Bitch

Have I told you about the Dragon in my garage?

Those of you who should will know this. Those of you who don't, should know this.

The Dragon In My Garage

by Carl Sagan

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

Ray Comfort Irony alert

The following statement by Ray "Stupid Banana Man" Comfort is so powerful in its blinding stupidity and its nuclear strength ironic blast radius is so large that Irony meters for years will not function correctly.

So let’s be careful when we mock things of which we have no understanding.

/jaw floor

Ray, if that is the case you should stop talking about nearly everything.

Polite and complete take down of an anti-vacination parent

This is amazing.


I wouldn't have been able to be so polite (let alone so incredibly thorough and all destroying)


via Orac

Mormon vistors and Mrs. BigDumbChimp

I love my wife. I do.

Sometimes though she does things. Things she thinks are better for everyone involved and I don't necessarily agree.

For example.


The door bell rings. I'm upstairs on the computer deep into a session of photo editing.

Mrs. BigDumbChimp "Honey do not come down stairs."

Me "Ok.... Wait. What?"

Mrs. BigDumbChimp "DO NOT come down stair I'm serious"

door opens, some mumbling, door closes

Me coming to the realization what just happened

Me running down stairs and looking out the front door windows to see two mormons on bikes riding off to annoy the next door neighbor.

Me "Honey, what the fuck?"

Mrs. BigDumbChimp "Do not go chasing after them"

Me "Honey I was just going to ask them a few things about their religion. They came to our house to proselytize, they are secure in their beliefs there is nothing wrong with me asking them a few things. For example I wonder if they know that their religion was started by a fraud and a criminal. And I was going to ask them about their Magic underw.."

Mrs. BigDumbChimp "Honey, I'm not in the mood. This was better for everyone."

Me. "Honey I was going to be polite. They came HERE. I didn't go to their house. I wanted to ask them about governance by divine revel.."

Mrs. BigDumbChimp "Honey. NOT NOW I"M NOT INTERESTED IN TALKING ABOUT THIS"

Me .../sulk

This makes me very happy

Kevin Trudeau, purveyor of lies and fraud and possible cause of the hastening of the deaths of many is busted by the FTC.

A federal judge has ordered infomercial marketer Kevin Trudeau to pay more than $37 million for violating a 2004 stipulated order by misrepresenting the content of his book, “The Weight Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About.”

In August 2008, Judge Robert W. Gettleman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois had ordered Trudeau to pay more than $5 million and banned him, for three years, from producing or publishing infomercials for products in which he has an interest. The ruling confirmed an earlier contempt finding, the second such finding against Trudeau in the past four years.

Urged by both the FTC and Trudeau to reconsider aspects of its August order, on November 4 Judge Gettleman amended the judgment to $37,616,161, the amount consumers paid in response to the deceptive infomercials. The judge also revised the three-year ban to prohibit Trudeau from “disseminating or assisting others in disseminating” any infomercial for any informational publication in which he has an interest. On December 11, the court denied Trudeau’s request to reconsider or stay this ruling.

Inaugeration Quick thoughts

Cheney in a wheelchair gives me a bit of Dr. Strangelove meets the Penguin from Batman schadenfreud.

Rick Warren's invocation was terrible and Jefferson is rolling over in his grave. The lord's prayer had no place there.

Obama did great and personally for me, his call out to bring Science back to the forefront and to acknowledge non-believers was fantastic.

He remained tough on terror while making obvious calls to reverse many of the disastrous policies of the last 8 years. A call for the rule of law and not making a choice between our ideals and our safety was particularly pointed at the ex-president over his left shoulder.

While being mindful of the state of the country he was uplifting and confident.

The benediction wasn't nearly as bad as the invocation, with a little more about hope and inclusion with some humor too. But I still think it has no place.

Blog Update

I'm beyond swamped with my Day job and some other side projects I have going. I'm not sure how long this is going to last so blog postings will be sparse at best.