Culture Wars
tfk | November 27, 2007Billy Dembski, the Isaac Newton of Information, is in trouble. He took an animation that Harvard University commissioned from XVIVO, modified it in various ways (or used a copy someone else modified), put a new title on it, and used it without permission of either Harvard or XVIVO. It appears he requested permission, was denied, and used it anyway. Bad.
Alas, the video of the event gets blurry at the precise moment when it might or might not show the copyright and credits for the video, but the video he used certainly is modified without permission and is used without permission. Both of…
omnibrain | November 21, 2007One of the earliest references to a controlled experiment is from Daniel 1: 1-16 in the Old Testament of the Bible. In this 'experiment' Daniel pits his nutrition regime of "pulse" to eat and water to drink versus the best cuts of meat and the most highly rated wine. Check out the experimental methods and results below:
1:1 In the third yearof the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and besieged it.1:2 And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with part of the vessels of the house of God: which he carried into the land of…
tfk | November 19, 2007Krauze is confused. How could scientists think the extermination of the human race over the course of a few decades would be bad, bad, bad, while thinking that the gradual extinction of the species over the course of millions of years would be inevitable and of no great concern.
It's the same reason that we think murder is a moral wrong, but having a heart attack or dying of cancer is not. Or rather, the reason we treat a 90 year-old dying of lung cancer as a sad part of existence, while we see a 30 year-old dying of lung cancer and think evil thoughts about tobacco companies.
Species go…
tfk | November 19, 2007While the shirt preshrunk is peddling does nothing for me, I can't argue with this:
Now say what you will about zombieism, but at least it’s an ethos. Well, okay — it’s not so much an ethos as it is an unrelenting, ravenous craving for brains.
I feel that way about creationism sometimes. I start to respect the IDolators for their attempts at making inhuman silliness seem warm and fuzzy and serious. Then I remember that they're trying to destroy my mind.
tfk | November 13, 2007You can see the NCSE's official stance on the NOVA documentary about the Dover trial at our website, but I want to add to that. The official stance is that it is "accurate," which skips the part about how ID got its ass handed to it in Dover. The thrill of that victory was getting a bit distant, and it's nice to remember just how badly ID (and the DI) blew it in their first big day out. The documentary does a nice job showing just how badly the IDolators screwed up, but they couldn't pack all of their stupidity into a mere two hour show.
The re-enactments were nice, but the vaguely British…
tfk | November 13, 2007There's a Simpsons episode where Bart manages to make tons of cash off of Homer by betting on the outcome of (IIRC) the chariot race in Ben Hur. "He has to lose eventually," is roughly Homer's response when asked to explain why he'd keep betting on the losing horse.
I keep thinking of that scene as I read the Disco. Inst.'s attacks on NOVA's Judgment Day documentary about the Dover trial. They seem to have hoped that a documentary reenacting the court case would somehow be less embarrassing to the DI and it's senior fellows than the trial and resulting legal ruling were, an error of…
tfk | November 12, 2007One of the frustrating things about reading creationist claptrap for a living is that they get so very much wrong. They get their facts wrong, they draw conclusions from those erroneous claims which would not be valid even if their factual claims were correct, and then they weave it all together by citing people in support of their factual claims or inferences who actually refute both. It gets tiring
Our pals at denialism did an admirable job disassembling the abstract layers of Ben Stein's half-baked attempt to tar evolution with the sins of imperial Britain. Stein is pimping his…
tfk | November 11, 2007In Creation/Evolution circles, the Salem Hypothesis suggests that "In any Evolution vs. Creation debate, A person who claims scientific credentials and sides with Creation will most likely have an Engineering degree." Surveys of the phenomenon suggest that it is a very real phenomenon. Explanations vary, with some proposing the corollary that "An education in the Engineering disciplines forms a predisposition to Creation/Intelligent Design viewpoints."
Then again, the same mindset that drives someone to engineering could predispose them to nutty ideas like creationism. Or Islamic…
tfk | November 10, 2007In an interview with Point of Inquiry, the host asks Behe if he'll clarify whether, "just to be clear, you think the young earth creationists are completely wrong."
"Uh, yes I do," Behe confidently replies. He pauses, the interviewer gathers himself for the next question, and Behe (reaching deep into his rhetorical bag of tricks) adds: "Well, it depends what you mean by "completely.'"
He disagrees about the age of the earth, but agrees that "there is a God behind nature." The ID he advocates is religious, it does not implicate (as he's previously suggested) "an angel--fallen or not; Plato…
grrlscientist | November 7, 2007tags: evolution, politics, education, Kitzmiller, Dover School District, intelligent design, Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial, NOVA, streaming video
Occasionally, very rarely in fact, I wish I had a television, and this is one of those days. I just received an ad from Kate Becker, regarding a new NOVA program, "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" which will air 8 pm on Tuesday, November 13 on your local PBS station (you might have also noticed that they are advertizing this program on this site).
This program documents the war over evolution that came to Dover, Pennsylvania…
tfk | November 5, 2007IDolator MikeGene is confused. On considering mice in which a change in enzyme production results in fast running and a longer sex life, Gene makes two comments which do not make sense in conventionally spoken English. First:
Here is an example where the traits of aggression, hyperactivity, skeletal muscle histology, and even fecundity were altered, but not because of selection. They materialized, en masse, simply as a consequence of over-expressing a single metabolic enzyme in a tissue
Translation: There are evolutionary mechanisms other than natural selection.
Alternate translation:…
tfk | October 21, 2007Reposted from the old TfK because it's fun.
In KU's introductory biology lab about evolution, the students are asked (not my phrasing):
In the vertebrate animal clade, jaws have evolved from cartilage-like rods associated with gills. In jawless ancestral vertebrates, as well as extant jawless species such as hagfish and lampreys, the function of these skeletal rods was/is to support the gills. Jaws function to grasp and chew, their success is notable, as jaws are still present in most extant vertebrates. If an engineer were put to the task of designing "jaws," would the outcome be the same…
tfk | October 19, 2007Chuck Colson has had an interesting life.
During his years as a Nixon goon/lawyer, he wrote the infamous Enemies List, proposed firebombing the Brookings Institution and stealing documents while firefighters put out the fire, and headed up the plan to steal psychiatric files about the Pentagon Papers' leaker. He is on tape joining in Nixon's anti-Semitic tirades. For his role in covering up the Watergate scandal, he did 7 months in federal prison. Shortly before being indicted, he found God, and how runs a prison ministry.
Given his experience with the depths to which humanity can sink, I'…
tfk | October 19, 2007The gang at Billy D's blog really seem to like a website called Science made Stupid. I'm sure you join me in my astonishment that they aren't suing for trademark infringement.
tfk | October 18, 2007Thanks to all your efforts, Senator Vitter asked that the $100,000 he earmarked for the creationist Lousiana Family Forum be given to someone else.
Thank you for your calls and emails to your Senators. If you have time, you might want to call your congresscritters back and offer your heartfelt thanks for helping do the right thing. Folks on the Hill don't get a lot of happy phone call, and would appreciate your thoughtfulness.
Vitter's remarks are below the fold.
Mr. VITTER. Madam President, I rise today to discuss a project I sponsored in the fiscal year 2008 Labor, Health, Human Services…
tfk | October 15, 2007Last month, papers in Louisiana spotted an interesting earmark tacked onto the Senate version of the appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, HHS, and Education. Senator David Vitter (R-LA brothels) had allocated $100,000 for a Dobson-derived group – Lousiana Family Forum. The money was meant to let them "promote better science education."
Who could oppose better science education? It all depends on what, exactly, you mean by "better" and "science." LFF has a long history of pushing creationism in public schools, including drafting a controversial policy in the Ouachita school…
tfk | October 13, 2007Last year, then-attorney general Phill (the extra 'l' is for "lascivious") Kline was sued over his interpretation of a state law. He claimed that a law requiring doctors and other counselors to report sexual abuse required them to inform his office of any sexual contact with a minor child, even if it were just two kids making out. This led to much amusement over his attempts to clarify what, exactly, constituted sex. On the stand, he allowed that french kissing would probably be OK, but had to think very hard about french kissing "while lying on top of each other." He wasn't sure whether…
tfk | October 11, 2007At Creation Ministries International, Don Batten wonders Are look-alikes related?:
My childhood best friend looked so much like me that our teachers, and even our friends, had a lot of trouble telling us apart. ‘Are you twins?’, we were often asked. However, there was no family connection as far back as anyone could trace. The similarity in our appearance was not due to being closely related—or, putting it another way—due to us having a recent common ancestor, like a common father, grandmother, or even great grandparent. It was just a ‘fluke’. … People would assume that because my friend and…
tfk | October 5, 2007The Disco Institute's Rob Crowther is confused. Because the NCSE announced and linked to an ID statement by the National Council for the Social Studies, Crowther seems to think the NCSE has changed its own position.
This really rests on two confusions (two of Crowther's many confusions). First, the flawed notion that the one organization adopts another's position merely by pointing out that the policy exists. NCSE publishes a book full of statements opposing creationism by scientific, educational, religious and civil liberties organizations. No organization could simultaneously endorse…
tfk | October 2, 2007Making Light addresses Ben Stein's descent into hackery, and other such cinematic chicanery. Stein is the star of a new movie the Disco Inst. is touting. To gather interviews, the producers of the film misled various folks about the name and nature of the film, and have produced a gross misrepresentation about the way science works. Teresa Neilsen Hayden explains:
It’s not possible to produce such programs honestly. Chopping logic and falsifying arguments like that can only be done by someone who knows that he or she is doing it. To put it another way: if you know enough about the Book of…