I Will Survive

Dear Denialists

What's with calling me a "liberal" and hating all over me if I happen to use the words "Al Gore" or "carbon footprint" in a sentence? Are you so convinced that global warming is nothing to worry about?

Listen, if I feel a lump in my breast, I'm going to inconvenience myself with a doctor's appointment and a few tests, even though I know the odds of any lump being cancer are quite low. Low probability disasters still merit some attention and preparation, just in case.

We can do a number of things to reduce greenhouse gasses that won't tank our economy. Surely we ought to begin reversing this trend toward ever greater CO2 emissions, even if climate predictions aren't certain.

Consider the potential risks and benefits of your denialist position: on the one hand, if global warming does not cause any major headaches, many will thank you for opposing the imposition of needless sacrifice. On the other, if you're wrong, if drought and famine overwhelm large parts of the planet, you will bear some responsibility for that outcome. Do you think you won't be held to account?

I confess I lack your courage. I say, "I'm not an expert so I'll listen to the experts." With the stakes so high, there's no way I'm putting my ass on the line.

Imagine your potential futures: beyond, "I told you so," will a win taste sweet? I'm not so sure. However I am confident that losing will suck the dog's balls. If you're wrong, the echoes of your denials will haunt you everywhere you go. No one will take you seriously. Many will want to shit all over you and your memory for getting in the way of people who might have done something before it was too late.

So denialist, do you feel lucky?

Ding Dong!

Punked!

Hey Ben Stein, Walt Ruloff, Discovery Institute, et al. I have a question for you: How are you going to deal with the evangelicals once they realize they've been punked?

You've used these people. You've appropriated the mantle of Judeo-Christian righteousness and played upon fears of the anti-Christ to make a buck. Maybe you also had some hope of rallying the faithful politically, as these "Academic Freedom" bills in several states seem to indicate.

But the evangelicals may not be as dim as you imagine. They may notice that your rhetoric doesn't match reality.

Gene sequencing technology is starting to change the practice of medicine. Soon we'll routinely sequence patients' liver enzymes, in order to better select drug dosages. Popular awareness of the genetic code shared among all living things is bound to increase.

People do not enjoy being manipulated.

Newtonists hate kids

In 1687 Isaac Newton published his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. This revolutionary work outlines a theory of gravitation capable of explaining the motion of apples falling from trees and planets moving around the sun.

Newton's theory has dominated the teaching of science in our schools and universities to such a degree, that alternate theories about mass and force are hardly given any consideration. Newtonists will admit that their theory isn't perfect. Yet few academics openly question or criticize Newtonism, as any dissent from the status quo is generally met with ridicule and worse. Try asking a Newtonist about some of the problems with Newton's theory, and you'll soon find yourself ... EXPELLED!

I've met several people who didn't particularly enjoy their high school physics experience. These creative souls just happened to see things a little differently. But were they given equal time to express their opinions? Sadly, no.

In fact these questioners suffered discrimination and humiliation. Their Newtonist classmates would receive comments on their homework like, "good job!" whereas the non-Newtonists would read statements like, "see me after class." The dissenters were warned that if they didn't start towing the Newtonist party line, they'd flunk out.

Hey Newtonists, what happened to free speech? What happened to America?

Very few faculty members at our leading institutions openly admit the problems with Newtonism. For example, Newtonism says nothing about where life came from, or what caused the Big Bang, or what happens when we die. With so many holes in their theory, it's surprising how arrogant and intolerant the Newtonists behave toward anyone who simply wants to hear other points of view.

Newtonists have been teaching our children that larger objects exert more force than smaller objects. A brief visit to any classroom in the US reveals what happens when these ideas are taught without criticism: the average child today weighs a lot more than the average child of a few decades past.

Yes, there's a terrible obesity epidemic in this country. Obesity is associated with diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, early death, and social stigma. Is this what we want for our kids?

Newtonists are forever going on about matter and energy as if nothing else existed. Ask a Newtonist about God or love or morality and you'll notice how quickly they try to change the subject. Many leading Newtonists even describe themselves as materialists! Shocking yes, but all too true.

Materialism and the culture of constant consumption are driving this obesity epidemic. I'm not saying Newtonism alone is making us fat. But I don't think we'd have this obesity problem today were it not for Newton's ideas of mass and inertia.

Anyone willing to question the Newtonist dogma can easily see the dangerous, slippery slope these people want us to walk: Newtonism leads to materialism leads to obesity leads to a whole lot of kids dying.

Hey, I don't have all the answers. But neither do the Newtonists. What right have they to call the rest of us ignorant fools? At least we care about the children.

I science; you science; he sciences

In his article, "Evolution: what's the real controversy?" Josh Timmer compares the manufactroversy of intelligent design v evolution to some bona fide debates among scientists today. Would "teach the controversy" make sense for any of these genuine disputes? His conclusion: no.

I can't argue.

Science is a method for assigning an appropriate level of confidence to claims about the world. It's a skill, like math or cooking. The more you do it, the better you get at it.

You can learn a fair amount of history from TV documentaries. But you won't learn much science while sitting on the couch. Yes, you can absorb a number of interesting facts from well-written science shows. But a collection of sciency facts does not a science make.

Science, like math, is a skill that benefits from frequent practice. Lectures and readings only take you so far. To really get the hang of it, you have to knuckle down and work your way through some problems on your own.

I hear the word "scientific" used to suggest a fashion or style evocative of test tubes, chemicals, blackboards, equations, conservative attire, monotone voice, and mechanical mannerisms. With respect to style, I prefer "sciency" to "scientific." I'd like to save "scientific" for something more useful, i.e. "defensible per accepted rules of evidence."

If I say that a claim is scientific, the onus is upon me to defend that claim using evidence and reasoned argument. But if I say, "well that's what I was taught in science class," I've actually demonstrated a non-scientific basis. This is not to say that a scientific basis doesn't exist; just that my basis is not scientific.

High school students, with rare exception, haven't developed the skills needed to independently critique or defend most basic scientific claims. Discussion of conjectures on the frontiers of current scientific understanding certainly won't grant them an opportunity to do the maths for themselves --i.e., to independently weigh the arguments and evidence forming the basis of each rival position.

When you can't double-check the maths, what's your basis for accepting what you're told? A vague hope that the teacher's got things right? Gosh, isn't that an appeal to authority --the basis for nearly everything that isn't science?

If we confuse kids about the nature of science, if we lead them to believe that knowing science means knowing a lot of sciency facts rather than knowing how to do science, we'll wind up with a generation of gullibles who can be made to believe a claim is "scientific" simply because someone sciency said so.

Oh wait. We've got that already.

Is there an "F" in Moron?

Steve Zara has started a conversation about whether Intelligent Design is science or not on his blog.

Someone pointed out that a specific claim that some biological structure is "irreducibly complex" can be falsified. Therefore, the common assertion that ID is non-falsifiable is wrong.

But hold on. Don't you smell something kinda fishy about this notion of "irreducible complexity"? Perhaps we ought to stop and take a closer look.

When someone declares that a natural structure is irreducibly complex, he's saying effectively, "I have no idea how the hell that got like that." Phrased thusly, it's easy to recognize an old friend: the argument from ignorance.

Notice that the argument from ignorance says something about the speaker, but actually nothing about the object of his remarks.

So yes, I concede that the statement: "I am an effin' moron" is falsifiable.

But I ask, dear reader, does the effort to challenge this hypothesis advance the cause of science?

Hmm. I think not.

Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows

I'm adding Richard Mellon Scaife to my list of wealthy men responsible for the stupifying of America with prolefeed and pseudo-scandal.

Scaife is heir to the Mellon family's banking, oil, and aluminum fortunes. In 1970 he bought the The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. He also owns 7.2% of NewsMax Media, a news-based website with conservative political content.

During President Clinton's tenure in the White House, Scaife funded The Arkansas Project, which had as its objective the unearthing of damaging information about President Clinton.

Remember those wacky conspiracy theories about the Clintons --e.g., how the Clintons worked with the CIA to run a drug smuggling operation in Arkansas, and how Clinton had White House aide Vince Foster murdered as part of a cover up regarding a land deal called "Whitewater"? That stuff originated in Sciafe's newspaper.

In 1996 Sciafe endowed a new school of public policy at Pepperdine University. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr was named the first dean of this school. Yes, that Ken Starr, the Clinton ankle-biter.

Did Ken's appointment by Sciafe look like a quid pro quo for a job well done? Oh yes it did. The controversy over the appointment prevented Starr from taking the position, and in 1998 he finally declined the job.

But time heals all, as they say. In 2004, Ken Starr was picked to head Pepperdine's law school. Woot!

Pepperdine. Say, isn't that where Ben Stein filmed his fake lecture before an audience of fake students in that dreadful Expelled flick? Hmm.

A couple of weeks ago something very curious happened. Two days before Pennsylvania's presidential primary, where the race between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama seemed too close to call, Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune Review gave its endorsement to Hillary Clinton.

Now you say, whaa?

Following the Money

Howard Ahmanson, like Sun Myung Moon, has a lot of money and he's not afraid to spend it on political favors and media time. I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with this, provided the objective was, at minimum, reality-friendly.

But Ahmanson is living in a theological castle built within his own head, a rather strange place where there's nothing wrong with, say, stoning adulterers and homosexuals.

I think when you become a little too rich, people stop telling you that your breath stinks, or your joke isn't funny, or you're boring the crap out of everyone. And thus you slowly morph from something basically recognizable as human into something more like Tom Cruise.

Following the Money is a report published by the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, where apparently not everyone is happy with Ahmanson.

Since the 1970s, charitable foundations established by families with politically conservative views have donated billions of dollars to what the National Committee on Responsive Philanthropy, a watchdog group, has called "an extraordinary effort to reshape politics and public policy priorities at the national, state and local level."

There's too much there to summarize here. But I'll mention one bit which illustrates a familiar deception: guilt by association.

CEPAD ran a network of medical clinics for the poor, as well as a successful literacy campaign, according to Fred Clark, an editor of Prism , the magazine of Evangelicals for Social Action. "That literacy work had won the admiration and support of Nicaragua 's president, Daniel Ortega, and his Sandinista regime. Ortega's praise of CEPAD gave [Diane] Knippers [ed: Ahmanson funded] what she saw as an opening," Clark wrote in a 2003 account.

Although the evangelical churches did not support the Sandinistas, Clark wrote, "Knippers portrayed CEPAD -- and therefore the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society -- as 'guilty' by association. She wrote of CEPAD as a communist front, part of a supposed Soviet beachhead in Nicaragua . No one in this country paid much attention, but the contras did. CEPAD's clinics became targets for their paramilitary terrorists."

Humans are naturally associative thinkers. Rational thought, which is rule-based, impersonal, and self-skeptical, is more difficult. So yes, it is possible to sell nonsense to people simply by associating positive or negative values with the nonsense.

That's what Expelled is all about: associate Hitler, Stalin, smugness, elitism, and black-hearted cruelty with science, and people will feel wary of scientists. Rather convenient if the scientists might challenge something you'd like to say.

The King of America

The King of America is John Gorenfeld's short film about Washington Times publisher Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Moon is one of several uber-rich men effectively inserting propaganda into our news outlets, in order to manipulate the emotions of the general public toward a variety of issues.

Apparently there are plenty of politicians and journalists happy to take this man's money. Look upon the crazy and despair, my fellow Americans.