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Archive for April, 2010

The Price Of Failure…

April 13, 2010 8 comments

…to apply herbicides to our lawn.  We get this every spring:

From spring

Here’s a close-up.  Click through and hit the little magnifying glass viewer:

From spring

Alas Picasa offers no way for you to smell them, but they’re delightful.  All day a happy riot of gently buzzing bees moving from flower to flower.

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Oxygen in a can

April 11, 2010 6 comments

“Out of gas?  Recharge your engine.  Helps aid your recovery from the effects of exercise, stress, travel, late nights, alcohol and pollution.  90% pure oxygen concentrated for natural recovery.”

From Muscle-powered transportation

Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad idea?

 

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An hour of anti-Humanism

April 11, 2010 4 comments

This week I saw an ad in sidewalk chalk that read; “Humanism” and giving a time and place on campus.  Thinking that perhaps a Humanist group was getting started, I attended the meeting, which turned out to be a lecture sponsored by a local church.

The speaker was an anti-Humanist twit and “defender of the Gospel” named Steve Wolfgang.  (I’m not giving him a link; you can Google him yourself if you want).  This was the last of four lectures in which he denounced Humanism, science, reason, technology, and in particular, evolution.

I have a message for you, Church Of Christ in Normal, Illinois: you spent money on a speaker who is either ignorant or a liar, or more likely both.  When he says that there’s no explanation for the evolution of the eye, he’s simply wrong, either accidentally or on purpose. When he says there are no journal papers on molecular evolution, he’s either ignorant or lying.  When he trots out that “teach the controversy” nonsense for schools, he’s ignoring an awful lot of myths.  He failed to let you know that Michael Behe is a laughingstock in the biology community.

It’s difficult for me to think he is being honest in attacking the classic “peppered moth” evolution example; despite its methodological problems the original study on peppered moths has been completely vindicated.  The follow-on study was so widely reported that Wolfgang would have to be very careful where he looked to avoid it.  His ignorance, if he is ignorant, is purposeful.

Macro- versus micro-evolution?  Seriously?  Let me ask you; don’t millions of small steps add up to a long journey?  He says “we don’t see changes from one kind into another” but he’s being very careful not to see it.  Read Richard Dawkins’ Climbing Mount Improbable, or River Out Of Eden.

Is he really discussing morphology and “missing links” without having read Neil Shubin’s Your Inner Fish?  Maybe I should give lectures on the historical development of Jazz – a subject about which I know nothing.  Maybe if I learned some key words I could make it sound as if I did, though.

When he says that humanism, science and technology issued in more slaughter in the 20th century than at any time in human history, has he done the math?  Or is he just making assumptions?  Because Stephen Pinker did the math and the 20th, even with its world wars, was less violent than centuries that preceded it.  There is considerable evidence that violence and sadism is less acceptable now than it was 200 years ago.

One person in the audience tried to ask what sounded like honest questions about the evolution of the eye, but Wolfgang steered them into a rhetorical twist.  Someone asked me later if I spoke up with the right explanation; I can debate reasonably well in writing but I’m not fast on my feet, and really don’t enjoy confrontation, so no, I didn’t.  I’d have paid real money for an evolutionary biologist with a bad attitude to be in the audience though.

The paragraphs above only cover one index card worth of Wolfgang’s stupidity (or duplicity) but in the one hour that he spoke, I filled two cards on both sides.  It was a hit parade of busted canards and all I can tell you is that if it makes you feel good to spend your money on a guy like that, knock yourself out.  But don’t be fooled.

The funniest part of the hour was when he lamented that humanists often mock creationists as “idiotic” or “stupid”.  Sad, yes, but there’s a reason: creationists keep spouting the same old lies decade after decade.  They may dress them up with new labels like “Intelligent Design” but it’s the same old ignorant junk. 

I’m certainly not sorry to have missed the first three lectures.  It isn’t difficult to figure out why the church is attacking Humanism, though; when your religion is based on mythological inerrancy, scientific rot is all you’ve got.  It’s sad that a church paid to come on campus and tell lies about a minority that they find inconvenient.  But they really didn’t have to do that: I just checked, and there are twenty religious Registered Student Organizations on campus, but none for atheism or humanism. 

Might be time to change that.

NOTES:

  • Here’s a more complete list of canards that he managed to present in just a single hour:

    • Peppered moth data “cooked” and “at the end of the day, you still have peppered moths”.  (The study was vindicated, and how about at the end of several hundred thousand days?)

    • Behe: mousetrap, flagellum, eye.  “Zero” journal articles explain how eye could appear on molecular level. (Just not true)
    • Old textbooks are sometimes wrong, and occasionally wrong information makes it into recent textbooks.  (You can thank the TBOE for most of that, but in any case science does, through a rancorous process, make its corrections.  As opposed to religion which started out being wrong about almost everything and has kept a perfect record.)
    • No “Tree Of Life” exists.  (Right.  It’s more like a tangled bank, we already know that.  But there are tracable lines of common descent, which appear in the morphological, fossil, genetic, and molecular evidence.)
    • “Since we have eyes, what happened to creatures with almost-eyes?” (Eyes evolved independently something like eight times.  You can find every stage of eye evolution just within currently extant members of the mollusca family.)
    • Upset at being identified as idiot, LOL
    • “Statement of doubt signed by over 400 scientists” (Please… 400 scientists?  That’s not many considering that over 500 scientists named Steve have signed a counter-statement, and that your list is mostly comprised of people – many not scientists at all – with no relevant expertise in biology)
    • Humanism responsible for slaughter in 20th century (Let’s be honest here: humanity is responsible for slaughter in every century)
    • Teach the controversy is “Academic integrity 101” (No it isn’t, and that ignores a lot of myths)
    • Say; “Prove it!” to evolutionists! (But won’t accept any evidence as proof.  And anyway, proof is a mathematical concept; science deals in probabilities)
    • Scientific naturalism and supernaturalism are equal and both require faith. (Not sure what definition of “faith” he’s using, but try getting a new scientific model accepted without evidence and see what happens)
    • Haeckel’s embryo illustrations “fraud” with cherry-picked Gould quotes (Really?  Not exactly keeping up with the literature, are we?  Yes Haeckel had it wrong but that isn’t news.  Find out something about “Evo-Devo” and get back to us.)
    • Micro- vs. Macro-evolution with regard to finches, moths, horses, and dogs.  “We don’t see large scale changes of one kind into another”.  (Seriously man, if you want to walk to South America, it’s going to take a lot of steps.  Watching any ten minutes of that journey won’t give you any idea of its duration and scale.)
    • Houses have designers, and so do mousetraps and airplanes!  (Right.  So all similar-looking things must have designers.)
  • Here’s Joss Whedon on Humanism.  W00T!

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Conservatives: overdriving their headlights

April 10, 2010 7 comments

Newt “Mister Morality” Gingrich says Obama is the “most radical president in US history”.  If so, then we’re a reactionary country.  After all, the health care reform act might have been cribbed from Mitt Romney’s final exam, and the nuclear arms-reduction treaty is almost verbatim Reagan.  I suppose it could be a radical idea that corporations which are large enough to affect The General Welfare of society as a whole should face regulation by that society, from the perspective of those corporations.  For those of us who breathe air, drink water, eat food, and depend on our retirement funds still being available when we reach the age, it’s common sense.

Still licking their wounds from the health care debate (in which they won nearly everything they wanted) conservatives are now freaking out about the nuclear arms treaty with Russia.  And no wonder!  We will be left practically defenseless with the world’s strongest conventional armed forces, plus only 1,500 nuclear warheads, and a treaty that forbids using them on non-nuclear powers, unless (as specifically provided in the treaty) we need to reconsider that provision in the event of a biological attack. 

Not good enough, says Michele Bachmann; we might need to nuke someone over a cyber-attack.  Without that option, we can’t feel safe!

Asked about Sarah Palin’s criticism of the treaty, Obama answered truthfully that Palin isn’t much of an expert on nuclear arms issues.  Palin, ignoring Obama’s work in the Senate on counter-proliferation, and the fact that he consults with the joint chiefs and other real experts, retorted that he isn’t either, so there.  Coming from her, the world’s leading expert on everything, that’s quite an indictment.

(There’s plenty of evidence the that for at least a generation, the right wing has been itching to nuke someone.  Just looking for an excuse.  That alone is reason enough to keep them out of office.)

Now Justice Stevens is retiring, and the right wing is already planning its obstruction, with the name of the nominee to be filled in later

But I don’t want to be unfair to the right wing; they do have a softer, more forgiving side.  For instance, if Michael Steele turns out to be a terrible manager, a self-aggrandizing profligate fool, and unable to keep RNC budget line items for exotic strip clubs from being expensed and approved, well, that’s certainly an item they’re going to discuss with the appropriate individuals real soon now, probably.  And if one after another of their group turns out to be sexually incontinent, or to be deeply dependent on government handouts (while denouncing same), or just plain hypocritical in every way imaginable (Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, Newt), all they have to do is point a finger at Obama and yell; “Socialist!”  and all is forgiven.

Basically they’re against anything that a liberal is for, no matter how much sense it makes strategically, economically, or environmentally.  They’ll deny any fact, toss aside any CBO report, or ridicule any science as long as it lets them end up conservative.  Which should not be confused with conserving anything.  You have to wonder if they like to drive faster after dark just for the thrill of overdriving their headlights.

  • Yes, I know it would be more grammatically correct to say “things the right wing IS freaking out about”.  I’m just that kind of rascal.
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In the array

April 10, 2010 Comments off

I got a tour of our University’s data center the other day.  Snapped this picture through the glass of the tape backup array:

From my photo album; Technology

(Couldn’t resist adding the stars afterward, but otherwise the picture is unmodified)

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TV Review: “Miami Medical”

April 9, 2010 3 comments

I watched a little bit of an episode of the new CBS drama Miami Medical last week.  And some of this week’s episode because I couldn’t believe any show could really be that bad.

It’s that bad.

It isn’t just the clichéd, improbable stories and characters; House has those in droves and still manages to be a fun show.  But Miami Medical has possibly the worst writing I’ve ever seen in a television show.  Notice I didn’t say; “In a prime-time television show” – I’ve spent enough time in real hospitals to have suffered through watching a soap opera or two (drugs help) and compared to this, they’re prize-winning stuff. 

And the acting is every bit as good as the writing.  This show is a parody of a bad copy of a distorted reflection of a “dark and stormy night” writing-contest winner, which has been marinating in floor wax smothered in artificially-flavored imitation anchovy ice cream with a rotten cherry on top.  It is as close to unwatchable as television gets.  We may have achieved a new standard in awful.

Really rather impressive, in its way.  But ten minutes from two episodes is quite enough, thank you.

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An evening in the heart of humanity

April 7, 2010 1 comment

Illinois State University hosted a talk by Frank Warren, the Post Secret guy.  Over the years, half a million people have written their secrets on postcards and mailed them to his home.  He puts them on his website, and publishes some of them as books.  Profits from the book sales go to a foundation that helps prevent suicide.  I think he makes his living from speaking engagement fees.

He started the project with no idea that it would grow into a worldwide phenomenon, or that it would change his life.  It began as an art project.  People tell him things they’ve never told anyone before.  Sometimes awful things, sometimes wonderful things.  He is known as “the world’s most trusted stranger” and has heard more private secrets, it is said, than any other living person.

He’s been deeply changed by the experience.  He is not a polished orator, but he’s learned some truths from the suffering and hopes of so many people.  Far from becoming cynical or depressed, he has embraced the shared experience and its uplifting potential for individuals and society.

There are two kinds of secrets, he says; those you keep from others and those you keep from yourself.  There must be a lot of overlap in those groups, though many people carry secrets that are obvious to everyone but them.

Those who have been mistreated by the world, he said, are likely to grow up and change it.  (That’s from memory; if anyone remembers the exact quote, please share it in the comments.)

He has learned that secrets are corrosive, because they make us terribly lonely.  If any lesson can be learned from that mountain of post cards, it is that the awful secret you carry is something human, something you share with far more people than you might imagine.  And in the strenuous work of hiding it, they feel awfully lonely too.

Our culture discourages disclosure.  Something in a fearful society recoils from the truth of cruelty, from the pain of individual minds, from the suffering caused by that which cannot be said. 

People harboring suicidal thoughts have written to Frank to say that his work has helped them realize they are not alone in their feelings, and it took a huge burden off their shoulders.

Certainly our culture (and this is hardly unique to our culture) has managed to turn sex, which should be a happy part of the human experience, into an almost universal wellspring of self-doubt and shame.  This is tragedy enough, but it is often compounded with other suffering and even death.

Depression is so common as to be almost universal; how have we made it something to be hidden, giving it such awful (and undeserved) power?  If you aren’t smiling, strangers are likely to tell you that you should smile.  It’s a state of mind, not a sin, and sometimes a creative state of mind at that. 

Religion, or the lack of it, encloses secrets as well.  A billboard campaign reassures atheists that if you don’t believe in God, you are not alone.  This kind message has been bitterly opposed as hate speech by the chronically over-religious, who threaten everything from vandalism to boycotts to eternity in hell to suppress the message.

A close relative once advised me never to disclose publically that I am an atheist.  In a religion-saturated culture, she was afraid it would cost me friends or a job.  (Neither has happened, fortunately.  But in fact, I do avoid discussing religion with people I know to be sensitive on the subject.)

Part of the program is a time when audience members take the microphone and reveal some secret.  These were not trivial revelations; one had slept in a closet all his life and was amazed by the size of his dorm room.  Another had been raped, but felt liberated by the charges against her rapist being dropped because she wouldn’t have to face him.

Warren said he never knows how to end his talk, because it doesn’t really have an ending. 

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Pulling the climate lever…

April 6, 2010 1 comment

Suppose you’re a consulting actuary for a Las Vegas casino.  The business rakes in piles of cash, yet most of the customers seem to be having a good time.  Every once in a while somebody wins the BMW convertable you have slowly turning around on a turntable under spotlights in the main floor.  Every few years, someone wins a million bucks.  In spite of that, nobody at the casino is worried about their jobs.  When somebody wins big, they check it and pay off with a smile.

Why is that?  After all, the games are honest; it’s impossible to predict the next pull of the lever, or when someone might really win a pile.  Why aren’t they worried?  At best you could judge that a really skilled card player will average better than an inexperienced one.  Yet the casino treats the high-rollers like royalty.  Why?

It’s because, while the next game can’t be predicted, the aggregate total of all the games can be predicted to very high accuracy.  One player can be an anomaly, but thousands of players are a near-certainty.  The marketing people figure out how to make the best use of big winners and you, the consultant, figure out what the percentage totals are likely to be.  One of the reasons for your work is that you make it possible to spot when someone is screwing with the odds.  Your work is of interest not only to the casino, but to their creditors and the state gambling commission.

Think of climate as a casino.  We often hear the challenge to climate science.  “They can’t even predict tomorrow’s weather!  How can they predict a decade from now?”

First, they’re getting pretty damn good at predicting tomorrow’s weather.  But they’ve also learned about decadal cycles and ocean currents and long-term temperature trends.  They’ve learned how to correct for known flaws in the data and find some signal in all that noise.

So when March is full of snow, and the cartoonists and conservative pundits have a field day mocking climate science, what does it mean that April so far has been more like early June?

Well not a whole lot, really.  That isn’t signal, it’s noise.  But there’s one signal that’s crystal clear: politicians, pundits and cartoonists who don’t know weather from climate should stay the hell away from Vegas.  ‘Cause they’re likely to get taken to the cleaners and wonder what the hell just hit them.  Either that or they’re in the pocket of the energy industry, take your pick.

By the way it wasn’t unusually cold in March; there was just a lot of precipitation.  In Winter, that takes the form of snow.

Nick Anthis at Scientific Activist has the story:  It’s getting kind of warm out there.  What I found interesting was his description of the difference between climatologists and meteorologists.  Just as climate and weather are different (but related), so are the relative methods of studying them.  Here’s an excerpt…

…climate scientists use very different scientific methods from the meteorologists. Heidi Cullen, a climatologist who straddled the two worlds when she worked at the Weather Channel, noted that meteorologists used models that were intensely sensitive to small changes in the atmosphere but had little accuracy more than seven days out. Dr. Cullen said meteorologists are often dubious about the work of climate scientists, who use complex models to estimate the effects of climate trends decades in the future…

It’s been awfully hot here in Illinois the last few days.

Funny the first commenter on that thread – and many climate threads – almost sounds like a parody of climate science deniers.  Not presenting any actual evidence contrary to the science – he doesn’t have any – just venting his hatred for Al Gore, etc.

NOTES:

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Don’t speak to me of any “Just War”

April 5, 2010 2 comments

Can somebody please tell me what the hell we’re doing there?

(Warning: people, actually die in this video, and the recorded voices of their killers revel in it.  There are children in the line of fire.)

Let there be no illusions as to the cost of such folly.  If that had been someone you love on that street, your children in that van, would you ever tire of telling the tale to anyone who would listen?  Would you fail to harbor those who want to destroy the country responsible?  Would you not make it your life’s work?

Forty percent of the world’s entire military budget is spent by us, while we wrangle over the cost of health insurance, and our schools can’t meet their budgets.  How can this not be the result?  This is not defense; it is pathology.

  • From Pharyngula

  • From The Atlantic, here’s another view from someone who may have a lot of experience in rules of engagement.  He’s not happy with how these videos have been interpreted.  It’s very interesting and I’d be partly assuaged if he hadn’t started with the standard “war is hell, people die” trope.  Yes it’s true that war is hell and people die, and that soldiers under pressure make mistakes for which they can hardly be blamed.  We get it, but that’s all the more reason not to go to war unless you really don’t have an alternative – because it will result in stuff like this and it will be on your head.  Besides, they lose any benefit of the doubt the minute they open up on that van; there was no indication that the van was doing anything but trying to help the wounded.  Sorry, but “war is hell” doesn’t cover that.
  • Slacktivist explores the difference between a soldier and a murderer in YNATKC.  Find out what that acronym means…
  • ***Dave makes the measured, rational analysis I could not, in Killing civilians and covering it up.
  • A soldier from the ‘collateral murder video” speaks out, confirming that this is, in fact, a pretty typical case.  He makes an excellent suggestion…
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This was my friend, Patches

April 3, 2010 9 comments

A neighbor’s cat, but his own person.  Were it not for my own cats’ territoriality, he would have simply moved in with us.  He was a huge cat, around 20 lbs.  A hybrid of some big breed and some other big breed, probably.  In this picture he was hanging out with MrsDoF; her friend too.

He used to come over and hang out with me while I worked on my antique VW.  I’d hear his baritone greeting; “Morowwwwr” and he’d climb up into my lap and rest his old bones.  He’d lay his enormous head in my hand and we’d just be together.  He knew the sound of my bicycle and would come greet me when I got home from work.  I kept a comb on the picnic table for him.

At the neighbor’s anniversary party, he had a stroke and was paralyzed in his hindquarters.  It wasn’t the first time this had happened, and he didn’t seem to be in pain, so I went to a back bedroom and held him while the party went on.  He was very sociable – a neighborhood celebrity – so after a while I carried him out in the room for everyone to greet him.  The guests were unaware of his condition and he really seemed to enjoy the attention.  A few days later, after a visit to the vet, he was getting around just fine.

In 2008 winter was approaching, and I didn’t see him for a few days.  This was not unusual.  He obviously had arthritis and didn’t like cold weather.  But he’d been a foundling and still wanted to go out.

The neighbor knew we were friends and she told me; he went out one night and didn’t come back.  I wish she’d told me that cold night; I knew his route.

In the spring, another neighbor found him. One of his paws was snagged in the branches of a bush.  Only his bones remained, but I’d recognize that great head and the broken tooth and those huge paws anywhere.  It was agreed I would handle the burial. 

But before I could do it, I wound up in the hospital.  It’s amazing what surgery and convalescence can take out of you.  All Summer, and Fall, and Winter he stayed in a box in my garage.

I’ve been working hard to recover.  Still don’t have much strength in my arms and my shoulder is a mess, but I can operate a shovel again.  And it’s Spring, again.  So today I buried his bones, in one of his favorite spots, in a grave on a bed of leaves, and covered him in leaves, and laid the Earth upon him.

I love my own cats, but different friends fill different places in your heart.

Yes, I wept for a cat, who died more than a year ago.  I sure do miss him.  He was an awful good cat.

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