It's beisbol time!

Here we are mere days away from the new year and I am going to some baseball games! I will trek down to see the Aguilas de Mexicali right across the border. They play in the Mexican Pacific League which kicks up when the US league winds down.

There are usually a few players peppered throughout the league who also play in MLB but for the most part it is basically like a US AAA game. The main diffences from a ballgame stateside are the really cheap tickets and really cheap beer. Oh right and they have chearleaders in the Mexican league.

I haven't deciced what I will do for New Year's Eve yet but I am sure it will not have anything to do with this town. So there will be another break on skepticklish until at least the weekend. Have a happy, enlightened, new year!

My night with the Diabolos!

So fair enough I will give you a story about my most recent trip before I head out on my next one to Mexico on Tuesday. The highlight of my quick trip to Vegas was in fact the juggling show that I previewed a few weeks ago.

The show was the final event in a weeklong juggling convention/competition. I felt a bit like a fly on the wall. When one of the performers asked the audience, “Are there any non-jugglers here tonight?” I was one of about five people who raised their hand. He then went on to explain for us laypeople what a Diabolo was. Having infiltrated the juggling masses it is my job to now explain what this thing with the cool sounding name is to the rest of you.

A Diabolo is basically a little round plastic splayed yo-yo shaped thing that jugglers manipulate on a string. That’s it. The guy at the event added lasers to his Diabolo and threw in a fog machine and with the lights turned out we were all able to experience a psychedelic light show together. I was so drawn into the passion and excitement of the Diabolo that I was looking to buy one after the show but alas the trade tables were closed at that point.

The real highlight of the juggling show was the act put on by a duo called The Passing Zone. They juggled chainsaws to the music of Blue Danube while wearing tutus and ballet slippers. Aside from them there were numerous folks who blew me away by juggling 6 . . .7 . . . 8 balls and/or clubs but got little applause from the jaded audience of professional jugglers.

Penn Jillette closed the evening with his broken bottle juggling routine. His patter was completely different than the other 4 times I have seen him do his show though. It was modified for the unique audience, spending most of the warm-up threatening any of the jugglers who might even think of trying to juggle broken bottles themselves. Then when he was in the middle of juggling the three broken liquor bottles somebody shouted out, “Under the leg!” Penn then started cracking up and completely lost his concentration and ended up dropping one of the bottles. It smashed at his feet and he started cursing out the heckler.

After the show was over I congratulated Penn on his recent wedding and asked him about the subjects for the forthcoming season of Bullshit. He told me that a circumcision show was going to be one of the highlights. Another one of the writers of the BS show was also there and we had a nice discussion about fostering critical thinking with young people.

Penn recently sold his pink Bronco on Ebay to benefit the JREF. Shame I couldn't afford it, I would have loved to have seen the looks on people's face here in town if I drove that thing back from Vegas.

The only Jesus I know is one of my students

Oh right, I know I am supposed to be nice today right? Respectful of this major christian holiday and take a day off. Well sorry, but I didn't start this site to play it safe. In a nutshell, my position is that christianity is a cult that has been blown up way out of proportion, and I wish they would keep their silly little day to themselves.

I am not for a secular version of christmas that many Atheists seem to be for, but I say the more religious the celebration the better. Go ahead put up your crosses and your nativity scenes in your yard, that way there will be no doubt in anybody's mind what the holiday represents. Consequently we can then leave the holiday only to the hardcore christian cultmembers. (Otherwise known as evangelicals) In this red state they seem to at least be getting that part of it right.

I have marked 2004 as the year the USA took a big step back from the Enlightenment and on this the most unenlightened of days, I will continue to preach for the future of science and reason in this country.

For some more approved reading here is a fine example of the xmas spirit and this is a review of the year that has been. Thank goodness we are only a week away from 2005.

What happens in Vegas . . . happens on skepticklish

So I had an up and down time on my quick trip. My computer broke . . . then I fixed it, I won some money . . . then lost it. I talked with Penn again . . . he brushed me off as usual. I went out dancing . . . but couldn't find many partners, I had some good food . . . but ate too much.

There are plenty of details I could share I suppose when the spirit moves me. Just in a bit of a funk tonight as I am back home. Hope you had a nice week and watch for more tomorrow.

Never tell me the odds!

Most people gambling in Las Vegas don't really want to know what the odds are. I will sum them up in one sentence. There isn't a single game played in sin city where the odds favor the player. So basically Vegas is a city built up on people who are bad at math.

That is not to say that there are some games that have a small house advantage and with a bit of luck you can buck the odds. Playing basic strategy in blackjack will move the house advantage to under 1%, the same goes for playing double odds(or more) in craps, and a full-pay video poker machine. Other than that however, the odds against you in the rest of the games are high enough to combat even against the best luck.

Now to me, I just consider Vegas a relatively close city to where I live with very cheap hotel rates and lots to do. I spend more time getting errands done there than gambling. I usually try to catch a magic show, go dancing and just relax. There are a few spots I have found that have Craps table with $1 minimums and 10x odds and if I have the urge to do any gambling thats where I will be.

So since my hotel doesn't have a free internet connection, and I make no money for this page, you will just have to wait until next weekend when I get back for my next post. In the mean time have a happy solstice.

Letting go of Pat

Julia Sweeney is best known perhaps for her role as the androgynous Pat on Saturday Night Live. It was a funny bit the first few times, but like everything else on SNL they ran it into the ground. You may know Sweeney did have some success a few years ago with a monologue called God said, 'HA!' She has now followed that up with another one-woman show which is now a minor success at a small theatre in Hollywood. It is called, Letting go of God.

The show is about Sweeney's journey from Catholicism to Atheism. I saw her do excerpts from it last January at the James Randi meeting in Vegas. (A DVD collection of the event was just released and for sale here) It was both hilarious and thought-provoking. The image I had of her completely changed following that event. All the guys in the hall instantly fell in love with her and Randi asked her if she would be willing to auction off a "Night with Julia" at the next meeting to raise money for the JREF. Ian Rowland got Julia's phone number at the event and threatened to auction it off!

James Randi Meeting Panel Discussion "Skepticism and the Entertainment Industry" Featuring from left to right: Penn Jillette, Andrew Harter, Julia Sweeney, Jamy Ian Swiss and Ian Rowland

At the meeting Julia talked about how she is trying to get an afternoon talk show and her agent told her to play down her Atheism. Not suprising I suppose since in a gallup poll asking what type of person you would discriminate against when voting for president, Atheists were number one, even scoring below homosexuals. So even though America has now embraced Ellen Degeneres, it might take a while for Atheist Afternoon with Julia Sweeney! to take hold.

The search for a good buffet in Vegas

A few years ago I heard about a Thai restaurant in Las Vegas that was rated by Gourmet magazine as the best of its kind in North America. I finally got a chance to go to Lotus of Siam this past June and found that the review was not an exaggeration. It is far from the strip and hard to find, but well worth the trip. It is just one of many things I am planning for my trip up there next week.

Before I go any further I should say that my favorite Thai restaurant in the USA is Sivilaya in Portland Oregon. The food is not as good as Lotus but still great and the customer service and value is unbelievable. Tell the owner Jose you know me and you will get spring rolls, bottomless ice tea and mango with sticky rice on the house.

Back to Vegas. In a city famous for its buffets, the one offered at Lotus is half the price and head and shoulders above all of the ones offered at the hotels. I figured with all I had heard about this place, how hard could it really be to find? This past June after I drove past where I thought it must be I parked in front of some grocery store. I figured everybody around there must know where "the best Thai restaurant in North America" is. People probably ask them that all the time right? Well after getting several people tell me they had no clue, one guy thought it might be in this one sort of mall area a block away where he remembered seeing an Asian restaurant.

I headed into this huge area just away from the street which was a giant parking lot ringed by all sorts of businesses. I walked around the place and did see several restaurants, but no Lotus of Siam. It was a very healthy walk in the hot sun, it must have been a mile lap walking around this whole place. Along the way I asked several folks I saw if they had heard of Lotus, none of them had any idea. After a while I just gave up and headed back to my car.

I figured I would give it one more shot since I really wanted good Thai food. I pulled back into the place with my car and did a loop and finally spotted the place. I had walked right by it! I parked and went inside only to find they were just wrapping up the buffet for the day. So needless to say the next day I was able to make a beeline for the joint at the right time and gorged out on the finest Thai food I have ever tasted.

So next time you are in Sin City you can either go to the Circus Circus buffet and consequently be laid out for the rest of your trip or have an adventure trying to find this little jewel.

skepticklish in the news!

Today is a crazy day, with a big school evening assembly and lots of work to do on our school paper so hang on until tomorrow for another insightful post. In the mean time read up on my sister in the news!

Bend it like Beckham

A nativity scene at Madame Tussaud’s London wax museum was attacked yesterday. After waiting for hours to get into the #1 tourist attraction in London somebody punched the replica of the soccer star in the face. Apparently he was upset that celebrities were standing in for the biblical characters. I personally am also a bit upset that George Bush and Tony Blair were represented as “wise men” but I think the shepherd played by Samuel Jackson was great casting.

Jackson probably looks a lot more like a typical North African of that time than 95% of the people and figures used in nativity scenes across the western world. So they can’t complain about this Posh Spice display being more inaccurate than any other. Also there is no mention in the bible anywhere about how many wise men there actually were. (While you are at it, why not read up on all sorts of xmas myths.)

What is most upsetting of all, is that in this day and age people still line up in record numbers to see a bunch of mannequins. Las Vegas even has a Madame Tussaud’s where you can pose with the likes of Jerry Springer, Don King and even play poker with Ben Affleck! Looks like I am just going to have to stay an extra day in Vegas in order to squeeze it into my vacation next week.

Wow, I guess I have been wrong all this time!

A hot AP story this past weekend that has been all over the papers and TV is that a famous atheist now believes in god. Never mind that I never heard of this guy before this "big news" story came out and that this conversion is exaggerated, it seems that this philosophy professor's key piece of scientific evidence is that life is just too complex to not have a deliberate creator. The news story does not bother to address the fallacy of his argument and mention that in science a lack of evidence for one theory doesn't directly provide any evidence for a competing theory.

You often hear these "god of the gaps" theories. Whatever science still can't explain, well thats where god steps in. One day there won't be any gaps left. While we don't have all of the evidence for the origins of life yet, we do have an awful lot. For a list of all the evidence ever gathered that god created life, go to this page.

People change their minds about this sort of thing all the time and it is hardly news. This guy was 81 years old to boot. (Remember my posting Looking for loopholes?) It would be nice if all the new scientific discoveries every year supporting evolution got played up in the news as much as non-stories like this.

So we will keep waiting for a real news story that cites actual evidence of god. Don't worry, you will read that huge scoop first right here on skepticklish.

Secrets revealed in the tea leaves

Today I got quite a shock as I made myself a nice hot cup of tea. It was quite a pleasant suprise actually. It got me thinking that the best gifts may be ones that hold secrets which reveal themselves down the road. The story started because all of the mugs in my house were dirty.

The only clean mug I had around was one from a fancy Japanese restaurant in Seattle called Nikko. It has since closed and I have never eaten there but about ten years back I knew the manager of the place and he gave me a mug from the restaurant as a gift. It has no handle and for that reason I never once used it for tea or coffee. It served as a pencil holder for many years. Today however I put some water in it and heated it up in the microwave.

When I went to pull out the water to put in the teabag at first glance it appeared that something had gone horribly wrong! The cup wasn't the same one I had put in a minute before! The cup I put in and that I had used for ten years had a sort of big black rectangle with the word Nikko in the middle of it, the new cup which had taken its place had pictures of sushi all over it! I thought I must still be asleep or my microwave was posessed!

After I came to my senses I realised that there was some sort of heat sensitive material on the mug which had been covering up the sushi pictures all this time. My friend never mentioned this when he gave it to me, perhaps knowing that one day in the future I would discover it for myself. I doubt however, he imagined it would cheer me up when I most needed it, during a depressing weekend stuck out in the desert.

The faboulous talking Teller!

Teller just doesn't get enough respect. I think he deserves his own post as well. Sorry I won't spend an hour on him like I did on the Penn page earlier this week but at least he will join the few who are honored with their own skepticklish post.

When Teller does open his mouth you find he has a nice speaking voice and lots to say. At the James Randi meeting he managed to get a few words in edgewise in the panel discussion and Q&A session during the rare few moments when Penn wasn't dominating the discussion.

He is also outspoken on skepticism and atheism, he just doesn't yell and scream about it in Penn's brash manner. The most interesting thing he talked about was the standoff between the old magician's code of never revealing your tricks and many magicians' goals of trying to promote skepticism and critical thinking. He feels revealing how tricks are done can be an important part of that message and wrestles with the idea that keeping secrets can sometimes hurt those goals.

He does an amazing bit with a rose in the P&T show which has to be seen to be believed. To describe it would not do it justice. I can guess at the trick behind this illusion, but I am not 100% sure and I would like to keep it that way. If we had all the answers in life today, what would we have to keep ourselves busy with tomorrow.

What's next, Spam resorts in the Carribean?

The Producers was a big hit so now they are making a broadway musical out of another classic film comedy. Something just doesn't seem right to me about Spamalot, it is a musical based on Monty Python's Holy Grail that will soon be heading to Chicago and New York.

The problem is that the only Python involved is Eric Idle. So it seems a bit like Beatlemania to me. Python were specific guys doing funny stuff at a specific time. The musical features Tim Curry, Hank Azaria and David Hyde Pierce, all funny guys in their own right who now find themselves doing somebody else's act. It's a bit like Chris Rock coming out today and doing verbatim a Richard Pryor classic standup act.

It is also strange that the once-cutting-edge Python boys are now considered so mainstream that Spam is sponsoring them. They don't seem to get that the original joke was on them. Hormel can also thank Python for making their disgusting product part of the language as a negative term for junk email. Now this "meat" is the theme for new hip cafes in the Philippines. For those of you worldwide who haven't had the Spam experience yet, don't be fooled, there is absolutely nothing trendy or cool about it!

Your second chance to vote.

Now that the New Hampshire test-case recount has come and gone and shown no serious irregularities with the Deibold voting machines and the forthcoming Ohio recount will probably reveal only minor problems, most of us are finally admitting that the critical thinkers of this country are just plain outnumbered.

There is always impeachment of course and that could be fun, but in the mean time you get another chance to vote this weekend! No not for the president again but for the People's Choice Awards! Fahrenheit 9/11 is one of the five top choices for people's favorite movie of the year. (Interestingly enough Passion of the Christ isn't up there) You can vote at this site and send the first post-election message to the redneck right that we aren't going to be quiet for the next four years.

You don't have to be a registered voter or even a citizen of the USA to vote for the film. The voting ends on Monday and if you miss your chance now to make a statement you will just have to wait until American Idol in January.

It's Jewish Christmas time!

You might want to mark this date down, skepticklish is agreeing with the evangelicals.

As you probably know, we are somewhere in the middle of hannukah. You only know this however because it is not politically correct to admit that the only major holiday celebrated in the West in December is christmas. Hannukah is actually a very minor holiday in the jewish calendar but because it happens to fall near xmas time we have to act PC and worldy and recognize it as an alternative. I am not even going to mention kwanzaa since I thinkI am even older than that holiday. These editorials from an Arkansas pepperpot, a christian libertarian, and a Canadian pastor don't mince words about their holiday and their religion and for that they have my utmost respect. To use euphemisms only cheapens your major holiday and religious beliefs, however backward I may personally think they are.

What is the point of a red and green sign in a storefront, decorated with holly and perhaps santa that says, "Happy Holidays!" The stores make money because of christmas, the schools take time off because of christmas, there is a federal holiday because of christmas. Who is this PC greeting for anyway? It's certainly not for me. I would rather have somebody say, "Merry Christmas!" to me, to which I can then respond, "I don't celebrate xmas. but hope you have a nice one." then to have to respond to, "Happy Holidays." with "Take care." or something tiresome like that.

Now admittedly christmas does completely annoy me and I wish the whole thing would get snuffed out. But I am a realist and as long as I am not forced to celebrate or pay for that humbug then I invite everybody else to drink eggnogg to their heart's content.

You need to bleed for your audience!

The final event of the World Juggling Federation Convention which I will be attending will feature Penn Jillette. Penn of course is the boistorous talkative 1/2 of Penn and Teller. He is very outspoken about his viewpoints on skepticism/atheism and libertarianism on the Showtime program Bullshit. He has a love/hate relationship with the artform of juggling, read about it in this interview. He has a wacky house in Vegas and for only $1000 or so you too can have a tour of it. Most suprisingly he just got married a few weeks ago.

If I were to bet on it, I would predict he will be performing his brilliant broken bottle juggling routine at the event in a few weeks. I have seen it several times live as part of the Penn and Teller show most recently this past January. Basically he comes on the stage juggling flaming torches and gets big applause. He goes on to debunk how easy juggling torches really is and the real difficult thing to do is juggle broken bottles. Then after building it up for like 15 minutes he gets big applause for something that doesn't look nearly as impressive at first glance as juggling torches.

This most recent time I saw the bit was actually the most interesting. In the beginning of the act he accidentally dropped one of the flaming torches, which many thought was part of the show. Then at a later part where he intentionally grabs the wrong end of one flaming torch and then drops the rest of them, one of them was perhaps a foot away from rolling off the stage and into the lap of somebody in the first row. A stage hand rushed down the aisle in case somebody in the audience was about to get a souvenir he didn't want. In a comment in the James Randi forum one of his friends said that he often leaves the theatre bleeding with cuts all over his hands from the bottles after a show. Penn himself wrote about the most eventful time he performed this act here.

I have had the chance to talk with Penn on several occasions. A few times when he was contorted into a small barrel on stage. If you paid a quarter to Teller you could go up on stage during the break in the show to take a peak at how the nearly 7 ft Jilette managed to get inside it and talk with him. I told him he needed to see the Thai dubbed version of Fantasia 2000 since the Thai guy who did his voice sounded exactly like him, spot on. When I saw the film at the Imax theatre in Bangkok I couldn't stop laughing about it, and all the Thais around me didn't get the joke.

Then this year I seem to be running into the guy everywhere I go. In January at the James Randi Conference I had the chance to talk with him about how I use P&T material in the classroom to teach critical thinking and found him to be a real nice guy.

However he did get a lot of people pissed off at that event when he dominated a panel discussion and shouted out how "fucking retarded" theists are. (Jump forward to his response here) Then in June I ran into him on the street in Vegas coming out of Fahrenheit 9/11 which I was going in to see. He was with a bunch of folks and I just talked to him for a minute about the Randi conference. Interestingly enough Penn is featured in the film Michael Moore Hates America complaining about the editing techniques he uses. (I disagree with his and other's viewpoint on this and addressed it already here.)

P&T will be featured on the West Wing sitcom tomorrow/wednesday night and I of course highly recommend their Showtime show, available on DVD. They don't tour anymore so you have to come to Vegas to see their live show these days, it will probably be the highlight of your trip.

Do you want to go see a juggling show tonight?

Most of you have probably lived your whole lives without ever having this question put to you on a weekend. There is a certain "night out pecking order" as it were. Usually top of the list would be a concert of some sort, then comes dancing, the theatre, a fancy dinner, a movie, then on down the list of desirable events.

Las Vegas which is supposedly the entertainment capital of the world interestingly enough seems to be populated with many of the lower-rung entertainment choices. Big in sin city these days are: magic shows, ventriloquist acts, hypnotists, impersonators, acrobats, fire-eaters, stilt-walkers, contortionists and jugglers. These type of acts only work when the performers transcend their medium and give you something truly unique. (Well ok, hypnotists shows can never be any good period)

If it weren't for Las Vegas a lot of these people would find themselves out of work. I do really enjoy a good magic show and it is what I usually find myself going to when I am in Vegas. As I have been to Vegas now five times in the past two years I have seen pretty much all of the ones I am interested in by now though. The ones I tend to skip involve tigers and Germans and things.

So in planning out my forthcoming Vegas trip I spied something that looked like a nice change of pace. The World Juggling Federation Convention! I have booked tickets for a few of the events including one featuring Penn Jillette. (More on him tomorrow) It turns out this event will be televised on ESPN2 in January, you know probably right after the hours of poker tournament coverage.

Since each show only costs $15 it will cost me less than a typical 7-out at the craps table. I am betting I will enjoy it more than the $125 Celine Dion show at Caesar's Palace.

Salvation can be had at Target!

If you must shop at a big box store this solstice season then Target is the place for you! Target (pronounced Tar-zhay by all the hipsters) has made the gutsy decision to ban Salvation Army bell ringers from their stores. They are getting a lot of flack about it from the evangelicals and we should support the giant retailer and tell them they have made the right choice.

You can read the news or read the Salvation Army’s own site to see what they stand for. They are the folks that provide a nice free lunch so long as you sit there and listen to a sermon. If you are looking for a charity to support this season how about The United Way? The evangelicals hate them! Because of Bush’s policies we need charities now more than ever. Let’s support the ones that don’t have ulterior motives.

P.S. - Just more evidence that skepticklish is ahead of the curve once again. Here is a link to an editorial published yesterday that seems to match closely with what we had to say on November 17th.

The landscape out here

There isn't too much exciting to see out your window while driving through my part of the state. So most folks will find their eyes attracted to the odd billboard that pops up on the horizon. This site has been nice enough to put them all in one place so you can avoid taking the long drives yourself to hunt them down.

The "stay focused" one I pass everytime I drive to Phoenix. The gem pictured above is from Clear Channel, when they can't sell the space they use the billboards to put their own "reminders" up for those of us who have forgotten. You know, the same texas-based Clear Channel who is helping censor our airwaves, the same Clear Channel who has helped bankroll Bush, the same Clear Channel who screwed up my mom's billboard artwork.

The news today shows that we are probably not too far from a draft and in a way I am all for it. Using an honest draft would prevent the status quo of poor kids fighting a rich man's war. You will see the support for unnescessary wars go way down when you have to put your own kids in harms way. Let's hope the Bush girls will be the first names pulled out of the barrel.

Funky Tut

That Egyptian superstar is back! Last time he toured the USA he started a dance craze. I can clearly recall going to see the last King Tut exhibit back in 1978 at the Seattle Center Pavilion when I was in the second grade.

I saw it about six times or so actually, a few times with my family, once with my school, and a few times with folks visiting from out of town. It really was huge, the wait to get tickets could be hours long. I think I was more interested in getting postcards in the giftshop at the end of the exhibit than at looking at the shiny gold trinkets over and over again.

It opens in LA about a 4 1/2 hour drive to the west of me in June 2005. Doesn't appear to be a Seattle date listed just yet. Drop by the official site for more information.

Move over Sony!

There was one more thing I managed to accomplish while I was up in Flagstaff last weekend. I know you were all concerned about my recent DVD problem. Being a single guy stuck out in the desert with no DVD player is not a pretty site. I was forced to watch broadcast TV for a few days actually!

Last Friday on the supposed busiest shopping day of the tour, I passed by a mall on route 66 on my way back into Flagstaff after my exciting trip to the meteor crater and Walnut Canyon. I figured I might find an electronics store of some type to get a replacement DVD player for the one that blinked out last week so I dropped in.

I stumbled into a Radio Shack, not expecting to find much. They had a special one-day sale for a Chinese DVD player by a company named Desay for only $20. My only other venture into Chinese electronics was a Chinese walkman I bought in Newcastle England in 1991 that worked horribly. But I figured for twenty dollars how could I go wrong!

Well this new machine works better than my old one. DVDs look better, the interface for MP3 discs is great, you can even use it to look at jpegs on your CDRs. The only thing it fails in is that the VCD playback is not that hot. I have another VCD player though that I bought in Thailand a few years ago I can always use for that.

So for less than the cost of a single Criterion DVD I have a whole new player. A big shout-out goes to the Chinese who look like they will be putting their neighbors in the land of the rising sun out of the electronics business in the very near future.

The perfect gift

All your shopping stress is over this solstice season. Every kid, teen or adult on your list would love to get a telescope! True they might not get as much use out of it if they don't live far from city lights and pollution like me but it will be a special treat for them whenever they go camping.

The Jr. Astronomy kit should include: a decent telescope and/or great binoculars; a planesphere, and a red flashlight. Get them all set up to stargaze and you will find it is the gift that keeps on giving.

If you find the rare kid that isn't turned on by astronomy, perhaps you can just put a Spongebob or other trendy sticker on the side of the telescope and claim it is officially licensed by his/her hero and you might get a new convert.