Yesterday a man came up to my counter and noticed the advertisement we have for the seasonal flu shot. He scoffed at it and said, “You know, Australia just banned the flu shot today.”

I told him, “That can’t be right.

“I just read about it today, google it.”

He walked away fairly quickly so I couldn’t ask the simple question, Why?

So I googled it. And it’s all over the place!

The very first link I got on my search:

http://conversations.blackvoices.com/health/e3b526295de34889a47c736eb97bc909/australia-bans-flu-%20…/05610ce095194f98865b2e2508b07066

As you can see the very first paragraph shows a strong bias toward anti-vaccination. And those anti-vaxers and flu conspiracy folks seem to be clinging to this. The second link was more informative and less bias but less likely to be payed attention to:

http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/flu-vaccination-ban-goes-national-after-fever-convulsions-in-children-20100423-tglp.html

I suppose I’m pointing these out because I got a bit frustrated with that customer and my iphone googling just wasn’t fast enough to counter his “points”. After all, it wasn’t BANNED. It was stopped for young children in order to figure out what the Hell’s going on.

http://atheist-alliance.deviantart.com/blog/34192261/

If you can, please leave a comment about how irrationally wrong the movement is.

This really irked me.

(The next conversation is paraphrased but is written to the best of my recollection.)

He comes up to me and kicks of the conversation with, “when I was taking a philosophy class in school.  I raised my hand and asked the teacher a question.  I said, ‘fifty years ago, men who were gay would hide themselves.  They were ashamed and they didn’t want other people to know, so they didn’t tell anyone.  But now, they’re out and there’s a day for them to celebrate and be proud.  In another fifty years, what’s to stop people from marrying their dog?  There are people out there right now that want to marry their dog!‘”

I responded with, “Marriage is a binding legal contract.  Both individuals need to be able to understand and sign the document.  There needs to be a cognitive discourse between both parties.  That’s why a dog can never get married.”

“There are people right now that talk to their dogs like they’re their best friends in the world!  That has never happened before.”

“It’s been happening since the first domestication of the dog!  We’ve been talking to animals for the last 100,000 years!  As soon as we started using them as companions or workers…”

“No.  In fifty years, I guarantee there will be technology so you can talk to the dog.  What will stop a man marrying a dog, then?  Nothing.  I guarantee that a man marrying a man will become a man marrying a dog.  Fifty years.  I wont be surprised.”

“What about kids?”

“What about them?”

“Wouldn’t people want to marry children before animals?  There are more pedophiles then there is zoophiles, yet the age of consent keeps getting challenged!  It keeps going up!  It keeps getting older because we know, as a society, that there are ages that simply can not make deep, life altering decisions like marriage.  We know that it would be the more mature person taking advantage of the ignorance of youth.  Because there are more people out there that are pedo-pervs and will never be socially accepted enough to marry the objects of their affection (that CAN communicate their desires coherently), the smaller portion of people that want to marry a dog, or a tree, or an alligator (something that CAN’T communicate what they’re thinking) will never be given a second thought.”

Ok… so he didn’t actually let me get past the second sentence.  It’s basically what I wanted to say but he stopped me after “…challenged!” and said, “Jake, you rely on academia so much, academia will never make you wise.  Wisdom comes from seeing the world, observing how things are and knowing what will happen.”

I paused in shock out of how stupid that was, even for him, then said, “Wisdom doesn’t come from just guessing.  Which is what you do.”

I walked away.

I had on opportunity to go this year and didn’t due to conflicting work schedules. But, next time I hear of something like this, I will stand up there next to all these protesters – these geeks, dweebs, nerds of the ages (my people) – and I will hold my sign up high so all can read… “NoTimeForLife.net”!

And… I don’t know… I’ll probably put Jason on it or something.

On the other hand, and at the risk of alienating many of my readers, I do consider myself a Civil Libertarian.  One of the problems Libertarians have is that we don’t have a good spokes person… well… with the exception of Penn Jillette.  Most of the time we’re just shrugged off as complete nuts… which, we tend to be.  Or completely ignored as though we have no say in the political world… which we do, despite whether or not we know what we’re talking about.  Because both the Republicans and Democrats tend to make all kinds of crazy claims about Science, and Personal Liberties that don’t bode well against fact checking, I think our simple claims of “freedom-freedom-freedom” should be taken just as seriously.

Yeah.  You’re free to laugh us out of the running just as we’re free to laugh you out of a anything else.

The main point of this blog is, coming straight out of left feild, The Simpsons.  I am a HUGE fan of Matt Groening and his masterworks of “Life In Hell”, “The Simpsons” and “Futurama”, which is why whenever they get into politics I let it slide… as we all should.

My problem with The Simpsons is it’s Lisa heavy episodes.  Lisa is a very clever little girl (who should be about 27 right now counting from the age she was at when it first aired if there wasn’t a floating timeline) and she’s always portrayed as the persecuted rational thinker.  One of my favorite episodes involved finding the fossil of an Angel and another is the classic one where she becomes a Vegetarian (for reasons I don’t object to).  Yet in my observations Lisa tends to be a fairly irrational thinker.  I suppose we can all just say, “It’s just a cartoon” and let it go at that.  But this cartoon has been on for 21 seasons and has affected many of our lives growing up.  It may be that when she left the Christian church and went Buddhist, the original intent could have been with her just going completely “Skeptical Atheist” on everyone, after all, she does read Junior Skeptic Magazine, but the FOX network might not have liked that idea.

Instead she adopts a new religion and starts supporting New Age Woo such as Feng shui, Meditation, Herbal Supplements and I don’t recall if she supports Homeopathic remedies or not.  I was especially disappointed when she had a Tummy Ache and Dr. Hibbert said he “could prescribe some harsh antacids”… just prescribe what will work!  Don’t put it in such a negative tone.  Yet, I know, if they didn’t write that in, it wouldn’t pave the way to the Alternative Medicine Shop part of the story and Lisa learning her lesson about how people don’t always have to bend to her every whim.

Damn those writers and the way they take the wrong route to a good point!  I’m not saying all herbs don’t do anything for you, but have you read the claims made by MOST of them?  Alternative Medicine that has been proven to work, is called Medicine.  So, I’m a bit sad watching Lisa veer off into the world of the pseudo-scientific while still being portrayed as the smart, rational one.  They could have kept her as a highly inelegant political Liberal without going into all these “spiritual” pseudosciences.  It simply made her less credible while building on a Liberal stereotype that glows with idiocy.

On another note, Bart, the “dumb” brother, is a good candidate for a Libertarian mascot!  Wow?  It took all that ranting to get to this point?  Well, I thought I had to point out how Lisa is really the only one in the Simpsons with a highlighted political stance.

BART=Libertarian.  Seriously.  Let’s think about it for a bit:
Homer=Casual Republican,
Marge=Casual Democrat,
Flanders=Fundamentalist Conservative,
Lisa=Fundamentalist Liberal
and, let’s face it,
Otto=Green Party.

Bart seems to adhere to all the basic “laws” of Civil Libertarianism.  He enjoys the right to bear arms (sling shot), he speaks his mind which is why he tends to get in trouble a lot, he cares more about personal freedom than he does authoritative control, he eats what he wants, he plays where he wants (within reason), he appears to be the only one to be what I call a “non-spiritual Atheist” (who wouldn’t be with quotes like, “Church-Cult. Cult-Church. So we get bored somewhere else every Sunday”, “Ice cream at church? I’m intregued, yet suspicious” and “God’s words have never sounded so plausable”), and when he get’s older he’ll have a Ponytail… which seems to be a kind of theme in the Libertarian party.  Yet, despite all those things he loves to do and take advantage of doing, he never infringes on other peoples rights to do the same.  He does tend to borderline on Anarchism, but there is a clear difference between Civil Libertarianism and Anarchism… Nelson is an Anarchist.

He may be dim-witted.  He may act out and cause trouble.  He may even say something you don’t agree with as a form of social satire aimed at the right or the left.  He is clearly Libertarian.

It’s no wonder that when He and his irrationally smart sister get together to solve a problem, they get it done.  Then they just go back to making fun of each other.

As it should be in politics.  At least from where this ill informed brain is seeing things.

This time it started with the Oracle Octopus. It’s amazing! This thing can predict the outcome of the world cup games! (Comic here) He laughed… I laughed… we had a jolly good time until he says, “My girlfriend’s grandmother can actually predict the future. She has…” yatta yatta… fill in all the anecdotal evidence you’ve ever heard about psychics; everything from helping police to predicting a job change.

I debated with him for a long while. I told him about how none of these kinds of claims ever pass scrutiny. It’s mainly cold reading… – shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot – …Ignore the misses, praise the hits and justify if there were no hits.

He gave me the example, “What if someone were to come up to you and tell you… um… ‘Hey! You must be having car trouble! I can sense it.’”

I then replied to his example with, “I am! I don’t have a car.” (Which is true.)

“No, no, no,” he said. “This is just an example.”

“Right,” I said.

“So, ok. You’re looking for a car and this person comes up to you – someone you don’t know – and says, ‘I have a feeling that your cousin is going to offer you a car’”

“My brother offered me HIS car about two-three months back,” I said.

“Right… but… This is just an example.”

I then tried to explain to him that his “example” was perfect for my argument because without even trying he pulled off exactly what cold readers do all over the world. He gave me vague descriptions of things that may or may not be going on in my life. Chances are the someone you’re going to be talking to has a car and that car would be giving them trouble. Or in my case, the car trouble being that I don’t have one.

He gave me the Faith excuse and more anecdotal stories about moving and knowing things she shouldn’t have known and yeah… enough of that.

The debate didn’t stop at psychics. It went on and on and on to subject after subject after subject. All of which I required evidence to believe and he required faith.

One thing he told me is that he knows much more than me because I limit myself to the scientific understanding of the things in the world. He relies on faith, and just “knowing” things with his gut. It doesn’t have to go through all the scientific hoops, justifications, peer review tests and papers all the other things have to go through before he “knows” it’s true. Science moves slow, so does that mean that you can just fill in any answer you like?

No! You don’t believe things because you’re impatient and you don’t justify things that have been proven wrong with supernatural explanations! When something is Supernatural it is, by definition, not of the natural universe and therefore is not real! If the claim is that this supernatural… thing… is doing something, we can test its effects on what it’s effecting that’s within our natural world. If there is no effect, there’s no reason to think it’s there. If there is an effect, then suddenly, after test after test after test and scientific hoops, justifications and peer review papers, this “supernatural” thing… IS NATURAL!

Holy shit. Didn’t see that coming.

One of the most interesting things though, was his argument for the moon. He claims that the universe is in balance, and because of that balance, if the moon were to be torn away from our planet, it would cause a massive explosion!

Huh?

Sure, it would cause some havoc here on Earth if we just suddenly had no moon. But, an explosion?

“The moon is there to provide balance,” he would say. “It’s there for us.”

“No,” I would counter. “The moon is there, because it’s there, if we had no moon life on this planet could still be here. You’re arguing for a purpose when you don’t need to.”

“For example… the atom,” this might be interesting. “Atoms have electrons that orbit it. To make a hydrogen bomb, you take the electron and push it away from the Atom.”

“Causing a chain reaction.”

“Right… so, because the moon is orbiting the Earth in the same way. If we pull the moon it would be a massive explosion of energy! Killing everything!”

“But, the moon is moving away from us. Besides that, you can’t take physics in the quantum universe and just transpose them to the macro! It doesn’t work that way. There are two different sets of laws being applied here and several being considered for the “Laws of Everything”.”

We finish the discussion with him arguing that the quantum and macro laws are interchangeable because of the fact that electrons orbit the atom’s nucleus, the moon orbits the Earth, the Earth orbits the sun, the sun orbits the center of the galaxy and the galaxy (as well as all the other galaxies) is orbiting something else that we haven’t discovered yet.

I went ahead and pointed out that his logic failed after atoms. Electrons “orbit” atom’s, yes, but the Nucleus of those atoms don’t orbit anything themselves. If everything orbits everything then why don’t those? Why doesn’t the moon orbit the sun? It is after all the dominant orbital force in the solar system. Why doesn’t everything just orbit this massive thing in the universe you’re talking about? This, by the way, seems absurd because we’ve already determined the expansion of the universe, and not the rotation. If something were that massive in our universe, we would be sucked in and smashed more quickly than I can think.

“It’s not in our dimension,” he countered.

Can I slap him now?

This universe in a jar idea is continually being thought about. I don’t think of it as being possible. The laws within our own universe shows that it’s improbable that anything is smaller than what is known as a planck length, if anything is smaller it would be mathematically confused and constricted by the “quantum foam”. If there were beings that were vastly larger than our universe, looking at us, our existence wouldn’t seem possible to them because of the same mathematical constrictions and neither would the beings so far beyond them and so on and so forth.

They’re all turtles, all the way down.

I told him that I’m not opposed to the idea of a rotating universe (despite current observations) and if they were to ever discover this massive object that all the galaxies are orbiting around, I’ll go ahead and think of him because he knew it simply by faith and I rely on something that doesn’t move as fast as his faith; science. (His words)

Go check it out NOW! It’s so incredibly killer that… well… CHECK IT OUT!