The Empire of the Odd

Alexandria, VA – Challenger Center for Space Science Education mourns the death of space artist Robert T. McCall, who died Friday, February 26 in Scottsdale, Arizona at the age of 90.

According to The University of Arizona’s Alumnus magazine, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov once described McCall as, “the nearest thing we have to an artist-in-residence in outer space.”

One of McCall’s space murals fills a six-story high wall at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C, and his work has been featured on United States postage stamps, an iconic movie poster for 2001: A Space Odyssey, and at Walt Disney World’s EPCOT theme park.

McCall also created the original concept art for Challenger Center for Space Science Education, which can be viewed here: http://www.challenger.org/about/images/McCallCConcept_lg.jpg

“Bob’s artistic talent and imagination helped us to create the concept and design for Challenger Center, and he remained a close friend and supporter. My heart goes out to his wife Louise and his entire family,” said June Scobee Rodgers, Challenger Center’s Founding Chairman.

“Robert McCall’s keen eyes and talented hands captured the wonders of space exploration in dramatic and inspiring detail, and documented our achievements for generations of Americans,” said Challenger Center President Dan Barstow.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made in McCall’s honor to the Challenger Space Center of Arizona, 21170 North 83rd Ave, Peoria, AZ 85382, www.AZChallenger.org.

About Challenger Center

Using space exploration as a theme and simulations as a vehicle, Challenger Center and its international network of nearly 50 Challenger Learning Centers create positive educational experiences that raise students’ expectations of success, fosters a long-term interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and inspires students to pursue studies and careers in these areas. Challenger Center’s network of Challenger Learning Centers across the United States and in Canada, the United Kingdom, and South Korea reach more than 400,000 students each year through simulated space missions and educational programs, and engage over 40,000 educators through missions, teacher workshops and other programs. To learn more about Challenger Center for Space Science Education, visit www.challenger.org.

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In the United States, we need a religious bill of rights about as much as we need a white people’s bill of rights, or a men’s bill of rights. That is, not at all: when 90+ percent of the country claims to be religious, you pretty much run the joint anyway. Worse, we hardly need something like this for public schools. There already are pretty clear laws about how religion can and cannot be treated in the schools.

Still, that hasn’t stopped people in Colorado from proposing just such a bill for public schools in the state legislature, a bill which may be presented to the Judiciary Committee as early as Monday, today. Note that this bill represents an act and not a law. Nothing in it is legally enforceable, as far as I can tell. Good thing, too.

The bill is ridiculous in a lot of ways, but two things stand out: one is that it simply isn’t needed — most of the rights it seems so concerned over are already guaranteed and under no threat at all — and the other is that it oversteps the bounds maintained by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

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No really! I am not making this up!

We think our destiny is to journey to Mars and beyond. Yet as we build our spacecraft, we’re about to be broadsided – from a different direction – by the most explosive event in history.

Sometime in the future science will be able to create realities that we can’t even begin to imagine. As we evolve, we’ll be able to construct other information systems that correspond to other realities, universes based on logic completely different from ours and not based on space and time.

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I run across this statement quite often. “Science,’ they say, “should stay out of the paranormal stuff. Science and the paranormal are not compatible and one should leave the other alone.

Here is a rather typical example of this kind of thing from a “passionate advocate” of the paranormal.

“The major reason I dislike Scientists interfering with the Paranormal, is the Fear that they have of these things that may yet be unknown. Fear produces negative energies and therefore, negative outcomes. The Scientists should stick to the conventional stuff that they are comfortable with, like Gadgets and Gizmos. Leave those of us that know what we are doing with the Paranormal to our Craft and we will leave them to theirs. Science really has very little to no place in the Paranormal and the Paranormal really has little to no place in Science. Science cannot possibly comprehend what goes on with the Paranormal.”

Outside of the obvious misunderstanding of what science is all about, this writer cites “fear of the unknown” as the reason science does not work in the realms paranormal. “Fear,” According to her, is the reason that no one can produce a ghost or a paranormal event on demand to a skeptic is because a sceptical person “fears the unknown” and would give off bad “vibes” which in turn prevents the paranormal event from occurring.

If that idea does not have you reaching for the extra-strength Tylenol, it should!

Other than being farcical this to my mind could be proof of this writer’s belief in the the power of skepticism! Apparently; skepticism itself is a paranormal activity! Skepticism acording to this writer  mysteriously produces “negative rays.” Rays that cannot be mesured in any way but their effect can be felt in the non-production of paranormal events. Although how in the heck you prove that an event which cannot be reproduced and quantified in some way didn’t happen is beyond me (I’ll take three Tylenols now if you  please.)

If this sounds reasonable than you may have just joined the ranks of the woo-woo, I imagine that you don’t feel at all comfortable with science, other than using the fruits of it each and every day.  I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be using all of those gizmos created by  pesky scientists !

This is not at all reasonable, it’s quite mad actually, because skeptics don’t produce “rays” that dampen paranormal activity. You can’t dampen or nullify something that does not exist.  Yes, I said that! Magic, UFOS, Bigfoot etc- etc and so fourth are either not paranormal or they do not exist. They ether exist in the real world or they don’t exist. We might not understand how they work – now. That does not mean we will never understand them using the scientific process as our guide.

All of this has happed before, many times as a matter of fact.

Magnetism and electricity were well known to antiquity but, although people saw electricity (as lighting or static) the process by which it came about was not well understood. It was to them, a paranormal activity, one controlled by the gods, spirits or “fluids” traveling through some mysterious either. It was not until the very early 19th century that the scientific principles of electricity were worked out and not until the 20th century that reasons why electricity works were discovered.

Electricity is no longer a paranormal activity, it is a normal phenomena that billions of people use every day.

How could this happen, when Scientists are so “afraid of the unknown” that they will “give off negative energy” and therefor have negative results? The answer? The idea cannot be falsified or confirmed, therefore it is not valid.

Science cannot comprehend what goes on with the paranormal? If Science were like a person I might agree with that statement, but “Science” is not a person and has no personality, it cannot love or hate, it is completely impartial and that if this were not so – it would not BE science. Not only can Science handle the paranormal, it’s the only thing that can.

And if it works! If you can read thease words, thank a scientist and a whole lot of cleaver engineers.

I submit that not only does science work very well with paranormal subjects, it’s virtually the only thing that does  work. Electricity is only ONE paranormal phenomena tamed by science, Mechanical Engineering is another, Medicine, Mental Health, Agriculture, Geology and Mining, Astronomy, Chemistry Static Engineering and Construction, Materials Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, Pharmacology  Education, Biology, Cosmology, Aviation and even Archeology. All of thease things were once in the realm of the paranormal. All were once the subject of religion and superstition. Science has changed the paranormal, it makes the “paranormal” normal, even ordinary.

Science is not about gadgets and gizmos, really science isn’t “anything.” It’s only a process, a way of action perhaps a philosophy (perhaps not.)  It’s  a systematic method that produces only one thing.

That “thing” is the truth.

Science is a filtration system, a sieve for ideas. Science (when used properly) dictates a method by which falsehoods are filtered out of ideas. What is left is the truth and this truth is criticized and interrogated until no possible alternative exists. Then this “idea” becomes a “fact.” A fact that can be reproduced in the real world, confirmed or refuted by anyone. Facts that are not handed down from some mountain top or penned by some guru. These are facts anyone can check out for themselves.

Science is not the realm of some weedy fellow in a tweed coat. It does not reside in an ivory tower. It was not handed down by God or deduced miraculous by some ancient race, etched into stone tablets. Science is for everyone and it is the ONLY way that truth can be derived from ideas.

Look around you, find some artifact in your home that was not produced by science and engineering. It would be tough. Nearly everything we touch was developed by applied science and and refined by using some for of the scientific process. Even the water you drink was pumped to you courtesy of Geologists, Metallurgists, Surveyors, Biologists,  Chemists, Construction Engineers, and scores of technicians, all working together to bring you a single drop of clean water. There is no witchcraft here, no religious ritual, no divining  rods or spells. Why? Becuse those things don’t work.They don’t (reliably) return results. Science and engineering do bring results. The proof is as simple as drinking a glass of water.

So what good is science?

Science created our world. Science has unlocked many mysteries, it has explained many a paranormal event. Science and only science can solve puzzles that confound us. Nothing else can do that. We can take comfort in religion or learn philosophy at the feet of a guru, these things feel nice but they don’t really enlighten us to anything.  In fact they mostly confuse and confound things.

Perhaps we would be better without science you say. Perhaps the Bushmen of Africa or the Yammamno of South America are better off than we are. They certainly think so. You are welcome to join them! Let me know how it works out!

The Odd Emperor

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For criminy’s sake. What is it with people and all the rending of garments over the impending doom of NASA?

First:

1) The reports of Spirit’s death are greatly exaggerated.

spiritOK, yes, Spirit is now stuck. It looks like even if it survives the Martian winter it may no longer be able to traverse the Red Planet’s landscape. But that doesn’t mean it’s dead. Instead of a rover, it’s now a stationary platform capable of doing a lot of science on the cheap (since most of the cost was getting it there).

If you’d rather not have a lander sitting on the surface of Mars doing science that we simply cannot do from millions of kilometers away on Earth, then fine. But astronomers and scientists and science journalists should know better. Stop saying it’s dead.

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This really is the most disgusting thing I’ve seen recently about the Church of Scientology: Their reaction to the Haiti earthquake.

The actions of the Church of Scientology are dispicable, in the extreme.

The Church of Scientology provides no money towards the victims in Haiti.  None.  Not one penny.  The church supplies no food, no water, no medicine, no building materials, no personnel, no expertise, nothing for Haiti.

But they claim, in their press releases, that their Volunteer Ministers are “a major relief agency” helping in Haiti.  If they do nothing, how can they claim this?

John Travolta supplied an airplane, not the church.  Individual Scientologists volunteered to go using their own money.  As usual, the Church of Scientology did nothing.

Along with a few untrained Scientology “Volunteer Ministers”, Travolta offered a lift to health-care workers from the Association of Haitian Physicians Abroad and from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Those other non-Scientology groups were sending trained medical personnel and the Scientologists were completely untrained.  And yet, in a most disgusting bit of lying, the Church of Scientology is actually claiming they sent the medical personnel!

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For our good friends from the church of L Ron, it’s not so much a tragedy as an opportunity.

Marina Hyde
The Guardian, Friday 22 January 2010

John Travolta and Kelly Preston with Scientology volunteers in New Orleans after Hurrican Katrina Photograph: PAUL J.RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

Psychopath, conman, liar, fantasist, fraudster, bully, tax evader, megalomaniac – it’s fair to say L Ron Hubbard’s death was a blow to global humanitarianism. Happily, there is a silver lining to the cloud that has hung over Earth since the founder of Scientology shed his corporeal form in 1986. That silver- lining is the high profile, expansionist figures who represent his organisation today – and the good news is that they’re turning their thoughts to Haiti.

Were an idiot like you to itemise the myriad things that this most wretched of disaster zones currently lacked, chances are you’d omit “militant Scientologists who claim post-traumatic stress is a conspiracy created by the evil psychiatric profession, and who believe the correct response to extreme shock is to touch sufferers with one finger, before attempting to convert them to the ways of Hubbard”.

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…and if it doesn’t, maybe we’ll reschedule it for 2016.

By MATT SEDENSKY
Associated Press Writer

CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) — More than 1,000 unreleased recordings of lectures by L. Ron Hubbard and reams of corresponding writings have been unveiled in the culmination of a 25-year project to locate, restore and transcribe lost pieces of the Scientology founder’s work.

Though sure to be derided by the church’s many critics, its followers say the materials amount to an opportunity to deepen understanding of the religion and to release the last known unpublished Hubbard works dealing with Scientology and Dianetics.

“It would be like discovering that Buddha, unbeknownst to anybody, had sat down and wrote down the entirety of his discoveries and it could be verified that he wrote it,” said Tommy Davis, the church’s top spokesman.

The new materials were announced in a New Year’s celebration at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles that was broadcast to churches around the world last week and include 1,020 lectures and hundreds of corresponding booklets from courses and other sessions with Scientology ministers from 1953 to 1961. They include discussions of how Hubbard arrived at the principles of Dianetics and his research on everything from decision-making to personal responsibility.

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