ideofact

Murder as Magic Trick

The Washington Post finally develops some skepticism (after uncritically relaying the suicide theory peddled by attorneys for some of the prison guards in the death of Ronnie L. White:

Five medical examiners from across the country interviewed by The Washington Post said it would have been difficult for White to have broken the hyoid bone in his neck by hanging himself.

Bobby Henry, an attorney for White's family, said that he does not think White committed suicide and that any discussion of such rumors distracts from the homicide investigation.

"The medical examiner's office has already given the cause of death, and that is not going to change," Henry said. White's "neck was broken, and he was strangled to death. There's nothing that can change that, nothing. . . . You can't willy-nilly come up with a convenient explanation three weeks later of suicide."

The medical examiners interviewed by The Post noted that the hyoid, a U-shaped piece of bone and cartilage just above the Adam's apple that helps form the airway, is fairly flexible in young adults and was more likely to be broken by a violent strangulation than a hanging.

This bit could have been presented with a bit more skepticism:

The revelation of additional evidence -- sources said a bedsheet was found in or near White's cell-- appears to lend some credence to the suicide theory. But it's unclear where, when and in what condition detectives found the sheet. If it was removed from White's cell, it could amount to tampering with evidence, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Now, why hasn't the Post published photos of the crime scene? Why hasn't the paper gotten a timeline of what happened after the body was discovered -- who found it, how many people entered the cell, at what point were guards told to preserve evidence, etc? And why is the Post presenting the suicide theory as even being vaguely respectable (White's body was not found hanging from the rafters, but on the floor). Did he hang himself and, with has last bit of strength, pull down the bed sheet and force it through the small opening for food trays in the door to his cell?

Waldensians

Apparently they survived the persecutions of the middle ages.

I've been rereading Norman Cohn's work Europe's Inner Demons, (Amazon link here), which describes their persecution in some detail. I had no idea there were modern Waldensians, let alone American ones. More about them here.

Is there anyone out there?

This is one of the most interesting things I've read in ages -- and while I tend to think that whatever happens I'll continue to sleep soundly, nevertheless here I am at near 2 a.m., suddenly insomniac with my mind rushing to, well, this.

There's been a long standing effort -- largely volunteer -- to listen to space, with the hope of picking up patterns in frequencies suggestive of language, or intelligence -- proof of extraterrestrial life. (It's called SETI, or the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life.) Now some of those folks are thinking of trying to get aliens to notice us:

Recently, several groups, ranging from radio astronomers in Argentina and Russia all the way to the web advertising site Craig's List, have declared that they intend to commence broadcasting high-intensity Messages to ETI... or METI... an endeavor also known at "Active SETI". Their intention is to change the observable brightness of Earth civilization by many orders of magnitude, in order to attract attention to our planet from anyone who might be out there.

Let there be no mistake. METI is a very different thing than passively sifting for signals from the outer space. Carl Sagan, one of the greatest SETI supporters and a deep believer in the notion of altruistic alien civilizations, called such a move deeply unwise and immature.

Why is this a bad idea? David Brin, author of the piece I'm linking, gives a very succinct reason:

In The Third Chimpanzee, Jared Diamond offers an essay on the risks of attempting to contact ETIs, based on the history of what happened on Earth whenever more advanced civilizations encountered less advanced ones... or indeed, when the same thing happens during contact between species that evolved in differing ecosystems. The results are often not good: in inter-human relations slavery, colonialism, etc. Among contacting species: extinction.

And here we might add: Modern western civilization, with its interest in foreign literatures and languages, its attempts to preserve environments and species, may be entirely anomalous in all the universe. Calling attention to ourselves might be suicide. It seems far more likely than this somewhat self-contradictory bit of ideology:

In Russia, the pro-METI consensus is apparently founded upon a quaint doctrine from the 1930s maintaining that all advanced civilizations must naturally and automatically be both altruistic and socialist. This Soviet Era dogma — now stripped of socialist or Lysenkoist imagery — still insists that technologically adept aliens can only be motivated by Universal Altruism (UA). The Russian METI group, among the most eager to broadcast into space, dismisses any other concept as childishly apprehensive "science fiction".

What's amazing, of course--and I believe this is the main point of Brin's essay--is that such a small number of people, acting in small groups, could make a decision of such existential importance for not only the human race but for every species on earth.

And here I must confess that I'm reminded of a bit from a Woody Allen story -- "[Andre Malraux and I] talk of serious things, and he tells me man is free to choose his own fate and that not until he realizes that death is part of life can he really understand existence. Then he offers to sell me a rabbit's foot." I don't think I believe that aliens are traversing the cosmos -- that real versions of Klingons, Mysterons or even Galactus are out there ready and able to pick up on a signal from earth. But this is merely my gut talking, as well as my prejudice (which serves me just as well when it comes to religion) that absence of evidence for thousands and thousand and millions and millions of years is, in empirical terms, sufficient to conclude there is evidence of absence.

But I really DON'T KNOW, and just as I'm unlikely to, for example, find out if a massive body builder has a bad temper by repeatedly calling him a wimp and a wussy, I'm not sure that advertising earth's location is the smartest way to find out whether I'm right about Galactus. Two rabbit's foots, please.

Only a movie...

...and only a movie review, even if both seem to disappoint (I haven't seen the film, but I trust the review accurately describes it).

We fool ourselves when we believe we live in a rational age, or that we have sloughed off superstition -- that our religious beliefs are grounded in unchanging truths (which our fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers viewed quite differently) or sound rational theology and exegesis (neither exists). Far more grounded than theologians, mystics and other cranks are sleight of hand artists who deceive, but well know how precarious their miracles are. From this, I believe, they derive a certain intellectual rigor when looking at the supernatural. Harry Houdini was such a man:

...in the final analysis, Houdini's great claim to permanent fame lay in his crusade against fraudulent mediums and other charlatans who preyed upon the public. Fearless of hazard or threat, he worked ceaselessly in the exposure and suppression of such fakery. The publicity he gained was tremendous, but it did not compensate for the risk he encountered. Today, many people have forgotten what an important factor spiritism had become in American life shortly after World War I when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and other famous personages were conducting an all-out campaign on its behalf. It is now considered as much as a crank phenomenon as was proved by its merely spasmodic revival after World War II.

As a professional magician, Houdini could spot a trick from a mile away, and successfully debunked fakes. For a time, he served as a consultant to Scientific American evaluating and exposing the claims of mystics (but nearly quit when the august publication published an article suggesting that one fake, Mina Crandon, was a real medium; Houdini was determined to expose the "vivacious" Ms. Crandon as a fraud, something he managed to do without much difficulty.

Testifying before Congress, Houdini explained, in part, why he pursued the phony mediums and mystics, and why he favored Congress outlawing psychics in Washington, D.C.:

You will stop people being robbed under the guise of mediumship. It is time to do something in this regard. If you were to die and your wife went to to a medium, they would rob her of every penny by claiming to bring your spirit back.

At that same hearing, Houdini issued this challenge:

I will give $10,000 to any clairvoyant in the world that will do one test. ... Tell me the name my mother called me when I was born. Tell me the pet name my father used to call me.

Houdini issued the challenge in a crowded Senate committee room, well attended by professional mediums, psychics, and clairvoyants. None took up his challenge.

In the Slate movie review, Dana Stevens writes,

Watching a movie newsreel, Mary and Benji learn that the great American escape artist Houdini has offered $10,000 to any self-proclaimed clairvoyant who can guess his mother's last words. (Though this contest is fictional, the real Houdini did have an obsession with exposing mediums as frauds and a fixation on his mother.) Mary decides that when Houdini (Guy Pearce) comes to town for an upcoming engagement, they'll sneak into his hotel room, dig through his personal effects, and piece together the mystery of that final maternal utterance.

Mary and Benji's half-baked scam is soon exposed, but Houdini takes a shine to the scruffy, resourceful pair and even believes (or is he just pretending to believe?) in Mary's paranormal gifts—a faith not shared by his cranky manager, Mr. Sugarman (the ever-welcome Timothy Spall). Houdini sets up the McGarvies in a posh hotel suite near his own, encouraging them to spy all they want, confident that they'll never uncover those last words. Meanwhile, he expensively courts the dubious Mary, who can't figure out the great magician's motives. Surely it's not possible that he's actually falling for her?

Let's hope not -- Houdini and his wife by all accounts had a warm, deep, enduring love. It is hard to imagine he'd fall for a faker. Houdini of course did issue the $10,000 challenge.

Why not a more interesting movie? On Houdini as monogamous hero, exposer of frauds, running against public sentiment which desperately wanted to believe the dead could be contacted -- Houdini, the sane man in a mad world? The sane man who made his money by wrapped in chains and straitjackets and sunk underwater and "miraculously" escaping.