Frog Invaders

Our home is a frog sanctuary, and we hear them croaking most nights. Recently, though, they've decided to invade the garage. This little guy almost made it to the fridge! He got taken back outside to safety. :-)

Something New

My newest experiment...blogging straight from my iPhone. I hope it works because...coolness! Just don't expect book-length exegeses. :-)

News [as] Marketing

There is an article indexed by Yahoo! Finance today titled "10 Places NOT to Use Your Debit Card" (their caps, not mine). The article was "provided" by CreditCards.com and offers ten situations in which a credit card is "safer" to use than a debit card. The article offers a quote from John Breyault, director of the Fraud Center for the National Consumers League, saying: "There's a difference in how the transactions are processed and the protections offered to consumers when they use them." In each of the ten cases, the article suggests that using a credit card is a safe method of payment because any fraud that may occur will not drain your bank account (Duh.).

While I understand the main point about protecting bank account information, I wonder whether or not the impetus behind this article is simply to advertise the use of credit cards rather than to "inform" the public as a news article should do. Certainly the corporate author, CreditCards.com, is not unbiased in suggesting that credit cards are better. Also, when I use my debit MasterCard as a credit card (which still draws from my bank account), I am covered by the same protections that a credit card would give me.

I don't feel that I need to belabor the point that using credit cards instead of debit cards can also cost a lot of money in interest and fees even when used responsibly, and this revenue is what credit cards companies count on when giving them out. Thus, it remains to be seen whether or not using a credit card instead of a debit card would actually protect more of my money in the long run, even if I became a victim of fraud. I highly doubt it.

In any case, I am getting more and more annoyed with such unabashed advertising being indexed under the guise of "news." I'm not naive enough to think this is only a recent problem, but Yahoo! Finance passes itself off as a legitimate news source, running "real" articles from the Associated Press alongside articles like the one discussed above. According to Wikipedia, Yahoo! Finance "is the top financial news and research website in the United States, with more than 23 million visitors in February 2010." With such influence, it should be alarming that this dot-com (yes, it is a commercial site!) runs such yellow journalism, playing on fears, offering it as common sense, and adding more fuel to the arson-fire of fear tactics being fanned these days.

One would think that Yahoo! would be much more judicious in what it accepts as news, at least if it wishes to protect its own credibility and not fall victim to the kind of fraudulence it posted today.

Pascal Says "Bet On It"

I ran across this entertaining little application of Pascal's Wager on YouTube, and it hit me: this is why the world will certainly respond to the issue of global warming, regardless of the science, statistics, or political arguments.

Whether you like it or not, the world's response to the global warming "risk" will change our way of life much more than it already has. This video explains why, and does it with enough cheesy, science teacher humor to make it a (somewhat) entertaining way to absorb the information. Pascal strikes again...enjoy.

A Ghost of a Response

I’d done nearly everything but sign a secret pact with myself to no longer blog about controversial religious topics (even though they interest me) because people tend to get so weird about them. However, today I just couldn’t resist. This morning, browsing the top news stories on Yahoo! News, I ran across the story “Loneliness Breeds Belief in Supernatural.” The story, by LiveScience Staff Writer Andrea Thompson was first published online on January 24^th. Before 8:00am on the 25^th, the story had been picked up by Yahoo! News, and as of today (the 28^th) the story is short-listed as one of Yahoo’s “Most Popular Science News.”

The article, a news report on a recent study at the University of Chicago and published in the February issue of Psychological Science, found that “people who feel lonely are more likely to believe in the supernatural, whether that is God, angels or miracles.” Based on a prescriptive study involving questionnaires given to subjects during induced emotional states, the findings were described by head researcher Nicholas Epley as indicating that “inducing people to feel lonely made them more religious essentially.” Thompson also writes that “humans have evolved as social creatures, so loneliness cuts to the quick. Living in groups was critical to the survival and safety of our ancient ancestors.” Epley concurs, stating that in the past “complete isolation or ostracism has been tantamount to a death sentence.”

Reading the article, I was immediately curious as to how communities of “believers” would respond to statements such as “when people feel lonely… they may create social connections by anthropomorphizing nearby gadgets, such as computers or cars, pets, or by believing in supernatural events or religious figures,” or, “there are health benefits that come from being connected to other people, and those same benefits seem to come from connection with pets and with religious agents, too.” These are both “factual” scientific statements, meaning that their truth value can be borne out using scientific methods; however, the article certainly suggests that belief in supernatural agents can be explained as simply a natural human defense mechanism. In short, it implies that belief in the supernatural can be seen as a symptom of ill mental/social health.

As of today, there has been a significant online response to the article. The article is being catalogued and discussed on websites representing a large variety of “believers” in the supernatural. For instance, a quick search of the article title in Google indexed well over twenty pages of hits. A good number of sites are pro-Atheist, championing the results as representing “something to believe in.” A huge range of sites denouncing the results are coming from Wiccan and all variety of Pagan sites, Ghost-hunting and other Paranormal related sites, Islamic sites, Mormon sites, and even a couple of sites from the Bahai faith. Strangely absent in the results are conservative Christian groups.

There are, of course, a small number of responses from the conservative Christian community, but they are few and far between and not from sites of any repute. Perhaps I missed one, or perhaps the responses will come late, but what does the current vacuum say about the overall tenacity of online Christian organizations? Are they too cautious, too scared, or too few to mount a visible response to a national news story over the course of four days? Or are they simply too disconnected, too cut-off…too lonely?