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In yet another friendly religious debate, I was given the argument that goes something like, “How do you know that _____ _____ existed?” The blanks can obviously be replaced with any prominent historical figure who is no longer living. On this occasion it was George Washington. This argument is quite weak in itself, since it is not even an argument for or against the existence of God (or Jesus); instead, it argues only that human knowledge is fallible, therefore no fact can be absolutely certain, indirectly leaving a little room for the possibility of a god.

The response to this kind of argument is three-fold. First, we have thousands of instances of indirect evidence that supports the existence of George Washington in the form of biographies, paintings, and letters, as well as documents and letters written by the man himself. It’s highly unlikely and unnecessary for all of these sources to have conspired to invent a non-existent first president of the United States.

The second part of the response is perhaps the most important: George Washington never claimed to be able to break the laws of physics! There are no claims of Washington parting seas, curing the blind, or turning water into wine. If such a claim had been made, we would undoubtedly need some truly convincing evidence, like confirmations of the observed phenomena by the greatest scientists of the time (emphasizing their inability to explain the phenomena), as well as experimental data on repeatability and consistency of Washington’s powers.

The third part of the response is a bit more subtle, but also very important. Believing in the existence of George Washington is not integral to the understanding of reality. History is reevaluated all the time. One day, historians might even discover that Washington was a hoax, and never existed as a real person. However, this kind of finding would have no effect on the foundations of physics, cosmology, or biology. The existence of Jesus, however (especially the god-man Jesus of the Bible) would have profound consequences in many scientific disciplines. The fact that the Bible is the only (second-hand) source that attributes supernatural powers to Jesus makes for particularly weak evidence for his divinity. If there was a single manuscript claiming that George Washington had magical powers, I would undoubtedly want evidence that is as credible as the claim is outlandish. Wouldn’t you?

One of the recent television commercials for the U.S. Navy depicts two police officers in their cruiser, patroling a shady urban neighborhood. Suddenly they pick out a boy in a group of friends, and call him over to the vehicle. One of the police officers points to his laptop, annoyed, saying, “It, uhh… it crashed again.” The boy glances at the laptop screen and says proudly, “Reboot with F8 in Safe Mode.”

Now, it is true that pressing F8 during the boot sequence will allow you to enter Safe Mode. However, going into Safe Mode is a very temporary measure, and by no means the solution to the underlying problem! Booting into Safe Mode should only be done in the most extreme situations (e.g. a malfunctioning video driver), and should never be used for anything except repairing critical errors in the operating system, and then making sure the computer can boot back into normal mode.

The Navy-bound computer whiz-kid should never have let the officer drive off with the computer still in Safe Mode. If anything, the officer will encounter more problems (or at least annoyances) trying to work in Safe Mode than working normally with an occasional crash. Is this kid really the kind of person we want working as an Airborne Ops Tech?

It seems that even this humble website isn’t immune to comment spam. Until now I’ve quietly tolerated it, manually deleting the occasional spam comment and adding the referring domain to the blacklist. But lately it’s been getting out of control.

So I decided to take action. The actual amount of action required for this was surprisingly minimal. There is, of course, a plethora of plugins for WordPress that can be used to block spam, and I chose one that seemed best-suited for my purposes, namely SecureImage.

From now on, anyone who wants to leave a comment must enter a security code based on a randomly generated image.

Right now there’s a program on The Discovery Channel called The World’s Worst Drivers. I wonder, couldn’t they just call the program Women?

Here’s what I would do if I had $10,000,000 to spend right now: First, I would buy out the animation studios Williams Street, Soup2Nuts, and Klasky/Csupo. I would then rehire the writers and animators that worked on all of the following shows: Home Movies, Dr. Katz, Sealab 2021, Perfect Hair Forever, Squidbillies, and Duckman. And I would tell them one thing: “Continue these shows!”

I’ll bring in Jason Alexander, Jonathan Katz, H. Jon Benjamin, Brendon Small, and all the other voice talent, and the shows will go on! The shows that were once cancelled because of a lack of “mainstream” viewer acceptance will flourish once more!

I mean, aren’t you dying to know what happens after Duckman’s deceased wife Beatrice turns up alive at Cornfed’s wedding? Or if Gerald will ever reach Tuna Mountain, defeat his nemesis Coiffio, and finally earn the respect of Uncle Grandfather?

Yes, this will definitely be the plan if-and-when I become a multimillionaire.

At long last, I’ve recovered the source code for my Bible Code Finder application. It’s covered in more detail in this article. The program takes a plain text file (preferably a large one), and allows you to scan it for occurrences of words with equidistant letter spacing. Download the program and, if you’d like, the source code repository. To download the full text of the Bible (or a great number of other texts), visit Project Gutenberg.

It works like this: start the program and open the text file that you want to search (the program automatically strips punctuation and whitespace). Then enter up to seven words to look for, and click the Start button! The program will find the first occurrence of all words within a certain range, unless you select “Find All” instead of “Find One.” The result(s) will be shown in the Results tab.

The “Frame Size” parameter is the range (in letters) within which all words must be found. “Min Delta” and “Max Delta” are the minimum and maximum letter spacing of words to search.

Obviously, longer words will take longer to search for. Generally it’s highly improbable to find combinations with words longer than 8 letters. On the other hand, don’t search for words shorter than three letters, since too many results will be found. As a rule, try to enter longer words first, then shorter words. This will result in a quicker search.

Why is it that the more ancient a certain alternative healing technique is (or the more Eastern it is), the more “hip” it is to practice it?

Isn’t it well-established that people in ancient times were less smart than we are today? What does this say about the medicinal techniques they employed?

With the advent of modern (“Western”) medicine, the average human lifespan has nearly doubled, numerous diseases have been completely eradicated, and we are well on our way to reverse-engineering the very structure of life itself. This is due only to the fact that all forms of voodoo, magick, and pseudoscience have been eliminated from the medical profession.

For New Age proponents to attempt to reinsert pseudoscientific quackery into medicine and “restore harmony with the ancient ways” is not only counterproductive, but dangerous, and ultimately futile.

There’s something I forgot to mention in my previous post on the absurdity of Tachyon Energy. What good is any New Age healing technology without the endorsement of one or two controversial medical practitioners, and some anecdotal evidence from athletes and friends of the inventors? Well, that’s exactly what you’ll find in the “Testimonials” sections of the Tachyon websites.

No doubt, endorsements from doctors and other professionals can be used to lend more credibility to a theory as radical as tachyon energy. An endorsement from a physicist would really be preferable, but no such luck. Still, let’s examine the credibility of the professionals that the Tachyon websites quote as being full supporters of the tachyon technology.

The most prominent figure in the field of Tachyon research appears to be David Wagner. Indeed, Mr. Wagner is actually the founder of Advanced Tachyon Technologies, whose website was the main focus of my previous article. He is also the supposed inventor of the mysterious Tachyonization machine, which is claimed to alter any substance at a “submolecular” level, so that the substance becomes “tachyonized.”

One would think that, with a breakthrough of this magnitude, Mr. Wagner would have published a paper or two in well-known scientific journals, or offer his device for testing in a laboratory. But a simple search turns up no results for Wagner in any publication, except a book about Tachyon energy that he cowrote with Gabriel Cousens, a medical doctor (again, not a physicist). I would wager that the book contains similar drivel to that found on the ATT website. Truthfully, some of the explanations reminded me of Gene Ray’s discourse on his Time Cube theory! But at least Gene Ray isn’t selling anything.

With the purported infinite healing properties of Wagner’s tachyonizing device, wouldn’t Wagner have a moral responsibility to give up his invention for the greater good of the planet? With the potential for healing millions of people, Wagner would gain worldwide renown, not to mention a Nobel Prize. But instead, Mr. Wagner has kept his tachyonization process “proprietary” for years, and only focuses on refining his business model for recruiting distributors for his wares. Does this sound like a true inventor, or simply a clever con-artist?

The other prominent name mentioned on the Tachyon websites is that of Dr. Hans Nieper (1928 - 1998), a German cardiologist and oncologist. Dr. Nieper was indeed a well-known doctor who used radically unorthodox methods for treating cancer, multiple sclerosis, and cardiovascular problems with megadoses of mineral supplements. Nieper did achieve impressive clinical results, but what exactly does that have to do with tachyons? Notice, once again, that Nieper is not a physicist. In fact, here’s what Russell Mills of the Delano Report says about Nieper:

Unfortunately, Nieper’s exposure to physics seems to have consisted of taking just one undergraduate physics course and then doing a great deal of reading over the years — an approach that seldom leads to excellence in such an intellectually demanding field. Thus, despite being very intelligent and having a fine memory, Nieper did not reach a deep or correct understanding of theoretical physics. In fact, his views on physics were superficial and naive, and the medical theories he tried to derive from them were rightly considered by physicists, biologists, and medical researchers to be errant nonsense.

Apparently Dr. Nieper, with his minimal formal training in physics, began to weave nonsensical theories about unseen energy fields, subatomic fluctuations, the ethereal realm, and of course tachyons, all of which he related to maladies of the human body. Naturally, New Age “researchers” snatched up Nieper’s theories and declared them as canon. Incidentally, the enthusiasm with which New Age proponents adapted these theories says something about their level of experience in physics, too, not to mention their experience in critical thinking.

And still, no publications exist that confirm the existence of tachyons, none that confirm the existence of the Tachyonization machine, and none that confirm the influence of tachyons on personal health.

I gladly welcome any of the Tachyon distributors to send me a sample of their product (I’m certainly not about to pay for it), so that I can conduct a simple double-blind test of the product’s effectiveness, a test that every one of the distributors forgot to do.

Does anyone else find this inappropriate?

Browsing the Web the other day, I came upon several websites that sell products that supposedly harness the power of… tachyon energy. These products include “tachyon-infused” silica disks, beads, crystals, elbow wraps, blankets, bottled water, and of course massage oils and body lotions. Suspending disbelief for a moment, I explored the websites hoping to discover the secret behind the process of Tachyonization. The discovery of tachyons itself, not to mention being able to control them at room temperature, surely deserves worldwide attention! I have no idea why any of these companies hasn’t gone public with their discovery. No idea at all! So let’s begin.

The last time I checked, a tachyon is a hypothetical particle that is one of the byproducts of special relativity. Recall that Einstein’s famous relation

yields both real and imaginary solutions. The real solutions apply to real-world physical particles, that is, particles that travel slower than the speed of light. The imaginary solutions arise when we invent a particle that has a velocity (v) greater than the speed of light (c). Since Einstein’s equation permits this kind of solution, there’s nothing stopping us from imagining such a particle.

The thing to remember, however, is that just because the equation allows such solutions does not automatically imply that such particles actually exist. In fact, the existence of tachyons would present significant problems for physics as we know it, since their interaction with normal matter (if it’s allowed) would violate the laws of causality, since any matter or information traveling faster than light must also travel backwards in time.

Apparently, what the naïve mainstream physicists fail to realize is that there’s a ton of money to be made from selling New Age products that claim to harness the True Power of tachyons!

A company called Advanced Tachyon Technologies (no joke!), has been marketing such products, which include glass beads for $50 that “have been proven to be the most effective directional antennas for the localized clearing of blockages in the Energetic Continuum.” The company peddles its products through a multi-level marketing scheme (MLM), where various distributors organize their own websites and sell the products on behalf of the parent company. Examples of these sites are here, here, and here.

So what exactly is this “tachyon energy” they speak of? The ATT website attempts to explain this, but I’ll spare you the mind-numbing pseudoscientific psycho-babble, and instead provide a short excerpt:

Tachyon Energy is the very first energetic structure that emerges out of non-structured, formless Zero-Point Energy. Just like Zero-Point Energy, Tachyon is not limited to a certain frequency. Tachyon cannot be measured in the Hertzian frequency spectrum. It is not a certain type of energy. Rather, it includes all energies within itself. Its qualities are much like Zero-Point Energy, varying only in that it is a structured field.

Very rarely have I seen this many misuses of scientific terminology in a single paragraph. What is an “energetic structure”? Why is zero-point energy “formless”? What other “frequency spectrum” is there besides the “Hertzian” one? This paragraph alone should be enough to taint our confidence in the effectiveness of the Tachyon line of products.

In another page of their website, ATT attempts to explain the “physics of tachyons.” This should be good…

The condensation of zero-point energy into tachyon energy is the beginning of the Energetic Continuum, which is directly responsible for all forms on the planet. It is this condensation that creates all forms. In the production of matter, this formless zero-point energy condenses into faster-than-light tachyon. At the point of the speed of light, tachyon interacts with the Subtle Organizing Energy Fields (SOEFs).

Once again, pure garbage. Each sentence becomes more and more devoid of meaning to anyone but the most scientifically ignorant. They proceed to give a diagram and an explanation of a tachyon interacting with other particles:

For this explanation, we will explore the interaction of tachyon energy with the lepton family of particles. The first elementary particle in the lepton family is a pion. The pion exists below the speed of light and has a consistent mathematically computable orbit, which we call the Subtle Organizing Energy Field (SOEF).

This paragraph, if anything, is the nail in the coffin, since it speaks volumes about the background of the “scientists” behind these products. A pion is indeed a known particle, but it’s by no means a lepton (it’s a meson). The family of leptons includes the electron, the muon, and the tau. (There are also three flavors of neutrinos, and all the corresponding antiparticles.)

Even if we assume that the author meant to say “tau” instead of “pion,” there is still a slew of problems. The tau is not the “first” particle in the lepton family. That would be the electron. Also, the author speaks of a “mathematically computable orbit.” Orbit around what?

It’s fairly clear that these ramblings are from a person with a high-school level grasp of physics who has taken too many issues of Popular Science too seriously. It’s highly unlikely that this person not only proved the existence of tachyons, but invented a process that alters matter at the subatomic level, allowing tachyons to be focused, thereby healing the human body of all ailments. The fact that the “inventor” of this technology hasn’t yet been invited to Stockholm for the Nobel ceremony proves this point definitively.

Speaking of the Tachyonization process, the ATT website states that the inventors would rather “keep it proprietary” instead of patenting it (I wonder why!). The website does, however, try to explain what tachyonization is not:

The Tachyonization process is not a frequency, spin manipulation, or transfer. It is not a high frequency or coil technology. It does not use magnets or sounds. It does not use sacred geometry to inform products. It is not a photon-based technology. It is not an SE-5 or other form of radionics-based technology. It does not require prayer or meditation. The technology does not use crystals or orgone technologies. It is absolutely not operator-sensitive.

Well of course it’s not any of those things. It’s not anything! Correction, it is something: it’s a cleverly-worded excuse for these companies to charge $30 for a bottle of water and $50 for a bunch of glass beads.

These companies have created the perfect recipe for sucking in highly impressionable New-Agers: throw in a bunch of the usual vague spiritual buzzwords: energy, healing, flow, balance, chakra, any of which would give an unsuspecting customer a hard-on… and combine them with the latest cool-sounding scientific jargon hijacked by the New Age movement: frequency, spectrum, continuum, fields, waves, and now, tachyons.

Combining all these words into randomized, barely coherent sentences, as ATT has done, speaks of a very naïve, superficial understanding of physics and mathematics, not to mention medicine. The only terminology that the website uses correctly is the financial and legal terminology for recruiting distributors and reeling in unsuspecting customers to pay through their noses for glass beads, silica disks, and bottled water.

Once again, tachyons are hypothetical, and not real! Even if they do “exist,” it would certainly not be possible to manipulate them. It’s not even clear what it would mean to manipulate them. Even if tachyons could be controlled, doing so would not be possible by modifying ordinary matter. And even if it were possible to control tachyons using ordinary matter, it’s absurd to assume that they would have some sort of healing effect on the human body!

My god, browsing all these sites has made my head hurt. It’s a bullshit overdose!