Scottish Nous

You're Known by the Company You Keep

The Idiot of the Day award goes to Sal Cordova, one of Dembski's co-bloggers over at Uncommon Descent.  Cordova has been commenting at the post I referred to here.  Let's take a look at what he has to say.  Trying to defend himself, he wrote (quoting Darwin), "I was taking issue with Darwin's statement:

Natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good." [his emphasis]

This quotation of Darwin was supposed to be the evidence for Sal's claim that:

Darwin was responsible in large part for the false assumption that “every advantageous mutation that appears in the population is inevitably incorporated”.  -Sal Cordova

Now isn't that cute?  Here's what Darwin wrote:

It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good. [emphasis mine]

The bloggers over at UD have the reading comprehension skills of anencephalic babies.  That, or they're just compulsive liars.  For more evidence of this, see my post here.  And I don't want to check this myself, but it sounds as if another Dembski co-blogger has refuted Kimura and Ohta's mathematics based on his/her glance at Google Books preview:

Since there was a link that provided a ‘look-see’ inside the book, I did so.  Well, what I found was very fascinating. -PaV

PaV goes on to "refute" Kimura and Ohta.  So much good science and brilliant creative thought goes on over at UD it just gives me the willies thinking about it.
 

Pure Ugliness

Read excerpts from e-mails sent by (probably Christian) anti-abortionists who need to be Hellenized or sterilized.  [via Majikthise]  Perhaps some of these neo-Nazi skinheads can be identified via their e-mail headers?  It'd be great fun outing them to their fellow non-denominationalists who could then give a special altar call for their murderously raging comrades in arms, lay hands upon them, and exorcise their demons.  That solution would, of course, be just as good as the worthless solutions this sort of person proposes to decrease the number of obtained abortions: from the mild "abstinence only education" to the extreme "bomb a clinic" variety. 

Empirical research proves that the best known way to minimize the number of obtained abortions is to provide comprehensive sex-ed programs and unfettered access to contraceptives and the morning after pill.  There is also no reasonable objection to contraception, because empirical research also shows that up to 50% of conceptions result in natural abortions, and philosophical argument suggests (what will likely be scientifically demonstrated in the near future) that the rhythm method results in vastly more embryonic death than the pill.  (I am obviously assuming that it is unreasonable to insist that it is morally permissible for couples to have sex only for the purpose of procreation at the times that conception is most likely or while pregnant or otherwise infertile.  And note that, if you're going to bite this bullet, you'll have to stop having sex as soon as in vitro fertilization becomes more reliable than sex the natural way.)

Bill Dembski: Would You Want This Guy as a Colleague?

Maybe if you teach at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary?  What kind of sick man reports professors like Eric Pianka to the Department of Homeland Security?  The state needs to get something right here and sue the pants off Bill Dembski for friviolous finking.  It's your tax dollar that Bill Demsbski is trying his best to waste on the mini-crusade he's waging apparently for the purpose of reaping perverse, hypocritical glee by backstabbing scientists with whom he (here: quite reasonably) disagrees.  For a relatively poorly written account of Pianka's views by the editor of The Citizen Scientist, Forrest Mims, go here.

In point of fact, there is just no good reason for reporting Pianka to the DHS.  Dembski's actions, in this respect, are  not rationally motivated.  Of course, I support Dembski's right to wage his other campaign against Pianka at the university level, but Pianka is not a national security threat.  Why is Pianka not a national security threat?  Well, for one, it appears that Pianka does not endorse the following principle, or at least, there is no evidence he endorses it:

(P)  For any current state of affairs A and other, all things considered better, state of affairs A', it is good to act in such a way so as to bring about A'.

No rights-based theorist would endorse the above, obviously.  Maybe we should be reporting more consequentialists to the Department of Homeland Security?  Actually, Forrest Mim's poorly written remarks (linked above) suggest to me that Pianka probably believes we need to act quickly (forced sterilization) so as to avoid catastrophe.   If you read Mim's article closely, you will see that he is exceedingly careful to avoid libel by never attributing to  Pianka the view that it would be a good thing if 90% of the population was eliminated by a nasty virus such as Ebola.   That Mim's is  obviously working so hard to walk such a fine line, while failing to draw attention to this point, suggests to me that intentional inflammation is his goal.  If so, this is dishonest reporting.  Fellow graduate student Diana at Noodlefood is also somewhat skeptical, if less so than myself. 

What about the philosophical ability of a man (Dembski) who constantly rants and raves about how the climate of modern academia so often hampers his ability to express his (scientifically unsupported) views, but reports other academics to the State for expressing their equally philosophical views?  If it hasn't already been sufficiently called into question, it's time to reevaluate.  Moreover, Dembski gives the ridiculous and bizarre questions of his colleagues a public airing when he rhetorically asks whether or not Pianka thinks that "the holocaust was an 'excellent thing'".  The professorship of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary needs to learn to think critically, but then again, SBTS may not be the school of choice if acquiring critical thinking skills is your aim.  It might have occured to this credulous group, if they weren't so easily inflamed, that Hitler endorsed (P) though Pianka has not.   To his discredit, this points seems not to have occured to Dembski either.  Finally, Dembski implicitly endorses (despite his attempt to waste your money) the view of a colleague who is angry that taxpayers (partially) fund Pianka's "pulpit".  [via Pharyngula]

Is My Hoax Detector Malfunctioning?

Ok, so here's a link for you.  I strenuously suggest that you read this entire page.  An excerpt following a time lapse picture of the night sky directly "above" the north pole:

If you can do so for a few minutes, just lay aside the Copernican indoctrination that accompanies such pictures and take a good hard look at these photographs of something that really, really happens every single night.  Do you see what I see? I see all the visible stars in the northern skies going around the North Star in perfect circles. In other words, I see all the stars which these time exposures have recorded actually going around that navigational star that is there for we Earthlings in the Northern Hemisphere... This means that each star circles in one 24 hour day (i.e., 23 hours and 56 minutes). (The same thing is captured in circumpolar photos taken in the Southern Hemisphere....) [emph. orig.]

Yes, bizarrely enough, a time lapse photograph of the night sky shot along the earth's axis of rotation from the north pole resembles the corresponding photograph taken at the south pole.  This is because both all the stars directly "above" the earth and all the starts directly "below" the earth move in perfect circles centered on the north and south poles, respectively.  I'll <sarcasm> respectfully </end sarcasm> have to disagree.  This is clearly a case in which the simpler explanation is the better, although, of course, not merely because it's simpler.  He goes on to ask (rhetorically):

What will it be? Will you trust your eyes (and your camera!) to record the truth of the matter?

and answer:

Trust your eyes and your cameras! They have no reason to deceive you about whether the stars are going around nightly!

Frankly, I'm having a lot of difficulty getting this picture to work.  Let's take it for granted that the vantage points of the north and south poles should be privileged.  That is, it's the photographs we take at these special locations that enable us to know how the stars are moving.  (Why?  Who knows.  Maybe because they're the only spots on earth at which compasses spin freely?)  So given this picture, there are one or more planes of stars rotating around a point intersecting with the line defined by the two points known as the north and south poles?  And I know this because "the photographs obviously tell me so".  So what am I supposed to see when I look up at those stars from the equator?  And how are the stars lying on planes perpendicular with that plane supposed to be moving?

I'm very good at detecting hoaxes.  Nothing about this website suggests to me that it's a hoax.  Is my bullshit detector malfunctioning, or is this cat serious?  Here's another quote about modern scientific assumptions:

It must be assumed [by scientists] that the Sun is stationary in the "solar" system relevant [sic] to the Earth (and to the Moon) and that it has never traveled East to West daily across the sky as observed by everyone on Earth throughout all history. -link

Finally:

Given that the definition of "science" is derived from the Latin root scire which means "to know", and the definition of "assumption" is "to take for granted or to suppose", each person is free to determine whether the Helio or the Geo Model is true science.  Just remember: Every time you watch the Sun when it rises, when it is high noon, and when it sets, you must assume that it isn’t doing what your eyes tell you it is doing, but that it only appears to be moving because the Earth is allegedly turning under your feet at several hundred miles an hour. And when you see the Moon in all its phases come up in the east and set in the west, reject what you see. "Science" has trained you to assume that it is going precisely the opposite direction at about 2200 MPH. Then rejoice that you "know" that each assumption is correct because of the correctness of the other assumptions that each is based upon, and because everybody everywhere has learned of their correctness in school.

So, does he think knowledge is factive or not?

 

Feminist, Are You? Be Prepared to Dry Wretch

I rarely follow any links in the spam I receive.  Today, however, one click led me to a disgusting web site authored by a twisted mental midget.  The site promises to give you access to a grammatically abominable e-book for the low cost of $59.95.  This book allegedly propounds a " System" (not a high brow "System" like Hegel's) for making "any woman submit to you instantly".  The website takes the cake for containing the greatest number of absurd inferences ever found in one continuous piece of text.  What do we think of the following argument?

The System always works with every woman.  Age and social status of the woman don’t matter. As well as the color of her skin and her nationality. As well as her character and life experience.  All of the stuff listed above doesn’t matter at all because the methods of the System are based on simple instincts which are the same for every woman. 

If a woman has menstruation she’s a mature female.  Therefore, she has the instincts of a female. So all her behavior depends primarily on her female instincts. All the other traits of her behavior are secondary.  The main human instinct is reproduction, propagation of our species. For women this instinct means finding a strong male who is willing to make sex with her and impregnate her. (emph. original) - link (warning: pornographic)

I really don't believe that you can get any stupider than this.  The level of discursive reasoning the author appears capable of is surpassed by a two week old specimen of Pan troglodytes.  Heck, the author is due for a full frontal lobotomy complete with electrical shocks administered directly into the neural cortex.  I know of several rotten tree stumps filled with stagnating, frog infested spunk water that can think faster than this social derelict.  Following the spam trail is like reading the newspaper... it just makes you angry and depressed.  I learned my lesson for the day.

 

Wherein the Members of the JCN are Irrational

I hadn't yet heard about this, and though it's a month old, it's too good to pass up.  Michael Gaynor, over at the crackpot organization Renew America, has an article titled "Notice to anti-Alitoists: Your Lies and Deceits Will Be Exposed".  In that article, he solidifies his position as a crackpot by expressing approbation for the internet ad of another conservative crackpot organization, the Judicial Confirmation Network.  You can see that ad here.  The ad strongly implies that "liberal extremists" who oppose Strip Search Sammy's nomination to the SCOTUS want an America in which "drug dealers could freely use children to hide drugs" and "honest police officers could be sued...for doing their job."

"Liberal extremists" want an America in which the drug related abuse of children and the firing of honest government employees is commonplace?  Wait a minute.  Only idiots could make this claim.  The JCN is, therefore, a group of idiots.  QED.  They have demonstrated that they are mentally incapable of distinguishing between two unrelated notions, first, when the law makes a strip search legal, and second, when a strip search, whether legal or not, may serve to reduce crime.  Unfortunately for Strip Search Sammy, warrant law does not permit the strip search of anyone, ten year old girls included, not mentioned in a search warrant.  Since the warrant authorized the search of the suspected drug dealer and his domicile only, the police offers who  virtually molested a ten year old girl should have been held accountable for their possibly lewd behavior.

This is not to say that a search of the daughter and/or wife may not have been justified, as the JCN obviously thinks.  It is just to be capable of distinguishing between when a search is justified and when a search is legal.  The judge who issued the warrant for the search did not authorize, for who knows what reason, a strip search of the wife and daughter.  When the police proceeded with that search, they became guilty of something like molestation.  Suppose an attractive young female missionary had made a housecall on the suspected drug dealer.  Could the police have made her get naked too?  Alito claimed the warrant:

"authorized the search of any persons found on the premises" and that "even if the warrant did not contain such authorization, a reasonable police officer could certainly have read the warrant as doing so..." [link]

In other words, according to Alito, yes.  I call bullshit.  What if that attractive young missionary happened to be the daughter of a member of the JCN?  Think they'd be happy then?  Whether or not the warrant should have contained an authorization to strip search the ten year old daughter of a suspected drug dealer, it did not contain that authorization, and the mere fact that the man was a suspected drug dealer does not make it ok to peer at the private parts of his wife and children.  The government can peer at your private parts if they want, but at least somewhat fortunately, not without leaping through the proper hoops first.   The JCN is a group of mentally challenged conservative windbags who equate forcing the government take the proper steps if they want to peer at your privates with the support of the drug related abuse of children. 

Alito appears to be incapable of making the same distinction the JCN is here accused of failing to make, a fact which, considered alone, strongly suggests he is unfit for the SCOTUS.  It is well known that Strip Search Sammy usually sides with big business or the government.  But it is troubling that he would, if given the opportunity, attempt to establish precedent in which  we the people are supposed to place the kind of trust in agents of the government (here: police officers) which would permit them to regularly overstep their legal bounds if they "thought it was reasonable".  Those who approve of our state, conservatives included, almost always approve of the system of checks and balances that are supposed to prevent it from exerting too much authority, abusing the authority it exerts, and so on...  It is ironic that the conservatives who support Alito's dissent are so befuddled that they think the "liberal extremists" who wish to uphold the existing checks and balances only want to slander, tarnish, and sue the honest agents of the state who ignore those same checks and balances.

 

Bushwinked

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has been teleported off Planet Earth by aliens and an idiotic robot has been surreptitiously substituted for him.  Listen to what he has to say about the mealy-mouthed Roberts:

Judge Roberts is a man of integrity. We can only take him at his word that he does not have an ideological agenda.

We can only do what again?  He's going to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States for Christ's sake!  And all we poor little pathetic wussies can do is "take him at his word"?  If it was the real Sen. Patrick Leahy speaking, I'd ask him how often his wife breaks out the ballgag, riding crop and horsewhip.  What an utter wuss.  This is a stealth candidacy, folks.  How stupid is the Senate?  Are they really going to let themselves be bushwinked yet again?

Numerology

The Rabbi Lazer Brody over at Lazer Beams tries his hand at numerology:

Katrina, written קטרינה in Hebrew, has a numerical equivalent of 374. Two relevant passages in Torah share the exact numerical equivalent of 374 also: רעה גמלוך, or "They have done you evil" (see Gen. 50:17), and ים ביבשה, or "The sea upon land" (see Exodus 14:15). The former passage may be an indication as to the spiritual cause of Katrina, while the latter passage describes the physical manifestation.

I think the beatific Rabbi meant to cite Exodus 14:16, which reads:

But lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry [ground] through the midst of the sea.

Is the Rabbi suggesting that God upped the force of the 11th hurricane of the season because he wanted, in particular, the name of this hurricane to start with a "k"?  What about the rest of the letters?  Perhaps God foreordained from all eternity that the 11th hurricane of the season would be fierce, and named "Katrina", just so the good Rabbi could draw his numerological allusions.  I suppose it fits with what we know about Yahweh.  He's always been terrible when it comes to communication.

Two for Two?

I'm terrible at predicting the future, and my future actions in particular.  I thought I'd blogged enough about the religious nutcases who think god's judgment fell upon New Orleans.  But not more than one month after my last post about him, someone has earned Pat Robertson another blog mention:

Pat Robertson on Sunday said that Hurricane Katrina was God’s way of expressing its anger at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for its selection of Ellen Degeneres to host this year’s Emmy Awards. “By choosing an avowed lesbian for this national event, these Hollywood elites have clearly invited God’s wrath,” Robertson said on “The 700 Club” on Sunday. “Is it any surprise that the Almighty chose to strike at Miss Degeneres’ hometown?”  Robertson also noted that the last time Degeneres hosted the Emmys, in 2001, the September 11 terrorism attacks took place shortly before the ceremony. [Dateline Hollywood]

Just in case you are still conditionalizing on new evidence, revising probabilities, and updating your beliefs, I should probably state that this evidence is misleading.  The article is, although almost believable, only satire.  I leave it to the reader to judge for himself whether or not Pat Robertson wishes he could say this.  On that point, we might recall a comment he about Ellen Degenerate's (a Jerry Falwell locution) lesbianhood:

I find it hard to believe because she's so popular. She's such an attractive actress.

Punish Hurricane Victims?

Here's a rough transcript of Senator Rick Santorum's statement:

...the [...] people who don't see those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not seeing those wornings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties namely , on those who decide to ride it out and understand that they're not supposed to [...] not [be] leaving.

Santorum seems to think that the government has a right to force people to leave their homes.  The government has no such right, and Santorum should be immediately removed (using whatever means necessary) from public office for just thinking it.  In fact, I think morality demands a role reversal: he should be marched at gunpoint straight into a maximum security prison.  There, he can experience the sort of further violation of his bodily rights the people our government locks up regularly experience.