More on: This is Just for Fun Week.
Celebrity watching is the premiere spectator sport of our time. Celebrity baiting is a subcategory of the celebrity watching in the same way that golf is an sedentary subcategory of actual exercise. However, while unadorned, boring exercise is far more entertaining than golf, celebrity baiting is a lot more fun than just watching.
Given that, it's time to talk about Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman. Jimmy Kimmel is a relatively well know comedian and writier and has his own talk show: Jimmy Kimmel Live. Sarah Silverman is an absurdist comedian who has been mining the annoyance vein for a long time-- a toned down Fran Drescher with a brain. She has her own show: The Sarah Silverman Program. Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman have/had (it's not clear and you'll see why in a moment) been going out for some time.
For a long time Jimmy Kimmel has been doing a bit of celebrity baiting of Matt Damon, long time friend of Ben Affleck. If you're that guy who lives under a tree stump in Idaho who hasn't heard of these two, check the links. Kimmel's baiting of Matt Damon has been in the form of signing off his show apologising to Damon that they had run out of time and weren't going to be bringing him on. Damon was never scheduled. Kimmel even brought his cohort, Guillermo Rodriguez, the parking lot security guard for his show to tug Damon's chain. The video for that is here. Finally, Damon was invited to the show only to be blown off as soon as he sat down. See here. Damon was apparently upset but with celebrities one can never tell.
Then, on January 31, 2008, Silverman appeared on Kimmel's show and showed a breakup video. That video is here. I won't say anything about it except it is very funny. Whether or not it represents an actual breakup is, as always with these things, unclear.
On February 24, 2008, Kimmel showed his revenge clip response to Silverman's video. That video is here.
Celebrity baiting is at its purest and most rarified form when the celebrities bait each other. As Lacombe said in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, they are events sociological.
What's incredibly fascinating to me is I was first turned on to this by the science blog, Gene Expression. Go figure.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Links of Interest
I should probably write something dramatic and inspired. Frankly, I'm too tired.
Just some bizarre links.
-----------------------------------------------
Links of Interest
American Scientist: Safer Vehicles for the Planet
Telescope for the Far Side of the Moon
Age of the Eyes
Peru's Lost City
Running on the Moon
Filtration in a Straw
Robots Overtake the Service Industry
Hanttula
Museum of Food Anomalies
Circus of Disemboweled Plush Toys
Other Hanttula Exhibits
Delegate Counter
Just some bizarre links.
-----------------------------------------------
Links of Interest
American Scientist: Safer Vehicles for the Planet
Telescope for the Far Side of the Moon
Age of the Eyes
Peru's Lost City
Running on the Moon
Filtration in a Straw
Robots Overtake the Service Industry
Hanttula
Museum of Food Anomalies
Circus of Disemboweled Plush Toys
Other Hanttula Exhibits
Delegate Counter
Time for Fun Stuff
Okay. No climate change or rantings on evolution today. Just fun stuff.
NASA's Image of the Day has some truly breathtaking pictures. Today's is of the Rho Ophiuchi dark cloud from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the closest star forming are to our sun. It's just really pretty.
There's an encyclopedia for all known species of life. I'm not sure how it's going to manage bacteria and such, since species boundaries may not apply. But the idea of a compendium of all known species is very cool. Of course, it was out of date the moment it was conceived but science is like that. Maybe they'll put up a website. The site is here.
The "Doomsday Vault" has opened its doors. The vault is a repository for keeping the worlds plant food seeds in a viable form. Consider what it might be like to be able to reference apples from the nineteenth century? Wheat from the Rome? Or pecans from last week? This is not just an idea for preserving against catastrophe. It's a viable new food source for the future.
For the first time a snake hunting its prey has been filmed. A timber rattler hunting a snake was caught on film as part of the British Life in Cold Blood series. Rattlesnakes are fast. Notice that in slowmo it's still fast. There's an old story I heard when I was a kid and have no idea if it's true or not. You know in all those old movies how the gunslinger would shoot the head off a rattler to show how good he was. Well, it actually happened but not the way one would think. Remember those old pistols were large, heavy and the bullets were slow-- much, much slower than a modern gun. And the bullets, after leaving the barrel, were hot. The rattlesnake sees heat. So there's this fast hot thing flying towards it. Naturally, it struck.
Tetrapod Zoology has an entry about the Big Cats in Britain. It's pretty certain that the early humans in England had more to worry about than those pesky Normans. Snorki the Giant is pretty cool as well.
Finally, a treasure: the artist, Ron Pippin, who makes art that reflects a world that should have been.
Some of you have heard of Steampunk, alternate world science fiction that uses (often) Victorian sensibilities with modern (somewhat) science. A good example is the Phil Foglio's comic, Girl Genius or Jake von Slatt's Steampunk Workshop. Or Doctor Julius T. Roundbottom. Brassgoggles. Game Studio's office suite. There is even Steampunk Magazine. And a blog.
These are all fine and good but Ron Pippin takes us into another world. I first heard of him via Bioephemera. Pippin creates works of art, ephemera, notebooks, skeletons, animals from this other world and presents them as if part of a traveling exhibit. I'm not going to talk about him. Here are the links:
Interactive work at the Obsolete. Other pictures from the Obsolete.
Relic notebooks from expeditions that never were.
A collection of museum boxes.
Works of his at the Trovelaguna.
More Pippin work at Bioephemera.
I have a big investment in the honesty of art and the fine line between illusion and reality. Here we have representative art of things that never were reflecting an popular idiom of things that couldn't be.
This is the part where my brain explodes.
NASA's Image of the Day has some truly breathtaking pictures. Today's is of the Rho Ophiuchi dark cloud from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the closest star forming are to our sun. It's just really pretty.
There's an encyclopedia for all known species of life. I'm not sure how it's going to manage bacteria and such, since species boundaries may not apply. But the idea of a compendium of all known species is very cool. Of course, it was out of date the moment it was conceived but science is like that. Maybe they'll put up a website. The site is here.
The "Doomsday Vault" has opened its doors. The vault is a repository for keeping the worlds plant food seeds in a viable form. Consider what it might be like to be able to reference apples from the nineteenth century? Wheat from the Rome? Or pecans from last week? This is not just an idea for preserving against catastrophe. It's a viable new food source for the future.
For the first time a snake hunting its prey has been filmed. A timber rattler hunting a snake was caught on film as part of the British Life in Cold Blood series. Rattlesnakes are fast. Notice that in slowmo it's still fast. There's an old story I heard when I was a kid and have no idea if it's true or not. You know in all those old movies how the gunslinger would shoot the head off a rattler to show how good he was. Well, it actually happened but not the way one would think. Remember those old pistols were large, heavy and the bullets were slow-- much, much slower than a modern gun. And the bullets, after leaving the barrel, were hot. The rattlesnake sees heat. So there's this fast hot thing flying towards it. Naturally, it struck.
Tetrapod Zoology has an entry about the Big Cats in Britain. It's pretty certain that the early humans in England had more to worry about than those pesky Normans. Snorki the Giant is pretty cool as well.
Finally, a treasure: the artist, Ron Pippin, who makes art that reflects a world that should have been.
Some of you have heard of Steampunk, alternate world science fiction that uses (often) Victorian sensibilities with modern (somewhat) science. A good example is the Phil Foglio's comic, Girl Genius or Jake von Slatt's Steampunk Workshop. Or Doctor Julius T. Roundbottom. Brassgoggles. Game Studio's office suite. There is even Steampunk Magazine. And a blog.
These are all fine and good but Ron Pippin takes us into another world. I first heard of him via Bioephemera. Pippin creates works of art, ephemera, notebooks, skeletons, animals from this other world and presents them as if part of a traveling exhibit. I'm not going to talk about him. Here are the links:
Interactive work at the Obsolete. Other pictures from the Obsolete.
Relic notebooks from expeditions that never were.
A collection of museum boxes.
Works of his at the Trovelaguna.
More Pippin work at Bioephemera.
I have a big investment in the honesty of art and the fine line between illusion and reality. Here we have representative art of things that never were reflecting an popular idiom of things that couldn't be.
This is the part where my brain explodes.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Back from the Grave. Again.
As the two people who read this blog, "believing in evolution" to me is the same thing as "believing in electric light bulbs". The only difference is that no one has staked their religious teachings on light bulbs having been around for six thousand years. I've even proposed a religious point of view that can allow someone to completely believe in young earth creationism and evolution-- see Back to the Dark Ages.
I feel about such arguments as did Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:11, "When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things."
But childish things are happening in Texas. Unfortunately, neither of my two readers are Texans. Florida has approved (sort of by accident) a fairly evolution heavy curriculum recently. But many in Texas won't be swayed by the Floridians turncoat behavior and are rallying forces to reintroduce (Not So) Intelligent Design back into the schools. Heinlein said once of the Irish that they were the only truly logical people on earth; facts did not sway them from a higher truth. Now, the same can be said of Texans.
Back in November, Chris Comer, the Texas Director for Science curriculum, was sacked for forwarding a email announcing a lecture on Intelligent Design being the Trojan horse to introduce Creationism into the schools. Anybody who followed the Dover trial can say that has been safely proven. Of course, that didn't stop Lizzette Reynolds from saying she should be fired since sending out this sort of email was inappropriate to her job.
Don McLeroy, the new Chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, believes similarly. Ever articulate, here is a transcript of one of his speeches supporting Intelligent Design.
What happens in Texas affects everybody. Florida, Texas and California are the largest markets for textbooks. Publishers of textbooks know this and gear their product to penetrate all three markets. If Texas drives a wedge into biology texts it's fairly probable that same wedge will show up in the other three markets and, eventually, in Kansas and Massachusetts.
As I said, we need to put these childish arguments behind us. Religion doesn't need science. Science sure doesn't need religion. But there are a lot of children that need textbooks and they ought to get the right ones.
It's possible the Texas State Board of Education will prevent that.
------------------------------------
Links of Interest
Seabirds and Dinosaurs in New Zealand
West Antarctic Glaciers on the Move
I feel about such arguments as did Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:11, "When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things."
But childish things are happening in Texas. Unfortunately, neither of my two readers are Texans. Florida has approved (sort of by accident) a fairly evolution heavy curriculum recently. But many in Texas won't be swayed by the Floridians turncoat behavior and are rallying forces to reintroduce (Not So) Intelligent Design back into the schools. Heinlein said once of the Irish that they were the only truly logical people on earth; facts did not sway them from a higher truth. Now, the same can be said of Texans.
Back in November, Chris Comer, the Texas Director for Science curriculum, was sacked for forwarding a email announcing a lecture on Intelligent Design being the Trojan horse to introduce Creationism into the schools. Anybody who followed the Dover trial can say that has been safely proven. Of course, that didn't stop Lizzette Reynolds from saying she should be fired since sending out this sort of email was inappropriate to her job.
Don McLeroy, the new Chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, believes similarly. Ever articulate, here is a transcript of one of his speeches supporting Intelligent Design.
What happens in Texas affects everybody. Florida, Texas and California are the largest markets for textbooks. Publishers of textbooks know this and gear their product to penetrate all three markets. If Texas drives a wedge into biology texts it's fairly probable that same wedge will show up in the other three markets and, eventually, in Kansas and Massachusetts.
As I said, we need to put these childish arguments behind us. Religion doesn't need science. Science sure doesn't need religion. But there are a lot of children that need textbooks and they ought to get the right ones.
It's possible the Texas State Board of Education will prevent that.
------------------------------------
Links of Interest
Seabirds and Dinosaurs in New Zealand
West Antarctic Glaciers on the Move
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Do You Trust Them?
Every now and then something really scary comes across my desk. I don't mean the normal things: global warming, impending starvation for much of the world, the end of species I care about. I mean 1984-like politically scary things.
A free society is going to take a few hits-- I've said this before. But I'm beginning to think a free society is its own worst enemy. One example from a few years ago is Jose Padilla. Padilla is an American citizen and (now) a convicted terrorist conspirator. His case wound through the courts and he was convicted. The system worked.
Or did it? Padilla was arrested in 2002 as an enemy combatant even though he was an American citizen and arrested on American soil. This was the position of the Bush administration until 2006 when he finally went to trial. That's four years he was held without counsel, without habeas corpus, in violation of the US Constitution. Okay, people might say. But he was guilty.
Yes. But we must remember why the constitutional safeguards were created in the first place. It was because the Founding Fathers had first hand experience of the oppression of their own government. The Founding Fathers were not American citizens. They became American citizens.
A more recent example of oppression in the name of liberty is the 2004 story of Robert Farrell and Steven Kurtz, as told in the October Aetiology. Robert Farrell was working with some harmless bacteria-- bacteria considered so innocuous that they are commonly cultured in high school biology courses. Farrell sent some bacterial samples to Steven Kurtz, a fellow science and artist, who used them in an art exhibit regarding genetically modified foods.
Kurtz' wife, Hope, died of heart failure. Kurtz unsurprisingly called 911. The police came to the house and saw all of these petri dishes lying around and were understandably a little suspicious-- that's what police are paid for, after all. The FBI retained Kurtz on the way to the funeral home the next day. Up to this point, it seems fairly normal-- no weirder than how Boston reacted to the LED displays of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force a while back. Boston authorities went on high alert, got a little ticked at the advertising agency that both placed the LED displays in sensitive areas and failed to inform the police, but then pretty much let it go. I think News Corp was fined.
Kurtz, on the other hand, was held for 22 hours. No Miranda was read to him. No counsel. People stomped through his house in hazmat suits. A plague was brought down upon his house. (Pun intended.) The details are all in the Aetiology article and its follow up, as well as here. There is also a movie that has been made.
Perhaps even this was perhaps understandable. But it has now been three years going on four. Farrell gave up after three strokes and two battles with cancer-- a fine, suspended sentence and turning evidence on Kurtz. Kurtz is still-- still-- being prosecuted. Heck, if they want to see where disease threats are going to be, check here. Or maybe they should be using scientists to help as is the case here.
Anybody that has been following the shenanigans of the Bush administration has seen harassment of scientists right up there with Cheney being a government in his own mind. But the cases above are things we normally expect in police states.
This is what the constitution is all about, to protect ourselves from the government we elected.
--------------------------------------------
Links of Interest
Religion vs IQ
Self Healing Rubber
The Anthrocene Extinctions
Ancestral Human Skull Found in China
A free society is going to take a few hits-- I've said this before. But I'm beginning to think a free society is its own worst enemy. One example from a few years ago is Jose Padilla. Padilla is an American citizen and (now) a convicted terrorist conspirator. His case wound through the courts and he was convicted. The system worked.
Or did it? Padilla was arrested in 2002 as an enemy combatant even though he was an American citizen and arrested on American soil. This was the position of the Bush administration until 2006 when he finally went to trial. That's four years he was held without counsel, without habeas corpus, in violation of the US Constitution. Okay, people might say. But he was guilty.
Yes. But we must remember why the constitutional safeguards were created in the first place. It was because the Founding Fathers had first hand experience of the oppression of their own government. The Founding Fathers were not American citizens. They became American citizens.
A more recent example of oppression in the name of liberty is the 2004 story of Robert Farrell and Steven Kurtz, as told in the October Aetiology. Robert Farrell was working with some harmless bacteria-- bacteria considered so innocuous that they are commonly cultured in high school biology courses. Farrell sent some bacterial samples to Steven Kurtz, a fellow science and artist, who used them in an art exhibit regarding genetically modified foods.
Kurtz' wife, Hope, died of heart failure. Kurtz unsurprisingly called 911. The police came to the house and saw all of these petri dishes lying around and were understandably a little suspicious-- that's what police are paid for, after all. The FBI retained Kurtz on the way to the funeral home the next day. Up to this point, it seems fairly normal-- no weirder than how Boston reacted to the LED displays of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force a while back. Boston authorities went on high alert, got a little ticked at the advertising agency that both placed the LED displays in sensitive areas and failed to inform the police, but then pretty much let it go. I think News Corp was fined.
Kurtz, on the other hand, was held for 22 hours. No Miranda was read to him. No counsel. People stomped through his house in hazmat suits. A plague was brought down upon his house. (Pun intended.) The details are all in the Aetiology article and its follow up, as well as here. There is also a movie that has been made.
Perhaps even this was perhaps understandable. But it has now been three years going on four. Farrell gave up after three strokes and two battles with cancer-- a fine, suspended sentence and turning evidence on Kurtz. Kurtz is still-- still-- being prosecuted. Heck, if they want to see where disease threats are going to be, check here. Or maybe they should be using scientists to help as is the case here.
Anybody that has been following the shenanigans of the Bush administration has seen harassment of scientists right up there with Cheney being a government in his own mind. But the cases above are things we normally expect in police states.
This is what the constitution is all about, to protect ourselves from the government we elected.
--------------------------------------------
Links of Interest
Religion vs IQ
Self Healing Rubber
The Anthrocene Extinctions
Ancestral Human Skull Found in China
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Skepticism
Todays blog comes from Skeptic Magazine and its most visible representative, Michael Shermer.
Both Skeptic and Shermer attempt to fact check ideas. The ideas come from people ranging from the ignorant to the fraudulent but everyone is fair game.
Being always interested in culture and biological evolution, I found Shermer's essay, The Evolution Wars, interesting. Though at first glance it appears to be a review of three books on science and science history, it rapidly becomes a discussion on the role of science and scientists within science.
TEW starts out discussing the debate on sociobiology-- human social and personal action in the light of biological imperatives. This really starts with E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology and involves the essentially political reaction Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin. The problem centered on whether human activities were predetermined genetic operations or if there were extragenetic factors. That sounds like something very innocuous and simple. But for "predetermined genetic operations" you can also substitute eugenics and Social Darwinism. For "extragenetic factors" you can substitute the fight against injustice and altruism. Big, big stuff. My own personal understanding leans towards free will. I can't see a difference between something being foreordained by genetics or God other than scale.
The end conclusion of the review, derived from Jeffrey McKee’s The Riddled Chain, is something called "autocatalysis". That is, the effects of evolution on the organism is itself fodder for evolution. In humans, this shows up (among other places) in sexual selection. The reason some mates are better than others might not be just for reproductive purposes. People choose mates on how close they adhere to the latest body fashion-- thin vs. zoftig, for example. Because they like the conversation or their sense of humor. None of these necessarily result in more children. Strict adaptationists, such as Dawkins, hate this sort of reasoning. If it doesn't result in reproductive success, what good is it? However, when it comes to human survival and dispersal, basic reproduction isn't the name of the game. Societal cooperation is. And, as we've discovered, societal cooperation is all about extragenetic factors. For example, who would have expected that Henry Ford would have been responsible for an uptick in population growth in the USA? He created a mass produced vehicle with a back seat. Didn't benefit him but benefited lots of other people and created a niche for many other people just like him. Any biological model of human behavior somehow has to account for human activities that benefit the reproductive success of other humans.
Of course, the Skeptic article initially frames the debate in terms of Creationism-- skepticism that's the reason it exists, after all. However, it veers quickly into how scientists frame their own debate and how the political debate can be used to create a scientific debate.
Which brings me to the next article, Is God All in the Mind? This is a review of Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili's Why God Won't Go Away, an extremely interesting book that details the neurophysiological responses observed when religious experiences are experienced. Shermer suggests that the experience, as well as the presumption of the reality of the experience, as delusional. I think this misses the point of the book. The history of human evolution continually shows us subverting the original use of a mechanism for new uses-- evolution does this in general. We developed a whole cortex beyond our ape brethren. Subverting a small piece of it for religious experience doesn't seem too difficult to believe. If the cortex can be believed to be a selective advantage then so can the underlying neural process that create this "delusion". Dismissing it as a delusion trivializes it. A delusion becomes a psychopathology and is therefore a disease. Viewing it as something that was selected for gives it a whole different perspective.
Of course, the same mechanism that might be advantageous in one circumstance might be disadvantageous in some other context. One area where this shows up is in catastrophe deniers. Two leap to mind: 9/11 deniers and Holocaust deniers. Shermer has dealt with both.
Catastrophe deniers have the same approach to the problem as evolution deniers: take the reporting of the event and poke holes in it (sometimes faking holes in it) thereby "proving" that their alternative is the only reasonable choice. This is wrong for (at least) two levels: the holes are often incorrect and the presented alternative isn't the only option.
Shermer takes apart the 9/11 conspiracy model beautifully here. Shermer is now on a book tour for an unrelated book but that didn't stop the "truthers" from pursuing him. You can see that here.
Shermer also took on the Holocaust deniers. He, in fact, wrote a whole book on it, Denying History, of which you can find an excerpt here. and additional information here. I've not read the entire book but I did read the excerpts and I found myself disappointed. The Holocaust is narrowly defined to be the extermination approximately six million Jews by the Nazis-- as horrible a thing as has happened in human history. However, there were an additional approximately five million other groups also murdered. From his excerpt and the endorsements, I gather that Shermer did not address the additional crimes.
This bothers me. Holocaust deniers deny more than just the murder of Jews-- though they rarely realize it. To narrowly dismiss the deniers of the Holocaust as opposed to the denial of all the murders is a denial in and of itself.
Of course, I should read the book completely. It may be much more complete than the excerpts and endorsements suggest. Still, the two pages are on Shermer's website. It seems incumbent on him to be thorough.
Both Skeptic and Shermer attempt to fact check ideas. The ideas come from people ranging from the ignorant to the fraudulent but everyone is fair game.
Being always interested in culture and biological evolution, I found Shermer's essay, The Evolution Wars, interesting. Though at first glance it appears to be a review of three books on science and science history, it rapidly becomes a discussion on the role of science and scientists within science.
TEW starts out discussing the debate on sociobiology-- human social and personal action in the light of biological imperatives. This really starts with E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology and involves the essentially political reaction Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin. The problem centered on whether human activities were predetermined genetic operations or if there were extragenetic factors. That sounds like something very innocuous and simple. But for "predetermined genetic operations" you can also substitute eugenics and Social Darwinism. For "extragenetic factors" you can substitute the fight against injustice and altruism. Big, big stuff. My own personal understanding leans towards free will. I can't see a difference between something being foreordained by genetics or God other than scale.
The end conclusion of the review, derived from Jeffrey McKee’s The Riddled Chain, is something called "autocatalysis". That is, the effects of evolution on the organism is itself fodder for evolution. In humans, this shows up (among other places) in sexual selection. The reason some mates are better than others might not be just for reproductive purposes. People choose mates on how close they adhere to the latest body fashion-- thin vs. zoftig, for example. Because they like the conversation or their sense of humor. None of these necessarily result in more children. Strict adaptationists, such as Dawkins, hate this sort of reasoning. If it doesn't result in reproductive success, what good is it? However, when it comes to human survival and dispersal, basic reproduction isn't the name of the game. Societal cooperation is. And, as we've discovered, societal cooperation is all about extragenetic factors. For example, who would have expected that Henry Ford would have been responsible for an uptick in population growth in the USA? He created a mass produced vehicle with a back seat. Didn't benefit him but benefited lots of other people and created a niche for many other people just like him. Any biological model of human behavior somehow has to account for human activities that benefit the reproductive success of other humans.
Of course, the Skeptic article initially frames the debate in terms of Creationism-- skepticism that's the reason it exists, after all. However, it veers quickly into how scientists frame their own debate and how the political debate can be used to create a scientific debate.
Which brings me to the next article, Is God All in the Mind? This is a review of Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili's Why God Won't Go Away, an extremely interesting book that details the neurophysiological responses observed when religious experiences are experienced. Shermer suggests that the experience, as well as the presumption of the reality of the experience, as delusional. I think this misses the point of the book. The history of human evolution continually shows us subverting the original use of a mechanism for new uses-- evolution does this in general. We developed a whole cortex beyond our ape brethren. Subverting a small piece of it for religious experience doesn't seem too difficult to believe. If the cortex can be believed to be a selective advantage then so can the underlying neural process that create this "delusion". Dismissing it as a delusion trivializes it. A delusion becomes a psychopathology and is therefore a disease. Viewing it as something that was selected for gives it a whole different perspective.
Of course, the same mechanism that might be advantageous in one circumstance might be disadvantageous in some other context. One area where this shows up is in catastrophe deniers. Two leap to mind: 9/11 deniers and Holocaust deniers. Shermer has dealt with both.
Catastrophe deniers have the same approach to the problem as evolution deniers: take the reporting of the event and poke holes in it (sometimes faking holes in it) thereby "proving" that their alternative is the only reasonable choice. This is wrong for (at least) two levels: the holes are often incorrect and the presented alternative isn't the only option.
Shermer takes apart the 9/11 conspiracy model beautifully here. Shermer is now on a book tour for an unrelated book but that didn't stop the "truthers" from pursuing him. You can see that here.
Shermer also took on the Holocaust deniers. He, in fact, wrote a whole book on it, Denying History, of which you can find an excerpt here. and additional information here. I've not read the entire book but I did read the excerpts and I found myself disappointed. The Holocaust is narrowly defined to be the extermination approximately six million Jews by the Nazis-- as horrible a thing as has happened in human history. However, there were an additional approximately five million other groups also murdered. From his excerpt and the endorsements, I gather that Shermer did not address the additional crimes.
This bothers me. Holocaust deniers deny more than just the murder of Jews-- though they rarely realize it. To narrowly dismiss the deniers of the Holocaust as opposed to the denial of all the murders is a denial in and of itself.
Of course, I should read the book completely. It may be much more complete than the excerpts and endorsements suggest. Still, the two pages are on Shermer's website. It seems incumbent on him to be thorough.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
The Tuesday After
Went to Boskone last weekend. One of the nice things about science fiction conventions is not only do science fiction writers get a bit of a stroke, there is usually a lot of science on panels. The only thing I regret was finding out today that the AAAS had an open public day I didn't know about. So it goes. "My ancestors spent 3.8 billion years evolvingout of the primordial ooze and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
But despite the dystopian nature of a lot of SF novels and stories (mine included) there's always this unrelenting optimism and excitement. A "Gee, isn't this neat" feeling. It also reinforces my understanding of the SF writer's mind as the only profession where all that stuff in the mental attic actually comes into use. After all, what other sort of person would bring together Digital Rights Management and interstellar colonization?
So: I came back in today and find the following articles come across my desk.
While we would like to think that Mars (or, actually, anywhere other than Earth) might have once harbored life it's not as likely as it once was. A recent report report from NASA suggests the ancient Martian seas were likely too salty. Martians invaded Grovers Mills back in the thirties for the fresh water. Unfortunately, they picked New Jersey.
From the AAAS, Nobel Intent gives us the JPL take on the Golden Age of Robots. Which is now, if you're in space. We're not going to be seeing Robby running down the street anytime soon but if you're going to Saturn, Robby's your man.
Robots are always defined in societal consciousness in contrast to humans. In this, they are a sort of German Cabinet of Miracles, exposing our own entrails by either lacking or mimicking them. Enter a real such cabinet in this article. These were models, drawings, etc., of anatomy. Imagine a reclining Venus, Botticelli-like, not only nude but with her entrails spread for your examination.
Statistical mechanics are being used to understand the brain. Another AAAS paper, brought to us by Nobel Intent, suggests the same mathematical approach that has been so successful in understanding Quantum Mechanics can also be used to shed light on brain activity. This is interesting since Penrose suggested a Bose-Einstein condensate could be a model for consciousness.
Nature has an article telling scientists they should lobby now for science advisers to the President, whoever that might be. It would be very interesting to find out who each candidate would pick.
-------------------------------------
Links of Interest
The Political Life of Animals
The Music of our Sphere
Math, Science and the Gender Gap
Chimps smarter than a 5th grader?
But despite the dystopian nature of a lot of SF novels and stories (mine included) there's always this unrelenting optimism and excitement. A "Gee, isn't this neat" feeling. It also reinforces my understanding of the SF writer's mind as the only profession where all that stuff in the mental attic actually comes into use. After all, what other sort of person would bring together Digital Rights Management and interstellar colonization?
So: I came back in today and find the following articles come across my desk.
While we would like to think that Mars (or, actually, anywhere other than Earth) might have once harbored life it's not as likely as it once was. A recent report report from NASA suggests the ancient Martian seas were likely too salty. Martians invaded Grovers Mills back in the thirties for the fresh water. Unfortunately, they picked New Jersey.
From the AAAS, Nobel Intent gives us the JPL take on the Golden Age of Robots. Which is now, if you're in space. We're not going to be seeing Robby running down the street anytime soon but if you're going to Saturn, Robby's your man.
Robots are always defined in societal consciousness in contrast to humans. In this, they are a sort of German Cabinet of Miracles, exposing our own entrails by either lacking or mimicking them. Enter a real such cabinet in this article. These were models, drawings, etc., of anatomy. Imagine a reclining Venus, Botticelli-like, not only nude but with her entrails spread for your examination.
Statistical mechanics are being used to understand the brain. Another AAAS paper, brought to us by Nobel Intent, suggests the same mathematical approach that has been so successful in understanding Quantum Mechanics can also be used to shed light on brain activity. This is interesting since Penrose suggested a Bose-Einstein condensate could be a model for consciousness.
Nature has an article telling scientists they should lobby now for science advisers to the President, whoever that might be. It would be very interesting to find out who each candidate would pick.
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Links of Interest
The Political Life of Animals
The Music of our Sphere
Math, Science and the Gender Gap
Chimps smarter than a 5th grader?
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