Penn Jillette Discusses Skepticism and the JREF on the Nerdist Podcast Episode #195!

In the Nerdist Podcast episode #195, Penn doesn't just discuss life behind the scenes of Las Vegas, but he reveals how "The Amazing" James Randi has had a profound influence on him and a little about what it means to be a skeptic. He also talks about the skeptical movement and the the work that the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) does with their annual conferences celebrating science, skepticism and critical thinking called, "The Amazing Meeting" (TAM).

Oh, and a spoiler alert...

he also explores the mind of a psychopath through Dean Martin, and argues why it is advantageous in Hollywood.


-Visit the Nerdist Podcast, "...a place where we nerds come together and share the nerdery that we find."

Classic Skepticism From Orson Welles

Check out this YouTube clip displaying a classic bit of skeptical insight featuring famous actor and director Orson Welles speaking about "cold readings" during an interview with Sir David Frost back in the '70's.

As it it stated on the Skeptic's Dictionary, regarding the nature of 'cold readings',

"...salespersons, hypnotists, advertising pros, faith healers, con men, and some therapists bank on their subject's inclination to find more meaning in a situation than there actually is. The desire to make sense out of experience can lead us to many wonderful discoveries, but it can also lead us to many follies." (Carroll 2012)

Where some people see special powers...

I see a whole lot of practice.

Source:
1. Carroll, Robert T., cold reading. The Skeptic's Dictionary. Last updated April 2, 2012. http://www.skepdic.com/coldread.html. Retrieved April 26, 2012.

Two well-known "psychics" or “spiritual mediums” coming to the valley of the sun

The amount of suffering that individual can experience with the loss of a family member or close loved one can be truly unimaginable. Consider that there is a business or business person making the claims that they can provide a specific service to these people and their plights (even when the claims themselves have never been proven). Now, take that a step further and include the details that some of these cases involve people with prior convictions in fraud and grand theft.

For example, Sylvia Browne calls herself a "psychic" and claims to be able to communicate with the dead. However, there is no reason to believe that anyone, let alone this one person, is doing anything other than performing simple acts of deception. Matter of fact, she is so good at deceiving people that she has been convicted of investment fraud and grand theft. *For more on this, see the story of Sylvia Browne's 1992 felony conviction in a case involving charges of grand theft and securities fraud.

Browne is quite popular among the known psychics in the world, James Van Praagh and John Edwards are a couple more known, and even amongst the people with less familiarity with psychic phenomena. Even just her name can produce strong reactions in people. To some of her devoted fans, she is a "true psychic-medium" that utilizes the help of a "spirit guide" named Francine. This is how she is able to see the future, diagnose illnesses, find lost children, and of course, communicate with the dead. To some others, she has never been able to prove any psychic or supernatural abilities. While using the stage tricks of magic like "cold-readings" to simulate psychic abilities isn’t in itself a ethical concern. Using this as a means to prey on the grieving, the ill, and the spiritually vulnerable is another thing all together. It is quite often during these readings that people selectively remember certain things and forget others, like the things the "psychic" got right, as opposed to the things that were wrong. This is often referred to as, "remembering the hits and forgetting the misses." We are not accustomed to seeing the "misses", however, Van Praagh demonstrates what this looks like in the following YouTube clip from the Australian television show, "The Circle" on "Channel Ten".

A computer programmer named Robert S. Lancaster started up a site called, “Stop Sylvia Browne”, dedicated to helping people make up their own mind about this very subject. Mr. Lancaster makes it quite clear what his site and campaign are all about with the following response from the ‘frequently asked questions’ main page,   

“Because I strongly believe that Sylvia Browne needs to either prove her purported ‘psychic abilities’, or stop pretending to have them.”

One very important message gets relayed from the readers’ inquiries when he is asked, “Why should we believe you?” This is a legitimate question, and good enough that it has me puzzled to why nobody ever poses it to the psychics. Instead, Lancaster gives his own answer, and at the same time, provides a much better explanation of the reasoning process by stating,

“You shouldn't. You should read and consider the contents of this site. You should dig around the web and see what you can find. If you can, find out what Sylvia's justifications are for some of the things you read here. Then, you should make up your own mind.”

This is excellent advice and a stance that all critical thinking citizens should utilize to protect themselves from the subtle and not-so-subtle nonsense that permeates our society. This is not just to serve as protection for the consumer, but to empower individuals through the knowledge of reason. Take this last part from Lancaster’s home page as he leaves us with an invitation to explore reason before investing anything emotionally or financially.    

“But here is a further comment, regarding TV/Celebrity psychics in general: It is important to remember that the producers of a TV show which claims to be about a ‘true psychic’ have a financial interest in making you believe that person is psychic. Because of this, you should never assume that what you see on the show is an accurate and unbiased representation of facts and events.”

Two "psychics" or “spiritual mediums” are coming to the valley of the sun. The first, James Van Praagh, will be appearing this week at an event put on the "Changing Hands Bookstore" in Tempe, Arizona on Thursday March 26, 2012 at 7:00pm. The event to follow features, Chip Coffey, next month on Friday April 20, 2012 at 7:30pm. The Phoenix Area Skeptics Society will be outside of these events to hand out flyers and some general information. Any questions or comments can be sent to: phoenixskeptics@gmail.com  

Could Discoveries in Superconductivity Finally Give Us Hoverboards?

From the act of virtually seeing inside the human body with medical imaging technology to helping physicists in their quest to discover the origins of mass in matter, superconductors are already incredibly useful. 

One of the most important applications of superconductors is making powerful electromagnets. In electronics, it is a basic principle that as electrical charges travel through conducting material, like current flowing through winding strands of copper wire, it generates heat and loses energy. Since the electric and magnetic fields are tied together, when charge passes through the wire it conducts electricity, it also creates a magnetic field. But, superconducting wire can carry an immense amount of electrical current without the effects of heating or energy loss. In this state of superconductivity, magnetic fields gets expelled from the equation by sending the electric current towards the outer surface, thereby, squeezing out any magnetic flux. This not yet fully understood phenomena is also known as, the Meisser effect. But what we do know, is that when the magnetic fields of the superconductor get cancelled out, the electrical currents do not change, or decay, with time. The electrical current can travel without a power source to drive it - infinitely! So, it's not just a clever name, it really is a super-conductor.    

One hundred years ago, Dutch physicist, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and his team found that certain materials completely lose their electrical resistance when cooled to a temperature that is within what is called "absolute zero". The following quote is from the 'History of Superconductors' section on Superconductors.org, a non-profit, non-affiliated website intended to introduce beginners and non-technical people to the world of superconductors. 

"Superconductors, materials that have no resistance to the flow of electricity, are one of the last great frontiers of scientific discovery. Not only have the limits of superconductivity not yet been reached, but the theories that explain superconductor behavior seem to be constantly under review. In 1911 superconductivity was first observed in mercury by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes of Leiden University. When he cooled it to the temperature of liquid helium, 4 degrees Kelvin (-452F, -269C), its resistance suddenly disappeared. The Kelvin scale represents an "absolute" scale of temperature. Thus, it was necessary for Onnes to come within 4 degrees of the coldest temperature that is theoretically attainable to witness the phenomenon of superconductivity. Later, in 1913, he won a Nobel Prize in physics for his research in this area." (Eck 2011)

Within fifty years of the discovery made by Heike Onnes and his team, superconductivity was though to have been fully explained by a simple beautiful elegant theory, when in 1986, an ugly disproving fact overturned it all.

It seems that superconducting materials are still surprising us. Three years ago, in the Science and Technology of Advanced Materials, an international forum for refereed original contributions and reviews covering all aspects of materials science, Tadashi C Ozawa and Susan M Kauzlarich published a journal titled, "Chemistry of layered d-metal pnictide oxides and their potential as candidates for new superconductors", covering their new findings of an (iron-based) superconducting material. In 2008, Charles Q. Choi wrote about this story in the April 23rd issue of Scientific American, "Iron Exposed as High-Temperature Superconductor: New class of superconductor may help pin down mysterious physics",

"For more than 20 years, the only known superconductors that worked far above liquid-helium temperatures were a few dozen compounds—virtually all based on copper. Now scientists have discovered the first high-temperature superconductors based on iron. These novel materials could help unravel one of the biggest mysteries in science—how exactly the high-temperature versions work"(Choi 2008)

These iron-based superconductors that were discovered three years ago were utterly unexpected, and this highlights just how much we still have to learn. The following video is from the article, "Superconducting disc locked in upside-down levitation", posted on the "New ScientistTV Blogs section", under 'Physics and Math' in October 2011. It may seem to be some kind of reversed alien technology, but I assure you, it is perfectly explainable simply using the most natural laws of physics. The key ingredient in effect here lies within the material of the disc. It's make-up consists of poor electrical conducting sapphire crystals, while being coated with an outer layer of superconducting material known as yttrium barium copper oxide. As you can see from the video, the disc can be locked into position because of the love-hate relationship between superconducting fields and magnetic fields. There are tiny, tiny gaps in the disc which allow for some of the magnetic field to seep in, trapping them inside weak area's. Those tiny spaces can hold up the disc by acting as invisible "pins".   

-Demonstration by physicist Boaz Almog from Tel Aviv University, Israel, at the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) Annual Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, illustrates how a superconducting plate can be fixed in 3D space while levitating above a track of permanent magnets.

This video below is from the article titled, "Superconductor flying saucer stunts", and it also appears on "New ScientistTV" in addition to those previously shown experiments from Boaz Almog and his team at Tel Aviv University.

-Filmed by physicist Boaz Almog and his colleagues at Tel Aviv University's superconductivity group, the clip builds upon Almog's 'hit demonstration' from the Association of Science-Technology Centers

As you can see from the clouds of gas in these two video's, the superconducting materials are cooled with liquid nitrogen. One of the main goals to help further the applications of this research is to find a material that can be superconducting at room temperature. As important as those achievements which have been made up to this point are, their potential for a future revolution in technology may be even greater. Then just maybe, we can all get our "Hoverboards".

http://www.davekeeshan.com/where-is-my-hoverboard/

Superheroes, Ghosts, and the Electromagnetic Spectrum

Believe it or not...but most of us already know more about the Electromagnetic Spectrum than we are even aware of from pop-culture and comic book superheroes. Superman has x-ray vision allowing him to see through objects, while an experiment gone awry exposed Bruce Banner to gamma rays turning him into the Hulk. These are both examples of some very real "energies". However, it is that fascination for science-fiction that can often lead some to stray into an obsession with the just plain fiction.