Book Recommendation: Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief

If you want to see how to create a new religion in less than one generation, pick up this book:

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright

I live pretty close to Clearwater, passed by the Scientology base there many times, I have seen their tables with e-meters in the local malls, and years and years ago, when I was working around Times Square in NYC, I peeked into their center there as well. For many years, I assumed it was a harmless cult for people in search of some spiritual need, the ultimate meaning and purpose of life, something new and exciting in their lives. After all, isn't that what all religions give us? However, as I was learning more about this particular cult, I realized that its dangers exceed any other religions we are familiar with, due to its secrecy, extend of its influence on people, and pure lunacy of its beliefs.

Now, after reading Wright's excellent book, I have even more contempt for this crazy cult and its followers, especially those who seem to have "brains" to think for themselves, and just refuse to do so, because they are too invested (either psychologically, or financially) in something that is so blatantly crazy.

The book has basically three logical parts:

• L. Ron Hubbard's early years - his war "heroism", his science-fiction writing career and the beginnings of his methods of mind control.
• Hubbard's "public" years - the crazy voyages across the seas, the beginnings of the religion of Scientology, dealings with foreign governments, the first battles with the IRS, and finally his "disappearance" (real and metaphysical).
• Scientology under David Miscavige - the victory over the IRS, and the expansion of the church, especially into Hollywood.

While the book starts off a bit slowly, and the elaborate details of Hubbard's early life seem a bit boring, they do paint an excellent picture of the future cult/religion, and it's apparent success. Hubbard's personality and his imagination were instrumental in establishing foundations of Scientology. The history of the church under Miscavige is a different story altogether, which reads more like a good suspense, or crime novel, rather than an account of things that really happen.

"Going Clear" is not only an excellent primer on Scientology itself, but it is also a great study on how a new religion can be created in a very short time, given a charismatic leader, a few lies here and there, and a group of people with enough problems in their own lives, that they would follow anyone and anything like sheep. Scientology, along with the Mormon church, is the second "major" religion created in the last 200 years, with enough historical records to study this strange human behavior and better understand human needs for community and belonging, and how those traits can be used and abused by others.

I guess, the only complaint I have about Lawrence Wright's book, is its very ending, in which the author actually seems to be giving Scientology a free pass, by comparing it to older, more mature religions and implying that since most of us need some kind of religious affiliation in our lives, Scientology could, and should become just one of many religions, that guide us through our short and miserable existence.

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Breakthrough In Physics: Florida Figures Out Time Travel!!!

Yes, that Nobel Prize winning feast has been accomplished in Marion County, in Central Florida, where they are bringing back beatings in elementary schools.

Gradebook reports:

Marion schools bring back paddling punishment

As the Ocala Star Banner reports as well:

The board ruled that paddling can be used only if a parent gives a standing written OK once a year. In addition, the principal must obtain verbal permission at the time the punishment is handed down. Under the policy, corporal punishment can only be used at the elementary school level. It can only be used on a child once a semester.

I would giggle reading it, if it weren't a bit scary. It also made me double-check the calendar to make sure we are in 2013. So, I guess, they did figure out how to go back in time after all. Not very shocking, since that area of Central Florida is very "conservative", if you know what I mean.

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The Worst of Humanity

The worst of humanity comes out way too often. Columbine, 9/11, Aurora, Beslan, Sandy Hook, and now the Boston Marathon are just a few that come to mind when we think about evil acts that one human being can do to others. Some of those acts are unstoppable, as they come from the darkest corners of human psyche, some of them can be attributed to just plain craziness and mental instability and, as such, are even harder to predict and "control".

But should we give up and do nothing to protect ourselves, and our loved ones, just because it is almost impossible to predict the next act of terror, or the next deranged person who commits it? I don't think so. While removing all the danger is probably impossible, it is viable to limit access to the means of destruction and minimize the amount of damage that can be inflicted in our society, when a person, a group, or an entire country goes crazy (whether it is "real" crazy, or crazy for some ideology, is beyond this discussion). This is exactly why most of us agree that proliferation of nuclear weapons is not the best idea. We do not want a crazy regime (like Iran, for example) to loose their cool one day, and start nuking everyone around, even if it meant their own ultimate destruction. Totalitarian governments go nuts, and so do people, who can turn violent one day, without much warning.

In a western society that (most of the time) calls itself civilized and democratic, there is no need for individuals to posses means of killing others in large numbers. As individuals, we do not face threats greater that a single, evil or crazy person, and our means of defending ourselves should be adequate to such dangers. We also delegated personal protection duties to the society (in various forms: local, state, country, etc), as part of our contributions to this democratic and civilized society.

When individuals go crazy (again, call it crime, or madness, it is not relevant to this discussion, as it simply means taking that individual outside of bounds of our society), they should not have access to weapons that can kill scores of other people. Especially, weapons that are designed to do only one thing: kill many people quickly and efficiently. Evil people can always find a way, that's true, but we can make it as difficult as possible for those who just simply "flip". One way to make it difficult is to outlaw certain weapons (assault guns), make others difficult to obtain (especially for those who are already on the path to "crazy"), and control them all to some extent, so we have an idea where they are and how they are used.

Not doing that, and claiming that we are rational, intelligent beings, is immoral and just plain stupid. If we can take away the means of destruction and mayhem from evil and deranged individuals, but we refuse to do it for self-serving (money) reasons, we are showing the worst of humanity in all of us. The recent US debate about gun control (ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines, and the extension of background checks to all gun sales) made it more visible than anything else could. One after another, those common sense measures were scraped under pressure from powerful, money welding interests, without even voting for them, with the last one (overwhelmingly supported by the public) being defeated in a vote two days ago, by the following senators:

Alexander (R-TN)
Ayotte (R-NH)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Baucus (D-MT)
Begich (D-AK)
Blunt (R-MO)
Boozman (R-AR)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coats (R-IN)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
Cruz (R-TX)
Enzi (R-WY)
Fischer (R-NE)
Flake (R-AZ)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hatch (R-UT)
Heitkamp (D-ND)
Heller (R-NV)
Hoeven (R-ND)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Johnson (R-WI)
Lee (R-UT)
McConnell (R-KY)
Moran (R-KS)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Paul (R-KY)
Portman (R-OH)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reid (D-NV) (voted "No" for procedural reasons)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rubio (R-FL)
Scott (R-SC)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

Those senators went for the money, not the safety of us and our children. They decided that selling our peace of mind for their shady employment in Washington, is actually worth it. They showed us the worst of humanity, not because they did something illegal, but because they "rationally" and consciously chose to ignore morality and good of others. I don't expect much from my own Florida senator Marco Rubio, as he's been showing himself as nothing more than half-wit (the World is 6000 years old?) cynic (guns vs. immigration?), with no moral compass (please, don't bring his religion into it... it makes it even worse), but I was hoping that there are smarter and more decent people in the Senate. I was wrong...

As former representative Gabby Giffords said in her New York Times piece:

Mark my words: if we cannot make our communities safer with the Congress we have now, we will use every means available to make sure we have a different Congress, one that puts communities’ interests ahead of the gun lobby’s. To do nothing while others are in danger is not the American way.

Great idea! Let's vote them out next time we have a chance. They don't deserve to be any one's representatives.

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Relative Morality

My interest in moral dilemmas was "tickled" recently, when I had heard a religious person stating that "stealing a dollar from a rich person is not as bad as stealing it from a poor one". Now, my reaction to such a statement in any other setting would be to ask a few follow up questions, but in this case, what struck me the most is the fact that the statement came from someone, who would be the first one accusing others (especially non-religious) of moral relativism.

In my mind, if we do not have any additional information, the question is simple to answer: there is no difference, when you are stealing from poor, or rich. A theft is a theft and, since your actions cause harm (physical, or mental) to others, they are morally wrong. We can, of course, expand this problem, by introducing variables, like your own wealth, or your current situation (Les Miserables comes to mind), and such differences can considerably change the outcome.

In any case, the answer might never be as obvious as one would expect, but my surprise was not so much with the problem itself, but with the person who stated it and "solved" it using some pretty relativistic criteria.

To follow up, here are some interesting readings on various moral philosophies and dilemmas:
1. Moral Dilemma: Would You Kill One Person to Save Five?
2. Stealing from the Rich
3. On ethics, part I: Moral philosophy’s third way
4. On ethics, part II: Consequentialism
5. On ethics, part III: Deontology
6. Of trolleys and morality

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MLMs, Pyramids and A Hope of A Quick Buck

We have all been there... bombarded by hundreds of ads and commercials on how to make money fast, and, best of all, do it in the comfort of your own home. The salespeople make you feel guilty and stupid by showing off all the "successful" people who jumped in and made millions. MLMs, Multi Level Marketing schemes, or how I prefer calling them, scams, because after all those years, I still don't know anyone who actually made any significant amount of money out of them. That does not include those who set those scams up and profit from the people who fall prey to their marketing gimmicks and smooth talk.

I have seen Amway, coming and going in the early 1990s, then there was Herbalife, and numerous others, including some fancy "video e-mail/conferencing" in the mid 2000s, which seems to be making a comeback on Facebook in the recent months. For all of them, the idea is the same, but the math (and it's rather simple math) does not work, as you run out of potential customers very quickly.

However, there is always someone who's inventing new tricks to make money using old ideas.
As a good precaution, it's worth diving into this extensive article, published by The Verge, which explores the never ending variations on the good, old pyramid scheme:

Income At Home, Herbalife, and the $8 billion pyramid

It's also worth looking at some statistics on what is actually an average success rate for an MLM-type business:

The Likelihood of MLM Success

and, see the idea from a skeptical point of view:

MLM Watch

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Getting Hot and Uncomfortable

So, this is nothing new in my opinion, but the recent study on the quick and accelerating rise in global temperature is simply stunning:

Early Holocene (10,000 to 5000 years ago) warmth is followed by ~0.7°C cooling through the middle to late Holocene (<5000 years ago), culminating in the coolest temperatures of the Holocene during the Little Ice Age, about 200 years ago. This cooling is largely associated with ~2°C change in the North Atlantic. Current global temperatures of the past decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ~75% of the Holocene temperature history.

It's very bad news, especially for our kids, who will suffer most of the consequences of this global temperature rise, in the next hundred, or so, years. Check out this projection, from ThinkProgress:

Looks pretty ominous, especially because more and more scientists agree that the past projections were vastly underestimating the rate of temperature change, and now, it looks like we are in for a much bumpier ride.

Now, if you think all this has no immediate effects on your life, think again. If you complain of allergies, and most of the people I know do, you should thank our insatiable thirst for fossil fuels. A recent study (here is the CNN article about it, and the study itself - paid access required) showed that the amount of allergens in the air between the years 2000 and 2040 will increase dramatically. This will make us and our children feel more and more miserable.

So, the next time you'll vote for someone who's not willing to do something about global warming, or just flatly denies it, think back to the last allergy season, and realize that in less than 30 years it could get three times as bad if we don't come up with some solutions.

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More on Dr. Oz

Wow... Dr. Oz is really hitting the waves this week.

After a great article in The New Yorker, exposing Dr. Oz's bland disregard for facts and reality, as well as the real motivation behind his media persona (ratings, money and fame), he dives ever deeper into the abyss of irrationality and pure stupidity. Dr. Oz embraces and endorses homeopathy!

Homeopathy irks me more than other alternative medicine woo, simply because a few years ago I myself watched helplessly, while a homeopathic "doctor" milked hundreds of dollars from someone with no good outlook for improvement and with very limited resources. The money went into useless "interviews" that had nothing to do with the condition of the patient, and into even more useless, "custom-designed drugs" that did nothing (it was pure water after all).

I'm glad that there is finally some bad publicity Dr. Oz gets from the media. Maybe exposing his program for what it really is, an elaborate fraud, not to help people, but to stuff his pockets, will turn away some of his viewers. I'm not against stuffing your own pockets at expense of others, especially when they are willing participants (yes, I go to the movies, and sometimes I even pay to see a really bad movie). What's dangerous about Dr. Oz is the fact that he has positioned himself in a health care "edutainment" sector of the media, and by promoting dubious therapies and just pure intellectual junk, he endangers people who believe him.

In the meantime, there are usual places on the Web that do a great job analyzing Dr. Oz's homeopathic claims:

Orac: Dr. Oz’s journey to the Dark Side is now more than complete: It’s Oz and homeopathy versus science-based medicine

and

Science-Based Medicine Blog: Are You Ready For the Oz Manifesto

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Dr. Oz - The Smooth Operator

I am no fan of Dr. Oz. I've been watching (metaphorically speaking, as I can hardly take watching him on TV) his raise to stardom from Oprah's "America's Doctor" wonder boy, to his own TV show, and the beginning of his own Day TV media empire, and I see a scary, scary future ahead of us.

At first, I thought that Dr. Oz basically sells a very typical and widely known advice of good diet, exercise and less daily stress, heavily coated in nonsense of alternative and herbal medicine and, increasingly, in funky spiritualism and pure crap (examples abound). I do realize that just saying "eat well and exercise daily" is not going to sell well on TV, since most of us just want quick fixes for our problems. However, Dr. Oz's endorsement of unproven herbs, vitamins and modalities that belong in Middle Ages, not in the 21st Century, is more dangerous than useful. Dr. Oz is also a proponent of Reiki, which is basically a type of therapeutic touch, which was completely discredited by a 9 year old Emily Rosa years ago. So, there you have it... would you trust that doctor with your health?

I'm glad the mainstream media has finally started noticing. I stumbled on this great article from the New Yorker: "The Operator", written by Michael Specter (the author of “Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives”, which I also highly recommend).
There is a number of really good points in the article, but this one really shows what Dr. Oz is about:

Oz sighed. “Medicine is a very religious experience,” he said. “I have my religion and you have yours. It becomes difficult for us to agree on what we think works, since so much of it is in the eye of the beholder. Data is rarely clean.” All facts come with a point of view. But his spin on it—that one can simply choose those which make sense, rather than data that happen to be true—was chilling. “You find the arguments that support your data,” he said, “and it’s my fact versus your fact.”

His facts are driven by his popularity and how well his show is doing, not by objectiveness. That's why I would never trust neither them, nor him.

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New Year Resolutions

Yes, the New Year resolutions never really get done, or at least most of them don't, but it's still good to place some goals in front of ourselves to strive for better, more peaceful and reasonable world.

So, in the World that did not end in 2012, what's out there for me in this coming New Year 2013:
- keep the ridicule and doubt high, in the spirit of Thomas Jefferson:

“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them"

and

"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."

- follow one of the best advices I have ever heard, the one from Christopher Hitchens:

“What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.”

- finally, as Hippocrates said:

"There are, in fact, two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance"

All of the above can help us in making this "unreality"-based world, a better, more humane place to live.

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Final Post: Good Bye!

So, it's less than an hour before the December 21, 2012 is upon us, and, as we all know, our World will end soon. By the way, I assume the people in other time zones are toast already!

Therefore, I figured, some goodbyes are in order, to all who have ever ventured here...

I don't think we have any way out of this one, since the Mayan calendar (or at least its long count, known as b'ak'tun) ends tomorrow, and we all know how good the Mayans were with predicting the future. And if the Mayans don't get us (rightly so, for all the wrongs we've done to their great civilization), our own calendar ends just a few days later, so I do not think we'll see the light of day on January 1st, 2013.

Seriously though, click over to the Bad Astronomy blog and see why the World will probably NOT end tomorrow: Worried About the End of the World on Dec. 21? Don’t Be.

To those who still believe in this nonsense: please, send my your money, before you close down your bunker hatches!

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