Woo

A BBC investigation into human sacrifice in Uganda has heard first-hand accounts which suggest ritual killings of children may be more common than authorities have acknowledged.

One witch-doctor led us to his secret shrine and said he had clients who regularly captured children and brought their blood and body parts to be consumed by spirits.

Meanwhile, a former witch-doctor who now campaigns to end child sacrifice confessed for the first time to having murdered about 70 people, including his own son.

Hey, he's just following the bible. Not his fault that he didn't read the whole passage.

Jim Downey

*Apologies to Bob.

Gods, this is funny:

Q: Is the ButtCandle really a candle?
A: Yes, but not necessarily what you might picture as your dining room table variety of candle. In length and diameter, it's similiar to common candles. However, a hollow channel is cut from bottom to top which causes air to be drawn from the base to the top. In practice, this creates a vacuum at the base which, when inserted in the rectum, gently dislodges intestinal and rectal blockage.

That's from the ButtCandle FAQ.

Yup. ButtCandle. Which is just like it sounds. A candle that you stick in your butt, then light "with the 10" wooden match that is provided." You know, like those silly "Ear Candles" that you can find in woo-shops? Which is how I stumbled across it, over on Phil Plait's site.

Don't use it after having chili, though.

Jim Downey

How homeopathy "works":

So stupid, it's funny. In homeopathic terms, that would be the intelligence of this video has been diluted to a 30c level, to the point where it just overwhelms your rational resistance. Or something.

I want my 8:12 back.

Jim Downey

Via MeFi.

. . . that all the good Christians who read this piece were just shaking their heads:

Nigerian car thief turns into goat!

Abuja, Nigeria – In Nigeria recently, an angry mob demanded that police jail a goat. Vigilantes insisted the animal was a human car thief who transmogrified upon being apprehended. Nigerian law doesn't recognize magic, witchcraft, or voodoo. Yet, faced with an angry mob, police acquiesced, arresting the goat.

* * *

Not infrequently, police hear reports that a man claims someone cast a spell to capture his spirit. Tradition here holds that if you sleep in bed with your feet at the headboard, you are communing with witches. Criminals buy charms from witch doctors to become invisible and escape arrest. A hairdresser tells of a client of another customer who reported a snake in her house that turned into a young woman. When the girl was taken to a Pentecostal church service she turned back into a snake. The journalistic canon of having two independent sources to confirm a news story becomes irrelevant when an entire congregation insists "it really happened."

Got this in my inbox this morning (happily, my spam filter caught it):

What is Mind Mapping

Mind Mapping is a great technique that will enhance your thinking skills and memory. A Mind Map uses key words, colours and images to stimulate your brain.

Your brain has the ability to learn and remember large amounts of information. It works by linking ideas together. When you think, your brain starts off from one idea and radiates outwards to other ideas. This radiant thinking ability is natural and automatic.

For your brain to function effectively, it must express itself in a radiant form that reflects its thought processes. In other words, to use your brain effectively, you have to think radiantly. A Mind Map, when drawn, radiates from a central idea and can be considered an expression of the radiant thinking brain.
This workshop will show you how to use Mind Mapping techniques to boost your productivity. It will give you the knowledge and techniques to be a more effective manager.

Benefits

By the end of the workshop, you will be able to:

* Use your brain effectively
* Increase your concentration
* Achieve a higher level of creativity

Just a follow-up to this post the first of the month. From Richard Wiseman's blog:

In short, all four trials were misses.

When I analysed believers and sceptics separately, the results were the same, with no difference between the groups. So the study didn’t support the existence of remote viewing, and suggested that those who believe in the paranormal are good at finding illusory correspondences between their thoughts and a target .

* * *

Update: I have just looked at the data from those who claimed some kind of psychic ability, and had a high confidence in their choice of target. This sub-group of participants also scored zero out of four.

Surprise, surprise.

Thanks, Richard -

Jim Downey

(Cross posted to my blog.)

Via Phil Plait, a glimpse into how far woo can go wrong:

Orbiter crashing into the moon

There is a Japanese lunar orbiter named Kaguya that is scheduled to crash into the moon today at about 2:30 pm ET. Scientists hope to learn something about the moon’s composition by observing the debris that is kicked up.

In many traditions, including astrology, the moon represents the feminine. It is the yin, the intuitive, the emotions. Women are connected to the moon by their menstrual cycles while they are fertile, and all beings, including the earth herself, are affected by the pull of the tides.

* * *

Did these scientists talk to the moon? Tell her what they were doing? Ask her permission? Show her respect?

Wow.

Just . . . wow.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this:

Twitter's first scientific study needs you!

Can some people correctly identify a place using mind power alone?

Psychologist Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire, UK, wants to find out, and New Scientist readers can help.

Over the course of this week, we'll be carrying out an experiment to find out if there's any substance to claims that some people are "remote viewers" – able to psychically identify a distant location without being shown or told where it is through conventional means.

I dunno - I'd think that twits and woo make a bad combination. The sort of thing that would have you hunched over a toilet after the party, if you know what I mean. But the way that they are doing it at least seems reasonable on first glance:

So, how is the experiment going to work?

So, I was listening to NPR yesterday afternoon, and heard their 'letters' bit about the show on Monday (which I missed, due to being out shooting). They had evidently done a segment speculating what would happen were marijuana legalized, and were reading some of the letters that they got in response. Most were about what you would expect - thoughtful observations and critiques of the show. Then there was the last one:

Well, it's been a year since I started this series, and I should probably offer a refresher on the idea for new readers. From the original post:

OK, it seems to me that one of the advantages that religion has is in dealing with guilt and absolution. Granted, most religions compound those problems for most people by adding in ridiculous rules and behaviours, but that is neither here nor there for my purposes.

Simply put, we all do things that make us feel a little guilty. And now I'm going to kick off an occasional feature called "Confession Time" which will allow us to 'fess up to a guilty pleasure and receive the absolution of our community. Each "Confession Time" will be devoted to one topic, and the rules are simple: confess to a guilty pleasure you have within that topic, and explain why it makes you feel guilty. And don't worry, I'm not serious about this.

Today's topic: What woo did you do, when you used to do woo?

I really gotta wonder if this is a joke:

Faith Of Britain Day is a day that focuses all of the positive energy in the country towards achieving our hopes and aspirations. For exactly two minutes on March 6th at 11.00am our consortium of psychics and healers will act as a channel for the positive thoughts of the entire country.

Why March 6th at 11.00am?

March 6th has been chosen as Faith of Britain Day because March is a time of seeing light emerging from the darkness of Winter, therefore emphasising hope in an unsure world. Numerologically this date is symbolic because the 3rd month, the 6th day and the 9th year are all multiples of 3 which is about balance - which is what we strive to achieve as humans. The time, 11.00am is a master number, or a powerful 2 (1 + 1) which is the duality of the inner and outer self, encouraging us to look within to find solutions.

The woo just keeps getting better. Here's another passage that I particularly loved:

In other news, Jenny McCarthy's head mysteriously explodes.

This is good news, folks!

[link] Vaccine Court: No Merit to Claims That Thimerosal in Vaccines Contributed to Autism
By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Health News Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Feb. 12, 2009 -- The federal "vaccine court" has rejected claims that either the measles/mumps/rubella vaccine or thimerosal in vaccines caused children's autism.

(Full story below the fold...)

Hey, it's the Stupor Bowl! Time for some special treats! What's better than some nice maggot cheese?

How about a little "blood marmalade"? Yum! It'll cure what ails you:

The Healing Power of Death

Were Europeans once cannibals? Research shows that up until the end of the 18th century, medicine routinely included stomach-churning ingredients like human flesh and blood.

* * *

In 16th- and 17th-century Europe, recipes for remedies like this, which provided instructions on how to process human bodies, were almost as common as the use of herbs, roots and bark. Medical historian Richard Sugg of Britain's Durham University, who is currently writing a book on the subject says that cadaver parts and blood were standard fare, available in every pharmacy. He even describes supply bottlenecks from the glory days of "medicinal cannibalism." Sugg is convinced that avid cannibalism was not only found within the New World, but also in Europe.

Offered, without further comment:

Two minor girls married off to frogs

PUDUCHERRY: In a bizarre ritual, two minor girls, both seven, from the remote Pallipudupet village in Tamil Nadu's Villupuram district were
married off to frogs on Friday night. The ceremony, an annual feature during the Pongal (harvest) festival, is conducted "to prevent the outbreak of mysterious diseases in the village''.

The girls, Vigneswari and Masiakanni, dressed up in traditional bridal finery -- gilded sarees and gold jewellery -- married the frog 'princes' in separate, elaborate ceremonies at two different temples in the presence of hundreds of villagers.

Amidst chanting of vedic hymns, the temple priests garlanded the brides and tied the magalsutras on behalf of the frogs pronouncing the two as wives of the amphibians before the sacred fire at the auspicious hour.

Jim Downey

(Via BB. *source)

You know, there's a reason why my email contact information listed here is "crap@afineline.org". Not because I don't want to hear from the many wonderful people who visit UTI, but because I want the kooks who also send me email to have to look at that address in their mailbox and think twice about what they're going to send me. It seems to me that sane people will get a small chuckle out of using that address - they get the joke - whereas the nutters will just be whipped into a greater frenzy.

Take for example one recent email I got, along with about two dozen other people. It started this way:

Subject: Nostradamus predicts the inevitable collapse of the capitalist system and the world-wide socialist revolution which follows

did you ever hear of the 1st amendment? or will you censor me like
everyone you disagree with...

the vote of the deluded, deceived, and brainwashed masses is not
valid.... it is a SHAM DEMOCRACY!

FINAL DRAFT FOR WORLD-WIDE CIRCULATION:

Tell it to the 13 people killed in a riot following rumors of witchcraft being used in a soccer game:

KINSHASA, Congo - Accusations that a soccer player was using witchcraft during a match in eastern Congo sparked a riot that killed 13 people, a U.N.-funded radio station reported Monday.

Most of the victims were between the ages of 11 and 16, Radio Okapi said. They were suffocated as panicked crowds ran for the exits during the mayhem Sunday in Butembo in eastern Congo's North Kivu province.

*sigh*

Jim Downey

Hat tip to ML for the link.

Say, I've got an idea. Let's disregard more than a 100 years-worth of evidence that tells us that vaccines work in preventing nasty childhood diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella because after all, vaccines make Baby Jesus cry.

THURSDAY, Aug. 21 (HealthDay News) -- Some parents' refusal to vaccinate children seems to be behind the highest rate of measles cases reported since 1996, federal officials said Thursday.

Between Jan. 1 and July 31 of this year, 131 measles cases have been reported in the United States, many of them among children whose parents have philosophical or religious objections to the vaccine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nice. Now your children get to suffer because you believe in magic.

How's that working out for them?

When I was a kid, I loved all manner of woo - ancient astronauts, psychic abilities, Atlantis, crystal skulls, the whole bit. Just go down the list of crazy shit in the 1970s and I pretty much believed it.

Most of us are this way. We grew up believing in God or other types of magical thinking. And it usually takes a while to divorce yourself from this junk, because it is so deeply ingrained in our culture and it is *so* appealing. Who wouldn't want an answer to their natural fear of death? Why not seek a solution to the threats of disease? Wouldn't it be cool if there really were alien visitors who were watching us, just waiting for the human race to mature enough to become citizens of a galactic civilization?

One of the more common complaints I see here and at some of the atheist-inclined sites I read is that those of us in the West only complain about the absurd religious antics of the various and sundry Christian cultists. Well, yeah, that's because the dominant religious tradition in the West is some version of Christianity. But that doesn't mean that I don't find other religious practices equally absurd.

And in that spirit, let's take a quick look at three recent manifestations around the world. In comments, feel free to add others.

First, this gem from South America:

EL ALTO, Bolivia (Reuters) - Muttering incantations at a witches' market above La Paz, Faustino Tinta sets fire to a dried llama fetus and wax trinkets, an offering his client hopes will help Bolivian President Evo Morales survive a recall vote.

* * *

"Evo is going to have the support of more people. He is going to win the referendum," said soothsayer Maria Samo, tossing coca leaves onto a crucifix placed on a piece of woven material in her own stall nearby.

OK, you've probably heard about the little dust-up that PZ Myers has been having with a bunch of Catholics. If not, here's the initial post at PZ's site, with follow-up posts here, here, here, here, with this being the most recent post, featuring some of the hate mail sent to Myers. That's over 6,000 comments on his blog alone, by my count. And of course lots of others have weighed in on the subject, including UTI alum DarkSyde yesterday at Daily Kos.