Seismologists Indicted For Not Predicting Earthquake

I hate to say "I told you so." I really do. There are few things that pain me more than a vigorous finger-wag and a scolding reminder of my prior fortellsions.

But in this case it is richly deserved.

The wonderful news out of Italy is that the families of the 309 people killed in the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake may finally receive justice. Six Italian seismologists and one government official have been charged with manslaughter for failing to predict the April 6, 2009 quake.

Typically, the global numero-scientific cabal is circling the wagons to defend the allegedly-homicidal seismologists. And as to be expected, they're throwing around the standard set of excuses: that earthquakes can't be predicted, that the purpose of seismology is to quantify earthquake hazard for a given region, and that people in earthquake zones should retrofit buildings or something - I don't know. I didn't read the whole thing.

The problem, of course, is that the seismologers were trying to use an inexact science like science to make their earthquake hazard shakey maps or whatever they do. Whereas the most effective techniques for earthquake prediction are currently in the domain of pseudoscience.

Legitimate seismologists summarily dismissed the radon-based predictions of pseudoscientist Giampaolo "Rudy" Giuliani, who predicted the earthquake nearly a week before it hit. Also summarily dismissed was my own successful earthquake prediction, using the pseudoscience of looking for alignments of various celestial bodies with the then-undiscovered Comet C/2010 X1 (Elenin).

So, scientists... although it hurts me to say it, I told you so!

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Camping's Folly: When Numbers Go Bad

As you may have noticed, the world didn't end yesterday. There have been a number of explanations for why Family Radio nonogenarian Harold Camping's Judgement Day prediction did not come true, ranging from a last minute change of heart by Our Lord and Savior to the fact that God doesn't exist and that all religions are merely societal constructs enabled by neurotransmitters in the brain. Camping himself has an alternate explanation - that Judgement Day happened, but was invisible.

While all of these are possible, I have an alternate theory. Camping's prediction was based on a very careful calculation of the accumulated ages of biblical figures, along with a rounding-down of the age of the Earth from 4.57 billion years to just over 6,000. What did Camping use to make this calculation? Numbers. Numerology. A study of the purported mystical relationship between numbers and life.

Since life proved to be correct by continuing to exist today, it is painfully obvious that numbers are wrong. This may be a harsh lesson for Camping's followers, who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and in some cases destroyed their families over this prediction, but a lesson learned.

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NASA Proves Einstein Right, Numeratocracy Wrong

NASA today announced the successful results of the Gravity Probe B mission, which validated Einstein's theory of General Relativity by showing that space and time are indeed warped by gravity. This result confirms what The Math Skeptic has been saying for years - that all time and distance measurements - and by extension the numbers used to make them, are inherently distorted and thus invalid.

Einstein's theory goes thusly: the Earth, like all celestial bodies, sits on a giant invisible rubber trampoline. This theory was quite revolutionary in 1916, as it displaced the previous Infinite Turtles theory from its spacetime pedestal, and has been under constant scrutiny in the century hence by IT proponents. According to General Relativity, the surface of this trampoline is distorted so much by the planet's immense mass that time and space themselves are bent into curves.

General Relativity also predicted that the rotation of the planet would also drag the frame of the trampoline around with it as it turned, much as a fat guy doing a back spin will drag the cardboard around with him as he breakdances, presumably to Herbie Hancock's "Rockit." This is known among IT² proponents (Invisible Trampoline, not to be confused with Infinite Turtle proponents) as frame-dragging.

The Gravity Probe B mission, using the most accurate gyroscopes ever made, proved both trampoline curvature and frame-dragging to be true, and that gravity distorts spacetime by 0.00183383 of a degree per year.

By extension, this means that all numbers vary by 0.00183383 per year as well, throwing all of arithmetic in doubt. That math homework you did 20 years ago is now off by 0.03667 per digit. However, if you go back to your grade school and appeal to have your grades changed (grades which also are now off by 0.03667 of a letter, incidentally), you will be mocked and ridiculed. Such is the pervasity of the arithmetic cabal.

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Math Skepticism Delayed is Math Skepticism Denied in Tennessee

A bill that could have opened the door for Math Skepticism in the Tennessee classroom is on hold until next year. The so-called "monkey bill," Senate Bill 893, would require state and local education authorities to inject some much-needed skepticism in the teaching of science.

Instead of merely learning one side of controversial theories such as evolution, abiogenesis, and climate change that have been subject to decades of experimental testing, evidence gathering, and peer review, students in the Nashville State would also have to learn competing theories such as Young-Earth Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Hollow-Earth Expansion. Presumably, this would also apply to competing theories of mathematics, allowing teachers to also inject some much-needed skepticism into controversial theories such as multiplication, geometry, and algebra.

Unsurprisingly, math and science promoters such as the National Center for Science Indoctrination and the ACLU are hailing this as a victory. "It's taken eighty-six years," said Hedy "Hedley" Weinberg, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, "but perhaps at last the Tennessee legislature is learning the lesson of the Scopes trial."

This lesson, I presume, is that in order to win, the bill's proponents need to bring in a populist firebrand lawyer from the North portrayed by Fredric March.

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More Pro-PI-Ganda!

Hard N Phirm, more like con"phirm"ed PI enablers.

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You're Playing With Fire, Astronomers!

When I read the news this week about the Minnesota Planetarium Society blatantly attempting to interfere in the millenia-old pseudoscience of astrology, my jaw literally hit the floor. Literally.

I tripped over an area rug. It's nothing serious, don't worry. Just a bruise, I think. Though there's now a popping noise when I chew. But that'll probably go away in a few days. Anyway, I digress.

Astronomers! Are you kidding me? Is a little axial precession worth violating the Oxford Agreement? Yes, this new constellation Ophiuchus may indeed lie on the ecliptic, and yes, the zodiac signs may not be where they used to be. But that's no reason to start a war. And war is exactly what you're going to get.

Sure, for now it is only a rhetorical conflict, but that could change. Sure, you may have the telescopes, the facts, and your orbiting space lasers on your side, but they have the gas giants on their side. You do not want a pissed-off Jupiter on your hands, do you?

The ghosts of Galileo, Kepler, Brahe, and others killed during the first War For The Stars are warning you to beware. I would strongly advise you to heed their warnings.

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What Can Base 10-X Do For YOU?

Sometimes, old isn't good. Sometimes, even the most traditional elements of society are due for a change. That's why the car replaced the horse, and democracy replaced feudalism, and why robots replaced the factory worker. One element of society that's LONG overdue for a change is our decimal number system.

Since they were first invented in modern-day Iran more than 5,000 years ago, they've stayed pretty much the same. 0... 1... 2... 3... I mean, wake me when we get to the 9, ok? Let's face it. These same old digits are just plain boring.

That's why The Math Skeptic is proud to announce Base 10-X: The Extended Integers edition. Base 10-X features some exciting new upgrades that you're going to love:

• Extra 7, for enhanced security (denoted as 7̃).
  
• Wildcard Wednesdays: from 3-7 pm, 4 can have any value you choose.
  
• Every 10th 3 is the "PowerUp 3" and is valued at 6.
  
• New "Ahh, Just Round It Off" decimal point option (denoted as ˳) for easy ignoring of decimals.
  
• 5 has a ±2 margin of error.
  
• Three 9's in a row automatically self-destruct.
  

Please help us spread this revolutionary new number system by lobbying textbook publishers, software programmers, and calculator manufacturers to include it in new versions of their product. Together, we can make alternative-math the new mainstream!

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Scientific Proof: Numbers Are Unreliable

In a fascinating The New Yorker article I hope to read eventually, neuroscientist and frequent Radiolab-rat Jonah Lehrer proposes an elegant answer to the mysterious conundrum of the Decline Effect: All data is meaningless.

He may or may not actually have said this. It's a really long article. But it's probably what he meant, so I'll just go ahead and quote him as having said it. And Mr. Lehrer then goes on to opine that numbers indeed have a mind of their own and are capable of changing themselves at will in order to confuse scientists.

This is, as you know, what I've been saying for decades.

The Decline Effect - the primary topic of Lehrer's piece - is a phenomenon observed in many of the sciences by which a large effect measured in an initial study tends to decline as the subject is tested in follow-up studies. This is particularly evident in the medical sciences, manifesting as a stronger placebo effect when trialing new drugs. It is patently obvious to even the dimmest patent clerk what is happening here: the numbers are changing themselves based on their own personal whims and fancies, thus rendering all data invalidable.

Of course, card-carrying number-sympathizers like Steven Novella are quick to dismiss these obvious cases of Divide Intervention as "regression to the mean" or "the self-correcting nature of science."

Balderdash, I say! Science cannot self-correct if the numbers are faulty. And the numbers, evidently, are indeed faulty.

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