Correct answer is worth 100 internet points. Hogwarts/Calvinball points system is in effect. Last time, everyone who answered (before *and* after the winner posted his answer!) won 25 points. I’m not saying that’s going to happen again; I’m just reminding people that participation and awesome answers may be worth additional points. Again, entries will be accepted from Facebook or comments to this post.
The list of winners can be found on the CUP Winners page, located in the right side bar of the blog.
Last Thursday (10/14/2010) I went to see Michael Shermer speak at the University of Minnesota’s Willey Hall (timely write-up fail!). Dr. Shermer was presenting “Why People Believe Weird Things”. His visit was sponsored/organized by the Campus Atheists, Skeptics and Humanists (CASH) group at the U of M.
Michael Shermer
I liked the lecture hall set-up – the back wall is rounded and the room focuses the audience’s attention down to the center of the room where the speaker is presenting. But instead of having one screen and the people on the sides getting cruddy views, the room has two gigantic screens angled so that no matter where you sit you’ll have a decent view of the material.
Map of Willey Hall
Before the talk Dr. Shermer checked his set up, then hung around up front chatting with people. The presentation started about 15 minutes late, but that was okay because people kept streaming in. Dr. Shermer was introduced by the CASH activities director, and then we were off.
He started by telling us about Skeptic Magazine and the Skeptic’s Society and he did a quick review of the topics covered on the screens up front.
The pre-talk display was these six covers of Skeptic Magazine, of which Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher
One of the comments that Dr. Shermer made early on really stuck with me. He presented the idea that smart people are very good at rationalizing their non-intelligent choices and beliefs. I think that, like anyone, skeptics can make poor choices when we weigh evidence against our personal beliefs, and we choose gut over facts (I’m still struggling with Penn and Teller’s BS episode on recycling). In the Q&A at the end of the talk, someone asked him to give some examples of the weird things skeptics believe. He chose politics – ask a liberal why they believe what they believe, and they’ll tell you it’s because they’re right about x topic, and that yes, they believe that 50% of Americans who vote for Republicans/conservativism are wrong. Confirmation bias, anyone?
Dr. Shermer showed this slide during his talk.
Dr. Shermer was all about using the humor to get ideas across. He was discussing the need for science education in America, and used this video got a LOT of laughs:
After that Dr. Shermer dug into some basic cognitive science topics like association learning and patternicity. He gave a broad-level overview of some neuroscience studies that have attempted to explain where and what in the brain may be responsible for patternicity. He showed some great illusions that illuminate how our brain handles facial recognition, and he presented his idea for how this might be related to the phenomenon of déjà vu. He demonstrated how granularity, shading and camera position in photos can be used to trick our brain into making assumptions about what we’re looking at, and even into seeing things that aren’t there.
Jerry Andrus’s 3D impossible crate
Nice doggy
Our Lady of the Chicago Underpass
Next he discussed agenticity: the tendency to believe that the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents. This moved us further into the realms of conspiracy, skepticism and pseudoscience. Dr. Shermer believes that human agenticity is behind animism, aliens, the 9/11 Conspiracy, JFK’s assassination, etc. He discussed mind versus brain (“Mind is just the thing that the brain does”) and the brain’s role in creating near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences, as well as the phenomenon of sensed presence, or the feeling that someone is in the room with you.
He also demonstrated how the priming effect works with a fun example. Do you remember the hysteria in the 1980s when some people thought that if you played rock and roll records backwards you could hear satanic lyrics or chanting? Dr. Shermer played Stairway to Heaven forward and backward for us. When he played it forward he put the lyrics on the screen. Then he played the song backward – without lyrics. It sounded like a bunch of gobbledy-gook. Then he played the song backwards for us again, but this time with these devised lyrics on the screen:
So here’s to my Sweet Satan. The other’s little path Would make me sad, Whose power is faith. He’ll give those with him 666. And all the evil fools, they know he made us suffer sadly.
And it sure sounded like they were singing those words when we listened to it again. Fun with tricking the brain!
Dr. Shermer managed to fit in a few more topics like why cold reading works (when someone goes to a psychic they’ll remember the hits (5-10 hits), but forget the misses (200-300), synchronicity, confirmation bias and expectation violation.
At the end of the talk we had about 30 minutes for Q&A. There was a good mix of Q&A topics – cognitive neuroscience, pseudoscience, belief, atheism. Nobody was too bumbling, although there were a few cringe-worthy seconds here and there while people rambled or struggled to get their question out. There were no confrontational questions.
A few of my favorite moments from the Q&A
Dr. Shermer using Good Kirk vs. Bad Kirk to explain why emotions are necessary to decision-making. Good Kirk is pretty accurate portrayal of what would happen without emotions.
“Don’t teach people what to think, but how to think.”
Someone asked if we could we erase memories like in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The answer started out pretty party line (“We don’t yet know how we store memories, so we don’t yet know how to erase them), but somewhere along the line he managed to get to “Aliens are going to be so incredibly different from us.” I don’t remember how we got there, but in reading my notes it seems like a fabulous non sequitur.
I enjoyed the talk, both the material and the way Dr. Shermer presented. I’m really happy that the Campus Atheists, Skeptics and Humanists (CASH) were able to organize the talk and the $4 entry fee was very kind. Next year CASH is bringing Jen McCreight from BlagHag to the U of M – yay!
Dan Choi is a former infantry officer in the United States Army. He’s a West Point graduate, he served in combat in Iraq (2006-2007), he’s fluent in Arabic and has a degree in environmental engineering.
Oh yeah, and he’s gay. He was discharged from the Army in 2009 for violating Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT).
DADT is very, very close to being repealed and we as a nation are very, very, very close to allowing openly gay men and women to enlist and serve in the United States military.
From Adam Levine, CNN
October 19, 2010 4:05 p.m. EDT
Washington (CNN) — The Pentagon has advised recruiting commands that they can accept openly gay and lesbian recruit candidates, given the recent federal court decision that bars the military from expelling openly gay service members, according to a Pentagon spokeswoman.
The guidance from the Personnel and Readiness office was sent to recruiting commands on Friday, according to spokeswoman Cynthia Smith.
The recruiters were told that if a candidate admits he or she is openly gay, and qualify under normal recruiting guidelines, their application can be processed. Recruiters are not allowed to ask candidates if they are gay as part of the application process.
The notice also reminded recruiters that they have to “manage expectations” of applicants by informing them that a reversal of the court decision might occur, whereby the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy could be reinstated, Smith said.
Later Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillips in California denied the government’s request for an emergency stay of her order barring the military from enforcing its ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly. The government is now expected to go to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Groups representing gays and lesbians have warned against coming out to the military because the policy is still being appealed in courts.
Today, Dan Choi re-enlisted in the Army.
This is a well-editted video of Dan Choi’s experience down at the recruiting office in NY Times Square (it’s only 4:10 vs. the 8:44 that is going around). It’s over at the Maddow Blog – clicking on the image below will take you to the original blog post and video.
Congratulations, Dan Choi! I’m glad to have you back, and grateful for your activism that has helped bring us to this point.
On Sunday the Hubby and I went to Sever’s Corn Maze in Shakopee, MN. The weather was beautiful – sunny with a clear blue sky, and a cool nip in the air to give it that perfect fall feeling.
This is a view of this year’s corn maze, Vikings 50th Season (the Vikings are the MN football team for you non-native, non-sports readers), from the air:
The maze itself is gigantic – it took us about two hours to wander through it and find all 26 of the hidden signposts that were scattered throughout the maze. That little tan board to the left of the picture above is actually a bridge where probably 40 people or so can stand side-by-side and look out over the maze.
At Sever’s they have pony and camel rides (yes, camels in freaking Minnesota – right der alongside dah corn, eh!). They’ve got an area where an old-timey band plays and visitors can buy “state fair food” like corn dogs, cheese curds, roasted corn, and fresh-squeezed lemonade. There’s a petting zoo, a corn “pool”, hayrides, a miniature hay bale maze for the younger kids, a pumpkin patch, magic shows, carnival games and all sorts of other entertainment.
On Sunday the Hubby and I went to Sever’s Corn Maze in Shakopee, MN. The weather was beautiful – sunny with a clear blue sky, and a cool nip in the air to give it that perfect fall feeling.
This is a view of this year’s corn maze, Vikings 50th Season (the Vikings are the MN football team for you non-native, non-sports readers), from the air:
The maze itself is gigantic – it took us about two hours to wander through it and find all 26 of the hidden signposts that were scattered throughout the maze. That little tan board to the left of the picture above is actually a bridge where probably 40 people or so can stand side-by-side and look out over the maze.
At Sever’s they have pony and camel rides (yes, camels in freaking Minnesota – right der alongside dah corn, eh!). They’ve got an area where an old-timey band plays and visitors can buy “state fair food” like corn dogs, cheese curds, roasted corn, and fresh-squeezed lemonade. There’s a petting zoo, a corn “pool”, hayrides, a miniature hay bale maze for the younger kids, a pumpkin patch, magic shows, carnival games and all sorts of other entertainment.
And the winner for CUP #2 is Jeremy! Jeremy was the first one to correctly identify this photo:
Jeremy’s guess, “This is an image of the place on the base of a stapler that bends the staple in the correct direction.”, wins him 100 internet points. Congratulations!
I also decided to credit all other commenter guessers 25 internet points.
I’ve started keeping track of winners and points on the CUP Winners Page, which is accessible through my “Pages” links in the sidebar to the right of the blog frontpage.
Thanks for playing, and keep your eyes open for the next Close-Up Photo Contest!
I had a lot of fun on Facebook this weekend. Saturday was a house-cleaning kind of day, and one of the things I did between chores was check FB, watch FB videos, read FB links, and add a little original content myself.
One of the posts that I did had a LOT of positive feedback. It was my “Things Around My House Quiz: What is this picture?”
Vicki won 100 internet points for the first correct guess “Bubbles in the kitchen sink! You’re doing the dishes!”
It was a lot of fun, and I had several people playing, so I’ve decided to try out the Close-Up Photo Contest as regular post on the ol’ blog. I’ll keep track of winners on the “CUP Winners” Page and as this evolves I’ll set some rules for “winning” and “prizes”. For now, correct answers will be worth 100 points unless otherwise specified. Particularly awesome answers that tickle my fancy will be worth additional points of my choosing. We’re going with the Hogwarts/Calvinball points system here, that is, totally made up and at my discretion.
If this really gets going I’ll consider setting a regular post time and date for future contests so that everyone who wants to play will know when the new contest is going up. For now answers submitted via the blog comments section and FB will be accepted.
So for the Second Close-Up Photo Contest we have this very common household/office item:
New Zealand museum bans pregnant women from attending exhibit
A clash of cultures over a rule forbidding pregnant or menstruating women to attend a Te Papa exhibit has been criticised by feminists. An invitation for regional museums to go on a behind-the-scenes tour of some of Te Papa’s collections included the condition that “wahine who are either hapu [pregnant] or mate wahine [menstruating]” were unable to attend.
Jane Keig, Te Papa spokeswoman, said the policy was in place because of Maori beliefs surrounding the Taonga Maori collection included in the tour. She said the rule was one of the terms Te Papa agreed to when they took the collection.
“If a woman is pregnant or menstruating, they are tapu. Some of these taonga have been used in battle and to kill people. Pregnant women are sacred and the policy is in place to protect women from these objects.”
If an object is tapu it is “forbidden” and in Maori culture it is believed that if that tapu is not observed, something bad will happen. Women who plan to attend the tour on November 5 are expected to be honest about whether they are pregnant or menstruating as a sign of respect to Maori beliefs.
So the argument for keeping certain women out of the special tour is because the women are sacred, forbidden, and need to be protected. And if they do go on the tour, tapu will be violated and something bad will happen.
I have nothing to lose in this debate, so I don’t know if I would lie or not to get in. But if I was affected by this ban, I might. Or I might try to organize a boycott or protest. The group imposing the restrictions doesn’t have the right to insist that I respect their beliefs. They have a right to not let me see their private stuff, but do they have the right to open their collection to the public except for the people they don’t want to see it? This particular museum is a public institution that accepts public funding.
Does the owner of a private collection have a right to place restrictions on who gets to see it, even if they allow it to be displayed at a public institution?
If only I had a seestor with a concentration in museum studies…
