Monday, May 06, 2013  Photos, Miracles, Lies, and Humor  God,
the comedian on Facebook, recently re-posted a picture from
Nirmukta:  Miracles vanished with the invention of the camera
...until Photoshop    It's also insipid and a lie.  As a
filmmaker, I have a mild interest in the image acquisition game.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the camera was
invented in 1888. Photoshop was released exactly 100 years
later, in 1988. Based on the graph above, we should have zero
reports of miracles during the early 1900s.  Does that match up
with reality?  Not at all.  Google instantly fed me a few
options, from the odd Miracle of the Sun to the massive
Pentecostal healing movement. In other words, the graph above--
created by an organization dedicated to promoting Science and
Freethought--felt free enough to generate data to promote their
ideals, disregarding all facts to the contrary. And here's why
that bothers me so very, very much: Since this is humor, it
turns off people's minds. Rather than thinking abo