Prose and Kaa

I make no secret of the fact that I can't stand most people. Not you, of course; I'm talking about them.

 

I'm in Las Vegas for TAM, an annual meeting of skeptics from around the world. Vegas gives me lots of examples to illustrate my problem with people.

 

The buffet opens at 8:00 am on Saturday. I know this because I saw it on the huge sign that said "Saturday/Sunday Brunch -- 8:00 am - 3:00 pm."

 

When I went down for brunch, it was 7:34 am. No one was in line. I decided, "Eh, why not? I got nothing better to do for 26 minutes." So I got in line.

 

Immediately, people got in line behind me, as though they were waiting for a catalyst.

 

And what did every single person ask me when they got in line behind me? That's right! "What time do they open?"

 

I'd like to point out once again that I was standing right beside a huge sign that answered their question.

 

Then, they'd look at their watches and sigh. And about half of them walked away, grumbling under their breath about how they didn't have time to wait that long.

 

So, let's get this straight: you'll sit in front of slot machines for hours feeding them coin after coin after coin for hours, but a 20-plus-minute wait for breakfast is where you'll draw the line? Interesting.

 

Then we have the people who approached the buffet, walked past the line of people waiting to get in, cut in line in front of me and asked the cashiers, who were getting things ready, "What time do you open?"

 

Alternatively, those same people who walked past all the people waiting in line would then walk into the dining area and act stunned when they were then told, "We're not open, yet." What in the actual fuck did they think all of us waiting in line were doing, exactly?

 

Then came the pièce de resistance. A woman dressed in very nice cream-colored business clothes and a name plaque barged in front of the line and said, "I have a large party of six."

 

When told, "We open in 15 minutes," she said, "Can't we go ahead and be seated? I have a large party."

 

The cashier said, "Ma'am, we aren't open, yet. The line is over there."

 

The woman huffed off. A minute or two later, she comes back with a guy in tow. Once again she wants to be seated. Once again, she is told to wait in line. Once again, she huffs off. Finally, she comes back again and ends up convincing the cashiers that she will wait in line, but her party will wait in a separate line.

 

Grinning, she hurries off. Soon, five people, all in business clothes, break in line in front of me and are told, "No, your line is over there."

 

They go and instead of standing in their own, special line, they barge into the dining area, and have to be told, again, to form their own separate line.

 

And people wonder why I hate people.

I just sent this via their web site.

It has recently come to my attention that American Airlines intends to air an interview with a woman named Meryl Dorey who is associated with an Australian organization called The Australian Vaccination Network. In spite of its name, the organization provides no solid, scientific information about vaccinations, but is instead dedicated to preventing people from vaccinating their children. Ms. Dorey is an HIV denier and also believes that doctors lie and poison babies.

It is an extremely dangerous organization that has come under serious scrutiny in Australia. Her claims have been proven false time and time again.

Given that last year, 100 AA passengers had to be tracked down, and more than two dozen quarantined, because a child infected with measles was brought on a flight, I don't see how you can, in good conscience, even consider airing such a thing. It is providing your passengers wrong, dangerous information.

I must therefore say that if you do air this interview, I will no longer consider American Airlines a safe alternative for travel, and will make sure that all my friends and relatives know why.

By propagating anti-scientific, anti-vaccination propaganda, you're making the problem worse, not better. Please reconsider your decision. I've never had reason to complain before now, but I feel VERY strongly about this issue.

Thank you. I hope AA will do the right thing.

Probably won't do a bit of good, but I mean it. If they air this pack of lies, I will no longer travel by AA.

For more information, read the Bad Astronomy blog. Don't let the name fool you: Dr. Plait defends all of science, not just astronomy. And anti-vaccination is bad science.

Last week, I packed my bags and went to Las Vegas for five days. I don't gamble. I don't drink. I don't smoke. And I had no intention of partaking of the other thing that's legal in Nevada that some people look forward to when they go to Las Vegas.

So why the hell did I go to Las Vegas? To attend The Amazing Meeting 9, also known as TAM 9 From Outer Space.

The Amazing Meeting or TAM is the annual conference of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), a group of educators, magicians/entertainers, scientists, etc. whose mission is to promote rational thought in our irrational world. This was my first one.

The first TAM was in 2003 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where the JREF was based at that time. It quickly outgrew the modest space and has since been held in Las Vegas, most recently at the Southpoint Hotel Casino and Spa a few miles south of The Strip in Las Vegas, NV. There have also been TAMs held in London and Australia. There have been cruises to the Bermuda Triangle, Alaska, Mexico, and the Galapagos Islands. All of them have been very successful.

Basically, it's a place where a lot of skeptics and freethinkers from all over the world and from all walks of life can come together for four days and make friends, learn, and just hang out. <irony alert>In one of the world capitals of irrational thought. :)</irony alert>

This year, there were 1652 of us in attendance.

One of the many things that skeptics take seriously is public outreach. We do it in many different ways. Some use blogs, others use podcasts, some create websites . . . it just depends on your personality. Still others are very public about their skeptical, rational outlook. These include people like James Randi, Banachek, Jamy Ian Swiss, Penn Jillette (all magicians); Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Dr. Phil Plait, Dr. Lawrence Krauss, Dr. Pamela Gay (all astronomers and/or (astro)physicists); Adam Savage, Bill Nye (The Science Guy), Julia Sweeney, George Hrab (entertainers/muscians); Derek & Swoopy, DJ Grothe, Richard Saunders, Chris Mooney, Dr. Steve Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Evan Bernstein, Rebecca Watson, Blake Smith, Ben Radford, Dr. Karen Stollznow, Brian Dunning, Robert Price, Joe Nickell (all podcasters); Sean Faircloth, Daniel Loxton, Dr. Richard Dawkins, Jennifer Michael Hecht, PZ Myers, Dr. Richard Wiseman, Dr. Ginger Campbell, Dr. Rachael Dunlop, Ben Radford, Greta Christina, Michael Shermer, Dr. Eugenie Scott, Jennifer Ouellette . . . I could go on and on and on for a good, long time naming people whose names are household words to me, but most of whom the average person has never heard of. Which is tragic.

One of the big issues right now with the skeptical movement is vaccination. When children are vaccinated, it helps protect them (vaccinations are not 100% effective, and there is a small chance of adverse reactions: absolutely no one in the skeptical community has ever claimed that this is not true, regardless of what you might have heard) from a host of terrible diseases that used to kill thousands of vulnerable people annually.

( I'm going to get serious )

Fun fact: Did you know that adults need to get boosters for some of these childhood diseases? For TDAP, it's about 10 years. Why? Because it's not about you. It's about other people, especially children too young to get the vaccination.

So when I went to TAM 9 and they announced that for one day, they had free TDAP vaccines, I jumped out of my chair and went to stand in line, missing the rest of the panel that was very interesting.

The line was out the door and about 30 feet down the hall. I waited.

Eventually, I got the shot in the arm, got a sticker (A STICKER! YAAAAAY!), my picture made with a toy bear, and a certificate saying I got the vaccination. I believe the final count was 305 people who got the TDAP vaccine.

I mentioned this on Facebook.

And got, "Why?" a lot. "Why did you get TDAP?"

Brennan. Seth. Jonah. Nathan. Suzi. Penelope. Nicholas. Caleb. Elias. Kathryn. Julian. Luna. Liliana. Annabelle. Fisher. David. The as-yet-unborn children of two of my coworkers. Those are who I got the booster shot for. I may never lay eyes on many of these children of my far-flung friends (and I know I left out a lot of my friends' young children, and I apologize profusely, but a lot of you don't post their names and . . . I just didn't have the time to research), but on the chance that I do, how terrible would it be to pass on a terrible disease because I didn't do something that took literally 20 minutes and a few days of pain in my arm?

So does that answer the question in a way that everyone can understand? If you don't like "because I wanted to," or "to counteract the stupidity of the anti-vaxers," or any of a number of other very good reasons, does this make it abundantly clear?

Hi, all. It's me, Skippy.

I love the mindset of UFO believers. Think about it: beings from another star travel quite literally trillions of miles across the treacherous vastness of space, possibly breaking the laws of physics, to come to Earth, an insignificant little speck of a place orbiting an unremarkable star.

And after they come all that way, what do they do?

1. Crash.
   
   

   So, let me get this straight. They came at the very least 50 or 60 light-years. They either did so in many generations or somehow managed to harness enough energy to propel their ship at relativistic speeds (so they would age a little while dozens or hundreds of years went by in the universe around them) or broke the laws of physics and got here basically instantaneously. And beings who have this high level of technology then enter Earth's atmosphere and can't handle it? Or crash into a windmill and lose control of their craft? And while we're using logic, what makes us think they'll think anything like us, look anything like us, or be able to breathe our air or eat anything that evolved on Earth?



2. Kidnap drunk rednecks for anal probing.
   
   

   I'm not even sure this rates a comment.



3. Cut chunks off cows.
   
   

   I've had some very tasty beef in my day. And it was worth driving a half-hour to get to a really good restaurant, or marinate and grill it myself. I don't know what you'd have to be high on to have the munchies bad enough for a trip that far. Not to mention that if they're seriously coming from another star to cut tongues, eyes, lips, udders, reproductive organs, and rectums off of cows, I have a bridge I'd like to sell them. No, seriously. Send them to me.



4. Draw pretty pictures in fields of grain.
   
   

   Because these technologically advanced, incredibly bored aliens like nothing more than to do the equivalent of drive from Nuwuk Lake, Alaska to Lago Navanno, Argentina (look 'em up!), get out of their car, and vandalize grain fields with alien graffiti. You gotta be druuuuuunk to do something like that.

Well, from this, we can conclude one thing unequivocally: if they have, indeed, visited Earth, as many UFO believers fervently claim, clearly they are interstellar frat boys and Earth is Fort Lauderdale.

Drunk, high, the munchies, and pulling asinine pranks? I'm just sayin'...

And that stuff they're making in the fields of grain? Obviously the equivalent of ΩΔΞ.

Frankly, I'm getting fed up with most of the media. I no longer have cable TV, but when I visit my mother, the TV stays on one of the three main news channels (CNN, Fox, MSNBC) when it's not on Food Network or Tru. (Food and Tru are our 'neutral ground' channels. :) So I hear bad journalism until I just can't take it anymore. And if I make the mistake of reading news online, I usually encounter the same lack of journalistic integrity and it makes me cringe. So I thought that since it's obvious no one is teaching this stuff to journalism majors, I should take it upon myself to do it.

1. Sometimes, there aren't two sides to an issue.

"What?" you may be asking yourself right now. But seriously, it's true. There are occasions when there is only one side, and there are occasions when there are many sides.

When writing (or filming) a story that is based on scientific findings, for instance, you do not have to look up every kook in your little black book of sources to find the one nutjob who has what you'll undoubtedly try to convince the audience is "an opposing viewpoint." Unfortunately, this all too often has the effect of equating valid, sound scientific theory with something completely insane that some idiot pulled out of thin air.

Let's say NASA released a report that showed there was water ice at the poles of Mars and that there is evidence that it has been liquid in the very recent past.

What you should do: interview the NASA people making the claim, talk to some exogeologists who understand the conditions on Mars, read and familiarize yourself with the actual findings, and try to find a way to explain it to your lay audience so that it's not long-winded and boring.

What you should do if the scientific community is genuinely divided:¹ interview proponents of all the major camps, familiarize yourself with the actual findings, and then present the story in such a way as to make it clear which theory (or theories) has the most support and so on. There's probably no such thing as an even division in science unless the discovery is new. A decent "recent" example might be the discovery of the "hobbit" skeletons on the island of Flores (Homo floresiensis). Scientists at the time were casting about for possible hypotheses to explain their small stature and whether they were recent or ancient. No consensus had yet been reached, so any well-written report would have had to show that and note that theory X was favored by the majority, but theories Y and Z also had significant proponents.²

What you should not do: interview the NASA people making the claim, then find some way-out-on-the-fringe wacko who is convinced that Hitler clones have been bred on Mars by Nazi scientists and are merely waiting for the signal to invade Earth. Then present them both as though they are equally valid "theories."

What you really shouldn't do: interview every idiot with a conspiracy theory or delusional belief that there are aliens on Mars, then talk to the NASA scientists, then edit the story so that 95% of the article/show is the idiotic/delusional nonsense, then toss in a sound-byte at the very end from the NASA scientists, generally refuting alternate "theories." (This is usually accompanied by a knowing, superior smirk on the face of said scientists, because they can't believe anyone is actually stupid enough to take the nub-job seriously.)

2. Asking questions without answering them (or asking questions that have no answers) is not journalism; it's manipulation, plain and simple.

Here's the end of a recent article about Joe Scarborough that appeared on a blog called Talking Points Memo:

But it makes us wonder: Did Scarborough, planning a run for Congress from a deeply socially conservative Florida panhandle district, sought [sic] to get involved in the Griffin case as a way to associate himself with, and build support among, the anti-abortion movement? In other words, was Scarborough's political career launched in part by exploiting the dangerous strain of right-wing extremism that views the defense of an accused killer of an abortion provider as a cause celebre?

At the very least, it's worth asking...

Um, no. No, it isn't worth asking. What you've done here—and let me be absolutely blunt—is to ask leading questions in a deliberate attempt to manipulate your readers / viewers into being left with the impression that there's more there. In reality, your research—assuming you did more than look it up on Wikipedia—didn't turn up any evidence to support your claims, so you just decided to ask the question to slant your audience's opinion in the direction you wanted them to go. If a lawyer tried to pull this crap in court, there would be a loud and indignant objection from opposing counsel, and rightfully so.

You have no idea how long I've been waiting for a specific, clear-cut example of this to turn up somewhere I could link to.

3. Propaganda isn't "journalism."

Let's say you're writing a story or filming a news segment about the economy. You have your own opinion, which is that we're all going to Hell on a crowded express elevator. So you contact a number of economists and pose the same question to them: "Where is the economy headed?"

Let's say 33.3% of them say "It will make the Great Depression look like a Presbyterian bake sale." Another 33.3% of them say "Every indication is that we're starting to pull out of the nose-dive." And 33.3% of them say "It's holding steady, with no definite trends in either direction, so it's hard to say." The remaining .1% either had no opinion or didn't answer their phones. :)

What you should do: write the story / edit the film segment in such a way as to represent what the economists actually said. Sure, it wasn't what you thought, but as a journalist, your job is to report, not to preach.

What you should not do: write the story / edit the film segment to highlight only those opinions that support your own opinion (this is a logical fallacy called "cherry picking"), giving little or no attention to those that did not agree, or attempting to discredit them. However you rationalize it, you're no longer reporting; you're propagandizing.

What you really shouldn't do: ignore the economists who didn't agree with your pre-formed conclusion and write the story / edit the film segment to say something like "I asked several prominent economists where they thought the economy was headed, and this is what they said," and then use only the clips that support your foregone conclusion. This is called "stacking the deck"; selecting only the bits of research that support your claim while ignoring all the ones that do not.

4. Word choice means everything.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: it's extremely difficult to keep bias out of your writing. For instance, if you've read my footnotes, you'll have noticed that I (deliberately) used the term "ID-iots" to refer to proponents of Intelligent Design. I also tacked "Creationism" on after the term. By doing so, I clearly state where my sympathies lie. (Not that there was any doubt, of course.)

But I could do it in so much more subtle a way, if I wanted to. Want an example? How about the way the media reports any story having to do with the issue of abortion? Here are two sentences that say the same thing, but are biased differently.

On one side of the entrance to the abortion clinic were peaceful protesters bearing signs and chanting 'Abortion Is Murder!' while on the other, burly escorts furtively rushed patients past the protesters.

On one side of the entrance to the OBGyn clinic were a mob waving signs and shouting 'Abortion Is Murder!' while on the other, volunteer escorts protectively accompanied patients past the protesters.

Those are fairly crude and certainly a bit heavy-handed with florid adverbs, but I wanted it to be to demonstrate how the choice of a few words could change the entire tone of essentially the same story so that the author's bias is represented, but never openly stated.

"Peaceful protesters" vs. "a mob of picketers." The first implies that there was no violence while the second one connotes a sense of menace. By the same token, "peaceful" could still mean that they were shouting things; just in a non-threatening way.

"Abortion clinic" vs. "OBGyn clinic." While both are factually true, one highlights what's going on there and the other downplays it.

"Bearing signs" vs. "waving signs." Bearing is passive; waving is active. It (not-so-)subtly connotes the opinion of the writer about the group.

"Chanting" vs. "shouting." Chanting conjures images of monks praying in Latin while "shouting" connotes a much more unruly, emotional act.

"Burly escorts" vs. "volunteer escorts." One highlights the fact that the escorts are clearly meant as bodyguards and the other underplays that by pointing out that they are donating their time without compensation. They may, indeed, be burly, but the second sentence doesn't mention that.

"Furtively rushed patients past" vs. "protectively accompanied patients past." This is where I got really heavy-handed. :) The words "furtively" and "rushed" together connote that what the escorts are doing is shady and underhanded. But "protectively" and "accompanied" imply that the picketers are dangerous and that the patients needed protection to get past them.

What a journalist should do is attempt to keep opinion to him/herself as much as possible.

On one side of the entrance to the OBGyn clinic where Dr. Smith also performs abortions were a group of protesters—many of them holding or waving signs—loudly proclaiming 'Abortion Is Murder!' in unison. On the other side, volunteer escorts from Townsville University's football team accompanied the patients to the door.

That's probably still not quite right, but I'm not a journalist. :) I'm a ranter who diatribes with the express purpose of underscoring the negative aspects of the thing I'm ranting against while simultaneously underplaying anything negative about my own 'side.'

All that being said, it's clear that none of the anchors on the news stations fit the bill. TV news is much more about entertainment than actually relating what's going on in the world.

This is why my mother watches all three channels; she likes to get three different reports about the same story, average them, and hope that somehow, something similar to what actually happened might lie at the intersection. It's telling that the shows that get on my nerves quickest (on any of them) are the ones that consist of talking heads yelling and screaming at each other. It's great for ratings, I'm sure. But ratings is about entertainment, not journalism.

We just have to hope that the print journalists will find some way to bridge the gap left by the "infotainmentization" of TV news.

Lest you think I'm being a big ol' hypocrite, I freely admit that writing the supposedly less biased sentence up there took me a half an hour because I kept wanting to point out the unruliness of my fictional picketers. :) And of the shows that my mother watches, I just can't stand Bill O'Reilly, Nancy Grace, or any show with Ann Coulter in any capacity, but I love Rachel Maddow, Kieth Olbermann, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert. Yes, the latter two are on Comedy Central, but it's so satisfying to watch them lampoon everyone, I'm filled with delightful schadenfreude every time I watch.

I'd also like to point out that if there is genuine one-sided behavior, then it should be reported that way. For instance, in my fictional situation above, if the burly bodyguards punch or shove the protesters aside and they're not doing anything wrong, then report that. Or if the protesters block the path and shout nasty things at the patients, that needs to be reported, as well. I'm talking about cases where the only real meat in the story is manufactured by the word choices of the journalist in question.

This is also why I get amused reading LJ during any sort of political fray, because I see the same incident as told through the viewpoints of my right-wing friends, my left-wing friends, and my centrist friends, and I often wonder if they were all watching the same event. :)

Hm. I think I've edited this enough times. I'm probably forgetting some really amazing point I wanted to make, but I'm too tired to see it.

---

1. And by "genuinely divided" I'm not talking about the "division" between the 99.999% of scientists who understand evolution and the 0.001% who believe in Intelligent Design Creationism. That is a manufactured controversy (manufactroversy) perpetrated by gullible media and ID-iots with an agenda. A genuine divide might be something along the lines of the schism between paleontologists who think the Chixchulub meteor impact alone caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and a very high percentage of life planet-wide and the paleontologists who think the meteor strike was but one piece of bad luck in a string of catastrophes that brought about the extinction over a much longer period of time. You're yawning right now, aren't you? That's why the media likes to create controversies where there aren't any: the real ones are so boring, no one would care. Plus, scientists don't generally yell and scream at each other, but add a devout ID-iot into the fray, and it's like Jerry Springer within minutes.
2. Note that I did not use the recent fossil named "Ida" as an example. This was by design. There was practically no argument among scientists in the archaeological/paleontological fields about what Ida was and what she represents. It turned into a media circus, and almost every one of the news reports (that I saw) got it dead wrong.

Hey, everyone! Your friendly neighborhood Skippy, here!

Here's a tip for homeopaths who want to have a keg party, but don't have the fundage for a keg:

1. Fill a bathtub with water. To the brim.


2. Add a single drop of the beer of your choice.


3. Agitate the water to mix the drop of beer with the water thoroughly.


4. Drink up! It may not taste like beer, but it'll have the same effects!


5. When the tub only has a few drops left at the bottom, fill it back up with more water.


6. By the principles of homeopathy, each subsequent tub full will be more powerful than the last!


7. By the 8th or 9th tub full, you should be able to get passing-out drunk with only a single sip! But make sure you agitate after each refill!

Caution: Make sure not to accidentally mix anything else into the water. *wink* *wink* By the principles of homeopathy, anything you mix in the water gets more powerful with each dilution!

Try the same technique with champagne (for wedding receptions)! Bourbon! Chocolate milk (for kids' parties)! Cyanide-laced Kool-Aid (for creepy religious cult gatherings)! The possibilities are as endless as the gullibility of anyone who uses homeopathic remedies!

Disclaimer: Neither Skippy nor kaasirpent can be held liable for driving breweries out of business. Or for any resulting water toxicity for anyone gullible enough to take this post seriously.

Skippy and I have a favor to ask of you.

There is a new TV show in the works. It's called The Skeptologists. Here's a very brief teaser trailer.



The executive producer/host (Brian Dunning, host of the Skeptoid podcast) is trying to show potential networks that there is interest for this kind of thing. He's trying to collect 50,000 emails asking for the show to be aired. If you would like to help out (please, please, please help out!), send an email to skeptologists@newrule.com and merely say something like "Please put The Skeptologists on the air," and sign your name. The email addresses will not be used for any other purpose (remember, this is a skeptic, not a spambot), but if you can't bring yourself to believe that, use a throw-away one from Yahoo or sneakemail or something like that.

Mine said "Please put The Skeptologists on the air. Television is suffering from an overabundance of stupidity, and we need some rational thinking to balance it out."

Stars of the pilot include Dr. Michael Shermer, publisher of "Skeptic Magazine"; Dr. Steven Novella, president of the New England Skeptical Society and popular skeptical blogger and host of the wildly popular podcast The Skeptics Guide to the Universe; Dr. Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer; Dr. Kirsten Sanford, host of the This Week in Science podcast; Yau-Man Chan, Chief Technology Officer for Computing Services, Network Services, and Telecommunications at the University of California, Berkeley's College of Chemistry and fourth-place finisher on the reality TV series "Survivor: Fiji"; and Mark Edward, professional mentalist.

Think something like Queer Eye meets The X-Files...but fun. :) The team is sent to investigate some woo topic(s) in each episode and actually investigates it—with science!—instead of just announcing what it is or isn't. Think The Anti-Ghost Hunters. The Skeptologists actually know how to use their (scientific) equipment!

I was watching a rerun of Medium and Skippy reared his head. But not in the way you're thinking. :)

I mean, if Skippy ruled what I watch on TV...heh. But I'm really good at the whole "willing suspension of disbelief" thing. You have to "believe" the universe of the show in order to enjoy it.¹ And that is where Skippy started to protest.

So, on Medium, the main character, Allison DuBois, is a medium (duh), and she's never wrong. Ever. But here's the thing: no one ever believes her, no matter what. She's like Cassandra in that sense. In spite of the fact that, in episode after episode, she has dreams and sees visions of startlingly accurate events that unfold just as she saw, her husband, her boss, the police officer that she works with from time to time...all of these people always say, "Well, you know, maybe a dream is just a dream, this time." At some point, the writers of this show have to let the people around Allison have memories and reasoning skills in order to see the "Allison is always right" pattern. Yeah, cops and lawyers and mathematicians are typically skeptical, but...come on.

Same thing with the X-Files. Week after annoying week, Scully refused to believe the evidence of her own eyes because she was the "skeptical" character who played foil to Mulder's...I can't use "gullibility," because in the universe of the X-Files, he was right. But you know what I mean. The X-Files did it best, which is why I called it "The X-Files Syndrome." It turned the skeptic into the one who had to take everything on faith. :)

Even cartoons are not immune. How many "ghosts" do Scooby's gang have to unmask before they stop believing every single silly seemingly supernatural spook is real? Sheesh. After about three, even the most gullible idiot would start running up to the werewolf and ripping the head off.

How many times on Monk do they doubt him only to find out--oh shock of shocks!--that he's right? "He's the best detective I've ever worked with!" out of one side of their mouth, but, "Monk, how could it be the guy in the coma?" out of the other side. You know he's right. Believe him!

How many people does John Smith have to convince on Dead Zone that he's a real psychic before they start to believe it? Alternatively, why do those whom he has convinced have such a hard time believing that what he sees about Greg Stilson and the coming Armageddon is real? Only his friend Bruce seems to be completely convinced, and even he scoffs from time to time.

How many times would you ignore your aunts' advice and get in a magical fix that they have to rescue you from? With Sabrina, it was every fucking episode.

I never saw a single episode of Buffy, so I can't say anything about the X-Files Syndrome as it pertains to Buffy. Maybe one of you will enlighten me.

On MutantX, every time a member of one of the team's family or friends (mutant or otherwise) shows up, it means serious trouble is coming. After maybe twice, I'd cut myself off and fake my own death to prevent the inevitable confrontation.

To my knowledge, only on Strange Luck (a short-lived blast from the past) was this idea exploited as the premise of the show itself. Unexpected things were always happening to Chance. And everyone he knew well understood this about him, and they went with it, barely blinkiing when he, for instance, opened a can of beans to find a glass eye, and then just happened to run into a guy the next day who lost his glass eye while working in a factory that canned beans. It usually only took a time or two for someone witnessing his strange luck (hence the title) for them to just accept it and move on.

The other aspect of this I'll call The Jessica Fletcher Syndrome. On Murder, She Wrote, at what point were the other characters going to realize that, everywhere this old biddy went, people dropped dead? Especially friends of hers. Or if they weren't the ones that dropped dead, they were the ones wrongly accused of the murder. Jessica would go on a cruise, and someone was murdered on the ship. She would go to the theater, and someone was murdered in the audience. She'd fly on a plane, and someone was murdered on the plane. Hell, she could go to a funeral, and pretty soon the corpse in the coffin was not a minority. Even a retarded politician would eventually figure out the pattern and nail her door shut. Even then, the paperboy and electrical meter reader would be in danger.

Matlock never represented a guilty client. Eventually, in the real world where people have memories and reasoning ability the judges would just toss out his cases and say "Why waste the taxpayers' money? Case dismissed!"

Monk's got this one, too. As does John Smith on Dead Zone. I mean, if you're up to no good and you see Adrian Monk coming, just hop a plane to a country where we have no extradition treaty. And if you're up to no good and you see John Smith reaching out to touch anything, just give yourself up.

Now, of course Skippy and I understand that these shows' plots require these things to make them entertaining. But with just a little more careful writing, they could each be so much better than they are! Deal with the elephant in the living room instead of continuing to pretend it's not there. Don't try to make the plots work in both the fake universe of the show and in our real one. We're big boys and girls! With a few notable exceptions, we can distinguish between fantasy and reality.

---

1. Only with shows that admit they're fiction, such as Monk and Medium ("based on a real person" blah blah blah...it's fiction) but not extending to shows like Ghost Hunters or Crossing Over because they pretend they're real, so Skippy surfaces and calls "Bullshit!" very loudly.

Last night, I watched the premiere episode of this series. As you can well imagine, when I heard this was coming, every skeptical nerve in my body fired at once. So I set my ReplayTV to record it.

So, last night's episode focused on three paranormal stories. I'll take them one by one.

( Rods )

( Ghost in the Lighthouse )

( Policeman's Past Life )

Them's my 2 cents and my detailed review. In conclusion/summary: If the show continues like it did for this first episode, they'll lose me. The "conclusive proof" wouldn't stand up to a curious 6-year-old. At least, unlike most of the other shows of its kind on the air right now (if there are any still left), they make an effort at scientifically investigating the claims. But it's the SciFi channel. If they didn't have at least a little "woo-woo" factor, they think they'll lose viewership. Because, you know, people who like science fiction will believe anything.

Any show if this sort worth its salt would have James "The Amazing" Randi on staff. Or Michael Shermer. Or someone with a skeptical bone in their body.