Can it be true? A little birdie (OK, actually Slashdot) told me that the guys behind MST3K are back! It’s not on the Satellite of Love, but I don’t care, as long as I can watch their silhouettes mocking bad flicks. They have regrouped, calling themselves The Film Crew. I have zero time to download and watch their stuff, but I will, oh yes, I will.

And if you have no clue what I’m talking about, start here.

This MSNBC article (via Fark; original Reuters article here) is so full of head-exploding irony it should come with a warning.

Proceed at your own risk.

Synopsis: a group calling itself Invincible America Assembly has claimed responsibility for the record high Dow Jones of last week (and say they will guarantee it’ll hit 17,000 this year thanks to them, too) and for North Korea shutting down their nuclear reactor projects.

How do they do this? Why, by meditation, of course!

Now, we know through about a billion studies that things like this have absolutely no affect whatsoever on the outside world, and that these people are deluding themselves. If you disagree, then I suggest you take a moment and educate yourself on these things (try the Skeptic Dictionary, for example, specifically here and here) before complaining in the comments.

Back now? Good. Now listen to the irony-gland-detonating comments by John Hagelin, the head meditating guy:

“This is not praying for peace, this is not sending out positive thoughts for peace,” Roth said. “This is diving deep into one’s own consciousness.”

It’s not prayer, see? We’re sitting around, thinking about stuff, and doing nothing positive, pro-active, or actually physical, but it’s not prayer.

Yeah.

Then he says this, which is the keeper, the biggie, the one that will melt your brain:

“We have control over things we didn’t have control over before. That’s the progress of science,” Hagelin said.

AIIIIEEEEE! AIIIIEEEEEE! PFFFSSSSSTTTT! BANG!!

Yup. I couldn’t even type that quotation out, and now I need yet another irony gland transplant. You’d think I’d have learned by now.

Well, I’m glad they’ve taken credit for those two good things since June 2006, when they started praying meditating. But they may have forgotten about the roughly 1500 soldiers who have died in Iraq since then (the number of whom per month, curiously, seems to have risen steadily since June 2006), the firing of 30,000 people from Ford factories in January, the 1000 people killed by earthquakes around the world, the stock market setback in March (and the recent 500 point tumble — the worst in 5 years — at the same time this article on meditation was released), and, oh, a few other things that have gone sour since last June. I’m sure you can think of others.

That people would make such ridiculous and patently false claims is not surprising; what’s sad is that Reuters would choose to write it up (and MSNBC print it) with absolutely no skeptical information.

Feh.

And the final proof that these guys are full of it? The fact that I’m so angry at them!

Need I say it?

Irony!

Oh, how I wish I were going to Dragon*Con this year! But I can’t; I’m cruising to Alaska with James Randi instead. Tough world (seriously, it was a very tough choice). But to make it worse, Derek Colanduno from Skepticality has posted a list of skeptical activities at D*C, and it’s a killer schedule. If you’re a skeptic in the Atlanta area you should get your critical brain to Derek and Swoopy’s panels! Michael Shermer will be there, Benjamin Radford, Jeff Wagg from Randi’s org (he’s flying out to go on the cruise the next day!), Mike Stackpole, the fantabulous George Hrab, Pamela Gay, an old friend and half of the Astronomy Cast team — it’s a great list of folks.

And of course, you see stuff like this:

But only stuff like that, since I won’t be there. Sigh.

It’s been a while since I did the “Brains on Vacation” segment on Are We Alone, the SETI podcast, but one came out a week ago. You can download it on their shiny new website, or you can simply grab the MP3. My segment is the first one, starting about 2 minutes in, and in this episode Seth and I chat about the Bermuda Triangle. My verdict about the Triangle is: well, duh. Guess.

You can listen to the rest of the podcast if you want to, but I’m not in it, so it’s not as interesting.

I get spam. Lots of it. But I got one the other day which was pretty funny:

We would like to invite you to join a magnificant [sic] and very special worldwide September event: The Days of Good.

The Days of Good is VERY IMPORTANT world-wide event which can help to change the whole World for BETTER and can improve the LIFE through joining all people over the World…

This majestic worldwide event takes place from 9th September (Sunday) to 18th September (Tuesday) 2007 and all those people of the whole world will join it (regardless of nationality, religion or spiritual traditions, cultures, philosophy, education, profession, age, or race…) who are not indifferent to their own life or life of their relatives and friends, life in their surroundings, village, town or city, their region, country and life on Earth in general!

In general, I think that everyone should do as much good as they can, all the time. And since this particular spam does encourage people to actually do something, instead of sitting around doing useless things like praying or wishing good thoughts, it is actually a cut above the usual New Age (rhymes with sewage) nonsense.

But I have to wonder: if they want me to think positive thoughts, why did they send me &^%#($(&*^&%@&* spam???

The server issues we were having should be finished now. There was some difficult-to-trace bug floating around, but evidently it’s been exterminated.

Just to rehash about the blog, I am still tracking down bad ads as people complain. If you see something that goes against the mission of BA, or is a really irritating ad, let me know in the comments. Please tell me where you saw it (at the top of the site, or the sidebar) and what it was advertising. I have already eliminated most of the bad ones.

I think I have eliminated the spam filter error some people were getting. The only way to know is to see if anyone gets it again! So if you see it, post in the comments please!

Every upgrade has growing pains, and this one was rough. I think it’s mostly behind us now though.

I just got an email from the Senior Publicist at Entertainment Weekly — wow, how important I must be! — about an online article they have with more info on the Cloverfield trailer (I wrote about this movie early enough after the trailer was released that BA comes up pretty high on Google if you search on "Cloverfield"). The article is no big deal, with almost no new info; all it really does is confirm it’s a monster movie, but doesn’t say how they know.

The poster shown above is spreading through the Intertubes right now (like on Slashfilm), since it was released at ComicCon today (together with a Star trek 11 poster which isn’t worth showing here; it’s just the words "Star Trek: Stardate 12.25.08").

Anyway, the EW article refers people to the Cloverfield site for more info, but there is only a Flash animation there with no info. It may be some sort of Easter Egg hunt, but I have no patience for such things. If anybody figures out more, feel free to comment!