 | This photograph is supposed to have been taken from inside a plane that has just been involved in a mid-air collision. The plane crashes and everyone on board is killed. The photo was recovered from a digital camera at the crash site. |
| Status: FALSE This is a hoax. The photos are from the opening scene of Lost. |
The Toronto Star reports that James Till and Ernest McCulloch were named to the Order of Ontario.FROM THE land that produced "A Christmas Carol" and Handel's "Messiah," more evidence that Christianity is fading in Western Europe: Nearly 99 percent of Christmas cards sold in Great Britain contain no religious message or imagery.
What is at stake in all this isn't just angels on Christmas cards. What society loses when it discards Judeo-Christian faith and belief in God is something far more difficult to replace: the value system most likely to promote ethical behavior and sustain a decent society. That isbecause without God, the difference between good and evil becomes purely subjective. What makes murder inherently wrong is not that it feels wrong,but that a transcendent Creator to whom we are answerable commands: "Thou shalt not murder." What makes kindness to others inherently right is not that human reason says so, but that God does: "Love thy neighbor as thyself; I am the Lord."Good Heavens! Another deluded Judeo-Christian. And in Boston no less. How do these idiots manage to survive in a town with more than one traffic light?
The atheist alternative is a world in which right and wrong are ultimately matters of opinion, and in which we are finally accountable to no one but ourselves. That is anything but a tiding of comfort and joy.
Professor Behe summarized the argument as follows: We infer design when we see parts that are arranged for a purpose. The strength of the inference is quantitative; the more parts that are arranged, the more intricately they interact, the stronger is our confidence in design. The appearance of design in aspects of biology is overwhelming. The appearance of design in aspects of biology is overwhelming. Since nothing other than an intelligent cause has been demonstrated to be able to yield such a strong appearance of design, Darwinian claims notwithstanding, the conclusion that the design seen in life is real design is rationally justified. (18:90-91, 18:109-10 (Behe); 37:50 (Minnich)). As previously indicated, this argument is merely a restatement of the Reverend William Paley’s argument applied at the cell level. Minnich, Behe, and Paley reach the same conclusion, that complex organisms must have been designed using the same reasoning, except that Professors Behe and Minnich refuse to identify the designer, whereas Paley inferred from the presence of design that it was God. (1:6-7 (Miller); 38:44, 57 (Minnich)). Expert testimony revealed that this inductive argument is not scientific and as admitted by Professor Behe, can never be ruled out. (2:40 (Miller); 22:101 (Behe); 3:99 (Miller)).This sounds very impressive. It seems as though Judge Jones was paying attention. He seems to have grasped the essential flaw in Intelligent Design Creationism and honed in on the connection to Paley. This is one of the reasons why I admired the opinion when it was first published.
Indeed, the assertion that design of biological systems can be inferred from the “purposeful arrangement of parts” is based upon an analogy to human design. Because we are able to recognize design of artifacts and objects, according to Professor Behe, that same reasoning can be employed to determine biological design. (18:116-17,23:50 (Behe)). Professor Behe testified that the strength of the analogy depends upon the degree of similarity entailed in the two propositions; however, if this is the test, ID completely fails.
# 83. Professor Behe summarized the argument as follows: We infer design when we see parts that appear to be arranged for a purpose. The strength of the inference is quantitative; the more parts that are arranged, and the more intricately they interact, the stronger is our confidence in design. The appearance of design in aspects of biology is overwhelming. Since nothing other than an intelligent cause has been demonstrated to be able to yield such a strong appearance of design, Darwinian claims notwithstanding, the conclusion that the design seen in life is real design is rationally justified. 18:90-91 (Behe slides, at 7); 18:109-110. See also, 37:50 (Minnich).There are numerous overlaps between the two documents covering pages 24-35 and 64-89 of Judge Jones' opinion. Much of the opinion is reproduced word-for-word from the Plaintiffs' Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law.
# 84. This is not a new argument, but a restatement of the Reverend William Paley's argument applied at the cell level. 1:6-7 (Miller); 38:44, 57 (Minnich). Minnich, Behe and Paley reach the same conclusion that complex organisms must have been designed using the same reasoning, except that Professors Behe and Minnich refuse to identify the designer, whereas Paley inferred from the presence of design that it was God. Id.
# 85. This inductive argument is not scientific. 2:40 (Miller). As Professor Behe admitted, it can never be ruled out. 22:101. See also, 3:99 (Miller).
# 86. The assertion that design of biological systems can be inferred from the "purposeful arrangement of parts" is based on an analogy to human design. According to Professor Behe, because we are able to recognize design of artifacts and objects, that same reasoning can be employed to determine biological design. 18:116-17; 23:50.
# 87. Professor Behe testified that the strength of an analogy depends on the degree of similarity entailed in the two propositions. 20:69. If this is the test, intelligent design completely fails.
What a patently silly criticism. What does Moran expect, that Judge Jones was going to invent his own arguments? That's not what judges do. When it comes to findings of fact, the judge does nothing more than determine which set of facts presented by the two sides is better supported by the evidence. Having decided that, can it really reasonably be argued that the difference between him being "brilliant" and being something less than brilliant is what percentage of the text he bothered to reword? Of course not.Yes, indeed I did expect the judge to express his own opinion. Yes, I thought the difference between being "brilliant" and being something less than brilliant has something to do with expressing yourself in your own words. Professors can be picky about that sort of thing.
Remember, we're talking about maybe 20 pages out of a 139-page decision. We're talking about a set of statements of fact, not legal arguments, where both sides presented their statements and the judge's job is to determine which set is best supported by the evidence presented in the case. Had he made the very same statements, but used different words to say the same thing, would that make the opinion more or less valid? Nope. Does it have anything to do with how well he understood the issues? Not a bit.Your culture thinks that copying the words of others (or paraphrasing) is a good way of demonstrating how well you understand the issues. Mine doesn't. I understand what you mean by culture wars.
Well Larry, I can answer those questions. The findings of fact were writen by the legal team,working with the various consultants in the case who were helping them on the scientific side (the expert witnesses, the NCSE staff, and even some others in our broader community). Every single one of us knew that the ruling had closely followed the proposed findings of fact.I take this to mean that you were aware from the beginning that large sections of the Judge Jones opinion were reproduced exactly as found in the plaintiffs' document. Point taken. It seems to be common knowledge among Americans that judge's opinions are not necessarily written by the judge. It seems to have been widely known that Judge Jones copied large sections of the plaintiff's document. Dozens of people have criticized me for not knowing this. Mea culpa. I didn't know, but apparently I should have.
There are only two kinds of people who could claim to find this "study" in any way surprising or distressing: demagogues (like the DI) and those who simply aren't aware that this is the entire purpose of filing proposed findings of fact and is absolutely normal. Why on earth do they think those proposed findings are written in the judge's voice? Because it is normal and expected that whichever argument the judge determines is true, the court's findings of fact are going to be very similar to the winning side's findings of fact.Put me in the category of not knowing that this process of extensive copying is absolutely normal in American courts. Put me in the category of not knowing enough about how your culture defines "brilliance" and "understanding of science." I hope this clears up any confusion. I was stupid, but I'm not a demagogue.
What all this ignorant blather, by both the DI and by Moran, comes down to is the ridiculous assertion that once the judge determined which statements of fact were correct and best supported by the evidential record in the trial, he should have reworded more of those arguments more often and more severely than he did, and that failure to do so undermines either the validity of his ruling or his intelligence.Enough, Ed. I never said that the validity of his ruling was in question. I'm in no position to judge the minutiae of American constitutional law. One of the things that I didn't know was that a judge can just copy the arguments of one side and claim them as his own. I also didn't know that in your culture this can be a sign of intelligence, even brilliance. It explains a lot. Thanks for the lesson.
I can understand why the DI takes this position; hell, they have to. What else do they have other than cheap attacks? But I can't for the life of me understand why Moran would join them in their absurd attacks. The DI threw out this rotting carcas of nonsense as bait and Moran swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Worse yet, he's using his ignorant misunderstanding of the legal process as a pretext for attacking the character of those of us who wrote about the trial and claim that we were covering up this absolute non-story.Chalk it up to ignorance, Ed. I was ignorant of the way you do things down there and of your standards for brilliance. I'll try not to overestimate you again.
As I said before, with friends like these...Friends are allowed to disagree. It's healthy. I've just learned a lot about your culture and your intellectual standards. Did you learn anything about mine?
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1902.
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District is a major victory for science and a major blow to those who have tried to sneak religion into the classroom by disguising in scientific garb. But it’s more than that. It is a brilliant, insightful, profound decision that reaches to the bottom of ID and finds it empty.These comments, and others, seemed to confirm that Jones had written this decision all by himself and deserved full credit for his brilliant analysis.
Judge John Jones, a George W. Bush appointee, deserves the praise and thanks of every defender of rigorous, meaningful scientific education. He has taken the time to really understand not just the legal issues, but the scientific ones as well. This decision proves he is a credit to the federal judiciary.
Hahma, B-K., Maldonadob, Y., Schreiberc, E., Bhuniab, A.K. and Nakatsua, C.H. (2003) Subtyping of foodborne and environmental isolates of Escherichia coli by multiplex-PCR, rep-PCR, PFGE, ribotyping and AFLP. Journal of Microbiological Methods 53; 387-399.
There are several different ways of making DNA fingerprints. In the one shown here, DNA is extracted from each substrain of bacteria and digested with a restriction enzyme called Xba I. This enzyme chops the DNA at specific sites in the genome corresponding to the DNA sequence TCTAGA. The result is that the genomic DNA is cut into large pieces of different sizes, ranging from about 100,000 base pairs (bp) to 500,000 base pairs (or 500kb). Since the whole genome of E. coli is about 4,600,000 bp in size, this means the there will be something like 20 DNA fragments produced by cutting with the enzyme.That is why this country has historically been in the vanguard of the global human rights movement. But that lead can only be maintained if America remains true to its principles, including in the struggle against terrorism.
When it appears to abandon its own ideals and objectives, its friends abroad are naturally troubled and confused.
And states need to play by the rules towards each other, as well as towards their own citizens. That can sometimes be inconvenient, but ultimately what matters is not convenience. It is doing the right thing.
No state can make its own actions legitimate in the eyes of others. When power, especially military force, is used, the world will consider it legitimate only when convinced that it is being used for the right purpose - for broadly shared aims - in accordance with broadly accepted norms.
No community anywhere suffers from too much rule of law; many do suffer from too little - and the international community is among them. This we must change.
The US has given the world an example of a democracy in which everyone, including the most powerful, is subject to legal restraint. Its current moment of world supremacy gives it a priceless opportunity to entrench the same principles at the global level.
As Harry Truman said, "We all have to recognise, no matter how great our strength, that we must deny ourselves the licence to do always as we please."
The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, by Francis S. Collins, Free Press, New York (2006)As I rounded the corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ. (p. 225)The language is important. The struggle that faces all of us is a struggle between rationalism and superstition. It's tough to be an atheist and it's easy to lapse into superstition, where you give up the fight and let others do your thinking for you. That's why "surrendering" is such an appropriate description of the event. I admire Collins for being so honest.
Encountering this argument at age twenty-six, I was stunned by its logic. Here, hiding in my heart as familiar as anything in daily experience, but now emerging for the first time as a clarifying principle, this Moral Law shone its bright white light into the recesses of my childish atheism, and demanded a serious consideration of its origin. Was this God looking back at me?The second persuasive argument is the presence in all of us of a God-shaped vacuum. What the heck is that, you might ask? C.S. Lewis supplies the answer. It's the sensation of longing for something greater than ourselves. It's the "joy" you feel when you read a good poem, listen to Beethoven, or view the beauty of nature. The emptiness we are all supposed to feel cries out for an explanation, "Why do we have a 'God-shaped' vacuum in our hearts and minds unless it is meant to be filled?" (p. 38)
This is, or course, where reasonable people will disagree, sometimes noisily. For the committed materialist, no allowance can be permitted for the possibility of miracles in the first place (his "prior" will be zero), and therefore even an extremely unusual cure of cancer will be discounted as evidence of the miraculous, and will instead be chalked up to the fact that rare events will occasionally occur within the natural world. The believer in the existence of God, however, may after examining the evidence conclude that no such cure should have occurred by any natural process, and having once admitted that the prior probability of a miracle, while quite small, is not quite zero, will carry out his own (very informal) Bayesian calculation to conclude that a miracle is more likely than not.So, to answer the question, how does a rational person believe in miracles? By admitting that they are possible and evaluating the evidence based on this prior assumption. Cute, eh? It's called "begging the question"—at least it used to be called that before the phrase acquired a new, very literal, meaning. In the world of the theist, it is rational to assume the answer to the question you're trying to answer in the first place. What a funny world.
All of this simply goes to say that a discussion about the miraculous quickly devolves to an argument about whether or not one is willing to consider any possibility whatsoever of the supernatural.
When PZ Myers and I visited London in October, I took him to the cafeteria in the crypt of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields. We ate our lunch on top of the tombs of medieval Londoners. There was a lot of construction going on behind the church.
Okay, so "taking over" may be a bit of an exaggeration. But according to the Washington Post black squirrels now make up 5-25% of the squirrel population. They are descended from a small number of Canadian black squirrels released about 100 years ago.Scientists say it's a real-life example of natural selection at work, which has rolled on for a century here without much public notice.The IDiots have jumped all over this one and for once they may be partly right.
The government seems to have made tremendous strides in its War on Fat. In 2004 researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said “poor diet and physical inactivity” were killing 400,000 Americans a year, a number that was widely presented as an estimate of “obesity-related deaths.” Just one year later, the estimate had been reduced to about 100,000. To cut the death toll by 75 percent in the space of a year, the anti-fat crusaders must be doing something right.
“Nearly all the warnings about obesity are based on little more than loose statistical conjecture,” says Oliver, adding that there is no plausible biological explanation for most of the asserted causal links between fatness and disease. “The health risks associated with increasing weight are generally small,” says Campos, and “these risks tend to disappear altogether when factors other than weight are taken into account.” For example, “a moderately active larger person is likely to be far healthier than someone who is svelte but sedentary.” Campos cites research finding that obese people “who engage in at least moderate levels of physical activity have around one half the mortality rate of sedentary people who maintain supposedly ideal weight levels.” Lest you think these facts have been noticed only by political scientists and law professors, Campos and Oliver draw heavily on the work of biomedical researchers such as Case Western nutritionist Paul Ernsberger, University of Virginia physiologist Glenn Gaesser (author of the 1996 book Big Fat Lies: The Truth About Your Weight and Your Health), and Steven Blair, the physician/epidemiologist who heads the Dallas-based Cooper Institute.I don't know if Campos and Oliver are correct but what they say makes sense to me. The whole obesity epidemic nonsense has a bad smell. It doesn't make sense to this skeptic. Here are some examples of distorted science.
Yet none of this contradicts the main scientific point of these two books, which is that the public health establishment, abetted by a credulous and alarmist press, has greatly exaggerated both the strength of the evidence linking fatness to sickness and the level of risk involved. Oliver cites a 2004 New York Times story headlined “Death Rate From Obesity Gains Fast on Smoking,” based on the highly implausible 400,000-death estimate that was later repudiated by the CDC. He also mentions a 2003 A.P. article that announced “Obesity at Age 20 Can Cut Life Span by 13 to 20 Years.” He notes that “the obesity in question was at a BMI of 45 [305 pounds for an average-height man], which affects less than 1 percent of the population.” In a passage that could have been lifted from a critique of U.S. drug policy, Campos says “the basic strategies employed by those who profit from this war are to treat the most extreme cases as typical, to ignore all contrary data, and to recommend ‘solutions’ that actually cause the problem they supposedly address.”We need more debate on this issue. We need more skeptics.
The latest opinion poll in Canada shows the Liberals (red) ahead of the Troglodytes (blue) in every part of Canada except Alberta. Almost 60% of the cowboys would vote for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives. 
I've been arguing that the Three Domain Hypothesis has been refuted. It is effectively dead even though most people don't realize it. It continues to be touted in the textbooks in spite of the fact that experts have rejected it as an accurate model of early evolution.
As usual, Ford Doolittle offers an insightful analysis of the controversy in his paper "If the Tree of Life Fell, Would We Recognize the Sound?" He points out that different genes give different trees at the deepest level and this is a serious problem. One that can't be ignored. Are there some "hard core" genes that have not been transferred during the exchange phase of evolution, where gene swapping was common? If so, these could reveal the "true" deep phylogeny?There may be a real catch-22 in assessing how much LGT as orthologoous replacement afflicts the core at depth, but given that we know that orthologous replacement can happen and that rampant LGT drives genome (gene content) evolution at the strain-in-a-species level, there is no justification in retaining vertical descent as the null hypothesis and requiring stronger proof for LGT. Rather (at least with greater fairness), we might recast the notion of the existence of a stable core as a hypothesis that needs to be tested, not a truth that needs further elaboration. If the hypothesis is that there is a cadre of genes that have never been exchanged (and that thus track organismal phylogeny), and the test of it requires that there indeed be such universally shared genes that show the same phylogeny, then this hypothesis has yet to be proven.What about the "complexity hypothesis?" This hypothesis refers to a core of genes that have never been transferred from one species to another because they are all part of a large complex. Presumably, the pieces of this complex are not interchangeable so new genes cannot be accepted. Thus, this core represents the true phylogeny of the lineage and all other genes have been acquired later.
Perhaps there is a plurality (most favored) pattern, or one tracked by several genes that we consider important, but this has yet to be proven. In any case, there is no compelling reason why this plurality pattern needs to correspond, by any simple mapping, to the tree of speciations and cell divisions. We cannot infer a unique tree of organisms from the pattern of relationships among genomes without making further assumptions about evolutionary processes that are just that: still-unproven assumptions. We have, for several decades, thought that our job was to uncover the structure of a Tree of Life, whose reality we did not question. But really, what we have been doing is testing Darwin's hypothesis that a tree is the appropriate representation of life's history, back to the beginning. Like any hypothesis, it could be false.
The latest (Dec. 9, 2006) issue of New Scientist has a remarkably stupid series of articles written by so-called "lone voices." Who are these "lone voices" and why do they get a soapbox in New Scientist? Here's what the editors say, ...Science works by consensus, right? Well, not entirely. Throughout the history of scientific endeavour there has been a scattering of people who, for good or ill, have swum against the tide.The answer to that one is easy. Yes, we can afford to be without some of them; notably, the Young Earth Creationist (YEC) John Baumgardner.
In this special series of premium articles, we look at these lone voices and what they have brought to our understanding of the world. Harry Collins (see How we know what we know) and Bob Park (see Watch out for the UFOs) start by offering their ideas on how to distinguish true genius from the ravings of a crank.
We then speak to five people who represent very different kinds of outsider: a star who led the pack (David Deutsch, free feature: At play in the multiverse); a non-scientist making bigger waves than the professionals (Jane Elliott, An unforgettable lesson); an experimentalist who put his own health on the line to get heard (Barry Marshall, Hard to swallow); a scientist doing respected work in the context of unlikely beliefs (John Baumgardner, God said, let the dry land appear…); and a genius who is causing a stir outside his original field (Brian Josephson, Take nobody's world for it).
Each offers a unique challenge to the scientific status quo. Can we afford to be without any of them?
TIME was when all scientists were outsiders. Self-funded or backed by a rich benefactor, they pursued their often wild ideas in home-built labs with no one to answer to but themselves. From Nicolaus Copernicus to Charles Darwin, they were so successful that it's hard to imagine what modern science would be like without them.The concept is valid. There have been genuine maverick scientists who swam against the tide and won over the scientific community after a hard-fought battle. Peter Mitchell, Lynn Margulis, Carl Woese, and Stephen Jay Gould are good examples. Unfortunately, the editors of New Scientist have destroyed what little credibility they had left by picking Charles Dawrin as an example. What were they thinking? Darwin was 100% establishment. Within a couple of years of publishing Origin of Species, the scientific/intellectual community had been converted. He had a good idea, he spoke, they listened.
Their isolated, largely unaccountable ways now seem the antithesis of modern science, with consensus and peer review at its very heart. Yet the "outsider" tradition persists. Think of Alfred Wegener, the father of plate tectonics and, more controversially, of Gaia theorist James Lovelock. Both pursued their theories in the face of strong opposition from their peers.
Such mavericks can be crucial to progress (see Lone Voices), but are they a dying breed?
You bet they will!
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1930.
One of our students just gave a seminar on molecular dynamics simulations. She's attempting to model an important biochemical process as part of her thesis project. She showed us the image above from a website on Molecular Dynamics Simulations and I thought I'd share it with the rest of you. It shows the three basic ways in which chemical bonds can vary; they can stretch, they can rotate, and the bond angle can change.
"Academic Matters" is a journal of higher education published by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA). The Winter 2006 issue contains several articles on a subject that's dear to my heart—the role of new technolgy in university teaching.But when all is said and done, how much has information and communications technology changed university life? What has been its effect on faculty and students? Has it made a meaningful difference in the quality and quantity of learning that takes place on campuses?Heather Kanuka is a Professor at Athabaska University, a school that has specialized in e-learning. She cautions that there is little empirical data to support the grandiose claims of e-learning [Has e-learning delivered on its promise?]. There's no evidence that it is as effective as standard lectures, and there's no evidence that it is even cost-effective. Peter Sawchuck (University of Toronto) cautions us to keep e-learning in its proper place [Curbing our enthusiasm: the underbelly of educational technology.
