So in Part I, we saw that Sam Harris, big-name atheist, claims psychic powers are being ignored by mainstream science, that speaking in tongues and reincarnation are worthy areas of scientific exploration, and nothing at all like religion. Also, meditation will make you a better moral person, in part because you see ‘lights’ and ‘bliss’ and so forth.

Remember boys and girls, before he started writing angry screeds, Harris was a grad student working in neuroscience.

Yeah.. that career wasn’t going far, I’d wager.

The more I read about Harris, the less serious he looks. Remember how he recommended (and still does, on his site) a book about Reincarnation? Wikipedia has a bit more on the ‘research’ of the man who wrote it, and how his work holds up when re-examined. Answer: not so well!

Sharada: Uttara Huddar was a woman in India who normally spoke Marathi. While in hospital undergoing psychiatric treatment, she began manifesting a personality called Sharada, who spoke in Bengali. Stevenson had recordings analysed by Bengali speakers, who disagreed among themselves about the subject’s fluency.[3] It cannot be ruled out that the subject may have learned Bengali earlier in life: both she and her father had a long-standing interest in Bengal, her home city had 1% native Bengali speakers, she had read Bengali novels in translation, and she herself had taken lessons in reading Bengali.[4]

…

Gretchen[6][8], an American woman named Dolores Jay who presented the life of a teenage girl in Germany while hypnotized by her Methodist minister husband. Stevenson reported that the subject was able to converse in German. Mrs. Jay did study a German dictionary at one point during the sessions, but Stevenson pointed out that she had already spontaneously produced 206 words before this event. Again Thomason’s reanalysis, while acknowledging that the evidence against fraud was convincing, concluded that Gretchen could not converse in German. Her speech was largely the repetition of German questions with different intonation, or utterances of one or two words. Her “German vocabulary is minute, and her pronunciation is spotty”.[9] When asked what she had for breakfast, she answers ‘Bettzimmer’, which is a non-existent word made up of the two words for ‘bed’ and ‘room’. Moreover she had some previous exposure to German in TV programmes and a “look at a German book”.

Wikipedia has other examples, those are just two of my favorites. Keep in mind, Stevenson only came up with 20 total, so that right there? 10% of the book Harris recommends. In the first case, the person had extensive exposure to the language before this ‘xenoglossy’, and the second? She couldn’t speak German, in any meaningful way whatsoever. Also, she watched German language tv. According to Wikipedia, those are some of the BEST, as well; in most of the alleged xenoglossy cases, they couldn’t ‘converse’ at all, just recite foreign language words like a bad dictionary, or a student in a tough spelling bee.

To compare, I bet I could pull off that much Japanese if you gave me a week with my anime collection, and I suck at language memorization (just ask any of my Latin professors).

Give me a break. Con artists of the world, might I suggest you pay a visit to Mr. Harris? It’s bound to be very lucrative.

Update: Uggh, looks like Carl Sagan might have bought into this stuff too, a bit.

In The Demon-Haunted World (1996), Sagan wrote that claims about reincarnation have some, though dubious, experimental support, arguing that one of three claims in parapsychology deserving serious study is that, “young children sometimes report details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation.”

Source, Wikipedia article on Stevensen, author of the Reincarnation book Harris likes

What precisely is so hard to understand, people? You die, you rot in the ground*. There’s just no plausible alternative. If you think you have one, GET SOME PROOF.

*(Or get reduced to ash, or eaten by birds in the desert, shot into space, what have you.)

Continues in Part II

So, the Cash for Clunkers program is apparently so popular that it ran out of cash.

This shocks me. Seriously. When I saw the stipulations on the deal, specifically the incredibly restrictive requirements for your old car to qualify as a ‘clunker’, I was shocked.

From Cars.gov:

How do I know if my car or truck is an eligible trade-in vehicle?

There are several requirements (but you also have to meet certain conditions for the car or truck you wish to buy). Your dealer can help you determine whether you have an eligible trade in vehicle.

Your trade-in vehicle must
have been manufactured less than 25 years before the date you trade it in
have a “new” combined city/highway fuel economy of 18 miles per gallon or less
be in drivable condition
be continuously insured and registered to the same owner for the full year preceding the trade-in
The trade-in vehicle must have been manufactured not earlier than 25 years before the date of trade in and, in the case of a category 3 vehicle, must also have been manufactured not later than model year 2001

Every time I think I’m cynical enough, the Democrats surprise me and show that I am not nearly jaded enough.

This is just an incredibly badly designed policy instrument. It rewards people for buying wasteful vehicles in the past, and actively punishes those who were more responsible.

A handy example: I wanted to trade in our second car, a 1995 Dodge Caravan. The only problem: it gets well over 18 mpg combined. I can’t give you the exact figure at the moment because the official fuel economy site is down, but it’s over.

So… if you were a selfish prick who bought a Hummer two years ago, you can cash in. Or an Excursion/Navigator, what have you. You’re eligible.

But my 14 year old POS van, which leaks fluid and burns oil, is too CLEAN. Which I’m sure must come as a relief to the watershed… or the apartment complex whose underground parking lot is now permanently scarred from the leakage.

Sigh.

A properly designed Cash for Clunkers program would have had, at a minimum, some standard method for depreciating cars. Everyone in their right mind knows that cars get dirtier and less efficient as they age. Evaluating a 10, 15, 20 year old car on its ‘New’ miles per gallon is fantasy akin to flying horses and elves. It’s just not credible.

Such a program would also probably have a provision decreasing payments for cars very recently purchased. Everyone has had time in recent years to see the price of gas, to learn about global warming, and to shop around for better options. The Prius is, what, 12 years old now? At some point, stupidity and selfishness have to have a negative incentive applied.

Instead, we get the exact opposite. There is no penalty for irresponsible purchases, for that shiny newish H2 you no longer want; there is also no allowance for the natural decay of aging cars. All they care about is the value, written on paper, for the ‘New’ MPG. Tell me: is there some magical car factory, somewhere, that is connected to 2009 by a portal through time, still making 1995 Dodge Caravans. No? THEN WHY AM I LOOKING AT THE ‘NEW’ MPG?!

There are two ways to look at this program: it’s either a submoronic implementation of bad policy… or it was designed to reward the selfish and the short-sighted who have come to regret their chrome-encrusted monstrosities.

Perhaps both.

Hat tip to Fire Dog Lake.

Welcome to another special edition of the HCT Cheese Blog.    Today’s entry is special for being the most expensive cheese we’ve ever reviewed here, priced at only $26.99 a pound (ouch!)

Read more…