Passing Thoughts

Nutters and pictures

It being friday there have been one or two small modifications to the site. The first you might have seen - the main page now has a flash animation on it. The second is that I have linked with some of the pictures I have made recently: new pictures. There will be a better navigation system for all of my pictures soon but I think its going to require some CGI programming to get it just right. I've also got some more pictures on my machine at home to upload.

Today I have been listening to a radio show broadcast yesterday by Art Bell called Coast to Coast. Although I haven't listened to this before it is well respected in the "nutter" communities and now I know why.

First of all I should point out what I mean by nutters. What I mean is people who refuse to embrace the reason and logic of science and believe things at random - without evidence to establish the belief. The usual response to this kind of comment is "But Science is a Belief too". Well - NO ITS NOT. Science is a process that allows explanations to be posited, tested and verified. It allows for explanations to be proved wrong and removed and it allows for the fact that some explanations are more likely than others. Most importantly it is OPEN and TRANSPARENT - it can be used by anyone who accepts logical thought. It doesn't require any leaps of faith. Every step of every explanation can be explained to anyone patient enough to learn the principles involved.

Now Art Bells program panders to the worst of these "Nutters" - those that use a mixture of pseudo science (nonsense dressed up in scientific language) and false authority (such and such worked for senator X etc. etc. - they may well have done so but it has NO bearing on the information being presented). The program I have just listened to concerned Richard Hoagland to start with. Hoagland is one of the advocates of the face on mars. The whole concept has only been tenuous at best - and now despite excellent clear pictures showing the "face" to be a mountain (suprising that...) Hoagland has modified his "theory" yet again explaining why its still a face (even though it doesn't look like one - uh?). Anyway in this program Art Bell breathlessly interviewed Hoagland as he explained that two crop circles constitued first contact with aliens. Now - crops circles are openly admited to be man made - the people who make them can be and often are interviewed. During the recent closure of the country side in the UK crops circles virtually disapeard. Clearly aliens then...

The worrying thing about programs like this though is that there are lots of people who listen to this and assume that these people are talking sense. They don't have the intellectual tools to question the things being described with deadly seriousness and establish what is fact and what is fiction (though its quite easy on Art Bell - its all rubbish).

That said - have a listen for yourself at Art Bell. Its hillarious. My favourite advert is the one that will teach you to use remote viewing to gamble better....

Posted by Mark at August 24, 2001 02:17 PM