Not only that, but there have been lots of followup posts and articles about it:

Skepchick’s Jon Ronson interview (NSFW language in the interview and on the page)

An article in Spanish that I hope is favorable

Crispian Jago

More Little Atoms

Facebook photos!

Merseyside Skeptics

Pictures on Flickr!

Pictures on Picasa!

Hugs and Science

More Crispian Jago

The blog called Using Me!

Hampshire Skeptics: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 (with an awesome pic you’ll know when you see it).

So, will there be a TAM London next year? We can’t say just yet, but we’re looking into it. Stay tuned!

However, James Randi has tested dowsers many, many times as part of the JREF’s Million Dollar Challenge. Not to keep you in suspense, but the money still sits in the bank. In other words, time and again, the dowsers fail. When a real, double-blind, statistical test is given, dowsers fail. Every single time.

That’s all well and good, and you might think it’s just another silly idea that nonsense-believers adhere to despite evidence. If someone wants to waste their money on a dowser, well, caveat emptor.

But what if your life depended on it? What if thousands of lives depended on it?

Such is the case in Iraq, where the military there is using what is essentially dowsing techniques to try to detect bombs in cars at military checkpoints. Let’s be very clear here: they are using provably useless antiscientific nonsense to try to find terrorists who carry explosives. They may as well use tea leaves, or palm reading, or seances.

This story just got major press; a reporter in Iraq wrote about it in the New York Times. It’s impossible to overstress how bad this situation is. Iraqi Major General Jehad al-Jabiri, who is the head of the Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives, is a whole-hearted believer in this crap. He is such a believer that the Iraqi military are abandoning proven methods such as sniffer dogs.

Instead, the Iraqi have purchased hundreds of these so-called bomb-detection wands from a company called ATSC in the UK. The cost? Millions of dollars. Millions. On technology that James Randi has come right out and called "a totally fraudulent product". Bob Carroll of the Skeptic’s Dictionary agrees with Randi.

The NYT article also has expert advice from several explosives and military authorities (including long-time friend of the JREF Air Force Lt. Col (retired) Hal Bidlack), all of whom conclude that this device does nothing. Given the product description on the company’s own web page, I agree as well. The description makes no scientific sense at all; it claims it can detect ions from a distance without ever coming in contact with them, and that includes through lead, concrete, and more.

In other words, it’s magic.

This, however, won’t stop al-Jabiri, who chalks up any successes to the detector, and any failures to the operator. In a situation like that there is little hope he can be convinced him he’s wrong, especially when he says things like "I don’t care about Sandia or the Department of Justice or any of them. I know more about this issue than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world."

Really? Then why, as the NYT article indicates, did that dowsing wand fail on October 25, when terrorists detonated two tons of explosives killing 155 people? Four thousand pounds of explosives apparently got right past the magic wands’ sniffer. But at least they’re fast! Again, from the article:

Checking cars with dogs, however, is a slow process, whereas the wands take only a few seconds per vehicle. “Can you imagine dogs at all 400 checkpoints in Baghdad?” General Jabiri said. “The city would be a zoo.”

I suspect a zoo would be better than a slaughterhouse.

It’s arrogance and blind faith like that which has and will get people killed. And the people we’re talking about in many cases are our fighting men and women, people who have to put their own trust in the leaders in Iraq. This is not a game, not some lark. It’s real. And in this case, antiscience kills.

[This post, with minor variations, has been cross-posted on the JREF Swift blog.]

Jamie Hyneman and My Close Personal Friend Adam Savage™ were on the always-hilarious Late Night with Craig Ferguson show a little while back, and the video is on YouTube (note: somewhat NSFW dialogue):

Did you hear what Adam mentioned roughly six minutes in? The JREF! Woohoo! Adam is great about donating stuff from Mythbusters to the JREF so we can auction it off to raise money, and that particular gift was pretty special. Rarefied, you might say.

And, thanks to Greg Fish, I can add this:

Yer darn tootin’.

[Get it? Tootin'! Hahahaha!]

Image from ROFLRazzi.

It’s in honor of Sagan’s birthday, which is on November 9th. He would’ve been 75 this year. Sagan inspired a generation of astronomers, and in reality a whole generation of people to look at the sky and appreciate the — yes, I’ll say it — cosmos.

Celebrating his life is a great idea, and the folks at BCCC have a full day planned (the schedule is online in PDF and Word formats). A lot of good speakers will be giving talks, including my friend Jeffrey Bennett (who wrote Max goes to the Moon series of kids’ books), skeptic and "Point of Inquiry" podcast host D. J. Grothe, and NASA astrobiologist and impact expert David Morrison (via satellite). I’ll be giving my Death from the Skies! talk at 4:00 (with David there, I’ll have to be on my toes). They’ll be showing "Cosmos" continuously in one room, with kids’ activities in another. There’s a planetarium show in the evening, too.

And this will be very special: James Randi will be there, talking about Sagan. The two were friends. Randi has a lot of personal insight on the man and will have wonderful things to say. This is a don’t-miss opportunity, folks. I think I’m looking forward to that part most of all.

For more info, there’s contact info on the Carl Sagan Day website. Also, there’s a writeup in the Broward/Palm Beach New Times.

This really will be a fun and wonderful tribute to Sagan. I’m very pleased and honored to be a part of this great day for a great man.

Here’s the show below. Note: some NSFW language.

They picked my word starting at about 39 minutes into the video. And what was my word? Well, at the risk of generating the ire of Houdini’s shade, it was floccinaucinihilipilification, a word I remembered from when I was a kid and read the Guinness Book of World Records (it was in the list for, duh, longest words). It means "the act of estimating something as being worthless". I didn’t realize they were using a Ouija board at the seance, though, so perhaps choosing a word that’s about 30 letters long may have been a little irritating. However, I really wanted to make sure they wouldn’t pick it by chance. Infinite monkeys, and all that.

The Denver Skeptics divined my word as "shor". I have to count that as a definite hit.

I should have picked pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

Houdini was a hero to James Randi, and he famously said that if there were an afterlife, he would do whatever he could after he died to contact his wife. She held a seance, and… nothing happened. However, when you have people like Randi and magician Andrew Mayne involved, why, anything can happen!

OK, maybe not anything. Like, say, actually contacting a dead spirit. But I bet this will be a very fun event, and I encourage all skeptics and believers — especially believers — young and old to drop in. For more info, stay tuned to Randi.org and WeirdThings.com.

Now, how long do you think it’ll be before every crackpot doomcrier takes this video out of context, and/or seriously?

One thing I really dislike about conspiracy theorists — well, one of many, many things — is their lack of a sense of humor. Maybe the tin foil hat drains that part of your personality away.

They’re too late anyway.

Related links:
Video interview with Ariane Sherine
Video interview with George Hrab
Review of TAM London
The James Randi Educational Foundation/a>