“Which is morally worse,” I wondered to myself, “to knowingly defraud people, or to believe that what you tell them is true, but never check back lest you discover that you’ve been mistaken?”

I was thinking about the proponents of Prosperity Theology. This is the belief that God prospers whom he favors, and therefore those who have material wealth are favored by God. God’s favor is attracted by faith, and faith is shown by the exercise of virtue, notably the virtue of generosity. Giving generously to further God’s purposes is essential.

Prosperity theology is a thread of Christian belief that can be found in the tapestry of all denominations. I’ve even heard it in Episcopal circles, whose members have more but tithe less than almost any other sect. It’s most prominent in charismatic and Pentecostal churches. Believers point to the words of a Hebrew prophet who said:
Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. (Malachi 3:10)

It has many names. Pat Robertson calls it the “Law of Reciprocity.” Norman Vincent Peale called it Positive Thinking. Robert Schuller changes a few letters and calls it Possibility Thinking. Rhonda Byrne dubbed it “The Law of Attraction.” It’s sometimes called the gospel of “Name It and Claim It” or, less charitably, “Blab It and Grab It.“

It is, of course, purest unadulterated bullshit. People like Benny Hinn, T.D. Jakes, Joel Osteen, Rod Parsley, and the wonderfully named Creflo and Taffi Dollar have found the fertilizer exceedingly good for their personal flower gardens. The poor, ignorant, deluded, and desperate who fund them don’t have microphones or cable networks and are never heard from. They have no recourse in any case. Freedom of religion means the freedom to be duped. Why do you think believers are called sheep? Did you think the Good Shepherd was a vegan who wore nothing but cotton?

So who’s worse, the bullshitter, or the believer who profits from a refusal to entertain any evidence that it might be bullshit?

Every now and then, I try and check back on yesterday’s news. The story doesn’t end just because network satellite trucks have lowered their antennae and raced off to cover a boy in a balloon. So, here’s the latest installment in a continuing series of “Whatever Happened To...”

The Praise The Lord Network was founded by Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker back in 1977. Its flagship program was the Bakker’s PTL Club, which ran from its founding in 1975 to Jim Bakker’s 1987 resignation in disgrace over financial and sexual scandals.

The rest of Tammy Faye’s story was a juicy scandal all by itself, but de mortuis nil nisi bonum and all that. Jim is back in the broadcasting business in Branson, MO, a mere shadow of his former self and still millions in debt to the Internal Revenue Service.

But what happened to the PTL Network? Welcome to the incestuous world of Pentecostal preachers.

In 1989, both the cable network and the associated theme park, Heritage USA, were bankrupt. Morris Cerullo, a Pentecostal evangelist and faith healer, in partnership with a Malaysian multinational company, purchased both at firesale prices. The Malay company, which also owns Laura Ashley, ended up with Heritage USA, now the Laura Ashley world headquarters. The network is now “INSP - The Inspiration Network, run by Cerullo’s son, David. Morris Cerullo World Evangelism has been indicted for IRS fraud and the ministry has been the subject of many investigations, but thanks to a liberal interpretation of the First Amendment, he has never been convicted.

Which leads us to David Cerullo, the 53-year-old son who is also a televangelist, faith healer, and all around smiling Christian confidence man. At first, he was content to rent time on INSP Network to others, like Benny Hinn and John Hagee. But the lure of easy money was too great, and he launched his own show. His pitch is fairly simple: God wants you to be rich. Prove that you trust him by sending money to David Cerullo, and God will pay you back in multiples that would make Charles Ponzi gulp in disbelief. Ponzi’s biggest mistake was not being ordained.

Despite laying off employees and freezing wages and benefits at his ministries, he’s just finished a $4 million dollar 9,000 square foot (not including the 1,100 square foot garage) home in a gated lakefront community in South Carolina. He’s also building a theme park, the City of Light, both from the donations of the faithful and tax breaks from the state.

David Cerullo. I predict the news trucks will be parked in his driveway someday. The sooner, the better.

Mississippi, the poorest, least educated, and most backward state in the Union, is the home of the American Family Association, Donald Wildmon’s little right-wing pressure group. The AFA’s biggest weapon is the boycott, and they resort to it constantly. Currently, they are crying for their members to boycott The Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic stores.

Is it because they use Chinese prison labor in manufacturing their clothes? Are they exploiting third-world children? Are they failing to provide a decent living wage to their hard-working employees?

Nope. It’s because they’re not crassly commercializing a Christian feast day. They’re not limiting their holiday greetings to “Merry Christmas.” They’re wishing their customers a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hannukah, a festive Solstice, and a cheerful Kwanzaa.

The winter holiday isn’t about family, or gift-giving, or any of those things. Not to the fanatics in Tupelo. It’s about the triumphalism of a single sect in a multicultural and constitutionally secular society.

Now, I suppose I could urge you to boycott the American Family Association, but chances are you already do. Fortunately, The Gap has just the thing with which to celebrate Joseph’s illegitimate son: Merry Christmas Boxer Shorts. Keep in in your pants this Christmas!

A tour of Robert Stone’s “American Stonehenge”, continued from yesterday.

Robert Stone had been fascinated by the site since his youth, and leaped at the chance to buy it in 1956. A more scientific man than his predecessor (he had been an engineer at General Electric), he also founded a society: the New England Antiquities Research Association, which investigates megalithic sites throughout the region. Stone proved by radiocarbon dating of the remains of a tree root growing through one of the structures that it antedated Pattee’s tenure. More excavations unearthed stone tools and charcoal that dated to roughly 1500 BCE, well before Goodwin’s mythical Irish monks. At this point, it seemed clear that the site had been built by Paleo-Indians, possibly as an astronomical calendar and observatory, and for other purposes unknown. Then the controversial Dr. Fell arrived from Harvard University, fresh from publicizing his new book that alleged that many Asian and European visitors had traveled to North America between 11000 BCE and 1492 CE. If the waters weren’t murky enough, Fell thoroughly roiled them.

Dr. Barry Fell, a professor of marine biology at Harvard and an amateur epigrapher, visited the site in 1977. He claimed to find Phoenician, Libyan, and Celtic writings at the site. While later scientists have discredited much of Dr. Fell’s work in epigraphy and archeologists have debunked most of his findings, it made a great stir at the time. For example, one stone has some lines carved into it – nothing remarkable, just slashes. Fell claimed they were the Roman numerals XXXVIIII followed by an inverted V or triangle that he said represented the Celtic word for “day”. 39 days, he said, the number of days between the equinox and a cross-quarter day.

Leaving aside that they are merely slash marks on the side of a rock, as easily made by a plough as by the stone tools of an ancient, the fact remains that Ireland was never invaded by Rome, so why would they use Roman numerals combined with a Celtic symbol? Besides, there are 43 days between the quarter and cross-quarter.

Other findings of Dr. Fell were what he called Iberian Punic script, which he said had been used by the Phoenicians, and which he claimed was a fragment of a dedication to Ba’al. He also translated another tablet from what he said was Irish Ogham, a fragmentary dedication to Ba’al’s Celtic manifestation Bel.

So, is it possible that ancient Ba’al (or Bel) worshippers set up the New Hampshire site and practiced astronomical divination, oracles, and gory sacrifice on a large grooved granite stone? For such a tale to be true, it would be necessary to posit that pre-Columbian settlers from Europe somehow sailed to, say, Newbury, trekked at least twenty miles inland to a wooded granite hill, and built a complex of stone buildings and stone astronomical calendar. Then, leaving behind not a single tool, not a single bronze arrowhead, not a single vessel or pottery fragment, not a single bit of writing save some highly debatable scratched fragments, they vanished. When choosing between scratches Dr. Fell claimed to be Ogham and the discipline of least hypothesis advised by Occam, I’ll take the latter.

But what do we make of the Sacrificial Table and the Oracle Chamber? The Table may have been what it claims, though I’ve found no record of Eastern Indians practicing ritualistic blood sacrifice. A similar design can be found in Sturbridge, where it was used as a colonial cider-press. However, a distinct lack of apple orchards makes this unlikely. It has also been suggested that it may have been piled with ashes, with the resulting run-off making lye for soap, but the same can be done with two wooden buckets for a lot less labor. My personal theory is that it was employed as a wine press for the wild grapes that still grow in the region. As far as the Oracle Chamber is concerned, I see no reason why it should not have been what it appears to be – a well-designed warm and dry dwelling. It was certainly well within the capabilities of Paleo-Indians to construct such a place with stone tools without any need for European intervention. Likewise, the rocks aligned with astronomical points are not in themselves remarkable. If you’ve ever seen the Indian mounds at Cahokia, near St. Louis, you’ll find the remains of several made of wood (large stones not being available in the Mississippi flood plains).

Future archaeology might turn up a stone tool or two, but it is doubtful that much remains to be found that would clarify this site’s original purpose. It has been too thoroughly disrupted by lumbering and quarrying, to say nothing of excitable amateur archeologists.

The bodies we were warned about were still hanging from a wooden viewing platform constructed in the middle of the complex, three effigies from the previous evening’s ghost stories. One pays admission to experience a sense of wonder and mystery, not the painstakingly long and tedious work of archaeology. America’s Stonehenge is, after all is said and done, a tourist attraction.


An afterthought from a leading authority on human nature:

HAMLET
Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?

LORD POLONIUS
By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.

HAMLET
Methinks it is like a weasel.

LORD POLONIUS
It is backed like a weasel.

HAMLET
Or like a whale?

LORD POLONIUS
Very like a whale.

HAMLET
Then I will come to my mother by and by…

(Hamlet, Act III, Scene 2)

A few years ago, I went to North Salem, New Hampshire, to view America’s Stonehenge. As I paid for three adult admissions, the cashier warned they hadn’t cleaned up from the previous evening’s events, and not to be surprised at the bodies left behind. It was a weird welcome to a weird place.

In 1734, Seth Pattee purchased the property now called America’s Stonehenge. He built a house, barn and sawmill there. The property remained in the Pattee family until 1863. During and after the Pattee years, the land was used to produce both lumber and stone. Although not of monument grade, the granite was fine for more utilitarian uses. Somewhere between ten and forty percent of the site was removed to Lawrence, Massachusetts for curbstones and the Lawrence Dam. It was not until the early twentieth century, when the property was virtually abandoned, that the stories began and the site became a local attraction.

In 1935, the Boston Globe published an article to the effect that the “caves” on the property were the dwellings of nomadic Indians or perhaps more recent robbers. In 1937, William Goodwin, an amateur archeologist, purchased the property. He had a theory that the stone structures were the remains of a monastery of Irish monks, and the press wrote many equally imaginative stories about it.

Goodwin died in the early 1950s. In 1956, the present owner, Robert Stone, purchased the property. He built a Visitor’s Center and opened the site to the public.

The tour began at a stone shed called “The Watch House.” It was reconstructed in 1978. Its original purpose is unknown, but the simplest explanation was that it was a storage shed, probably built in Pattee’s time. A pathway leads up the hill, marked by stones on other side. The site’s owners call it a “Sacred Way” or “Processional Path,” but there seems no reason to either date its formation to pre-colonial times or why a marked wagon path should be anything other than what it appears.

Near the top of the hill is a familiar sight to any New England hiker: a cellar hole. This was apparently the home of the Pattee family. In itself, it is utterly prosaic, a sad reminder of the many who tried and failed to scrape a living from the thin-soiled rocky fields of New Hampshire. It is claimed that at least one Pattee was an abolitionist and that this site may have been a stop along the Underground Railroad, moving slaves to freedom in Canada. As evidence a pair of rusty shackles is displayed in the visitor’s center. No explanation is given as to why an escaped slave would have been shackled in the first place, or why they were not removed until New Hampshire.

Nearby is a low triangular shelter topped with a large slab. The site owners point out that many similar buildings are found in Ireland, and wonder at what their common purpose might be. It looks to me very much like the sort of shelter in which sheep or goats might take refuge from the prevailing winds, just as they do in Ireland.

The most important structure is referred to as the “Oracle Chamber.” It is a relatively large building made of granite slabs and would have made a comfortable dwelling for several people. It was clearly designed to stay dry and smoke-free, with adequate drainage and ventilation. A simple stylized carving they called a “running deer” can be seen on the interior north wall, but to my untutored eye it looks far more like a running rabbit; as North American deer don’t have antlers that swoop back in a long curve like an ibex. Other elements of the structure are given more fantastic names. A claustrophobia-inducing niche is called a “Secret Bed” and a narrow shaft a “Speaking Tube.” These terms only make sense if you accept the delightfully inventive premise that I will discuss below. The last part of the main complex is the so-called Sacrificial Table, a large and heavy stone slab with a groove or gutter around its edges.

At various points around the central site are found rocks that have been tipped on end to form monoliths. Let me be clear that these in no way resemble the Stonehenge in England. Stonehenge’s stones are neatly trimmed pillars standing over thirteen feet tall, made of stones imported from as far away as Pembrokeshire in Wales. New Hampshire’s stones are local, moved no great distance, crudely carved if carved at all, and simply tilted so that their longest axis is vertical. The tallest of them is less than three feet. It is apparent that, if this was intended to be a calendar, the closest large stone to each desired point was used; little attempt was made to form a perfect circle of stones like that on Salisbury Plain.

All of this is quite interesting in itself. It is possible that the calendar stones were part of an ancient Indian astrological observatory, and that the “Oracle Chamber” at least was a significant structure, possibly a dwelling or perhaps even the central “church” of a now-forgotten Indian religion. Interesting, but not sufficient to bring in the tourists.

It was Goodwin who found the “Sacrificial Table,” and indeed it was remarkable that such a large flat chunk of granite hadn’t been carted off by the quarrymen. Goodwin clung to his idea of Irish monks, but having found a grooved flat rock suitable for blood sacrifice, the monks appear to have abandoned Christianity and reverted to a fanciful Druidic cult. The secret bed was a hiding place for the abbot or high druid, and he would speak his mystic oracles through the speaking tube. The current owners don’t swear it to be true, but ample suggestion is given. The cardinal calendar stones, for example, are named not for the dates of equinoxes and cross-quarters, but for Druid holy days: Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, and so on.

Tomorrow: The Plot Thickens!

"You must choose between me and your cigar."
--BREACH OF PROMISE CASE, CIRCA 1885.

Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.

We quarrelled about Havanas--we fought o'er a good cheroot,
And I knew she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.

Open the old cigar-box--let me consider a space;
In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie's face.

Maggie is pretty to look at--Maggie's a loving lass,
But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass.

There's peace in a Larranaga, there's calm in a Henry Clay;
But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away--

Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown--
But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o' the talk o' the town!

Maggie, my wife at fifty--grey and dour and old--
With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold!

And the light of Days that have Been the dark of the Days that Are,
And Love's torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar--

The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket--
With never a new one to light tho' it's charred and black to the socket!

Open the old cigar-box--let me consider a while.
Here is a mild Manila--there is a wifely smile.

Which is the better portion--bondage bought with a ring,
Or a harem of dusky beauties, fifty tied in a string?

Counsellors cunning and silent--comforters true and tried,
And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride?

Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes,
Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close,

This will the fifty give me, asking nought in return,
With only a Suttee's passion--to do their duty and burn.

This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead,
Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead.

The furrows of far-off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main,
When they hear my harem is empty will send me my brides again.

I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouths withal,
So long as the gulls are nesting, so long as the showers fall.

I will scent 'em with best vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides,
And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of my brides.

For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between
The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o' Teen.

And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear,
But I have been Priest of Cabanas a matter of seven year;

And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light
Of stumps that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight.

And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove,
But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o'-the-Wisp of Love.

Will it see me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire?
Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire?

Open the old cigar-box--let me consider anew--
Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you?

A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke;
And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.

Light me another Cuba--I hold to my first-sworn vows.
If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for Spouse!

-- Rudyard Kipling

Christmas time is here, by golly
Disapproval would be folly
Hang the halls with hunks of holly
Fill the cup and don’t say when.
Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens,
Mix the punch. Drag out the Dickens.
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother, here we go again.
        - Tom Lehrer

I know, it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet, but the Christmas decorations are up in the malls, the Black Friday sales are already upon us, and the dingling ringling jingle bells of the Salvation Army are on every street corner. The postman is groaning under the weight of catalogs and appeals for every imaginable (and some quite fanciful) charities. And the school kids are out on the street corners, begging for baksheesh.

When I was a kid, I remember we sold candy bars to raise funds for... I have no idea what. It was a fairly lucrative fundraising effort, because I really liked those candy bars, and had to pay for the ones I consumed. But I don’t remember ever standing out in traffic importuning drivers. When did begging become socially acceptable for middle-class kids?

More to the point, what are we teaching our children? I have no problem with the petty larceny of selling a twenty-five cent candy bar for fifty cents. Ditto, ditto with overpriced wrapping paper and candles. Car washes are good, as is snow shoveling. But standing at intersections with buckets like squeegee men? This is not a positive life lesson.

I don’t want to sound like mean ol’ man Sheehan yelling at kids to get off his lawn, but it bothers me when I see us becoming a third-world country. What does it say about our priorities when we can send kids out with iPhones and Nikes to cadge spare change from strangers?

Bah, I say. Humbug!

Live is a journey. Each one of us came into this world with our round-trip ticket already punched. We had no choice of the station at which we started our travels, and no choice of our accommodations. Some of us boarded a First Class car at Grand Central, and others leapt onto a boxcar as the train slowed near a crossing.

We had no choice at how we came, but we can choose our departure carriage. In older years, you could go to your friendly neighborhood Funeral Home and pre-select the casket of your choice: something tasteful in a nice walnut with brass handles, perhaps? Or maybe white steel with rose-colored satin cushions? The funeral director would be happy to help you.

You don’t have to settle for your local Funeral Home’s selection. Nowadays, there’s competition. You can now order your caskets at Wal-Mart, for example. You can’t beat the prices, but the styles are fairly conventional.

Some feel that these ordinary wood or metal boxes do not adequately express the joie de vivre with which they lived. For them, the American Casket Company has a special line of Art Caskets. These 18 gauge steel caskets are beautifully painted with inspirational scenes. Imagine how inspiring it will be when your surviving relatives see you going to your eternal reward wrapped in Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. Spent more Sunday mornings on the links than in church? Tee off with Fairway to Heaven. Didn’t notice until too late that the two bikes you were cutting between were the headlights of an oncoming Peterbilt? Take your last ride in The Last Ride!

Call now for next-day delivery. Just remember: all sales are final.

I confess, I’m a big fan of BBC’s Top Gear. Calling it a show about cars is like saying that the Oasis of the Seas is a boat. Even though I can’t tell a four-barrel carb from a dual-exhaust, I enjoy watching James, Richard, and Jeremy play with big, shiny, and very expensive toys.

On of their favorites is the Bugatti Veyron, the supercar’s supercar. Built by Volkswagen, it is an engineering marvel. For example: when the car reaches 140 mph, hydraulics automatically kick in to lower the car to just three and a half inches above the ground, and a spoiler and wing deploy. This combination of factors provides 770 foot-pounds of downforce to keep the car on the road as you approach 220 mph.

But there’s more. By turning a special “Top Speed” key and running through a checklist, the car will retract the rear spoiler, close the front air diffusers, drop the car to two and a half inches above the ground, and accelerate to over 250 mph. According to James May, who drove one on the Volkswagen test track at top speed, "the tyres will only last for about fifteen minutes, but it's okay because the fuel runs out in twelve minutes".

The Veyron is the superstar of supercars, and the price tag is suitably astronomical. Only two hundred have been built, and only fifteen can be found in the United States.

Better make that fourteen. A few days ago, the owner of a 2006 Veyron dropped his cell phone and/or was distracted by a bird while motoring near Galveston, Texas. He lost control and drove his two million dollar car into a salt water lagoon. Here’s the video.

No one was injured, and it happened to someone wealthy enough to drive a two million dollar car while house-hunting. It’s hard to work up a whole lot of pity for plutocrats. Too bad about the car, though.

The exercise of authority corrodes the soul. Nowhere is this more evident than in the insulated environment of the public school. The very worst examples of the corruption of power are those with the most: school administrators.

Nearby Danvers High School is an international laughing stock. Principal Tom Murray, believing that a student fad of using the nonsense word “Meep!” was somehow disruptive, used the telephone alert system to call all parents and warn them that their children could be expelled for saying “Meep.”

The local media picked up on the story. Then MSNBC and ABC News ran it. At last search, the BBC and CBC have weighed in.

New York City attorney Theodora Michaels took a few seconds to look up the principal’s and vice-principal’s email addresses from the school website, and sent them each an email. The subject line was “meep” and the body of the message repeated the single four letter word, meep. In response, she received an email from the vice-principal informing her that her email had been referred to the Danvers Police Department. She blogs about it here.

I remember a game I used to play with my parents and teachers when I was a teenager. I’ll bet you played it, too. The rules were simple: whoever loses his cool first loses the game. Danvers High School administrators have lost, and every meeping student should be proud for exposing them as tinhorn dictators and petty tyrants.

Whom gods destroy, they first make mad.

My sister called me yesterday afternoon. She just wanted to thank me, she said. For what? I asked. For my service to our country, she said.

Back in February of 1975, I joined the Air Force. Here’s the thing, I didn’t do it for my country. I don’t even know my country. Certain people in it, sure, but my country? It’s a huge and meaningless abstraction. I might as well have signed up to serve my galactic quadrant. It was 1975. No enemy threatened our borders. No bloodthirsty ethnic slurs were leering at my sisters.

I joined because I was young and stupid, eighteen years old, just out of high school, with no idea of what I wanted to do with my life. The Air Force looked like a good idea at the time. Maybe I’d learn something high-tech and glamorous. I certainly wasn’t going to get into any sort of war or get my ass shot off in some sweaty foreign slum not even cultural anthropologists would visit on a bet. Besides, I was eighteen. I was immortal. Bad things happened to other people.

Maybe other people are more thoughtful and patriotically inclined than I. Maybe they can see the connection between the safety of their homes and families and the political and religious beliefs of distant people in dusty hovels. Maybe they really did enlist for noble reasons. Maybe they did die as heroes.

Or maybe we just can’t stand to think of the alternative.

After losing his son Jack in the barbarous Battle of Loos, Rudyard Kipling wrote:

If any question why we died,

Tell them, because our fathers lied.

Anybody remember Pohl and Kornbluth’s book The Space Merchants? First published as a pulp serial called Gravy Planet, Fred Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth wove a tale of an overcrowded Earth where wood is so rare it’s used for fine jewelry. Multinational corporations have replaced governments. Consumption fuels the engine of the world’s economy. Advertising is the most lucrative and influential vocation to which a man can aspire. (Apologies to the distaff side: this was written in the early 1950s.)

Our hero is Mitchell Courtenay, a bright young copywriter for the mighty Fowler Schocken Associates advertising agency. He’s just about to receive the highest profile job of his career: creating an ad campaign encouraging emigration to Venus.

To sell, you have to create a need. Here’s a cynical report from a board meeting in the first few pages:

As an example, I want to mention the Coffiest pro-... " He broke off. "Excuse me Mr. Schocken," he whispered. "Has Security checked this room?"

Fowler Schocken nodded. "Absolutely clean.“

Harvey relaxed again. "Well, about this Coffiest," he said. "We're sampling it in fifteen key cities. It's the usual offer --- a thirteen week supply of Coffiest, one thousand dollars in cash, and a weekend vacation on the Ligurian Riviera to everybody who comes in. But --- and here's what makes the campaign truly great, in my estimation --- each sample of Coffiest contains three milligrams of a simple alkaloid. Nothing harmful. But definitely habit-forming. After ten weeks the customer is hooked for life. It would cost him at least five thousand dollars for a cure, so its simpler for him to go right on drinking Coffiest --- three cups with every meal and a pot beside his bed at night, just as it says on the jar."

The agency was credited with organizing the first spherical trust. It was described like this:

Later I was hungry and there was the canteen where I got Crunchies on easy credit. The Crunchies kicked off withdrawal symptoms that could be quelled only by another two squirts of Popsie from the fountain. And Popsie kicked off withdrawal symptoms that could only be quelled by smoking Starr Cigarettes, which made you hungry for Crunchies.

But of course, this was science fiction. Mere fantasies.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Reynolds American, parent of RJ Reynolds, makers of Camel and Pall Mall cigarettes and the second-largest tobacco company in the U.S., is currently in negotiations to purchase Niconovum AB, a Swedish company that helps people quit smoking. Niconovum sells cigarette replacement products. Nicotine, the addictive component of tobacco, is in itself much less dangerous to health than tar and other smoke by-products, so it might be said that taking nicotine in the form of gum or spray is healthier than inhaling burning leaves.

Think about it while you’re lighting up a Camel. What, you work in a no-smoking environment? Then tuck this little teabag of Camel smoke-free spit-free snus between your cheek and gum. Dentist showing you color photographs of oral cancer? Well, here’s some Camel gum. It’s a lot less painful than nicotine withdrawal, after all.

Skål!

It has become common, especially during election years, for certain states to virtually secede from the union. The political consultants, pollsters, and pundits slice and dice the country up into different demographic groups. South Carolina is one of the states that’s generally seen as red, conservative, and fundamentally Christian.

In 2008, South Carolina attempted to introduce a new license plate design with a cross superimposed on a stained glass gothic church window, and the slogan, “I Believe.” The bill authorizing the new plate passed both the state House and Senate unanimously on May 22, 2008.

“I didn’t see a constitutional problem with it,” said Senator Lawrence K. “Larry” Grooms, the bill’s co-sponsor, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, and the Republican representative of the 37th District. (Incidentally, 37th is South Carolina’s ranking in high school graduations by state. Tells you something, doesn’t it?) Senator Grooms went on to say, “We have other plates with religious symbols on them and phrases like ‘In God We Trust.’ Just because it’s a cross, some very closed-minded people don’t believe it should be on a plate.”

Fortunately, Judge Cameron Currie of the US District Court is just the sort of very close-minded individual who believes that the First Amendment means something. Judge Currie excoriated South Carolina’s elected officials for ignoring the bright line of the Establishment Clause and deploring that “this state’s limited resources have been used to promote, pass, and defend a state law, the ‘I Believe’ Act...” It’s a beautifully written decision, and I highly recommend you read it.

South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer, who helped push the legislation through, wasn’t surprised. "I don't expect anything different from a liberal judge who was appointed by Bill Clinton. If she wants to single me out, so be it.“

Bauer said it "once again shows how liberal judges are not just interpreting the law but making legislation."

Damn that godless liberal James Madison and those activists in the First Congress. Didn’t they know we were supposed to be a Christian nation?

I am only human. In the words of Douglas Adams, I’m an ape-descended life form who still thinks digital watches are a pretty neat idea. Although my species is classified Homo sapiens, wise man, I’m not wise. I don’t think clearly. I’m easily confused, distracted, and deceived. I may be a member of the smartest and most adaptable species on the planet, but that’s really not saying much. It just means that my ancestors were smart enough to avoid predators and build their privies downstream.

Still, my brain is the only one I’ve got. I have learned, through painful trial and error, that the best way to survive and thrive is to deal directly with reality. Fantasies and wishes are fun, but pipe dreams are low in nutritional value and won’t keep me warm in the winter. Only reality does that.

On the basis of the relevant facts that I and others of my species have established, we attempt to learn what is true and what is false. We create hypotheses, make predictions based on these hypotheses, test those predictions, and confirm or disprove the hypotheses. If a hypothesis is disproved, it is discarded, and we go on. This method we call science.

Some of our hypotheses have been so strongly and consistently confirmed by evidence that we call them theories. A theory in the scientific sense is an analytic structure designed to explain a set of empirical observations. It isn’t an assertion or a guess. It is a fact, and facts are the things that don’t go away just because you don’t like them. Based on these theories, we now enjoy a standard of living that Caesar would envy. Most women survive childbirth, most children survive childhood, diseases are treated, food for billions is grown on land that only supported millions a few short generations ago, we are clothed and sheltered and can reach far places on the earth on a matter of hours, or see them on our screens in seconds. None of this came about because of wishful thinking. It’s all based on hard, solid facts obtained by the scientific method.

But we are, as I said, only human, and humans are easily confused, distracted, and deceived. Deceiving other people is generally regarded as immoral. Deceiving children is the worst of all. It is intrinsically evil, since children must depend upon their elders to teach them the facts they’ll need to survive and thrive in this difficult world.

This is an example of evil. It is a book for home-schoolers on the subject of dinosaurs, and very proudly includes the following:
There is no reference to dates so you are free to insert your family's personal view of the age of the earth and when dinosaurs roamed it.

Stupid is a condition. Ignorance is a choice. Inflicting ignorance on minors is child abuse.

Located just outside Boston’s tony Copley Square is a computer company that you’ve never heard of. I hadn’t heard of it either, though I walk by it at least once a week. It’s a little company. In fact, it’s the Litl company. And they’ve just released their new product which will revolutionize the World Wide Web.

Or not.

The CEO, John Chuang, has spent the past couple years designing the next big, er, litl, thing in computing: a ubiquitous laptop-shaped “web computer”. It runs a proprietary OS based on Ubuntu and GNOME, propelled by a bunch of Javascript. The computer itself has a proprietary rear hinge so that you can fold the keyboard back and use the screen as a tabletop easel. It’s got the second-generation netbook stats: an Atom processor, a gig of RAM, a 1280 x 800 screen. What makes it different is the OS and the fact that it has only 2 GB of Flash storage. Everything else is in the cloud. Oh - and there’s the price: $699. For that price, people like us can get a full-fledged Intel laptop or two netbooks. But we’re not the target audience.

One might think that after Microsoft’s disastrous fiasco with Sidekick customers’ data, people might be a little suspicious of cloud computing. I mean, I keep things in the cloud myself, but I also have them backed up on my own hard drives. But I’m not the target audience.

The Litl website has pictures of happy family members with Lilt computers scattered around their homes, even in the bathroom. Gee, for $699, I could buy a couple iPhones. I’ve got one in my pocket right now. I get the web everywhere in my home. I can even reach out and pull in stuff from “the cloud.” Not the target audience.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a cute little machine, and looks cleverly built, but I’ll never buy one. It’s much too limited and too expensive. Here at The Den of Iniquity, we just found it cheaper to scatter old computers all over the house. Not only can I do all the neat tricks that Litl does on all of them, but I can do much more besides. I know, I know, the target audience doesn’t have the history of personal computing in their attics like we do.

So who is the target audience? It’s not my mother - she just bought a new iMac. It’s not my computer-illiterate brother - he doesn’t care how cheap and easy it is, he just doesn’t care, period. It’s certainly not the price-conscious consumer still wondering if the Great Recession will ever end. Who will Litl sell to?

Good question. I’m afraid their chances are Litl, too.

In honor of Carl Sagan’s 75th birthday today, I am going to excerpt what is perhaps his greatest contribution to human development. It’s from his 1997 book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark. With his customary sensitivity and good manners, he called it his Baloney Detection Kit. The following is from pages 196 to 204 in my copy.


In science we may start with experimental results, data, observations, measurements, 'facts'. We invent, if we can, a rich array of possible explanations and systematically confront each explanation with the facts. In the course of their training, scientists are equipped with a baloney detection kit. The kit is brought out as a matter of course whenever new ideas are offered for consideration. If the new idea survives examination by the tools in our kit, we grant it warm, although tentative, acceptance. If you're so inclined, if you don't want to buy baloney even when it's reassuring to do so, there are precautions that can be taken; there's a tried-and-true, consumer-tested method.

What is in the kit? Tools for skeptical thinking.

What skeptical thinking boils down to is the means to construct, and to understand, a reasoned argument and, especially important, to recognize a fallacious or fraudulent argument. The question is not whether we like the conclusion that emerges out of a train of reasoning, but whether the conclusion that emerges out of a train follows from the premise of starting point and whether that premise is true.

Among the tools:

• Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the "facts".
• Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
• Arguments from authority carry little weight -- "authorities" have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
• Spin more than one hypothesis. If there's something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among "multiple working hypotheses," has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
• Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours. It's only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don't, others will.
• Quantify. If whatever it is you're explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you'll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are the truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.
• If there's a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) -- not just most of them.
• Occam's Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler. [simpler = the conclusion which relies on the least number of unsupported propositions]
• Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle -- an electron, say -- in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

The reliance on carefully designed and controlled experiments is key, as I tried to stress earlier. We will not learn much from mere contemplation. It is tempting to rest content with the first candidate explanation we can think of One is much better than none. But what happens if we can invent several? How do we decide among them? We don't. We let experiment do it. Francis Bacon provided the classic reason:

"Argumentation cannot suffice for the discovery of new work, since the subtlety of Nature is greater
many times than the subtlety of argument."

Control experiments are essential. If, for example, a new medicine is alleged to cure a disease 2o percent of the time, we must make sure that a control population, taking a dummy sugar pill which as far as the subjects know might be the new drug, does not also experience spontaneous remission of the disease 20 percent of the time.
Variables must be separated. Suppose you're seasick. and given both an acupressure bracelet and 50 milligrams of meclizine. You find the unpleasantness vanishes. What did it- the bracelet or the pill? You can tell only if you take the one without the other, next time you're seasick. Now imagine that you're not so dedicated to science as to be willing to be seasick. Then you won't separate the variables. You'll take both remedies again. You've achieved the desired practical result; further knowledge, you might say, is not worth the discomfort of attaining it.

Often the experiment must be done "double-blind", so that those hoping for a certain finding are not in the potentially compromising position of evaluating the results. In testing a new medicine, for example, you might want the physicians who determine which patients' symptoms are relieved not to know which patients have been given the new drug. The knowledge might influence their decision, even if only unconsciously. Instead the list of those who experienced remission of symptoms can be compared with the list of those who got the new drug, each independently ascertained. Then you can determine what correlation exists. Or in conducting a police lineup or photo identification, the officer in charge should not know who the prime suspect is, so as not consciously or unconsciously to influence the witness.

In addition to teaching us what to do when evaluating a claim to knowledge, any good baloney detection kit must also teach us what not to do. It helps us recognize the most common and perilous fallacies of logic and rhetoric. Many good examples can be found in religion and politics, because their practitioners are so often obliged to justify two contradictory propositions. Among these fallacies are:

• Ad hominem -- Latin for "to the man," attacking the arguer and not the argument (e.g. The Reverend Dr. Smith is a known Biblical fundamentalist, so her objections to evolution need not be taken seriously).
• Argument from authority (e.g., President Richard Nixon should be re-elected because he has a secret plan to end the war in Southeast Asia -- but because it was secret, there was no way for the electorate to evaluate it on its merits; the argument amounted to trusting him because he was President; a mistake, as it turned out).
• Argument from adverse consequences (e.g., a God meting out punishment and reward must exist, because if He didn't, society would be much more lawless and dangerous – perhaps even ungovernable. Or: the defendant in a widely publicized murder trial must be found guilty; otherwise, it will be an encouragement for other men to murder their wives).
• Appeal to ignorance -- the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa (e.g., there is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist -- and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Or: there may be seventy kazillion other worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth, so we're still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
• Special pleading, often to rescue a proposition in deep rhetorical trouble (e.g., how can a merciful God condemn future generations to torment because, against orders, one woman induced one man to eat an apple? Special plead: you don't understand the subtle Doctrine of Free Will. Or: how can there be an equally godlike Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the same Person? Special plead: you don't understand the Divine Mystery of the Trinity. Or: How could God permit the followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- each in their own way enjoined to heroic measures of loving kindness and compassion -- to have perpetrated so much cruelty for so long? Special plead: you don't understand Free Will again. And anyway, God moves in mysterious ways).
• Begging the question, also called assuming the answer (e.g., we must institute the death penalty to discourage violent crime. But does the violent crime rate in fact fall when the death penalty is imposed? Or: the stock market fell yesterday because of a technical adjustment and profit-taking by investors -- but is there any independent evidence for the causal role of "adjustment" and profit-taking; have we learned anything at all from this purported explanation?).
• Observational selection, also called the enumeration of favorable circumstances, or as the philosopher Francis Bacon described it, counting the hits and forgetting the misses (see footnote) (e.g., a state boasts of the Presidents it has produced, but is silent on its serial killers).
• Statistics of small numbers -- a close relative of observational selection (e.g., "they say 1 out of every 5 people is Chinese. How is this possible? I know hundreds of people, and none of them is Chinese. Yours truly." Or: "I've thrown three sevens in a row. Tonight I can't lose.")
• Misunderstanding of the nature of statistics (e.g., President Dwight Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence!).
• Inconsistency (e.g., prudently plan for the worst of which a potential military adversary is capable, but thriftily ignore scientific projections on environmental dangers because they're not "proved". Or: attribute the declining life expectancy in the former Soviet Union to the failures of communism many years ago, but never attribute the high infant mortality rate in the United States (now highest of the major industrial nations) to the failures of capitalism. Or: Consider it reasonable for the Universe to continue to exist forever into the future, but judge absurd the possibility that it has infinite duration into the past).
• Non sequitur -- Latin for "It doesn't follow" (e.g., our nation will prevail because God is great. But nearly every nation pretends this to be true; the Germans formulation was "Gott mit uns"). Often those falling into the non sequitur fallacy have simply failed to recognize alternative possibilities.
• Post hoc, ergo propter hoc -- Latin for "It happened after, so it was caused by" (e.g., Jaime Cardinal Sin, Archbishop of Manila: "I know of ... a 26-year old who looks 60 because she takes [contraceptive] pills." Or: before women got the vote, there were no nuclear weapons).
• Meaningless question (e.g., What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? But if there is such a thing as an irresistible force there can be no immovable objects, and vice versa).
• Excluded middle, or false dichotomy -- considering only the two extremes in a continuum of intermediate possibilities (e.g., "sure, take her side; my husband's perfect; I'm always wrong." Or: "either you love your country or you hate it." Or: "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem").
• Short-term vs. long-term -- a subset of the excluding middle, but so important I've pulled it out for special attention (e.g., we can't afford programs to feed malnourished children and educate pre-school kids. We need to urgently deal with crime on the streets. Or: why explore space or pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?).
• Slippery slope, related to excluded middle (e.g., if we allow abortion in the first week of pregnancy, it will be impossible to prevent the killing of a full-term infant. Or, conversely: if the state prohibits abortion even in the ninth month, it will soon be telling us what to do with our bodies around the time of conception).
• Confusion of correlation and causation (e.g., a survey shows that more college graduates are homosexual than those with lesser education; therefore education makes people gay. Or: Andean earthquakes are correlated with closest approaches of the planet Uranus; therefore -- despite the absence of any such correlation for the nearer, more massive planet Jupiter -- the latter causes the former).
• Straw man -- caricaturing a position to make it easier to attack (e.g., scientists suppose that living things simply fell together by chance -- a formulation that willfully ignores the central Darwinian insight, that Nature ratchets up by saving what works and discarding what doesn't. Or -- this is also a short-term/long-term fallacy -- environmentalists care more for snail darters and spotted owls than they do for people).
• Suppressed evidence, or half-truths (e.g., an amazingly accurate and widely quoted "prophecy" of the assassination attempt on President Reagan is shown on television; but – an important detail -- was it recorded before or after the event? Or: these government abuses demand revolution, even if you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Yes, but is this likely to be a revolution in which far more people are killed than under the previous regime? What does the experience of other revolutions suggest? Are all revolutions against oppressive regimes desirable and in the interests of the people?)
• Weasel words (e.g., the separation of powers of the U.S. Constitution specifies that the United States may not conduct a war without a declaration of Congress. On the other hand, Presidents are given control of foreign policy and the conduct of wars, which are potentially powerful tools for getting themselves re-elected. Presidents of either political party may therefore be tempted to arrange wars while waving the flag and calling the wars something else -- "police actions", "armed incursions", "protective reaction strikes", "pacification", "safeguarding American interests", and a wide variety of "operations", such as "Operation Just Cause". Euphemisms for war are one of a broad class of reinventions of language for political purposes. Talleyrand said, "An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public").

Knowing the existence of such logical and rhetorical fallacies rounds out our toolkit. Like all tools, the baloney detection kit can be misused, applied out of context, or even employed as a rote alternative to thinking. But applied judiciously, it can make all the difference in the world-not least in evaluating our own arguments before we present them to others.

Footnote:

My favorite example is this story, told about the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, newly arrived on American shores, enlisted in the Manhattan nuclear weapons project, and brought face-to-face in the midst of World War Two with US flag officers:

So-and-so is a great general, he was told.
"What is the definition of a great general?" Fermi characteristically asked.
"I guess it's a general who's won many consecutive battles"
"How many?"
After some back and forth they settled on five.
"What fraction of American generals are great?"
After some more back and forth, they settled on a few per cent.

But imagine, Fermi rejoined, that there is no such thing as a great general, that all armies are equally matched, and that winning a battle is purely a matter of chance. Then the chance of winning one battle is one out of two, or 1/2; two battles 1/4, three 1/8, four 1/16 and five consecutive battles 1/32, which is about three per cent. You would expect a few per cent of American generals to win five consecutive battles, purely by chance. Now has any of them won ten consecutive battles ..... ?

One of my all-time favorite quotes comes from Gordon Dickson. He wrote:

        Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books.
        For to you kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring,
        but to him they are but toys of the moment,
        to be overturned with the flick of a finger.

Professor Thomas Tang of Middle Tennessee State University is more ambitious. Not satisfied with being more powerful than kings and armies, he settles for nothing less than Ultimate Authority.

It all began when he suspected an MBA student of cheating. He asked each of his scholars to sign an honor pledge. It included a clause that if they cheated, they would “be sorry for the rest of [their] life and go to Hell.”

Up until now, teachers have only been able to make your life Hell for a semester or two, or maybe place a black mark on the Permanent Record. (I’ve never seen a Permanent Record, but I heard about it a lot. Is it some kind of millstone?) Now, Professor Tang’s dominion extends across the River Styx into the infernal regions beyond.

Fortunately, there’s an easy out. Just repent on your deathbed.

On this day in 1605, a group of Catholic terrorists seeking to restore the authority of the Roman church in Great Britain hatched a plot to blow up the House of Lords and King James I. Guy Fawkes was caught in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament with barrels of gunpowder.

Nowadays, Guy Fawkes is remembered as an excuse for fireworks. The Vatican’s influence in Europe has waned significantly. But back in the seventeenth century, the Church was far more powerful.

Consider this: had Catherine of Aragon borne a son for Henry VIII rather than a daughter, England would have remained a Catholic country, bound to Spain and Rome by marriage and religion. America would be Spanish today. It was due to the Vatican’s ties to the Spanish monarchy that the Pope refused to entertain Henry’s request for an annulment. Henry didn’t want to start a new religion, he just needed a son and heir, and resented the influence of foreign princes in his realm.

English Protestants seized on the plot as evidence of the perfidy of the Pope. Guy Fawkes’ death was celebrated by bonfires in which the Pope was burned in effigy. The custom continues to this day, but most have forgotten who the straw man represents.

Given the present-day influence of Roman Catholics in this country, as evidenced by the recent vote in heavily Catholic Maine to deny equal rights to same-sex couples, I feel inclined to remember the old song. There are many versions; this seems to be the oldest.

A brief Summary of the Treason intended against King & State, when they should have been assembled in Parliament, 5 November, 1605. Fit for to instruct the simple and ignorant herein: that they not be seduced any longer by Papists.      

        Remember, remember the 5th of November
        Gunpowder, Treason, and Plot.
        I see no reason why gunpowder treason
        Should ever be forgot.

        Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes 'twas his intent
        To blow up the King and the Parliament.
        Three score barrels of powder below,
        Poor old England to overthrow
        By God's providence he was catch'd
        With a dark lantern and burning match,

        Holloa boys, holloa boys, make the bells ring.
        Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
        Hip hip hoorah!

        A penny loaf to feed the Pope.
        A farthing o' cheese to choke him.
        A pint of beer to rinse it down.
        A faggot of sticks to burn him.
        Burn him in a tub of tar.
        Burn him like a blazing star.
        Burn his body from his head.
        Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.

        Hip hip hoorah!
        Hip hip hoorah!

Leo Tolstoy opened Anna Karenina with the line: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. It is true. Happy families are all alike. But why are they happy? It’s really very simple. Delusion, deception, and denial. There can be a whole herd of elephants in the middle of the room, but happy families talk around them, disguise them, or simply refuse to acknowledge their existence.

I was deeply saddened to learn that the citizens of Maine went to the polls and cast ballots to deny equal rights to their friends and neighbors. My parents live in Maine, and I’m pretty sure I know how they voted. The real sorrow is that my parents are fully aware that they have gay children. It’s not a secret. My brother and his husband are flying in from England later this month to celebrate my Mom’s 75th birthday.

My parents are loving, honorable, and generous people. They are also very devout Roman Catholics. I’m sure they sincerely believe that voting against gay marriage is what God wanted them to do.

“Bill from Portland Maine”, the (gay) blogger who writes the Cheers and Jeers column on Daily Kos, found the silver lining in this dark cloud. The vote from the University of Maine campus in Orono was 81% in favor of same-sex marriage. These young voters are the future. A good number of the 53% who voted against equal rights are my parents’ contemporaries.

I just wish that liberation and equality didn’t have to wait for a generation to die.

Hallowe’en is over. The wannabe Draculas and Bill Comptons have put their plastic fangs away for another year. The Buffys and Van Helsings have boxed up their stakes and crucifixes. The only vampires out there now are real blood-sucking fiends. Our only defense is a thin grey line of real vampire slayers.

According to a blogger in the LA Weekly, there are Seven Rules of Vampire Hunting.

Rule #1 - You cannot kill a vampire. It is already dead. You can only destroy it.

Rule #2 - An annoyed vampire is a dangerous vampire.

Rule #3 - Guns tend to annoy vampires. See rule #2.

Rule #4 - Real vampires are evil.

Rule #5 - If you are seduced by a vampire, you will become one, or become dead. See rule #4.

Rule #6 - (And this is the one that really counts.) Kill them all!

Rule #7 - When in doubt, and all other times, execute rule #6.

But it’s not all fun and games. It’s hard work and dangerous, and most of all, lonely. As the slayer writes:
“If after your first successful destruction, you find you have a taste for the game, then maybe, you can join the ranks of the elite, but if you have any sense at all, you'll run and hide. Make no mistake about this, the only creature who is lonelier than the vampire, it the one who hunts it.”

The only other option is to remember to take your antipsychotic medications...