Blogs / Bad Astronomy

Update (May 13): I love my commenters! The meteorite has been found; in fact, it appears it was found well before I posted this entry. I didn’t find any info before I posted, but maybe my Google mojo had abandoned me. Anyway, this is good news, in a place that could really use some.

My in-laws live in Kansas, but I’ve never been to Greensburg (even though it’s about an hour from their house). Now if I go it’ll be different: it’s the town that was just literally destroyed by a tornado.

If there were any reason I’d go, it would have been to see their Pallasite meteorite, my favorite kind. They had a huge one that was found there, and in fact several have been found nearby in recent times. They have an ugly exterior, like slag, but when you cut them open they’re spectacular. They have translucent greenish-yellow olivine crystals lodged in an iron matrix, and if you cut them into thin slices and hold them up to the light, they are spectacular.

I just heard that the meteorite was lost in the tornado as well.

I’m not nearly as sad about that as I am over everything else that happened to those poor folks there, of course. I was slack-jawed looking at images from the town. That meteorite was the town’s prized possession, and it’s gone too. Man, that is an incredible bummer.

I have to add– when we’d drive through Kansas, we’d see signs for Greensburg, and they’d say that it was the home of the Pallasite meteorite and the world’s largest hand-dug well. We’d have to laugh, because a well seems like a silly thing to promote. Then, a long time later, I actually saw a pamphlet about the well. Wow. It really is big. It’s not the kind of thing I’d like to go visit, but then I can imagine a lot of people would see the meteorite and think it’s not a big deal because it’s just a rock. Different strokes. But I’m just saying — that’s a big well.

I imagine it’s still there. I also imagine they’ll find the meteorite, eventually. It’s about a meter across, and it’s almost solid iron, so it’s not likely to get too damaged (though I’d hate to see anything it might have hit at 400 kph inside that tornado). I hope they do. It sounds silly, maybe, but I bet if they find it it’ll cheer the town up a lot.

Tip of the Whipple shield to Thoughts from Kansas.

Heh heh heh. I love it when the bad guys get a little of their own back.

Noted fraud Uri Geller, who made his fortune in the 70s claiming he could bend spoons with his mind (I do it the same way Uri does — my mind says "Bend!", and then my fingers bend the spoon), has a notorious habit of suing everyone who says bad things about him. He and superskeptic James Randi have been at each others’ throats for decades (Randi tends to win).

Anyway, the Rational Response Squad, a group of skeptics,Electronic Freedom Foundation is suing Geller (on behalf of the Rational Response Squad)! The RRS put some vids on YouTube showing how Geller is a fraud. Geller demanded YouTube take the clips down, saying he owns the rights.

Oops. No he doesn’t. So the RRS EFF is suing him.

I will sit back and enjoy the developments of this situation with great amusement and schadenfreude. Geller is a bad man, who does everything he can to intimidate his critics, so I am lovin’ this. Stay tuned to the Rational Response Squad for more info.

Tip o’ the goggles to Rebecca. Note: I mistakenly said originally that the RRS was suing, but it’s the EFF on their behalf. Thanks to commenter David Vanderschel for pointing this out.

Update 2: an article in the news said a fund has been set up for Ms. Malloy by Wells Fargo bank. As I write this it’s evening and they are closed, but I’ll check tomorrow to see if there is a way to donate to this fund online. I didn’t see anything at their website.

Update (Monday, May 14): This blog entry has incited quite a reaction. I expected some, given that I am poking at what is essentially a religious viewpoint about miracles, and a superstitious viewpoint on luck. However, somewhere along the line while writing it I lost track of my ultimate goal which was to simply point out how we tend to ascribe causes to random events, and how this leads to uncritical thinking. Where I blew it was jumping right into this discussion before acknowledging where it comes from: a real human who has suffered a horrible accident. I know it’s hard to tell tone from words, but I am being very honest when I say I wish nothing but good for Ms. Malloy on her road to recovery, and I apologize for any grief she’s had about this. While I disagree with many (if not most) of the negative comments about the meat of my claim, what I cannot disagree with is that the tone of this entry is more snarky than it should have been. I let my irritation get the better of me stylistically, and again I apologize. I hope that my extended comment on this entry clears that up. Given the number of comments and the back-and-forth of them, I will leave this entry intact as I wrote it (except for the insertion about the chiropractor); but it can also serve as a reminder to any of us who blog, comment, or just plain discuss topics, that many times there is a reality behind the discussion, and people who are affected. Some of the comments below cross well over the line as well, so I hope that everyone involved here has learned a lesson.

Man, I get tired of this kind of stuff:

A car crash in Nebraska on Jan. 25 threw Malloy up against the vehicle’s dashboard. In the process, her skull became separated from her spine. The clinical term for her condition is called internal decapitation.

That’s the gist of the article: a woman survives a bad injury that in most cases would kill the victim. But the amount of bad thinking that continues from there is astonishing. Let’s look:

Miracles do happen. That’s what doctors said about 30-year-old Shannon Malloy.

Ah yes, a miracle. It has nothing to do with pure statistics and probability. Or the fact that medical science has advanced enough to save someone’s life.

Dr. Gary Ghiselli, a chiropractor an orthopedic spine surgeon at the Denver Spine Center, said Malloy’s will to survive is what saved her.

A chiropractor said it was her will. Right. I suppose someone involved with what is at the very best a borderline quack field would say it was her will, and not, say, probability and medical science. Note added Monday, May 14: The original news article said that Dr. Ghiselli was a chiropractor, but that has been amended in that article to indicate that Dr. Ghiselli is an orthopedic spine surgeon — a profession that I can say with some confidence and personal experience is a lot more trustworthy, reliable, and scientific than chiropractic.

“I had a fractured skull, swollen brain stem, bleeding in my brain, GI tube in my stomach, can’t swallow, and nerve damage in my eyes (because they cross),” said Malloy.

Doctors are working on that but she has been lucky enough to get the halo removed.

I know I shouldn’t get upset when people talk about luck, but it still irks me. Luck is probability taken personally, as the saying goes. She wasn’t lucky to get the halo removed, it’s just the way things worked out. I have actually specially worked on not using the word "luck" anymore. It’s just another accepted notion that’s incorrect, and I don’t want to promote it, even colloquially.

“Oh my God, it’s a miracle,” said Malloy.

I guess then it was also a miracle that God made the terrible, horrifying accident to happen in the first place, too. You can’t pick and choose which random events to ascribe to God, folks. If He throws the dice for one, He throws the dice for all.

“It’s a miracle that she was able to survive from the actual accident. It’s a miracle that she’s made the progress that she’s made,” said Ghiselli [the chiropractor].

See above. I suppose then it’s a miracle her skull was severed from her spine, she sustained nerve damage, and she cannot see well or swallow properly.

That’s some miracle. Tell you what: I’ll take my chances on probability.