Absolutely go and listen to Pseudopod #771 right now

Readers of this blog (if there are any, considering the paucity of posts recently) will be aware that I have narrated for three of the Escape Artists short fiction podcasts for many years. My British voice has been in demand for fantasy (I narrated the very first story for PodCastle — the fantasy fiction podcast) and for horror, at Pseudopod — the horror fiction podcast. Apparently I'm scary enough to impart the desired fright to stories of the night — and I'm glad to do so.

This blogpost, however, is not to tout the latest of my appearances, but to draw your attention to an episode of Pseudopod that I found truly wonderful. As a listener to Escape Pod, PodCastle, and Pseudopod, I've had my issues with some of the stories, with some of the narrations, and with some of the audio productions (as in, is it really that difficult to ensure that audio levels of the host and the narrator actually match?) — but today I'm here to tell you that Episode 771 of Pseudopod, "The Human Chair" by Allen Zhang and Edogawa Ranpo, narrated by Ron Jon is absolutely wonderful in every respect and you absolutely must go and listen to it right now. Absolutely.

Fitbit goes woo

As a Fitbit user I regularly get notifications to 'go Premium', which I ignore as I have no reason to pay for features I don't need. But if anything is likely to make me consider going in the opposite direction — that is, ditching Fitbit altogether — it's their latest embrace of arch-pseudoscientist Deepak Chopra.

And when it comes to the mind-body connection, there’s no one more knowledgeable than the pioneer of integrative medicine, Deepak Chopra. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce Deepak Chopra’s Mindful Method for Fitbit, our new partnership with the world-renowned well-being expert and founder of the Chopra Foundation, exclusively for Fitbit Premium members.

Fitbit Premium? No thanks. Deepak Chopra? Definitely not. 

Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.0/Wikimedia/Mitchell Aidelbaum

 

Wasteful Witnesses

This was sent to me, or rather to "The Householder", by post (2nd class) at my street address. I don't know a great deal about Jehovah's Witnesses but I can understand that the pandemic has limited their door-to-door activities. This handwritten card, however, seems rather wasteful of resources. It doesn't appear to be personalised in any way, so it could have been printed in bulk. What are the JWs trying to say with such a profligate squandering of their time?

Here's a larger version of the handwritten text:

No smoking here, dummy!

I'm retired now, but I can't help musing on certain things when I see them. One of those things I saw recently was on top of a partially built house in a new housing development near where my parents live. It was a chimney stack on top of a roof. Except the roof was as yet no more than flimsy timber trussed rafters. There was no actual chimney below the roofline to support the bricks-and-mortar chimney stack, nor any chimney breasts in the rooms further down. The stack, complete with earthenware chimney pot, appeared to balance unsupported above the uncompleted house as if hoisted wholesale into position. Which, I concluded, it probably was.

During my working life in architectural practice I came across fakes of various kinds, including plaster and glass-fibre pretending to be something else, and I've been against them on principle, despite many being such good fakes that without actual physical contact it wasn't possible to distinguish them from the real thing. My objection isn't based on how poorly they replicate the real thing, but on how well they do it. They do it so well that it's impossible, at a moderate distance, to tell that they are fakes.

But once you know such fakes exist, that knowledge devalues the genuine article. You see something that looks genuine, but is it? The existence of convincing counterfeits puts everything into question. Does this matter? In the grand scheme of things, probably not, but if you care about truth, it most certainly does.

So I now look at chimneys with a degree of suspicion. Nowadays of course, this also applies to news media.

From the Stormking website:

The Stormking GRP SmartStack dummy chimney applies the same principles of the Stormking GRP chimney that enhance the appearance of any building offering the builder virtually maintenance free product, with a traditional aesthetic look, but with the added bonus of incorporating a GRP lead effect plinth box and lead flashing detail, saving you time and money with installation. Whilst the chimney used to have a function to them in the past, today they are viewed as unnecessary features that add to the build cost but are required under planning restrictions.

Non-faith primary school caves to minority creationist pressure

This would be disgraceful enough if the school in question was a religious or faith school, but Hartford Manor Primary School in Cheshire is a 'community school', of which there are precious few available for children whose parents don't want religious indoctrination to be part of their education.

A cursory perusal of the school's website reveals no religious agenda (as it shouldn't), and yet in response to threats by a few creationist parents the school have cancelled a play about Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution. The National Secular Society have understandably made their objections to the cancellation clear:

NSS chief executive Stephen Evans said: "Schools should have the confidence to face down unreasonable parental demands. Objections to children learning about evolution – including the Church of England's historical hostility to it – clearly fall under this description.

"We're seeing a worrying trend of parents pressuring headteachers and threatening to withdraw children when teaching doesn't fit their, often narrow, worldview.

"Schools should broaden pupils' horizons and need to be supported to do that when faced with external pressure demanding that the education their children receive conforms with parents' religious views."

Be reasonable about near-death experiences

When I heard that the latest episode of Michael Marshall's podcast Be Reasonable would feature Eben Alexander I wasn't sure I actually wanted to listen to it. But it came up on my iPod while I was cooking dinner this evening, so out of simple inertia I listened. And it confirmed my previous opinion of the neurosurgeon who claims to have been taken on a tour of Heaven while in a coma:

1. Neurosurgery is to neuroscience as gardening is to botany, or as plumbing is to fluid dynamics.
2. Despite being a neurosurgeon Eben Alexander doesn't understand the scientific method.
3. Near-death experiences (NDEs) are evidence of being near death, but not much else.
4. Presumably writing books that pander to spiritual yearnings is more profitable than neurosurgery.

Alexander's claim that consciousness is independent of the brain is an idea also propounded by Rupert Sheldrake, with a similar lack of actual evidence for it (and a whole lot of evidence to suggest the opposite).

I've blogged about NDEs, and Eben Alexander, and Rupert Sheldrake before:

http://www.evilburnee.co.uk/2011/02/near-death-experiences-are-evidence-of.html
http://www.evilburnee.co.uk/2013/09/chris-french-bites-his-tongue.html
http://www.evilburnee.co.uk/2014/06/heavenly-confirmation-bias.html
http://www.evilburnee.co.uk/2012/01/woo-or-no-rupert-sheldrake-on-bbc-radio.html

Incidentally NDEs featured on this morning's Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4, unsurprisingly as if they are good evidence of an afterlife.

Whither the atheist movement?

James Croft on atheism and the alt-right:

Since my earliest involvement in the movement, it has been clear that movement atheism is concerned more with offering a response to religion as it is with crafting a positive atheist identity. It is, in large part, an oppositional movement concerned with the limitations and predations of religion, drawing its energy from the many outrages perpetrated by religious organizations and individuals.

Continue reading at James's Patheos blog, Temple of the Future:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/templeofthefuture/2018/04/the-atheist-alt-right-connection/