, low price of $49.95.

But I just want Kirlian photograph! Oh, please, mister, just let me have a Kirlian photograph!

Here’s the even better news, he told me. I didn’t have to take his word for it that the neutrino-quark pendant works. I could prove it to myself! All I had to do was let him take an imprint of my credit card, which he wouldn’t even submit (yet). He’d just hang onto it for the duration of the show. Then we’d make a Kirlian photograph of me (yay!) to use as the Before picture. Then all I had to do was wear his reptilian-hydrocarbon pendant for the rest of the day, then come back by his booth before the show ended. We’d make another (Yay! I get two!) Kirlian photograph of my fingers. The After photograph would prove that the pendant worked. If it didn’t, or if I didn’t want it, I could return the pendant and he’d tear up my credit card image.

I thought about that for a moment. I could easily come by here by the end of the day and return the pendant. If the guy tries to defraud me and runs the charge anyway, I could dispute it with the credit card company. Polaroid film costs about $1 per shot, so I’d actually have to pay someone real money to get them made anywhere else. So I handed over the card.

After I signed the credit card receipt, he took me over to the Kirlianator. It was a heavy metallic box. The top of the box was covered by a long tube, made of some sort of black fabric, flopping off to the side. He placed an unexposed Polaroid into the box through a slot in the side and then pulled the top sheet of the Polaroid off. The bare film was now waiting for me to reach in and fondle it. I stuck my arm into the long, black tube (which protects the Polaroid from stray light) and placed my fingers down onto the film.

It was then that I noticed an electrical cord running from the box. I had never really thought about how these photographs were made. I guess that’s why they seemed so mysterious to me. I didn’t remember any of the TV shows mentioning this part.

He placed his hand on the outside of the tube and gently pressed down on my hand, to make sure it made good contact with the film. He told me to touch a particular piece of exposed metal on the outside of the box, which I did. Reluctantly.

He said “You’ll feel a slight shock.”

“How slight is—”ZZZAAAPPPPPP! “Sonofabitch! That freakin’ hurts!”

I then removed my numb, tasered arm from the tube. He pulled the Polaroid out, waved it around, then peeled it open.

It turned out my Kirlian photograph looked a lot like the other Before pictures. The coronas around the fingertips were not fully formed, and they were of varying strength. But at least I finally had my Kirlian photograph! I reached out for it, lovingly.

And he snatched it away from me.

“I’ll just staple this to your credit card slip,” he said. “Then when you come back later today, we can compare it to your After photo.”

But… but… that’s my Kirlian photograph! You can’t take it away from me! I was tortured for that photograph!

Then he gave me one of the pendants. It looked really cheap. I hung it around my neck, but I stuffed it inside my shirt. No point in advertising how foolish I am with money.

I wonder how many people forgot to go back at the end of the day. He probably sold a lot more pendants than he otherwise would have just by that fact alone. Well I sure as hell was going to remember to go by his booth before the end of the day. Not only did he have my money, but he was holding my photograph hostage!

[Tomorrow: More of the fair. And do I remember to get my money back by the end of the day? Do I manage to rescue my photograph from the clutches of this fiend?]

Earlier this month, I went to the “New Living Expo” in San Francisco. In plainer terms, it was a new-age fair. Or, as Penn Jillette would pronounce it, “newage” (rhymes with “sewage”). I had been to one of these before, probably in 2004, so I was overdue to return.

The tricky thing about this newage stuff is finding the wheat among the chaff. Yes, there really is wheat there (or at least there used to be). Several things that we now accept as normal made their first appearances in American society among the aura-oozing, crystal-loving, brain-lapse set. Yoga might be the best example of this, but there are others (which I’m too lazy to look up right now).

I also have a fascination with fringe topics. Since I live an evidence-driven life, I love to check out stuff for myself and gather my own data. This led me, for example, to try out self-hypnosis way back in the ’80s. I discovered that (despite James Randi’s protestations to the contrary) hypnosis is very real and not some cheap stage trick (What passes itself off as stage hypnosis is not hypnosis at all but some very powerful group psychology.).

I’m not sure if hypnosis can actually serve a purpose beyond relaxation, though. There are those who claim you can use it to quit smoking or lose weight. I didn’t need either of those, so I didn’t try it.

The hypnotic state alone can be fun to play with. I’m able to go pretty deep, which I guess not everybody is able to do. I can go deep enough to completely shut down all of my tactile senses. I feel like a brain just floating in space. Trippy, man! Who needs chemical assistance to enter an altered state of consciousness? I can do it with sheer brainpower. (Soon I will be able to shoot lightning bolts out of my eyes! Then the world will tremble!)

You don’t have to be a floating brain, either. You can enter any realm your imagination can dream up. My best experience happened one day when I was trying to reach that ultra-deep state. The common induction techniques have you imagine yourself going down, such as riding down an escalator. You have to visualize yourself descending. If you’re doing it right, this will be accompanied by a sensation of sinking.

On that fateful day, I was lying on my bed and talking myself deeper and deeper. I used the escalator visualization at first, but it only got me partway. Then I noticed that it felt like my body was sinking through the bed. I immediately conjured up some visuals to reinforce that sensation. I imagined myself sinking through the floor, under the house, and then down through the ground. I went deeper and deeper until I hit groundwater. I discovered that I was in an underground cavern, with fresh, cool water, glowing walls, and surprisingly fresh air. And what else was in this subterranean aquatic paradise? The only thing that could make it better, of course. Mermaids!

And these aren’t your crappy TV-censored puritanical mermaids with hooter-shells. No! These were real mermaids! With short hair!

The best part of all was that the fish part started just a tiny bit lower than is normally depicted, if you get my meaning.

As you can see, you never know where your explorations will take you, if you open your mind and follow your curiosity.

I need to emphasize that I suffer no delusions that mermaids exist. They don’t. That entire episode was pure imagination.

[Tomorrow: I go to the newage fair. Six years ago.]

Wow. You guys missed the most amazing talk. Greta Christina spoke tonight at the San Francisco Atheists meeting. Her subject was “What can the atheist movement learn from the gay movement?”

I wish I had taken notes. I did write down one thing she said, because it touched upon a matter that I occasionally struggle with:

Let firebrands be firebrands and diplomats be diplomats.… Both methods together [are] more effective than either alone.… The good-cop/bad-cop dynamic should not be underestimated.

The funny thing is, in real life, I’m very much the diplomat. My carbon-based incarnation is not nearly as dickish as my silicon-based alter-ego. In the past, I have struggled with just what my online role should be. For the moment, the matter is settled.

But Greta is right. The atheist movement can learn a lot from what the gay-rights movement did right and where it stumbled.

So go out there, find yourself a gay friend, and probe him.

For ideas.