Sunbeams From Cucumbers

Random Disgustingly Cute Video

2007-10-11T22:32:00.000-06:00

Here is a baby duck feeding a Swim Team (it's not my Swim Team, it's someone else's). I was hoping the Team would eat the duck, but it's not what koi do.

Clemson's Purple Uniforms

2007-10-10T10:13:00.000-06:00

As everyone knows, Clemson got stomped by Virginia Tech last week, at home and while wearing their vaunted purple uniforms, mostly because they couldn't stop VT from running the ball all the way back on nearly every kickoff and punt. Personally, I think the purple uniforms are overrated and may in fact have contributed to the loss. Below is a picture I received via email:

And this is why I love Michael Kinsley

2007-09-21T12:42:00.001-06:00

This must be the best thing written yet on the MoveOn.org pseudo-scandal:

How Dare You.

These days, mock outrage is used by every side of every dispute. It's fair enough to criticize something your opponent said while secretly thanking your lucky stars that he said it. The fuss over this MoveOn.org ad is something else: it is the result of a desperate scavenging for umbrage material. When so many people are clamoring for a chance to swoon that they each have to take a number and when the landscape is so littered with folks lying prostrate and pretending to be dead that it starts to look like the end of a Civil War battle re-enactment, this isn't spontaneous mass outrage. This is choreography.

But that quote's just a good summation -- you have to read the whole thing for the real juicy bits.

Blog note: I don't have haloscan comments working for some odd reason, and I'm still playing around with the template. Hopefully I'll get it all squared away this weekend and things will be back to normal.

Technical Problems

2007-09-17T14:00:00.001-06:00

For whatever reason, the blog's template seems to have disappeared. I thought at first that it was a Blogger glitch that they'd work out, but apparently the url where the template was stored is no longer operative. So I'm going to have to get off my lazy ass and make a new template I guess.

Irony Watch

2007-09-10T13:15:00.000-06:00

In this article, we learn of the Pope attacking his fellow Europeans for not having enough children:

Pope Benedict XVI blasted Europeans for being selfish and not having enough children, in a sermon on Saturday at the 850-year-old pilgrimage site of Mariazell in Austria.

"Europe has become child-poor. We want everything for ourselves and place little trust in the future," the pope told a crowd of faithful from his canopied area at an open-air, afternoon mass that took place under heavy rain.

Not long after saying this, the Pope went on to defend celibacy.

Friday Animal Blogging

2007-08-31T08:44:00.000-06:00

New kitties! My animal hoarding has now reached its apex. I've acquired two cats that were no longer wanted, and they've adjusted to their new home just fine. The birds aren't too happy about it, but they're safely out of reach.

On the left is Jack, and on the right is Nibblet (I didn't name them, they came that way). Jack and Nibblet are brother and sister, respectively. They're quite loving.

(Don't forget to visit the Friday Ark.)

Random Disgustingly Cute Picture

2007-08-29T00:01:00.001-06:00

Four tiny orpahned hedgehogs are snuggling up to the bristles of a cleaning brush - because they think it's their mother. (Source.)

Crank's Suit Dropped

2007-08-28T17:54:00.000-06:00

That didn't take long. Stuart Pivar's suit of PZ Myers has been dropped, or at least that's what my behind-the-scenes sources have told me. Let that be a lesson to anyone who would dare insult Stuart Pivar -- he will slap a suit on you faster than you can say "defamation" and then take it right off faster than you can say "frivolous". Unfortunately, that leaves PZ in a state of un-sued, so we'll have to find someone else he's insulted to carry the torch. Maybe Scott Adams of Dilbert fame.

Nope, it's for Real

2007-08-28T10:41:00.000-06:00

I was digging about on Snopes the other day and came across this video. It got sent to Snopes because it's so outlandishly gross that a lot of people thought it must be a fake. Nope, it's for real. I'd feel more sympathy for the guy, but he got himself into this by writing a bad check and running from the cops. That and the fact that I don't think he was wearing his seatbelt.

You know what's better than playing Football?

2007-08-27T14:48:00.001-06:00

Playing football with a $100,000 brick of cash, that's what:

Every time they scratched their asses, they earned; there was so much money around for contractors, officials literally used $100,000 wads of cash as toys. "Yes -- $100 bills in plastic wrap," Frank Willis, a former CPA official, acknowledged in Senate testimony about Custer Battles. "We played football with the plastic-wrapped bricks for a little while."

And that is one of the more minor atrocities documented in this Rolling Stone article.

Please Stop Making My Home State Look Stupid

2007-08-26T18:12:00.000-06:00

I'm talking to you, Miss Teen South Carolina.

Update: Taking pity on the poor thing (she was a Lexington High grad after all), the Today show gave her a chance to re-answer the question. After studying all night, she came up with a highly original and unexpected answer: We need better geography education.

Expelled: No Intelligence Evident

2007-08-26T17:23:00.001-06:00

The Expelled movie isn't yet out so we can't make fun of it in its entirety, but as everyone knows by now, the filmmakers started things off rather badly by lying to the pro-science people they interviewed, making them think that it was an entirely different film with a different name and a different premise. That's a good taste of the kind of sleaze we're dealing with.

Another taste can be found on the movie's official website, complete with press release and a blog post by Ben Stein. Although they say you can't judge a book by its cover, one has to assume that the claims being made in the press release and by Stein, who stars in the film, were actually made in all seriousness and truly reflect the content of the movie. I'm going to critique what I've seen so far based on these materials. The film could always surprise us of course by avoiding the insane rhetoric and untruthful claims found in its own promotional materials, but that seems unlikely to me. Also, I'm not going into detail about the specific cases mentioned in the press release, which have already been discussed at length and will be discussed in much more detail once the film is out. Instead I'm going to talk more generally about the persecution claims being made.

The promotional materials for the movie are heavy on rhetoric and light on substance, so it's hard to disentangle all the nonsense and get to the heart of what the filmmakers are actually saying. I'm going to start with Stein's blog post. As I see it, there are basically three issues at stake here, which are in descending order of craziness, about what supposed "persecution" that ID advocates may have suffered. I will address them in order, starting with a straight-forward reading of this passage:

Do you realize that some of the leading lights of “anti-intelligent design” would not allow a scientist who merely believed in the possibility of an intelligent designer/creator to work for him… EVEN IF HE NEVER MENTIONED the possibility of intelligent design in the universe? EVEN FOR HIS VERY THOUGHTS… HE WOULD BE BANNED.

Under a new anti-religious dogmatism, scientists and educators are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator. In today’s world, at least in America, an Einstein or a Newton or a Galileo would probably not be allowed to receive grants to study or to publish his research.

They cannot even mention the possibility that–as Newton or Galileo believed–these laws were created by God or a higher being. They could get fired, lose tenure, have their grants cut off. This can happen. It has happened.

[Foaming at the mouth emphasis original]

Okay, so question one: Are the above statements correct, as they appear? At the risk of stating the obvious... goodness gracious no. These are in fact extremely stupid claims. First of all, how would it even be possible to ban¹ a scientist who merely thought about ID but never voiced his opinion? Do we have mind-reading devices? Secondly, just what the heck is up with the qualifier about not being able to believe in the possibility of ID/God? It appears three separate times in that short screed. This is a nonsensical descriptor, given that nearly everyone believes in the possibility that God might have created... whatever it is the IDists think was created (they're not exactly consistent on this). Mainstream scientists simply believe either that such claims are untrue, that they might be true but are without evidence, or that they are true but do not constitute scientific claims. Or any number of variants along those lines. IDists on the other hand don't merely believe in the "possibility" that God waved his magic wand, they dogmatically and inflexibly believe that it's true, and more importantly, they assert that it's a scientific fact. That's a mite bit different than the description above, and has everything to do with mainstream science's attitude toward ID.

And finally, there are a massive number of scientists who believe in God, many of them quite devout, most if not all of them believing that God created the universe and the laws of physics that govern it (among other things), yet they haven't all been fired, lost tenure, or had their grants cut off. The very notion is insane. If you think about it for five seconds, if someone were subject to that kind of treatment based on their religious beliefs, it would be extremely strong grounds for a lawsuit. Are we to believe that the ID movement, which spends most of its time screaming at the top of its collective voice that its being discriminated against, wouldn't jump at the chance to win an anti-discrimination suit? The reason that no such suits have been filed, much less actually won, is pretty obvious. There's no religious discrimination going on here. The claim that scientists "cannot even mention the possibility that... these laws were created by God or a higher being," simply has nothing to do with reality.

Now Stein might claim that it was their supposedly scientific beliefs, and not their religion, that was the basis of the discrimination. But that's not what he wrote. The anti-evolution arguments that constitute the sum total of ID's presumed scientific content go unmentioned. It's all about God, a higher being, the Creator -- pure theological constructs. What makes this especially ironic is that in any other context, the ID people would vehemently deny that ID was a religious belief. I'll say more about this hypocritical bait-and-switch later.

Okay, now for the second issue: Given that Ben Stein's words are little more than irresponsible hyperbole, would a more milder form of the claim be correct? Are scientists getting fired, losing tenure, or having their grants stripped away because they are outspoken ID advocates? Again, the answer is no. Of course the film will try to convince you otherwise, but I've seen all their martyrdom claims before, at least all the ones mentioned in their press release (which one imagines are the best ones they've got), and none of them actually fit that description. The IDists have flogged a small handful of cases in which they allege discrimination, but none of them have featured a firing, a loss of tenure, or grant stripping as far as I know². What's worse is that upon closer inspection, it turns out that these allegations are gross exaggerations. Their most celebrated case of persecution, that of Richard von Sternberg, turned out to be an almost complete fabrication. These isolated and dubious cases are then used to make a sweeping generalization that discrimination occurs all over the place, that there are literally hundreds of pro-ID scientists who are being mistreated.

They never give any evidence for this wild claim of course. And when pressed for evidence, they intimate that none can be provided because it would further jeopardize the careers of those who are being attacked -- a closed-loop conspiracy theory that, like ID itself, is impervious to empirical testing. The very idea however seriously strains credulity. The IDists have shown a penchant for trumpeting as loudly as possible a number of exceptionally weak cases, without any apparent concern for the supposed victims' future careers³, yet they expect us to believe that there are actually hundreds of genuine cases that they refuse to tell us about? It doesn't even pass the smell test.

And finally, the last issue: If IDists aren't really being "persecuted" as such, having their careers deliberately destroyed, are they at least suffering from a loss of reputation? Do scientists think less of someone who is an ID advocate? Does this have negative consequences for them? The answer is, you're damned right. One thing that really baffles me about this film and its antecedents is that for all their talk of free speech and academic freedom, the IDists seem to think it completely out-of-bounds that anyone would dare express a negative thought about them. Take the Sternberg affair for example. After all the material claims about Sternberg's suffering turned out to be unsubstantiated, the IDists and the politicians who maliciously attacked the Smithsonian kept going on about the loss of reputation that was hurting poor Sternberg -- their evidence being that his colleagues said mean things about him in private emails. Apparently, merely having a negative opinion about Sternberg was an act of persecution. This just stuns me.

Like everyone else in a free society, scientists have a right to think you're a moron. If you are making ostensibly scientific claims -- whether it's saying that the Earth is 6000 years old, new genetic information can't evolve, or that airplanes can't fly -- your colleagues have not only a right, but a duty to evaluate your claims and pass judgment on them. That is what scientific discourse is all about. Scientists have heated debates all the time, and the ones who eventually lose those debates inevitably pay a price by losing esteem in the eyes of their peers. And those who cling to false beliefs long after they've been debunked... why they really lose esteem. How could it be any other way? Without a doubt a bad reputation is unhelpful to one's career prospects, but the ultimate responsibility for this rests with those who earned the bad reputation to begin with. ID has simply failed to gain any traction in the scientific arena because it is poorly reasoned, contrary to established fact, and in many cases downright incoherent. The ID movement has thus responded⁴ by pouring all of its resources into their political machinations and highly dishonest propaganda campaign. Unsurprisingly this makes ID look even less legitimate in the eyes of the scientific community. If Ben Stein wants to a good example of why scientists think very poorly of ID advocates, this silly film he's starring in ranks right at the top.

The ID movement can't have it both ways on this. They can't demand to be taken seriously by the scientific establishment and then throw a tantrum when scientists actually do take them seriously. And that's exactly why they engage in the bait-and-switch I mentioned earlier. The actual merits of ID as a supposedly scientific theory are glaringly absent from the Expelled website. I don't doubt that they'll be absent from the film as well. They are taking ID's presumed intellectual merits for granted and are appealing instead to supposedly anti-religious sentiment as the reason why ID is being roughly treated. In doing so, they side-step the very issue that's at stake as far as science is concerned. Moreover, scientists as a group are actually quite tolerant of religious diversity -- much more so than the fundamentalist Christians who make up the base of the ID movement. But if you start claiming that your religious beliefs are scientific, and if you start demanding that they be taught in science class, scientists are going to respond. Don't start crying if the response is negative.

__________________________________________________________________

Footnotes:

1. Lacking a rudimentary understanding of what the scientific community is like, Ben Stein apparently thinks it's something you can be "banned" from. Like the Tour de France.

2. The Gonzalez case for example involved not being granted tenure (and for good reason as it turned out), which is very different from having tenure taken away. Likewise, whatever happened with Crocker she wasn't fired; she's still at George Mason. As for taking away grant money, it's a mystery as to what Ben Stein is talking about. Anyone? Bueller?

3. Case in point, whatever harm Richard von Sternberg's reputation may have suffered as a result of his unethical practices in publishing the Meyer paper, the Discovery Institute made it a thousand times worse by turning him into their poster child. Much the same can be said of Gonzalez.

4. As most non-lobotomized readers will note, it's not as if the ID movement really gave it the old college try in the scientific realm, and then suddenly switched to crass political maneuvering after all else failed. It was always a political movement.

Expelled.

Mother Teresa was an Agnostic

2007-08-24T11:52:00.000-06:00

This is amusing.

Mother Teresa's diary reveals her crisis of faith

Mother Teresa, who was put on the fast track to sainthood by the Pope after her death five years ago, was tormented by a crisis of belief for 50 years, her writings reveal.

...
"In my own soul, I feel the terrible pain of this loss. I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist."
Il Messeggero, Rome's popular daily newspaper, said: "The real Mother Teresa was one who for one year had visions and who for the next 50 had doubts - up until her death."
Her years of doubt coincided with the period when, after having visions, she decided to leave her teaching post at a privileged Calcutta school to help India's poor.

It's a good thing she began having doubts about religion, otherwise she would have never started helping the poor.

Friday Animal Blogging

2007-08-24T08:35:00.001-06:00

Here is a lizard I spotted on a camping trip:

He's a member of the genus Sceloporus, most likely the prairie/plateau lizard Sceloporus undulatus. I found him (and legions of his conspecifics) while hiking in the beautiful Cheeseman Canyon, pictured below:

(Don't forget to visit the Friday Ark!)

PZ Myers Gets Sued!

2007-08-20T14:57:00.000-06:00

It's about time someone did it.

C-list crank Stuart Pivar, author of Lifecode, is suing PZ (and apparently ScienceBlogs as well) for having the nerve to write a negative review of his book. Since the review was obviously unfair and actionable, you absolutely should not read it here. Nor should you read the earlier review concerning the first edition. And to help avoid being exposed to the other mean things that PZ said about Pivar, I will advise you not to go here, here, or here and read any of the contents. Can you imagine what would happen if, as a result of Pivar's lawsuit, everyone went and started reading the criticisms?

Both PZ and ScienceBlogs will likely be unable to discuss the case until after it's been laughed out of court, so I will definitely point out any future developments so as to help you avoid hearing any more negative things about Pivar.

Update: Jim Lippard has found the actual complaint that Pivar filed. He's suing for only $15 million, which wouldn't even put a dent in Myer's massive empire. Here's the money shot from the complaint:

Myers has publicly described himself on his web log as a "cruel and insensitive person".

Clearly someone deserving of a harassment suit. That kind of reasoning, combined with numerous grammatical and spelling errors, makes me wonder if Pivar even bothered consulting with a lawyer.

Friday Animal Blogging

2007-08-10T20:34:00.000-06:00

Swim Team edition.

Okay, I'm a little late on this, but I've got massive amounts of animals that haven't been blogged.

First and foremost is the Swim Team. When I bought my new house, the previous owners had dug a pond (pretentiously: Water Garden) in the back yard, though it was covered and disused. The previous owners were people who apparently cared greatly about their house, until they mysteriously became dead-beats and lost it all; the HOA later covered up the pond to keep mosquitoes from breeding. So I had no idea what was going to be under those plywood planks. Luckily, there was a nice little pond that had great potential, and with the help of my parents who were visiting at the time, I was able to turn it into a great koi pond.

Koi, a domesticated vareity of Cyprinus carpio, are very hearty fish and make for excellent pond specimens. I stocked my pond (which is I'm guessing about 700 gallons) with four small fish for starters, figuring that this would be safely within the limits of what the pond could handle. I named them Otter, Pinto, Flounder, and Boon (bonus points for guessing where the names come from), and set them loose. Sadly, Otter, who was the boldest of the four, mysteriously disappeared, perhaps killed by a cat or a bird. The other three remain however, and they've probably tripled in size over the 2.5 months I've had them. Here is their home:

And here's a close-up of the waterfall, which they love:

Note that there are a couple of water hyacinths there. The hyacinths, along with the water lettuce, have since exploded all over the pond, which the fish really like, since they frolic among them. It's a sign of a healthy pond. And here is the Team:

Pictured clockwise from upper left are Pinto, Boon, and Flounder. Flounder, like his namesake, is the fat one. He always the first to the dinner table. Boon is a butterfly koi, which means he has long, flowing fins (not readily visible in this picture). Here they are again:

These pictures are a few weeks old; the fish have grown remarkably since then. They eat a lot. I feed them a couple of small handfuls of high protein koi food everyday, and when they're not eating that, they're nibbling on algae and plants and anything unfortunate enough to fall in the pond. Here they are at feeding time:

In the second picture, you can see the pump that powers the waterfall, which normally can't be seen thanks to the bridge and a lack of camera flash.

I'll post more pictures of the Swim Team once the members are big enough to swallow Coors Field. It shouldn't take long at this rate.

Feel the Love Demonstrated

2007-08-10T14:37:00.000-06:00

And summer camp used to be such a fun place, until the fundies got a hold of it:

Arrest warrants have been issued for two officials at a Christian boot camp accused of dragging a 15-year-old girl behind a van after she fell behind the group during a morning run, authorities said.
Charles Eugene Flowers and Stephanie Bassitt of San Antonio-based Love Demonstrated Ministries, a 32-day boot camp, are facing aggravated assault charges for the alleged June 12 incident.

The two were accused of tying the girl to the van with a rope then dragging her, according to an arrest affidavit filed Wednesday by the Nueces County Sheriff's Department. Arrest affidavits for Flowers and Bassitt list a $100,000 bond. [...]

Flowers, the camp's director, allegedly ordered Bassitt to run alongside the girl after she fell behind, the affidavit said. When the girl stopped running, Bassitt allegedly yelled at her and pinned her to the ground while Flowers tied the rope to her, according to the affidavit.

It figures...

2007-08-01T14:15:00.000-06:00

This doesn't need any comment:

State lawmakers shot down a request for extra financial help for low-income students who will attend South Carolina's public colleges and universities next year.
Meanwhile, they approved $2.5 million to help low-income students attend Bob Jones University, a private school in Greenville. [...]
The bill to include Bob Jones University was sponsored by Sens. Michael Fair, R-Greenville, and Darrell Jackson, D-Hopkins.
Shannon said that although the bill didn't specifically mention Bob Jones University, "it happens to be the only new one that qualifies."
Before the legislation was passed, Shannon said, private colleges had to be nonprofit organizations, have a major campus and headquarters in South Carolina and be accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
Under the new legislation, a private college can meet those criteria or it can simply be a bachelor's level institution chartered before 1962 with a major campus and headquarters in South Carolina, the latter of which allows Bob Jones to qualify.
Bob Jones University is not accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Mike Fair, if you'll recall, is the guy who teamed up with the Discovery Institute to block the state science standards until pro-creationist language could be inserted. This move failed, which naturally prompted the DI to declare victory anyway.

Mind Your Businesses

2007-07-24T13:37:00.001-06:00

I've got a post today up at the Thumb. One of these days I'll stop neglecting this blog and cross-post everything here.

Random Disgustingly Cute Picture

2007-07-19T15:11:00.001-06:00

Mane attraction: A lion cub, aged around seven weeks, looks for a role model in an adult male. These beasts live in prides of between three and 30 lions. (Source.)

You're a Fucktard, aren't you Kent?

2007-07-06T17:48:00.000-06:00

This is easily the greatest thing ever posted on YouTube. Ever:

From the "things I don't miss about SC" file.

2007-06-11T14:54:00.000-06:00

Easley's new library has a summer reading program with a pizza party afterwards.

Some parents, apparently of the religious nutball persuasion, object to one weekly session because it is advertised as such: “Get to know your inner cosmic being through astrology, palmistry, numberology [sic]. Partner up to practice palm-reading, or try your hand at tarot cards.” Obviously a bunch of superstitious nonsense, but as long as it's presented as such, it's completely harmless. But no, according to those parents, it was indoctrinating kids into the dreaded occult.

As a result, the library drops the reading program.

But still has the pizza party.

Read more about it here.

Friday Animal Blogging

2007-06-01T09:05:00.000-06:00

My mom sent me some pictures of my cat, Fluffy, who still resides in South Carolina.

Here she is peering down from a perch:

Rolling on the patio:

Under the shadow of the enemy:

Wants something:

Experiments with pot:

(Don't forget to visit the Friday Ark.)

The Bubble Hall of Fame

2007-05-31T14:27:00.000-06:00

An article in Slate lists some of history's all-time worst "bubble-blowers" -- people who help create unsustainable economic bubbles through their relentless promotion, over-optimism, and snake-oil salesmanship. Upon seeing the article, my first thought was, I bet I know at least one person who will definitely make the list. I was right:

The Internet
George Gilder (1939-present)
Noteworthy bubble-blowing role: Newsletter writer and futurist foresaw a world of infinite wealth because of infinite bandwidth. Book published in 2000 promoted soon-to-be-worthless stocks like WorldCom and Global Crossing.
Catchphrase: "The investor who never acts until the financials affirm his choice is doomed to mediocrity by trust in spurious rationality."
Bonus catchphrase: Of WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers, he said: "He is a hero of the dimensions of Rockefeller and Milken."
Ignominious end/debunking: Dot-com wipeout nearly forced him into bankruptcy (subscription required), according to the Wall Street Journal. Still touting stocks and trying to undermine Darwin.

Random Disgustingly Cute Picture

2007-05-31T10:38:00.001-06:00

A worker from Rome's Biopark zoo holds a Testudo Kleinmanni hatchling, an endangered species also known as an Egyptian tortoise, in Rome May 22, 2007. The offspring is the hatchling of several Egyptian tortoises that were rescued from a smuggler's suitcase in 2005 at Naples airport, southern Italy, by Italy's forestry police and were entrusted to Rome's main zoo.

(Source.)

Sen. Sam Brownback: Intelligent Falling Advocate

2007-05-31T09:53:00.000-06:00

Presidential candidate Sam Brownback was one of three Republican candidates who raised their hands when asked if they didn't believe in evolution.

Today he has an op-ed piece in the New York Times wherein he explains his stance. If you're looking for something original, meaningful, or interesting, it's not for you. It's your standard "I'm a creationist but am too cagey to come out and say it so I'm going to dance around the issue and exude platitudes about faith..." There's a fair chance it was ghost written by a member of the Discovery Institute. Consider this:

The question of evolution goes to the heart of this issue. If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.

And what if evolution means what it really means, namely that various species (say, humans and great apes) share common ancestry? Brownback totally dodges that one.

The great thing about the internets though is that new-fangled things call blogs allow people to let it all out and say what they really think, the kinds of things they would never publish in the New York Times. You know, unhinged, stream-of-consciousness rantings. Things like this:

Senator Brownback is among a tiny handful of 2008 potential Presidential candidates who understand that ANNUIT COEPTIS is what makes America great. Senator Brownback's belief in a Higher Power goes far beyond reasonable belief. We know beyond any and all possible doubt that gravity had to have come from somewhere and by inference that this "Intelligent Designer" has favored our undertakings.

Brownback apparently didn't get the message that the "Intelligent Designer" is an unknown entity that might well be an evil space monster, because ID is not a religious belief no sir it's not, but he's hardly unique in that regard. Putting that aside, what the heck was that about gravity? Here it is again:

It would take a miracle from God himself to convince non-believers that patterns statistically beyond random chance that prove an "Intelligent Designer" to be behind the creation of gravity. Maybe this miracle, or series of miracles has already happened. Belief in a Higher Power taught to our school children will increase discipline in our public schools, thus increase our economy. Reasonable belief that gravity had to have come from an "Intelligent Designer" is just the kind of miracle that America needs.

Brownback is a proponent of Intelligent Falling! We knew there had to be one out there somewhere. And apparently gravity is coming in for quite a shellacking, because they've even created their own category for it on the blog:

Tags : Gravity, Higher Power, ID, ethics, morals

Sadly, this is the only post under "Gravity" for now.

(Cross-posted to the Panda's Thumb.)

Friday Animal Blogging

2007-05-25T00:06:00.000-06:00

Lazy squirrel:

Look at that bastard. Just laying spread-eagle on a branch. Who said life in the wild was rough? Here's a close-up:

(Don't forget to visit the Friday Ark.)

Why Theistic Evolutionists are Not a Legal Threat

2007-05-15T17:14:00.000-06:00

Okay, here's a follow-up to yesterday's post. This one is about PZ Myer's claim that the presence of TEs somehow harms the legal case against creationism. Let me repeat in full his comments on that here:

Try to imagine the next big court case to get ID out of the schools.

The lawyer says, "Mr Matzke (you know Nick will be there, right?), you've brilliantly dissected this textbook the Discovery Institute is using, and shown that despite the absence of any overt mention of god or religion, it's antecedents are derived from the creationist movement, and its authors are all strongly religious and have made statements outside the context of this particular book that strongly imply intent to promote religion. We should not be fooled by the absence of obvious religious advocacy in the book itself, but recognize instead its duplicitous nature and the bad faith arguments of its proponents?"

Nick will humbly reply, "Yes, sir."

And the DI lawyer will then say, "But half your witnesses are "theistic" evolutionists, and proud of it. They say openly that they believe a God, the Christian God, not even an ambiguous supernatural force, was involved in the creation of human beings. They write books about DNA as the "language of God". They lecture with considerable force that science and religion are compatible, and more, that science strengthens their faith in the Christian God. Proponents of the evolution position blithely call these people who insert a god into their explanations of origins 'pro-science'. Your side ignores or even derides scientists who insist on purely natural explanations of our evolution, and promotes those who use religion to sell science to the public."

"I'm baffled. On what basis are you arguing that this case involves a violation of the separation of church and state when I can scarcely tell the two of you apart, and when it's your side that more openly embraces religious ideas—when the Intelligent Design proponents show a history of nominally moving away from their religious roots, while your side shows a history of increasing recruitment of church leaders, theologians, and lay advocates of god-involvement in science?"

And Nick will say … I have no idea how Nick would reply. I'm sure it will be clever and devastating, and I'm sure it will explain how the statement that "I believe God is intelligent and I believe he designed the creation" is pro-science while "I do not believe in the sufficiency of random mutation and natural selection to explain the history of life on earth" is anti-science. I'd like to hear an explanation for how "theistic evolution" is less religious than "intelligent design".

This belief, to me, seems based upon some serious ignorance about what the actual legal issues are concerning creationism. Here I'm going to delimit what the legal issues are really about, and part of that is going to include some examples of what they are not about:

1. ID/Creationism is not unconstitutional because its adherents are religious.

This may seem obvious, but PZ seems to think that the mere fact that TEs are religious creates the possibility that they'll be seen as indistinguishable from IDists in a court setting. But their religiosity is not an issue. After all, if being religious were enough to condemn one's ideas, 90% of the country would have to remain silent.

2. ID/Creationism is not unconstitutional because its adherents are motivated by religion.

This is not obvious to most people. But it's important to realize that religious motivation per se is not enough to violate church-state separation. Lots of legislators and public servants do things that are motivated by their religious beliefs. Opening orphanages, feeding the poor, passing anti-gay laws, etc. Some of these things are exemplary and some are not, but none of them has ever been found unconstitutional on church-state grounds. Motivation is only an issue to the extent that it provides evidence for what's really at stake...

3. ID/Creationism is unconstitutional because it has the primary effect of advancing religion and has no secular purpose.

This is why the courts have consistently ruled against creationism. Not because its adherents are religiously motivated, but because the policies they put in place have the primary effect of advancing religion. That's the distinction between someone who pushes anti-poverty laws because his religion tells him to, and someone who pushes prayer in school (to pick a random example) in order to get more believers. The former does nothing to advance religion while the latter most certainly does. The evidence that ID is intended to advance religion is quite overwhelming; one needs merely to read any of the ID movement's foundational books or documents.

That the government is not allowed to advance (or inhibit) religion is one of the three prongs of the so-called Lemon Test, which is the courts' current precedent for deciding church-state separation cases. Another prong is that the government's actions must have a legitimate secular purpose. ID/Creationism fails this prong too. The courts have ruled that since ID/Creationism isn't science, there's no secular purpose for teaching it in science class. Contrast that with anti-poverty laws, which have an obvious secular purpose. (The third prong of the Lemon Test is that there cannot be excessive entanglement between church and state -- to the best of my knowledge this has never been an issue in creationism cases, and it's not clear to me that it's a useful prong to begin with.)

So considering what church-state jurisprudence is actually based upon, what effect does the presence of TEs have in fighting creationism? It doesn't violate the effect prong because TEs are not arguing to have their religious views included in science classes -- quite the opposite in fact. Nor does it violate the purpose prong because what TEs do want taught (plain old everyday evolution) has an obvious secular purpose. And it does nothing to change how the effect and purpose prongs are applied to the IDists. Yes, the IDists will continue to get sneakier and try to make it look as if their claims aren't religion masquerading as science, but the presence or absence of TEs isn't going to have any effect on that. That's why TEs have testified in every creationism court case that we've had, and yet we've still won all of those cases.

There is however one major way in which TEs have had an effect on the courts. Creationists have long argued that evolution is the same thing as atheism, or that it at least strongly promotes atheism. Therefore, they say, in order for the government to be religiously neutral, it has to give equal time to religious ideas such as creationism. The courts have soundly rejected this argument. One reason is that the creationists contradict themselves when they say that creationism is religiously neutral yet is necessary to counterbalance an anti-religious idea. Another reason is that the plaintiffs can drag out all of these witnesses who say that evolution doesn't conflict with their religion, and that they're comfortable believing in both evolution and the existence of God. We call those people theistic evolutionists. And they destroy the creationists' case for portraying evolution as necessarily atheistic.

PZ's apparent belief that TEs need to be purged (or swept under the rug, or whatever) not only isn't going to help our case, it has the potential to severely damage it. If the courts were to rule that the primary effect of evolution was to inhibit religion -- and this ruling would be much easier for them if evolutionists automatically excluded anyone with religious beliefs -- then it would be toast. That's not to say that you have to think that evolution and religion compatible. You can personally think that they aren't, but the proper legal strategy is to acknowledge that there are people who believe that religion and evolution are compatible, and that therefore evolution is not in essence an anti-religious theory.

P.S. Wesley Elsberry has more.

Mitt Romney: THEIST!!!

2007-05-14T14:18:00.000-06:00

This was entirely predictable. After I wrote my post about Romney's position on evolution, calling it "essentially pro-science", PZ Myers writes a post griping about it. According to PZ, anyone who believes in both God and evolution must be anti-science or something. He never really quite explains how it is that a large fraction of scientists, some of them notable evolutionary biologists, are anti-science according to his own criteria. If asked, these scientists would say pretty much the same thing that Romney said -- i.e. there's a God behind everything, but mainstream evolutionary theory is correct. One might criticize them for having incoherent or contradictory metaphysical beliefs about the world, but to call them anti-science when they are 100% the same as the rest of us concerning scientific matters is asinine.

Jason Rosenhouse, who also provoked PZ's ire when he dared suggest that Romney's stance is actually a good thing, wrote a reply that I think is pretty spot on. And like Jason, it simply boggles my mind that that PZ cannot understand the difference between theistic evolution and ID. That's like being unable to understand the difference between a pot smoker and an axe murderer. They don't make distinctions much more obvious than that.

PZ wrote a reply to Jason in which he reaffirms the fact that he can't tell the difference between the two:

The second big issue is the complaint that I can't tell the difference between a theistic evolutionist and an intelligent design creationist.

That's a fair complaint, actually. I can't.
Pretend I'm a Martian (not hard to do, I suppose; to a lot of people, my complete rejection of "faith" as a reason for believing in something seems to make me alien, anyway). Explain it to me. I even explicitly laid that out as a question at the end of my post; no one seems to have tried. At best, what Jason and poke do is point out that there is a difference in tactics—the theistic evolutionists are willing to move their god out of gaps in our knowledge as they are closed and place them in other gaps; the IDists want to fight to keep the gaps open, usually by misrepresenting the science that threatens them.

What he really shows is that he doesn't know what theistic evolution is. The vast majority of TE's reject god-of-the-gaps arguments. To be fair, there are some who use that style of reasoning, like Francis Collins who made the exceptionally lame argument that there's no natural basis for morality, but this is the exception to the rule. Most TE's believe that God acts through natural law, not supernatural intervention. They know good and well that god-of-the-gaps is a losing argument, so they place God outside of any gaps where He becomes all-pervasive and in charge of everything. Again, I'm not saying I agree with this -- I sympathize with people who dismiss TE as being self-contradictory or meaningless, because I myself can't quite figure out how to reconcile a meaningful concept of God with a universe that operates through purely natural means -- but it's definitely not the same as being anti-science. Those scientists who are TEs agree with the rest of us concerning what science is, the methods that it can reliably employ, and what its established results have been. Additionally, they uphold the general integrity of the scientific community and believe that religion has no place in science class. In other words, in every single detail concerning the creation/evolution debate (except the existence of God itself, which absent any scientific claims is a non-issue), they are on the exact same page as I am. Romney scored a perfect 10 as far as scientific and educational issues were concerned. If he had claimed that his religious views were scientific and should be taught in science class, I'd be denouncing him too. Yet according to PZ, merely having religious views mark him as anti-science. What was Romney supposed to do, renounce his faith?

Now let's look as what the ID movement believes. They emphatically do not agree with the rest of us concerning what science is, what methods it reliably employs, or what its results have been. They routinely denounce the scientific community as corrupt, dogmatic, elitist, and repressive. They lie about everything, even those things that can be easily exposed as such. And they have spent the bulk of their time and resources trying to get their so-called scientific claims -- pretty much all of them factually incorrect, grossly misleading, or badly reasoned -- taught to primary and secondary school children. If PZ cannot understand the difference between these guys and TEs like Romney, then he hasn't been paying attention. Or, more likely, his notorious disdain for theism has clouded his thinking. Me, personally, I don't care about theism vs. atheism war, so the contrast sticks out like a big red thumb against a green background.

Ultimately, this is not about whether TEs are right or wrong, or whether we should "enthusiastically embrace" TEs, which neither Jason nor I did. It's about tolerance. It's about forming alliances against the people who are really anti-science, and then recognizing that people like Mitt Romney are on the correct side of the divide. PZ's only excuse for his rejection of all theists is a bizarre belief that when the next court case comes around, the views of people like Romney are somehow going to hurt our side. This is if anything even worse than his failure to see a distinction between the Ken Millers of the world and the Phillip Johnsons. Is he not aware that TEs have testified in every creationism trial in the country, and that this somehow didn't make us lose? Does he know what our prospects for winning would be if judges were persuaded that you couldn't believe in evolution and theism at the same time? Not very good at all. But that's a subject for another post.

Still Slacking...

2007-05-11T11:42:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm not really slacking. I haven't been updating the blog much because of the exact opposite of slacking. I just bought a house and moved into it, and it's in need of some amount of fixing up. At work my research is going well for a change, which gives me little time to sit in front of the computer and find silly news items to make fun of. Maybe once my house is in order I'll at least have time in the evenings to blog.

Today I made a post on the Panda's Thumb, Mitt Romney, Theistic Evolutionist. My previous posts on Romney have all focused on the fact that he's a MORMON which doesn't sit well with religious right crazies. His stance on evolution is just more evidence that he's trying to center himself and appear moderate. Ironically, this may placate the wingnuts rather than rile them up. Romney is basically saying, "See, my Mormonism doesn't rule every facet of my life -- I am definitely a normal person, normal I say -- so there's no need for you to worry about it."

We'll see how this plays out.

Unintelligenter Design

2007-04-25T13:54:00.000-06:00

Larry Moran has posted a picture which purports to demonstrate "unintelligent design" in the human anatomy. Unfortunately, I think he misses some of the real screw-ups that are apparent from the diagram. Below I'll post an improved version of the picture with the real flaws highlighted:

Random Disgustingly Cute Picture

2007-04-25T10:50:00.000-06:00

A two-month old Amur baby tiger sits by his mother at Tama Zoo in Tokyo October 23, 2004. The Amur tiger, the world's biggest wild cat, has pounced back from the brink of extinction to hit its highest population level for at least 100 years, the WWF said on Thursday.

(source)

Office of Sternberg Coddling to investigate Karl Rove.

2007-04-24T17:59:00.000-06:00

Remember Scott Bloch, head of the OSC? Remember how his office produced a report on L'Affaire Sternberg that was an obvious political hatchet job, filled with inaccuracies, exaggerations, and outright lies?

Good news: He's about to launch an investigation of Karl Rove's political interference with the executive branch. Yes, the only guy who might possibly contend with Rove for the title of worst political hack ever is going to investigate charges of political hackery. Not to worry though, Bloch says he'll be objective:

"We will take the evidence where it leads us," Scott J. Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel and a presidential appointee, said in an interview Monday.

Hm, where have I head that aphorism before? If past behavior is any guide, the purpose of this investigation is to whitewash Rove's unsavory deeds. But maybe Bloch will prove me wrong.

From the "You Can't Make This Shit Up" File...

2007-04-16T14:24:00.000-06:00

Baby Jumping.

The village of Castrillo de Murcia (Burgos) held its traditional Baby-Jumping Festival at the weekend as part of its Corpus Christi celebrations.
Since the 17th century, on the Sunday of Corpus Christi, "El Colacho," a personification of diabolical evil, has been jumping over babies born in the village during the previous twelve months thus cleansing their souls of evil.

Slacking.

2007-04-09T15:06:00.000-06:00

I haven't been updating this blog much lately. Today I have a post on the Pandas Thumb: The Pro-ID Paper That Wasn't. That's my contribution to the blogosphere for the time being.

They Blew It

2007-03-29T20:09:00.000-06:00

Clemson 73, West Virginia 78.

Charleston in the year 2095

2007-03-28T16:15:00.000-06:00

Via Gristmill, I found this cool site that allows you to see what any point on Earth is going to look like when sea levels rise due to global warming. Below is Charleston with a 1 meter sea level rise, which is near the high end of IPCC predictions for the year 2095:

And here's Folly Beach, where I used to live:

It doesn't look good. Fortunately, sea levels may not rise this much. One meter is the upper bound; at the low end it could be as little as a tenth as much. Unfortunately, they won't stop rising by 2095. Sea levels could rise as much as several meters over the next few centuries if nothing is done to turn warming around. If you want to see what that looks like, change the number in the top left corner to 7 and be amazed.

Clemson To Play In NIT Final

2007-03-28T13:39:00.000-06:00

The Tigers took on and beat Air Force last night to advance to the NIT championship game against West Virginia. It wasn't a pretty win, but Clemson pulled it out.

Of course most people's attention this time of year is focused solely on the NCAA tournament, but this is what you get when you're a Tiger fan. Clemson has an almost unparalleled ability to choke, to start out with a good season full of promise and then to screw things up and fall just short of good. It's the same with basketball as it is with football. Clemson jumped off to a 17-0 start, looking for all the world like a serious contender... until they went 2-9 over the next 11 games. But they picked up a couple of ACC wins to end the season, keeping them in contention for an invite to the Big Dance. All they really had to do was beat Florida State in the opening round of the ACC tournament, a team which they had beaten twice in the regular season. Of course they choked. They lost by one point, thanks to a last second foul of all things.

Now we'll see if they can redeem themselves with an NIT championship. Although given the Tigers' history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, I'd feel pretty good if I were a West Virginia fan.

Random Disgustingly Cute Picture

2007-03-22T13:38:00.000-06:00

Thumbelina, a five year old dwarf miniature horse, slides underneath the pasture fencing at Goose Creek Farms in St. Louis, MO on Fri. October 3, 2006. At 17.5 inches, she is the smallest living horse in the world, and holds the record for the smallest horse in history

Source.

The Unicorn Was Driving.

2007-03-16T10:25:00.000-06:00

We've all heard of the Twinkie Defense and the Chewbacca Defense. Now witness the Unicorn Defense:

A man accused of drunk-driving and crashing his truck into a lamp post told police a unicorn had been at the wheel when it careered off the road, local media reported Wednesday. [...]

His March 7 crash in Billings was witnessed by two police officers, said prosecutor Ingrid Rosenquist, but Holliday still insisted a unicorn was driving when he slammed into the street lighting, shortly after jumping a red light

I bet he gets off.

Mitt Romney -- Still a MORMON!!!!

2007-03-14T16:30:00.000-06:00

Way back in the heady days of September 2006, I mentioned that nascent presidential candidate Mitt Romney's status as a Mormon isn't going to go over well with the religious right, especially in South Carolina where they've kind of doubled-down on the whole wacky religion thing. Lots of conservatives have tried to downplay the religious bigotry inherent in "the base" and pretend as if Romney's religion is no big deal to the tolerant, open-minded Republican primary voters. Except of course for that little incident where a party leader accosted him about his religion.

Now there's another example in Monday's Greenville News. For balance, of course, the News feels the need to lead off with an example of that famed Republican tolerance:

Bob Leach, a Republican legislator from Greenville, got right to the point with Mitt Romney on one of the presidential candidate's early stops in South Carolina late last year.
"Who was Jesus Christ?" he asked Romney, a devout Mormon.
"My personal Lord and Savior," Leach recalled Romney saying.
Leach, a Baptist and House Republican Caucus chaplain, was so taken with the response that he soon endorsed Romney.

Leach is so tolerant, he didn't really need to know anything about Romney other than the fact that he accepts Jesus as his lord and savior. Just so long as he isn't, you know, like a Jew or something.

But not everyone is as ecumenical as Bob Leach:

But Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, didn't sway fellow Republican Rep. Gloria Haskins of Greenville, who attended Bob Jones University.
"Mormonism is a cult, and you can't paint it any other way," she said recently. Haskins is supporting the candidacy of Arizona Sen. John McCain.

So says the graduate from BJU. Here's another:

The Rev. David Kay, associate pastor, said it [the how-to-convert-a-Mormon seminar] wasn't triggered by Romney's visits, but by his own increasing awareness of growing Mormon missionary work. Mormonism, he believes, is a cult rather than a Christian religion.

Kay describes Mormonism's martyred founder, Joseph Smith, as "just a nut case" and said "anybody who would believe the teachings of Joseph Smith is misled."

Yeah, Smith's teachings are pretty nutty. They're almost as nutty as believing that Adam and Eve frolicked with dinosaurs, that the Pope is the Anti-Christ, that a one-world government run by the UN will trigger the end times, that all kangaroos are descended from a pair that hopped to Australian from the Middle East after getting off of a boat they had been on for a year, and other things that no rational person could ever, ever believe.

But Romney's religion isn't the religious right's only hang-up. That terrible evil known as divorce also has them up in arms:

They're not reluctant to weigh in, as frontrunner Rudolph Giuliani learned last week when a top Southern Baptist Convention official said the thrice-married former New York City mayor's tangled personal life may be too much for evangelicals to accept, The Associated Press reported from Nashville.

I really think that a guy who's been married three times isn't that big of a deal considering some recent revelations about the lifestyles of prominent evangelicals. Sometimes I wonder if they shouldn't just get it over with and choose leaders who are openly gay pedophile gambling drug addicts. It would would probably be less embarrassing that way.

Anyway, the whole point here is that of course Romney's Mormonism is a huge issue among the religious right, and anyone who thinks that it'll go away by focusing on Romeny's conservative credentials, or the fact that he's never been divorced (very important when formulating foreign policy you know), is deluding themselves. Romney will lose the primary, and part of it will be due to the fact that we do not live in a religiously tolerant society.

Apple Unveils the iRack

2007-03-13T02:06:00.000-06:00

My Eyes Have Seen The Future...

2007-03-12T20:01:00.000-06:00

There's a great article in American Scientist about plug-in hybrids. These are cars that work just like hybrid cars do today (i.e. they use a gas engine to charge batteries, and then use the batteries to run an electric motor during those times when the gas engine is most inefficient), but you can also plug them in and charge the batteries directly. That way you can run the car completely on electricity if you so desire, but in those situations where you can't pause for several hours to recharge, you can just use gasoline.

In particular, they are far and away a better option than hydrogen, which I have previously groused about here, here, and here. The American Scientist piece explains the obvious and straightforward benefit of electricity over hydrogen:

Indeed, one of the great advantages of plug-ins (and purely electric cars) is that they can directly use solar- and wind-generated electricity for transportation, a process that is three to four times more efficient than converting such renewable energy to hydrogen for vehicular use.

As I've said many times, hydrogen is not a source of energy, it is a particular means of storing and delivering energy. It just so happens to be a terrible means of storing and delivering energy, because it requires a lot of waste and creates all sorts of technical difficulties. As such, I simply can't see any future for it.

The real future of the automobile will be the electric car, with plug-in hybrids as the transitional species. Anyway, the entire article is well worth the read, so hop to it.

Egnorance

2007-03-11T12:27:00.000-06:00

I guess I'll have to pile on. Over on Panda's Thumb, Burt Humburg wrote an excellent take-down of the latest nonsense to come out of Dr. Michael Egnor, a neurosurgeon who has managed to spout some unbelievably dumb things about evolution. Naturally, this makes him the Discovery Institute's new darling, not because he's said anything original or profound (he's just recycled old ID talking points, some of which are so bad that the other ID guys won't go near them), but because he's a brain surgeon and therefore must know what he's talking about. More on that in a bit.

Something that PZ wrote awhile back has kind of stuck with me, and that is that the biggest problem with creationists isn't that they're dumb or ignorant. Many of them are certainly not dumb (Egnor surely is not), and ignorance itself is not necessarily a problem. We all start off in a state of ignorance after all, and one thing that you learn when studying a given subject in depth is that no matter how much you know, it's only a tiny smidgen of all that there is to know. So we all carry some degree of ignorance. The important thing is that you're aware of it and that you adopt the requisite level of humility so that you can keep learning more.

And therein lies the problem with creationists: It's neither ignorance nor stupidity, it's arrogance. They think they already know everything, so therefore they can refute a large and complex body of scientific thought without bothering to familiarize themselves with the basics, much less mastering the details. The most jaw-dropping example of this I think I've ever seen is here, at the blog that William Dembski set up for high school kids, where some poster who is incapable of understanding technical scientific writing (which is forgivable) has been so infected with the arrogance of the ID movement that he actually believes that a section he quotes from an essay that appeared on Panda's Thumb was made up out of thin air (which is not forgivable), and then goes on to ask where those "so-called facts" came from when the citations are right there within the text he quoted (which is pathetic to the point of comedy). This is how the ID movement rots young minds. The level of arrogance is so extreme that a high school student is eager to believe that a senior pharmacologist must be making something up simply because he, the high schooler, can't understand the material. Arrogance of this kind breeds ignorance, which leads itself to more arrogance still. It is a defining characteristic not only of ID/creationism, but of anti-intellectualism in general.

Now back to Dr. Egnor. Egnor is just like the above high school kid but without the excuse of being young and foolish. He doesn't really know what he's talking about, but he doesn't feel he needs to. After all, when you already have all the answers, what's the point in understanding that which you deign to critique? Heck, ignorance should be worn like a badge of honor. All the better to disdain those hoity-toity experts who've spent their lives studying a subject that you won't debase yourself to learn anything about.

In spite of Dr. Humburg's quality refutation of Egnor's ignorant statements, there's something that I think has been missed. And that is what Egnor has told us about what he, and by extension the Discovery Institute which has seen fit to make him one of their spokespersons (an honor bestowed only upon those meeting the highest standards, such as Ann Coulter), have told us about just how seriously he deserves to be taken. Below is the meat and potatoes of Egnor's argument:

Doctors don't study evolution. Doctors never study it in medical school, and they never use evolutionary biology in their practice. There are no courses in medical school on evolution. There are no 'professors of evolution' in medical schools. There are no departments of evolutionary biology in medical schools.

As Burt shows, the above claims are untrue. In fact, most of them are untrue even for the medical school at which Egnor teaches! But while they are untrue in a general sense, they are probably perfectly true for Egnor himself, who -- as is so often the case with these guys -- can understand the world only through the lens of his own personal experience. I'll amend the above quote, slightly, to reflect what Egnor is actually telling us:

I don't study evolution. I never studied it in medical school, and I never use evolutionary biology in my practice. I never took courses in medical school on evolution. I studied under no 'professors of evolution' in medical school. I have no familiarity with departments of evolutionary biology.

Egnor just pulled the rug out from under himself. He freely admits that he knows nothing about evolution, and he's proud of it. And now he wants us to think that doctors in general are similarly ignorant. The DI has welcomed Egnor as a new commentator for their Media Complaints Division blog, but strangely enough, they didn't quite get the message that doctors are not qualified to comment on evolution. Doctors such as Egnor, according to Egnor, are never taught anything about the subject. They don't use the subject. They don't know anything about those who do. They're awash in a sea of ignorance.

By Egnor's own reasoning, he should be ignored. And on that narrow point, at least, I think he's right.

Update: I have a post up at the Panda's Thumb concerning a survey that Egnor and the Discovery Institute twisted beyond all reason. If you haven't read it already, go there and do so.

A Different Kind of Faith-based Initiative

2007-03-09T12:16:00.000-07:00

It's not as good as the voodoo guy who tried to jinx Bush with dead animal blood, but at least they're trying:

Priests to Purify Site After Bush Visit

Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday. [...]

Tiney said the "spirit guides of the Mayan community" decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace. He also said the rites -- which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles -- would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.

Bush just gets no respect. No respect I tells ya.

Birthday Poetry for PZ Myers

2007-03-09T09:55:00.000-07:00

We have all been commanded by Satan's representative on Earth, PZ Myers, to write him a poem for his 50th birthday. Here's the best I can do on short notice:

There once was a man from Morris,
Who led the atheist chorus.
He was easily charmed,
By things with eight arms,
So his writing would never bore us.

Happy birthday you old curmudgeon.

Friday Animal Blogging

2007-03-09T09:01:00.000-07:00

Bird on a wire.

My parakeet, Chicken, finds himself trying to climb up the wall, but can only go as far as the wire goes.

Don't forget to visit the Friday Ark.

Creationist Morality

2007-03-05T13:37:00.000-07:00

I had to think long and hard before posting this. At any given moment, I probably have 10-15 pages open in my browser. Some are things that I check often, like email, but others are just random news items and various junk that I figure I'll get around to reading eventually, so I leave them open so as not to lose them. Occasionally I go through and cull the pages that I know I'll never read or write about in order to reduce the clutter, but then there are always those pages that I just can't decide what to do with. This page sat open for about a week and half:

A Shreveport surgeon was released on bond Thursday after being accused of trying to solicit sex in a Shreveport park.

Dr. Milton Moore Slocum, of the 500 block of Waterford Drive just southeast of the city limits, was booked Tuesday night into the Caddo Correctional Center.

The sheriff's office has accused him of trying to solicit someone he thought was a 15-year-old girl over the Internet.

So far, no big deal in terms of newsworthiness. But here's the part that caught my eye:

Slocum was recently in the news for serving as a panelist during the local Darwin Day celebration at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church. Slocum, a self-described "old-Earth creationist," said he interprets the Bible to mean God created the Earth over millions of years.

This guy who was caught soliciting sex from an underage girl is a creationist. Not just any creationist, but a creationist with an M.D. who felt strongly enough about his beliefs that he showed up to a Darwin Day event to argue them in front of a panel. In other words, he was the kind of person that creationists strongly look up to and count on to be their standard bearers.

Now before anyone gets the wrong idea, the point here is not that creationism somehow causes pedophilia. The point is that creationists have a nauseating habit of loudly proclaiming their moral superiority. They roundly accuse evolutionists of being responsible for the breakdown of society's moral fiber. And as a corollary, they say that creationism is supposed to cause people to lead more virtuous lives, so therefore it needs to be taught in public schools. There is of course never any evidence given for these assertions, they are simply taken a priori. It just makes sense to the creationists that having more "godly" beliefs makes you virtuous. They can't conceive of things being otherwise.

However, what we see in real life is that being a creationist is no guarantee of good behavior. The innumerable ethical breaches that creationists commit on a routine basis are one thing, but crimes that prey on the most vulnerable members of society cannot be dismissed as mere "lapses". If creationism can't even dissuade this kind of behavior, why should we to expect it to have any positive effect on morality?

Now I don't want to overgeneralize, which is exactly why I was hesitant to post this in the first place. Slocum hasn't even had his day in court, and it's possible that he was wrongly accused. Or it may be that he's just a bad apple and is for some reason immune to the wonderful virtues of creationist belief. Or maybe he would have been even worse without his religious beliefs, which is pretty hard to believe, but not impossible. Certainly we can say with confidence that the vast majority of creationists would never commit such behavior. But the same is true with the vast majority of any given group.

What the creationists need to do is account for why there are so many examples of bad behavior among their ranks. (Admittedly, recent examples such as Kent Hovind or Ted Haggard are nowhere near as bad as this.) My own explanation is that the creationist cause has little to do with advancing morality and everything to do with advancing the cultural and political influence that right-wing Christians have over society. Otherwise we would see more emphasis on the importance of leading a moral life and less about maintaining proper theological beliefs.

The Return of the Hammer

2007-03-05T12:06:00.000-07:00

No, not MC Hammer. I'm talking about someone who's even more clownish and pathetic. Before he left Congress in disgrace, Tom DeLay earned himself the nickname "The Hammer" because he was such an asshole. It appears now that he's trying to stage a comeback of sorts:

No Retreat, and a Plan to Get Even

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is joining the activist world with a plan to return conservatives to dominance. DeLay calls his new group the Coalition for a Conservative Majority, and it has one mission: recruiting and electing conservatives in all 50 states. He plans to begin building it during an April book tour to promote No Retreat, No Surrender, his blueprint for victory. Ironically, DeLay was inspired by Democrats who followed their loss to President Bush in 2000 with what he calls a liberal shadow party that ousted the gop last year and is aimed at installing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the White House.

DeLay is pimping his new book titled, No Retreat, No Surrender, a subject he's very familiar with since he resigned from Congress and then stupidly remained on the ballot which allowed the Democrats to take his seat.

I'd say his chances of a successful comeback are roughly the same as those of Vanilla Ice. Then again, this is Republican Party we're talking about.

Why Do They Hate Our Troops?

2007-03-02T16:43:00.000-07:00

You know who really hates our troops? The troops, that's who. A recent poll published in the Military Times (part of the liberal MSM no doubt) shows us how our treasonous our soldiers truly are:

For the first time, more troops disapprove of the president’s handling of the war than approve of it. Barely one-third of service members approve of the way the president is handling the war, ac cording to the 2006 Military Times Poll.
When the military was feeling most optimistic about the war — in 2004 — 83 percent of poll respondents thought success in Iraq was likely. This year, that number has shrunk to 50 percent.

It is obvious that the 50% of our troops are giving aid and comfort to the enemy by suggesting that our mission in Iraq may not be a success. Just think of the effect on the troops' morale when they hear what their traitorous selves are saying. And on top of it, 2/3rds are questioning our Commander in Chief during a time of war. All of those troops should be brought up on treason charges immediately. Only then will our military be strong enough to win the war on terror.

Friday Animal Blogging

2007-03-02T09:12:00.000-07:00

Name that bird!

I found this gorgeous bird the other day when I was out watching prairie varmints. It's probably a common bird around here, but I've never seen one before. If anyone can identify it I'd be greatly appreciated. For whatever reason, I can't find a good guide online.

Don't forget to visit the Friday Ark.

Happy Birthday, Dear Blog.

2007-02-25T21:14:00.000-07:00

I started this blog one year ago today.

Happy birthday, blog.

Update: Make that one year ago, yesterday. I was out of town for the weekend and knew that it was either today and tomorrow, and for some reason mistakenly thought it was today. Happy belated birthday, blog. Boy am I in trouble...

Gov. Sanford Supports Action on Climate Change

2007-02-23T12:41:00.000-07:00

This is unexpected. I've blogged about some outrageously dumb things that SC governor Mark Sanford has said over the past year, but this just goes to show that you can't judge a book by its cover. Or by its first 200 pages.

Sanford has written an opinion piece in today's Washington Post titled, A Conservative Conservationist? The subtitle is, "Why the Right Needs to Get Invested in the Search for Climate Change Solutions". Whoa.

For the past 20 years, I have seen the ever-so-gradual effects of rising sea levels at our farm on the South Carolina coast. I've had to watch once-thriving pine trees die in that fragile zone between uplands and salt marshes. I know the climate change debate isn't over, but I believe human activity is having a measurable effect on the environment.
The real "inconvenient truth" about climate change is that some people are losing their rights and freedoms because of the actions of others -- in either the quality of the air they breathe, the geography they hold dear, the insurance costs they bear or the future environment of the children they love.

Sanford is kind of a self-styled libertarian, and libertarians have been the biggest culprits when it comes to distorting climate science for ideological ends. They're so rigidly opposed to any possibility of government regulation that they've chosen instead to deny that the problem even exists, and in some of the more absurd cases, intimate the existence of a dark conspiracy in which scientists and governments are trying to use the "global warming scare" to advance one-world socialism. (Yet oddly enough, the one socialist country of any consequence left in the world, China, is taking a skeptical point of view on climate change.)

But I've always maintained that a true libertarian point of view -- one which consistently holds that people should be free from the negative actions of others, rather than being reflexively pro-business -- would agree with Sanford's last sentence above. When someone imposes costs on you against your will -- and that's basically what pollution in all its forms does -- then they're violating your rights. The standard libertarian response to this is that polluters should be sued for damages (anything other than government regulation) in order for victims to recoup their losses, which would supposedly be enough to dissuade polluters. But aside from being unworkable, this model violates freedom of choice. If someone can expose me to pollutants against my will, it doesn't set things right if they merely pay for the damage they cause. They've effectively forced me to sell my person or my property against my will.

Aside from that, Sanford makes some other good points. He also makes some silly ones. He seems to be of the opinion that banning incandescent light bulbs, which was recently proposed by a California lawmaker, is apparently a solution of the "far left". He must not know that the entire country of Australia, run by a right-wing PM with a history of global warming skepticism, has recently proposed to do the same thing. And Sanford is still caught up with that libertarian delusion that regulation is always a bad thing. So he names it something else:

Third, conservatives must respond to climate change with innovation, not regulation. This means encouraging private research and implementation of more eco-friendly construction, more energy-efficient workplaces and more sustainable ways of going about life -- all of which cuts costs and protects God's creation.

There's not much difference between "encouraging" something and regulating it. The way you encourage things, at least if you're doing something meaningful and not just spouting platitudes, is to tax bad behavior and subsidize good behavior. It's not direct regulation, but it's still the government meddling in the economy. The difference between me and Sanford, presumably, is that he has an ideological objection to such meddling. I, on the other hand, don't think we have any choice.

Still, at least Sanford accepts the reality of climate change and, more importantly, the need to address the problem. And I don't think anyone could reasonably accuse him of wanting to institute a one-world socialist government either.

Friday Animal Blogging

2007-02-23T09:26:00.000-07:00

The return of the Prairie Vermin.

The snow has been melting off in large amounts for the last couple of weeks, and prairie varmints have been coming out of their holes looking for food. Below are some pictures I took of the little buggers running around and making a nuisance of themselves. Unfortunately, with all the vermin about, one was bound to get squashed by a car. I'll spare you that picture.

Don't forget to visit the Friday Ark.

Commander Sulu on Tim Hardaway

2007-02-22T12:49:00.000-07:00

First former NBA player John Amaechi comes out of the closet and admits he's gay. Most NBA players and coaches are supportive of Amaechi. But not Tim Hardaway.

So now George Takei, who played Commander Sulu on Star Trek, gives us his thoughts on Hardaway. It boldly goes where few men would want to go.

Man Charged with Funding Various Terrorist Groups, Including the Republican Party.

2007-02-20T16:07:00.000-07:00

This is just too funny:

A New York man accused of trying to help terrorists in Afghanistan has donated some $15,000 to the House Republicans' campaign committee over three years.

Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari pleaded not guilty Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to charges that include terrorism financing, material support of terrorism and money laundering.

From April 2002 until August 2004, the man also known as "Michael Mixon" gave donations ranging from $500 to $5,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to Federal Election Commission reports and two campaign donor tracking Web sites, http://www.politicalmoneyline.com and http://www.opensecrets.org.

Just imagine what the Right would be saying if the guy had been a Democratic donor.

The Church of Greed.

2007-02-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

I'm not even sure what to say about this. Perhaps it just speaks for itself.

Pastor cites 'misunderstanding' of ministry.

Pastor Mac Hammond's congregation at Living Word Christian Center in Brooklyn Park reacted strongly Sunday to his appearance in the wake of a watchdog's group complaint to the Internal Revenue Service that he violated federal tax law and a front-page Star Tribune article examining his financial dealings:
Worshipers gave him a prolonged, cheer-laced standing ovation. [...]
He called questions about his financial dealings "a misunderstanding" of his prosperity-gospel ministry, which holds that following God's word leads to spiritual and economic bounty. [...]
In a sermon peppered with "hallelujahs" from Hammond and "amens" from the congregation, Hammond said some of the accusations in the IRS complaint and news story "are inaccurate ... and many paint a picture of the ministry that is grossly inappropriate."
However, he was not specific about inaccuracies except to say that he has two houses in Florida, not two condos. He said he has no control over the board that sets his compensation and that his pay is scrutinized by attorneys.
He got one of many laughs when he said the Star Tribune story had "left out" his two motorcycles. He also quipped that his Porsche has been "an expensive ministry tool" because a State Patrol officer who gave him one of four speeding tickets he has gotten in it went through church membership classes. He said he buys expensive clothes because "if I look decent, I preach better, so I'm really doing it for you, amen." [...]
The congregation was presented with the annual report, which said the church had $34 million in gross revenues last year and gave $3 million to charitable causes and evangelism. [...]

Hammond said the media and many Christians don't understand the prosperity gospel. "God says if you base your life on his covenant, these blessings are gonna overtake you; you can't do anything about it, friend. [What was once] flocks and herds is in today's parlance stocks and bonds.

I... don't even know where to begin here. Let's see.

1. The baby Jesus is crying.

2. I think this guy's critics don't misunderstand his ministry, they probably understand the prosperity gospel just fine. It's just that they find it disgusting, exploitative, hypocritical, and possibly in violation of the tax code if the minister is enriching himself with tax free dollars while pretending to do charitable work.

3. The church brings in 34 million in revenues and spends 3 million on "charity and evangelism". That means that 31 million, over 90% of all revenue, is going to enrich the minister and... who knows what the hell it's going towards?

4. The adult Jesus is planning to kick this guy's ass.

5. With an almost 10,000 member congregation, each member is forking over an average of more than $3400 per year, only to see the minister use that money to buy condos, motorcycles, and lease private jets. Yet when he openly brags about his greed, they cheer.

6. Amway has nothing on these guys. This has got to be the most blatant pyramid scheme since Ponzi. If you fork over lots of money to me, God will make you rich. See how it worked for me? Never mind that I got my money by suckering you into believing this nonsense, the lord works in mysterious ways amen.

7. The crucified Jesus is rolling over in his grave.

L'Affaire Sternberg, Part Eighty Million and Four.

2007-02-16T11:16:00.000-07:00

Ed Brayton has a good fisking of an article by Jack Cashill in the WorldNutDaily concerning the Sternberg affair. Cashill repeats just about every throughly discredited and dishonest bit of crap that the ID people invented about the affair. My previous entires in the series are here, here, and here.

Jack Cashill, by the way, was interviewed in Flock of Dodos. He was one of the "nice guy" IDists who filmmaker Randy Olson contrasted with the aggressive, obnoxious, and apparently drunk poker playing evolutionist friends of his. But as Ed's fisking demonstrates, Cashill isn't a nice guy at all, he's a lying scumbag. Anyone can put on a smile in front of a camera before turning around and writing an extremely dishonest hit piece -- that doesn't make one a decent person.

Then again maybe Cashill is just dumb and doesn't realize that nearly everything he says in the article is either false or misleading. But we're long past the point of this being a legitimate excuse. If you're going to make serious accusations against people and publish them in a widely read publication (however poor its reputation may be), you'd better make damn sure you've got your facts straight. A casual disregard for the truth is of course a defining characteristic of the ID movement, but you'd think they'd be a little more careful when it comes to libel.

Awesome.

2007-02-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

Hijacker foiled:

Ahmedou Mohamed Lemine, a 20-year veteran of Air Mauritania, realised during his conversations with the 31-year-old hijacker, who was seeking asylum in France, that his assailant did not speak French and that, on the moment of landing, he would be only person not wearing a seatbelt.

So in the minutes before touching down at Gandó Airport, on Gran Canaria, Captain Lemine briefed his mainly-French speaking passengers and crew over the public address system that he would slam on the brakes as soon as he landed and then quickly accelerate, hoping to knock the man, who had two automatic pistols, off his feet.

The plan worked and, according to Spanish officials today, the hijacker, named as Mohamed Abderraman, tumbled over and dropped one of his guns before six men, including a Mauritanian mayor, stormed the pilot's cabin and threw a pot of boiling water on his groin and chest.

Flock of Dodos -- Yet Another Review.

2007-02-12T22:13:00.000-07:00

I attended a screening of Flock of Dodos last night at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The film was shown in the IMAX theater -- of course it was not filmed in the IMAX format, but anyone who's been in an IMAX theater knows how many people will fit into one. And the place was packed. The filmmaker Randy Olson (and his mother, Muffy Moose, who was featured prominently in the film) were on hand to introduce the movie and to answer questions afterwards, which was a special treat.

Before I go into gripes about the film, I want to say that on the whole it was excellent and definitely worth seeing. It was above all entertaining. It made for a decent if somewhat incomplete exposé of the ID movement. And a number of nonsense arguments that the IDists promulgate were knocked down, in many cases through the documentary technique of just letting the silliness speak for itself. The recurring theme of Mt. Rushmore was the sterling example of this.

Nevertheless, in spite of the film's strengths, my job as semi-obsessed-ID-watcher was to notice those parts of the movie where I think Olson missed the mark. Below I'm going to go into a lot of detail about this, and it could take awhile, so you might want to buckle in. This isn't because I think Olson got a lot of things wrong -- there are really only a few issues here -- it's that I think these are key points that are important to movie's theme and the broader issue of defending science. They are therefore worth expounding upon at length.

Problem number one: During an interview with Michael Behe, Olson as the narrator interjects to explain what ID is, and the problems that ID has with evolution. His response: It actually doesn't object to evolution that much at all. In fact, according to Olson, ID for the most part accepts common descent, the ancient age of the Earth, etc. This is a classic mistake. Yes, Michael Behe does accept common descent, meaning he thinks that humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ape ancestor. However, his position is very much in the minority among prominent ID advocates, to say nothing of their less prominent, more creationist-leaning base. Much of the material put out by the Discovery Institute and their associates attacks common descent. As for the age of the Earth, I think it's probably safe to say that a majority of leading ID advocates accept an old Earth, but there are a significant number who are young-Earthers. Prominent examples would include Paul Nelson, John Mark Reynolds, and possibly Phillip Johnson, the godfather of the ID movement (but he's too cagey to say). The official position of the ID movement on the age of the Earth is... there is no position. The Discovery Institute will not categorically state whether the Earth is really old or young according to ID theory. They say it doesn't matter.

Now this is important for two reasons: First of all, it tells us that the ID movement isn't really interested in doing science. You can't exactly come up with a testable model of natural history if you can't even agree on how old things are. ID therefore consists of little more than an attempt at poking holes in evolution, and has yet to come up with anything resembling an actual theory of its own. Secondly, there's really no telling what kind of nonsense is going to worm its way into public school science classes if the ID people were to have their way with the curriculum. Since there is nothing in ID theory that says the Earth isn't young, and since the IDists don't spend time arguing that young-Earth views should be barred from classrooms (that would contradict half their arguments for allowing ID in), then there's nothing to stop the most extreme young-Earth views from being taught. Most IDists would probably not intend for this to happen, but it's no accident that the movement refuses to take a stand on the age of the Earth. It's not that individual ID advocates just really don't have any idea how old the Earth is, it's that the ID movement was formulated in large part as a compromise between old-Earthers and young-Earthers. (The compromise does not sit well with many young-Earthers, but that's another story.) The ID movement needs the young-Earth contingent for its sheer numbers and well-established base. When the door is finally thrown wide-open and the ID movement can have its way with science curricula, the young-Earthers will demand their due. Or, as Phillip Johnson has said, that is the point at which they'll begin to debate the age of the Earth. Won't that be fun.

Another thing that bothered me about the movie was the way in which the ID movement's religious and ideological roots were glossed over. Yes, Olson does get around to mentioning the Wedge Document and the whole thing about destroying "materialism" somewhere about 2/3rds of the way through the movie. But we're led to believe all the way up to that point that these ID people are perhaps just a bit misguided, or... maybe they're even onto something. What I found quite telling is that the audience was audibly shocked when shown the whole "splitting the log of naturalism" icon and other creationist illustrations which blame evolution for all of society's ills. The audience was even more shocked when Olson said during the Q&A session that a creationist doctor (or scientist, or whatever) once told him that our propensity for heart disease was a sign of good design because it gives God an easy method of punishing us for our sins. (It's not as fun as the lightning bolt, but it gets the job done.) Anyone who is the least bit surprised by these things -- which included most of the audience, apparently -- doesn't know much about the creationists and the ID people. This is clearly an area where Olson could have done more to educate, but his treatment of the ID movement's rather extreme ideological underpinnings was tepid at best. To me these underpinnings are very important, not because they serve as a stick with which to beat the IDists, but because you simply cannot understand the movement without taking into account its creationist roots and reactionary politics. You cannot understand, for example, why the ID movement refuses to take a stand on the age of the Earth if you don't know that the movement seeks to be a "big tent" for all forms of creationism. Nor can you understand why the far right-wing of the Republican Party is so enamored with ID, and why cramming it into public schools is by far the movement's top priority, if you don't know that ID's whole raison d’être is to provide an intellectual justification for socially conservative political beliefs.

And now, finally, let me say a few things about the subject of communication and how we scientists apparently suck at it, a running theme of the movie which while true in many ways has justifiably irked some people. Yes, scientists could do a better job of communicating. Ain't that the truth. However, a scientist's main job is to be a scientist, not a public spokesperson. It's no wonder that people who dedicate their lives to the deep study of certain issues have a hard time explaining things in layman's terms to people who are not inclined to know anything about those issues at all. The movie even makes the excellent point that while scientists feel constrained by the truth, the art of public relations (or, less charitably, propaganda), which is essentially what the Discovery Institute is engaged in, is not so constrained. Yet Olson seems to want to blame scientists for their failure to successfully compete with the intellectual equivalent of fast-talking used car salesmen. I'm all happy to put at least some of the blame on scientists, but the thing that bothers me is that Olson gave no real solution for how we're supposed to be better at communicating. Everyone who tried to ask for such a solution was instead treated to anecdotes on what not to do. Olson was full of stories of evolutionists who gave rotten presentations because they got too angry while their creationist counterparts remained poised and calm. In one example, the evolutionist he referred to made himself look bad by simply responding "no, no, no, no, no, no...." to some of the nonsense delivered by his creationist opponent.

What I don't think Olson quite gets, and there was at least one questioner who I think tried to hammer this into him, is that it is not possible to debate creationists on a level playing field when they use the fast-talking used car salesman technique, which is of course all the time. I kept thinking about what the prominent Holocaust historian Deborah E. Lipstadt said when asked why she doesn't debate Holocaust deniers: I don't debate liars. It is near impossible to have a reasoned debate with someone, much less win that debate, if the person in question is not intellectually honest. If they keep spouting falsehoods that have repeatedly been shown to be false, sometimes "no, no, no, no, no, no...." is the only thing left to say. Perhaps a better approach is not to agree to appear with them until they clean up their act. There is no easy answer to this conundrum, but I'm afraid that Olson hasn't even correctly diagnosed the problem.

In the end, the only message I got was that we're apparently supposed to lighten up, to be all bright, cheery, and good natured with the people who are on an ideological crusade to smear us in every way possible. People who, for example, compare us to Nazis, Stalinists, and the dark lord Sauron. Okay, so we're supposed to be happy with people who are utter jerks to us. Got it. Olson also made disparaging remarks about "angry bloggers", which made me cringe because I feared he may have been talking about us, in which case my thought was that he must not read our blog. But that can't be right because he later made a positive reference to PZ Myers, one of the most active members of our blog. This is very strange, because PZ is the very archetype of the angry blogger, the one who comes out with guns a blazin' and holds nothing back. Yet in spite of his sandpaper persona, PZ is very effective and probably has more readers than the rest of us put together. This tells me that righteous anger, when properly channeled, works quite well. What, then, is Olson actually suggesting?

The happy dude stance became all the more ironic when during the Q&A session Olson recounted the Discovery Institute's recent smear job on him. We've all seen the whole Hoax of Dodos nonsense. This was something that also seemed to shock the audience, which again tells me that the movie failed to inform them about how the ID movement really operates. Olson himself seemed somewhat surprised, as if he thought they were going to give him a pat on the back when up until this point all they've given him is the finger. In recounting the tale, however, Olson sounded rather... bitter. Almost as if he didn't really appreciate being blatantly lied about. Hey, welcome to the club! It happens to all of us eventually. But what about being all happy with people who are acting like jerks to you? Why the angry blogger routine? Maybe Randy Olson should lighten up a bit.

Guess the Crank

2007-02-12T12:54:00.000-07:00

As I pointed out recently, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) was caught offering rather large honoraria (or less charitably, bribes) to scientists or economists who would come forward and dispute the recently released IPCC summary for policy makers, which represents the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming.

The AEI, somewhat predictably, reacted to the negative press by flexing their persecution complex, claiming to be the victims of a mass conspiracy by the "orthodoxy" to repress academic freedom. Below I put a quote from a screed written by two AEI spokesmen which appeared in the Weekly Standard. Along with that quote, I decided to add two more. One is from a document titled, "The Holocaust Controversy: The Case for Open Debate" put out by the leading Holocaust denialist group. The other is from a piece titled, "Thought Police Try To Stifle Academic Freedom at Iowa State University" put out by the Discovery Institute, a leading anti-evolutionist group. I've removed references to the theories and people in question and just left the pure, unbridled paranoia. See if you can guess which quote comes from which crackpot:

1. No subject enrages campus Thought Police more than _________. We debate every other great ____ issue as a matter of course, but influential pressure groups with private agendas have made the _____ an exception. Elitist dogma manipulated by special interest groups corrupts everything in academia. Students should be encouraged to investigate _____ the same way they are encouraged to investigate every other ________.

2. The rollout of _____ and the _____ attacking us coincide with the climax of what can be aptly described as a _____ inquisition intended to stifle debate about ________. Anyone who does not sign up 100 percent behind _____ is deemed a "_____ denier." ... Show-trial hearing to follow? Stay tuned.

3. “The ______ inquisition is spreading,” said _______, president of ____, the nation’s leading ________. “_______ have recently hunted down and tried to disgrace _________ for daring to defy the ______ orthodoxy. Now we see that the witch hunt has turned to ____ and is focused on ________.”

And no fair Googling. You have to guess the source based on the quotes alone. Good luck!

Darwin Day in South Carolina

2007-02-12T10:35:00.000-07:00

There are a number of Darwin Day events going on in the Palmetto State, both today and throughout the week. You can go to the South Carolinians for Science Education website for a complete run-down of the events and links to the individual flyers. Events will be held at Furman, the College of Charleston, and Clemson. Kenneth Miller will also be speaking in Clemson next Monday.

The War On Fossils Continues

2007-02-07T11:29:00.000-07:00

As I reported previously, evangelicals, led by Bishop Boniface Adoyo, Chairman of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya, are trying to suppress a fossil display in Kenya’s National Museum. (And they’re apparently getting aid from unnamed Western groups.) The planned exhibit contains numerous hominid fossils found in that country, including the famous Turkana Boy, a nearly complete Homo erectus skeleton.

CNN has recently published an article about the museum exhibit and the evangelicals’ attempts to whisk it away to some back room where it can't offend them. Most of the information in the article is old hat, but it’s good to see the American media finally picking up on this. There is however one part that’s new to me:

[Richard] Leakey fears the ideological spat may provoke an attack on the priceless collection, one largely found during the 1920s by his paleontologist parents, Louis and Mary Leakey, who passed their fossil-hunting traditions on to him.

The museum, which attracts around 100,000 visitors a year, is taking no chances.

Turkana Boy will be displayed in a private room, with limited access and behind a glass screen with 24-hour closed-circuit TV. Security guards will be at the entrance.

“There are issues about the security,” said Dr. Emma Mbua, the head of paleontology at the museum. “These fossils are irreplaceable and we wouldn’t want anything to happen to them.”

Insurance coverage could run into millions of dollars, she added.

Way to go creationists. You’ve successfully driven security and insurance costs through the roof because your nutty followers can’t be trusted not to destroy priceless artifacts.

(Cross-posted to the Panda's Thumb.)

Bauer Responsible for Plane Crash

2007-02-02T15:35:00.000-07:00

I'd almost forgotten about SC Lt. Governor Andre Bauer and the difficulties he has with moving vehicles. First he gets caught speeding multiple times and worms his way out of it by playing the VIP card. Then he crashes his airplane upon take-off and tries to get out of it by playing the God card.

Now the NTSB has ruled that Bauer was at fault for the plane crash. He apparently didn't have enough speed to take-off properly. Why didn't he have enough speed?

Walters, who reviewed the NTSB report at the request of The State, said he believes the plane might have been slowed on the grass and dirt runway because its parking brake was either partially or fully engaged.

He forgot to disengage the parking brake.

Note to self: Do not get into car with Andre Bauer. Do not get into plane with Andre Bauer. And when possible, do not be in the same state as Andre Bauer.

Excellent Opportunity To Become A Paid Shill

2007-02-02T13:59:00.000-07:00

It looks like someone doesn't like the new IPCC report, and they're offering cash payments to scientists who will join them:

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.
Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.

Boy is that shameless. Not to long ago they would have at least tried to make it look innocent. Now they're openly offering bribes.

The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.
The letters, sent to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere, attack the UN's panel as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work" and ask for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs".

Keep in mind that the letters were sent out before the Summary for Policymakers was released, and that the analytical work from Working Group 1 that the summary is based upon still hasn't been made public. Exxon-Mobil money can apparently buy you an awful lot -- including psychic powers, it would seem.

The letters were sent by Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at AEI, who confirmed that the organisation had approached scientists, economists and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report.

"Strengths and weaknesses". Let's see, where have I heard that one before? I could swear that's a familiar phrase.

And we've got more to look forward to as well:

On Monday, another Exxon-funded organisation based in Canada will launch a review in London which casts doubt on the IPCC report. Among its authors are Tad Murty, a former scientist who believes human activity makes no contribution to global warming. Confirmed VIPs attending include Nigel Lawson and David Bellamy, who believes there is no link between burning fossil fuels and global warming.

Let's hope that on their plane ride this weekend, they don't do something drastic like read the report with an open mind. That might jeopardize the conclusion they reached before the report came out.

IPCC Fourth Assessment Report is Out

2007-02-02T10:06:00.000-07:00

The summary for policy makers is here. It's long so I haven't read the whole thing. If you want a summary of the summary, there's a good article on it here in Nature News:

The report, a consensus document put together by 600 scientists and agreed by representatives of 113 countries, predicts continued warming of 0.2 °C per decade for the coming few decades.

Over the twenty-first century it predicts a range of 1.1-2.9 °C warming in a scenario with low emissions of greenhouse gases, and 2.4-6.4 °C in a high-emissions scenario. The warming is expected to be greatest over land and in the north, and the chance of heat-waves increasing in frequency is greater than 90%.

Well, that tells us a couple of things. First of all, early "leaks" which said that the upper bound for temperature had been lowered were wrong. As was pointed out by climate scientists at the time, the reporters had confused climate sensitivity (i.e. the increase in temperatures expected from a 2x CO₂ scenario) with actual projected temperatures. In the case of climate sensitivity, the upper bound stayed the same but the lower bound went up. In the case of projected temperatures, the upper bound increased.

Secondly, there is a huge difference, particularly in the upper bound, between the low emissions scenario and the high emissions scenario. That means that lowering emissions may have a very large impact, contrary to what the "climate skeptics" have been saying (the argument that nothing we do will matter is kind of their last ditch "plan C" attempt at justifying inaction, after their all their previous claims have bitten the dust).

More from RealClimate and Deltoid.

I Hate Snow

2007-01-31T13:32:00.000-07:00

It is snowing, hard. We are supposed to get up to 5 inches. We still have piles of the shit everywhere, much of it still left from the December blizzards. Every time it gets warm enough to melt some of it off, it soon gets below freezing and stays there. Then we get more snow. I hate snow.

I have been told by people who have lived here for 15 years that new snow never falls on old. It's usually very dry in the winter, so there's no more than an inch or two here and there, and it always melts off before the next snowfall appears. Not this year. I hate snow.

What's truly frightening is that March and April are supposed to be the snowiest months of the year. If true, we're really in for it. The only consolation is that by then, hopefully, temperatures will be warm enough to melt the old stuff off before new snow accumulates.

I hate snow.

Update: It stopped snowing and the sun is out in full force. I take it all back.

Update again: We're supposed to get 5 inches Thursday night, and Friday's highs will be 5 degrees. I hate snow.

Update yet again: We didn't get the projected 5 inches, although it is quite cold. We didn't get much of anything, just a light dusting yesterday. I take it all back again.

Price of Roast Chicken Falls in Upstate South Carolina

2007-01-26T14:07:00.000-07:00

Chickens roast in truck fire after collision

A chicken truck was northbound on Pleasantburg just past Mauldin Road when a southbound pickup turned in front of it and was hit, Greenville police Sgt. Bob Gamble said.
The semi's cab caught fire and was "fully involved," he said, adding that "quite a bit" of diesel fuel also spilled in the road.

Treasurer Falls for Nigerian Scam

2007-01-26T13:45:00.000-07:00

This just boggles the mind:

A public treasurer in the Michigan county of Alcona stands accused of embezzling tax payers out of more than $1.2m, at least part of which was used to cover costs he incurred falling for a Nigerian banking fraud. [...]
County officials first suspected something was amiss late last year, when bank employees informed them Katona had sent eight payments totaling $186,500 to overseas accounts, six of which were associated with peddlers of the Nigerian scheme. He stepped down in November as authorities commenced an investigation.

They found that bank employees had warned Katona that the investment was a sham, but the treasurer ignored the warnings. An audit eventually showed that more than $1.2m was missing from county coffers. It remains unclear how much of that was paid to the scammers.

Even if it wasn't obvious from the content of the emails that this was a scam, how can you have been living on planet Earth for the last several years and not heard about it? And the guy is an accountant of all things, you'd think he'd be a bit more cautious with his money.

Friday Animal Blogging

2007-01-26T09:21:00.000-07:00

Cat stalks iguana.

I posted some pictures of this event once before, but these are different and possibly better pictures.

The hunter (Jackson) has spotted his prey (Death Machine).

The hunter makes his move.

Having caught the prey, the hunter has a Wile E. Coyote vs. Roadrunner moment: Now what do I do with him?

(Don't forget to visit the Friday Ark.)

Darwin Day in Chuck Town

2007-01-25T13:43:00.000-07:00

For anyone reading this blog from the Charleston area, Darwin Week is Feb. 12-18, with an extensive list of programs being sponsored by the College of Charleston and other organizations.

Up near Greenville, Furman is also hosting some events. I'll post more as I find them.

Update: Ken Miller will be speaking at Clemson on Feb. 19th.

The God Problem

2007-01-23T17:02:00.000-07:00

Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, has a new movie out entitled, "Friends of God". That's not what I'm going to discuss. This article in Raw Story talks about the movie along with the jaw-droppingly hilarious statement by Ted Haggard that evangelicals have a better sex life. I'm not going to discuss that either. Rather, there is a statement from Pelosi that I thought I'd zero in on, because it's apparently a very common sentiment:

Pelosi came away from the experience with an understanding of how evangelicals affect the political sphere, particularly the presidential race.

"Evangelicals are the largest majority bloc in America. … I don't think you can win without them," she said. "I think if you unified, you'll lose if they go against you. John Kerry learned that. Al Gore learned that, and Hillary Clinton will learn it."

There's a lot of nonsense here. I don't know what is meant by "majority bloc"; it seems to me that this must be a misstatement of "minority bloc". Evangelicals definitely are not in the majority. Moreover, this idea that evangelicals are this mighty political force is badly overstated. Pelosi didn't exactly come up with this idea, it's one that's been circulating in the media for a long time. But it's one that needs to stop.

Let's look at some exit polls. In 2004, white evangelical/born again Christians made up 23% of voters. That's nothing to sneeze at, but it's nowhere close to a majority. They went overwhelmingly for Bush over Kerry, 78% to 21%. However -- and here's where things get interesting -- non-Christian voters (Jews, "Other", and "None") made up 20% of the voting population, and they went almost as overwhelmingly for Kerry over Bush, 70.5% vs. 27.3%. In other words, the non-Christian vote almost, but not quite, completely negated the evangelical vote. Yet how often do you hear about the importance of courting non-Christians? The importance of courting evangelicals has become so cliché that the Democrats have actually hired an evangelical consultant. Yet given the fact that evangelical obnoxiousness and hostility towards religious minorities is what helps drive non-Christian voters into the arms of the Democrats, this strategy would seem dubious. The evangelicals probably provide, at most, only a small net advantage for the Republicans.

Did courting evangelicals help the Democrats do better in 2006 than they did in 2004? Although the right-wing spinsters on the cable channels were floating that hypothesis the second the returns started showing a big Republican loss, the 2006 exit polls tell a more complex story. The breakdown by religion was statistically the same as in 2004 -- 24% white evangelical/born-again, and 19% non-Christian. The evangelical share going to the Democrats did improve, to 70%/28%, or about a 15 point swing. (Contra Pelosi, the evangelicals safely went against the Dems, yet the Dems still won.) But there was almost as large of a swing in the non-Christian vote as well. In 2006 non-Christians went for Democrats over Republicans 74.4% vs. 21.9%, which is a 9.3 points.

A major problem in comparing the two above polls is that the 2004 results are for the Presidential election whereas the 2006 results are for House elections. Exit polls based only on the House elections show that the swing among evangelicals was only 6 points. The swing among non-Christians in aggregate, however, was far larger: 22 points for Jews, 4 points for "other faiths", and 18 points for the unaffiliated.

So in conclusion what we can say is this: Evangelicals are an asset to the Republicans, but non-Christians are an almost equal asset to the Democrats. Evangelicals did swing towards the Democrats in '06, but so did everyone else. In House races, the evangelical swing was significantly less than that of the non-Christians, indicating that courting the evangelical vote per se had no discernible benefit.

One thing that really annoys me is the way in which the media have allowed evangelical self-importance to become conventional wisdom. Yes, evangelicals are a potent political force, but so too are non-Christians, and you never hear anything about them. To look at the polling data and then to breathlessly state that the Democrats have a "God problem" is to badly misrepresent the state of affairs. It would be just as accurate to say that the Republicans have a God problem, given that they do terrible among non-Christian voters, they're doing worse as time goes on, and non-Christians are a rapidly growing share of the populace.

Update on Kenya

2007-01-23T11:15:00.000-07:00

The East African Standard has a new (well, a week and a half old, but new to me) article concerning the attempts by evangelicals to suppress the hominid fossils currently on display in Kenya’s National Museum. You may remember when this ruckus first began several months ago. We now learn that churches are planning on holding “major demonstrations to the museum to press for the removal of the bones.”

The ringleader of all this is Bishop Boniface Adoyo, the head of the Chairman of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya, which has roughly six million members. The article contains numerous quotes from Adoyo, which show him to be pretty much your standard creationist. The following lines, interspersed throughout the text, are particularly telling:

“I’m worried that children will believe we evolved from monkeys. Yet this is not the truth that’s killing our faith,” he says. […]

“When museums claim that man evolved from apes, they are actually hurting many Christians who believe that God created us,” Adoyo says. […]

“These people should know that palaeontology is an old science. Richard Leakey and his group are afraid that their only source of survival and fame is rightly being put into question,” Adoyo claims.

Note the irony. After expressing dismay at the possibility that his job will be rendered obsolete if children are exposed to science, he then goes on to accuse Richard Leakey of being the self-interested party.

And of course the good Bishop’s ranting wouldn’t be complete without reciting some creationist falsehoods:

“Even Darwin on his death bed expressed surprise that people believed his theory,” Adoyo says

The good old Lady Hope Story. Never was there a creationist claim so thoroughly refuted that it doesn’t keep resurfacing. Here is another one:

The advent of DNA testing has helped us to trace the origin of man to Adam and Eve,” he says. “Palaeontologists do not want to admit this because it will crumble their scientific edifice,” he says.

He is presumably referring to Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam. Prior to my interest in the evolution-creationism debate, if someone told me that M-Eve and Y-Adam would be used to argue in favor of the literal Adam and Eve story, I would have said no way. No one could be that ignorant.

Sadly, they are. You can read these links to get the low-down on what M-Eve and Y-Adam really mean. But the well known fact that M-Eve lived about 84,000 years before Y-Adam should make it obvious to even the dimmest of bulbs that this does not in any way support the literal Bible story.

The good news in is that the Kenyan government says that it won’t give into this garbage. The disturbing news is that the Evangelical Alliance has enlisted a number of “Western institutions” to aid them in their crusade against people looking at bones. One can only guess which American creationist groups that might include.

“I’m worried that children will believe we evolved from monkeys. Yet this is not the truth that’s killing our faith,” he says. […]

“When museums claim that man evolved from apes, they are actually hurting many Christians who believe that God created us,” Adoyo says. […]

“These people should know that palaeontology is an old science. Richard Leakey and his group are afraid that their only source of survival and fame is rightly being put into question,” Adoyo claims.

And of course the good Bishop’s ranting wouldn’t be complete without reciting some creationist falsehoods:

“Even Darwin on his death bed expressed surprise that people believed his theory,” Adoyo says.

The good old Lady Hope Story. Never was there a creationist claim so thoroughly refuted that it doesn’t keep resurfacing. Here is another one:

The advent of DNA testing has helped us to trace the origin of man to Adam and Eve,” he says. “Palaeontologists do not want to admit this because it will crumble their scientific edifice,” he says.

(Hat-tip to Bartholomew’s notes on religion.)

The 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2006

2007-01-22T14:04:00.000-07:00

I don't normally care for all of the superlative lists that you see at the end of each year, but this one is pure gold. Here are a few of my favorite entries:

26. Ann Coulter

Charges: It was a run of the mill year for Ann: openly calling for the murder of a Supreme Court justice and the entire staff of the New York Times, accusing 9/11 widows of "enjoying their husband’s deaths" and Bill Clinton of being a rapist. Coulter’s neck gained an amazing 3 vertical inches in 2006; inside sources attribute this to a strict regimen of deep-throating Satan’s scaly cock. It’s projected that by 2010 Coulter will be able to plagiarize the Illinois Right to Life Committee website more deftly than she did in this year’s ode to mindless intolerance of tolerance, Godless, simply by snaking her grotesque head-ladder through the ventilation ducts of their office and skulking away with their webmaster’s hard drive clenched firmly in her masculine jaw. Ann’s slipping, though; she’s become an unconvincing fascist parody, increasingly betraying herself in televised interviews, blushing at her own brazen idiocy. She’s faking it, and so are her tits.

Exhibit A: "Hi, I’m Ann Coulter."

Sentence: Most "controversial" statements redacted from "Exhibit A," as they’re a naked ploy for attention–-and Adam’s apple removed with a backhoe.

19. Steven Milloy

Charges: It’s a pretty fucked up world in which a falsified memoir of drug addiction can spark widespread outrage, but a lawyer and registered lobbyist posing as a science expert can take money from Exxon Mobil and Phillip Morris to spread blatant lies without repercussion. Milloy, writing under the ironically accurate title of "junk science expert" for foxnews.com and at his own website, junkscience.com, is in the business of dismissing any and all alarming scientific studies about, well, anything—global warming, secondhand smoke, livestock diseases, pollution, insecticides, guns—employing statistical sleight of hand and relying on the ignorance of his readers. Like fictional "climate expert" Michael Crichton, Milloy warns us against evil "environmental extremists" who deliberately trick us into fearing global warming just to increase their funding. The theory seems a little shaky, considering that there’s a lot more to be made lying for oil, tobacco and chemical firms like Milloy.

Exhibit A: Three days after 9/11, Milloy took the opportunity to argue that the buildings collapsed because of asbestos regulation.

Sentence: Fed alive to emaciated polar bears.

17. Tony Snow

Charges: A soft-spoken scoutmaster with the obfuscatory skill of a Jedi car salesman. After years defending the Bush administration’s worst excesses on "Fox News Sunday," Snow’s job transition to White House Spokesman consisted solely of getting directions to the new office. Very first answer at very first press briefing was a lie, containing that old stonewaller’s chestnut, "we will neither confirm nor deny." Snow’s vast ignorance greatly enhances his ability to appear to believe the bullshit he emits for a living—he thinks evolution "is pure hypothesis," that black/white disparity in America has "all but vanished," and that the Baker-Hamilton report is "partisan." This kind of willful denial of reality makes him a much more sophisticated protocol droid than his monotonous predecessor.

Exhibit A: "Helen, the President understands that you cannot win the war without public support."

Sentence: Hugging electrified tar baby.

8. David Horowitz

Charges: A former lefty radical who has devoted his life to prosecuting his former self, Horowitz now specializes in making enemies lists and persecuting intellectuals for "liberal bias," usually in the form of criticism of Israeli or American policy. Like most fascist converts, Horowitz sees disseminating information as an act of treason. His favorite targets are university professors he declares enemies of "academic freedom," because nothing is more dangerous to a neocon than someone who actually knows what they’re talking about. Horowitz also targets Hollywood’s nefarious scheme to craft entertainment that audiences find appealing, founding the Center for the Study of Popular Culture to push his brand of regressive revisionist propaganda on unsuspecting viewers. Apparently, for this Marxist-turned-Machiavellian, affirmative action is a great idea when applied to the media.

Exhibit A: In June, Horowitz warned his readers of a "grave threat to American security"—the New York Times travel section, for running a piece on Rumsfeld and Cheney’s summer homes, which was approved by the Secret Service.

Sentence: Drafted, shipped to Iraq, kidnapped by terrorists who convert him to Islam, released, captured and tortured to death by US contractors.

Name that Animal

2007-01-20T14:06:00.000-07:00

The Pensacola News Journal has more on "Dr." Kent Hovind's sentencing. Hovind's behavior both before and during is highly entertaining:

Before his sentencing, a tearful Kent Hovind compared his situation to that of the lion and the mouse in Aesop's Fables.

"I feel like the mouse," Hovind told U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers. "I stand here in great fear of the power of this court. Your decision can destroy my life, my ministry and my grandchildren."

Hovind's courtroom comments were in stark contrast to more-combative statements he made in recent telephone calls from Escambia County Jail.

In a recording of one of the telephone conversations played in court Friday, Hovind said the Internal Revenue Service, presiding judge and prosecutor broke the law by going after him, and there were things he could do "to make their lives miserable."

Comparing himself to a buffalo in a lion fight, Hovind's voice was heard saying "As long as I have some horns, I'm going to swing. As long as I have some hoofs, I'm going to kick. As long as I have some teeth, I'm going to fight. The lion's going to know he's been in a fight."

Apparently Kent does believe in Evolution. He evolved from a buffalo to a mouse in a mere matter of days. Of course it's not really evolution at all -- just changes within the jackass kind.

It's Going to be a Hovind-Free Decade

2007-01-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

10 years for 'Dr. Dino'

Pensacola evangelist Kent Hovind was sentenced Friday afternoon to 10 years in prison on charges of tax fraud.

After a lengthy sentencing hearing that last 5 1/2 hours, U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers ordered Hovind also:

-- Pay $640,000 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.

-- Pay the prosecution’s court costs of $7,078.

-- Serve three years parole once he is released from prison.

The funniest/saddest part:

Prior to his sentencing, a tearful Kent Hovind, also known as "Dr. Dino" asked for the court’s leniency.

After all of these years of willfully evading taxes and thumbing his nose at the IRS, after having had the gall to argue in front of a judge and jury that he is above the law, after having mounted a defense that insults the very basis of our judicial system... only now does he start showing signs of remorse. And I suppose it's just a coincidence that it's at the very moment when he's about to be sent up the river. Come on Kent, whatever happened to the courage of your convictions?

Say It Ain't So

2007-01-19T14:24:00.000-07:00

U.S. detains mega-church founders over cash

Brazilian mega-church leaders Sonia Moraes Hernandes and Estevam Hernades-Filho spent the last two decades building one of Brazil's largest evangelical empires.

They're now spending their time at a federal detention center in Miami.

The couple was arrested at Miami International Airport last week on charges of currency smuggling and lying to customs officers after U.S. Immigration and Customs agents found they were carrying thousands of dollars more than the $10,000 they declared, investigators allege.

I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell ya. And the best part:

Agents found the first extra bundle of cash, $9,000, tucked into the cover of Sonia's Bible.

They don't call it the Good Book for nothing.

The Return of the Living Dead

2007-01-18T09:45:00.000-07:00

Via the LaurinLine, it appears that Rudy Giuliani is hiring a certain... someone to run his South Carolina campaign:

The Shot has received word from a very reliable source close to the situation that Team Giuliani has hired The Palladian Group, of Spartanburg, to handle political advising and fundraising in South Carolina. The Palladian Group is run by Karen Floyd, who was the Republican nominee for Superintendent of Education in the 2006 election cycle.

Karen Floyd? You mean that Karen Floyd? The one who did that and wrote that? Harder to kill than a zombie and twice as mean. If her recent political track record is any indication, Giuliani's campaign is doomed and his brains will be eaten.

Bush to Eliminate Program that he Previously said was Absoultely Necessary to Stop Terrorism.

2007-01-17T14:17:00.000-07:00

Bush won't reauthorize warrantless eavesdropping

I guess this puts paid to the claim that eavesdropping on suspected terrorists must be done without warrants and in violation of FISA. Either that, or Bush doesn't think there needs to be surveillance of terrorist suspects.

They Suck at Geography Too.

2007-01-17T12:07:00.000-07:00

PZ Mayorzsh has been steadily mocking the new creationist "museum" set to open in northern Kentucky, and has noticed a rather strange claim that appears in all of the news articles written about it. Here is the original form of the claim, as recorded in this article in The Guardian:

It [the museum] is strategically placed, too - not in the middle of nowhere, but within six hours' drive of two-thirds of the entire population of the US.

So the museum is within a 6 hours' drive of 2/3rds of the population of the entire US? I don't think so.

Below is a map of the United States, upon which I drew a circle with a radius of approximately 360 miles with the creationist museum in the center. 360 miles is about the maximum one can drive in 6 hours, assuming that you drive in a straight line (no bends in the road), you maintain a constant 60 mph speed, and you don't make any stops.

The idea that 2/3rds of the population of the United States lives within that circle is absurd. Everything to the west and southwest of St. Louis is outside of it, including the entire states of California and Texas, plus the whole population of 20 other states (23 if you count Arkansas, Mississippi, and Wisconsin, whose borders just barely touch the circle). Everything to the south of Atlanta is outside of the circle, including the entire state of Florida. And everything to the northeast of mid-Pennsylvania sits outside of it, including Washington, DC, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston.

If you add the populations of California, Texas, Florida, Massachusetts, Washington, and New Jersey -- all states that are outside of the 6 hour radius -- that alone makes up more than 1/3rd of the country. Plus you've got an additional 24 states and several major cities. I mean, it's just not even close.

Now The Guardian is a UK paper, so its writers might be forgiven for knowing nothing about American geography. But they almost certainly didn't come up with this particular talking point -- instead it was fed to them by the creationists. It's not that getting their geography wrong is a major defect in and of itself, it's that it demonstrates a serious lack of knowledge or concern about even the most basic, easily checked facts. And that gives us a good idea of what's likely to be found in the museum.

Strangely enough, in spite of how easy it is to refute this claim, it hasn't gone away. Instead it has evolved. Now instead of the museum being within a 6 hour drive of 2/3rds of the country, it's within a "day's" drive of 2/3rds of the country. That's still awfully hard to swallow. Although in this case "day" has the virtue of being undefined, so they could take it to mean 24 hours of non-stop driving, in which case, yes, 2/3rds of the country probably falls within that range. So does Mexico. However, when we think of a "day's" trip, most people would be thinking about a maximum of about 600 miles, and of course this isn't going to be in a straight line. When I drove from South Carolina to Denver, it took me two and a half days, and that was some pretty hardcore driving. (I drove all day, stopped only when necessary, and didn't have any screaming kids in the car.) On my first day, I made it from around Greenville, SC to southern Illinois. On my second day, I made it from southern Illinois to the western edge of Kansas. Those distances are not much bigger than the radius of the circle I have drawn, so if we assume a realistic day of driving, we're just barely widening the circle and not adding that much more of the US population. It's still downright nuts to say that 2/3rds of the population lives within a day's drive of northern Kentucky.

A better question here is, how "strategically placed" is this creationist museum? In terms of nearby people, not very. You've got the populations of Ohio and Indiana nearby, plus a few major cities that are realistically within driving distance -- Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, etc. However, to the immediate south and east you've got the sparsely populated (and hard to drive through) region of Appalachia, and to the immediate west sits thinly populated farm country, and while these area may contain the creationists' prime constituency, the people living there may not be able to afford the admissions fee. If you wanted the museum to be close to a lot of people, shifting it to the northeast by a couple of hundred miles would have been the smart thing to do.

My Entry, Card Catalog

2007-01-12T13:03:00.000-07:00

I am in the card catalog!

Maybe given that the card catalog is moribund, that's not such a good thing. Still, nice to see that librarians have taken note. (They make them here.)

Friday Animal Blogging

2007-01-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

The watch-where-you-sit edition.

This is a place where you really don't want to sit. Chester, the green bird, has foolishly placed himself right in the cross-hairs of the blue bird. You can see a turd sitting right down by Chester's feet. As I watched this scene, several turds (parakeets crap at a ridiculously fast rate) came down and landed on Chester, but lucky for him they slid off like water off a duck's back.

Here is a bonus picture. The boys are hanging out on the chain that holds their cage. They always like climbing to the highest point they can, apparently in a vain attempt to escape the reach of their cruel, cruel master.

Don't forget to visit the Friday Ark.

Denver Weather

2007-01-12T08:47:00.000-07:00

As I prepare to leave for work, the temperature outside is one below zero. The day before yesterday it was in the 50s. I do not like this weather. I do not like it Sam-I-Am.

National Delurking Week

2007-01-11T20:04:00.000-07:00

All of the cool kids are saying that this is National Delurking Week. For anyone who doesn't speak internet, "lurking" is when one reads material on a discussion forum or blog yet doesn't post comments. Hence his or her presence is unknown. To delurk means to post a comment and say hi. I know I don't have that many readers, but if anyone wants to delurk, this is the thread to do it on.

Cool!

2007-01-11T10:52:00.000-07:00

Democrats Pick Denver For 2008 Convention

Democrats have picked Denver for the 2008 convention, officials said Thursday.Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean made the announcement in Washington."I congratulate Governor Ritter, Mayor Hickenlooper, Senator Salzar and the members of the Denver Host Committee for assembling an outstanding bid that demonstrates the community's commitment to organizing a first-rate national convention that will put our nominee on the path to victory in 2008," Dean said in a statement. Click here to read his full statement.

Denver had been vying with New York City for the convention. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in recent weeks that he would not commit the city to underwrite the convention's costs.

I'm not sure if I'll still be here come fall 2008, but if I am I'll have to check out some of the hoopla. Anyway, this is a wise strategy for the Dems. The West and Southwest are areas where they can definitely make some gains -- Colorado for its part now has a Democratic legislature, a Democratic governor, and a majority Democratic Congressional delegation.

Why Do So Many Doctors Accept Evolution?

2007-01-09T13:44:00.000-07:00

Over at Uncommon Descent, Gil Dodgen asks the question of why so many engineers reject evolution. Dave Scott then asks a similar question about doctors. Not surprisingly, their answers to these questions are self-serving and backed up only by wishful thinking. Dodgen quotes Stephen Meyer as saying that because engineers know all about "design", they are therefore in a unique position to know about biology. (As a corollary, I suppose biologists must have special insight when it comes to designing bridges.) Even more amusing is Dave Scott's explanation for why doctors supposedly reject evolution. They are risk adverse. I'll let others ponder the logic of that one.

But all of this begs the question: How many doctors (or engineers) reject evolution, and why do they do so? I think the question is worth looking at, even if just for fun. So let's do something that the denizens of UD would consider totally alien -- let's look at some data.

Lucky for us, the Louis Finkelstein Institute recently conducted a survey on the beliefs that doctors have concerning evolution and "intelligent design". The headline for the survey was that a majority of doctors, 63%, preferred evolution over ID. Still, that leaves a fairly sizable minority, 34%, who agree with the ID position. Unfortunately, it's hard to know what to make of such numbers. Thanks in large part to the obscurantist tactics of its major proponents, "intelligent design" is a fuzzy concept that has any number of possible meanings among lay people. For example, a lot of people seem to think that ID is equivalent to theistic evolution, a position held in contempt by the leading ID advocates. It's also difficult to compare different surveys against each other, given that (especially for this issue) the answers tend to be extremely sensitive to the wording of the question. For example, any question that makes a reference to God or the Bible will tend to elicit a more positive response than one that doesn't, even when the questions are essentially the same.

Fortunately, the Finkelstein survey does contain one question that is directly comparable to that asked of the general public in a CBS News poll conducted around the same time. That question asks people about their views on evolution and gives them three choices: The first is that humans were created by God essentially as they are now; the second is that humans have evolved with God guiding the process; and the third is that humans have evolved without God's guidance. Although the wording differs slightly between the two surveys, the differences are trivial and shouldn't make any difference in how people respond. Thus I submit that this is the best comparison between surveys that we're likely to find. I've put the results together into a single chart:

We can see that the results are quite striking. Doctors are far less likely to believe in the explicitly creationist position than are the general public. They are also far more likely to believe that evolution occurred without divine guidance. Overall, the acceptance of evolution among doctors is around 80% (actually 78% when asked the question directly) whereas it's only around 45% for the general public. So contrary to the self-congratulatory beliefs of the UD folks, it is not the case that being a doctor somehow makes one more prone to being a IDist/creationist. In fact it makes one much less prone. While some of this may be due to the fact that more educated and affluent people are more likely to accept evolution, much of it is probably due to the medical training that doctors receive. That makes Dave Scott's remarks all the more ironic. (One quick note: The Gallup organization has been conducting a similar poll for a long time, though they include a 10,000 year age for the human species are part of question #1. Even still, the results for the general public are highly similar to those above. However, if I had included those results broken down by college education, the college educated would have sat somewhere in between the general public and doctors in the above chart. Because I couldn't find any data for this more recent than 1991, I left it out, but it supports the notion that there is more than just general education that leads doctors to accept evolution.)

It is true of course that doctors are more prone to being creationists than scientists in general and biologists in particular. This is to be fully expected, as it's unlikely that you're going to find any one group of people who are more convinced about evolution than biologists and other scientists. But the fact is, we see a steady increase in the acceptance of evolution when we move from the uneducated to the educated, and from those whose educations are irrelevant to evolution towards those who are more relevant. Thus, the prevalence (or rather paucity) of creationist doctors has a simple explanation.

Much the same can be said of engineers. The perception that there exists a large number of creationist engineers has actually spawned its own bit of internet folk wisdom, known as the Salem hypothesis. Although there are no survey data for engineers specifically as far as I know, I strongly suspect that the percentage of engineers who accept evolution is similar to (though probably somewhat less than) that of doctors. Which is to say, an engineer is far less likely to be a creationist than is a member of the general public, yet is more likely to be a creationist than is a scientist. Assuming this is the case, it doesn't really require any special explanation.

Ironically, ID/creationists are very keen on giving the impression that they have quality credentials, in spite of the fact that they are very quick to dismiss and vilify the vast majority of credentialed scientists. The propaganda put out by the Discovery Institute and other creationist organizations will always mention an advanced degree held by one of their own. This is true even when the degree is of highly questionable relevance. If it seems like there are a lot of engineers and doctors espousing ID, it's probably just a manifestation of this tactic.

(Cross-posted to the Panda's Thumb.)

Update: Dave Scot throws a childish temper tantrum over at UD, claiming that I “trots out a strawman - [that] ID and “evolution” are mutually exclusive”. Except of course I didn’t. Nowhere do I say that evolution and ID are mutually exclusive. The Finkelstein survey pits them that way, but that’s exactly why I used a question that gives people more than two choices. The fact is, no matter what flavor of IDism/creationism one espouses, the survey data make it abundantly clear that doctors are much less likely to buy into it than are the general public. If doctors are therefore considered to hold some sort of special insight into the evolution debate, this does not bode well for the IDists. That is the substance of the post, and naturally Dave Scot totally ignores it. It appears that in his intellectual dishonesty, he’s reduced to slaying strawmen. :)

On the Wonders of Compact Fluorescent Bulbs

2007-01-08T20:44:00.000-07:00

Three of the bulbs pictured on the left draw 40 watts of electricity. One of them draws only 9 watts. Can you guess which one?

I've been a big fan of compact fluorescent (CF) bulbs for a couple of years now, but I was shocked to hear recently that only 6% of households in the US are using them. CF bulbs don't work for every application, but as I just discovered, even "aesthetic" bulbs can be replaced with CFs. And certainly most of your everyday bulbs can. A 100 W incandescent bulb, for example, can be replaced with a 23 W CF that produces the same amount of light. To my eye, at least, they appear completely identical. Not like those ugly whitish fluorescent things they tried to sell us 20 years ago, which for obvious reasons never caught on.

The economics on this are rather startling. If you replace 10 incandescent bulbs of 100 W each with comparable CF bulbs, that saves you 770 W for every hour they're on. If they're on for an average of 4 hours a day, that's just over 3 kilowatt-hours (kWh) saved per day. At about $0.10 per kWh of electricity, that'll save you around 30 cents a day. It may not sound like much, but over a year those savings add up to over $112. Just for changing light bulbs.

The CF bulbs are certainly more expensive. If you buy them individually, they cost about $5 each, though you can get them cheaper in bulk. But they're also guaranteed to last for 5 years, unlike incandescents which last only a matter of months, so it equals out in the end. (One hint though: save your receipts and UPC; you may buy a whole package that ends up going sour, which happened to me once.) But you don't have to wait for the bulbs to live out their full life-span in order to get your money back. Switching 10 bulbs will cost you at most $50, and assuming you use them regularly, you will have doubled your money in less than a year.

Another way to think about this is to assume that you're making an investment. $50 invested today will, within 5 years, return $560 in energy savings. Subtracting your original investment and assuming the interest is compounded annually, that's about a 60% annual return on your money over the life of the bulbs. I challenge anyone to find me an investment that guarantees a better than 60% return. I mean seriously, if you know of one please tell me.

Absent finding that magical guaranteed 60+% return, switching to CF bulbs is about the best investment that anyone can make. To be sure, CF bulbs aren't entirely without their drawbacks. The biggest is that they don't get up to full brightness for about 15 seconds after you turn them on. But that is at most a minor nuisance. Another drawback that most of the CF bulbs produced are ugly and you don't want to use them in situations where you have a naked bulb jutting out from a light fixture. But as in the case above with my bathroom lights, even this is no long an issue in most cases. Barring these trivialities, there is no reason why everyone shouldn't be switching to CF bulbs.

In addition to saving you some serious duckets, switching to CF bulbs is good for the environment. Were everyone to do so, using the above assumptions and given about 100 million households in the US, that would save over 112 million megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity per year. That's a lot. Unfortunately, the US generates over 4 billion MWh of electricity per year, so we're talking about only a small dent here. But it's a dent nonetheless. And you get paid for it.

And Millions of College Students Mourned...

2007-01-08T20:29:00.000-07:00

Instant noodle inventor dies at 96.

GM Does Something Right, For Once

2007-01-08T11:50:00.000-07:00

General Motors is that far-sighted car company who was completely blind-sided by the Japanese on fuel efficiency not once, but twice -- first during the oil crises back in the 70s and then again today. As a response, rather than figure that maybe they should invest in fuel efficient cars, they lobbied the government to relax CAFE standards and have dropped over 1 billion dollars into developing hydrogen vehicles. Hydrogen is perhaps the worst idea ever, meaning that this is all just money down the drain and a huge opportunity wasted. But at least GM gets to pretend as if they're doing something useful while selling gas-guzzling SUVs.

Now it looks like they're finally catching on. The electric car may be boring to futurists, but it almost certainly represents the future of automotive technology. And now GM has one :

Struggling auto giant General Motors Corp. on Sunday revived its once-failed idea of a mass-market electric car, unveiling a new "concept" car called the Volt designed to use little or no gasoline.

Introduced at the North American International Auto Show here, the Chevrolet Volt will draw power exclusively from a next-generation battery pack recharged by a small onboard engine -- if the technology is ready in two or three years. [...]

The Volt is designed to run for 40 miles on pure electric power, making it marketable for everyday family use.

For the average American driver who drives 40 miles a day, or 15,000 miles a year, the Volt will require no fuel and lead to an annual savings of 500 gallons of gasoline, GM said.

Unlike current gas-electric hybrids, which use a parallel system twinning battery power and a combustion engine, the Volt will be driven entirely by electric power.

So it appears to be a pure electric car, but one that carries an on-board gasoline engine to recharge the batteries so that the range can be extended indefinitely. I'm not entirely sure about the wisdom of that -- replacing the inefficient gas engine with more batteries might be better -- but the infinite range thing has its advantages. I sort of doubt however that if you ran it exclusively on gasoline that you would get good mileage. Still, it gives consumers the option of running purely on electricity for most of their travel, and assuming that the electricity is generated cleanly, this is a net gain for the environment. So credit where credit is due.

Awwwwwww!

2007-01-07T15:14:00.000-07:00

Many more where that came from here. In fact it gets worse; the deer and rabbit start snuggling and... well, you've been warned. Make sure you're wearing your cuteness dampening glasses. What I'm wondering is if these photographs are staged or if the photographer actually found them doing this in the wild.

That Liberal Media

2007-01-05T16:20:00.000-07:00

There are some characters who, the more you know about them, the scarier they get. Rev. Moon is perhaps the best example of that kind of character.

Jaw, prepare to drop:

George Archibald, who describes himself “as the first reporter hired at the Washington Times outside the founding group” and author of a commemorative book on the Times’ first two decades, has now joined a long line of disillusioned conservative writers who departed and warned the public about extremism within the newspaper.

In an Internet essay on recent turmoil inside the Times, Archibald also confirmed claims by some former Moon insiders that the cult leader has continued to pour in $100 million a year or more to keep the newspaper afloat. Archibald put the price tag for the newspaper’s first 24 years at “more than $3 billion of cash.” [...]
Though best known as the founder of the Unification Church, Moon, now 86, has long worked with right-wing political forces linked to organized crime and international drug smuggling, including the Japanese yakuza gangs and South American cocaine traffickers.

Moon insiders, including his former daughter-in-law Nansook Hong, also have described Moon’s system for laundering cash into the United States and then funneling much of it into his businesses and influence-buying apparatus, led by the Washington Times.

The Times, in turn, has targeted American politicians of the center and left with journalistic attacks – sometimes questioning their sanity, as happened with Democratic presidential nominees Michael Dukakis and Al Gore. Those themes then resonate through the broader right-wing echo chamber and into the mainstream media. [...]
Besides the estimated $3 billion-plus invested in the Washington Times, Moon has spread money around to influential right-wingers, often coming to their rescue when they are facing financial ruin as happened with Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell in the mid-1990s.

And then there's the stuff about the sex rites in the Unification Church. And another article about where Moon gets all this money. Creepy.

My Predictions for 2007

2007-01-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

I don't normally do this, but it's customary these days to make predictions for the new year. So here goes:

There will be violence in the Middle East.

2007 will be the hottest year on record, surpassing the previous record set in 2005, which itself surpassed the previous record set in 1998. "Climate contrarians" will point to what happened between August and December and insist that we are in a cooling trend.

Will Smith will star in a movie in which he uses the phrase "yo dog" at least 3 times.

Pat Robertson will make an ass out of himself by claiming that God spoke to him and informed him about some terrible catastrophe that ends up not happening. (Okay, I cheated somewhat -- the first part already came true.)

More of everything, everywhere. Less of nothing.

The Clemson Tigers will have an initially promising football team yet manage to lose two or three games that they should have won due to stupidity, resulting in a mediocre season.

The Discovery Institute or one of its close allies will claim that they've somehow been terribly wronged and persecuted by "dogmatic Darwinists", yet upon close scrutiny it will turn out that they've grossly distorted the facts and their complaint is entirely frivolous.

Gary Coleman will announce his candidacy for President of the United States. Not one person will notice.

The average American will continue to grow fatter. Sadly, this will no longer be correlated with increased jolliness.

George W. Bush will widely be recognized as one of America's greatest ever presidents, with clear vision, intellect, and strength to lead us through some of the most trying times in our history. At least according to Hugh Hewitt.

I will win. What exactly it is I'm going to win isn't clear, but I'm definitely going to win it.

The Tale of the Victim Bully

2007-01-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

I recently ran across the term "victim bully". It's an excellent descriptor for a distressingly common creature, one who can be found in all walks of life but is most frequently sighted in the political sphere. Here is a brief description:

Gunsalus distinguishes between traditional, assertive bullies, who throw their weight around with bluster and force, and 'victim bullies,' who use claims of having been wronged to gain leverage over others.(pp. 123-4) Unlike simple passive-aggression, victim bullies use accusations as weapons, and ramp up the accusations over time. Unlike a normal person, who would slink away in shame as the initial accusations are discredited, a victim bully lacks either guilt or shame, honestly believing that s/he has been so egregiously wronged in some cosmic way that anything s/he does or says is justified in the larger scheme of things. So when the initial accusations are dismissed, the victim bully's first move is a sort of double-or-nothing, raising the absurdity and the stakes even more.

Or, if you want a more contemporary description keeping with recent events, this one will do too:

Republican lawmakers held a press conference today to continue their push for a "Minority Bill of Rights" in the new Congress.

"The Minority Bill of Rights gives [Speaker Nancy Pelosi (R-CA)] a chance to lead with integrity instead of rule by force," Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) said, ignoring the Republican-controlled 109th Congress' reputation for strong-arm tactics.

"Washington, D.C. has just enacted a smoking ban, yet somehow Nancy Pelosi and her liberal colleagues have found a way to lock themselves in a smoky backroom in the Capitol to make deals for the next two years,"
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) added.

Even House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), who as one of the top Republican leaders in the past two congresses was as responsible as anyone for the Republican majority's penchant for backroom deals and hard-nosed legislating, got in on the act, issuing a separate statement on the Democrats' diabolical intent:

In their first one hundred hours of governance, House Democrats will renege on a pledge to fully debate policy alternatives, denying the citizens of this country an open, honest discussion of the issues.

Please note: the new session of Congress has not yet started, and the Republicans are already pretending to be the victims of Democratic meanness.

By the way, if you want another, possibly even more absurd example of victim bullying, the Sternberg saga provides it in spades.

Edited to add: Ed Brayton has a post on this and has argued that because Nancy Pelosi proposed a Minority Bill of Rights back in 2004, she is thus obligated in the name of consistency to cave in to this unseemly theatrical display. I disagree. One can both believe that a MBR is a good idea and still tell the Republicans to shove it as concerns their victim bullying. Here are the basics of my argument as I've laid them out in comments on Ed's blog:

The Republicans are not doing this because they're actually afraid that the Democrats will mistreat them, but rather because the accusation itself serves as an attack on the Dem's integrity. The merits of a Minority Bill of Rights isn't even an issue. The issue is that the Republicans are playing victim bully. The absolute worst thing one can do in this situation is to tacitly agree with the accusers by giving them what they want. That just guarantees more of the same. (If you want a familiar example, remember Larry Caldwell and his frivolous lawsuit against the NCSE?) The proper thing to do is to dismiss faulty and irrational accusations as being faulty and irrational.

A Minority Bill of Rights is a good idea in principle. The Democrats should pass one, but they should do so on their own terms and preferably with strong bipartisan support. But they absolutely should not pay any heed to this particular bit of chicanery.

I will probably leave things at that.

Edited to add again: This article in The Hill explains things further. While the Democrats completely rebuffed (and even laughed at) the Republican whine-fest, they instituted a number of rules changes that addressed the issues they raised back in 2004, including preventing the majority from holding votes open past their time limit and making sure that minority members are allowed to participate in conference committees. This was, as I argued, the proper thing for them to do.

Best. Lawsuit. Ever.

2007-01-01T19:50:00.000-07:00

This is one of those random things on the web I came across. It is a judge's decision from an actual lawsuit. Here's a small taste:

Teri Smith TYLER, Plaintiff,

v.

James CARTER,
William Clinton,
Ross Perot,
American Cyanamid,
IronMountain Security Corporation,
Defense Intelligence Agency,
IBM,
David Rockerfeller,
Rockerfeller Fund,
BCCI,
NASA, Defendants. [...]

Plaintiff Teri Smith Tyler, appearing pro se, filed a complaint in December 1992 alleging a bizarre conspiracy involving the defendants to enslave and oppress certain segments of our society. Plaintiff contends she is a cyborg, and that she received most of the information which forms the basis for her complaint, through "proteus", which I read to be some silent, telepathic form of communication. See complaint, at 1, and Affidavit accompanying November 1993 Order to Show Cause, at P g. She asserts that the defendants are involved in the "Iron Mountain Plan", which provides for the reinstitutionalization of slavery and "bloodsports" (which she identifies as death-hunting [FN1] and witch-hunting), and the oppression of political dissidents, herself included. Plaintiff's complaint alleges a number of personal indignities visited upon her by defendants: "strafing of my dormitory room by planes and helicopters, the electronic bugging of my student rooms and apartments, deliberate noise harassment, blasting of loud rock music with lyrics designed for witch-hunts (music about social pariahs) ... students following me around to prevent me from studying, whispering campaigns and social ostrification ..." Complaint, at 1-2. Plaintiff also makes the following allegations against the defendants. Former President Jimmy Carter was the secret head of the Ku Klux Klan; Bill Clinton is the biological son of Jimmy Carter; President Clinton and Ross Perot have made fortunes in the death-hunting industry, and are responsible for the murder of at least 10 million black women in concentration camps, their bodies sold for meat and their skin turned into leather products. The defendants are also responsible for breeding farms, which turn out 2,000 black girls a year, who are then sold for recreational murder or as human pets. Additionally, the defendants utilize weather control and earthquake technology to threaten other countries that object to the Iron Mountain plan. [...]

Plaintiff additionally contends that Gulf War against Iraq was undertaken so that America could restock its sexual slavery camps, which had been depleted. According to plaintiff, 40,000 Iraqi soldiers captured by the United States, selected for their physical attractiveness, have been brought to this country where they were "being beaten, forced to run gauntlets and homosexually gang- raped by American soldiers." Plaintiff claims to have confronted Secretary of Defense Cheney with evidence of this allegation. Cheney, through "proteus", purportedly told the plaintiff, "Well, we were so sick and tired of killing black girls. We just had to put some variety back into our death- hunting industry. And they [Persians] are incredibly beautiful. The beauty of the face heightens the pleasure of the kill. I know of no higher pleasure than the gang-rape of exceedingly beautiful people."

Wow. And to think, the complaint was dismissed. That's an awful lot of wrongdoing the judge is turning a blind eye to.

He Died for You

2006-12-30T11:35:00.000-07:00

The 2006 edition of the Darwin Awards are out, and they are as always entertaining. Although it didn't make top billing, my favorite is this guy:

In August, a congregation's 35-year old pastor insisted one could literally walk on water, if only one had enough faith. Big and bold was his speech. He extolled the heavenly power possessed by a faithful man with such force that he may well have convinced himself.

Whether or not he believed in his heart, his sermons left room for only shame should he leave his own faith untested. Thus, the pastor set out to walk across a major estuary, the path of a 20-minute ferry ride. But the man could not swim.

He has made the world a better place through his absence.

Clemson Sucks

2006-12-29T18:14:00.000-07:00

Clemson sucks.

Again?

2006-12-28T13:54:00.000-07:00

Having just barely escaped Denver after last week's big storm, it looks like we're getting hit again:

Eighteen inches of snow was forecast for the Denver area starting Thursday, with as much as 2 1/2 feet of snow in the foothills. That could shut down area highways all over again and possibly delay flights at Denver International Airport, where thousands of holiday travelers were stranded for about two days during the last storm.

Frontier Airlines, the airport's second-busiest carrier, canceled more than 50 flights Thursday and Friday in anticipation of the storm.

It's a good thing I opted for the extended vacation and didn't try to get back as soon as X-mas was over. Although if I had flown out yesterday I suppose it would have been fine. Still, there's going to be one hell of a mess to contend with when I get back.

Karen Floyd sends War on Christmas Greetings.

2006-12-26T15:43:00.000-07:00

Remember Karen Floyd? The creationist and hard-core voucher advocate who ran for South Carolina State Superintendent of Education but lost by a hair? To show she had no hard feelings, she went out and shot a few dozen ducks and then sent Christmas cards to everyone bragging about it:

In case you are wondering, yes, this is real. Aside from the poor taste the card exhibits, this kind of large kill is most likely in violation of SC hunting laws. Who knows how many of our children she would have slaughtered if elected Superintendent? I shudder to think.

(hat tip to NVB.)

Travel Fun

2006-12-24T09:48:00.000-07:00

Okay, things didn't quite work out like they were supposed to. I got to the Denver airport over two hours before I was supposed to leave on Friday. I figured that would be plenty of time. Wrong.

Flights had been suspended since around noon on Wed. and weren't resumed until noon on Friday. My plane was scheduled to leave at 3:20 on Friday and, unlike a lot of flights, it had not be canceled or delayed. But when I got to the airport, the place was a refugee camp. The lines for the check-in counter were horrendous. Far worse however was the line to get through security -- it literally wrapped around the entire airport twice, and it took over an hour just to get up to the point where you could then wait in line for another 20 minutes to get screened. They had no mechanism to separate out people who had flights leaving soon, and for that matter no one tending the lines at all. It's amazing that it wasn't complete chaos. By the time I got checked in, made it through security, and took the train to my concourse, my gate had been closed. If I had made there just ten minutes faster, I would have gotten on the flight since, unlike most people trying to escape Denver, I had a confirmed ticket. All that shit for nothing.

The best they could do was to get me a 8 am flight through Detroit (my original connection) to Greenville. So I left and came back the next morning, this time giving myself three hours. Security was just as bad, but it ended up that the 8 am flight was postponed until 10:10, so there was no rush. However, because the flight was delayed, I couldn't make my connection in Detroit. The next flight from Detroit to Greenville left at 9:30 pm, giving me a nearly 7 hour layover. I was really very lucky that I was able to get on the flight to Detroit at all, since I had been put on standby, and a lot of people on standby weren't getting anywhere because there was no room left on any of the flights. At one point, there were over 5000 people stranded at DIA; many of the people I talked to had been there since Wed. Some of them won't get to where they're going until after Christmas.

All's well that ends well I suppose. I spent over 17 hours in commute yesterday, which did not make me a happy camper. The only consolation is that I got put in a first class seat from Denver to Detroit, and given my frustrations, I was more than happy to take full advantage of the situation and run up Northwest's food and booze bill as much as I could. And I also figure that when I missed my original flight, some poor soul who had been stranded since Wed. and had been placed on standby was able to get a seat that he otherwise wouldn't have had, and therefore he got to make it home to see his family. If you are that person, Merry Christmas.

Flying Out

2006-12-22T12:33:00.000-07:00

Well, it appears that might flight out today hasn't been canceled, and now that I've spent the better part of my morning digging my car out, my trip to SC looks like a go...