Quick Hitts

Driving a U-Haul moving van is like getting a piggyback ride from Michael Moore. It’s bumpy, noisily, uncomfortable, pulls to the left, is difficult to maneuver, and has huge blind spots on both sides.

I just spent the past two days piloting one of these POS so I feel qualified to offer the following advice.

Forget the “when you assume” cliche  When you see a U-Haul vehicle on the road you should assume the following:

• The driver is at least annoyed, possibly agitated, and probably outright pissed because his vehicle is very uncomfortable and there’s something wrong with it. (It’s a U-Haul, so something is broken.)
• The driver is not familiar with the area, so he’s trying to find his way, either with a GPS that’s hard to hear above the truck’s rattling or maps that are blowing around the cab.
• The driver’s experience controlling big cumbersome vehicles can be measured in hours.
• And this is the most important assumption: The Driver, no matter how careful he is, can’t see you. The blind spots on these things are enormous, and they’re not helped by lose mirrors that flap in the wind.

I was schlepping boxes from Rhode Island to Connecticut over roads I’d never traveled. My first adventure happened a few minutes after picking up the beast. A motorcycle cut in front of me, and when I tried to slam the brakes I discovered the brake pedal, which is located considerably higher than it should be, is designed to catch your foot on the way up. I was able to stop a foot away from his back tire. Another second and the EMTs would have sent his remains home in a Tupperware bowl.

Adventure #2 happened after I had picked up a friend and we headed out for the long drive to get the boxes that needed schlepping. We were driving up an on-ramp where the road merged. I asked if the road to my right was clear. He checked and said yes, then, about five seconds later yelled “Watch Out!” I swerved to the left and an idiot zoomed by on my right. I missed him by inches.  Despite our double-checking we didn’t see him, and the idiot compounded the problem by deciding that passing a huge clumsy truck on the right with inches and moments to spare was a really good idea.

On the trip back it happened again, with a different idiot, who missed disaster by millimeters. If I hadn’t pulled to the right milliseconds after hearing my friend yell there would be one less idiot in the world, instantly converted to hamburger embedded in scrap metal. He would have deserved his closed coffin.

The moral of the story: For your safety and his, stay far, far away from any U-Haul moving van. And pity the poor guy driving it. He is not having a good day. That’s not an assumption, that’s a fact.

Four Chord Pop Music

Let me tell ya, Sonny, when I was a boy, we only needed three chords for all our rock and roll songs. We could play every song with those same three chords.  But that’s not good enough for you.  You use got to use the same four cords for everything. Pfft.

If you want to be a really well rounded musician you’ll you need to add the five notes from Pachelbel’s Cannon. Combine them with the four chords and you’ll be able to play everything.

Pat Condell is consistently terrific, and his latest is even better than usual.

This may be the best news photo and caption ever published:

Firefighters wrap up at the scene of a fire at 15 M. St. in Hampton this morning, where a home was gutted by two fires this morning. Right, Wayne McGowen, who was sleeping in the basement of the house when it caught fire, watches firefighters at the scene along with neighbor Kali Burns, who was dressed as a gorilla. (JASON SCHREIBER)

Yes, it’s real.

If I’d been in the neighborhood I’d have immediately bought the guy in the gorilla suit a beer.  I’ve always appreciated people who go out of their way to make things a bit more surreal.

In 1973, I was a high school senior filling my schedule with easy classes. The cult I was in had been teaching me public speaking since I was 12, so I took a public speaking class to get an easy A.

My final speech, for my final grade, was about why evolution was wrong and how you could describe the age of the earth with just a handful of zeros. I got an A, so I was obviously being graded on style, not content.

Two years later I had escaped the cult and was reading, really studying, everything I could get my hands on, to deprogram myself. One of the subjects I studied was evolution, and I rather quickly came to the conclusion that everything I knew on the subject was wrong. As I learned dozens of facts, then hundreds of facts, every one of them supporting evolution, I realized just how silly my beliefs had been.

I didn’t change my mind because of the consensus on evolution. That consensus had been there long before I’d been brainwashed. No, it was the facts that convinced me. Hundreds and hundreds of facts that, when put together, proved beyond any doubt that evolution happened, that it was real. It was cool that the consensus agreed with my conclusion, but it wasn’t the reason I changed my beliefs.

I didn’t need consensus to believe Newton’s laws of motion either, became I had experienced them directly. I live in the northeastern US and more than once, as I tried to stop my car on a sheet of ice, I’ve thought “The inertia of this body in motion is about to be acted on by the outside force of that rapidly approaching tree.”

I’d experienced Newton’s third law by building model rockets. Occasionally something went wrong and a rocket would spin out of control. It would inevitably land on Mr. Sebuski’s lawn, where it would spin around and explode, creating lots of noise and smoke. Mr. Sebuski always responded by running into his yard, exploding in anger and screaming threats that were little more than noise and smoke, proving that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

I’m seeing more and more insistence, on skeptic blogs and forums, that we must accept the consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) because . . . it’s the consensus. And when subjects are complicated we should acquiesce to the experts. But the consensus, and the experts can be wrong. Sometimes, completely wrong.

The consensus on second hand smoke is that the homeopathic levels of toxins it contains make it so deadly we must protect everyone from it. Smartenized people know that’s complete bullshit.

But what about the experts? James Repace makes a nice living concocting reports about SHS for various nanny organizations. He claims that removing SHS from a room requires winds of hundreds of miles an hour, and he has a PhD in physics. I don’t. Does that make me unqualified to call bullshit on his ridiculous claims?

I don’t have a degree in medicine either. Plenty of MDs are anti-vax and pro-homeopathy. Should I stop criticizing them because I’m not enough of an expert?

Here’s the most important reason to avoid relying on consensus and experts when researching scientific claims: It takes all the fun out of being a skeptic.

Last week I heard a medical claim from a source that’s usually pretty reliable, but also occasionally falls for woo. I don’t know if it’s true or not. When I get around to it, I’ll research it myself. I’ll read reports and articles and track down facts and figure out if it’s true, false, or undetermined at the moment. That’s the fun part of being a skeptic – learning and discovering and filtering and figuring out what’s real and what’s nonsense. If you’re going to automatically accept the word of an expert or the current consensus, are you really a skeptic? And even if you are, where’s the fun in it?

A consensus can, and usually should, be factored into you conclusions. If the consensus agrees with your conclusions, great, that’s an indicator you’re probably right. If there’s a strong consensus against your conclusions you better have done some pretty solid research and reasoning to be sure they’re valid. But if you’ve done that research and come to your conclusions carefully and thoughtfully, don’t let someone tell you you’re wrong because of some consensus. Instead, demand facts, because ultimately it’s facts, not consensus, that separates reality from nonsense.

This post is also available as a Quick Hitts Podcast. The podcast version is a bit longer, and includes a discussion of conspiracy theories about consensuses.

I need some advice about home security cameras.

Relatives are having trouble with a persistent and nasty vandal. They know who he is, but he strikes randomly and at night and they can’t prove he’s the culprit. They want to photograph him in the act. A few clear photos, or a video, combined with his past criminal history, should earn him a nice state funded vacation.

We need something fairly easy to set up and use that will take infrared pictures without him noticing.

I tried a Field Camera, a self contained unit designed to be left in the woods, attached to a tree, to take pictures of critters that cross its path. It has a single LED on the front to indicate its status, and a bank of infrared LEDs to illuminate the subject. The status LED blinks red when it detects motion, then green when it takes the picture, and is easy to see on a dark night. I could cover it with a bit of electrical tape, but that won’t solve two bigger problems with it. When it takes the picture the bank of LEDs glows red – they’re easy to see in the dark. Even worse, the pictures are completely washed out, without enough detail to identify the person.

This was a $100 camera, with the Wildgame brand. (It will be going back to the store tomorrow.) Would a better camera give me a clearer picture, and have LEDs that really are invisible when they illuminate the vandal?

The other option is to mount a camera on their garage. (The layout won’t allow the simple solution of leaving a camera running in one of their home’s windows, and there are no windows in the garage facing the direction of the vandilism.) I can run external power to it if necessary, but I want something that either saves to digital media or does a wireless broadcast that can be picked up on a PC inside. Cameras with an analog output aren’t acceptable. And cheap is better than expensive – it would be great to keep it at $150 or so, if possible.

Despite surfing and reading and comparing of reviews I remain unsmartenized on the subject. If you’ve had any relevant experience with home surveillance gear, good or bad, please leave a comment and smartnize me.

I usually try to mix things up in the Things Atheists Didn’t Do stories.  I’ll list different religions and mix a few silly, amusing things in with the horrific crimes committed in the name of a god.  But the mess in the Catholic Church has resulted in so many bizarre stories it deserves a post all to itself.

When the story started, back in Boston, many years ago, the church could have been heroic simply by admitting what had been happening and punishing those involved.  The pedophile priests could have been turned over to the authorities.  The bishops who moved them from congregation to congregation (where they could find fresh meat) could have been defrocked and publicly denounced.  The church could have apologized for the incredible pain they caused to satisfy the lust of their perverts.

Instead they covered it up, fought every attempt to bring it to light, refused to cooperate with investigators and intimidated the victims.  Some of the bishops were actually rewarded for their behavior; moved to the Vatican where they’ll spend the rest of their lives in luxury.  (Considering they’re bishops, is that considered a diagonal move?)

It’s pretty much settled down in the states, but now the same scandal is exploding in Europe, with one big difference:  Pope Ratzenberger is up to his ears in this one.  He actively helped a pedophile who molested over 200 kids.  Deaf kids.

And then it gets worse.

The Pope issued a letter of apology to the victims, but never mentioned any penalties or punishments for for the bishops or priests involved.  Instead he blamed the problem on “society.”   The fact that the church has a decades long history of not just covering up, but aiding and abetting such behavior, somehow went unmentioned.  Must have slipped his mind.

Bill Donahue, the head of the Catholic League, claims that it’s not pedophilia because the most of the boys molested were post pubescent, not pre-pubescent, reducing their horror to a dictionary argument.  He claims that the real problem was homosexuality, which anyone with a half a brain cell (i.e. not Bill) knows has nothing to do with pedophilia.

Oh, and just in case this somehow makes it to court?  The Vatican, aka The Holy See,  has declared that the Pope is immune to any legal claims.  Because he’s so holy, you see.  Not holy enough to do anything about rampant pedophilia – that’s evidently beyond his Popely super-powers – but holy enough that he can shirk any responsibility for it.

The Pope has lashed out, not at the perpetrators and enablers of the abuse, but against those who had the audacity to report it, particularly the New York Times and the AP.   Damn, if those nosy news organizations would just stop talking about it, it might all go away.

A Vatican priest compared the criticism of the church to the persecution of Jews.  He whined, “The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”  Great comparison there, Sparky.  Free clue, you incredibly insensitive piece of dung: Seeing your family gassed to death by a madman  isn’t quite in the same league as the same as being called to task for something you’re guilty of.

And those priests caught up in the first scandal, here in the US?  Some of them are being very quietly reinstated to churches across the country.  A pedophile is a terrible thing to waste.

This should be the end of Catholic Church, but it won’t be. The only thing more boundless than the evil of the Vatican is the infinite gullibility of its followers.

Edited to Add: At an Easter mass one of the bishops said, ““Holy Father, the people of God are with you, and do not let themselves be impressed by the gossip of the moment, by the challenges that sometimes strike at the community of believers.”

I can’t contain my disgust with these evil, evil people.  This is not gossip.  Thousands of your priests fucked little boys, over and over and over again. You condoned it.  You enabled it.  You excused it.  You lied about it.  And now you’re belittling the thousands of victims you’ve scarred for life.

You filthy scumbags should be put out of business by any means possible.  You should be sued into poverty.  You should lose your tax free status.  Every one of your churches, everywhere on earth, should be seized and sold, either to a commercial entity or to a religion that doesn’t fuck little children.  Anyone contributing to the church should be imprisoned for aiding and abetting child rape, and should probably be institutionalized for being too stupid to be allowed in public in any civilized society.

Every single one of you, every pope, every cardinal, every guilty priest, every priest who makes excuses for his fellow kiddie-fuckers, Bill Donahue, and every idiot believer who still supports the church, belongs in prison for the rest of their life, sharing a cell with a very large, well-endowed, horny rapist who will treat you the way you’ve treated the children.

You are scum.  You are beneath scum.