Category Archives: Skepticism

Go stick a candle in your ear

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I read an article today about ear candling, and how it is ineffective and dangerous. I have three words on this subject: No. Shit. Sherlock.

I first heard about ear candling about 10 years ago. Whoever was telling me about it had to tell me a couple of times before I would believe that people actually did this. The idea is that you take a hollow candle and stick one end in your ear, and light the other end. The flame creates a very mild vacuum, which draws wax and other “impurities” out of your ear. This is another one of those things that should be obvious hogwash to anyone with an IQ over 7, but apparently is not.

My friend Jeff (also a skeptic) once did an experiment to see just how much suction is created by burning a hollow candle (note that it wasn’t just any hollow candle, it was a candle made for ear candling). He lit the candle, then lit a match, blew the match out, and held the match below the bottom of the candle, which was held at the same angle as when doing ear candling. The wisps of smoke coming from the match drifted right by the end of the candle, completely unaffected. There was absolutely no vacuum sucking the smoke into the candle. If the vacuum created is so small that smoke is not affected, how is it going to pull wax out of your ear?

And another thing – ear wax is there for a reason. Unless you have a medical condition where you have too much of it, why pull it out?

New Toys and Psychic Nikki

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On Mix 99.9 this morning, they had Psychic Nikki on as a guest – she comes on now and again and they get people to call in and ask her questions about their love life, job, financial situation, stuff like that. What a crock. Every single person who calls gets a positive response – yes, your money situation will improve. Yes, you will meet the person of your dreams within a few months. Yes, you will get promoted or get a new job. This morning she was also doing “past lives readings”. Humble Howard apparently was a German fighter pilot in WWI named Deiter. The funniest part was the very first caller – she asked about her past lives, and Nikki told her she was one of Henry VIII’s wives, who was beheaded. Puh-lease. There are approaching 6 billion people in the world today, and the first person to call the Mix this morning happened to be one of Henry VIII’s wives in a past life? Come on. I get a kick out of Psychic Nikki whenever she’s on – it’s such crap.

Now for the real fun stuff – toys! I went out to Factory Direct yesterday and picked up a PVR card and DVD burner for $60 each. I need to put a cable TV jack in the office now, but there’s one in Ryan’s room which is on the other side of the wall, so I could probably just cut a hole in the office wall opposite the jack in Ryan’s room and move the jack over. Then plug the cable into the card and voila! I can record TV shows on the computer, then burn them onto DVD. I have anothor thing called a Dazzle, which plugs into the computer, then you plug the video camera into that, and it allows you to transfer video tape to the computer. Now we can transfer our video tapes of the kids to the computer, and then onto DVD. This will obviously make watching them easier, but will also allow us to put the original video tapes in the safety deposit box – backup and offsite storage is a critical part of disaster recovery, dontcha know.

The PVR card also has a FM tuner in it, so I was able to listen to the radio through the computer yesterday as well. I’m sure I won’t use that feature all that often, but it’s cool nonetheless.

Wacko Creationists

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Dr. Kent Hovind is the founder of Creation Science Evangelism, which is a ministry that teaches that the Bible is “literally true and scientifically accurate”. He believes that the world was created by God in 6 24-hour days about 6000 years ago, and that dinosaurs (which humans called “dragons”) lived at the same time as humans. He has even offered to pay anyone $250,000 for “scientific evidence” of evolution.

The offer is, of course, horseshit, as this article describes. In essence, the only way to win the money is to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that God does not exist. This is obviously impossible, and so the fact that nobody has yet won the money proves exactly nothing.

It is amazing to me that intelligent, educated people can still believe stuff like “since there is no evidence that life can be generated from non-living matter, then God must be responsible”. The fact that we have not yet discovered the answer to a particular question (indeed, our minds may not yet be advanced enough to be able to understand the answer) does not mean we should just chuck all of our scientific knowledge and go with “God did everything”.

Sherlock Holmes once said “Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remained, however implausible, must be the truth”1, and this seems to be the reasoning behind intelligent design / creationism — evolution is “obviously wrong”, and therefore the only alternative is that God did it. First of all, “obviously wrong” is rather vague – there are never any scientific exlanations for why evolution is wrong, just the standard “if evolution is right, then how did X happen?”. Again, just because we don’t know the answer to every question, this doesn’t mean that the theory is wrong. Secondly, even if our current theory of evolution is wrong, why is creationism the only alternative? You cannot prove creationism true by proving evolution false. Proof by contradiction doesn’t apply here – evolution is not the “logical opposite” of evolution.

Here is another interesting article, this one by the editor-in-chief of Scientific American, listing some popular arguments against evolution, and why they are all bogus.

1 – Note that this is probably not a direct quote – I’m quoting Lt. Cmdr. Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation, who quotes Holmes in one episode.

Open Letter

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Here is a hilarious open letter to the Kansas School Board. The board has decided that along with the theory of evolution, they will also teach the theory of “Intelligent Design”, which is simply Biblical Creationism disguised as a scientific theory. The letter writer agrees with this decision, and asks that a third theory also be added – the theory that the universe was created by a flying spaghetti monster.

Go ahead, true believers – tell me why this theory is less scientifically plausible than intelligent design, using facts, not beliefs. I dares ya. I double dares ya.