Flickr CC-BY ninjanoodles

Most of us are familiar with the scene in the fantastic 1999 film, The Matrix, where Cypher and Neo are chatting about their introduction to life outside the matrix via Morpheus’s offer of a choice between the red and blue pills. Cypher laments that he wished he’d taken the blue pill instead, making it clear he’d have preferred to be living a happy fantasy rather than risking everything by fighting against the machines.

One of the great things about Cypher’s character is that you can empathise with him. Nobody can blame him for wanting a simple, easy life — especially as he’s not The One. At that point in the film we all know that he’s just as likely to end up a smudge on the ground as make old bones.

I mention The Matrix because that’s how I’ve been feeling lately. And this is where I may lose you as a reader. Either way, so it goes…

Over the last few weeks I’ve been consuming the works of two prolific writers and speakers, both world experts in their fields: Noam Chomsky and the late Howard Zinn. Chomsky (now 82) is regarded by many as “the Einstein” of his field of linguistics and cognition at MIT, though outside the classroom he talks almost exclusively about political science. Zinn was regarded similarly in his field of history at Boston University.

I first encountered Chomsky in the early 2000s via his book Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies [Amazon|UK], a collection of essays and papers focussing mainly on Central American politics and history over the last 40 years. It’s an astounding book that left me truly stunned, wondering about the rest of the world if even half it it was true. He provides full references and consistently avoids a simple answer to, “If the mainstream media is wrong, biased, controlled or corrupt, then where should we turn to get reliable information?” His answer is typically a variation of Ben Goldacre‘s, “I think it’s a bit more complicated than that.” There is no single source, type or medium of reliable, unbiased or uncorrupt information. You need to look at the mainstream, the margins, including sources you may dislike, and analyse what’s going on for yourself.

Damn. I’m going to have to think for myself. And that’s the point.

Zinn is a fairly recent discovery for me, though most people know him via his groundbreaking A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present [Amazon|UK], where he included the viewpoints of non-Europeans in the discovery and conquest of North America. I’ve not yet read it, but I understand that it’s a polarising work, and your reaction to it will depend upon whether or not you’re prepared to revise your views on official history. Interestingly, the FBI kept a large file on him, most notably due to his influence on Martin Luther King, Vietnam anti-war campaigning and the McCarthyist hysteria of the time.

And this is where I think many of Chomsky’s and Zinn’s detractors come from: many seem to regard them as un-American or even traitors. Both authors present alternative versions of recorded history, removing the infantile notion of good (us) versus evil (them), and add insult to that injury by presenting other reasons why such things did or are happening in the first place. It’s not as simple as the official version; it’s not even as simple as the counter-accusations or popular conspiracy theories. It’s a complex mix of power, greed, acquisition, control, domination, influence and coercion, and furthering of interests.

The use of past and present tense is deliberate — these things are still happening. Consider the endless stream of major and minor wars in the 20th and present century, the provision of “foreign aid” weapons and training to brutal and sadistic regimes, the quiet growth of internal enforcement agencies into international intelligence agencies (as has just happened with the DEA), the dismantling of union-protected workplaces that made our workers cheaper than those in some developing countries, and national elections of leaders whose candidates can be differentiated only by their party’s logo. To name a few.

Neither Chomsky nor Zinn pretend to be 100% certain about everything they say. Both admit they may be wrong, and are open to evidence-based correction. Nor should you take it from me as fact, an amateur hack who spends his spare time consuming non-mainstream information, wondering about the world and sharing the occasional thought here whenever I’m not playing computer games or socialising with friends. Use, refine and practise your analytical skills and skepticism to examine what these men say, compare it against what you see, know and/or suspect, read the papers and articles to which they refer, and then judge for yourself.

There is no universal truth, and I’m not declaring that this is it — but it makes you think. However, if you’re unwilling to have your perception of world history and current events challenged, you may want to choose the blue pill…

Here are some of Noam Chomsky’s works that you might want to look at:

• An American Addiction [Amazon|UK]
• Case Studies In Hypocrisy [Amazon|UK]
• Class War: The Attack On Working People [Amazon|UK]
• The Clinton Vision: Old Wine, New Bottles [Amazon|UK]
• The Emerging Framework Of World Power [watch online]
• For A Free Humanity [Amazon|UK]
• Free Market Fantasies: Capitalism In The Real World [Amazon|UK]
• The Imperial Presidency [Amazon|UK]
• The New War On Terrorism: Fact And Fiction [Amazon|UK]
• Propaganda And The Public Mind [Amazon|UK]
• Prospects For Democracy [Amazon|UK]

Here are some of Howard Zinn’s works that you might want to look at:

• Artists In A Time Of War [Amazon|UK]
• Class And War In US Society [AK Press]
• Heroes & Martyrs [Amazon|UK]
• History And Democracy [free download]
• Howard Zinn On War [Amazon|UK]
• The Myth Of The Cold War [free download]
• Stories Hollywood Never Tells [Amazon|UK]
• War And Civil Disobedience [Amazon|UK]
• You Can’t Be Neutral On A Moving Train [Book: Amazon|UK; DVD: Amazon|UK]

(I haven’t read or seen all of these yet). Both have released many more works, but I think that will keep you busy for some time.

Flickr CC-BY-NC johnlinwood

Many people are familiar with the ‘Twitter joke trial’ here in the UK, where a chap discovered that his nearby airport was closed due to snow, so was not going to be able to spend the weekend with his girlfriend, and sent the following humorously frustrated tweet in January this year:

Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!!

I knew it was a joke, he knew it was a joke, we all knew it was a joke, but someone at the airport decided not to see it as a joke after having searched social networks for references to themselves. Possibly in the same way that some celebrities, companies and cults trawl through Internet archives looking for people to sue.

Not only was he arrested on one charge and later convicted of something completely different (the “arrest him now and find something that’ll stick while he’s in custody” approach), he’s had his appeal overturned — despite the able assistance of David Allen Green (also known as @jackofkent), the lawyer who successfully assisted Simon Singh in his libel defence with the British Chiropractic Association.

In response to the appeal being overturned, many people who had been following the case’s progress used Twitter to show solidarity by re-tweeting his original tweet using the #IAmSpartacus hashtag (original reference). And as I write this post I can still see people re-tweeting it. Humanity can be fantastic, especially in the face of what many of us consider to be a travesty of justice.

Whatever your thoughts on the wisdom of the tweet ‘in this day and age’ (if ever there was an Appeal to Happy Days fallacy, that is one), the reaction of the airport management, or the subsequent arrest, conviction and appeal failure, Charlie Brooker has — I’m sure some of you will be shocked to discover — something to say about it:

The moment I’ve finished typing this, I’m going to walk out the door and set about strangling every single person on the planet. Starting with you, dear reader. I’m sorry, but it has to be done, for reasons that will become clear in a moment.

And for the sake of transparency, in case the powers-that-be are reading: this is categorically not a joke. I am 100% serious. Even though I don’t know who you are or where you live, I am going to strangle you, your family, your pets, your friends, your imaginary friends, and any lifelike human dummies with haunted stares and wipe-clean vinyl orifices you’ve got knocking around, perhaps in a secret compartment under the stairs. The only people who might escape my wrath are the staff and passengers at Nottingham’s Robin Hood airport, because they’ve been granted immunity by the state.

Read the rest of the article here: The words you read next will be your last

To say I’m excited is a bit of an understatement. Last year saw the inaugural TAM London, the first ever Amaz!ng Meeting event to take place outside of the US. It was a resounding success and was attended by people from all around Europe from all walks of life — some of whom were household names. During that weekend I made a number of friends, most of whom I have been in regular contact with ever since. Many of us have subsequently joined or started skeptic groups in our own communities and have become more active in our fields of interest.

This year the event is taking place in a bigger venue, as there are far more people attending, and I’m looking forward to seeing those same friends again this weekend, making new ones, enjoying the talks and performances — particularly the world première of Tim Minchin‘s Storm movie — as well as the chance to chat with and get to know people during the breaks.

If you’re a skeptic, atheist, humanist, secularist, or scientist, then the opportunity to commune meaningfully with like-minded people is not to be underestimated.

After all, who said only the religious get to have a social life and sense of community?

As you may be aware, Dr Phil Plait is an astronomer, science blogger, author (most notably Bad Astronomy [Amazon|UK] and Death From The Skies! [Amazon|UK]), public speaker with magnificent on-screen/-stage presence, educator, and also skeptical activist and the former President of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). He’s also recently announced that he has a TV show called Bad Universe — the pilot airs on Sunday, 29 August 2010. Enough of the plugs…

During the recent The Amazing Meeting (TAM) 8 conference in Las Vegas, Phil gave a talk that generated quite a bit of controversy in the blogging world — including from a number of fellow skeptical activists. That itself is becoming increasingly more common, but what is entirely uncommon was the messages of Phil’s talk. You should watch it.

Phil Plait – Don’t Be A Dick (JREF)

You’d need to have been asleep to not have seen how deeply important that message was to Phil. I’d be hard-pressed to recall any speech I’ve seen or heard that is so deeply impassioned, compassionate and humanistic. Everything he says is correct.

It truly is far too easy to mock the viewpoints of those with whom we disagree, to score cheap points, to shout the doctrines or proofs of our own position over others, to be abusive and insulting, to treat others as sub-human or idiots. You may say (as some of the talk’s detractors do) that this is justified in light of what they or those they identify with have done, but the fact remains that if you’re not behaving like a grown-up when discussing these topics, you’re deliberately expending time and effort showing others how smart you are while confirming both that skeptics are dicks and closing that mind to further discussion. I have better things to do with my time.

It’s impressed me deeply enough to see about how I can re-think my approach to the topics I write about. Stay tuned, sports fans.

If you’re unaware of the context: a Catholic bishop is on record using the same disgusting argument that rapists throughout history have used in their own defence: these children were asking for it, so it’s their fault. This is piled on top of the other crap they’ve been spewing about the issue, such as claiming that the voice of thousands of victims now coming forward about their own abuse is just petty gossip or that it’s a Jewish conspiracy (also called “the God-killing Joos done it!” gambit). Today’s latest is that the Pope “forgives” the Beatles.

None of these amateurish attempts at deflection or distraction hides the fact that for centuries, little boys (and girls) placed in the care of authoritarian father figures have not only been getting raped by the people who were supposed to care for them and show them the love and peace of their god, but that the organisation recruiting these monsters actively protects and shields these pederasts from justice by moving them away from one legal jurisdiction and into new predatory hunting grounds. And to add the final insult to that injury, it was The Pope Formerly Known As Ratzinger (TPFKAR) himself who appears to have been directly behind it for quite some time in his role as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It was in this role that he earned the telling nicknames of God’s Rottweiler and Pope’s Enforcer — neither have positive connotations.

It is to all our shame that we, as a society, have allowed the status quo to remain. And it is to the worldwide Catholic community’s shame that they elected such a man to be the representative of their god on Earth. As Christopher Hitchens said on Real Time with Bill Maher last month: the act that all levels of society and nearly all cultures consider to be one of the most heinous of crimes is the very one on which the Church wants some wiggle room:

Are we going to say these people are above our law. I appeal to people. I mean, that’s what’s being asked for. If you’re a clergyman, you’re not liable to the laws… Don’t let’s call it child abuse. It’s the rape and torture of children.

I wish success upon the campaign to arrest Ratzinger on his upcoming visit to the UK in September, using the same legal principle that caught Augusto Pinochet in 1998. At the very least, where the will of the majority has not been successful in preventing it, this threat may dissuade him from visiting at a cost of £20M to the taxpayer.

What odds will you give me that, at the last minute, Ratzinger will have to cancel his trip due to “unforeseen circumstances”?

Hat tip: LOLgod

Or perhaps they haven’t given much thought to their position on the supernatural — or are frightened for one reason or another — so when asked their beliefs, they’ll write or say the same thing as their family. In some cases this can be an act of self-preservation, as much of the world does not enjoy religious freedom (yet) and can be punished severely. However, for most in the West this normally revolves around our relationships with family, friends and colleagues.

Wherever you live, the unfortunate result of this passive acquiescence is that governments and organisations with a strong religious ideology are then able to claim that the percentage of religious believers is far higher than is actually true (this can be skewed further by families with a domineering religious parent, or parents who take their babies to be christened or equivalent). Religious Tolerance states that, as of 2000, one-third of the world’s population is Christian, 19.6% is Muslim, 13.4% is Hindu, 12.7% are non-religious, and has atheism at 2.5%. They state that non-religious includes those with “no formal, organized religion include agnostics, freethinkers, humanists, secularists, etc” but clearly consider atheists to be a separate category. I think this is misguided at best — I consider myself a Secular Humanist (i.e. humanist), which is very much an atheist world view. One could also say that non-theists (i.e. all those without religion) are 15.2% of the world population, and thus the third-largest group, but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate, either.

So with all these statistical fun and games taking place from the school classroom to the highest seats of government power, isn’t it time we stood up to be counted?

Funny you should ask! Next week is the start of the ‘A’ Week on Facebook campaign (29 March to 6 April, 2010), hence the scarlet letter ‘A’ image at the top of this post. From the campaign’s front page:

Good without God? Imagine Facebook with ‘A’s all across the site showing the world is full of people who are ‘good without God‘ and don’t need religion to influence their lives. Imagine the awareness we can raise during ‘A’ Week On Facebook if 1,000s of people take part. Imagine… you can be a part of making a difference…

Details on how to go about joining this campaign can be found at its website:

‘A’ Week on Facebook

Simply follow the recommended steps, then you’re good to go!

In the past I’ve been reticent to connect myself with groups such as the Out Campaign, as I consider many of them to be too aggressive to otherwise normal people who just happen to believe in a sky fairy. However, in this case I think the value of a worldwide Facebook atheist awareness campaign outweighs any differences I may have. So those who know me on Facebook can see that my profile picture is now showing the scarlet letter in support of the campaign.

Perhaps this will put paid to the oft-quoted fallacy that atheists are a tiny but vocal minority.

I hope you’ll consider joining the campaign, and look forward to a week of increasing the general public’s awareness of atheists and atheism by showing that:

• It’s okay to be atheist
• It’s okay to let others know you’re atheist
• We’re not all aggressive iconoclasts
• We don’t hate everyone
• We’re not all “angry at God” or “punishing God” for something
• Not all of us reached this point after a traumatic event
• Not all of us insist your unexplained events are hallucination or mental illness

For most of us, atheism is simply a logical process held up to the light and examined critically.

If you’re anything like me, you’re now at the point where you withdraw a small amount of cash to carry around with you until next payday to cover incidentals (lunches, drinks, bread and milk, etc) and do the bulk of your regular purchases either by plastic at the point of sale or online. What’s more, the government and the credit card companies are trying to make this practice the de-facto standard to address things like fraud, money laundering and the universal catch-all for any modern government initiative: terrorism.

The downside to this is that cards are relatively easy to forge and misuse. This problem and its likelihood varies throughout the world with the USA (the last time I checked) being one of the least secure in just requiring a signature and Australia having had mandatory PIN usage for almost 30 years. The UK has only moved from signatures to PIN within the last 5 or so years.

With all that security you may think that your credit card information would require some kind of gadget to read your card while at a cashpoint/ATM (I always check for add-on fascias) or sleight-of-hand to skim it at a restaurant (my card never leaves my sight), but there is a guaranteed exclusion to the PIN entry requirement: online and telephone orders. Such as when you call an order through to your local takeaway delivery place and pay with your card because you don’t happen to have enough cash at home. Most won’t provide a mobile card machine so you have to read the details through to them over the phone: name, card number, expiry date and security code (on the back of the card). Everything a scumbag needs to spend your money.

And that’s exactly how I’ve just been done. Again. And quite likely via the same shop, though I’ve only just deduced that by elimination. I received a letter from my bank today advising that it has put a hold on my Visa debit card (current account with its own Visa card number) due to some unusual transactions. My initial thought was that they’d gone bananas — as a former bank had done some years ago, resulting in every single transaction being flagged as fraudulent (which is why I say former bank) — but when I called them they advised that on Tuesday they detected seven fraudulent transactions totalling £1,300 and blocked them all.

Needless to say I’m quite pleased with their hit rate, particularly as they just got 7/7 hits and I’ve not been inconvenienced in any purchases recently (zero false-positives or -negatives). I wish my email provider’s antispam detection facilities were that good. Of course the bank then tried to upsell me some card protection insurance, which I politely declined after pointing out that now was perhaps not the most ethical time to try to pitch a sale, it being the functional equivalent of a mortuary attendant trying to sell me a burial package while there to bury my dear old aunt.

So I’m going to re-think my approach to giving card details over the phone. My seldom-used credit card has a facility called a “webcard” which allows me to generate a single-use virtual credit card with the maximum transaction value I choose and an expiry date of one month. Although it will mean being at a Windows PC every time I make a phone order, it should do the job nicely. And I won’t be buying any more scumbags the latest flatscreen TV.

Update 1: It seems my credit card provider discontinued its “webcard” product as of October 2009 without telling anyone. Unless I can find something else to replace it with, it seems that I’ll no longer be doing business with takeaway delivery places that don’t offer either a mobile card reader or online ordering facility, or indeed with anyone who requests my card details over the phone. I really like their food, too. Oh well.

Update 2: To address a few queries I’ve had so far: I am not going to name the takeaway place. Blogging is a medium that English & Welsh law (insanely) considers actual publishing, like a newspaper or book and therefore subject to its even more insane libel laws, you want me to name the shop without proof? Not going to happen.

Update 3: Just to make things more interesting — the almighty chip-and-PIN system has just been cracked, and can be accomplished by anyone with a stolen card and doesn’t require much technological savvy.

I had arranged to attend the Oxford Skeptics in the Pub event due to take place near Radcliffe Camera, but — despite getting everything prepared last night, including programming my satnav for a carpark near the event — I forgot to set my alarm. I admit it: I am an idiot.

So I dropped an email apology to the organiser and prepared to ‘overdose’ at home… without the homeopathic protection of homeopathic medical services against this homeopathic act of homeopathic self harm. Homeopathically dangerous, I’m sure you’ll agree.

At precisely 10:23 this morning, I broke the seal and emptied the contents of my pre-purchased container of “30c Homeopathic potency of Sepia officinalis” — as it says in bold red lettering on the label — into my camera’s lens cap and then swallowed it all (minus the lens cap) in one sugary, children’s sweets-like gulp, washed down with a few mouthfuls of water. It’s now some time later and I’m feeling homeopathically ill, the world is homeopathically spinning around me, and I think I may homeopathically pass out anytime soon. Or put another way: I’m typing this blog post while drinking a nice cup of tea, and considering making myself a late breakfast. I am, by all accounts, homeopathically dead.

And while I couldn’t quite work out how to take photos while in the process of swallowing the sugar pills, I did take some. Behold! The mighty power of the sugar pill!

Pics 1 & 2: Note the therapeutic indications line in the second image.

Pic 3: Every pillule emptied into my camera’s lens cap.

Pic 4: Oh look, it’s 10:23! We know what that time means…

Pic 5: All gone! Sweet sugary goodness… and utter pseudoscientific bollocks.

You only have my word to go on that I committed homeopathic harakiri today (although my cat witnessed it, I’m not sure she’d be suitable to give testimony), but in this article alone I have provided orders of magnitude more evidence of me swallowing these pills than exists for the efficacy of homeopathy. I did indeed swallow them all in one gulp, and it’s over 90 minutes since I did so and the world (or my world, at least) has not ended. And I paid £4.99 for the privilege.

If you think that homeopathy has helped someone you know, then neither of you understand the importance of the placebo effect. Please learn about it — it’s a very real effect with measurable positive results. Ultimately there is no direct harm in taking homeopathic products (as all 10²³ campaigners have proven today), but there is harm in taking these products instead of seeking medical advice. Particularly if they have an ailment where earlier diagnosis can make the difference, or affect long-term health or even life. They may feel better taking these pills for a little while, but eventually even they’ll stop working as the problem gets worse and by then it may well be too late.

But I’m not trying to convince you of anything that’s not provable or measurable. Do your own research and come to your own conclusions — even if a thousand or more skeptics around the world ‘overdosing’ on homeopathic products isn’t enough to convince you (for some Twilight Zone reason). Perhaps pick up a book by an actual scientist and medical doctor, and examine what research they’ve done to research their conclusions. I’d highly recommend Bad Science by Ben Goldacre (Amazon or Amazon UK), as it’s very readable, full of information (including this topic), and it’s all supportable by evidence.

Update: Thanks to Antony, we have some video footage of the the Oxford event:

1023 Homeopathic Overdose – Oxford

Update 2: Courtesy of Science, Reason and Critical Thinking, we have some video footage of the Southampton event:

1023 Southampton

Update 3: Richard Saunders, Skeptic Zone ringleader, and Sydney skeptics have some footage of the event in Sydney, Australia:

ten23 Homeopathy Protest – Sydney 2010

Update 4: Courtesy of Kylie Sturgess, footage from my home town’s skeptical group, Perth Skeptics:

The 1023 Event with the Perth Skeptics

Update 5: And now the walls begin to fall. The New Zealand Council of Homeopaths has just admitted that… Homeopathy: There’s Nothing In It! It’s only a matter of time before the rest of the homeopathy industry worldwide admit the same or begin circling the wagons. Either way, the truth is now public knowledge and we should see less of this:

As the Director of Professional Standards for Boots himself said:

There is certainly a consumer demand for these products. I have no evidence to suggest they are efficacious. It is about consumer choice…

On one level I can understand the free market, capitalist ideal of “There’s a market for it and people are willing to buy, so what’s the problem?” The problem, of course, is that some people who are seriously ill will turn to expensive tap water instead of seeking actual medical advice or treatment.

‘Natural selection,’ you may cynically retort… but now imagine that person is your grandmother.

As the legendary Tim Minchin says in his excellent beat poem, Storm:

You know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? Medicine.

It’s as simple as that. Unless you’re some kind of conspiracy nut (“they are hiding the truth”), a deluded fool who thinks reading a few pseudo-scientific layman blogs qualifies you to know more than proven, peer-reviewed science (particularly meta-analyses of methodologically-reliable scientific studies), or think you have an open channel to some kind of supernatural force.

If you’re not familiar with the ‘theory’ of homeopathy, it consists of finding an agent that, when swallowed, generates symptoms that resemble the patient’s symptoms (e.g. food poisoning and Ipecac Syrup both induce nausea), dilute it to the point where there’s statistically no chance of a single molecule of the agent remaining, banging it a specified number of times to shake it up, and then believing that such super-dilution magnifies the healing properties, because it somehow remembers the life force (or something) of the original agent. Again, I refer to Storm:

Water has memory! And while its memory of a long lost drop of onion juice is infinite, it somehow forgets all the poo it’s had in it!

Homeopathy is magical thinking based on poor science, logical flaws and unsupported assumptions. It’s water. I suspect the two main reasons that homeopathy is so popular is because its methodology sounds similar to the principle behind vaccination (a small amount of an antigen is given, allowing the body to generate antibodies) and because major, trusted retailers sell it alongside actual medical treatments.

And this last point is what the 10²³ Campaign in the UK is addressing:

At 10:23am on January 30th, more than 300 homeopathy sceptics nationwide will be taking part in a mass homeopathic ‘overdose’.

The closest protest to me is taking place in Oxford, and is being run by Skeptics in the Pub (Oxford). If you’re nearby and interested in attending, please visit the event’s page:

Skeptics In The Pub: Oxford ‘mass overdose’

More importantly, please contact Rosie (on the above page) to let her know you’ll be attending. You’ll also need to bring along your own Boots brand 30C homeopathic remedy pills.

Let me make this perfectly clear: this is a peaceful, harmless protest against a company that has a business practice that some of us consider unethical or harmful, it is not against government or other authority. Leave your politics and Guy Fawkes masks at home.

Why 10²³? How’s your middle/lower school science memory? Avogadro’s Constant! A fitting use for it, I think.

Update: It appears this campaign has gained some momentum, with various skeptical groups worldwide planning their own ‘homeopathic mass overdoses’ this coming Saturday. Check with your local skeptics group, the 10²³ Campaign website, the #ten23 hashtag on Twitter, Facebook or forums such as the JREF for more information.