A friend of mine just had a baby. She is currently feeling all the awe, wonder, fulfilment, happiness, nervousness, and fallibility that goes along with having your first child. I experienced the very same thing. Its an incredible wonderful set of emotions that you have with a new child.

We got to talking about many subjects including diapers, baby poop, breast milk, and of course vaccinations. If you have read my blog before you probably know I am pretty consumed with assertions that require evidence. Its why I think "ancient chinese medicine" is nonsense, and claims from companies about their products, or God. If you make a claim, you should be prepared to back it up.

Granted I fully understand two things about the human species. First, we crave answers to our questions. Why did my son die? Why did my mother get cancer? Why did that bad person do something horrible to my friend? Many poeple are inclined to beleive in god's needs or challenges, but if you are not you may be prone to pseudoscientific answers from clods who look to gain from selling nonsense either to you directly or to news outlets, or as legal fees.

Second big thing is that no one likes to be wrong. So what happens when no evidence can be found to back up a claim, or worse, conflicting evidence arises (we will see both shortly), well you move goal posts and claim victory. Or you pull out anecdotal evidence. Or you claim conspiracy theories. All of these tactics are employed by people selling nonsense from the antivaccinationists to water dowsers, to astrologists, homeopaths and so forth.

I am no expert in immunology (and neither are most of the mercury militua) but I am pretty good at reviewing information and seeing weak arguments when they are made. This is the only sort of expertise I can offer with regard to my opinions about vaccines. There is a whole field of debunkings possible and I wont do everything in one post. At the end I will provide some links to other folks who have done a great job of tearing apart the claims of the mercury militia.

So lets get started:
Claim: Mercury in Thimerisol causes autism
Evidence: We have been vaccinating more people and the rate of autism has been rising.
Debunking: Here is a study that tries to make this very claim. But that data in the study conflicts with its own conclusions. It shows the rise in autism rates, but sadly for him, and David Kirby the head of the mercury militia, thimerisol is no longer added to vaccines in the US as of late 2002. Its now 2008 and the rates continue to rise in california, and in the entire US, without even a blip in the rate when the thimerisol was removed.

This is not surprising, Canada performed the very same study in 1998 with 27,000 kids in it, same result.

If you take out the thing they claimed to be causing autism and the rates continue to rise, then it wasnt that thing.


Claim: Mercury is a toxic substance that should not be put into the body.
Evidence: Heavy metal poisoning is real.
Debunk: It sure is, but that is irrelevant. Look, sodium is an explosive metal, chlorine is a deadly gas, but that doesnt mean that salt will kill you. Thimerisol is a very good preservative. It forms ethylmercury, which does not bioaccumulate. It is easily confused with methylmercury, a different compound, that does bioaccumulate and is very poisonous.

Claim: chelating my kids makes them better.
Evidence: Kids seem to improve while getting chelation therapy.
Debunk:Chelation (kee-lay-shun), is a process of giving some chemicals to people to help remove heavy metals. This is pretty well debunked here. Basically we are at a place where the claim of the efficacy of the therapy has no evidence to support it, never mind deaths caused by it. But what about the fact that many parents think their kids got better from it? This is a form of confirmation bias. No parent of an autistic child chelates their kid and does nothing else. Most will do everything they think is possible in order to 'cure' their child. So they will use hyperbaric chambers, they will remove casein from their diet, they will try all sorts of stuff, including therapy of various forms. But if the kids get better, then they point to the 'alternative' method rather than point ot the fact the some kids just get better with therapy. Now we have good organizations, such as the CDC and NIH who are taking notes, they are grouping kids that have parents that are submitting their children to all these things, and they have groups of kids of parent who are just using therapy for the most part. Guess what....the improvement of symptoms is virtually the same in severity and in rates.

Whats worse, is that people think they have cured their kids due to administering all this nonsense and then can't understand why scientists aren't beating down their door to see what they did. Its becuase they are providing no good data!

Double blind tests are difficult to do and expensive, but anyone claiming to have a cure, must go through this process to verify this. Here is a good synopsis of what has truly been studies and what has not. It is a disconcerting to see how far away we are from a treatment. But just because there isn't a proven treatment, that doesnt mean that some unprovent treatment with no basis for working is the answer either.


Claim: the rate of autism is increasing it must be something we are doing to our population.
Evidence: The rate of autism is now 1 in 150, with some estimates even higher
Debunk: Yes its true, but that certainly doesnt mean that it is vaccines. It could be flash photography. More importantly one must understand the extent of the spectrum of disorders. On the most mild side, there are perfectly capable members of society who may be a little weird, who may not look you in the eye who are now considered to have autism that were not before. These folks are added to the statistics of people with autism.

further, there has been changes in diagnoses. There are many poeple who, 20 years ago, were diagnosed with mental retardation, or a developmental language disorder, who are now recognized as autistic. This is known as diagnostic substitution.

Claim: People who don't have vaccines don't get autism
Evidence: ?
Debunk: The amish vaccinate. The amish get autism, albeit at a lower rate. If they are getting vaccinated and have a lower rate of autism, can we now say that its not the vaccinations? Again, maybe its flash photography or fluorescent lights? Can I start a new theory?

Claim: Kids get autism when they receive their 18 month MMR shot
Evidence: Kids spike to a fever, then get autistic symptoms.
Debunk: In the past diagnosis was not possible before age 3 or 4, then diagnosis became possible at 18 months. Some claim to be able to detect it as early as 6 months now. So once again, while the shot may cause some immunological response, its more likely the autism was there first.



There are a ton of other causation questions that make no sense from the mercury militia. As the data comes in that its not mercury they move the goal posts and focus on something else, or they change their definition of autism. Im not going to go into every iota of it here. There just isnt space. These reasons were enough for me.

There are some good blogs about autism. Here are some:
Katharien Seidel at Neurodiversity
Skeptico
Science Based Medicine
Autism street

Each of them will provide good clearheaded articles on autism and links to many more sites. I hope this was helpful. I hope it has alleviated some fears for my friend. I shared all those fears also when I had my daughter, believe me! We all want answers to this puzzle. Its likely there is a genetic factors plus some environmental one. Do you have autism in your family? If not I wouldnt worry about this too much.

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It was a real doozy today on NPR. First, they profile a young woman being an 'intellectual rebel' by her quest to fall for every bit of conspiracy theory there is about Global warming. And yeah, I think its great that she is challenging those around her, yeah I think teachers (and news!) should understand the concepts well enough to be able to defend against this sort of stuff and I also think if she thinks something contrarian she should question those around her. Skepticism is great, denialism....not so good.

What makes me sad is that apparently she is only willing to go as far as her preconceived notions rather than where the data actually leads her. Janet Stemwedel takes her apart pretty well here. I wrote her an email inviting her to answer my questions. We'll see if it goes anywhere.

This may be incredibly cynical of me, but this looks like a ploy to raise money for college for her. Not that this is a bad thing....

75% of all contributions will be depositied in an irrevocable trust specifically for Kristen Byrnes... Kristen Byrnes Science Foundation may use no more than 25% of contributed funds

Well at least she doesn't plan on buying drugs and beer with it. Hey, if she can get some people to give her money for being snarky, I'm all for it. It sure pays better than anything I am getting from google ads.

Anyway, shortly after this NPR descended into a dire chasm of woo. They had a short piece on the utter nonsense of Zero Balancing. Get this, the practitioner thought acupuncture was too clinical. The entire episode was so filled with every cliche and metaphor that we hear from woo meisters it was ridiculous.

Zero Balancing (ZB) is a hands-on bodywork system designed to align your energy body with your physical structure. Simple yet powerful, it focuses on your whole person, even when addressing specific needs. Considered at the leading edge of body/mind therapies, ZB moves beyond Western scientific approaches to body structure by incorporating Eastern concepts of energy and healing What this does is enable a practitioner to work simultaneously with your structural and energy bodies to bring balance.

What energy? Mechanical? Electrical? Acoustic? electromagnetic? What wavelength? How do you know anything about any energy if you have no way to measure it. What structure? Muscular system? Ligaments? Skeletal? The building foundation? Here is how it is performed.

How Is ZB Performed?

Zero Balancing process generally takes between 30 and 40 minutes and is performed with you fully clothed. Sessions begin with you in a seated position, moving from there to a comfortable reclining position on your back. Using touch, the ZB practitioner evaluates your energy fields and energy flow in these two positions and balances the structures as needed. He or she may focus on body, mind, spirit, or all three, depending on where the fields are disturbed or the energy is blocked. Throughout the Zero Balancing session, attention is given to the skeleton in particular because it contains the deepest and strongest currents.

Let me get this straight. You take a patient, you seat them comfortably and then let them relax lying down. You play some nice music. You talk to them and touch them here and there? Sounds like study I recently read about at Oracs and at Science Based Medicine. In other words, ZB is yet another word for PLACEBO.

It was so disappointing to hear a really lame representation of a skeptics side. I don't have the transcript (yet), but the commentator Susan Barnett (that is part two, this was in part 3 of her flab to fit series) said something like this.

Skeptics don't believe in ZB because you can't see the energy they are talking about. ZB enthusiast say that you may not be able to see the energy, but you can see its effects, like gravity.

How utterly idiotic! Its NPR's responsibility to see through this nonsense and report the actual arguments, not strawmen. ZB is placebo. That analogy is false because we can measure gravity. What measurement, besides placebo effects, can you see from this ZB stuff? Anecdotal cures? Repeat customers? Just like every other brand of woo. It was a real shame to listen to this. You know that Woo Medicine is going to be the next bingo game I make.

The part that really got to me is that I do listen to WAMC a lot (its our local NPR outlet). They have some really great programming. Its too bad they have to deal out this sort of crap. It sure wasn't the first time.

However, at the end of the day, WAMC redeemed themselves. I'll quote it here:

Stephen E. Gottlieb

April 15, 2008: Manslaughter?

Are our public officials, the ones we put in office, responsible for what they do?

The usual rule for you and me is that we are responsible to act reasonably and if we don't, we are responsible for the damage we cause. We call the failure to act reasonably negligence. It's the rule for everything from car accidents to corporate misbehavior.

When behavior gets particularly bad and results in death, we call it manslaughter. Here is a definition used in the District of Columbia, though it is typical of most jurisdictions:

The essential elements of involuntary manslaughter, each of which the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt, are: 1. That the defendant caused the death of the decedent; 2. That the conduct which caused the death was a gross deviation from a reasonable standard of care; and 3. That the conduct which caused the death created an extreme risk of death or serious bodily injury."

Let's examine a few facts:

George Tenet told the president there was no connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq until he was pressured to change his story. He told the Congress that the CIA never did an NIE, a National Intelligence Estimate, on Iraq, before we invaded. In fact no one wanted one because it would have aired the doubts, criticisms and contradictions that had surfaced.

The Administration accepted the word of a captive about the Iraqi-al Qaeda connection even though the man he said had met with Iraqis had actually been in the hands of the FBI in Florida at the time.

Before the invasion, the State Department was trying to figure out what would be necessary to secure the peace. The rest of the Administration was uninterested. In fact, the President wouldn't meet with the Secretary of State unless the National Security Advisor arranged the meeting. The top staff of the Army told the Administration before the invasion that it was not providing the force needed to secure the peace.

Everyone except the Administration knew that invading Iraq was far worse than a can of worms. But some in the Administration decided that no information could be relied on, so no reliable information was necessary.

So the Administration set in motion the deaths of more than 4,000 Americans, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, tied our military down, crumpled our reserves, crippled the officer corps, neglected to take care of the veterans and mortgaged our future to the Chinese.

So was the carelessness of the Administration or anyone in it negligence? Manslaughter? You decide.

Steve Gottlieb is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor of Law at Albany Law School and author of Morality Imposed: The Rehnquist Court and Liberty in America. He is also a member of the Board of the New York Civil Liberties Union and served in the US Peace Corps in Iran.

And I couldn't agree more. I would have added that this is what happens when you choose to make decisions that are not based on data and evidence. In fact its worse. It's making decisions and executing actions contrary to available data.

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Well, I just finished a little project I have been working on for everyone. It kind of an experiment. After seeing Skeptico's bingo boards for psychics and ID debunking, I found myself really liking the idea of people playing bingo during presentations or movies or shows relating to this sort of nonsense.

The big drawback of his bingo games was that there wasn't a good set of descriptive texts that described why each box was ridiculous or woo. In his psychic one, he did explain it out, but it wasn't convenient format. Further it was not easily distributable. There was no good way to hand out bingo cards to a bunch of people, with the descriptive text. They were great blog entries, but I was hoping for something slightly more useful.

So, I made a program to do it. If this works out (i.e. people use it) I will make more bingo games for other areas where the level of discourse truly needs to advance further. I posted it at my new site. Please feel free to browse around, but you should know, only Creationist ID bingo is there (well there is a sample animals one there too for the kiddies). As time goes on, I'll put up more bingo games (I could use help, they are very time consuming to make, even with resources available like TalkOrigins).

Get Bingo Game

You can go to the products page and download the bingo game, but also go to the topical bingo page to download the game files. Later I will introduce more bingo games. So far, everything is free, but I would appreciate token donations, any significant money that is generated will go to charity.

The software allows you to print out booklets with randomized cards on the front page. Or, you can just print out randomized cards. This way you can distribute them before dumb movies, or any presentation that a creationist may give. At least let them know, and the others around you (especially the blind followers) know that this has already been argued and debunked ad nauseum, by yelling out, good and loud "BINGO!" when you win.

Anyway, I hope you have fun with this. I hope someone uses it. I hope it helps to advance the discussion forward, even to a small degree. But I guess we will see.

Note: You need the .net framework to run the software. If you have vista you should be OK.

Tell me your bingo story in the comments.

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Recently Berlzebub put in a lot of time trying to give a hand to P-Momma, a victim of Lupus. One of the tools he used was a chipin, a little tool that made it easier to collect and report on fund raising goals.

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 one of the most 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.

Yes, we need gas. Yes, we need energy. But after having spent 3 trillion dollars in Iraq (if we get out now), isn't it time that we look for another way? Limiting oil and gas exploration will require these companies to look for alternative incomes. For example BP an oil company, is becoming heavily invested in solar. Chevron is investing in geothermal. Good! The more difficult it is for them to drill, the more they will have to look for alternative incomes. Why should we plunder our the most beautiful areas of our country when we can spend our efforts learning how to get energy from that gigantic ball of fire in the sky?

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.

Thanks..

-Tech

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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?

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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 of suggestions 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.

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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.




Why have I talked about my daughter and her blocks so much? It turns out that most of this country thinks that at some point in her playtime with blocks, she will have done something immoral. I have read some pretty silly things coming out of the religious folks in this country, but this tops them all. I dont know where they define the problem to be, which size blocks was it? As the blocks get smaller, they become more and more useful. The list of exciting and extremely beneficial uses of nanotechnology is ever increasing.

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?

Is this the same 65% that wouldn't vote for an atheist for president regardless of his or her solutions to the various issues?

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.

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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.

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Lee Strobel will not make it to my pages very often. His whole shtick is something to the effect of:

I used to be an atheist, and then I looked at the evidence and concluded God exists, and you should too!

Then in a series of money making books and videos he takes you through his evidence, generally consisting of arguments from incredulity from "scientists" from the Discovery Institute (even though I have only a few readers...i'm not linking there). Tiny Frog has done a pretty good job of taking apart his ridiculous "Case for Faith" in 5 different posts.

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 scary people 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?

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