At TAM 6, I was honored to present James Randi with a unique gift: a trophy filled with comments from audience members about how Randi has affected their lives. Randi has had a profound influence on me and my journey to reality, and it was, well, amazing to stand on stage and give this to him. JREFer Kittynh got video of it; unfortunately her battery died just as Randi started speaking, but you can hear what I said.

In case you’re wondering, the pause in my speech was because something got stuck in my throat. Yeah, that’s it.

And that’s Hal Bidlack standing on stage with me. He’s running for Congress in Colorado against a Bush rubber-stamper, and needs your help.

Hat tip to Dean Baird for the photo.

I don’t know what to make of this report. We’ve had so much shrieking about global warming that I am actually a bit gun shy when someone predicts dire consequences.

But The Independent is claiming that the northern ice cap on the Earth — this planet, our planet — is receding so quickly right now due to excess warmth that it might completely disappear by this September. That’s this year, not 2050.

This has never been seen before. Ever. In human history.

“From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water,” said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.

I don’t know Serreze, but the NSIDC is a reputable research lab. Serreze seems reputable, too.

Mind you, this may not happen. But what concerns me very greatly is that scientists are even contemplating that it might. This, on the heels of the northwest passage being open last year for the first time ever.

Maybe this is just some cycle we’re going through. Maybe it’ll reverse itself. Maybe.

But we’ve been reading these signs for a long time. If the north pole actually becomes ice-free for the first time in thousands of years, now, maybe then people like Senator Inhofe can admit they’re wrong, and get off their butts and do something?

My head is explodey.

I have been busy since TAM 6, really stupid crazy busy. On the phone, sending email, writing stuff, and thinking thinking thinking.

Thinking? About what?

Good question. For now, my answers are few and cryptic. However, stay tuned. I have Big Blog News coming very soon. Maybe even early next week. Maybe Monday.

OK, definitely Monday.

But I am heading to Toronto to attend the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s General Assembly meeting, where I’ll be giving a couple of talks. I expect I will also see a moose, eat back bacon, and learn how to say "I left my toque at my hoose agane".

I might — might — be able to do a live video chat on Sunday. I’ll be in a place where teh intertoobs may be good, and if I can squeeze it into the schedule I’ll set up the chat. Check back here Sunday to see.

Oh, I’ve written about Sylvia Browne before, the woman who preys on the gullible people, vulnerable people who need some comforting after losing a loved one. What Browne does — pretend to speak to the dead — doesn’t help these poor folks at all, and in fact delays the grieving process.

Robert Lancaster, on the other hand, is a hero. He has taken on the mantle of exposing Browne, literally simply showing what it is she does without being mean, nasty, or saying she is a fraud. His site, StopSylviaBrowne, is a remarkable compendium of her antics.

While at The Amaz!ng Meeting 6 last week, Robert and a few others went to see Browne live at a casino. His exploits are now online, and they are a fantastic read. Robert handled himself beautifully (note to Robert: yes, you did do very well, and let her ironically expose her own nastiness).

I wish everyone on the planet would read what Robert’s written, especially the believer in Ms. Browne. Robert is a gentle, quiet, intelligent, and warm man, not at all how Browne would paint him. I suspect she needs to look up the psychological term projection.

Bobby Jindal, creationist/exorcist governor of Louisiana, has signed the academic freedom bill into state law.

So that’s it then. Teachers are now free to teach a false controversy in their classrooms, introducing creationism like it’s an actual science instead of tissue-thin nonsense. It will also allow them to talk about other non-controversial subjects like global warming, as if there were two sides to the debate.

For a detailed history of this incredibly bad law, and why it’s so evil, please read Barbara Forrest’s essay posted on Talk to Action. She has been embroiled in this since day 1, and has fought very hard for reality. She wrote that essay just before Jindal doomed his own state.

Sadly, Louisiana legislators have no time or care for reality, and are determined to drag its children back into the Middle Ages. I am honestly very sorry for everyone in the entire state. I hope that this law gets contested; it’ll take a brave teacher to do it, but I think there are Constitutional grounds against it. Seeing as how the whole legislature voted for it overwhelmingly, and many are scared to speak out against it, it’ll be a very, very tough fight.

Humans have an enormous predilection for nonsense, and those of us in the reality-based community have been fighting it for centuries. But science tends to win out in the long run; ask any smallpox virus about that. And like a disease, antiscience can be fought back. Shining a light on it will help, and I have no doubt the attention – and ridicule — of the world on the Louisiana politicians (and the reluctance of high-tech companies to build there) will go a long way to inoculating other states against this creeping plague.

But many other states are at risk (Texas, Oklahoma, Michigan, and on and on). Never flag, never tire, and never assume you’re safe. Keep fighting, people. Because I guarantee this victory for the bad guys in Louisiana will embolden them.

Keep fighting.

Hat tip to Mike Smail for letting me know about the newspaper article.

I’ll keep this short:

Jesus is seen is a slab of granite.

Fine.

BUT WHY IS HE CARRYING A MACHINE GUN???

Obviously, he has something to say about the recent Supreme Court ruling.

Tip o’ the holy (holey?) bullet-proof vest to Fark.

What the heck has happened to the media? Have they lost their minds?

Newsweek has an article online about a psychic who charges $10,000 per month to her clients. The article gushes all over her — she must have needed a towel after reading it — detailing her intuition, her successes, her clients.

But it forgets to mention one thing. A small thing, a minor detail, really: psychic powers don’t exist.

It really is that simple. If you have psychic powers, you’ve had years to show them to Randi, who would happily give you a check for one million dollars if you can prove it.

Or you could win the lottery ten times in a row. Your choice.

The Newsweek article is an embarrassment. It actually says this:

It’s impossible to objectively judge psychic powers.

Wow. I mean, wow. Of course it’s objectively possible to judge psychic powers. It’s trivially easy to do so. We have a whole field of mathematics called "statistics", and it can be used to judge quite well if someone is able to do better than random chance in a fair test. Have the psychic pick cards, random numbers, the flip of a coin, throws of dice, guess what word I’m thinking of. Then test this ability, say, 100 times. Statistics will give you a very clear view whether it was chance or not. Did they guess heads on the coin toss 50% of the time after 100 tosses? Bzzzzt. Did they guess it correctly more than 5 standard deviations away from the mean? Then you have something. Do it again. And again.

The article in Newsweek mentions none of this, and goes out of its way to paint a frilly substanceless picture of psychic nonsense. Maybe the woman involved honestly believes she has a power; she makes $50k a month which is strong incentive for her to believe it (though she says she has "intuition", and the article never quotes her as saying she’s psychic, though the author used the term many times). But if she’s right, Randi’ll give her a year’s salary in a few days. Sounds worth it to me.

As for Newsweek: feh. I have little trust for the mainstream media as it is, but for Newsweek now I have actual contempt.

Feh.

Tip o’ the turban to the several BABlogees who alerted me to this article.