In a related note to my earlier post, I keep getting a MySpace friend request by someone who is shilling books about death and doom in 2012. I marked the request as spam, but this person has resent it twice. On the third try, he said (paraphrased) "I am a fan of your work and would like to be your friend here."
Are you kidding me?
Look, I’m a nice guy, and I like having friends. But let me be clear; people who write books only to scare people about nonsense doomsday predictions are among the lowest and worst forms of slime on this planet.* Scaring people to make a buck is just evil, plain and simple. Prosecuting someone like this bonehead who is writing antiscientific garbage about 2012 would be very difficult — fraud is hard to prove — but it’s too good for them. I have no doubt he’ll find a ton of folks all too willing to feed from the slop he’s swilling, but I’m not quite so gullible. And I certainly won’t befriend him. I don’t know which possibility I find more offensive — the idea that he is such a chucklehead that he thinks I would actually agree to add him to my friends list, or that he thinks I’m such an idiot that I won’t check up on him before I click "accept", even when his MySpace avatar is the cover of one of his antiscience books proclaiming we’re all gonna die in 2012.
C’mon.
So let me say this here, as loudly, publicly, and clearly as I can: if you are an antiscientist, if you are a doomsday crier, if you abuse science and specifically astronomy to sell books, videos, pamphlets, websites, or get on the radio, TV, and podcasts, trying to scare people or funnel money into your scam, then I am your worst enemy. I will expose you for what you are. I will mercilessly and unrelentingly tear apart your arguments, shine the light of reality on the noisome offal you peddle, and do everything I can within reason to make sure that people understand just how ridiculous, offensive, and downright wrong your claims are. And that includes people who promote the Moon hoax, creationism, selling star names, astrology, Mayan prophecies, Sitchinism, Velikovskiism, the Electric Universe, structures on Mars, antivax propaganda, NASA conspiracies, supernatural apparitions, pareidolic visitations, UFOs, aliens peeking in windows, hot comets, and planetary alignment disasters… and especially if you’re a politician who promotes any of these things.
If you fall into this category, then you might want to keep an eye on your rear-view mirror. The face you’ll see in it is mine, as well as those of hundreds, thousands of others who will not rest as long as you try to tear down reality. We’ll be right there, fixing it back up.
*Yes, I’m aware that I have written a book about death and destruction from space. The difference here — and it’s a basic one, a fundamental one — is that mine is based on science, on evidence, and on reality. I present what we know, what we don’t know, and also talk about the (in general very long) odds of any of these happening to us. I’m not trying to scare people to sell books, nor do I make up anything, nor do I abuse science and astronomy to do it.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Good post! Keep at it Phil, and everyone else too. And I’ll join all of you and fight antiscience in my own corner of the world too. (Yeah, ‘corner’ here is figurative… the world is an oblate spheroid after all).
Pierre
June 9th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Thanks for being a solid voice of a reason on an internet seemingly full of the opposite.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Frickin’ A! Couldn’t have said it better myself.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Keep fighting the good fight Phil, your blog is an inspiration.
I wish there was a “Bad” site for every scientific discipline, (ie Bad Geology, Bad Physics…etc)
June 9th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Don’t hold back, Phil. Tell us how you really feel.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
I agree with everything you said except for the alien peeking in the window; that HAD to be real.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
“Conan, what is best in life?”
“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women!”
Damn Phil, that was quite the tirade. I enjoyed it.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Great. It’s kind of like a nerdy, skeptic Braveheart speech leading the troops into battle. I only regret that I have but one brain to give to my science.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
The only thing that could possibly be added is Ms. Crabtree yelling at the scammers “SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!”.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
OK, but what if I just use science to pick up chicks and get free beer?
June 9th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
go tell it on the mountain!
June 9th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
On “Selling stellar names”… I occasionally catch one of those ads on TV, and I have to chuckle at the pompous line “… will be recorded in book form in the Library of Congress…”
Since the LoC is the world’s largest library, charged with the task of making every book that has ever been published available to any member of congress, the line above means that (ta-dah!) the name will be published in a book! Wowie.
June 9th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
So, I guess I couldn’t interest you in my book? It’s about how the Mayans were off 1 year. The end is 2013.
Hey, it worked for the guy that wrote “88 Reasons Why The Rapture Will Occur in 1988″ when he wrote, “89 Reasons Why The Rapture Will Occur in 89.”
“If you fall into this category, then you might want to keep an eye on your rear-view mirror. The face you’ll see in it is mine…”
Will you be wearing the wig?
June 9th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Wait, wait, back up! Did you say I can buy my own *star*? Please send me teh linkz ASAP.
Kidding, of course. Be heartened that you do indeed have an unstoppable army of scientific truth-sayers behind you. I agree with your decision not to friend-inate this joker. You are not just two sides of the same coin. This not a social construct like government, where people regularly switch sides or revolve through positions, going from industry to regulator to elected office to lobbyist and back to industry. This is a battle to the finish for the hearts and brains of all humans.
I’m all for friendly, civilized debate, but there’s no need to invite sworn enemies over for a backyard barbecue (unless they’re the main dish).
June 9th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
To Truenorth
There is
http://www.badphysics.info/
http://www.badgeology.com/
June 9th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
“I will expose you for what you are. ”
So what’s the myspacer’s name?
June 9th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
@Peter & Truenorth
Also http://www.badarchaeology.net/
June 9th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Phil, I say accept him as a friend… and then send his details to your Skep-Army… and then grab a seat by the riverside and watch the fun!
June 9th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Well, at least you don’t get the *24 year old female brain surgeons that can’t spell from New York aka Nigeria* spamming you.
June 9th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
I think we now need a picture of Phil in a Rambo outfit.
June 9th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Actually, Phil, this happens to be my retirement plan. Since earning a living wage as a physics teachers is damn near impossible, I intend to use my powers for evil instead of good, and scare a bunch of suckers out of their money.
Behold!
May 26, 2040: Total Lunar Eclipse
SCARY! THE MOON IS AS RED AS BLOOD!
September 8, 2040: planets and Moon in conjunction within 8.3°
SCARY! THE JUPITER EFFECT CAUSES PLANETARY TIDES!!
November 04, 2040: solar eclipse over New York City and Washington D.C.
SCARY! THE SUN WILL DARKEN! BOOGA-BOOGA!!
(I might have to move this up to 2020, depending on how my IRA is doing. If so:
December 14, 2020: Total Solar Eclipse
December 21, 2020 Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction
Boo!)
June 9th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Phill, you’re forgetting something in your anti-anti-science bellic proposition, and it is that there are some people that actually DO believe in BadScience, and uncounsciouslly claim as real this world-threatening nonsense because they REALLY THINK IT’S REAL.
It is still their fault (in part) not to know the truth, since it’s quite simple to find the right answers, but some people do not ask themselves if what they think is real, so it becomes impossible for them to know the truth.
Those are part of the victims, and also part of the problem, because they indirectly make other people victims of this stupidity epidemia, that I strongly support destroying.
Thank you, and sorry for my bad english…
June 9th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Wow….
This is a beautiful, beautiful manifesto. Huzzah!
June 9th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
To be fair, you did friend me on Facebook. Surely you don’t have to lower your standards that much for him.
Jk.
June 9th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Na, the worst are those Dr Frank people, especially the homeopathic joint paint relief stuff. I nearly cry when I think about someone begging their pet to drink more of their water so that their horrible joint pain will go away.
June 9th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Sounds like he was attempting to get you on his friendslist to give presumed legitimacy to his work.
June 9th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
On the plus side, at least these people — this book-writer and the earlier person intent on interviewing moon-hoax believers — didn’t misrepresent themselves or their projects to you, unlike the strategy of the folks who brought us Expelled!, which was to lie to every scientist they interviewed in order to get their cooperation and better spin their words out of shape, and to pretty much continue lying on virtually every point of fact or order that has come up since.
Honest woo-woos are enemies of truth, by sheer default — but it is dishonest woo-woos who are the true villains, and the ones for whom I reserve my utmost ire in this sort of struggle.
~David D.G.
June 9th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Dennis:
You mean that actually works?
“Come back to my apartment, and I’ll show you my star charts.”
“I’ll give you 10 million nanodollars for that case of beer.”
June 9th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Hey Phil — once more *with* feeling. Seriously, some folks really don’t see the world through any glasses but their own.
June 9th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
When I see those books at the bookstore, I put them in the fiction section.
June 9th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I think Phil is getting his manifesto mojo on.
I’ve been bringing up similar topics all weekend over at Newshounds. I just quoted part of Phil’s post in a topic titled, “How much tolerance is good?”.
http://forum.newshounds.us/viewforum.php?f=1
June 9th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
PS. Word leaked this weekend about a pregnant extra-terrestrial being held by the US Government. Apparently it’s been pregnant 22 years. I know that for a fact because I made it up.
June 9th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Does this include the doomsayers in the “anthropogenic global warming” cult?
Robert
June 9th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Re: making a living at pseudo-science. It’s sad to me that this is often the refuge for people who can’t seem to make it in the private sector. Von Danneiken, Hogland, Adamanski, Lazar… All of them found a way to keep money rolling in via M.S.U. (Making Sh*t Up)
Hell, now there’s a theme park being built according to “Chariots of the Gods” somewhere. We’re literally enshrining stupidity!
It’s when I hear stuff like this that I tend to agree with Sam Neill’s character in the movie “In the Mouth of Madness.
“We’re turning our minds to mush with this (Sutter Kane) crap. The sooner we’re off the planet, the better. Mankind is far too smart for it’s own good, but too stupid to be viable.”
June 9th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
What about that endless stream of “doctors” and “diet experts” who sell dietary supplements to people based on the whole “we carry ten pounds of waste products in our digestive systems and we need to flush them out” “theory”? We literally spend BILLIONS of dollars on such nonsense.
Has no one ever heard of the endoscope? Doctors peek around all the time up there, and no medical paper has ever been published documenting where these waste products are located. Hate to be a bit gross, but the human body does a pretty good job of cleaning up after itself.
The FDA obviously doesn’t care, because, unlike Europe, these people who sell this stuff aren’t required to show proof that their cures work.
June 9th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
the sky is falling
June 9th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
I think maybe you and him have different definitions of “friends”. I’m not too sure, but I think being friends on MySpace is different than being friends in real life.
Maybe I’m confusing it with the subscription & friends service on YouTube, where you can say you like someone for their work and be informed when they make new things vs. say that you’re actually friends on a personal level.
In any case, maybe you should RickRoll him and see if he tries to be your friend again.
June 9th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
#
# Paulon 09 Jun 2008 at 3:42 pm
the sky is falling
—————————
It only seems that way because the earth is eating too much McDonald’s and getting fatter.
June 9th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
What is nagging you the most… people making a profit based on fear mongering, or people making a profit based on scientifically absurd fear mongering?
June 9th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
somehow (and it doesn’t have anything to do with BA’s admirable crusade) the pathos reminded me of Ross telling Chandler in an episode of Friends: “If you ever do anything to hurt my sister, I will hunt you down and take you out” . Sorry
)))
June 9th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I just had a sudden flash of the T. rex chase scene in Jurassic Park: “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.”
He’s hungrier than T. rex! He’s more corrosive than The Blob! He’s meaner than Alien and Predator combined! He’s faster than a speeding asteroid! More powerful than a gamma-ray burst! Be prepared to be shocked and awed by….
Badastronomus madasbloodyfrakkinhellus!
@ Seamist: Dammit, that was supposed to be my line!
June 9th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Go get them, Tiger!
:applause:
June 9th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Phil….wow….this was the most Conan-The-Barbarian-esque entry I’ve ever read. I was half expecting to see a video of you presenting the severed-head of Richard Hoagland.
….can you do that?
June 9th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”
You go, Phil! Stab them with your ABBA lapels!
PS: GOT YOUR BOOK and it is totally awesome! Now I just need to find a good place to snap it for your collection of where the BA book’s been.
June 9th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
This must be why I despise people like Richard C (onspiracy). Hoagland. They have just enough fact filled science talk to almost make you think they might know what they are talking about. They may even name drop “NASA” to add an air of credibility to themselves. But then they go off on a wild tangent about secret military spacecraft flying to the moon and beyond on a routine basis, pyramids on Mars and maybe a face constructed by an ancient civilization that lived there, and you realize how far off the base of known facts they have strayed. They use the hard earned and good name of science to benefit their own twisted agendas. I believe this persistent and nagging wannabe friend would use you and your good name/reputation the same way. Keep ignoring him until doomsday, if you have to.
You can say something 1,000,000 times, but that doesn’t make it true without tangible proof. Common sense should tell people that simple fact.
June 9th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Be careful who you alienate, BA. The pink Unicorn has a habit of impaling those who refuse to believe in it.
Also those who do, but thats because it works in mysterious ways.
June 9th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
W0000000t!!!!
June 9th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Myspace needs an enemies list, or foes because the alliteration is better. Keep your friends close but your enemies closer…
June 9th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Yeah–what Phil said.
Oh, and Ken B and Dennis: One of my favorite T-shirts has the legend, “Date an astronomer! Who else can promise the sun, moon and stars…
…AND DELIVER!
June 9th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
@ fred edison
you means NASA?
June 9th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Curses, the forum ate my fancy html linkage.
Anyway, just picture this adress pops up when you click the word “NASA”
http://cectic.com/147.html
June 9th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Well, 2012 is a presidential election year. If Hillary runs again and actually wins, then who knows what else could happen?
June 9th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
You go Phil! Made my day reading this.
Now, I’m off to remove UFO Monthly from the Astronomy section to the woo woo section of the Newsagency!
June 9th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Being a once a victim of people like this wannabe friend, I applaud you. People like him should be sued for creating stress and anxiety in people’s lives.
June 9th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Two words: BLOCK USER.
June 10th, 2008 at 12:51 am
“Scaring people to make a buck is just evil, plain and simple.”…
Unless you design roller coasters or perform “death-defying” illusions. Those are cool.
Seriously, a resounding Here here! to this post, and I say this as one person who was, in fact, deeply and personally frightened by the prospects of apocalypse in 2012 not long before finding this blog. Your daily doses of reason, skepticism, and truth-more-awesome-than-fiction have pointed me in a smarter direction. Thanks Phil! Best blog ever.
::holds up a lighter::
June 10th, 2008 at 4:50 am
Just add the phrase “Do not Panic” on the cover or the first page any possible accuse of scare mongering will go away
June 10th, 2008 at 5:03 am
You right Phil, the guy is a moron. The world actually ends in 2018 and I am currently writing a book about it using your book as the sole reference. Trying to convince people the date is 2012 is just plain wrong. You were correct not to add him to your freinds. Can we be friends?
June 10th, 2008 at 7:10 am
Awesome BA! Give those phonies what for!
June 10th, 2008 at 8:20 am
phil, after reading this post – im convinced :
YOU ARE THE DOOMSDAY DEVICE!
June 10th, 2008 at 10:25 am
“Conan, what is best in life?”
“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women!”
As a Bad Historian I must point out that this quote is lifted from a bad translation of Genghis Kahn’s famous line: “The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.”
As for 2012, I really prefer Terrance McKenna’s “Timewave Zero” version. Still loopy as all hell, but at least vaguely scientific in a sophistic way.
June 10th, 2008 at 10:30 am
I am your worst enemy
Holy cow! Phil is Batman!
June 10th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Hmmmm….did you check out his book to see what specific threat he’s talking about? Maybe he’s referring to some kind of meteor impact event based on sound astronomical data? I certainly don’t advocate junk science……but shouldn’t you check out his facts and see if there’s any merit to his conclusions? At the very least it would give you a better background from which to dispute his views.
June 10th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
>> Maybe he’s referring to some kind of meteor impact event based on sound astronomical data? <<
If the “astronomical data” was indeed sound, every astronomer on Earth would be talking about it, publishing papers on it, running to the news with it, lobbying government to fund a defense against it, etc., etc., etc.
Etc.
I assume you have a critical thinking mechanism. Perhaps you should put it to use.
June 10th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
@Duane.
But….until you have examined the data, how can you assume it’s false?
Sorry didn’t mean to offend
June 10th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
I’m not offended. Just wondering how you can assume someone who claims the world is going to end in four years is being factual?
June 10th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Blocking a user such as this is, unfortunately, emulating the three wise monkeys.
See the evil, hear the evil and then speak about the evil so that others will know of its propagation.
“I will expose you for what you are.”
So, yeah. Get with the exposing. Not here, though. We’re too riled up.
June 12th, 2008 at 2:39 am
But fear sells
June 16th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
This is another case where science and reality is way more interesting than superstition:
I’m interested in the coming catastrophe in 2042 when the clocks in 32-bit computers and software roll over. Sort of a year-2000 problem, but without the easy hacks we employed at the cost of billions.
Sure, it’s easy to think that we’ll have upgraded to 64-bit machines by then, and won’t be using any of the software currently in production . . . but that’s the kind of thinking they had in 1970 as well.
June 16th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Whoops — I meant 2038. Oy! Sooner than I thought.
July 7th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
make money online
I really appreciate your posts. Thanks!