The Winter Olympics started this weekend in Turino, Italy. This year the event is of particular interest to those of us here locally because the next time the Winter Olympics are held will be 2010, right here in Vancouver. Cool.

Prior to the Olympics my total sum knowledge of Turino was that it was the location of the famous Shroud of Turin. Took me a while to connect Turino and Turin but apparently its really the same city, different spelling due to differences in language. Probably the same way that Peking and Beijing are really the same place too.

I sort of expected that the Shroud might play a role in the opening ceremonies but instead a Ferrari Formula One racing car drove out onto the stage, rev’ed the engine then did a few donuts that left tire marks sort of like the Olympic ring logo. Weird, but what can you expect? As far as I can tell the goal of any opening ceremony is to be weird enough to make people wonder what the heck is going on. Should be exciting in four more years. I wonder if we’ll all be slightly embarrased by whatever looney show is put on here in Vancouver?

The humorous thing about the Shroud of Turin: its a fake and yet people still cling to hope that it somehow proves the Biblical stories of the death and resurrection. It doesn’t prove anything except how gullible people can be. The most reliable testing shows the cloth was painted in the 14th century. Likely it was a fake prepared for profit. Holy relics had good profit margins during this time in history, and there is a long record of such items being bought and sold all over Europe and especially Italy.

Its a pretty good fake but more impressive is the unrealistic defense offered against scientific test results. Especially silly was the testing supposedly performed to show that a fire in the 16th century could alter the results of carbon dating. Turns out the evidence about how this can occur was completely faked the the “scientist” behind the testing is a fraud as well. As for the evidence about the unique origin of the pollen grains, well this seems to be a completely bogus argument as well. Seems the pollen samples wheren’t actually collected from the cloth in question. Opps.

Want to know more? Read the CSICOP summary article by Joe Nickell. Be sure to read his book Inquest on the Shroud of Turin too. He talks about the relevant examinations on both sides of the argument and shows why the logical conclusion shows the Shroud is a fake. Good reading!