Providing Data for a world that makes decisions based on beer can labels
Reimagined and Revamped. Fighting the spread of nonsense often feels like a Sisyphean task. However, the joy is in making the information available, not the hope of conversion.
His results were impressive (particularly after a mention on PZ's site!). He raised thousands of dollars for her to be able to put UV filters on her windows so she could actually leave her room and live in her house.
Recently, and simultaneously, a group in Wyoming who I have been involved with, decided they needed help. The groups name is Stop Drilling - Save the Bridger-Teton National forest. They are a grassroots effort to try to prevent the oil and gas industry from digging up the BT national forest.
If you have ever been to this part of Wyoming, you know it is oneof themost spectacular areas we have in the United States. There are pictures all over the web of this area of the country. To think that we continue to dig up our world for fuel that will continue to hurt our climate is just the height of stupidity.
What do Berlzebub's efforts have to do with gas drilling? Well, his donation tool led me to this web application, sproutbuilder, which I have not seen before. It looked like a very flexible and powerful tool. So I made a sprout.
This is an introduction to the problem. SDSBT's website has far more information. Please join me in helping with their efforts. As you can imagine its a HUGE battle stacked heavily against them. Please donate and seed the sprout to spread the word.
I was listening to the radio today. Turns out one of the most ludicrous religious groups we have, the Southern Baptists are doing something good. They are finally starting to get on the ball with climate change. Perhaps I should say some of the Southern Baptists are getting on board. OK, Kudos to you guys for actually trying to rouse your own members to do something constructive, even if its for ridiculous reasons (you know like SkyDaddy gave you a planet, you better take care of it).
I dont care if Stephen Pinker writes off our actions towards global warming as simply moralizing an issue. The fact of the matter is that there is tons of data there to support the theory, and lots of conflicting data to prevent other theories from coming into play. I first wrote about it here and wont rehash global warming in this post.
One their declaration page, they discuss why members should pay attention and act towards climate change. After a bunch of bible stuff they come to this:
We have recently engaged in study, reflection and prayer related to the challenges presented by environmental and climate change issues. These things have not always been treated with pressing concern as major issues. Indeed, some of us have required considerable convincing before becoming persuaded that these are real problems that deserve our attention. But now we have seen and heard enough to be persuaded that these issues are among the current era’s challenges that require a unified moral voice.
By "seen and heard enough to be persuaded" you mean "Science has provided you with enough data to be persuaded", don't you. Certainly God didn't tell you, did he? Was there something in the Bible about CO2 concentrations? Was there a letter from one of the disciples about greenhouse gasses? The only way you got 'enough' was from scientific observation, hypothesis generation and verification. This is the scientific method, in short, that you rail against in virtually every other aspect of our civilization.
There are four statements by which these folks support their responsibility towards caring for the earth. It is almost comical (if it weren't so sad) that these are required in order to convince their own members to start cleaning up after themselves and live in a way that doesnt increase suffering around the world.
The first statement is pretty much just fluff. It just goes along with the normal "God said it, I beleive it" sort of stuff, then they quote mine the bible to support the idea that the God followers have to care for an protect the planet.
The second statement has some fun stuff in it.
We recognize that we do not have any special revelation to guide us about whether global warming is occurring and, if it is occurring, whether people are causing it. We are looking at the same evidence unfolding over time that other people are seeing.
Once again, it is made clear that none of this effort is from some communication from God. The only 'evidence unfolding' is that from scientists and scientific observation.
We recognize that if consensus means unanimity, there is not a consensus regarding the anthropogenic nature of climate change or the severity of the problem. There is general agreement among those engaged with this issue in the scientific community. A minority of sincere and respected scientists offer alternate causes for global climate change other than deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels.
If consensus means unanimity, then we dont know anything. There is not one subject considered by man that has a unanimous consensus, there are always a few wackjobs out there. This includes interpretations of the bible, which has no consensus. So once again, points for correctness on how to recognize consensus and how consensus supported by evidence is not a bad thing.
Then, ping! Out to left field!
Unlike abortion and respect for the biblical definition of marriage, this is an issue where Christians may find themselves in justified disagreement about both the problem and its solutions.
There are no christians who support a womens right to choose? There are no christians who support the idea that the government should not be deciding religious matters? There are no christians who are gay? Laughable, but not really important or even on topic, so lets move on.
Yet, even in the absence of perfect knowledge or unanimity, we have to make informed decisions about the future. This will mean we have to take a position of prudence based partly on science that is inevitably changing. We do not believe unanimity is necessary for prudent action. We can make wise decisions even in the absence of infallible evidence.
Based partly on science? What is the other part? You already made clear that god has nothing to do with this except telling you to take care of the planet. For all you know, he meant he wanted you to plant apple trees everywhere to make up for the lost apple.
Though the claims of science are neither infallible nor unanimous, they are substantial and cannot be dismissed out of hand on either scientific or theological grounds.
More points for correctness. Note, with time, the claims of science become less and less fallible as both more evidence become available and scientific theories become more accurate. With more observation we do not see less unanimity, we see more. The global warming issues has now been around for a few decades, only in the last 20 years have we been able to use the observations we have assembled to throw out many hypotheses (including the "nothing is happening" hypothesis) and have a very very strong greenhouse gas emission theory.
Statement three is mostly more bible blather, however there is this part:
The consequences of these problems will most likely hit the poor the hardest, in part because those areas likely to be significantly affected are in the world’s poorest regions. Poor nations and individuals have fewer resources available to cope with major challenges and threats.
This is right on. The reason ignoring global warming is immoral is because it increases suffering around the world. Sadly, and this is why God is just a jokester, it acts exactly how the southern baptists describe, the hardest hit will be the poorest nations with the fewest resources (for the most part). Even in rich nations, the economies will suffer tremendously, and who gets hit the hardest with worsening economies? Yup! You guessed it, the poor and needy. What societal population around the world is the largest? Yup! once again, correct! The poor. Acting in a way that increases your personal and communal greenhouse gas emissions directly acts towards increased suffering around the world.
Statement four spends a bunch of time on abortion again (hello! abortion is primarily due to unwanted pregnancy, help stop that and you are doing more to stop abortion than any law can, focus people, focus!). The rest of the statement basically says the time is now and they must act personally and within their communities towards helping with climate change. Again mostly kudos to you for this effort. Here is a real moment of clarity:
We realize that simply affirming our God-given responsibility to care for the earth will likely produce no tangible or effective results.
That is right, just like praying doesnt do anything, neither does affirming that god gave you responsibility to take care of the earth. Its a moral, and human responsibility that helps our species (and many others!) to survive.
OK, so while I generally regard the southern baptists as the Taliban of American culture, this is a pretty good step forward.
Now since you have made the step forward with regard to climate change, how about making the same exact step forward with regard to evolution. Not only is the mechanism by which acceptance of it exactly the same, the evidence base is even larger and longer! If you can finally accept scientific evidence with regard to climate change, you can accept scientific evidence, period. Lets get on board with your evolution, your germ theory and vaccines, your stem cell use, your genetic research and your nanotechnology. Or is that asking too much at once?
If you live in a cave and have not heard, the Governor of my state, Elliot Spitzer, just got caught up in a prostitution ring. The specifics are not clear. Without saying exactly what he did, with whom and how much it cost, Spitzer just apologized for doing something wrong.
"I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself," he said. "I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family."
Shocked
For those of you who are not from this state, Mr. Spitzer has a really incredible background. He was our attorney general and really did a good job, I believe as good a job as can be expected, of creating fairness and reducing immorality (with respect to a population, not arbitrary interpretations from an outdated book). He came to office with as good a resume as you could expect form a governor. He was also expected to be a bit kick ass. He made no qualms about having a strong hand with out assembly and senate, something badly needed here in NY.
He made a few forgivable political errors this summer. Forgivable, not in that it is OK that he did these things, just that they looked like same old run of the mill political nonsense to me.
But now, this prostitution thing. It was just shocking, I literally could not believe it. How could someone, on the right side of so many issues, with the right foresight on so many things, do something so incredibly stupid. I literally could not believe that this could happen. It would be like finding Senator Obama in a porn video. I just didn't seem to fit.
Disappointed
Don't get me wrong. Thousands of men pay prostitutes. To me, as long as both parties in that relationship are consenting, and hold up their ends of the deal, I dont really think it that big of a deal. Its pretty much been a fact of life forever. I wish we could stop it, but this is yet another thing that wont go away by making it illegal. To be succinct, if you want prostitution to stop, make sure that we are teaching our women how to excel in our society, focus on education and opportunities, explore ways to inure our citizens from sexual images, and lets stop making sex this dirty thing. How? Well I read a couple ofsuggestions before, i'm sure there are more, both things we can do with regard to legislation but others with regard to the way we work in our communities.
That said, I went from being shocked, to being horribly disappointed in Mr. Spitzer. I don't care if he visited a prostitute every week, that is between him and his wife and family. The utter gall, to expect that no one would find out and the height of hypocrisy about the act that he displayed is what bothers me. He busted up other prostitution rings as AG, decrying how despicable and pathetic they were. The whole reason I laugh at the Republican party with regard to all the folks getting caught up in drugs, sex and homosexuality is for the same reason: they try to stand on this fake higher moral ground only to think they won't get caught themselves while performing the very acts they are railing about.
Now Mr. Spitzer does the same thing and I am disappointed. I am sad because he represented hope for my state to get out of its political quagmire. He represented a trustworthy, data driven, optimistic new face of our government and then displays only political clumsiness and now, outright stupidity.
Angry And now I am just angry. What an utter waste of time. The rest of this gubernatorial term will wallow in a chasm of inaction, lack of focus and little will get done except the same crap we have seen for the last decade. I'm pissed off because now it doesn't matter who gets elected, if Jezuz himself rises again and runs for governor I will expect nothing (well, if we see Jesus around I'm going to have to re-examine a bunch of other stuff too!). What Spitzer has done was make it so that there is no one who can have a good enough background, a good enough resume, a good enough set of priorities without the possibility of dumbfounding idiocy. At least we knew Bush was a pliable idiot before he got to office.
I realize this is a lot like an emotional reaction to other events in our lives, like accidental death, or unfairness, and loss. And I did lose something, I lost some of my optimism about the possibilities of a great government.
In closing, screw you Spitzer. Step down now, you are done anyway.
Posted Wednesday, February 20, 2008 by
Techskeptic
My daughter is a little over one years old. She likes to play with her building blocks. She takes them one by one, and puts them in various configurations. Sometimes the blocks are on top of each other. Sometimes the blocks are side by side. Some times they make patterns and sometimes they don't. These blocks are between 5 and 10 centimeters on a side. They have colors and patterns and some of them behave differently depending on what they are next to.
In a few years she may be playing with blocks about 10 times smaller, Lego. She make take them, one by one, and put them into various configurations. She may put the blocks on top of each other. She may put them next to each other. Sometimes she will build things into familiar patterns. She may build things that serve a purpose. Sometimes she won't. These blocks are between .5 and 1 centimeter on a side. They have colors and patterns and some of them behave differently depending on what they are next to.
A few years after that she may be playing with blocks 10 times smaller, beads, glitter, seeds. She may take them one by one and put them into various configurations. She may put the blocks on top of each other. She may put the blocks next to each other. Sometimes, she will build things into patterns. Sometimes she will build things that serve a purpose. Sometimes she won't. These blocks are between .5 and 1 millimeter on a side. They have colors and patterns and some of them behave differently depending on what they are next to.
Some time later she may be playing with blocks that are 10 times smaller, paints, flour, confectioners sugar. These blocks will be on top of each other and next to each other. Sometimes, she will put hundreds of thousands of these blocks into patterns. Sometimes groups of the blocks will serve a purpose, sometimes they wont. These blocks are between 50 and 100 microns on a side. They have colors and patterns and some of them behave differently depending on what they are next to. She may even use these blocks to read or write on electronic paper. A few years after this, she may be playing with blocks that are 10 times smaller, soluble powders for making chemical solutions, insoluble powders for making suspensions, fine inks. These blocks will be on top of each other and next to each other. Sometimes, she will put millions of these blocks into patterns. Sometimes groups of the blocks will serve a purpose, sometimes they wont. These blocks are between 5 and 10 microns on a side. They have colors and patterns and some of them behave differently depending on what they are next to.
By this time she may also be playing with other blocks that are 10 times smaller. These blocks will be on top of each other and next to each other. Sometimes, she will put millions of these blocks into patterns. Sometimes groups of the blocks will serve a purpose, sometimes they wont. These blocks are between .5 and 1 microns on a side. They have colors and patterns and some of them behave differently depending on what they are next to. They show up in many of the items she will be using like coatings on the LCD screen of her devices, the accelerometers keeping her safe in her car, or even the solar cells she may have where she lives.
Perhaps by this time she will even be playing with blocks that are another 10 times smaller. These blocks will be on top of each other and next to each other. Sometimes, she will put millions of these blocks into patterns. Sometimes groups of the blocks will serve a purpose, sometimes they wont. These blocks are between 50 and 100 nanometers on a side. They have colors and patterns and some of them behave differently depending on what they are next to. They show up in many of the items she will be using like the microprocessor in her computer, the chips in her Ipod, and the medicines she may be developing or using.
Depending on her field of interest, with some more time she may play with blocks that are even 10 times smaller that that. These blocks will be on top of each other and next to each other. Sometimes, she will put billions of these blocks into patterns. Sometimes groups of the blocks will serve a purpose, sometimes they wont. These blocks are between 5 and 10 nanometers on a side. They have colors and patterns and some of them behave differently depending on what they are next to. They show up in many of the items she will be using like catalysts in a fuel cell she may be using, or as quantum dots that may make her lights more efficient, her solar cells better or to improve medicinal targeting.
If she continues to study and learn about nature, she may play with blocks that are 10 times smaller. These blocks will be on top of each other and next to each other. Sometimes, she will put billions of these blocks into patterns. Sometimes groups of the blocks will serve a purpose, sometimes they wont. These blocks are between 5 and 10 angstroms on a side. They have colors and patterns and some of them behave differently depending on what they are next to. These blocks may be interesting buckyballs or nanotubes used to improve the electrodes in her batteries, make her energy use more efficient, make surfaces harder than diamonds. Perhaps she will make further progress in treating illness and abnormalities with genetic engineering.
Further playing could bring along blocks that are even smaller. Ten times, 100 times, even 1000 times smaller blocks are all around for playing with. Further use of these items can yield (and has already yielded) great strides in energy efficiency, medicine, and new sources of economic activity.
It isn't a fear that someone will create a self replicating nanobot that will turn everything to goo. Its a fear that at some size, the rationale is that we have left the realm human building blocks and are now playing with God's building blocks. I didn't realize God was as selfish with his blocks as a 3 year old at playtime.
Is this the same 65% that think evolution is a nice little story but the real way we got here is a giant invisible sky daddy, waved his arms and poof, in a week, the universe, the world, and all its inhabitants appeared?
We really need to flush organized religion from our society, though education and teaching of morals with respect to humanity, rather than fictitious space gods . I really don't have a problem with people personal beliefs, and for many folks, religion is a path to inner peace. But organized brain washing in the form of religion, often funded by our government, is really continuing to hurt our country, make it less competitive and in the end less secure. The road to happiness and equality lies only in the respect of evidence, not faith. Blind faith will simply allow those who wish to respect evidence and data to advance right past us, soon relinquishing our great country to the sidelines of third world.
Maybe I am not part of the 'in' crowd. Maybe this term has been around for a while, I'm not sure. But I heard it for the first time today. It really hit home with me since I tend to peruse around the blogosphere and see this type of thing almost on a daily basis. For those who have not heard it:
Fractal Wrongness:
The state of being wrong at every conceivable scale of resolution. That is, from a distance, a fractally wrong person's worldview is incorrect; and furthermore, if you zoom in on any small part of that person's worldview, that part is just as wrong as the whole worldview.
This isn't simply one person's worldview with respect to another persons worldview. For example if a muslim and a christian consider an atheists world view, they will simply presume wrongness (and most likely vice versa). However only by using actual data and not accepting things that do not have hard data, the state of fractal wrongness be avoided.
The most frustrating part about listening to (or reading) people who are in a state of fractal wrongness, is that no matter where you examine their view, you simply find more wrong stuff. If you examine parts of the part, lo and behold, more wrong stuff. The funniest part is that throughout it all, they still consider themselves to be expert and infallable. Its psychopathy.
Two encounters I had recently at other blogs with people who were mired in a state of fractal wrongness were John Best at Skeptico's and Justin at Berlezebubs. Its an interesting and sometimes hilarious, read if you can make it through.
I often question myself when I engage in debate with folks like that. It seems to be an obsession I quite enjoy.
While looking up video debunkings of the same books from extant dodo (please see these, they are pretty well done for a shoestring), I found a Strobel video concerning I book I read. Here it is.
Basically, what happened is that some religious person read Ehrman's book and said something to the effect of: 'Oh my lord! You mean the bible is not the literal and inerrant word of God! People wrote it and modified it! My faith is crushed!' [hyperbole mine]
Lee then gives the standard GodBot review of the book: 'Nothing in here is controversial nor new and therefore your faith should not be affected'. He tried to make the claim that all the old texts are dust. Someone clearly hasn't even bothered to visit the Yale library that even has early syrian and coptic versions..We do in fact have some very old and very good condition manuscripts, that have not gone to dust. We have versions that pre-date 600AD. and we literally have many thousands of copies of various manuscripts. The differences between them had to come from somewhere! Certainly the original ones are dust, but that is the whole point of the book, there is no original bible.
What he totally fails to make any sort of statement on is the original complaint of his audience member. Tons of pastors, priests and parent across the country are literally brainwashing their kids with the idea that the bible is inerrant and literal. By doing this, they can pretend the Bible can be referred to as fact, because of course, God wrote it. So yeah, finding out that God makes spelling errors, doesn't know how to correctly translate his text from one language to the next and adds parts to it, should be pretty discomforting to people brought up this way. And this is an awful large portion of America, that would happily vote scarypeople into office.
Further, Lee totally ignores one of the biggest assertions of the book. He pretends that the big controversy was about the Trinity concept. Why didnt he mention anything about the fact that the "Let he without sin cast the first stone story" (John 8:3-11) didn't appear in any of the earliest and best manuscripts, you know, the ones that were closer chronologically to the initial writings? This is clearly an addition, albeit a fine story,
Lee also writes off that difference in manuscripts as a "few spelling errors". His audience member that wrote the email to him could not possibly have been satisfied by that answer. According to Ehrman and others, there are currently more differences between the various historical manuscripts of the bible than there are words in the bible itself. Um, thats a lot of spelling errors.
Ehrman discusses at length about how changes get into the various bibles, accidentally and intentionally. Intentional changes are a result of racism, misogyny and politics, but Ehrman really takes you back to the time. Prominent clergy had their own versions, versions they thought were best and had them copied and distributed. Politics became important while the religion of Christianity was evolving, the result is a version of the bible that 'won', through the political struggles of man, centuries after Jesus existed.
Strobel also tries to reaffirm the major tenets of the Trinity in his video. Once again completely ignoring the evolution of Christianity or any religion for that matter. Jesus didn't die and then all of a sudden Christianity existed. Nothing in any human culture behaves that way. The concept of one god had to permeate (i.e. the rise of judaism and islam) and then the idea of Jesus as God's son( or as God or whatever) had to permeate. Many of the differences and changes in the initial biblical manuscripts had to do with adaptation of the newer religion into the older pagan ones, or vice versa. Much like how when western medicine was brought to China, the doctors insisted in injecting vaccines and medicines into acupuncture points. A quick read of Erhmans other history of Christianity, Lost Christianities goes through this much better, than this book, or my very brief synopsis.
Instead of saying that the bible may be a good guide (something I don't really see, but whatever), but it is not inerrant and that you can still have your faith and belief in God, he simply ignores all this as if he didn't even read the book (LOL, either of them). Sadly, this is the same tact other critics have taken when evaluating Ehrmans book.
It is a great disservice to the humanity to keep perpetuating obvious falsehoods like this. General belief in God or gods is fine for the most part. Most people are not driven to genocide, rape or theft by it. However when making moral statements, isnt it better to subject it to humanity's interest rather than one of many possible sky daddies?
Someone just sent this to me. This guy is brilliant (presuming he made the software). I happen to like video games. Mostly RPGs and puzzle types, not shooters. But this is pretty damn cool.
I had truly intended to write a real report on my trials with the Medis 24/7. Sadly I have never really found time to do a good job of it. So I will just unload the data, finally, and discuss it a bit.
It is truly important to understand the concepts of Power and Energy, if you are going to understand this post and why the hype from Medis is so inaccurate. I realize that to the layman, power and energy are synonymous. But the reality is that these are two distinct quantities. Further a good understanding of energy density and power density will be important as will why these quantities will define a successful product.
The 'report' is located here. Its by far not the best job I have ever done, but at least its out of my head now. Feel free to use the comments to ask any questions or for clarification on any of this. I didn't just make it a blog post because its pretty long with a lot of pictures, and the blog format really isnt conducive to all the data and depictions.
Skeptico pointed me at this overview of a recent study about mercury causing autism. Many of us have already known that ethyl mercury in thimerisol had nothing to do with autism. There has been no data or proposed mechanism to justify that hypothesis. But this myth keeps getting promoted and is often accepted as true by popular culture.
People wasting their money on chelation, hyperbaric chamber therapy, and other nonsense 'treatments' are just delaying true understanding of the causes and treatments for Autism. Further, they are endangering their child with 'treatments' that have not been shown to have any effect, and worse, have not been vetted for possible side effects (although, I'll admit, sticking your kid in a hyperbaric chamber is probably not that dangerous unless it is operated wrong, think "The Bends" from scuba diving).
I have a one year old daughter. I can fully understand how frustrating and saddening it must be to find out your child is autistic (or has any disorder that lower mental or physical capacity). I understand the intense desire to do anything that might help your child not have to suffer. I am also not sure I would be able to let my reasoning remain stronger than my emotion in my efforts to relieve my child of suffering. But while my rational half is strong, I appeal to you to help put this myth to bed so we can focus our time and money toward finding the real cause.
So, to my ten or so readers, please read the whole article. Its very well written. Then please tell people you know to read it. Help put this stupid myth to rest.
My daughter is a little over one years old. She likes to play with her building blocks. Sh
