Orgone Research

I’m very late coming into this discussion, so perhaps this post won’t have much impact. But it feels good to put one’s thoughts in order, so I decided to write this piece.

I’ve followed with some degree of care the ongoing debate within the skeptical community about Phil Plait’s now famous “Don’t be a dick” speech at the most recent JREF meeting. When a video of the speech was posted I watched and listened carefully. Most of the salient points about his speech have already been made by others, so what little novel input I can give comes more from a personal and therefore anecdotal perspective.

First off, I have to agree with those critical of Plait in that Plait segues between a person-to-person encounter to impersonal or public pronouncements without clearly demarcating the two. I completely agree with Plait that an in-your-face confrontation is not likely to sway opinion. I remember some years ago reading in Fortean Times about the “moon landing hoax.” While I never seriously doubted that we went to the moon and back, I was significantly flummoxed by the claims that the photographs taken on the moon were faked. Remember, The United States federal government lied to the public about all sorts of much more significant issues like Watergate, Vietnam casualties, and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, just to name a few. Faking photographs as a propaganda move during the cold war frankly didn’t seem that far fetched to me.

Several years after being exposed to the Fortean Times article I ran into a website that went into great detail about the nature of the photography on the moon. Frankly it was a sort of “face palm” moment for me, as it made me realize that I was a total beginner at understanding photography and optical perspective, and was easily taken in by the bogus arguments of the moon landing “hoax” proponents.

In the meantime I attended a social gathering at the Seattle Space Needle in celebration of Yuri Gagarin’s space flight. There I met a man who had worked for NASA. Being a genuinely curious person, I asked him his thoughts on the “moon landing hoax.” His reaction was immediate and totally negative. In essence he stated that the claims were so prima facie ludicrous that they weren’t even worthy of debating. Needless to say, I didn’t come away with any greater understanding of why the photos seemed anomalous. Was he a “dick?” Yeah, he was kind of a dick.

I suspect Plait was put in the unenviable position of actually having to name names if he decided to create a provisional definition of what constitutes a “dick.” But he didn’t and therein lies the big problem. You can’t have a meaningful debate if you’re using fuzzy terms. It reminds me of high school, where we spent inordinate amounts of time arguing what rock bands were “cool.” Concepts like “cool” and “dickishness” are human valuational constructs, and as such lie outside of the realms of science or logic.

One of the more thoughtful rejoinders to Plait’s speech was made by Richard Dawkins, who argued that it’s often third parties reading these exchanges who are swayed, rather than the direct target of the criticism. From my perspective, I can totally agree with this.

Previously I’d written about my encounters with the tracts of Jack T. Chick. While I was never a particularly devout Christian, I still clung to that belief system up until I was about 17. But by the time I got to high school, various things began to make me confused. While I was a lukewarm Lutheran, I had a friend who was a fundamentalist, or at least his parents were fundamentalists. At the time, I was a big fan of Houdini, and I remember my friend’s mother telling me that perhaps Houdini was in league with the Devil, who enabled his escapes. Well, I knew that was obvious bullshit, so cracks in the façade were beginning to form.

My fundamentalist friend took me to a revival meeting, where I witnessed dozens, if not hundreds of people speaking in tongues. As you might imagine, this really blew my mind! I asked one of the Lutheran pastors about this, and he gave me a rather unctuous and dismissive answer, to the effect that “we really don’t do that.” This was one of my first introductions to the schismatic nature of the Christian religion.

But the big break came by reading Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary. It was a sort of humor that went far beyond the simplicity of anything I’d ever seen on TV; sort of like Mad Magazine on steroids. Obviously I had to look up a lot of words, and ask my father about a lot of historical background, but in general I found it very funny.

Bierce was blasphemous, to be sure. But he spread his blasphemy around quite evenly, which suggested that religion was a pathology of mankind, and had existed in many forms and many places since the beginning of recorded history. He was making one of the simplest and most fundamental of atheist arguments, albeit in a roundabout and oblique way; everyone thinks their religion it the One True Religion, and that every other religion is false. Without solid evidence, belief in any particular religion is no better than belief in any other. Belief in the divinity of Thor is just as valid as belief in the divinity of Jesus, which is to say there is no good reason to believe in the divinity of either one!

Was Bierce a “dick?” Well, my mother, who was a Lutheran, certainly thought so, although she would never use such crude language… But my point is that I was reading Bierce as a rather disengaged third party. He certainly didn’t write; “Matt Crowley, you are a fool and an asshole for believing this religious garbage.” I agree with Dawkins that judicious application of humor, sarcasm, wit, and yes, blasphemy, can actually win hearts and minds.

Later on, I found Bertrand Russell’s Why I am not a Christian, was utterly blown away by it, and never looked back. Russell’s demeanor was much more urbane than Bierce’s and of course his book was not intended as humor but as a somewhat technical argument against religious belief.

Is Dawkins a “dick?” I don’t think so, but of course I also think Led Zeppelin was the greatest rock band of all time. Both “dick” and “greatest” are human valuational constructs, which cannot be empirically or logically defined. I find Dawkins to be as urbane as Russell, at least in his on-camera presentations. His writings are sometimes more biting. But I think Dawkins’ vitriol is entirely justified, as his enemy, organized religion, is one of the most destructive and evil institutions in the history of mankind.

So who’s a “dick?” well it pains me to say this, but I think Penn Jillette is a dick. Like Ted Nugent, Penn’s personality is so over-the-top that he ends up being a poor spokesman for his cause. Penn’s constant resort to loud-mouthed vulgarity, mockery, and ad hom attacks on his opponents are entirely counterproductive. A sad figure is just that, sad, but when a sad figure is mercilessly mocked, they become a martyr.

I’ve met Penn, albeit briefly, and my impression is that his on-camera persona is very much like his real life persona. I remember trying to congratulate him on mentioning Avogadro’s number in their act, but evidently I misquoted the exponent. Penn was quick to correct me, smugly and condescendingly. I’ve had the pleasure of spending quality time with Teller, and he is perhaps the most genteel man I’ve ever met, diametrically opposite to Penn’s behavior. The great mistake that Penn makes is mocking those who really don’t deserve it. It’s disturbing to see ordinary people being used as guinea pigs to demonstrate a point, like signing a petition against “Dihydrogen Monoxide”, or drinking tap water claimed to be bottled water. You are a professional magician, you have staged the con, yet you make people look like fools for behaving in the very way you coerced them to.

Is PZ Meyers a “dick?” I don’t think so, but then again I think Caravaggio was the greatest painter of all time. I can’t prove either assertion empirically or logically. It seems to me that Meyers picks and chooses his targets carefully, and his targets are eminently worthy of being called out.

Taking a step back here, I think Plait made an unfortunate logical transition at the beginning of his speech, namely by equating a face-to-face interaction with (presumably) what is written on the Internet. It hardly bears mentioning, but the relative facelessness of the Internet has ramped up the level of vitriol and meanness in ALL areas of social interaction, not just skepticism.

I’m curious as to Plait’s take on pre-Internet “dicks.” How about H.L. Mencken? Ambrose Bierce? The Chicago Seven? Again we don’t know, because Plait didn’t specify. I can’t be the first person to have mentioned this, but it’s kind of like Joe McCarthy claiming there were “X” number of communists within the Federal government, yet not naming them. If there REALLY was such a problem, you have to be specific. It’s like taking your car that won’t start to a mechanic and being told “Your car’s really being a dick.”

I’m also pained by watching the near-fanatical and overwrought defense of Plait’s speech. It seems to me the point was made the first time around, and further hand-wringing only comes across as self-righteous moral superiority. “Let he who is without dick cast the first dick.” Jesus dude, gimme a break, this bleat sounds like Bono.

To summarize my own take on the subject from personal experience, I don’t find all biting wit to be counter-productive to effective “outreach.” Sometimes “biting wit” goes too far and becomes venal and ugly, like certain episodes of South Park. I can understand why Plait chose not to name names as being examples of “dicks” as this would be grossly divisive toward skepticism as a whole. Yet this is why this issue will never be resolved; unless you name names, or provisionally define what “dickish” behavior is, you cannot meaningfully discuss it, anymore than you can meaningfully say who the “greatest” rock band is.

Here we are almost at the end of 2009 and there is no clear consensus as to what to call this decade.

The most common term that I’ve seen in my own un-scientific perusal of the Internet has been “the aughts”. I should like to argue that this term is exactly backwards, as a quick perusal of the OED will show. The commonly held belief is that “aught” means “nothing” or “zero”. A common example of this is the voicing of the name of the 30.06 rifle and round; “thirty-aught-six”. “Thirty” being the caliber and “aught-six” being the year of introduction.

Unfortunately this is a misnomer, although a very deeply ingrained one. The word “aught” actually means “something”, not “nothing”. Here’s what the OED says:

A. n. (pron.) Anything whatever; anything. In interrogative, negative, and conditional sentences.

The term “naught” is uncommonly used in the United States. What Americans call “Tic-tac-toe” is called “Noughts and Crosses” in the UK. “Nought” is a variant spelling of “naught”. As I’m sure you can infer by now, “naught” means “zero”, or “nothing”. Here is the definition per the OED:

A. pron.
1. Nothing, not anything; = nought pron. 1a. Now arch. and literary.

So if your decade ends in two zeros, it seems to me that it should be called the “naughts” rather than the “aughts”.

But decades are often given additional descriptions, usually in retrospect; “the roaring twenties” and the “swinging sixties” come to mind. Being that we are near the end of this decade I believe the retrospectives can safely begin. I should like to propose that this decade be called the “supernaughts”, a term which should also please Black Sabbath fans.

The following list is actually a repeat of a post I made to the JREF back in late 2007. Being that several of my predictions came true in 2008, I’m going to stick with a winning game plan. ‘Cause a winner never quits and a quitter never wins…

1. Cell phones with amazing new features will appear on the market.

2. Early frost will threaten Florida or California orange groves, causing TV anchors to warn viewers that the price of orange juice may go up.

3. This one guy will go from total obscurity to national fame virtually overnight.

4. A well respected female Hollywood celebrity will shed her clothes for a magazine photo spread. This event will be announced as “news” and not simply celebrity publicity.

5. Large retail sales will be continue to be referred to as “clearance events” and not “sales”.

6. The United States will produce a bumper crop of a major agricultural staple.

7. A record setting pumpkin will be grown.

8. A pumpkin will be “chucked” a record setting distance.

9. Courtney Love will be in the news again.

10. And here is my biggie: A railroad tanker car laden with a noxious chemical will derail and breach, necessitating the evacuation of a small town in the deep South.

One of my earliest memories of my father was of him showing me a rope trick. It wasn’t much of a trick, but I was only about four, so it was pretty impressive. He laid out a length of rope on the floor and sent a traveling sine wave down the line.

When I was about five, I graduated to tying knots with my father. He had a book about knots that we would use as a guide. Before he went into law, he worked in the copper mines in Butte, Montana, and so had hands-on knot experience. He even showed me a knot that wasn’t in the book, a way of terminating a line with a double loop. This was a rescue sort of knot, to be lowered to a person below from someone above. The person below would put their legs through the loops and grab onto the standing part of the line with both hands, then be pulled up.

There was one knot that seemed to flummox us both; the Monkey’s Fist. Years later, I figured out how to tie it, and I don’t really understand why it seemed so difficult in the first place. But as a child in the late 1960’s my knowledge of male role models besides my father was limited. I remember gently goading my father about his inability to tie this knot; “I’ll bet Mannix could tie a Monkey’s Fist.”

I still remember that book, as it was something that my father and I enjoyed together. I remember playing some sort of made-up game by myself in which I filled a cloth or burlap bag full of things and took them into the back yard. I left the bag outside and of course it rained and the book became water damaged.

Years later my father showed me a trick he called “throwing half-hitches” which is sending a loop down a line which is secured at the other end. The idea is that if one is about to haul a timber or something heavy, the extra hitches help hold the line to the load.

By the time I got to high school I was fascinated with Houdini. The whole fascination with rope and knots was re-awakened, but by this time was superseded by my interest in locks and lock picking.

When I moved to Seattle and became a pharmacist I had enough income to indulge in bibliophilia. By and large, I would buy really unusual books, but I was also intrigued by the notion of “overstock” or discounted books which you often see at large chain bookstores. I went through a phase where I bought several books on knots. Not that I really had a genuine need for such books, just that the whole subject seemed sort of topologically esoteric. Eventually I realized that there was ONE book which really covered the subject: The Ashley Book of Knots, by Clifford Ashley. Once I had that, there was really no more need to buy any other book on the subject! Yet I would often come across other books on knots, usually at a discounted price, and it got me wondering. Why was it that there were so many books on knots?

I also played chess, mostly in high school, but it was something that I never kept up with. I began to notice the same pattern; there were lots of books on chess moves out there! Again it began to puzzle me, it seemed like these were subjects which were relatively esoteric, like knots and chess moves, in which the supply of books on the subject probably exceeded the demand.

It took me many years into adulthood to come up with a theory of why this is. My theory is simple; knots and chess moves cannot be copyrighted or trademarked! As long as you don’t directly plagiarize the text or the artwork, the fundamental content is already out there. Yes, I acknowledge that chess is vastly more complex than knot tying, but still, a great body of information has already been published, usually broken down into simple components.

For many years television had a fascination with WWII. It finally dawned on me that most of the archival footage was in the public domain, and thus the production costs of the program could be kept that much lower.

Sometimes the public domain nature of certain kinds of information is even made explicit. I remember reading the introduction to a book of ghost stories; the author had to plead with his readers not to re-sell or re-tell the stories as their own!

The Internet has changed everything, of course, and we are only seeing the beginning of what is clearly a revolution in information technology. But as far as books go, there sure are a lot of books on knots and chess moves out there…