Fun with pseudoscience

This is why people distrust science.

Now to be fair, Psychology Today isn't exactly the foremost authority on the science.  They've featured such rigorous scientific studies as "Interacting with Women Makes Men Stupid" and "Why Politicians Get Laid More".  But honestly, you'd think there'd be one person on the editor's staff that would raise the red flag at "Why are Black Women Less Attractive?"

I'm all for pop science.  Stuff like Malcolm Gladwell and Jonah Lehrer make for great reads that are both fascinating and accessible.  But dumbing down science into sensational, completely misleading snippets of kinda-facts? That's just playing into the media's view that the American public is a bunch of slack-jawed yokels.

This article is particularly damaging because it further emphasizes the stigma that psychology has the interest of Great White Father in mind.  The National Alliance on Mental Illness rattles off a list of how African Americans under-utilize and are under-served by mental health services.  And these shmucks at Psychology Today go off running an article by some asshole who'd already gotten in hot water over saying that people are poor because they're stupid and advocating nuclear holocaust against the Middle East.

Come on.  There are people proving memory isn't written in permanent ink.  Others proving that all it takes to improve your condition is to breathe differently.  Others working on solutions to our deepest and most fundamental psychological issues.

And you're talking about whether people really do, in fact, like big butts?

Let's get together and celebrate someone dying.

So Osama is dead.


LET'S PARTY!!! WHOOO!

I don't really get it.  Someone's gonna need to explain it to me.  We spend something like $400 billion in Afghanistan, lose a little over 2,000 soldiers, kill about 20,000 Afghani people and we're celebrating that, whew, what a relief, we killed some 54-year-old religious nutbag?

This is not a time for celebration.  This is time for solemn reflection on what we've lost and a reevaluation of if, in fact, this was worth it.  What message did we send to al Qaeda with this? A former CIA agent said back in 2010 al Qaeda is stronger now than before 9-11.  Whatever lesson we think we're teaching al Qaeda might be lost behind the lines of new recruits streaming in.

But what really gets to me is all those images of people partying in DC and NYC like someone's death is something to celebrate.  Our nation ended a life last night, and I'm hard-pressed to understand why that's worth celebrating.  I mean, I can understand why people want to celebrate.  We've been at war for 10 years, spending billions while a huge portion of us can barely afford medicine and rather than progress, we've just seen the progressive decay of both countries we invaded under corrupt and ineffectual governments.  We need something to celebrate, just like we needed something to celebrate when Bush pulled one of these:

But that doesn't make it right.

Death is terrible.  It is the end of us, it is where we become powerless and are reduced to little more than the wood, earth and stone we regard as tools.  Our agency is gone and everything that makes us, us has vanished and will never return.  Osama was not a good person, but he was a human being.  And that we can celebrate having put at end to his being human just shows that something's gone wrong in these ten years.  Something that resulted in the kill teams in Afghanistan.  The Abu Ghraib torture in Iraq.  The My Lai massacre in Vietnam.  The Japanese internment camps on our own soil.

War is unnatural.  It is an abomination.  And it causes what we're seeing all around us.  Poverty, mental illness, injury, death.  And after 10 years, it's taken a toll on our psyche as a nation.  So here we are.  Celebrating someone dying.

We lost this war a while ago.  Now I'm just wondering else what else we're going to lose.

Depression interlude

Just thought I'd take a break from all the good stuff happening and all the crappy poetry to express my complete awe-struck horror at some news I learned about last week. I didn't really want to get into it in the middle of an already eventful week, but now I'm free to stress myself out about it.

This shit. This horrible and, worse, not unexpected shit.

Our soldiers taking pictures of themselves after killing and mutilating innocent civilians.  Like they're so hardcore, man, gunning down a small child from behind cover must take REAL guts.

But the truth is, it's not the soldiers.  It's the situation.  The torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, the water boarding of detainees in Guantanamo, the bombing of civilian targets during the Persian Gulf, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.  That's just a few of the AMERICAN atrocities.

And what's the common denominator? It's not the people, what is socially acceptable changes constantly.  So does leadership.  So does the setting.  So does the enemy.  The common denominator is war.  The fact of the matter is that there is no way to wage a humane war.  You put people in insane situations, you can't be surprised when they act insane.

You have to be crazy to kill someone.  Murderers are either placed into impossible situations or are just completely insane.  War cultivates this insanity and we act surprised when our soldiers return and are all kinds of fucked up.  We ENGINEERED that crazy and called it basic training.

The thing that's worse about this is that Obama's still harping on the same tired "America is making the world safe for Democracy" bullshit, when the only thing we show the countries we are safe-izing is a barbarism that puts to shame any of the dictators we oust.

Our soldiers gunned down innocent people and smiled about it.  I think a situation like this deserves a few years of reflection on what we're doing to our people.  Something's gone wrong here.  We've created something toxic in ourselves and until we fix it, the only thing we're spreading is misery.

Your rejection "didn't work for me"

"Thanks for submitting this story, but I'm going to pass on it. It didn't quite work for me, I'm afraid. Best of luck to you placing this one elsewhere, and thanks again for sending it my way."

What is this?

What the hell does that mean?

"It didn't quite work for me"

I didn't send you the story to find out whether it worked.  I sent you the story to try and get it into your magazine.  I know my story works.  I want to find out if you'll publish it.


What I want from a rejection letter:

• Notice that you will not be publishing my work
• That's it.

This isn't the first time I've gotten this reply, either.  There was someone else who said "it didn't quite work for me".  Those EXACT words.  I'm not the only one. 

What is it with these editors that they think we really care about their opinions? No, we want to know if it's accepted.  If not, suggestions are nice.  If not, SHUT UP.

Also, I'm annoyed.

Science says facebook makes you happy.

Scientists have spoken.  Facebook makes you have higher self esteem.  It's on CNN, so it must be fact.

Nevermind the fact that the set up went kind of like this:

Nevermind the fact that they COULD have had Group B playing a game or, I dunno, reading ridiculous faux science articles on CNN rather than staring into a mirror for five minutes.  No.  This is science.

Correlation DOES imply causation, so long as the something trendy is proven beneficial.

New hope for vegetarians

So this has been in the news.

Apparently Taco Bell does not serve high-quality locally-farmed organic sirloin steak with every kid's meal.  What a fucking travesty.

Louis Black says it better.  Plus, if you watch that, you don't have to read stuff.  Who wants to read stuff, amirite?

So anyway, the summary is that Taco Bell says their food is 88% beef (which, I guess is why they emblazon packages of it with the words "taco meat filling" instead of "BEEF").  The lawyers say, however, it's more like 36% beef.  So really arguing over nothing, right? The lawyers insist Taco Bell call it "taco meat filling" rather than beef.  Which you could totally see being good for business.

Then again, it's taco bell:

Source

So the question came to me as I was making my way through three of seven layers of my burrito filling:

Does this mean vegetarians can eat at Taco Bell?

I mean, technically it's not meat.  And vegetarians should be used to the taste of the filling, since they eat mostly processed food filler anyway, so it wouldn't be much of a change.  I feel like this opens new doors to vegetarians.  For the longest time they've been deprived of having high cholesterol, diabetes and heart failure.  Now even the greenest of the green can make themselves sick.  It truly is a brave new world.

Thank you, Taco Bell, for making the world a more unhealthy place.

P.S: In order to make up for my hardcore bashing of vegetarians, here's a tofu recipe:

Sauteed tofu:

Cut tofu into slices and press out some of the water in each slice with a paper towel.  In a separate container, put soy sauce, sesame oil and pretty much anything else (sriracha, salt and pepper, hell, you can even get wild and put some hot+sour sauce up in there).  Put the slices into the container with this mixture and shake it like a polaroid picture until the slices are nicely coated.

Put some oil (Olive oil and maybe a little sesame oil) in a pan and heat it.  Then throw some chopped garlic in there and cook until delicious.  Once that’s done, take each slice and sautee them until…well, whenever, really, you can make them really cooked or leave them a little squishy.  After they’re all cooked, you can take some of that leftover sauce and sautee some chives or whatever else you want to eat with your delicious tofu creations.

Valentines: Why happiness is like being depressed and Hallmark sucks

So it's Valentine's Day.

Fuck Valentine's Day.

If you need Hallmark to tell you when it's okay to give your one-in-a-million a once-in-a-lifetime night:

YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.

I was very happy yesterday, so much so that I wondered what the hell was wrong with me.  I took my temperature, nope, normal.  I checked my eyesight, nope, I wasn't going blind.  I pinched myself, nope, I wasn't dreaming.  I pinched someone else and they punched me, so yes, I'm still living in the real world.

But yes, I was happy.  This kind of happy:

It was just a bit like being on drugs.

It's also a bit like being depressed.

Sometimes you get sad, it's a natural consequence of being alive.

And maybe happiness is just like that sometimes.  The confluence of starlight, the alignment of Mercury in rising and Libra in your pocket, your blood sugar up and your electric potentials evoked.

Sometimes you just feel good.  It's as reliable as death and taxes.  As inexplicable as...death and taxes.  But unlike death and taxes, it happens more than people realize.  Drugs operate in the bizarre landscape that is our mind and play by the rules of our biology.  Anything they can do, we can do.  And better.

So do drugs.  I mean.  Be happy.  And when you are, it's not worth questioning it, honestly.  It won't answer.

The benefits of being negligable.

It went like this:

Verizon Guy: Well, ya'll bought one o' dem fancy phones.  Ya gotta pay for a data plan, kno-wut-I-mean? (Yes, he did talk like a cowboy.)

Me: Well, no one told me about that. (I'm lying, they told me about that.)

Verizon Guy: There ain't nothin' I can do, boy, time's are rough down here on the prarie.

Me: But I've been a customer for years and blah blah bitch moan complain.

Verizon Guy: Okay, okay! I hollered for a manager and he got 'er done! (No joke, the guy actually said "got 'er done")

Me: Thank you, you're the best, god bless the Confederacy.

{fin}

This is what I love about dealing with big corporations.  At a certain point, you become not worth the time arguing with and you get exactly what you want.  Given my tendency towards being a spoiled brat, it's great to have an interaction that's just super responsive to me being obnoxious.  It's like having a bad parent you can go to when the other one turns you down.

It's always my advise that if a company ever charges you or does something you don't like, just complain.  Go higher and higher up the chain until you reach a manager that is either A) afraid of human interaction or B) is worth more money per hour than your complaint.  Of course, there's an equivalency to these things:

$10 = 30 minutes complaining (or m/c)

$100 = 60 m/c

$1000 = 120 m/c

And so on.

Of course, everything's against you on this.  Articles tell you why it's not healthy.  Doctors prescribe medicines to make the bile go down easier.  God hates complaining.  But it's a lot like an oil company saying global warming doesn't exist.  Think about how much easier it would be for companies if their employees never complained for fear of getting sick and missing work.  Or how much more money doctors would make if people just shut up and took their pills.  Or how much more churches could get away with if their congregation stopped going to the police.

I'm being half-serious here.  Complaining shouldn't be a way of life, but it certainly isn't going to make you die and go to Hell.  That's why I've decided to show some whiny asshole pride.  Behold:

Wear it with pride.

Err...Science, Possibly. Extremely Scientific Poppycock. Execrablely Stupid Psuedoscience.

I'm trying to think of more.  This is hard.

Extremely Silly Possibility.  Even Scientists Poop.

So, this barrage of hilarity comes from this article.  Apparently some well-known social psychologist got his study into a pretty highly-esteemed journal.  What was his study? Well, according to him, you should already know.  Because ESP exists.  Definitively.  Even though it's been disproved time and time again.

The article is interesting in that it doesn't take sides and does a good job of maintaining journalistic neutrality.  It gives a perspective that maybe this Dr. Bem is just publishing this as an "elaborate joke".  This is honestly a possibility, as history is littered with stories of how respected people in the field can flummox everyone.  Examples: The Swiss Spaghetti Hoax, the Hotheaded Naked Ice Borer, the San Serriffe hoax.

But honestly, joke or not, a psuedo-science article making its way into a respected journal is a tiny bit ridiculous.  I mean, it's bad enough that these homeopathic crazies get the legitimacy they do, do we really need to be opening up another door to the snake-oilers?

I mean, what did the Simpsons say about that?

Let one of these crazies in, and you're basically making science a free-for-all.

Not to mention that someone actually got paid real money to do this research.  It's kind of like giving someone money to masturbate all day to see if they grow hair on their hands.  Aren't we in too hard a company to pay scientists to bullshit?