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- Pat Condell and what he thinks about the clergy (via sapere aude)
Links of the Week (2009/33+34)
- Artists’ drawings of the planets at Experience the Planets (via Bad Astronomy)
- Cartoon: The evil homeopath (via @astrodicticum)
- Cartoon: When birds twitter
Links and Videos of the Week (2009/29)
- Marcel’s (Travel) photography safety tips
- There’s a reason why we call it evidence… at World of Weird Things
- My name’s on the way to Mars, too, of course:
- Russian drunk yoga (10 images; via @Fischblog)
- A “normal day” – a video with actions that must have needed lots of attempts… (via @gillyberlin):
- Bullshitting the bullshitters: (via Wortvogel)
Links and Videos of the Week (2009/27)
- A nice short story by Phil Plait, the “Bad Astronomer”: Deep.
- The first photos from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
- I linked the photos of a volcanic eruption, taken from the Spase Shuttle, last week – this week, there’s a video composed of several still images:
- What would a homeopathic emergency room look like? The British comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb show it in this sketch (first via Wortvogel):
Projekt 52/21: Emotions
This week’s Projekt 52 topic is “Emotions”…
This needs some ‘splaining, I guess: You know, there are reality deniers who not only believe that water would store information1, but also be influenced by thoughts and emotions – that for instance the thought when filling it, labels on the glass or playing music of varying styles would change the structure, the “vitality” of the water, “vitality” being their own definition without being based in reality, that is; nevertheless there are pseudoscientists, especially a Japanese with the apt name Masaru Emoto –, who like to pick and interpret favorable crystal images to “prove” this.
Which of course is used by vendors of similarly placebo-ish “water levitation devices” as a basis for advertising, like one that regularly spreads his ads in my region (I wrote about it last year in German only). Let’s see some quotes:
James Randi commented on that back in 2003 (2nd section), also showing selected(!) crystal images. Quote from Randi:
Well, if that didn’t convince you that Dr. Emoto might not have both oars in the water, try this, a quotation from him in answer to his thoughts on what the crystals are: “I came to the realization that these crystals are spirits.” Okay. Where’s the door….?
Quote from ZEIT Online, “Kann Wasser denken?” (“Can water think?”, (re-)translation by me):
But who actually asks for science when Emoto gives his statement of faith: “The water molecules made me understand deeply that only when gratitude is present twice (H2), love (O) can assume an active form and take effect.”
What to add to that? 
You can imagine that such a nonsense doesn’t exactly cause positive emotions in me; even this glass of water – with coincidental eye-like bubbles (which I colorized a little) – doesn’t look too happy about it…
Edit: To be on the safe side, I removed the originally present finger tapping the forehead – not that someone’d feel that insulted that he’d run to his lawyer…
- the would-be-scientific part of homeopaths, for instance, like to use it as an explanation [↩]