Tetherd Cow Ahead

The Continuing Misfortunes of Simple Graphics Man ~

#39: The Excised Extremities.

Ever wondered why SGM is always depicted without hands? Well, here’s a shot from early in his career.

___________________________________________________________________________

Another SGM found & photographed by Atlas. Thanks again buddy!

___________________________________________________________________________

Well Faithful Acowlytes it’s fast approaching the time of year when we once again remember the only good thing that Christians have ever done for the world, namely, the active keeping alive of the pagan traditions of the Yuletide. The antecedents of the Yule predate Christianity by an unknown period of time, but it is bedded much more deeply in reality and meaning than the johnny-come-lately fairy story spun by the Christian Church will ever manage.⁽ⁱ⁾ Try as they might, the Christians have never quite succeeded in dampening down the original excesses of the festival, which was pretty much all about feasting, drinking and having a jolly good time – or, as the Norse Grettis Saga puts it: a time of ‘greatest mirth and joyance among men.’ This excessive indulgence and pleasure continues to be a great annoyance to Christians who routinely whinge about ‘the true meaning of Christmas being lost’. Well, pals, you don’t know the true meaning of Christmas from your ass. You can chuck ‘Christ’ in there if you want, but it’s still just Yuletide-by-another-name to those of us who haven’t drunk the Kool Aid. People continue to eat, drink and be merry just like the pagans did, and for most of the same reasons.⁽ⁱⁱ⁾

Anyhoo, all that aside, the other main reason for the season, as you know, is to indulge in commercial excess, and keep our ailing banks and their managers living high on the hog. Life’s been tough for them this year, and they probably had to sell one of their Mercs, so make sure you make the effort to spend that extra dollar that you can’t afford! Preferably in the newly opened Tetherd Cow Ahead Shoppe! Yes Acowlytes, you’re accustomed to having The Cow with your morning coffee – now you can have the coffee in a Cow cup (plus a whole lot of other things, and more to come!) Look for the easy-to-click portal to Zazzle in the side bar, and remember, every purchase you make helps keep the Reverend in whisky!

Go on, what are you doing still reading? Click on it now!

(But please don’t spend your money on this. You have been warned).
_________________________________________________________________________
Footnotes:

1. The pagan tradition of the Yule was so strong that the Early Christians knew they didn’t have an ice-cube’s chance in Hell of getting their prospective converts to ditch it. So, politically and cynically in my view, they contrived the birth date of Christ to occur at exactly the same time as the already entrenched festival. Seriously – why do so many people fail to see through this deceitful and manipulative behaviour? [↩]
2. About the only valid addition to the Yuletide sentiment has been the introduction of a desire for ‘Peace on Earth’. And, whilst admirable, that’s not really worked out well for most Christian countries, has it? (Israel and Palestine? Still at one another’s throats?) And yet, the Norse countries are doing pretty OK these days, having gotten the raping and pillaging out of their systems like grown-ups a couple of thousand years ago. Do I need to draw a more detailed picture? [↩]

_________________________________________________________________________

OK, so where were we? Oh, that’s right, God had just made the fish and the birds and was patting himself on the back. Again. Crikey – what is it with all the self-congratulation? How annoying does that make God sound? Aside from anything, it shows a distinctly un-Godly lack of humility.

Day 6:

~ And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

~ And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Jesus Christ! There He goes again! With no-one to cast a critical eye over the proceedings, God might have been able to convince Himself that all his handiwork was the bees knees, but if you ask me He could have used a good supervisor. If we were concerned with the Truth, in a proper accounting of things somewhere about here there would be a passage that read something like:

~ And God said, Let the earth bring forth cancer and leprosy, cockroaches and merchant bankers and Scientologists. Let there be abundant flooding and drought, and earthquakes and plagues of mites. Let there be hydrocephalic children, hemophiliacs and fatally conjoined twins. And behold, it was so. And God looked on all that he had done and saw that it truly sucked big time.

Where are the passages like that, eh? Funnily enough, not in Genesis. Or anywhere for that matter. God happily takes credit for all things bright and beautiful, but all things ugly and screwed-up are conveniently ignored or blamed on someone else.⁽ⁱ⁾ Hands up who amongst us doesn’t recognize that kind of person in the workplace?

And, as I mentioned last episode, it’s here we start to see God’s preoccupation with ‘creeping things’. There’s more:

~ And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

God seems obsessed with creeping things in much the same way as Fundamentalist Christians are fixated on atheists and homosexuals. It’s almost like He made the damned things but can’t quite believe they exist.

You will also notice that in that previous passage⁽ⁱⁱ⁾ God creates man, bizarrely lapsing into the possessive plural personal pronoun. ‘Let Us make man in Our image’? There’s someone else around? Who the crap is that? Are they the ones responsible for the water, maybe? Or is it, perhaps, that, in the manner of all those who abrogate responsibility, God is just trying to avoid taking the whole blame for making humans?

~ And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

Again with the creeping things. And back into the singular personal pronoun. God is supposed to have created an entire universe and He’s still shit at grammar? It’s obviously a manifestation of ‘omnipotence’ which excludes language skills.

Genesis 1 ends at this point, with the newly-made sun setting on Day 6 (which is really Day 3 if you’re talking about days actually being determined by the Earth’s orbit around the Sun) and we take up Genesis 2 with:

Day 7:

~ And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

God is so knackered from all that creatin’ that he’s done that he has to put his feet up. But people – HE’S OMNIPOTENT! Why the fuck does He need to REST? Does it occur to anyone else that this is pure unadulterated baloney?

Seriously, you can’t have it both ways – God is either omnipotent and can do anything he likes with no restriction, or HE’S NOT. You can’t be Almighty God and be ‘kind of’ omnipotent. Do Christian people who believe in the Bible never think about these things?⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾

Anyway, Week 2 continues on much as Week 1, with God creating man again (it’s there in writing, I’m not making it up) and straightaway telling him: ‘I’ve made all this stuff, but you can’t play with it unless I say so!’ – quickly assuming a petulant and vindictive tone that doesn’t let up for most of the Old Testament. Oh, He also creates woman too, pretty much as an afterthought, and not until after Adam has named every living creature on the planet (and after He has created them for the second time too):

~ And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

I imagine it to have gone something like this:

God: Hey look at this Adam. Whaddya think?

Adam: It looks like it should be called a ‘rabbit’!

God: Righty-ho! So it shall be! What about this?

Adam: It looks like it should be called a ‘spotted toad’.

God: Brilliant! I would NEVER have thought of that! What about this? I think this is quite good, if I do say so myself. And I do, often.

Adam: I think that should be called a ‘procompsognathus’.

God: Hahaha! Awesome. that should keep the Creationists on their toes! What about this?

Adam: Oh, I dunno. Er, a ‘wallaby’? No, how about a ‘squid’? Look, how long is this going to take? I’m kind of tired. I’m not omnipotent like some people.

God: Chin up, Skipper, we’re just getting started! Look at this! It’s really quite well crafted – I think you should call it a ‘sea cucumber’. But it’s up to you of course! Don’t let me sway you!

Adam: You really need a girlfriend. Come to think of it, so do I.

I don’t think I need to point out to you, faithful Acowlytes, that, as we’re in Week 2 with God still creating stuff, it kind of makes nonsense of the claim that He did it all in seven days. He quite explicitly did not. But for the moment I will leave God and Adam naming the siphonophores and the echinoderms, as we ponder what God has been doing ever since those first couple of enthusiastic weeks.

Mostly making a nuisance of Himself, is my opinion.

_________________________________________________________________________
Footnotes:

1. Satan or humans, typically [↩]
2. I’m reproducing all these verses from Genesis in order, with no excisions, lest you think I’m being partisan [↩]
3. God demonstrates his lack of omnipotence numerous times in the Old Testament. For instance, a few paragraphs from where we are in Genesis 2, after Adam and Eve have eaten of the Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, realised that they are naked, and so hidden themselves from God, He walks through the Garden of Eden calling out ‘Where art thou?’ Well, of course he already knows this, obviously, so it’s quite plain that he’s just being a bastard. [↩]

_________________________________________________________________________

Day 3 (cont):

~ And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

~ And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good

In other words, God made all the plants. And felt mighty pleased with himself. Then he remembered that maybe the plants would all DIE if they had no sunlight (at least they had plenty of water), so when he went home that night he obviously scribbled up a few ideas for the next day’s chores.

Day 4:

~ And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

~ And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

OK, so I just want to go over that. In the first verse it says God made some lights in the firmament, and then in the next one he made the sun and the moon and the stars. What the fuck is the person who wrote this smoking? If he made lights in the firmament, what were they if they weren’t the stars? And didn’t he already make light anyway? Where the hell was that coming from if it wasn’t from the sun or the moon or the stars?⁽ⁱ⁾

If these verses tell us anything, it is that God is very fucking badly organized. Why the crap didn’t he do the sun & the stars and so forth before he did the Earth? It’s like he was doing this for the first time or something. Oh, right.

Anyway, God set the sun & stars in place…

…to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

Here he is acting smug again, even though he’s royally screwed up Day 4. Can it possibly get any worse?

Day 5:

~ And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

~ And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

On the Fifth Day we find God creating winged fowl and whales. The most astute of you will have already noticed that God’s To Do List for Day 5 specifically describes ‘Birds and Fish’ and so again he has fucked up from the get-go by creating whales, which as anyone knows are mammals and not fish. As for the fowl, he has given them free reign to flap around the firmament, which, as we learned from the last installment he designated as Heaven. Yes, that’s right – Heaven is full of chickens.

Stay tuned to Tetherd Cow Ahead for Episode 3 of ‘What God Did’, where we find out what God got up to on Day 6, and examine in depth his obsession with ‘creeping things’.
_________________________________________________________________________
Footnotes:

1. Out of his ass is the obvious answer. OK, I guess if anyone can claim that the sun shines out of his ass, it’s God, come to think of it [↩]

_________________________________________________________________________

As Reverend of the Church of the Tetherd Cow, one of my many duties is to ponder the Big Questions of Life so that I may duly pass my received wisdom onto you, my flock of faithful Acowlytes. Recently, I found my mind wandering onto one of the biggest puzzles of them all – that of the Creation of the Universe. Specifically, the kind of Creation as taught primarily (but by no means exclusively) by those who advocate the Christian view of things.

In case your Sunday School lessons have receded a bit too far into the foggy haze of memory, here’s a quick refresher on how the Almighty got things under way:

In the beginning there was nothing at all. Except, self-evidently, for God Himself.⁽ⁱ⁾ This must have been deadly dull for dear old God. Imagine the most boring day you’ve ever had and then multiply that by ten gazillion. There wasn’t even so much as a crossword to fill in or some paint to watch dry. There was just a whole big heap of nothingness. Just God sitting in a chair, on his ass, wondering what to do with himself. No, wait, there wasn’t even a chair.

So God decided to bring the universe and everything we know into existence.⁽ⁱⁱ⁾ The conventional wisdom has it that he did this over seven days. Well, technically six, but more of that in a bit. This was the To Do list:

Day 1: Light.
Day 2: Separation of the Waters.
Day 3: The Earth
Day 4: The Sky.
Day 5: Birds and Fish.
Day 6: The Animals including Humans.
Day 7: Rest.

Day 7 wouldn’t count as a working day in any job I’ve ever had, so we can only assume God filled in His timesheet something like this:

But really, if you start to scrutinize God’s first week of work, some interesting questions arise…

Day 1: How long, exactly, does it take to create Light? It’s not like you can carve it out of something, or cobble it out of stuff to hand – there isn’t anything. So you’ve got to conjure it up from scratch. To you and me this sounds rather daunting but it is of course no real problem for God, since He is omnipotent. This means he could easily whip up a whole batch of light in a good 8 hour day. But waiddaminute… if he’s omnipotent, why spend a whole day on it? He could do it in half an hour. A minute. A second even. Just what was God doing all that first day? Is it possible he rocked up to work, zapped light into existence, grabbed a cup of hot java⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾ and then sat on his fat ass all day? Are you with me here? Alright. Then, the very next thing that happened was:^(iv)

~And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Whoa! Wait just one damn minute there Big fella! Everyone knows that night and day are the result of the earth’s rotation^(v), and the Earth doesn’t get created until Day 3, according to the List. What the crap is going on here pal? You’ve got days, but you ain’t got rotation! Or even a planet. How the heck does that work?

Day 2: To me, creating Light sounds pretty damn tricky, but that’s a snack compared to what God did next:

~ And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

~ And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

OK, now did you get that? It seems there was a lot of water (I don’t exactly know where that came from, because there is no mention of it actually being created, as such. The water was just there.) and God divided it into two portions, separated by a firmament – a sort of watery firmament sandwich. God then called the firmament Heaven. Just so you’ve got a visual picture here, there’s Heaven, with a whole lot of water above it, sitting in a whole lot of water. I trust that God made sure Heaven has good caulking.

Day 3:

~ God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

From here on in, there is no mention at all of the waters that float somewhere above Heaven. Like it doesn’t matter. What bothers me is if this supra-water was not important, then why bring it up it in the first place… What has it got to do with ANYTHING? And, as far as I know, we never again hear about this extra water in the whole course of the Bible!^(vi)

Well, I’ll leave you to ponder that until the next installment, when we will learn some more about the Creation of the Earth and then about the Sky, including the Sun and the Moon (Yes, yes – I know we have days already without the Sun being in place… if you think that’s daffy, wait till you see God make all the trees and plants and then the Sun. Talk about workflow inefficency.)

_________________________________________________________________________
Footnotes:

1. There may also have been a lot of water – see later [↩]
2. Why He did this all of a sudden is anybody’s guess. [↩]
3. OK, I guess he couldn’t have done that – he hadn’t created coffee beans yet [↩]
4. All biblical references are from the King James Bible, ‘cos I’m an old fashioned kinda Reverend and I don’t hold with these modern ‘interpretations’ of the Holy Bible where some joker has gone ‘I know God said that, but this is what he really meant’. [↩]
5. Anyone going to argue with me over that? No? I thought not. [↩]
6. Although I guess God had to get the water for the Great Flood from somewhere… [↩]

_________________________________________________________________________

I was browsing in a local shop the other day and I noticed a pile of these curious volumes. It looks like a book, right? But no, dear Acowlytes – it’s a cunning ploy to make you think it’s a book. It’s actually a box in which you can hide your valuables!

Brilliant! I’m going to get one of these tomorrow – it will totally solve my problem with illiterate thieving Creationists!⁽ⁱ⁾ And just to really screw with them, I’m going to hide all my fossils in it!
_________________________________________________________________________
Footnotes:

1. It will only work on the illiterate ones – the literate ones will spot the title blunder instantly [↩]

_________________________________________________________________________

A Tetherd Cow Ahead Public Service Post.

A little ways back I threatened to write something with the above title, and Cowpokes, that day has arrived! Using this handy guide whilst simultaneously stroking your lucky ShooWooWoo™ talisman will absolutely guarantee that you will never again run afoul of swindlers and mountebanks.

I don’t need to tell you that the aforementioned snake oil vendors have about a million tricks up their sleeves when it comes to separating a sucker from his cash, but fortunately, most of their chicanery settles into fairly well worn patterns. So. Let us begin:

1. There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

Most forms of flim-flam promise a quick and/or disproportionately large profit on the back of a small outlay.⁽ⁱ⁾ The mantra here must surely be: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

This seems to me to be so self-evident that it hardly bears mentioning, but plainly, a great number of people never develop the appropriate neural pathways to comprehend it sufficiently, even, it seems, after they’ve been burnt many times. If you obey this one rule alone, you’ll avoid falling into the clutches of most con artists.

Tetherd Cow Avoidance Advice: When you hear of something that seems like a remarkably good exchange, ask yourself what the other person stands to gain. If it’s your money or your soul, walk away.

2. It’s Not Rocket Science

Beware of claims that invoke ‘fuzzy’ areas of science, like quantum mechanics, magnetism, plasma, ‘energy fields’ and so forth. Particularly if used in conjunction with ‘feel good’ concepts like ‘environmentally friendly’ or ‘non toxic’.

The technique at work here is one of ‘blinding the sucker with science’. It typically takes the form of the scammer picking some kind of scientific concept that is tricky for the layperson to understand, and attempting to make it sound plausible in relationship to their product. We see mild versions of this in advertising, where white-coated ‘scientists’ talk about the scientific principles at work behind washing powders⁽ⁱⁱ⁾, but it really comes into its own in scams. Peddlers of nonsense as diverse as ‘electromagnetic’ pest control and ‘vibrational’ water just love to try and make you think that there’s science behind their wares – quite baffling, really, when the very same peddlers typically vilify scientists for ‘pretending to know everything’.

Tetherd Cow Avoidance Advice: Beware words and phrases that sound like they come from Star Trek.

3. Gurus are Bad News

People who proclaim that they can help you change your life for the better for a fee,⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾ almost always mean ‘better for them’.

There is a kind of person (among the most despicable of the despicable) who seems supremely adept at finding unhappy, lonely or damaged people and happily taking away their money (or their dignity – or anything else they can get their grubby mits on). Unfortunately, these kinds of crooks are almost always uncannily charismatic, and more often than not, intelligently cunning. They often have an innate understanding of brainwashing techniques, and many have even studied such methods for manipulating their victims. They appear to have no conscience, and if exposed, often take up their racket again at the first available opportunity.

Such people frequently claim to be in possession of ‘special knowledge’ imparted to them under supernatural circumstances. There is, of course, no effective refutation^(iv) of these kinds of claims, and that is leverage of considerable power for fragile or disenchanted people. Examples include:

•L Ron Hubbard
•Peter Popoff
•Rael
•The Pope

Tetherd Cow Avoidance Advice:Ask yourself what the most notable achievement of the guru is. If the answer is ‘Being a guru’, walk away.

4. Ancient Wisdom is Most Likely Past its Expiry Date

Just because something has history behind it, doesn’t mean it has logic or evidence behind it. This is a problem we find particularly, but not exclusively, with medicine.^(v) There is a strong belief among many people that ‘we were better off in the olden days’ because we ‘weren’t so technological’, the logical extension of that being that technology is a bad thing.

Now, while there’s a lot to be said for being careful about what we do with technology and the planet, there is no evidence that we were ‘better off’ in any quantifiable way before we had it.^(vi) Take vaccination, for instance. A dangerous idea that is currently doing the rounds is that vaccination is somehow a bad thing^(vii). The evidence is in fact quite to the contrary if you know even a little history and a little science. And yet, thousands of people are currently climbing on the anti-vaccination bandwagon to their own detriment, and ultimately to the detriment of us all. Equally worrying are 18th century notions like homeopathy, or folk wisdom such as that which dominates ‘traditional’ Chinese medicine.

In general, the bucolic and happy world of our forefathers is a shiny myth, and most people couldn’t even survive a month without running water, food delivered to their door, modern medicine and technological forms of shelter and transport.

Tetherd Cow Avoidance Advice: If you are tempted to think that the ancients knew all the answers, remember the last time you went camping. Now, imagine doing that for a year, but without the tent, the bug repellent and the single malt whisky^(viii).

5. Mother Nature Doesn’t Necessarily Know Best

(This is related to #4, but has some shades of difference)

Just because something is ‘natural’ doesn’t mean it is:

A): Better than something artificial, or:
B): Harmless.

There has been over the last few decades a vogue for ‘natural’ therapies of various kinds, the understanding being that something that comes from ‘nature’ must be superior to, and less harmful than, something created by humans.^(ix) This is plainly absurd for so many reasons. Sickness and disease (and indeed, death), are quite natural, so doing anything to thwart their process is actually interfering with a ‘natural’ process – whether you choose to chew a herb or have genetic therapy. How you determine the acceptability of ‘naturalness’ of the treatment must, therefore, necessarily be a subjective judgement. Aside from anything, you can quite easily damage or kill yourself with things found in the natural world – nature is as good at concocting lethal chemicals as humans. Better, even.

Tetherd Cow Avoidance Advice: Ponder on the established fact that, for the most part, people in countries with access to modern ‘unnatural’ medicine live for longer in better health than people in communities that rely on their natural surroundings for survival.

6. The Eyes Don’t Have It

Seeing isn’t necessarily believing. Human senses, and our ‘instinctive’ feeling for what is true or not true, is highly fallible. Ask any stage magician.

The human brain is a magnificent organ, but its capacity for being fooled is vast. If you think you’re far too clever for that, go watch this clip on YouTube. And that particular trick is a doddle – just factor in some self interest and watch the punters line up to throw their money down the toilet. In short, if someone tells you ‘I saw it with my own eyes!’ be aware that what they saw, and what they think they saw may well be two entirely different things.

The peddlars of woo^(x) are keenly aware of our bottomless capacity to be misled and have over the years tried on every psychological trick in the book and then some. The ol’ Shell Game is still very much in play.

This should not really come as any surprise. In this age, we are in the peculiar situation of attempting to survive in a world into which we have not so much evolved as found ourselves thrust. Our brains, pandering to eons of evolutionary imperative, make mistakes. Often. We should be aware of that fact.

Tetherd Cow Avoidance Advice: When you see something that looks like a miracle, before you get too excited, cast your mind back to when you were eight years old and Uncle Ben made a coin appear from behind your ear. Same thing.

7. Best Intentions Are Often the Worst Reasons

I call this the Canute Rule: A genuine belief in the illusion that you are peddling is no guarantee that it contains any truth. Be keenly aware that many purveyors of hogwash sincerely believe that their own particular brand of irrationality is efficacious.^(xi) In a way, these are the worst kinds of snake-oil sellers, inasmuch as it is almost impossible to sway them from their claims. Their interests are not just in the claim itself, but in their personal investment in the claim as well. To admit that they are wrong about their belief means an admission of gullibility into the bargain.

In my experience, numerous so-called ‘psychics’ fall into this category. These people fail to understand that their criteria for accuracy are so vague that they can fool even themselves about the magnitude of their ‘success’. And often, it may well be that they are completely genuine at heart. This does not make them right, nor does it make their advice helpful. Unfortunately, their sincerity is often the persuasive factor that convinces others to buy into their delusion.

Tetherd Cow Avoidance Advice: Look for the condescending look of pity when you question their claim. You’re obviously too damaged to understand, poor thing.

8. Third-Person-Removed Endorsements

Besides not necessarily being a reputable source, Glen or Glenda’s father’s best friend might not even exist. In fact, the odds are he doesn’t.

We’re all aware of the old ‘friend-of-a-friend’ phenomenon when it comes to urban legends. You know the deal: that story about the guy with the headless corpse on the car must be real – it happened to a friend of a friend of mine! This same phenomenon appears again and again in pseudoscientific claims. One place I’m sure you’ve heard it is if you’ve ever challenged a believer of homeopathy: ‘But my friend Wanda’s mother was completely cured of her her acne by a homeopathic treatment!!’ This kind of declaration uses two levels of obfuscation – the ‘friend-of-a-friend’ ploy and the appeal to a diffuse evidence base; even if Wanda’s mother does exist, and does endorse homeopathy, the reason for her acne disappearing may well have been due to some other medication or it may have even just cleared up of its own accord. But because Wanda’s mother is not actually here putting her case it’s instantly impossible to make efforts to get to the bottom of the claim. In legal terms, this is called evidence by ‘hearsay’ and is not admissible in a courtroom for very good and obvious reasons.

Tetherd Cow Avoidance Advice: Don’t bother arguing with someone who invokes the testimony of a third unpresent person. You cannot win.

9. Damned Lies and Statistics

Be very wary when someone calls on statistics or probability to support a questionable contention. It is a well known fact that nine out of ten people have problems understanding statistics.

Well, that was a joke, but you see how easily it slipped by. Seriously though, the human brain does not handle accumulations of numbers very well, especially when they appear inconsistent with ‘common sense’. An example of one such situation is the Monty Hall Problem, which we have discussed previously.

We see this kind of phenomenon in arguments advanced by Creationists, who have much difficulty grasping the vast amounts of time which evolution has been able to exploit, and in the claims of homeopaths, who are unable to understand the ramifications of dilution.^(xii)

Statistics and probability are useful mathematical functions and can bolster an argument very effectively if in capable hands. If wielded by untrained people, though, they usually just cause confusion and misunderstanding.

Tetherd Cow Avoidance Advice: Ask the claimant how much of his or her brain a typical person uses. If they immediately spout “10%”! You will know that in their case the number is probably right.

10. The Shell Game

If one of the above methods for spinning fantasy is successful, then it follows that combinations of two or more are even better! When it comes to irrational claims, there is nothing quite so effective as piling up the misdirection – the more complicated the flim-flam, the harder (and more exhausting) it is to counter. Most modern forms of trickery need to resort to more than one of the methods I’ve outlined here, in order to obfuscate their questionable status.

For example: homeopathy uses a combination of #4, #5, #8 & #9 (with #7 thrown in on some occasions). The Shoo!TAG phonies proffer elements of #2, #5 and #9 (I don’t for a moment believe that they can claim any #7). The Anti-vax crowd use #5 & #9, with a nice element of paranoia mixed in for good measure. Frauds like John Edwards exploit #3 & #6 mostly, but will typically resort to any of the above if it suits them.

Tetherd Cow Avoidance Advice: If in doubt, ask The Reverend. He will know.

_________________________________________________________________________
Footnotes:

1. The down-payment may not necessarily be monetarily small – a good example of this is ‘alternative’ medicine, where the treatments can in fact be outrageously expensive, especially given the actual expense being outlaid by the practitioner. In this case, the proportionate size of the return is based on the low impact of the treatment in the initial instance. For example: the moderate process of undergoing homeopathic treatment in contrast to, say, chemotherapy or surgery. [↩]
2. Detergent chemistry is seriously dull, and any advertiser knows that ‘dull’ is never going to move units. So the brainless ‘oxy-whiz’ and ‘ultra-brightoids’ that get invoked in these ads are just made-up nonsense. [↩]
3. And be cautious here – the fee doesn’t have to be money. [↩]
4. You can’t easily demand proof of an experience of this kind – the Guru will characteristically claim that the knowledge is the proof. [↩]
5. Most religions have this card in play. I submit that the only reason that Scientology is not more successful than, say, Catholicism is because it doesn’t have a couple of centuries of mythology behind it. Rationally speaking, there’s not a lot of difference between what Scientologists believe and what Catholics believe. [↩]
6. The concept of ‘technology’ being evil is, in itself, an absurdity as I’m sure you are aware – humans have had technology since one of our enterprising ancestors sharpened a stick to toast marshmallows [↩]
7. The rationale being that vaccination is some kind of Evil Plot concocted by the pharmaceutical companies to fleece us of our money [↩]
8. Oh, OK – they had the whisky. That’s why it was invented. [↩]
9. It’s logically stupid anyway, considering that humans are ‘natural’ so it follows that anything they do is also ‘natural’, even if it is to create something that doesn’t occur naturally. [↩]
10. I don’t much like that term, but there’s nothing else that encompasses all the facets of the exploitation of irrational belief quite so neatly, unfortunately [↩]
11. Even if they sometimes vocally belittle other irrational claims. It could be said that most modern religions including Christianity fall victim to this fantasy; how is it that your particular set of strange myths is true yet no-one else has that privilege? [↩]
12. Those who do understand the numbers have had to resort to advancing even more implausible mechanisms in an effort to explain how homeopathy is meant to work [↩]

_________________________________________________________________________

A local Chinese Restaurant. I’m not inclined to sample their wares.

If you’ve ever spent any time in Australia over Summer, you will have heard the unmistakeable shrill chirruping of cicadas. These noise from these insects can be so deafening that I’ve known Summer events to be forced to retreat indoors in order to escape from the ear-crushing sound pressure.

But they don’t appear every Summer. The life-cycle of the cicada (of which Australia has over 200 species) is interesting in that most of it (anywhere from 3 to 17 years)⁽ⁱ⁾ is spent underground. After this interminable period in the dark, feeding on nothing but tree sap sucked from a convenient root, the cicada climbs to the surface in crysalis form, breaks free of its drab brown shell and emerges in colours of emerald green, burnished bronze, buttery yellow and even polished coal black. It then makes its way to the branches of a leafy tree to commence a short (but cacophonous) period of mating and reproduction.

Except if it gets squashed in a sliding door.

1. In most cicada species this period is defined by a prime number. No-one is quite sure why, but it is probably to do with surviving predation [↩]

_________________________________________________________________________