There are more planets than stars

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Michael

I have long wanted to put forth the point that there are more planets than stars in the Universe. This goes to my contention that it is reasonable, even necessary, to believe that there is copious life in the Cosmos. After all, from the time when Earth’s surface cooled to when life began to appear was relatively short. It appears that all it takes for self-replicating molecules to get going is the right conditions. With so many planets, the opportunities are so vast; it has surely happened over and over again.

But I haven’t been able to make this exact point. I have still made the same effective point, but I had to rely on the trillions and trillions of stars. Of course, plenty of people have inferred over the years, especially the past decade, that there must therefore by billions, maybe trillions of planets. But we need something more concrete. We need observation. And now it looks like we’re there:

Three studies released Wednesday, in the journal Nature and at the American Astronomical Society’s conference in Austin, Texas, demonstrate an extrasolar real estate boom. One study shows that in our Milky Way, most stars have planets. And since there are a lot of stars in our galaxy — about 100 billion — that means a lot of planets.

It could be that the Milky Way is a weird outlier, a galaxy where planets are easy to make. But there isn’t any reason to suspect that. The observations show that we are an average galaxy with an expected array of stars. What’s more, we are seeing what happens around stars. It isn’t just that these giant gas balls form in space and that’s that. No, it’s much more. Most of them come with their own planetary pals. An accurate average of the star-to-planet ratio remains to be seen (they say 1.6 planets per star, but that is probably extremely low), but it is clear that we’re talking about trillions and trillions out there.

None of this changes the thrust of my argument about exo-life, but it does allow me to be much more specific. This is very nerdexciting.

Filed under: Astronomy/Cosmology/Physics | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Rhode Island prayer mural ordered taken down

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Michael

A high school in Rhode Island had an obviously illegal prayer banner hanging on its walls. It opened with “Our Heavenly Father” and closed with “Amen”. Student Jessica Ahlquist pointed out that the school can’t go about promoting Christianity, so they ought to take it down. She made a few direct pleas, spoke with administrators, and made a Facebook page for starters. In other words, she had a perfectly reasonable and measured initial response. So you’ll never – never! – believe what happened next: the Christians and high school administrators were stubborn and said “no”. I know, I know. Who would have thought people who supported Christianity and chose to spend their lives controlling teenagers would be stubborn. I swear, I can’t think of more than three or four thousand instances of stubborn actions from the people who ran my high school.

Anyway. Once the mooks rebuffed the constitutional efforts of one of their better students, Ahlquist sued. And won:

U.S. District Judge Ronald Lagueux rejected the school’s claims that the message in the mural – which opens with “Our Heavenly Father” and closes with “Amen” – was purely secular.

“No amount of debate can make the School Prayer anything other than a prayer, and a Christian one at that,” Lagueux wrote in a 40-page opinion.

And now the school has a short period in which it must remove the mural. This is excellent. No one should be using public funds to promote any particular religion. This is especially true when those subjected to that promotion are impressionable teenagers.

Of course, the school had the audacity to claim the prayer was somehow secular in nature. I can’t help but feel everyone involved knew that was a lie. But even if they didn’t, it’s still a stupid argument. I’ll let the judge take this one:

[N]o amount of history and tradition can cure a constitutional infraction.

Not even for you Christians out there.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism, News, Religions | Tagged: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Here’s something stupid

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Michael

I recently updated my About page when I noticed WordPress has made it so comments are automatically not allowed. They even deleted the comments that were there. And there is no simple option for fixing this idiocy. The only way to correct it is to change the page title url from “/about” to “/aboutftsos” or anything with more than “/about”. I even tried changing it back to just “/about” to see if it was a glitch. Nope. Someone just thought this was a good idea.

Dumb WordPress.

Filed under: Administrative | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

Gays don’t belong at the back of the bus

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Michael

But that’s where we keep putting them:

Frederic Deloizy says his life began the day he met Mark Himes by chance at a birthday party in April 1990.

Himes had recently started a job with Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, and Deloizy was studying at a nearby college. The strangers arrived at the party at the same time, and Deloizy held the door open for Himes, catching his eye.

“It was love at first sight. We felt we belonged together,” Deloizy said.

What followed was a whirlwind romance lived out across two continents, through overseas phone calls and hand-written love letters.

Deloizy, a French national, spent the past two decades in and out of the United States leapfrogging from one visa to another, in hopes of creating a life together with Himes, who was born and raised outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

But 21 years and four adopted children later, the couple — who were married in California in 2008 — is fighting to stay together since Deloizy’s final visa expired in September.

And, of course, DOMA is forcing this couple to the back of the bus. Hell, it’s kicking one of them out of the vehicle all together. How anyone can’t see that this is wrong is beyond me.

I would love to hear some conservative bigot try to justify this. Oh, marriage is for the protection and well-being of children? Then how about we make the lives of the four children involved here a whole lot better? I realize that the emotional and financial well-being of human beings who are different isn’t important to most conservatives, especially those conservatives of the religious variety, but it is nothing short of hypocrisy to want to deny this small litter of kids their parents. It can only be a good thing to facilitate a loving home. That fact is nothing but improved under the presence of children.

Filed under: Rights, Same-sex marriage | Tagged: , , , , | 18 Comments »

Haha, Oklahoma

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Michael

Oklahoma passed some stupid anti-Sharia law not too long ago. Because we all know what a threat that is. Especially in Oklahoma. But it looks like THE FREEDOM HATING EVIL OF ISLAMIST DEVILS is still alive:

A federal appeals court upheld an injunction against a voter-approved ban on Islamic law in Oklahoma on Tuesday, saying it likely violated the U.S. Constitution by discriminating against religion.

A three-member panel of the Denver-based U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the rights of plaintiff Muneer Awad, a Muslim man living in Oklahoma City, likely would be violated if the ban on Sharia law takes effect.

The decision upholds the ruling of a lower federal court.

“While the public has an interest in the will of the voters being carried out … the public has a more profound and long-term interest in upholding an individual’s constitutional rights,” the appeals court said in a 37-page written decision.

I find a lot of satisfaction in this. The law was an obvious waste of time, only meant to fear-monger and scare up a few Christian votes. I hope the few people who take it seriously are scared shitless right now. I really do.

Also, sorry for laughing at your state, Mike.

Filed under: Humor | Tagged: , | 6 Comments »

Unemplyoment bill in SC

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Michael

I can’t say I entirely disagree with efforts in South Carolina to reform how unemployment benefits are paid out. Basically, they want to get people back to work doing something. Some of it makes sense:

A Senate panel advanced bills Tuesday that would require people laid off in South Carolina to pass a drug test to receive unemployment benefits, then volunteer 16 hours weekly with a charity or public agency to keep receiving a check…

Another policy change would require people drawing unemployment benefits to accept job offers that pay incrementally less than their previous wages.

The change means those drawing unemployment benefits must accept job offers that pay 90 percent of their previous wage after four weeks. The percentage would drop every four weeks. After 16 unemployment payments, they’d have to accept 70 percent of their previous income. Once federal extensions kick in at 20 weeks, they’d have to accept minimum wage labor.

I can agree with the volunteer work to an extent. Currently there are companies which state that people out of work for certain periods of time need not apply. There have been movements to make it illegal to do that (which I support), but I don’t know of any state that has actually passed any legislation. Having people volunteer in certain areas would counter some of the concerns of the douchebag companies out there. (I don’t know the ins-and-outs of the bill, but it would make sense to include internships as well.)

Of course, this doesn’t come without its problems. A person on unemployment in South Carolina gets about $235 a week. As a single individual with roommates, I could get by on that if need be, but anyone with kids is necessarily going to struggle. I can’t imagine it would be easy to pay for daycare or a babysitter for 16 hours a week while already on such a tight budget. For some people the SC bill is only going to make life more difficult, thus forcing them onto welfare for longer. That would be counter-productive for everybody.

On drug tests, I think that’s just a stupid idea. Relatively few people on welfare spend their money on illegal drugs, so the whole idea isn’t practical. And for those who do imbibe such substances, the testing costs are astronomical compared to the savings for the states.

On forcing people to accept job offers that suck, there are two obvious problems. First, fuck you to anyone who forces a person to work at a particular place or for a particular wage. Given how fond Republicans are of pretending that taxes are somehow akin to enslavement, I would think they might be more sensitive to forcing people into certain actions regarding their economic well-being. Second, any company that sees a large gap in a person’s work history is liable to intentionally offer that person the lowest wage they know they can get away with. All this does is create cheap labor for businesses by unfair means. If the state wishes to encourage people to get off welfare, they should use the carrot, not the stick.

So, some of these ideas aren’t entirely terrible. I think it’s likely the volunteer idea is motivated by the Republican perception that poor people are inherently lazy and bad, but it does have some merit to it. Indeed, the drug testing idea has a similar motivation, though it has no merit. The forced-work/slavery idea is a terrible one, but it has seemingly decent enough motivations. But then, this is South Carolina. I really don’t expect them to fix any of their problems in a way which resembles anything rational. (Sorry, native South Carolinian Stephen Colbert.)

Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , | 8 Comments »

Thought of the day

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Michael

So, basically, the Broncos won their game yesterday because they won the random coin toss to begin OT. This is why people say the NFL is not run well and has bad rules.

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

Eternal meaninglessness

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Michael

It is often the cry of theists that atheism makes everything meaningless. They equate and conflate it with nihilism, claiming it reduces all of human existence to nothingness because life will eventually end and no one will remember anything. To this I have two responses, one pragmatic and one philosophical. First, let me quote the late Christopher Hitchens in Hitch-22:

It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one’s everyday life as if this were so.

Go ahead. Try and live life as a nihilist. See if that is even possible. See if one’s interactions with others somehow cease to have any meaning.

On the philosophical end, what is this nonsense that assumes that for something to have meaning, it must also be remembered? Of course life still has meaning without some external entity remembering it forever. Saying otherwise is an additional, unnecessary attachment to what “meaning” itself means. Moreover, those who argue that for something to have meaning it must never be forgotten are gaming the issue. They are defining “meaning” itself to mean unending; it’s circular. That is, they are trying to argue that for something to have meaning it must be unending, but they seek to prove their point by effectively defining “meaning” to mean “unending and eternal” in the first place.

So let’s get our definitions and arguments straight and linear. “Meaning” simply refers to the level and sort of value and importance one places on something. I place value and importance on many things, including science and writing. They hold great meaning to me. No one can say otherwise. Furthermore, the fact that I will end does not magically disappear the history of that meaning. It will still have existed because, unless someone has evidence to the contrary, the Universe exists independently of me. That means that every event which has happened, whether consciously remembered or not, has happened no matter what I do, no matter what anyone remembers, and no matter whether there is a god or not.

Now let’s flip the coin. The theistic argument is that for meaning to be meaning, it must also be eternal. This is really no more than a value statement on their part; it is not a descriptive argument of reality and can thus be dismissed as actually being factual. But let’s pretend it is correct. What does that mean?

For something to be eternal means that it has no reference to time. It is not possible to look back on something that has happened because “has happened” holds no significance. This means that it is impossible to compare to events. Indeed, it is impossible, under this scenario, to compare two emotions or thoughts or feelings. Happiness will hold no meaning if it cannot be contrasted with sadness. Anger is incoherent if there is no pleasure or joy. Literally every single human concept is rendered meaningless by the claim that eternity is how something derives meaning. That is, “meaning must be eternal to mean anything” is inherently self-contradictory.

The theistic argument is wrong in its wrongness. First, atheism (which is not nihilism) allows for meaning because “meaning” itself refers to the importance and value placed on a thing or idea by humans (or any conscious being). Attempts to play semantics and redefine “meaning” aren’t going to fly. Second, even if we did allow theists to game the argument, what they are saying still fails because eternity takes all meaning from everything. It inherently disallows and denies reference, providing an incoherent path for arguing in favor of something (“meaning”) which is itself premised in reference.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism, Philosophy | Tagged: , , | 14 Comments »

tigtog doesn’t get it

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Michael

I recently came across an old post from hoydenabouttown.com that referenced an argument about rhetoric I made on Pharyngula. Basically, I was saying that one’s argument should match one’s goals. The sexist goals of PZ and others do not match their goals of making people more aware of what they see as sexism, thus their rhetoric is just awful. That isn’t to say it is awful for their in-group discussions. I expected to see harsh rhetoric from PZ and his followers. That’s what his audience wants, so he delivered. The problem is when they want to appeal to anyone else. No one is going to listen. Try getting an event organizer to book more female speakers by calling him a sexist, privileged pig who wants to take away women’s rights to vote. See what happens. So once I made my argument and everyone thoroughly misunderstood it, I cited Cicero who made the same basic point all day long: rhetoric should match goals. Unfortunately, author “tigtog” of hoydenabouttown.com doesn’t seem to get it:

Using this quote as if Cicero thus obviously advocated politely rational rhetoric is so hilariously ignorant about how Cicero actually used rhetoric in practice to garner an audience and persuade them to his will! Nobody who was actually familiar with Cicero’s most famous successes as an orator could possibly imagine that he was recommending civil argumentation.

(I didn’t actually use a quote, but I digress.)

tigtog then went on to discuss specific tactics Cicero used. None of it got to my point. Again, rhetoric needs to match goals. The times when Cicero used harsh rhetoric matched his goals and spoke to his audience. If he did the same thing in 21st century American politics, he may have been seen as just another asshole who is petty and flies off the handle. Or not. All politics are local, so – as always – it all depends on his audience.

People just don’t seem to get it. I’m all for harsh tones when harsh tones work. I feel they are more honest, so I prefer them. Just look at the hilarious lashing Richard Lenski gave to creationists. The second letter he sent to the morons at Conservapedia was far from nice, but it’s hard to deny its greatness. And, oh gee, look at his third sentence:

I expect you to post my [second] response in its entirety; if not, I will make sure that is made publicly available through other channels.

In his first response he was fairly cordial. He was just responding to a few silly creationists. However, his second response was designed to be seen by scientifically-oriented people. That’s why he explicitly said he would make it public one way or another. So in each letter we see appropriate rhetoric: in the first he answered nicely so as to more easily move on from the situation while remaining professional; in the second he ripped them apart so everyone could laugh. That pretty much nails the sentiments and arguments of Cicero in every regard.

So, again, my argument is simply that one’s rhetoric must match one’s goals. In fact, that was Cicero’s argument. This makes tigtog wrong twice. First, she has implied that I would not advocate for harsh tones. Saying as much is to willfully disregard everything I have said. Harsh tones are great when used correctly. Second, I never argued what Cicero thought was the best or worst specific rhetoric one way or another anyway. That’s just poor reading comprehension on her part.

Oh, and using an embarrassing misunderstanding of another person’s argument as a premise for one’s own argument is also bad rhetoric. I don’t know if Cicero ever felt the need to be explicit on that point, so maybe tigtog can enlighten us all.

Filed under: Language/Rhetoric | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Glenn Beck defines “bigot” correctly

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Michael

I figured Glenn Beck had slithered back into his hole, but apparently he still does and says stuff. For instance, in recently speaking of gay marriage he gave a correct definition of bigotry:

Beck started the conversation off by offering up the definition of the word “bigot” — a term that is often utilized in the gay marriage debate. “The definition of bigot is somebody that won‘t listen to anybody else’s side, because of their point of view…they try to shut down everyone else’s point of view,” he explained. “If you won’t tolerate someone else’s point of view, then you are a bigot.”

His first part isn’t entirely correct – that’s just a common action of bigots – but the part I bolded is perfectly correct. Bigotry comes down to tolerance. I’m not sure Beck is smart enough to distinguish between that and non-acceptance, but is at least on the right track.

Now the next step is for the bigoted Beck to stop being intolerant of equal rights for gays before the law.

Filed under: Same-sex marriage | 1 Comment »

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