In the last few days, the political process in the great state of Arizona has been made a mockery of by one of its own highest elected officials, Arizona secretary of state Ken Bennett. That’s because Bennett mentioned last week in an interview that due to “outstanding questions” regarding President Obama’s citizenship, he might have to withold Obama from the Arizona ballot in November’s presidential election. He stated that while he personally believed that Obama is a U.S. citizen, he also had a duty to “investigate” because he kept getting emails (about 1200 of them) demanding proof of Obama’s citizenship. Essentially, a bunch of birther conspiracy theorists pestered Bennett, and he went off on this fool’s errand as a way of appeasing these nutbags in the base of his own Republican party.
But the joke’s on Bennett, because not only did the state of Hawaii address his concerns (by providing solid evidence, yet again, that proves Obama was born in the U.S.), but it did so by turning the tables on Bennett and his fellow birthers:
Hawaii’s Now Asking Birthers to Prove Who They Are
Ken Bennett, Arizona’s secretary of state, is the latest person to question the President’s birthplace, although he’s doing it the way people do when they want to call it into question but don’t want to seem like a loon. Bennett, a Republican who perhaps coincidentally is planning to run for governor in 2014, said on a radio show last week that he’s looking into the issue, and that it’s “possible” he might keep Obama off the Arizona ballot in 2012, not because he thinks the President isn’t a “natural-born citizen” but because some other people say they think that and so he’s gotta look into it. …
… In the meantime, though, he’s just waiting (apart from his other secretarial duties) for Hawaii officials to provide verification. He said on the show that he was puzzled it took them eight weeks to respond to his request, and when they did respond they still didn’t give him what he wanted.
Instead, they asked him to prove who he was:
On Thursday, Bennett said he sent his request to Hawaii officials eight weeks ago but has yet to get the proof he was hoping for…. In the weeks since then, Bennett said, Hawaii officials have forced him to provide proof that he is who he says he is. They asked him to send them copies of the Arizona laws that prove the secretary of state really is the person in charge of handling the ballots. Admittedly, Bennett said they told him they were “tired of all the requests.” But he is continuing anyway.
Oh my, that’s embarrassing!
This is why, whenever I get into a discussion with birthers, I first insist that they prove – to my satisfaction – that they are citizens of the United States by giving me a copy of their birth certificate. You can just imagine how happy they are to hear their own stupid arguments turned back at them 
But it gets even better. Apparently, Bennett was using the fact that he received so many requests (about 1200 or so via email) about President Obama’s citizenship as justification for this colossal waste of time and resources. So how can one respond to such a wimpy excuse for backpeddling out of such a dumb position? Answer: outright mockery…
Mitt Romney: Is He a Unicorn? More Than 17,000 People Want Ken Bennett to Find Out
Is GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney a businessman? Or is he really a unicorn?
At the time of this post, more than 17,000 people would like Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett to find out.
In response to the 1,200 “birthers” who asked Bennett to verify with the state of Hawaii — yet again — that President Obama has a birth certificate there, the left-wingers would also like Bennett to check out their conspiracy theory.
“I understand you are considering kicking President Obama off the ballot because some people continue to raise questions about his birth,” the petition to Bennett says. “Well, I believe it cannot be proven conclusively that Mitt Romney is *not* a unicorn. A unicorn would not be qualified to be president. Thus, I hope you will apply the same standard to Romney, and investigate the unicorn question.”
Indeed, Romney has never denied being a unicorn, and the left-wingers say it’s possible Romney’s hair could be covering up a unicorn horn. …
Ridiculous? Of course it is – but that’s the whole point! Once you have set the bar so low by trying to kowtow to the level of birther conspiracy mongering, you might as well open the door to ludicrous inquiries such as that above about the Romney-Unicorn.
Congratulations, Mr. Bennett! You’ve earned this:
Posted in conspiracy theories, politics | Tagged: Arizona, barack obama, Bennett, birth certificate, birther, certificate of live birth, citizen, citizenship, conservative, conspiracy theory, funny, GOP, Hawaii, humor, Hussein, illegitimate, Joe Arpaio, Ken Bennett, Kenya, Manchurian candidate, Muslim, Orly Taitz, Osama, politics, president, Republican, Republican Party, Romney, secretary of state, September 11, sheriff, socialism, Tea Party, unicorn, United States | 2 Comments »
Election 2012 and a Reminder that Pollsters are B.S.
Posted by mattusmaximus on May 22, 2012
As we ramp up for yet another frenzied political season where, no doubt, there will be much drama and mudslinging, I’d like to leave you all with this one thought: for the most part, political polls and pollsters are bullshit.
This article does a good job explaining why…
Pay no attention to the pollster behind the curtain
There are many ways to keep score on whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney has better odds of winning the general election, which is almost exactly six months away. Here at The Signal, we are fervent evangelists of the political prediction markets, where people place real money on the line to bet on the winner. These markets proved to be more prescient than polls in the Republican primary.
Many journalists prefer to stick to reporting on raw daily polls. While these surveys offer valuable information, it is dangerous to read too much into the daily fluctuations, especially this far in advance. Currently, Rasmussen has Romney leading Obama 49 to 44, while Rueters/Ipsos has Obama leading Romney 49 to 42. This disagreement is due to several common sources of error that occur on any poll. Averaging several polls to get an aggregate figure, as RealClearPolitics does, helps ameliorate these errors.
Upcoming work by Bob Erikson of Columbia and Chris Wlezien of Temple, recently presented at the Midwest Political Science Association conference, demonstrates a second problem with following the daily polls too closely. The researchers looked through past presidential elections, aggregated the national polls, and created the most effective forecast based on that data. They found that, even when properly aggregated and averaged, national polls do not have predictive power at this point in the cycle. … [emphasis added]
You can read the entire article to get the gist of how untrustworthy most politically-oriented polls can be, but I think it is said even better by skeptical magicians Penn & Teller
Posted in politics | Tagged: 2012, barack obama, Bullshit, congress, Democrat, election, Frank Luntz, GOP, Luntz, manipulation, markets, Mitt Romney, Obama, Penn, politics, polls, pollsters, prediction, prediction market, president, presidential, Republican, research, Romney, surveys, Tea Party, Teller, United States | Leave a Comment »
Discovery of Earliest Mayan Calendar Throws 2012 Doomsday Claims into Doubt
Posted by mattusmaximus on May 18, 2012
No doubt, unless you’ve been living in a hole, you have heard about the supposed end-of-the-world coming this December 21st, 2012 – at least, that’s what some New Age whackadoodles and apocalyptic doomsayers would have you believe. Why do they believe this? Because, according to them, the Mayan calendar predicts it.
Unfortunately for the doomsday prophets, the Mayan calendar predicts nothing of the sort. Take, for example, the fact that recently the discovery of the world’s oldest Mayan calendar seems to have thrown the whole “Mayan 2012″ prophecy of armaggedon into serious doubt:
Nevermind the Apocalypse: Earliest Mayan Calendar Found
The oldest-known version of the ancient Maya calendar has been discovered adorning a lavishly painted wall in the ruins of a city deep in the Guatemalan rainforest.
The hieroglyphs, painted in black and red, along with a colorful mural of a king and his mysterious attendants, seem to have been a sort of handy reference chart for court scribes in A.D. 800 — the astronomers and mathematicians of their day. Contrary to popular myth, this calendar isn’t a countdown to the end of the world in December 2012, the study researchers said.
“The Mayan calendar is going to keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future,” said archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas, who worked to decipher the glyphs. “Numbers we can’t even wrap our heads around.” …
Oops. That’s embarrassing. So the Mayan calendary doesn’t predict the apocalypse? Why exactly is that?
… The Maya recorded time in a series of cycles, including 400-year chunks called baktuns. It’s these baktuns that have led to rumors of an end-of-the-world catastrophe on Dec. 21, 2012 — on that date, a cycle of 13 baktuns will be complete. But the idea that this means the end of the worldis a misconception, Stuart said. In fact, Maya experts have known for a long time that the calendar doesn’t end after the 13th baktun. It simply begins a new cycle. And the calendar encompasses much larger units than the baktun.
“There were 24 units of time they actually could have incorporated into their calendar,” Stuart said. “Here, we’re only seeing five units and they’re still really big.”
In one column, the ancient scribe even worked out a cycle of time recording 17 baktuns, the researchers found. In another spot, someone etched a “ring number” into the wall. These notations were used to record time in a previous cycle, thousands of years into the past. The calendar also appears to note the cycles of Mars and Venus, the researchers said. Symbols of gods head the top of each lunar cycle, suggesting that each cycle had its own patron deity.
“There was a lot more to the Maya calendar than just 13 baktuns,” Stuart said. …
Of course, another reason to doubt the claims of the doom-mongers, despite the structure of the Mayan calendar, is the fact that no matter what the source for the supposed end-of-the-world prophecy, every prophecy of this nature in the past has had one thing in common: THEY HAVE ALL FAILED SPECTACULARLY! This includes at least one high-profile prediction from last year!
It’ll be interesting to see what the doomsaying believers have to say on December 22nd, 2012 when we’re all still here
Posted in doomsday | Tagged: 2012, alignment, apocalypse, armaggedon, baktun, calendar, cosmic, debunking, Dec 21, December 21, doomsday, end of the world, flare, flip, judgement day, Long Count, magnetic, magnetism, Maya, Mayan, NASA, New Age, Nibru, Planet X, planetary, planets, poles, reversal, solar, storm, Sun, tidal forces, tides, video | 1 Comment »
The Skeptical Teacher to be Interviewed on Darkness Radio – LIVE!
Posted by mattusmaximus on May 14, 2012
I know I’m posting this a little late, but I wanted to let you all know that I’m going to be interviewed tonight (Monday, May 14th) live on Darkness Radio at 11:00pm CDT. If you recall, I blogged some time ago – almost two years – about a very interesting discussion I had with paranormal investigator Dave Schrader at Convergence 2010 on the topic of “ghost hunting”. Despite the fact that Dave’s a believer in ghosts and the paranormal and I’m a skeptic, we hit it off and he invited me to be on his show so that I could give my perspective as a skeptic… well, it took awhile, but tonight’s the night!
If you can catch the show, please click the Darkness Radio icon below to listen live. Otherwise, try looking it up on the Darkness Radio archive afterwards.
Darkness Radio
Posted in ghosts & paranormal | Tagged: afterlife, Darkness Radio, Dave Schrader, death, demons, ghost hunters, ghost hunting, ghostbusters, ghostbusting, ghosts, interview, investigator, live, mediums, paranormal, Paranormal Radio, psychics, radio, sensitives, skeptic, spirits, supernatural, TAPS, The Atlantic Paranormal Society | Leave a Comment »
“We Are Star Dust” – Symphony of Science
Posted by mattusmaximus on May 12, 2012
Astrophysicist and science/skeptical activist Neil deGrasse Tyson is working on a re-release of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and this nicely autotuned Youtube video clip from melodysheep clearly shows why he is the right person for the job
Posted in scientific method, space | Tagged: astronomy, astrophysicist, astrophysics, autotune, autotuned, Carl Sagan, Cosmos, music, Neil deGrass Tyson, science, space, star stuff, stars, Symphony of Science, Tyson, universe, video, We are star stuff, youtube | Leave a Comment »
Judge Proposes Cutting Ten Commandments Down to Six
Posted by mattusmaximus on May 10, 2012
For many years now, various fundamentalist Christian groups have been attempting to post the Ten Commandments (which version? Good question…) in public buildings, using the lame argument that they serve a “secular purpose” as a way of skirting lawsuits for violation of church-state separation. Well, now those folks have been hoisted by their own pertard
Cut Ten Commandments down to 6?
Judge Michael Urbanski suggested a possible compromise to the issue that has been raging in the Giles County school system.
By Laurence Hammack 981-3239
Could the Ten Commandments be reduced to six, a federal judge asked Monday.
Would that neutralize the religious overtones of a commandments display that has the Giles County School Board in legal hot water?
That unorthodox suggestion was made by Judge Michael Urbanski during oral arguments over whether the display amounts to a governmental endorsement of religion, as alleged in a lawsuit filed by a student at Narrows High School.
After raising many pointed questions about whether the commandments pass legal muster, the judge referred the case to mediation – with a suggestion:
Remove the first four commandments, which are clearly religious in nature, and leave the remaining six, which make more secular commands, such as do not kill or steal.
Ever since the lawsuit was filed in September amid heated community reaction, school officials have said the display is not religious because it also includes historical documents such as the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.
“If indeed this issue is not about God, why wouldn’t it make sense for Giles County to say, ‘Let’s go back and just post the bottom six?’” Urbanski asked during a motions hearing in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.
“But if it’s really about God, then they wouldn’t be willing to do that.” … [emphasis added]
I think this judge is a genius. He’s asking the obvious question which clearly shows the motivations of these fundamentalists: to use public institutions to force their religious beliefs upon the rest of us. Up until this point, the fundamentalists have tried to have it both ways, using the wiggle room argument of a “secular purpose” as a wedge. But I think that’s the point of what the judge here is saying: to deny them any wiggle room at all. They must either step up and admit flat out that they had (and still do) a religious intent when displaying the Ten Commandments, and thus risk being on the losing end of a costly lawsuit; or they must accept the compromise, and thus risk encurring the wrath of their constituents. This lame attempt on their part to play coy and try coming up with an ad hoc “secular purpose” after the fact won’t fly with this judge.
They only have themselves to blame for getting into this position in the first place. If they bothered to follow the First Amendment Establishment Clause in the beginning, they wouldn’t have this problem; but nooooo, they had to try pushing their religious beliefs.
Quite frankly, they deserve the smackdown coming their way.
Posted in politics, religion | Tagged: atheism, atheist, Bible, Christian, church, commandments, court, Decalogue, display, federal, First Amendment, fundamentalism, fundamentalist, Giles County School Board, God, judge, law, Michael Urbanski, Old Testament, public, religion, secular, separation of church and state, state, Ten Commandments, United States, Virginia | 1 Comment »
Cognitive Dissonance in Partisan Politics: The Case of Gas Prices
Posted by mattusmaximus on May 9, 2012
In a follow up to my recent posts (here and here) on the issue of rising U.S. gas prices and how the President and Congress really have little power to affect them, despite the belief by some that they do, I heard an excellent piece on NPR this morning about this very subject. Of course, in NPR fashion, they went a bit deeper and actually started to discuss in a scientific fashion why it is that Republicans are blaming President Obama for higher gas prices now whereas a few years ago it was Democrats blaming then President Bush for higher gas prices. Check it out…
Partisan Psychology: Why Do People Choose Political Loyalties Over Facts?
Charlie Reidel/AP — President Bush and then-Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry shake hands at the end of a presidential debate in 2004 in St. Louis. Researchers want to better understand why partisans’ views of the facts change in light of their political loyalties.
When pollsters ask Republicans and Democrats whether the president can do anything about high gas prices, the answers reflect the usual partisan divisions in the country. About two-thirds of Republicans say the president can do something about high gas prices, and about two-thirds of Democrats say he can’t.
But six years ago, with a Republican president in the White House, the numbers were reversed: Three-fourths of Democrats said President Bush could do something about high gas prices, while the majority of Republicans said gas prices were clearly outside the president’s control.
The flipped perceptions on gas prices isn’t an aberration, said Dartmouth College political scientist Brendan Nyhan. On a range of issues, partisans seem partial to their political loyalties over the facts. When those loyalties demand changing their views of the facts, he said, partisans seem willing to throw even consistency overboard. …
Posted in economics, politics, psychology | Tagged: 2012, blog, cars, cognitive dissonance, conspiracy, conspiracy theory, crude, Democrats, economics, economy, election, fact, fiction, gas, gasoline, GOP, market, money, myth, National Public Radio, NPR, Obama, oil, partisan, politics, president, President Obama, price at the pump, prices, psychology, pump, recession, Republicans, United States | Leave a Comment »
One in Seven People Think the World Will End in 2012
Posted by mattusmaximus on May 4, 2012
Straight out of the “What the f**k?!” files comes this little gem about people’s beliefs concerning the supposed end-of-the-world…
One in seven thinks end of world is coming: poll
Credit: Reuters/Argely Salazar
(Reuters) – - Nearly 15 percent of people worldwide believe the world will end during their lifetime and 10 percent think the Mayan calendar could signify it will happen in 2012, according to a new poll.
The end of the Mayan calendar, which spans about 5,125 years, on December 21, 2012 has sparked interpretations and suggestions that it marks the end of the world.
“Whether they think it will come to an end through the hands of God, or a natural disaster or a political event, whatever the reason, one in seven thinks the end of the world is coming,” said Keren Gottfried, research manager at Ipsos Global Public Affairs which conducted the poll for Reuters.
“Perhaps it is because of the media attention coming from one interpretation of the Mayan prophecy that states the world ‘ends’ in our calendar year 2012,” Gottfried said, adding that some Mayan scholars have disputed the interpretation.
Responses to the international poll of 16,262 people in more than 20 countries varied widely with only six percent of French residents believing in an impending Armageddon in their lifetime, compared to 22 percent in Turkey and the United States and slightly less in South Africa and Argentina. … [emphasis added]
I want to just make note of the bolded text above: apparently, according to this poll, over one-fifth of the population of the United States – the most advanced and powerful industrial nation on the planet – believes in this 2012 end-of-the-world hooey. Oh… my… FSM…
Wow, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. But one thing’s for sure: I predict that we’ll be here in 2013 to show that this Mayan doomsday prophecy is just a load of crap; and I say that not just because NASA recently crushed these stupid prophecies.
After all, people have been predicting doomsday for thousands of years, with supposed divine revelation or prophecy to back them up, and all that time there’s been one thing common to all those predictions: they’ve all been dead wrong.
I have just one question for all of these people who claim to believe “the end is near”: Can I have all your stuff? 
Like this:
Posted in doomsday | Tagged: 2012, alignment, apocalypse, armaggedon, beliefs, calendar, cosmic, debunking, Dec 21, December 21, doomsday, end of the world, flip, judgement day, Long Count, Maya, Mayan, NASA, New Age, Nibru, Planet X, planetary, planets, poles, poll, reversal, solar, storm, survey | 1 Comment »
President Obama, God, and Agency Where None Exists
Posted by mattusmaximus on April 27, 2012
I was inspired to write the following JREF Swift blog post as a result of my earlier posts (here and here) on the question of gasoline prices in the United States and the powers (perceived or real) of the U.S. president. I hope you find it enlightening…
President Obama, God, and Agency Where None Exists
On my blog, I recently put together a post – Gas Prices and Politics: Fact vs. Fiction – about higher gas prices and how people are blaming President Obama for it. As I pointed out there, Republicans blaming him for the increase in the price of gasoline (and oil in general) are wrong for the same reason as when Democrats blamed former President Bush back in 2007: the President doesn’t really have that much power to influence oil and gasoline prices.
So, if it is true that no such power exists for the leaders of our government to affect the price at the pump (and that is true, as the prices are set more by market factors such as global supply and demand of oil), why is it that people want to lay blame upon our mostly blameless leaders? I struggled with the answer to this question for some time, but I think I have finally hit upon a possible answer: many people, either consciously or not, attribute powers to the President of the United States and Congress that simply do not exist.
And that asks the next obvious question: why do people attribute such powers to our political leaders? Why is it that many of us assign almost god-like abilities to our decidedly non-god-like and wholly fallible authority figures?
I think the answer is multi-faceted and can give some interesting insights into how we think about a lot of things, especially regarding politically oriented topics. In addition, an analysis of this topic can lead us into a deeper discussion of a philosophical concept known as “agency”.
First, I think (somewhat cynically) that there are some, if not many, politicians in government who, either actively or inactively, encourage the notion that they have more power than they are in reality. After all, this is one of the reasons why people vote for candidates running for political office: because they make promises and we expect them to deliver on those promises, whether or not those promises are in any way, shape, or form realistic to achieve. This also goes for the various subsidiaries which surround the government, such as lobbying groups, political action committees, etc. But it’s too easy to stop there.
Second, I think that in many ways we are somewhat hard-wired to make inferences to the existence of things which are not there. In philosophy, this is sometimes referred to as “agency”, where we assign some kind of powers and abilities to an entity through our beliefs about that entity or our behavior towards it. For example, how many of us have been in the middle of some very important work on the computer when suddenly the program crashes? No doubt that many of us then engaged in a certain amount of cursing at (not necessarily about) the computer, as if it could not only hear but understand us. (Aside: my wife works with computers for her career, and she will swear up and down that “they know what we’re thinking”) The computer itself is real enough, but what about the agency which we assign to it?
But when you step back and think about it, it’s downright silly to rant and rave at the computer. The most obvious reason for this is that it simply doesn’t work. Yell at the computer all you want, but that won’t fix the problem; actually trying to solve the relevant hardware and/or software problem will fix things. The other reason is that, let’s face it, at the end of the day the computer is simply a collection of circuits, wire, switches, and assorted electronics. Does it really have a mind with which to interact? The answer, so far with today’s common technology, is a negative, yet for some reason we engage with the computer as if it did have such a mind. And in so doing, we assign agency to the computer. …
Posted in economics, philosophy, politics | Tagged: 2012, agency, belief, blog, cars, conspiracy, conspiracy theory, crude, Democrats, economics, economy, election, fact, fiction, gas, gasoline, God, gods, GOP, illusion, market, money, myth, Obama, oil, Paul Brandus, Peak Oil, philosophy, politics, power, president, President Obama, price at the pump, prices, pump, recession, Republicans, Skeptic Money, spike, The Week, United States | Leave a Comment »
