Last July my sons Ryan and James and I attended our first Amazing Meeting (TAM9) in Las Vegas. As I wrote in my recap of that outstanding conference, one of the highlights of the event was the first time James Randi was introduced to speak to the crowd - to a thunderous standing ovation. If you are involved at all in the skeptical community, you quickly develop a true appreciation for The Amazing Randi - thanks to his decades of creative, honest and tireless work on behalf of science, reason and logical thinking.
The morning we checked out of the hotel we ran into Randi in the lobby. We spent a few very pleasant, unforced moments with the Amazing One, moments that left all three of us even more impressed with his openness, genuineness and all around awesomeness. Somehow, coming out of that discussion, one of the boys suggested we create a song about James Randi.
So we did. Unfortunately, Ryan wasn’t able to get to Sacramento to collaborate on this (he’s working hard to succeed as a magician in San Francisco), but James and I spent part of our Memorial Day weekend putting on the Randi beards and lip-synching to the song we’d recorded earlier.
It’s a little fun and goofy, but hopefully people will take it in the spirit in which it is intended - as an honest tribute to a guy we really do admire greatly! And let’s hope the Amazing Randi keeps going and going and going for a long time to come!
A few years ago my sons and I had the idea to write a
musical about the world’s greatest frauds and hoaxes. Both boys were (and are) performers and actors, and, as a
family, we were every much into musical theatre. So it seemed logical to put
our “talents” towards creating a theatre piece. I wrote a bunch of
skeptical-themed songs, my son Ryan started writing a script and my son James
started writing a rock opus about little green men.
Inevitably, as time went on, the boys graduated from high school
and moved on to other pursuits (Ryan’s a magician in San Francisco now, and
James is finishing his second year of studying molecular biology at UC/Santa
Cruz), and the project languished.
But I still have all these songs. So I figured I might as
well record and post them. This song is called “Song of the Huckster (People
Are Sheep),” and it was written to be sung by a character based on PT Barnum. The
idea was that this character, who makes a fabulous living by capitalizing on
the gullibility of the masses, would sing this song about his philosophy –
summed up in the phrase “People are sheep.”
Yesterday’s political tempest-in-a-teapot over some
Republican bigfoot’s supposed plan to sink $10 million into an ad campaign
highlighting President Obama’s ties to hackles-raising preacher Reverend Jeremiah Wright
was highly entertaining. Not
entertaining in any positive or instructive way, but entertaining in a
look-how-idiotic-the-whole-process has become sort of way.
The story, in a nutshell, goes like this:
The New York Times,
in its usual too-cool-for-school fashion, publishes a front page story about
how billionaire Republican backer Joe Ricketts plans, through his SuperPAC, to
air $10 million worth of negative ads about President Obama’s ties to Reverend
Wright, The good Reverend, we recall from his brief moment of infamy four years ago, is famous
for shouting out incendiary things like “God Damn America” to his cheering
constituents (of which Obama was one for many years).
The Twitterverse erupts in a fury! Obama operatives demand
that Romney control this rogue Republican before children start getting hurt!
Romneyites tut tut about how the SuperPAC’s aren’t under the Romney campaign’s
control and, besides, maybe the media should
pay a little attention to Obama’s history this time around.
The cable news networks and the increasingly irrelevant nightly
network news programs all make the kerfuffle the focus of the day’s coverage – many of them trotting out the exact
same damaging footage of Reverend Wright that the ads would presumably have
featured.
Romney issued multiple statements condemning the idea and,
eventually, Mr. Ricketts insists this was always just one approach being
considered and that the ads probably would never have run anyway.
So, like some political version of the mayfly, the whole story
lives and dies within one 24-hour news cycle, and with what result?
Is it a “win” for the Times - a case of good, old-fashioned
investigative journalism making the world safer for mom, apple pie and apple-cheeked
children everywhere?
Is it a win for Romney, who was allowed to take a principled
stand and deplore character-assassinating negative political advertising?
Is it a win for Mr. Ricketts, who gets to generate far more
media coverage than his $10 million would have bought, all highlighting the
President’s ties to a damaging part of his personal history?
Or is it just another sloppy day on the campaign trail, with
the usual nitwits striking the usual postures, all in the hopes of tarnishing
“the other guy” in order to make a handful of swing voters less comfortable
with the idea of him as president?
And to think, we get to enjoy five more months of this daily
insult to our collective intelligence.
I don’t often find myself nodding along with PZ Myers (while
I usually agree with him on substance, I don’t share his no-holds-barred approach to skepticism), I did
agree with his take on President Obama’s tepid acknowledgement that he now
supports gay marriage. And everything we’ve learned since – that the President's
hand was somehow forced by Vice Buffoon Biden’s unscripted comments, that he immediately
turned his weak-ass comments into a fundraising letter, that he won’t actually
support efforts to bring about a fairer world – just makes it seem that
much less impressive.
As proverbial “leader of the free world,” Obama could have
made a bold statement backed up by strong indications of what he, as president,
would do to change policy and make the world safe for marriage equality. But he
didn’t…he made a meandering statement that was weak on substance and hard to
accept as particularly sincere, and then his people did everything they could
to portray him as weak and buffeted by events, rather than strong and forceful.
So, while I acknowledge the importance of the moment – and I
don’t want to take away from the fact that a sitting president has gone where
no high elected official has gone before - I wish I could write that he had “boldly”
gone there.
And the funny thing is that it’s hard to conclude that this
is anything but a statement of conviction on his part. I don’t see how it’s a
boost to his electoral campaign, particularly in the handful of swing states
that he has to carry to win reelection. From a purely political standpoint, it seems
like it would have made a lot more sense for him to continue offering guarded support for gay rights while waiting to complete the “evolution” of his
views once he was firmly entrenched in a second term.
So, if you’re going to make a statement of conviction – why not
make a strong one. I’m puzzled.
I believe that
the universe is understandable and explainable through science, reason and
logic...and that that is awesome!
It is
awesome to see a new photograph from outer space, knowing that I'm looking not
just at something achingly beautiful in its own right, but that I’ve also been granted a
momentary glimpse into an unfathomable past. And it’s awesome to know that people
who are much smarter than I am will use that photo to decipher the mysteries of
our universe, answering questions that I would not even know how to ask and,
yes, raising new and perplexing questions as they do so.
I am
awestruck when I read about evolution, as made comprehensible by Richard
Dawkins. Or when Laurence Krauss
explains, in terms I can almost understand, how we came to have a universe from
nothing. And when Penn and Teller use humor and magic to show just how
important a scientific worldview is.
The
universe we live in is so compelling and complex and it is science that is making
it comprehensible, and that’s pretty awesome!
I believe that our
existence is understandable and explainable through science, reason and logic...and
that that is liberating!
It is
liberating to forgo the mental gymnastics required to make what we know and see
and understand of our world correspond with dogma or superstition. It is liberating
to shun magical thinking and to reject manufactured or bastardized evidence in
support of the unsupportable.
It is
liberating when one is not required
to make leaps of faith.
This is
liberating, not in the sense that one is freed from moral responsibility, but
because one can focus on being moral for the right reasons - reasons that are
hard-wired in us as a community of human beings who need each other to thrive.
I believe that life
is understandable and explainable through science, reason and logic...and that
that is fulfilling!
I don't
need anything else to give my life meaning. No magical beings, no higher
powers, no ancient astronauts, and no promises of future glory, salvation,
reincarnation or eternal sessions of cloud-based harp playing!
It means
I can focus on this one infinitesimally short life here on this unremarkable
planet. And when it's finished? Then the molecules and quarks and atoms of my
body will rejoin that great expanse of stardust from which we all are made.
I want to thank Richard Saunders for featuring my new song Mighty Mystic Power Bracelets on his week’s Skeptic Zone podcast. It was quite a thrill to hear my music on such a respected podcast!
And, just in case you are finding their way to my blog for the first time as a result of the Skeptic Zone podcast, I thought I’d put links to some of my more popular songs from my skeptic’s songbook (not that the “Skeptic's songbook” actually exists…yet!).
So, if you’re a skeptic, and interested in some music that playfully espouses the rational and scientific point of view, here are a few of my videos you might enjoy:
The Skeptic in the Room
I have been writing all kinds of songs for a long time, but a little over a year ago I decided to start trying to write specifically about my skeptical worldview. The first song I posted is The Skeptic in the Room. This nine-minute ditty describes the experiences a skeptic often has when confronting a friend or acquaintance about their pseudoscientific beliefs.
Shortly after I posted this song in January of 2011, the video was featured on a host of skeptical websites and achieved something like viral success. This surprised and thrilled me, and I am very grateful to all those members of the skeptical community who featured, liked and helped promote it.
There is Nothing Like Science
This song is the ideological flipside to The Skeptic in the Room. Where that song focuses on things I find unreasonable or pseudoscientific, this one happily expresses my belief that the world is made comprehensible and infinitely better through science, reason and logic.
This video was featured on the Richard Dawkins Foundation website, which is kind of a thrill in and of itself, as having my work affiliated in any way, however tangential, with the name Richard Dawkins is pretty awesome!
The Conspiracy Song
As with all varieties of pseudoscience, I find myself skeptical of virtually all conspiracy theories - especially the “big” ones like elaborate Kennedy assassination theories and one world governments and trutherism and…well, you get the idea. These are conspiracies so vast that logic dictates they would be virtually impossible in reality, given the large number of people who would be required to keep secrets in a world where almost nobody (and certainly no government body) can keep a secret at all! So, a song…
Thank You God
I have always been annoyed by athletes who wear their religiosity on their sleeves, crediting their or their team’s success to the influence of the Almighty. In this song I try to posit a few questions that I find very reasonable – in a nutshell, I’m saying “Hey, God, all that infinite power and knowledge and you’re messing around fixing football games?! Really?!!”
Turtle Science
This song actually predates all of the others listed here. It came to me while listening to several science and skepticism podcasts a few years ago (and I’ve incorporated bits of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe crew in the video). The discussions were about a new fossil discovered in China and the light it shed (or maybe not) on turtle evolution. The consensus of opinion was that turtle science will never be the same again. This song is silly, but I quite like it.
Mighty Mystic Power Bracelets
And that brings us, once again, to my latest effort, a little song about those magical, mystical energy bracelets that are supposed to improve one’s balance, flexibility and well-being. Um, they don’t, actually.
I have other songs posted, which you can find at my YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/eddiescott1957). But these are the ones of which I am proudest. And keep checking back, as more music of a skeptical nature will be forthcoming.
Few things get a skeptic's heart pounding the way some pervasive bit of pseudoscience worms its way into public acceptance. And, along with homeopathy and other forms of alternative medicine, one of the most pervasively accepted pseudoscientific success stories is the widespread use of "energy bands" by athletes, coaches and even my dentist.
Here in California's Capitol city of Sacramento, our little basketball arena last year sold its naming rights to one of the companies promoting this nonsense, and is now known as Power Balance Pavilion, to the great shame of our city (in my humble opinion).
So, while I can't really do anything about that situation, I can write a song about these miraculous bits of rubber, which is what I've done. And here it is:
