Tetherd Cow Ahead

While we’re on the subject of those with a very tenuous grasp on reality, let me introduce to you the latest invention to hit teh internets: the Magical Technical Remote Viewing Pen from from TRV University.™ Here’s what TRVU promises on their site:

Now you can convert ANY rollerball style pen to operate like a Magic Pen capable of downloading precise and accurate information about the future, the past or anything you want to know — anywhere on the planet.

Well tie me to an anthill and smear my ears with jam! Precise and accurate information at the same time! About anything I want to know, from anywhere or anywhen! Golly TRVU, how the heck does it work??!!

It’s a mind technology called Technical Remote Viewing and anyone can learn this formally top secret skill and for less than a dollar convert an ordinary pen into a magic pen worth millions.

A formally top secret skill! Well, that’s the bomb – who’d want an informal top secret skill?!* So, let me get this straight – I can convert an ordinary pen into a million dollar pen for less than a buck? Sweet! My fortune is made!

Sigh.

Digging through the trash heap that is the TRV Empire unearths several dumpster-loads of similar preposterous idiocy. On TRV ‘News’, for instance, we learn that if you fork out to attend TRV University ‘…you will be trained along with the best and brightest minds on the planet’ (a contention I find highly unlikely) to use your Magic Pen to be able to ‘accurately sketch a nuclear weapon located inside a mountain in China, thousands of miles away’ and ‘probe the mind of Osama bin Laden in real time, uncovering his current intent and next move’. Straight away one can quite clearly see that there are only two options here:

1: There are people out there with a Magic Pen who know where Osama bin Laden is and what he is thinking, but just don’t aim to tell anyone… or…

2: The pen doesn’t work.

It doesn’t require one of the brightest minds on the planet to figure out which of those alternatives is the most likely. This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the amount of claptrap available at TRVU, though. Dane Spotts† from TRV News, a person who claims to be ‘properly trained’ in the use of the Magic Pen, sets us up for a demonstration of how effective the predictions are by choosing as a ‘target’ “The Next Catastrophic Terrorist Attack on US Soil”. But don’t hold your breath for any revelation of something that surely would benefit every single soul in the US‡ – Dane waffles on with some of the most ridiculous baloney for several pages without offering up a single whiff of a result, until, predictably he ends in a promise of ‘all will be revealed when you send us your money’.

Perhaps best of all are the ‘explanatory’ videos hosted by TRV spokeswoman Joni Dourif in which Ms Dourif makes some of the most risible and possibly actionable claims I’ve ever heard.

Here are a couple of the howlers she comes up with:

‘Having the Technical Remote Viewing Certification guarantees you a certain level of credibility amongst… uh… the law enforcements, amongst science and technology – who already know about us by the way’

Uh-huh. I think I know what that ‘certain level’ of credibility is likely to be. And, oh yes, I just bet the law enforcements know about you lot…

There is just an endless variety of options available for you to use this in a career. In science and technology, for example. You don’t need to be a doctor to assist a neurosurgeon…

There are neurosurgeons who consult Remote Viewers? OMFG! Kill me before I get to the operating theatre!

The TRVU site features several videos of Ms Dourif earnestly spouting such ridiculous and worrying nonsense. They are laugh-out-loud funny in places, and in others, stick-your-head-in-the-oven depressing. I am surprised that she can keep a straight face throughout, and I wonder if the many jump-cuts and fades are due to her corpsing her lines.

So how does the Magic Pen really work? Let’s go back to Dane Spotts’ ‘terrorist attack’ demonstration that I mentioned above. After Spotty leads us through some incomprehensible gibberish involving writing down random numbers and ‘prompting the signal line’, we have spent about 45 minutes doodling over a blank stack of Reflex and:

… have produced 30 or more sheets of paper which are covered in words, phrases and drawings, that we can now summarize and create an analysis from. It’s uncanny to see it all come together like some incredible jig saw puzzle; each piece combined to create a complete picture that reveals a solution to our problem. All of this from the tip of a magic pen.

In other words, TRVU is going to show you how to draw some vague predictions out of THIRTY PAGES of random scribbling! The obvious get-out-of-jail-free card here is that the Magic Pen has given you all the right information – if you don’t end up with an accurate prediction of the future it’s not the pen’s fault, it’s that you are a crap Remote Viewer!

As I read further and further through the TRVU sites, I find it harder and harder to convince myself that it’s not all some big joke. So much of it is SO farcical that I really want to believe it’s a giant leg pull. Sadly, it appears not to be the case – TRVU is an actual money-making venture; another shameless scam aimed at lining the pockets of morally bankrupt con-artists by fleecing gullible schmucks.

And I don’t for a moment think that the proprietors of TRVU really believe this rubbish. If there was anything at all to this ‘Remote Viewing’ it seems to be it would be the simplest thing in the world to verify. In fact, here you go, TRVU (or any other Remote Viewing adept) – I offer you up a challenge. I have, sitting on a chest of drawers in my bedroom, a box. Tell me what is in that box. Now I don’t mean thirty pages of guesses – I want an exact description of the contents of the box. You can do it in one short sentence. There should be no equivocating – it’s a very simple answer. This should be a completely trivial task for a graduate of TRVU, and here, in a public forum, you can demonstrate for all the world to see how marvellous your Magic Pen really is.

If you get it right, I promise I’ll buy out your entire stock.

(I will reveal the contents of the box here on The Cow in, oh, say two month’s time…)

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*I figure there’s a sure-fire way to spot pseudoscience even if you don’t know your pendulum from your psychomanteum – just look for the atrocious murdering of the English language in any promotional material. Dead giveaway.

†If you think his name sounds like a joke, you really should read his writing…

‡We must assume that Dane, a self-professed accomplished user of the Pen, actually does know this information but has declined to share it with anyone, for reasons I’d really like to hear.

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Ah, I just love it when the loonies leave their pearls of wisdom on The Cow. You may remember that some time back as part of our TCA Educational Series ‘Woowoo Beliefs’, we featured a little piece about a personage named Jasmuheen (Queen of the Breatharians). To recap, Jasmuheen claims that she does not need food and water to survive, but lives solely on air. It doesn’t require much intellectual effort to recognize this as an unmitigated barrel of hogwash.

Well, Cow Commenter Tibet23* is evidently not able/unwilling to expend said intellectual effort and has this to say:

The fact that you’ve not experienced anything else than your mcdonald-hungry body, does not exclude that people may be and behave differently.

Tibetan monks have been tested under controlled conditions…and scientist could not explain what they found.

Slowing down their heartbeats to almost stop. Being in a sleeplike state for days with no water no food, melting the snow around them while in meditation.

Is it a miracle? Are Tibetans special and we, poor mortals, can’t make it ?

Man is a machine. Somebody learn how it works and modify it. Others just use it to go to work…

Maybe we’re just scared by what we ignore.

Our intrepid correspondent T23, gives us the most wonderful metaphorical illustration of someone getting their head stuck in the banisters of logic. Significantly, notice how T23 is using science to bolster his/her argument whilst simultaneously treating it with disdain. In other words, T23 is holding up scientists as a benchmark for something that they claim is inherently unquantifiable by science.

Let’s just ignore the fact that the claim is in fact complete hogwash anyway – Tibetan monks don’t do anything that science can’t explain.† And, focally, with Jasmuheen we are not talking about a meditative state of low metabolism whilst sitting still doing nothing (which can quite easily be understood by science), but instead about her assertion that she doesn’t eat or drink anything at all and is somehow able to live a functional life. Actually, not just a functional life, but a better life than anyone else! This, as anyone with half a brain instantly recognizes, is complete rubbish.

Indeed, T23, I completely agree with you that the human body is a machine. And, just like your car, it needs fuel. But no matter how much you tinker with your Datsun, you’ll never get it running exclusively on fresh air. Just pointing at it sitting in the garage doing nothing is not proof of your wacky theory.

And if, by ‘maybe we’re just scared by what we ignore’ you mean maybe we’re scared by ignorance, well, then, yes, it certainly scares me. And, sadly, I doubt you’ll comprehend the true despondency I feel when I read comments like yours.

Now, where did I put my cheeseburger?

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*23! Sometimes I wonder if the Universe is just one big practical joke.

†OK, there is some neuroscience that is on the far edge of explanation, but then that is the case with a lot of neuroscience. Scientists freely admit that they don’t understand a lot of what the brain does. Scientists are really good at pointing out things they don’t understand. This is not, however, a free ticket to an endorsement of your wacky belief, no matter how much you’d like that.

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It seems that the punchline gag that Violet Towne came up with for my recent comment on the stock market catastrophe is more on the money (heh) than we’d anticipated.

Apparently, the current financial problems besetting the global economy are not the fault of contemptible grasping money-traders at all, but were in fact inevitable, because they were written in the stars! At least that’s what Raj Kumar Sharma, an ‘astro-finance specialist’ in Mumbai is telling everybody, according to this morning’s Melbourne Age. Spouting incomprehensible drivel about Saturn and the Sun ‘not getting along’ and invoking the influence of the ‘shadow’ planet ‘Ketu’ which doesn’t even exist, Sharma attributes the Lehman brothers collapse and the beginning of the fiscal disaster to Saturn and Ketu ‘fighting like dragons’.

Using impenetrable logic, he rationalizes the effects of distant astronomical bodies on our fortunes thus:

“You cannot avoid the coolness of the moon or the heat of the sun. And if you cannot avoid heat and cold, you cannot avoid the influence of Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury or Venus.”

No wonder there’s an economic fiasco taking place if people are using this kind of hooey to guide their investment strategies.

Elsewhere in India, astrologer Christopher Kevill, who writes a financial astrology column for India’s Daily News and Analysis, agrees with Sharma that movements of remote astronomical bodies predicted the fiscal turbulence. Invoking the influence of ‘Rahu’ (another entirely fictional planet) and its ‘150 degree relationship to Saturn’ as the cause of the market calamity, he condescendingly prevaricates with the qualification that:“It’s a lot more complicated than that but that’s one layer of explanation.”

The really amusing thing is that anybody at all in India lost money on the markets with these incisive augurs on the scene.

So, what do they see for the resolution of all this kerfuffle, then? What should we do with our money? According to Sharma, Venus is entering Libra, and that means stability and recovery, so all is dandy. Kevill, on the other hand, says the rallies will fizzle quickly with the markets slumping at 50 percent lower than current levels by 2010. Both of them agree that the turmoil will continue for some years.

Let me simplify – that’s a safe guess for the short term with a bet each way for the outcome.

My advice for the your pecuniary future? Invest in the exploitation of gullible chumps. That’s an industry that’s never going to tank.

It warms the cockles of my heart* to know that Cow Readers are ever-vigilant for tidbits to whet my whistle†. JR sent me the above flyer which was popped through his door recently by some vagrant evidently disenfranchised from the Land of Normal Thinking.

Let’s deconstruct it, shall we?

•IS EVOLUTION PART OF SCIENCE OR IS IT A TAX SUPPORTED RELIGION?

Given the tone of the nonsense that follows, this is probably meant to be a rhetorical question. Sadly for the person who wrote it, evolution is, in fact, part of science. A tax-supported religion is something like Catholicism or Scientology or Mormonism or just about any other whacky belief system that calls itself a religion. Governments seem to be real happy about allowing those kinds of organizations to accumulate cash and avoid their social financial responsibilities. Calling yourself an Evolutionist, on the other hand, doesn’t attract any tax benefits. Trust me – if there was even the remotest chance of that, I’d have the certificate.

•HAS EVOLUTION EVER AIDED MAN IN TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT AND PROGRESSION?

Well, duh, yes. That’s why we’re not in still in caves hiding from Big Noise and Light That Come From Sky When Gods Make With Much Falling Water. You idiot.

•WHAT ARE THE FRUITS OF EVOLUTION?

Well, I really want to say ‘bananas’ here but that would just be flippant wouldn’t it? What do you mean by that you loon? It’s a question that defies any sense whatsoever. I couldn’t make up a stupider question if I spent a month trying.

•WHAT ROLE HAS IT PLAYED THROUGH RECENT CENTURIES AND WHAT ROLE DOES IT PLAY TODAY?

You really are a halfwit, aren’t you. Evolution plays the ‘role’ of having gotten us where we are. Maybe you think it would do better playing the role of Hamlet? Or Riff-Raff from Rocky Horror? And ‘recent centuries‘? Hello? Missing the point bigtime there fella.

ALL QUESTIONS ARE ANSWERED! ALL SIDES ARE SHOWN AND EXPLAINED THOROUGHLY AND FUNDEMENTALLY SUPPORTING MUCH EVIDENCE.

AND ALL IN CAPITALS WITH SPELLING MISTAKES AND NONSENSICAL SENTENCE CONSTRUCTION!

KENT HOVIND, A SCIENCE TEACHER AND A BIOLOGIST WITH A DEGREE IN PHD AND OTHER AREAS OF QUALIFICATION

Hmmm. A degree in PHD. That either makes no sense at all (surprise!) or possibly stands for ‘Phony Historical Dissertations’ or maybe ‘Preposterous Hysterical Diatribes’, seeing as Kent Hovind, a well-known Creationist, knows as much about science as George Bush knows about, er, science. As for ‘other areas of qualification’, well sure, if you accept a Bachelor of Religious Education from a non-accredited college, or a ‘Master’s’ Degree in Christian Education gained via a correspondence course as qualifications. I guess they could be considered ‘areas’ of qualification. As in, “Yeah, they’re in the general area, but not actually qualifications.” Of course, anyone with actual qualifications that meant anything could just say what they were.

– IS A FEARED OPPONENT IN DEBATES, AND YOU WILL KNOW WHY

Well, that’s true, anyway. He’s a feared opponent in debates because he’s a pig-headed close-minded bible literalist of dubious (if any) intellect, with a track record of making ridiculous and unsupportable claims. Richard Dawkins, a well-known champion of evolution, refuses to debate people like Kent Hovind because, really, who could be bothered? It’s not so much a fear of losing the debate, as a fear of losing your sanity.

Oh I can’t go on. Suffice to say that if you did waste valuable time visiting Kent Hovind’s ‘Dr Dino’ site, you would not get an explanation of ’60+ Hours of Science’ so much as an irritating spew of biblical silliness. How Atlantis quite fits in there I’m not sure, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least that it’s included. They probably have stuff on UFOs and unicorns too.

As for the promise that ‘you won’t be dissappointed‘, well, aside from the fact that you might be dissappointed by the awful spelling, you certainly won’t be dissappointed if you’re looking for more of the kind of claptrap that the flyer spruiks. There’s LOTS of that.

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*What does that actually mean, ‘cockles’? Since when did you ever hear a doctor talking about your heart cockles? “I’m sorry Mr Smith, but it seems you have near-frozen heart cockles and we’ll have to operate”.

†And what the heck does that mean, too?

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Atlas draws my attention to a story at Times Online about a group called the Evangelical Alliance (representing ‘thousands of churches of most denominations worldwide’) who have handed down what they call The Ten Commandments of Blogging. It seems that church leaders have suddenly become aware of the actual landscape of the internet and are worried that God Bloggers might be falling prey to Satan’s wiles. This is entirely in keeping with my hypothesis that the thing that scares religions the most is that their followers might one day get access to actual facts and start questioning the fundamentalist status quo.

The Commandments that the EA has decreed* include such pithy paranoid edicts as: You shall not put your blog before your integrity (whatever the crap that means), You shall not use the web to commit or permit adultery in your mind (OK, there goes 90% of the Blogosphere) and You shall not steal another person’s content (there goes the remaining 10%).

Also of note is the weighty You shall not covet your neighbour’s blog ranking. Be content with your own content. Wha? Does anyone really care about their ‘blog ranking’ so much that it needs a commandment?

I haven’t spent much time on blogs dedicated to Christian Evangelism (I mean, who could really be bothered?) but it seems to me that if the Christian corner of the blogosphere is in such dire need of guidance that the Powers That Be feel compelled to issue ‘commandments’, then it must truly be a seething Sodom & Gomorrah of iniquity and maybe I’m missing out on something.

I get the distinct feeling, though, that it’s all a ridiculous beat-up in the vein of the Vatican’s idiotic Ten Commandments of Motoring and with all that in mind, you can see that I have no choice but to post The Tetherd Cow Ahead Ten Commandments of Blogging:

1-10: Thou Shalt Not Create Blogging Commandments†. It’s pointless and stupid and will send you straight to Hell.

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*One has to wonder how they got the dispensation to do this. After all, the original Ten Commandments were personally handed to Moses by God.

†And yes, I am completely aware of the recursive nature of my actions.

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