Maybe humanity isn’t doomed afterall

It seems that Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) did what the two greatest Jeopardy players of all time couldn’t do. He beat Watson in Jeopardy. Holt is a trained rocket scientist and former five-day Jeopardy! champ:

Holt — who was a five-time Jeopardy! winner more than 30 years ago and joked midday that Watson was “just a little Atari” when he made his game-show splash – tweeted almost an hour ago about the experience: “I played a full round against @IBMWatson tonight and was proud to hold my own: the final tally was Holt $8,600, Watson $6,200.”Holt was joined in the game by Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, who tweeted that he didn’t mind losing to a nuclear physicist and computer that famously defeated some of the TV game show’s top champs: “I seriously CANNOT believe that @rushholt beat @ibmwatson,” he wrote. Also playing: Reps. Bill Cassidy, Nan Hayworth and Jared Polis.

Now we just have to make sure Watson doesn’t send robots back in time to kill Holt’s mother before he’s born.

News From Around The Blogosphere 3.4.11

1. John Connor, it is time. -

Whenever the military rolls out a new robot program, folks like to joke about SkyNet or the Rise of the Machines. But this time, the military really is starting to venture into robot-apocalypse territory: swarms of little semi-autonomous machines that can team up to manufacture complex objects (including, presumably, more robots).

That’s right, the only thing scarier than a swarm of intelligent military mini robots is a swarm of intelligent military mini robots in control of the means of production. And your Navy is hard at work on making it a reality.

2. Supreme Court rules in favor of Westboro Baptist Church – As detestable as the WBC is, I think the Supreme Court made the right call, which I’ve argued previously over at the Gotham Skeptic. Alito was the only Justice who sided with the Snyder family against the WBC. Between this decision and the vaccine court decision last week, the Supreme Court has been batting a 1000 lately.

3. Anti-abortion billboard goes down in NYC - The billboard tried playing the race card, a gambit anti-abortionists have been using for some time now. And while I don’t condone censorship, this wasn’t government censorship:

Councilwoman Letitia James and her legislative aide Aja Worthy-Davis that yesterday they launched a Change.org petition targeting Life Always and billboard owner Lamar Advertising, asking them to remove it. Later in the day, Lamar Advertising announced that it would take the billboard down.

Of course this notion that Margaret Sanger was a racist eugenicist, and that Planned Parenthood’s true agenda is to exterminate black people is complete bullshit.

4. Third-grader allegedly heals friends with magic – Okay, let’s settle this once and for all by seeing him heal Christopher Hitchens.I understand why a kid could buy into this fantasy but adults who report the news have no excuse.

5. Age of Autism cries misogyny – The same blog that suggested journalist Amy Wallace was blowing Dr. Paul Offit is accusing Doonesbury of misogyny over a cartoon that suggested Jenny McCarthy makes Playboy bunnies look bad. That is too funny. If anyone can explain to me why, feminist crusader that she is, Katie Wright had no objection to her own blog’s attack on Wallace, let me know. Also, if you can explain how the content of the cartoon is criticizing all women instead of just criticizing Jenny McCarthy alone for speaking out of school, I’d love to know that too. Oh, and one more thing. If you can explain to me how a website that accuses its critics of being a “loyal Pharma-funded wife” without even the slightest bit of evidence of any conflict of interest can maintain any moral high gound, let me know that too. Sullivan writes about it here.

Age of Autism’s adorable attempt to correct Seth Mnookin’s facts

I haven’t yet read Seth Mnookin’s book “The Panic Virus – A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear,” but I’ve heard great things about it. It was inevitable that the anti-vaxxers would eventually come up with silly ways to poison the well in order to try and discredit Mnookin but I never thought it’d be this dumb.

Dan “I can’t find the autistic Amish because I never looked” Olmsted devoted no fewer than three paragraphs chastising Mnookin for a trivial error regarding the order of the Kennedy children. Olmsted tries to disguise his pettiness with faux-sympathy because he too has made errors in his writing. He claims he’s bringing this error up because in his book, Mnookin criticized what Olmsted feels is an equally trivial error on the part of the writers of an anti-vaccine press release that “appeared to confuse [Robert Kennedy Jr.] with his uncle, Massachusetts senator Edward Kennedy: ‘Having Senator Kennedy as part of the supporters for the Green Our Vaccines Rally is an honor.’”

Olmsted elaborates:

What possible purpose does this snarky observation serve? It serves to suggest that these fringe vaccine-autism types are hopelessly “confused” at the most basic level – that they can’t get anything right, even the title of the speaker at their own goofy rally, let alone the cause of autism.

The two mistakes are not of equal value. Mnookin’s alleged mistake confused a completely irrelevant detail, the order of the children in the Kennedy family. There’s a big difference between that error and one where a press release for an event that suggests a U.S. senator will be in attendance when it’s only that senator’s activist son. And based on the quotation provided by Olmsted, I think he missed the point of Mnookin’s criticism entirely, which seems less about calling his opponents stupid and more about suggesting dishonesty in how the anti-vaccine movement operates. In other words, I think he’s saying it’s the leaders of the anti-vaccination movement who seem to think their followers are stupid, and are not above exploiting some people’s ignorance to further their agenda. For those who noticed the error, the built-in excuse was it was a mistake. Otherwise, they can just let the ignorant believe they’re hearing from a U.S. senator. It’s a win-win.

And now that Mnookin called his movement out on their dishonesty, Olmsted is trying to paint Mnookin as a “stickler for accuracy.” Why Olmsted thinks this is a criticism of Mnookin’s character I have no idea, especially if his movement wants to continue to perpetuate defamatory claims against him being dishonest in his research. A “stickler for accuracy” who, as Olmsted points out, is quick to admit his own errors when they’re detected is exactly the kind of character trait an honest person sincerely interested in truth should find to be a fairly trustworthy source. Not to Olmsted though. Apparently, that just proves he’s not to be trusted…somehow.

Now I would be dishonest to suggest that’s all Olmsted criticized in his blog entry. He eventually gets into spouting old arguments such as the claim that vaccines cause encephalopathy. Olmsted says the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Compensation Act (NCVICA) covered encephalopathy and the NCVICA has paid out compensations for this condition. For some reason he feels this is sufficient scientific grounds for claiming this is a fact, ignoring the reality that the NCVICA has always used more generous standards than even other types of legal cases, which are themselves much more lenient than the standards of evidence in the court of science. Steven Novella explains this distinction further here.

Then Olmsted chastises Mnookin for allegedly incorrectly reporting that a 1943 paper looked at eleven boys when Olmsted explains that that is so completely wrong and demonstrates Mnookin is the world’s largest idiot because the paper actually looked at eight boys and three girls! Take that, Mr. Know-It-All! And then Olmsted finds another several completely trivial alleged errors in Mnookin’s reporting of that one insignificant 1943 paper!

Oo, burn!

Dan Olmsted then continues to list another half dozen to a dozen other completely trivial errors Mnookin made either in his book or elsewhere to show once and for all who the real fool is.

And then Olmsted ends his piece before wasting any of his precious time pretending to look for autistic children in the Amish community when all he has to do is contact the Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg, Pennsylvania on trying to refute any actual important facts in Mnookin’s book.

But visitors of Age of Autism know that the end of an article on the site is only the fun begins as their fanatical followers continue the discussion in the echo chamber that is the Age of Autism comments section, where no critics are allowed.

Take for instance, one commenter named “A Friend”:

Just so we are clear… The former heroin addict Seth Mnookin wrote a book and I’m supposed to be impressed? Um, no thanks. I’ll take a Autism Mom former playboy bunny any day of the week!!He’s going to be speaking @ Hospitals?!?! Lock up the medicine cabinets. How sad.

This led Kristina to write:

Oh, wow. a former heroin addict? Why is this the first time I’m hearing this? One would think all news articles about his book would introduce him as, “former heroin addict, Seth Mnookin,” just as they have done with Jenny McCarthy and her being a former Playboy model. Not that there is anything illegal or brain-frying about being a former Playboy model.

Could brain frying via heroin be an explanation for all his ridiculous factual mistakes?

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a little peak at the fact manufacturing process at Age of Autism.

Finally, an atheist ad I can get behind

No, this isn't it. Keep reading.

For the last few months, American Atheists have been rolling out a bunch of billboards across the country that, as I’ve made very clear in more than one article, I think completely suck. Eventually, other well-known atheists like PZ Myers and Rebecca Watson have jumped on the bandwagon and criticized those ads as well. And yet for some reason, the Raelians, France’s answer to Scientology, liked it enough to try to piggy-back off the “success” from the American Atheist campaign by ripping it off to draw attention to their kooky little atheistic, alien-worshiping religion.

But though I do love those crazy Raelian’s nudity policy, this piece isn’t about either of those “God is a Myth” campaigns. Rather, it’s about an advertising campaign that’s actually good, that actually sells atheism as as a positive thing rather than as a bunch of assholes whose sole purpose in life seems to be to piss people off and be miserable.

I can get behind this new commercial from the Center For Inquiry because, you see, they actually get it. They understand what the purpose of advertising is and they understand marketing. Great job, Center For Inquiry! That’s what I’m talking about!

Also, another great way to promote atheism and skepticism, Skepchick has just launched a sister site, Mad Art Lab, which “will include a diverse group of webcomic and fine artists, musicians, composers, and performance artists, with the occasional guest post by other well-known skeptical artists.”