Would you want this judge covering your case?

A Philippines judge who said he consulted imaginary mystic dwarves has failed to convince the Supreme Court to allow him to keep his job.

Florentino Floro was appealing against a three-year inquiry which led to his removal due to incompetence and bias.

He told investigators three mystic dwarves – Armand, Luis and Angel – had helped him to carry out healing sessions during breaks in his chambers.

See, now he should have said that the dwarves ordered him to keep an enormous granite copy of the Ten Commandmants in the courtroom. He would have been deluged with support from the American religious right. They give you a pass if your psychosis matches theirs.

“They should not have dismissed me for what I believed,” Mr Floro told reporters after filing his appeal in May.

Durn tootin’. If he really really wants to believe it, who are we to pooh-pooh the notion? It could be true. The difference between his belief system and other more successful ones is primarily marketing.

I don’t go looking for bizarre claims about animal language. They come to me. And I’m noticing a definite pattern for these articles.

Part 1: Make some overstated or outrageous claim about animal language.

The claim: Cows have accents.

Cows have regional accents, a group of British farmers claims, and phonetics experts say the idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds.

The phonetic expert explains:

“You find distinct chirping accents in the same species around the country. This could also be true of cows,” Wells said on the group’s Web site.

Birds I can understand. There is a clear advantage in mimicry, and there’s abundant evidence that this actually happens. (For example, check out this amazing YouTube video of the lyrebird.)

But cows?

Part 2: Have someone explain why this is happening, without verifying that the phenomenon is for real.

“I spend a lot of time with my Friesians and they definitely ‘moo’ with a Somerset drawl,” he said, referring to the breed of dairy cow he owns.

He’s picked it down to the accent. And ‘ow is this ‘appening?

“I think it works the same as with dogs – the closer a farmer’s bond is with his animals, the easier it is for them to pick up his accent.”

Not just from each other. From the farmer.

Hey, if you think it’s impossible for a cow to pick up its owner’s accent, check this list of what cows say in other languages. Totally different there! Proof positive! It’s not just perception — the cows actually sound different because of the local lingo.

The problem with this explanation is that we don’t know if the cow accent thing is really happening, and therefore there’s nothing to explain yet. First, you get the farmers to hear tapes of cows and see if they can identify the dialect. I’m willing to bet that they couldn’t do it better than random chance. Or get the moos on a spectrograph and see if the computer can detect any similarities. And if that checks out, then it’s explanation time. Not until.

Part 3: Back away from all the claims at the very end of the article.

He added that more scientific research was needed to prove what was just an anecdotal theory at this stage.

But it’s too late for that. The news people have already gone nuts, and now I’ll get people coming up to me, one every couple of weeks for the next few years, telling me about cow accents. Nova Magazine will run articles about our spirit siblings the cows, and how to communicate with them. (Although if it stops people eating them, I won’t mind so much.)

If this is for real, I’d be pretty interested. But what’s more likely — that cows are picking up accents from humans and other cows, or that farmers are projecting their accents onto the cows? Because if I’ve noticed one thing about language and animals, it’s that people project like crazy. We think apes and birds understand us. We think computers understand us. We think the sky understands us. So why not cows?

Bring on the double-blind test, and then we’ll have something to talk about. And then it’ll be interesting. Really.

I’ve been noticing the language G. W. Bush has been using lately (always a hoot), and I think he’s getting his language cues straight from right-wing blogs.

Today’s speech used the term ‘Democrat Party’ instead of ‘Democratic Party’, which is a staple of Michelle Malkin, townhall.com, and their ilk.

In calling the opposition the “Democrat Party” Mr. Bush was repeating a truncated, ungrammatical version of the party’s name that some Democrats have called a slight, an assertion the White House dismissed as ridiculous.

Add this to the “Islamic fascism” Bush cited last week — barely modified from ‘Islamofascism’ à la Little Green Footballs — and a pattern begins to emerge.

So what’s next? My vote: ‘purpose-driven’.

One last quote from the NYT article:

President Bush seized today on Democratic calls for withdrawal from Iraq to make an election-year case that his political rivals did not properly understand the threats to the nation and would create a more dangerous world.

Oo! Oo! I know what the threat to the nation is! A president-king with absolute power and no real accountability to Congress or the people, who has the ability to break laws with impunity, and no real knowledge of how to govern.

Do I win something?

…but you’ll have to excuse me for indulging in it, because it’s been a few bad days for a few bad people.

Katherine Harris has been having some trouble on her flailing Senate campaign. She’s the one who stopped the hand recount in Florida in 2000. The image of balloons silently falling onto an empty stage will live on in my mind.

Uri Geller got gazumped on his attempt to buy Elvis’s first house. Will he be able to use his mental powers to influence the legal system?

Some Christians are trying to boycott Tyndale House, makers of ‘Left Behind: Eternal Forces’ and publishers of the ‘Left Behind’ books. Check out that online petition — up to 29 names! That’ll hurt ’em.

Okay, maybe it’s not time to break out the popcorn yet. But until the good guys start winning for real, I’ll take what I can get.

“I see what you mean,” she said, “but I don’t know. I still believe in something, even though it’s not an organised religion. I like to leave room for the magic in life.”

I made a mental note that believing in untrue things equals magic.

Actually, I love magic. I used to do magic shows as a kid. I learned how to get a line of patter going, and how to misdirect the audience. I still know quite a few card tricks. My favourite YouTube clip right now is this one of the Microwave Man. I can’t figure it out yet — there’s one thing in the way of my explanation.

I really like Penn & Teller. Their cable show “Bullshit!” is being carried on Channel 9, though in the TV Guide it’s tastefully listed as ‘Penn & Teller: BS’. (One of the nice things about Australian network TV is that they run American cable shows in their regular line-up.)

Have you noticed that the best skeptics are magicians? Harry Houdini spent his later years debunking psychics and their phony seances. Famous debunker James Randi started out in conjuring. Maybe it’s because the magician-skeptics know how to fool an audience, but they’re honest about their deception — you know it’s entertainment. They have no patience with dishonest magicians (like Uri Geller) who con people into thinking that the magic tricks are real.

Magic works because it exploits our assumptions about what we see. We think the coin has been passed into the other hand. We assume the hat is empty. We imagine that we’re free to choose any card, when the magician has tricked us into picking just the card she wants.

“But when you’re talking about saving the magic in life, you have to remember that magic isn’t real,” I concluded to my friend. “Magic is someone fooling you.”

She looked glazed.

“Um… sorry for the extended philosophical exposition,” I said, “but you triggered a keyword.”

“You owe me a coffee now,” she said.

It was worth it!

In the car, the boys asked why religions ask for money if God owns everything.

“Now, kids, it’s not supposed to be about the money,” I said. “In church, they always say that the Lord doesn’t want your money; he wants your faith.”

“Fine,” said Oldest Boy. “I’ll keep my money and pay with faith.”

“Ha!” said Youngest Boy. “I get it — they’ll take your money and pay you back with faith!”

They’re pretty sharp.

Tucked away in the update to a Glenn Greenwald post:

Dick Morris revealingly predicted that revelation of this [foiled London airplane] plot would give the President a 10-point bounce in the polls, yet he received almost no boost at all.

By golly, he’s right. Mid-thirties and falling.

In addition to causing people to take the terrorism threat less seriously, playing political games with these threats also causes people to be far more skeptical of their government’s statements regarding terrorism. It’s the classic Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome, and in the terrorism context, that can be a very dangerous problem.

Someone once asked me, “What would you do about terrorism?” My answer: “In very general terms, I would a) try to solve the problem, and b) try to avoid scaring people unnecessarily.” That’s what I think a responsible leader would do. Bush has done the exact opposite on both counts.

It seems Bush has acquired a taste for existentialism.

US President George W. Bush quoted French existential writer Albert Camus to European leaders a year and a half ago, and now he’s read one of his most famous works: “The Stranger.”

It’s been one of my favourite books ever since I first read it — at age eighteen. I even tormented my patient bow-tied French professor with that Cure song, as we all do.

What would Bush be getting out of this book, besides killing Arabs? I imagine Mr Bush, with his approval ratings stuck at 40 and under for months, must be feeling sad and misunderstood. A bit like a morose Mersault. The world seems absurd — after all he’s done for world peace and safety, how could his own countrymen and party turn against him?

And the bit about Mersault not feeling sad when his mother dies — perhaps that resonated.

And compare Camus:

Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter.

with Bush:

Asked by Woodward how history would judge the war, Bush replied: “History. We don’t know. We’ll all be dead.”

There’s a faint whiff of existentialist angst. Very faint.

Or maybe I’m reading too much in, and it’s more like wilbur envisions.

Anyhow, he’s now finished ‘L’etranger’. Next he can read ‘The Plague’.

I had occasion for a chat with the Priest last Sunday. I enjoy these chats, but I think he’s having trouble accepting my new-found lack of faith.

“It’s very simple,” I said. “I used to think feelings and experiences were good evidence for my beliefs, and now I realise that those things are not sufficient to establish the truth of an idea.”

He stopped and considered for a moment. He seemed like a doctor trying to ask the right question to find the source of the disease.

“Are you reading the scriptures?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Although I will sometimes cite one on a blog post. And I’m just as familiar with their contents as ever, But reading them by course, no.”

“Do you pray?”

“Nope.”

He then asked, “How are you supposed to get an answer if you won’t do what you need to build your faith?”

Keep in mind that in the Mormon view, great emphasis is placed on the need to pray and receive a personal witness of the truthfulness of God’s existence and other religious principles. But notice what’s implicit in the Priest’s view. The idea is that faith has to be nurtured in order for it to grow. It’s not enough to just read the ‘theory’ (if I can use that term to mean ‘a belief system’). You have to keep working it. Like a leaky balloon, you have to keep pumping it up. Keep reading, keep praying, keep thinking right, keep living by the rules, so that the theory will seem ‘truer’. If you don’t do this, the theory may seem less believable, and you may not believe it anymore and abandon it entirely.

By contrast, consider a principle that is as true as anything can be in science. Let’s say gravitation. We can do thousands of experiments with gravity. We have theories about what gravity is and how it works. The theories can be tested against observable facts. And so by now the theory is pretty solid, though it may get modified if we need. As a result, nobody gets very excited about it. No one says you need to keep reading about gravity or studying about it or talking to scientists in order to keep believing in it. There are no meetings at the Church of Gravity. Instead, you find it to be a more or less fitting account of what happens (or you don’t, in which you get to work on a better theory).

There are goods and bads with the scientific method. The bad side is that the prevailing theory could be changed if more facts come to light, so what you think now could be wrong. The good side is that you have reasons for your ideas that you can show people and have them verify. You can go to the wall for an idea, and say, “Given what we know, this is the best theory available.” Faith needs continual propping up because there’s nothing behind it. Without support, it falls over easily, and you have to imagine that it’s standing up by itself. And this kind of self-deception is difficult for a halfway aware person to keep up without feeling a good deal of cognitive dissonance.

“I don’t think you understand,” I said. “If I read the scriptures and prayed, and then had a big religious experience, it would prove nothing. It would show that I had a feeling. People have all kinds of feelings, like what kind of ice cream to have, or to drown their children one by one in the bathtub. But that doesn’t mean they’re good ideas. If a phenomenon is valid, it’ll be backed up by facts. Not feelings.”

Now what if I had said yes to both the Priest’s questions about reading and praying? What would he have said then? Well, he could have asked more. Are you attending your meetings? Sure. Living the Word of Wisdom? Yes. Being honest with people? I think so.

Paying tithing? No. Well, then there’s your problem right there!

I’m not saying these are bad things to do (except tithing — I hope no religion ever gets any of my money ever again). But in my particular strain of Christianity there were so many things to do that you could never really do them all, and any missing pieces could be cited to show that one’s faith needs to be worked on. This is convenient for the Priest because in this view, lack of results never means the belief system has failed. The adherent just needs to work harder at it. Such is the leaky balloon of faith.