Dick Cheney is refusing to stand during Barack Obama’s inauguration.
Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: Dick Cheney, Inauguration, Obama, Wheelchair | 1 Comment »
Tendril in the Night
Posted on January 19, 2009 by Michael
Because I like it.
Filed under: Astronomy/Cosmology/Physics | Tagged: hubble, NASA, Tendril in the Night | 3 Comments »
More Christian Science
Posted on January 18, 2009 by Michael
I’ve been kicking around some thoughts. There’s a lot of pseudoscience out there. It’s bull. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence can tell it’s bull. So I’d like to put forth a challenge. This specifically goes out to Christian Science. Offer me some good evidence that believing really, really hard can heal a person. I’m not talking about spiritual healing. It’d be silly and worthless to seek evidence of something which is actively hidden from evidence. I’m talking about physical healing – something real.
To be fair, asking for evidence of magic is, of course, silly. However, as long as there are people out there making claims – ones which are dangerous – I feel it necessary to ask for some evidence. Given the nature of the people who so readily accept pseudoscience, it may be helpful to define what evidence is not:
- It is not correlation – correlation is helpful, but just because Jimmy got better when you started praying does not mean your prayers did anything
- It is not declaration – claim does not make a ‘miracle’ so
- It is not anecdote – saying Jimmy was healed due to prayer does not offer much evidence; this crosses into my first point
- It is not mystery – because something is yet unexplained by science does not mean God Did It.
These few points I’ve listed are pretty standard. I’d assume something as ‘true’ as Christian Science could surely offer up evidence which held to such standards? Nay, it should be lightyears ahead it’s so real!
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Christian Science, Evidence | 5 Comments »
Gay marriage in Maine
Posted on January 15, 2009 by Michael
People seeking an end to bigotry are pushing for the passage of a bill that would allow homosexuals to marry in Maine, making it one of the few states which does not illegally discriminate on the basis of gender.
“Some have asked if this is the right time,” said Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Trenton, the bill sponsor. “To them, I say, this legislation is long overdue.”
The bill would define marriage as the union of two people, rather than one man and one woman. It would allow any two eligible people, regardless of sex, to be issued an application for a marriage license.
This should put an end to the ‘if you allow gay marriage, you should allow beastiality’ argument. It won’t. But it should.
Essentially, “two eligible people”, as far as the secular Maine government is concerned, are two people of age who are capable of consent. That means 18 and with an understanding of the terms of their secular marriage contract – in other words, non-human animals are not eligible since they cannot consent to or understand the contract. Of course, that’s the legal argument. The more interesting argument is that there is no good reason to deny homosexuals a certain set of rights. There is, however, the good reason of allowing two harmless individuals the right to a complete and happy life.
Gov. Baldacci isn’t so sure.
And while several Democratic legislators stood with gay advocates for the announcement, Gov. John Baldacci released a statement saying he hasn’t yet made up his mind on the issue.
“This debate is extremely personal for many people, and it’s an issue that I struggle with trying to find the best path forward,” Baldacci said. “I’m not prepared to say I support gay marriage today, but I will consider what I hear as the Legislature works to find the best way to address discrimination.”
The man has made up his mind. He’s a politician, though, so he needs to be careful with what he does. Maine is in the better part of the country politically, so he does have the advantage of having a fairly liberal constituency, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of bigots, especially in the north. (To give you an idea of the northern Maine bigotry potential, Sarah Palin campaigned there due to Maine splitting its electoral votes. The McCain campaign thought they had a shot up there. They didn’t, but the fact they even tried is disconcerting.)
Carla Hopkins and Victoria Eleftheriou, of Mount Vernon, who brought their toddler, Eli, to the Statehouse to participate in the event, said they want a secure future for their son.
“The state discriminates against his family and it affects our ability to care for him in very real ways,” Hopkins said.
For example, she said after Eli was born, they had to fight with an employer to get him covered under a health care plan, something that would have been automatic if his parents were married.
This is just one of the differences between marriage and civil unions. Aside from being insulting, they prevent parents from being able to care for their children robustly.
Bob Emrich, a Baptist pastor who leads the Maine Marriage Alliance, said he hopes for a respectful debate on the issue. The alliance wants a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
He said the gay marriage bill is “really bad for society.”
Whoa, back up the irony train. You want to be respectful? Don’t say bigoted things that aren’t true because a piece of literature claims the currently most popular god endorses that bigotry. Then you might have a shot at being respectful. Until then, you’ve done nothing to earn any respect accept insofar as a literary critic deserves respect.
“It’s changing the very foundation of our society,” he said. “It’s going to have a major impact on children. It says something about the importance, or lack of importance, of fathers and mothers.”
Yes, your god forbid children have health insurance and their parents have more complete relationships to reinforce their love. How dreadful.
Filed under: News, Politics and Social | Tagged: Baldacci, bigotry, Bob Emrich, Carla Hopkins, gay marriage, Maine, Maine Family Policy Council, Maine Marriage Alliance, Michael Heath, Sen. Dennis Damon, Victoria Eleftheriou | 1 Comment »
First glimpse of exoplanet atmosphere
Posted on January 15, 2009 by Michael
Taken together, the studies open a new frontier in the study of exoplanets, hard-to-detect celestial bodies circling stars beyond our own solar system.
Barely 300 exoplanets — some of which may have conditions similar to those that gave rise to life on Earth — have been identified so far, though astronomers assume that far more are waiting to be discovered.
Up to now, virtually everything known about the atmosphere of exoplanets has come from data collected by the space-based Spitzer infrared telescope.
But Spitzer will soon run out of the cryogens needed to keep its instruments cool, severely limiting its capabilities.
One team spotted a massive planet many times the size of Earth named OGLE-TR-56b, a so-called “hot Jupiter.”
Hot Jupiters are massive planets — many times the size of Earth — that orbit very close to their stars. Because they are so near, they are believed to be hot enough to emit radiation in optical and near-infrared wavelengths that would be visible from Earth.
“The successful recipe is a planet that emits a lot of heat and has little-to-no wind in its atmosphere,” said co-author Mercedes Lozez-Morales of the Carnegie Institution in Washington D.C.
In addition, it must be a clear and calm night on Earth in order accurately measure the differences in thermal emissions when the exoplanet is eclipsed as it goes behind the star.
“The eclipse allows us to separate the emissions of the planet from those of the star,” she said in a statement.
Filed under: Astronomy/Cosmology/Physics | Tagged: Carnegie Institution, Exoplanet, hot Jupiter, Mercedes Lozez-Morales, OGLE-TR-56b, Spitzer | Leave a comment »
Ancestral environments and reverse evolution
Posted on January 14, 2009 by Michael
There’s been a long debate regarding whether evolution can be reversed or not. The general trend has been that it can not. The idea goes that once one evolutionary pathway has been crossed, it cannot be retraced back to its origins. It turns out that is not entirely true.
Says [researcher] Henrique, ‘In 2001 we showed that evolution is reversible in as far as phenotypes are concerned, but even then, only to a point. Indeed, not all the characteristics evolved back to the ancestral state. Furthermore, some characteristics reverse-evolved rapidly, while others took longer. Reverse evolution seems to stop when the populations of flies achieve adaptation to the ancestral environment, which may not coincide with the ancestral state.
What the researchers did was subject fruit flies to various selection pressure for multiple decades, i.e., they changed their environment over and over. The ‘end’ result was fruit flies that were markedly different in their traits as compared to the original specimens. That’s evolution. Children should understand that. What happened next was the researchers mimicked the original environment of the fruit flies from decades gone by. In response, the fruit flies adapted to those environments, possessing many of the same allele frequencies they originally had. What I find particularly interesting is that they did not evolve exactly the same, but they still evolved in a way that was similar to the original phenotypes. This helps to explain why sharks and horseshoe crabs remain so similar for so long: the gene pool of the population centers around certain allele frequencies because, well, they work. Change may happen – in fact, it certainly does – but ancestral pheno- and genotypes can evolve to such similar future counterparts as to make little difference in show, even though we know there to actually be differences, at least in contigency. It’s a bit like how two people of very different backgrounds and even different alleles can come to have the similar tones to their skin. Their evolutionary contigency, or histories, are different, but the result is virtually the same.
Another point of note here is that evolution can produce similar things, but it will almost never produce the exact same thing. The history of life, if rerun, would be much, much different in all likelihood. When exolife is discovered, we’ll have indirect confirmation of this. Until then, it should be important for people to realize that nothing in biology is inevitable – including humans.
Filed under: Evidence, Evolution | Tagged: Ana Godinho, Drosophila melanogaster, Evolution, fruit flies, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Henrique Teotónio, Historical contigency, Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, natural selection, Nature Genetics | 1 Comment »
Playing with language
Posted on January 13, 2009 by Michael
It’s become quite popular, especially since the release of The God Delusion, for the proponents of religion to throw certain terms on to their secular counterparts. Take for example this excerpt from a recent interview with Richard Dawkins.
So, ironically, you have an evangelistic zeal about this.
As a science teacher, it is an important thing. “Evangelistic” would be an unfortunate word, if it suggested loyalty to some sort of book. It’s loyalty in my case to scientific evidence.
“Zeal” I’m happy to live with.
The zest with which those of religious persuasions thrust terms on to atheists that are generally reserved for their own world views is getting out of hand. The above excerpt is just one example. Pay attention and you’ll see far more. Atheists and humanists are “devoted” and evolution is a “religion”.
These terms can generally be discarded because 1) they tend to just be rhetoric, 2) they tend to come from people who believe in dinosaurs around the time of the agricultural revolution, and 3) they’re blatantly wrong and ill-thought. We should, however, pay some attention because they’re also delightfully ironic.
Evolution is called religious belief. People say “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist”. Blah, blah, blah. That’s fine rhetoric, but it’s also fine humor. What is the point in calling evolution “religious” or using terms related to faith when speaking of atheism? It’s to indicate that these things have little to no basis; those who use these terms are being derisive – that’s the whole point. Faith in evolution is a bad thing because it is merely faith. It has no substance behind it. Of course, that’s patently stupid. Evolution is nothing but evidenced. But these creationists/less-honest-creationists-who-hide-behind-the-lie-of-intelligent-design are correct about one thing: faith is a bad thing. It should be derided. It serves little purpose but to delude people.
I suppose I’m fine with Bible-thumpers calling me a man of faith. I just hope they begin to realize that by doing so they are undermining the very basis for their beliefs in magic and skyfairies.
Filed under: Creationism | Tagged: atheist bus campaign, Evolution, faith, Richard Dawkins | Leave a comment »
Golden Globe people get it right
Posted on January 12, 2009 by Michael
Heath Ledger won a Golden Globe for his role as “The Joker”.
The award for Ledger, who died of an accidental drug overdose last year, was accepted by “Dark Knight” director Christopher Nolan who said the loss of Ledger was like “a hole ripped in modern cinema.”
“All of us who worked with Heath accept this with an awful mixture of sadness but incredible pride,” Nolan said onstage, “He will be eternally missed, but he will never be forgotten.”
It’s quite pleasant to finally see some awards going the right way. It was bull when Brokeback Mountain didn’t win best picture for the Academy Awards a few years ago. Crash was pretty good, yes, but it was nowhere the movie Brokeback was. Regardless of one’s persuasions or beliefs or whathaveyou, it’s difficult to argue that wasn’t a near-perfect movie.
While Ledger should have won for Best Actor in Brokeback, he was lightyears better in the supporting role as “The Joker”. He gave, without any doubt, the best performance I have ever seen, no medium excepted.
Filed under: News | Tagged: Academy Awards, Batman, Best supporting actor, Brokeback Mountain, Golden Globe, Heath Ledger, Oscar, The Dark Knight, The Joker | 1 Comment »
For the Sake of Science 