Law and Magic Blog

The Failure of Psychic Detection

From Benjamin Radford on LiveScience, "Jaycee Dugard Abduction Case Highlights Failure of Psychics."

Tanzanian Court Sentences Four To Death For Witchcraft Killings

A Tanzanian court has handed out a death sentence to four persons convicted of murdering albino individuals for their body parts. Some people believe albino body parts can be used in charms by witch doctors to bring good luck.

The death sentences are the second handed down in trials conducted in Tanzania over this kind of murder. Last September the same court sentenced three to death by hanging for the same crime. Read more here, and read more here and here in previous posts about killings of those murdered for body parts in Tanzania and other countries.

Will Health Care Insurance Plans Include Complementary/Alternative Medicine Coverage?

So, have you thought about whether any of the health care bills would require that insurance plans cover alternative or complementary medical treatments? No? Check out this story from Newsweek magazine, which suggests that the CAM lobby has already made its arguments to the Hill.

Requiring insurers to cover therapies with unknown outcomes runs counter to the White House's push for medicine with a proven track record. The basic idea behind evidence-based medicine is that doctors ought to use treatments that have the best possible evidence that they work. What counts as the best possible evidence? Randomized clinical trials.... Clinical trials work fine for drugs, where trials can quantify and compare outcomes. But for alternative treatments, things like prayer or even yoga, the evidence gets much less clear; randomized trials are more difficult to conduct. "For drugs you have placebos and double-blinded studies," says Timmermans. "But you cannot have a placebo for testing behavioral interventions." So alternative treatments are essentially on an uneven playing field when it comes to evidence-based medicine. Timmermans admits that "it's not an equal-opportunity methodology."

...

Requiring insurers to cover prayer treatment may be a bit too extreme for health-care reform. More interesting to explore though, are other forms of nontraditional medicine, floated in reform bills, that have a stronger claim to an evidence base. Take, for example, complementary and alternative medicine, a field often criticized for unproven therapies. Some 38 percent of Americans use some form of it. Moreover, the field has increasingly embraced traditional research methods. Just a decade ago, the government established a National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The center studies "alternative healing practices"—anything from the use of echinacea to treat colds, to acupuncture for irritable bowel syndrome—"in the context of rigorous science." They use that gold standard Timmermans mentioned: randomized, clinical trials.

Here's a link to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Now, I admit to practicing yoga, off and on, and I think (I think) it helps me feel less stress and it helps me calm down after a long day of magical legalizing. I know it helps my flexibility, but then so would, I suspect, going back to my ballet exercises. I do feel better when I downward dog and make like a tree, even though I don't Om. It annoys the felines. But I don't try to bill my health insurance company for my trips to the yoga studio. Hey, I've tried feverfew for my migraines, too. Zippo. But one of my physicians explained that outcome--there's no quality control in the feverfew you buy OTC. Better to rely on the meds the neurologist prescribes, and mirabile dictu, my migraines have decreased significantly over the past few years. Hooray for modern medicine and Big Pharma (waving imaginary flag).

Jacob Loshin Discusses "Crush Videos" (U.S. v. Stevens)

Lawyer/magician Jacob Loshin discusses the recently argued case United States v. Stevens here. The case involves free speech and animal cruelty, specifically "crush videos."

Magical Internet Thinking

From PC Magazine, "10 Most Heinous Hoaxes on the net." Some of them appeal to magical thinking, like the "we captured BigFoot and we've got him in a freezer" hoax. The one about legislatively setting the value of pi to 3? Here's the text of that Indiana bill. Some of the other hoaxes listed are no laughing matter, such as the one that led to the suicide of young Megan Meier. Federal prosecutors charged Lori Drew, one of the people behind that hoax, under the Computer Fraud and Abuse act. A jury found her guilty of three misdemeanor counts, but a judge threw out the verdict this year.

The Haunted Pool Room

Just in time for Halloween, another haunted house story, but this haunted house story is one about a haunted pool room, called--what else--the Flying Saucer, located in Nashville, Tennessee. The pool room is a converted train station. Paranormal investigators are hot on the trail. Read more here.

"Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?" "I Refuse To Answer On the Grounds..."

A Time magazine article from October 26, 1953 highlights "fourteen magic words": "I refuse to answer upon the ground that it might tend to incriminate me."

They became magic words in this country in a famous Supreme Court case, Blau v. United States (340 U.S. 159 (1950)). ( and see related Blau v. United States, 340 U.S. 332 (1951)). In that case, an individual refused to answer questions, asserting that to do so would result in self-incrimination. The Court agreed with her, ruling that "Whether such admissions by themselves would support a conviction under a criminal statute is immaterial. Answers to the questions asked by the grand jury would have furnished a link in the chain of evidence needed in a prosecution of petitioner for violation of (or conspiracy to violate) the Smith Act. Prior decisions of this Court have clearly established that under such circumstances, the Constitution gives a witness the privilege of remaining silent. The attempt by the courts below to compel petitioner to testify runs counter to the Fifth Amendment as it has been interpreted from the beginning....Reversed."

Even as we value the right of silence under our Constitution, this right is being limited elsewhere, most particularly in England and Wales. The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, passed in 1994, discusses inferences that may be made concerning an accused's silence (sections 34-39).

BigAppleCOR Good Without God Ads Will Adorn New York Subways

Reports CNN, groups calling themselves the Big Apple Coalition of Reason have commissioned ads to appear in the New York subway system beginning October 26 with the label: "A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?"

According to the Metro Transit authority, it will accept ads that don't contain nudity or offensiveness. Other than that, its walls are open.

According to the BigAppleCOR (get it?) website, the organization that make up the coalition are

[C]ommitted to a more compassionate world; we are working for a more reasonable citizenry and a higher level of discourse; we are striving to increase the quality of life for all; and we find fellowship an integral part of the human condition. Theists and nontheists alike are the same people: we go to work everyday; we have families and friends; we are involved in our communities, state, and country; and we care deeply about life.
 
Big Apple COR aims to inform New Yorkers that there is a community of people who share a rational basis for their worldviews, who attend intellectual public lectures, enjoy philosophy discussions, and socialize. We invite you to visit our various websites, to contact any of those in which you are interested, and to feel free to attend the public gatherings of any of our organizations.

One supporter of the BigAppleCor is magician Jamy Ian Swiss.

Card Counting On "The Big Bang Theory"

Last night's The Big Bang Theory episode (The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary) reveals that Sheldon is a card counter (though he uses his gift for good, not evil--that is to say, he doesn't immediately see the point of using his gift at all). Koothrappali enlists him as a reluctant partner in a tournament where they end up facing guest star Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation) as himself. A wonderful and fun integration, once again, of "real life" in the "artificial world" of the BBT nerds. Remember Summer Glau (The Sarah Connor Chronicles)'s visit on the episode "The Terminator Decoupling"? And Charlie Sheen's crossover from Two and a Half Men on "The Griffin Equivalency"?

For more on card counting, and whether it's legal or not, and yes, it is if you are not using a "device"--that is, if you are using your unaided brain, see I.Nelson Rose's column on "Dealing With Card Counters." Professor Rose is a leading guru of gaming law and teaches at Whittier Law School. Among his publications: Gambling and the Law (a classic). Now, just because card counting is legal does not mean the casinos will like you if you try it, and they may exclude players who do so if they catch them.

As an aside, check out Richard Marcus' entertaining Poker Cheating and Casino Cheating Blog. Forewarned and all that.

Time To Reread Scarne On Games

I can has cheezburger.com.