I found a great website, The Skeptic Report. In addition to covering the usual frauds—such as psychics, UFOs, homeopathy, etc.—it has a section on creationism, which I have added to my sidebar. It also has a more general section on religion. In there, I found an article on the Ten Commandments that I was planning to write. Theirs is at least as good as mine would have been, so just go read that.

The article asks:

Is American law based upon the 10 Commandments? Let us examine them.

It then looks at each commandment in turn to determine if it’s something we built our laws on. The article concludes with [slightly reformatted for emphasis]:

Out of the ten commandments:

• Four (1, 2, 3, 10) are counter to American laws.
• Three (6, 8, 9) are part of our legal system, but are part of just about every legal system in history. [and predate the 10 Commandments]
• Two (4, 5) are not a part of our laws.
• One (7) may or may not be a part of state or local laws.

Even in a state that has laws concerning #7, that still means less than half of the 10 commandments carry any legal weight, and an equal number are illegal to enforce.

Those that claim the 10 commandments are our basis for law apparently do not know the law very well. The only thing funnier is those that want it posted illegally in schools “to teach children respect for the law”.

Go over to Skeptic Report and read the whole article. Save it to your hard drive. The next time one of your fundie relatives sends you an email about how U.S. law is based on the Ten Commandments, send them a copy of this.

PZ Myers has a good analysis of the new fossil (Ventastega curonica) announced a couple of days ago:

On one earlier side we have a bunch of tetrapod-like fish — Tiktaalik and Panderichthys, for instance — and on the later side we have fish-like tetrapods, such as Acanthostega and Ichthyostega. Now they’re talking about shades of fishiness or tetrapodiness within those groups! You’d almost think they were documenting a pattern of gradual evolutionary change.

The creationists keep claiming there are no transitional fossils. That’s a lie that’s getting harder and harder to maintain.

While I was in Las Vegas last weekend, I snapped a few pictures of odd things I saw. The above photo is of the toilet in my room. Just keep away from the holy water.

For many months, I wasn’t sure whether I’d even be able to go to TAM 6 this year, because of job conflicts. I wasn’t able to make the commitment until just a few weeks before TAM. By that time, the convention rate on the official hotel (the Flamingo) had expired. Now they wanted over $200 per night. Holy crapper! (see above) I can’t justify that. I looked around for someplace cheaper. I found the Super 8 Koval just one (very long) block off of the Strip. It was something like $70 per night, so that’s where I ended up. It’s a tolerable place, and it appeared clean. Much to my amazement, the walk between the S8 and the Flamingo was not packed with crack whores, drug dealers, and Elvis impersonators. It was, however, a very long walk in the extreme Vegas summer heat.

But imagine my surprise when I checked into my room and found this:

I saw this sign in the lobby of the hotel. I didn’t eat there. If it really is the best, they wouldn’t need to use irony quotes.

This is actually from a couple of days ago, but I was too busy to post.

Today’s quote is from Barbara, in the comments to the article “Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ!”. First, she starts by quoting ParrotLover:

Compared to McCain, a dildo has a better shot at turning things around for the US.

To which she replies:

We’ve had a dildo in office for two terms now, and he did turn things around. But not in a good way.

As you all should know by now, I went to the Amazing Meeting 6 in Las Vegas last weekend. Here are a few thoughts and reactions.

The best reason to go is to meet all the different folks. Some of the highlights were connecting or reconnecting with PZ Myers, Phil Plait, Hal Bidlack, and Adam Savage.

If I have a complaint, it’s that it’s actually very difficult to connect with most of the speakers. Attendance this year was a record-breaking 900. With that many people, it’s hard to get more than a few minutes with any of them.

Of the many ordinary attendees I ran into, I did get a chance to converse with Robert Lancaster, who runs the Stop Sylvia Browne website. I also got to talk to Comedy Jesus.

The Presentations

Here’s a brief rundown of my reactions to some of the presenters:

Neil deGrasse Tyson. Once he got rolling, he was very good. He talked about a variety of things that tick him off. My only complaint with him is that he scooted out pretty fast after his talk was over. All of the other speakers stuck around for most of the weekend, so you could talk to them if you wanted to.

Richard Saunders talked about a variety of things, but the best part was his demonstration for teachers in how to use a dowsing demonstrations to engage their students in science and critical thinking.

Penn and Teller are valuable members of the skeptical community, but their contribution to TAM 6 was low key. They just took a few questions from the audience. The more I hear Penn speak, the less I like him. His abrasive personality and extreme Libertarianism are best in (very) small doses. It’s interesting that Libertarianism is so disproportionately over-represented in the skeptical population compared with the general population. I haven’t completely figured out why.

P.Z. Myers talked about evo-devo. Although I enjoyed the talk, I would have preferred it if it had been more directly related to skepticism.

Michael Shermer talked about some ideas he has for his next book. I remember it was a very good talk; I just can’t remember any of it. I guess I’ll have to wait for the book.

Sharon Begley, Senior Editor for Newsweek, told us that we shouldn’t expect the news media to educate the general public in science and skepticism. The better ones try, but there is only so much they can do.

Steve Novella was brilliant. He’s a neurologist, host of The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, and a contributing editor to Quackwatch. He told us about some great brain research.

Phil Plait gave an excellent talk about how the universe is so darn cool, you don’t have to make up crazy things about it.

Adam Savage gave us two vivid examples of just how compulsive he is. He went to great lengths to create a complete dodo skeleton model and the world’s most accurate Maltese Falcon replica.

Psychologist Richard Wiseman is a hoot. I think he enjoyed his talk more than we did, and we enjoyed it immensely. He talked about this YouTube video of a card trick he made:

(YouTube page is here)

Then he passed out spoons, and we all participated in the world’s largest spoon-bending.

Other Stuff

During lunch on Saturday, they showed the pilot episode of The Skeptologists. It was pretty good. They investigated ghost hunting and wheat grass. If you want to know how those investigations turned out, you’ll just have to hope that the show gets picked up by one of the cable networks. My only complaint about the show is that it only has one woman among its seven hosts. Girls are very heavily socialized away from math and science in our society, and the casting of this show isn’t helping matters any.

TAM 7 will be July 9-12, 2009. I’m telling you now, so you won’t have any excuse for not going next year. (OK, Las Vegas in July is almost a good excuse.)

Today’s favorite comment comes to us from LadyRavana. In the comments to the article “There Once Was a Comic Named Cectic”, LadyRavana writes:

Ya know, it’s no fun to argue with a fundie. They just drag you down to their level and beat you with their stupid.

(Still at TAM 6, so here’s some more FC.)

Today, let’s look at a few highlights from that other parody site, The Dysfunctional Family Circus.

(I’m at TAM 6 right now and can’t post, so I scheduled this to run as cheap filler.)

Here are a few more re-captioned Family Circus panels from The Other Family.