Yard Signs

I'm always of two minds about putting up political yard signs. On the one hand, some sort of latent Britishness within me feels badly about imposing my views on others. It seems almost... well, almost impolite, in a neurotic way. On the other hand, many people seem to have no such scruples, so I'm not sure that I should give in to that particular neurosis.

The other night, when the GHR and I went for a walk, we cut through the road that has been blocked off, preventing traffic from flowing from the new development over the hill and our own tidy little town. The blockade itself has always struck me as inexplicably odd, and frustrating to me as an inveterate seeker of perceived "short-cuts".

However, upon cutting through the gap in the barricade, we found that we had entered... McPalin land. A half-dozen signs within moments of entering the neighbourhood, to one Obama / Biden sign. And it made me realise a couple of things:

1. Missouri is, after all, a swing state at the moment. Every vote could potentially count.


2. Somewhere out there are people so capricious that they will vote based on the number of political signs that they see. We can affect that number, even by a factor of one. We can also make people wonder: why are they putting signs in their yard? And the curiosity may well drive them to deciding to put signs in their yards, or stickers on their cars, too.


3. Finally, I really dislike McPalin. I've probably already established that, but especially in light of the last few days, it seems relevant to say.

So yesterday it was over to the county Democratic Party headquarters for me. I came back with three, to add to the one already up for the local democratic candidate for the State House of Representatives. Now the signs are up, all in a row:

(I just walked out into the cold, wet grass in my bare feet to take this photo, which was not my brightest idea ever, but expedient - I hope you enjoy the photo).

This is not a time for delicate feelings. It is a time to get these cretins out of office once and for all, not to perpetuate more of the same. I feel the urge to volunteer coming on...

The Universe, According to XKCD

Great stuff in the newest edition of XKCD:

It puts life into perspective, once again. Also great to browse through the archives, if you need a laugh for some reason.

Tip of the ski-pole to astropixie, who got there first.

The Palimpsest and the Pulpit: Why the Religious Scare Me

I can look at my life in two ways: either I constantly have too many interests and they dilute my accomplishments, or that I have a broad general range of knowledge which I can hone to a specific topic with comparatively little additional research, should I see fit. I like the latter better than the former, obviously, even if the former is probably more honest.

One of my many interests is history, specifically ancient history: Greeks, Romans, Etruscans, Egyptians, that sort of thing.

Today, I was casually flipping through a book that I had found again in one of the many still-packed cartons of books in the cellar. It's something that I found back in my classical history days: an edition of the Roman author Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, the first volume, containing Books I to III in the dual Latin / French Belles Lettres series edition. The first paragraph of the introduction is what caught my eye:

"De la vie de Lucrèce on peut dire que nous ne savons practiquement rien. Une date pour sa naissance, une autre pour sa morte, et toutes les deux mal assurés, c'est à peu près tout ce que l'antiquité nous a laissé. Ses contemporains l'ignorent ou se taisent sur son compte, Cicéron, qui fut peut-être son éditeur, lui consacre dans toute sa Correspondance, ou du moins dans ce qui nous en reste, une phrase courte et banale, du rest défigurée dans les manuscrits, et qui ne mérite certes pas les flots d'encre qu'elle a fait couler. Sous l'Empire, l'oubli semble s'étre rapidement fait sur son nom. Notre principale source d'information est la courte biographie insérée par saint Jérôme dans ses additions à la Chronique d'Eusèbe..."

-- Lucrèce, De La Nature, Livres I-III, p. vii

Of course, I'm not assuming that you read French. I merely quote the text because it helps to make my point. Here's the translation:

"Of the life of Lucretius we can say that we know practically nothing. A date of birth, another for his death, both of those uncertain; that's more or less all left to us from Antiquity. His contemporaries either ignored him or were silent about him; Cicero, who was probably his editor, wrote of him in his Letters, or at least in those that remain to us, one short, banal sentence. Under the Empire, he seems to have been rapidly forgotten. Our principal source of information is a short biography inserted by Saint Jerome in his additions to the Chronicles of Eusebius...

De Rerum Natura is one of the most famous long poems surviving from the Roman period. Written in the first century BC, it is an introduction to Epicurean philosophy, and describes a number of natural phenomena. It also suggest that the universe is ruled by chance, with no intercessory actions by any gods.

What struck me, though, in reading this introduction, was the memory of how texts like this - how all texts, for that matter - were to meet their end in the Roman world. In the Introduction quoted, the editor mentions the lack of information about Lucretius, and those of us who have studied ancient history are accustomed to this. We know about some authors, we have fewer exemplars still of their known works, and our estimates of what has been lost are catastrophic. And you might be forgiven for thinking: "well, it was a long time ago. Some things were bound to go missing." That would, I suspect, be correct, too, if it weren't for some key events. Namely, we would have a lot more of the knowledge of the ancient world's knowledge if it hadn't been for the early Christians.

Ravages of time aside, then, let's look at what happened. Christians from the first through third centuries CE were a minority, and were periodically persecuted or scape-goated by Imperial leaders for their steadfast refusal to participate in Roman civic life as all other religious minorities did. The Roman Christian author Lactantius lists ten different major persecutions in his De Mortibus Persecutiones. By the fourth century CE, and with some help from the political opportunism of Constantine "the Great", Christians were in finally their ascendance, particularly after Julian's death in 363 CE: known as "the Apostate" for rejecting Christianity and attempting to restore the Classical academies and the pantheon of Greco-Roman gods, Julian died in battle, although his death might have been at the hand of a Christian soldier. Constantine bought Christian support in battle with promises of political equality, and he was even purported to have converted to Christianity. As a saavy political operator, Constantine no doubt saw this as a sure method to consolidate his power and survive in an era when treachery and assassination was still a common option for Roman Emperors. The wave of religion that subsumed the failing Roman Empire as a result of Constantine's change of heart certainly didn't help to contribute to Rome's survival. Bishops ordered the destruction of any texts that revolved around ancient religion and religious practises first, as did the Emperor Valens, who ordered the burning of all non-Christian books in the city of Antioch, around 372 CE. But those attacks quickly spread, and whole libraries were gutted, sometimes burned pre-emptively by citizens of Roman towns who feared the retribution of the Bishopric and the Emperor.

Book burning is an ancient tradition, not just for Christians, but for nearly every people on the planet, at one time or another. But it's Christians who appear to have a particular flair for it. They have a long history, not only of the destruction of texts that fall under a sectarian dispute, but of the destruction of anything which doesn't agree with their world view. Bear in mind too what a savage act the burning of a book would have been. We in the 21st century are accustomed to books being cheap consumables, readily available almost anywhere. Prior to the 20th century, though, this was not the case. Even after the invention of movable type, books were expensive, often scarce commodities - if you knew how to read in the first place. In the classical world, a book represented hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours of labour, copying by hand onto costly paper. Yet we know that there were, in some cases, a hundred thousand books in a given library. In the Library at Alexandria, there were perhaps a million books (it's impossible to say now with any certainty), including a vast repository of philosophy (science) and technology books - all destroyed. Some other copies of these books survived the ravages of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. Many did not, and we are the poorer for it.

Take the example of the palimpsest. Apart from being an autobiography by Gore Vidal, a palimpsest is an example of the Christian devaluation of ancient writing. Unlike the Bronze Age delusions of certain holy books, Classical Greek and Roman writers built up an impressive body of philosophy, technology, history, rhetoric, art, and literature. Christians, in comparison, followed the view of Augustine, who said that it was better to study only the "word of god", as the Bible claimed to be, and that the study of the material world was a pointless exercise. Therefore those books which managed to escape the illiterate but self-righteous hordes, unless they found favour with a monast somewhere or other, would duly be scaped clean, if possible, otherwise recycled in some other fashion. The ink which had been used to copy down the orations of Cicero, or the geometry of Euclid, the plays of Sophocles or even Lucretius' De Rerum Natura was literally scraped from the pages - like erasing a notebook kept in pencil. The newly blank pages were then often re-used to write down some sanctimonious nonsense or other. Recently, it has been discovered that in some cases, the pages can be re-imaged using X-rays and that the original text can be recovered, but in many more cases, this may not be possible. Much of what has been lost is lost forever.

So why bring up all of this now? It's worth pointing out that, irrational as faith is to anyone who can attach themselves without qualm to the here and now, not all people who adscribe to a faith are necessarily irrational. There are some religious people who are, in the main, just as rational as anyone else, except for that one little area. And despite a pocket of irrationality, they are able to function, because they can separate the difference between the proven need for a secular public life, the one which the Framers of the American Constitution intended, and whatever private life they choose. These are the people who do the charity work, who volunteer at shelters, who are genuinely concerned about their fellow creatures and the world in which they live. In short, these are not the people who are out burning books. However, not all of their co-religionists are so moderate and sensible in their views.

It would be easy to say that the fundamentalists are back, but in truth, they've never really been away. Fundies, ultra-conservatives: these are just synonyms for the soi dit uber-Christians. These are the scary ones, the ones who want to drive us right back to the middle ages, or beyond. Regrettably, they have a new voice in Sarah Palin.

Palin's a biblical literalist (more links from these posts, follow to your heart's content), the sort of person who believes rather than thinks. For her, it's a fair bet that there's only one book and one law that matters, that being the arrogantly-named "bible" (I say "arrogantly-named" because biblos is Greek for "book", the implication being that it is the only book that matters - however seeking succour in the tribal idiosyncracies of Bronze Age nomads seems to be more than a little foolhardy). There are stories of her views on banning books: some say she's for it, others say that the stories are exaggerated, still others have suggested that she'd happily preside over the next big bonfire. We know better. When there's even a whiff of a doubt about someone's sense in the matter of destroying or removing from sight things with which they don't agree, we'd best be concerned. Let's hear what she has to say about it, if anything.

By giving Palin such prominence on the national stage, the McCain campaign hopes to use her to shore up their conservative credentials. But, like Constantine, they are playing with a sword which cuts both ways. In inviting this little-scrutinised figure to play a role on the national stage, and the second most important role in the American political system at that, they invite disaster.

The other night, I heard an acquaintance - whose opinion I find utterly worthless, because of statements just like this one, among numerous other reasons - say something to the effect of (paraphrase): "I liked her when I first heard about her becoming Governor of Alaska. She seemed like she was taking on the old guard and shaking things up." This is the sort of woolly, foolish, uncritical thinking that leads to ruin. Palin and all of her ilk are gravely worrying. They're not very bright, as she demonstrates each time that she is interviewed. They appear petty and vindictive and easily corrupted by power (this becomes clear from reading work by journalist Shannyn Moore, who has interviewed the Governor on multiple occasions, and others). Fundamentalists of Palin's stripe are scared of what they don't understand (which is almost everything), and when they're scared, they lash out, which hardly makes a good foreign policy stance. And they're coming, they're always coming, unless we continue to stand up to them.

In light of this, and the impending election, I thought it might be worth reminding people of what has happened in the past, what has been happening ever since this pernicious philosophy emerged. This is not a mistake that we should choose to make again. There is too much at stake, and too much to lose.

The Oldest of the Old

Here's a new story from the New York Times, "Rocks May Be the Oldest on Earth". Originally reported in the most recent issue of Science, this makes for fascinating reading (you can also find the original article here, behind the paywall). UPDATE: You can also find the BBC reporting of the story here. The précis is this: an area of bedrock has been discovered in northern Quebec, some portions of which appear to be some 4.28 billion years old. If further validated, this represents one of perhaps three sites where rocks well over four billion years old have been identified.

Of course, a number of people have already gotten to this (damn you, PZ Myers, damn you!), but I just find it fascinating and want to talk for a moment about the age of the Earth.

It's a source of endless fascination to me that our understanding of the age of the planet has evolved so radically in the last century. In the book On the Trail of Ancient Man, written by Roy Chapman Andrews and published in 1926, an old version of a geological column appears. I reproduce it here for you:

When I gave a presentation on Andrews back in June, I showed this slide and asked if anyone in the crowd could see the problem with it. To my chagrin, not even any of the parents noticed the problem, but each time I pointed it out gently and went on to explain why the difference was interesting. Readers of this blog, expecting science of some sort, no doubt see the problems,but here's a quick pointer: the Cretaceous didn't end ten million years ago. The current estimate is 65.5 million years ago. Here's what a modern view of the geologic column looks like, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

So why is it interesting - or is just that way to me?

Unfortunately, there's is still a "bastion of religious conservatism", as Richard Dawkins puts it in 'The Root of All Evil?' which demands attention. It is unfortunate that the number one result in a Google or a Yahoo search for the term "geologic column" returns this entry: The Geologic Column: Does It Exist? (loving that "nofollow" tag, by the bye). When I saw this, my heart sank just a bit. Well, a lot. The foisting of evident falsehoods upon the gullible, in an effort to support bronze age myths (again, to paraphrase Professor Dawkins), is all too prevalent, even in the wilds of the digital frontier. A real geologic column, as represented in the colour image, gives a more appropriate view of the history of the Earth, as we understand it with increasing precision.

What young earth creationist types don't want to talk about is the actual evidence, and the people who spend their careers making very careful, precise measurements of rocks from various strata around the world, gradually building up a picture of their true age. This has been going on for more than a hundred years, and as we see from our two different versions of the geologic column, our knowledge has been expanded and refined quite a bit.

Major cultural shifts may well take longer than a century. But it is still worth hoping that, with more evidence such as the recent Quebec find, people will begin, finally, to opt for the better information, for the explanation that is actually supported by evidence, and not merely held to be true because they say that it is true. That is a fallacy of circular reasoning, and not one with which we really need to bother, except to point out, as often as necessary, that it is wrong.

Debate Talk

I'm late in mentioning this, but it seemed like it deserved a moment's coverage. We went to a debate watching party last night - thanks to our hosts Chris and Mary Jane for a nice evening. We had the events of the evening running from two different networks, but the Dear Wife and I were in the MSNBC room. For some reason, there was a time delay between the two channels, and MSNBC was a second or two ahead of the television in the other room, which proved somewhat distracting.

After sitting through the ninety-odd minutes, I hadn't really heard anything new from either candidate. I wanted Obama to give a better explanation of his US $923 million in earmarks which McCain purported, and I wanted him to hit back harder. It's important for Obama to stop agreeing with his opponent, even if he does, in fact, share the same position. It's also important for him to stop being so damn magnanimous. I don't think that people get that. McCain, for his part, proved that he was a contemptuous old goat through his body language, and appeared visibly angry on several occasions. He needs to stop that, because it makes him look like an immature, petulant child, which seems disproportionate for someone as old as he is.

Oh, and on a related topic (to the debates in general), am I alone in thinking that someone owes the estate of Sinclair Lewis in a really big way for all of the times that people have been tossing around the words Main Street? It makes me wonder of how many of them can possibly have read the book.

In the meantime, what am I really looking forward to? Yes, you guessed it: the Vice Presidential debate. I'm hoping not to have a replay of the Quayle - Bentsen debate in 1988, the one where Quayle looked foolish but Bush 41 still won. I feel reasonably confident that Joe Biden can mop the floor with Sarah Palin, but he has to do it very carefully, so as to let her hang herself with her own rope, rather than playing the executioner himself. A delicate challenge and one to which I hope he can rise.

Cool Photo Redux

Here's that photo of two space shuttles again... this time with both visible, and with rainbows...

I just had to share, it looked amazing...

Ageing Gracelessly

It must be terrible to be old and bitter and to have nothing to look forward to, feeling only as though life has given you the short end of every deal.

I could be talking about McCrazy, I could be talking about someone else. But here's something that I don't understand, and I want to put it out there for other people to wonder about as well...

Is David Letterman mean? Honestly? That's what I was told last night: "David Letterman's just mean. I don't think he's funny at all."

Fine - you don't have to think that he's funny. You prefer "As Time Goes By" for your hard-hitting satire, fine. I like Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer too. You don't have to think that Letterman is funny - I don't always think that. But here's how it went down, and here's why you - and McThingy - are wrong.

Letterman reacted to McCrazy cancelling his appearance - fine, people do sometimes have to cancel, it happens. There is a moose loose in the Bush Build-A-Crisis Workshop, after all, so McCrazy had better best rush back down to DC and do something about it. What's he going to do - yell at the crisis to "get off my damn lawn"? But here's the rub, as you'll see from the clip - McCrazy lied. He lied, he didn't rush back to the Capitol, and instead went to be interviewed by that doyenne of high-quality journalism, Katie Couric. Following that, he didn't rush back to DC - he stayed the night in a hotel, got up in the morning, and - rushed off to avert catastrophe with his super McCrazy brain? Err...no - then he addressed the Clinton Global Initiative. And then, eventually, twenty-two hours later, he wandered into the Capitol to do a bit of ugly grandstanding.

It's all summed up pretty neatly on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. (Oh, and Keith? Nice to see you on Letterman again, even if you were his second choice (ha!)...) Here's the embedded video:

So, political satire is now "mean"? Well, then so be it. Get used to it. Because if you're worried about "mean", you should really be concerned about how someone who is susceptible to "mean" deals with all those nasty bullies in the bigger, uglier world.

Late Night and Last Minute

Sometimes, minutiae escape me. I forget names, and faces. I confuse dates. I cram a lot of things into my head on any given day, so it doesn't entirely surprise me that things occasionally fall back out in protest.

But tomorrow morning, I'm a fill-in presenter on archaeology for Science Club at the Beagle, and it occurred to me... oh, about an hour ago, that I might need some simple notes. The proper presenter is a bona fide archaeologist: the most I've ever done is messed about in a ruined castle in France and hunted for arrowheads. So once again I find myself cramming, in a big way. Most of this stuff I know, but there are some small details that I want to have right. I don't intend to talk all that long, but I don't want to look like a prattling imbecile. I do that often enough already.

The school-children attending - basically, a home-school crowd, or so I've been told - are all supposed to bring some sort of object to talk about, and I'm trying to scare up a few interesting things to bring too. I'm thinking of the basics: a few Roman coins, some American, British, and French coins, a replica of an ancient oil lamp, a strand of old beads... just the sorts of things that anyone might have loose about the house.

But, dash it all, I should have done this weeks ago. Yes, I've had my car in dock since Sunday night, work, children, home, and some time spent prepping my auction software for its use tonight, but all of that to one side, I hate it when I procrastinate. More than anything, putting things off until the last minute is a skill which I wish that I could lose - permanently.

In the meantime, wish me luck presenting! It's my sincere hope that I won't need it, but you never know. Kids can be a rough crowd when you're boring their little arses off.

We've Invented a New Game

The Amateur Astronomer and I were talking yesterday, on the back of my little piece about the fairyland unencumbered by fact that is Conservapaedia, and its comparisons with Wikipedia. The AA had never seen Conservapaedia before, but quickly entered into the spirit of things by tearing apart several of their astronomy articles. It was quite amusing - here's a man who knows his stuff. I don't call him 'Amateur' as a mark of disrespect, not in the least. As a point of fact, astronomy is one of the sciences where the amateurs, because of their dedication to observing and the time that they can put into watching one thing, can make really significant discoveries. Compared to that luxury of time, the big telescopes have to keep to observation schedules in order to ensure that all comers get their 'scope time, and can, as a result sometimes miss really good stuff. So, 'Amateur'? High praise.

At any rate, he was enjoying demolishing different approaches to justifying the observable features of the universe to make them fit in with a biblical view of 'creation' Example: did you know that some mad-as-pants deity or other created stars thirteen billion light years away with their light already en route to Earth so that it would just appear that they were part of a much older universe? In other words, I guess, this deity really hates astronomers, and the tenets of naturalism. I certainly hadn't heard anything that preposterous since the last time that I listened to an 'ID - the Future' podcast. It was roughly at this point when I had an idea: Conservapaedia Roulette.

The rules are simple: a list of controversial topics are placed in a hat, cup, catcher's mitt or similar receptacle. Next, one of the topics is drawn out, and the topic is looked up on both Wikipedia and Conservapaedia. The contestant then compares the two articles, and counts up the flaws in the Conservapedia article. Whoever picks the most articles out of a given number, eg; five, and racks up the highest total of errors is the winner. If you wish to adapt as a drinking game, then at this point add the alcohol of your choice to the equation. It won't matter how you play it, really, as with something as fruit-batty good as Conservapaedia, you're still going to end up as overwrought as a newt.

We tried with one of the best BS topics that the creationists love to trot out before a crowd who don't know any physics: the Second Law of Thermodynamics. If you've never encountered the argument, it goes something like this: evolution can't be true, because the Earth is a closed system, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics says that in a closed system, entropy (the tendency of things to move from order to disorder) always increases. I've heard that someone who purported to be a science teacher in the Kansas Evolution Wars (Part II) actually tried to use this line of "reasoning". Oh, no, you're thinking. It sounds rather a good argument, doesn't it?

And yes, it would be just brilliant and water-tight if it weren't for the fact that the Earth isn't a closed system as defined in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. From most places on Earth, except maybe in Scotland, we can see the reason - it's that big glowing ball of gas in the sky - you may know it as the sun. The sun pumps a lot of energy into the Earth - which means that Earth is not a closed system, and that entropy, in this regard, does not have any bearing on evolutionary processes.

Not that you would know most of this from reading Conservapaedia. Do the comparison on the Second Law of Thermodynamics and see for yourself:

Wikipedia | Conservapaedia

And again, again with the statistics:

Wikipedia | Conservapaedia
Number of Printed Pages: 12 | 2
Number of Citations: 10 | 1

Other notable goodies: one section of the Conservapaedia article is called "Entropy and disorder for dummies". I think that my case, and the fact that I now have to down another shot, rests right there.

Seriously? This Is Supposed to Help? (32 Words for the Administration)

I'm not a finanacial wizard, I'll say that from the start. I know that it's wrong, but frankly, all these things surrounding high finance normally bore me well beyond the point of coma.

That doesn't mean, however, that I don't have some rudimentary knowledge of economics. Nor, indeed, of common sense. And it doesn't mean that I can't read and understand new things. Like this: the BBCs special section on the Global Financial Crisis. Take a look.

One of the books that I've been reading recently (I usually have several going at once, because I am something of an intellectual magpie - no, it's not a good thing), is John Allen Paulos' 1988 work, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences. And the book's central thesis is pretty much what you would expect: that people are rubbish with numbers, and that it's wreacking havoc.

Sometimes, people even say that they are bad with numbers, and bad with maths, as a sort of badge of honour. You see the same thing with most hard sciences. And, as far as maths go, I used to be one of those people. But not any longer. Here's why.

I now realise that numbers can be used against people, and that innumeracy is, to paraphrase Janis Joplin, just another word for not bothering to care. If we are told how much money is being spent... bailing out a corrupt and greedy industry with taxpayer funding and no oversight, for example, we should really take that number to heart. We should not just glaze over and effectively say "Well, they must know what they are doing..." If we, as tax payers, are going to bail out this industry, then it needs to be on our terms - not on theirs. And our terms should include accountability, oversight, and a clear end game - not a bottomless well of taxpayer funds to whomever has donated to the right political campaign.

Even conservative pundits, like Andrew Sullivan, for a start, seem to feel that it's a bad idea to hand US $700 billion over to one man, with no oversight. And those who think that even should Secretary Paulson be a good man for the job - and this, in fairness, does seem to be an opinion of at least some on both sides of the aisle - to have this included:

"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."


-- Source

... is nothing short of ridiculous. It's a naked grab for unaccounted power. We've seen what happens when this administration wants to rush into something, on its own terms, without telling people what they're doing. It's what they do when they don't want to be held to accounting for it later, too. We've seen it, and it never ends well.

So my thirty-two words for the Bush administration? Easy:

That's got to be the dumbest thing that we've ever heard. Do you think that we haven't been watching, and that we don't see your track record from the past eight years?

There is a different between rapid, measured, decisive action and handing over the keys to the distillery to an alcoholic. Had enough? Do something about it. Kill that clause, kill it now, and let's talk. But I think that eight years of carte blanche to rape and pillage the country have been quite enough, thank you very much.

Now Museum, Now You Don't

While I was doing some research preparing a new book review, I happened to find that there's a whole Wikipedia entry on that pesky Kentucky creation museum, you know, the one with the jesus horses. And it got me wondering - would there be a similar entry on the generally inept Conservapedia? Well, guess what? There is. And you know what else is interesting, if you have a few minutes to kill? Try comparing the two articles.

Here are some figures that caught my attention:

• The Wikipedia entry is comprised of seven sections, and if printed, would occupy roughly eight printed pages (without adjusting printer settings).


• The Conservapedia entry is comprised of four sections. If printed, it would occupy about three pages (again, I make this determination just by letting Firefox do a print preview).


• The Wikipedia entry has sixty-five (65) citations and notes following the body of the article.


• The Conservapedia entry has seventeen (17) citations and notes.

I have to say that this may be the former academician bias coming out again, but isn't a longer article, with more source notes, generally considered more reliable and useful in actually understanding a topic? By which criteria alone, the "Trustworthy Encyclopaedia" loses out once again.

The only tidbit that I could find in the Conservapaedia article that wasn't in the Wikipedia article was that Bill Maher and his film crew visited the creation museum while filming, presumably for Religulous. Can't wait to see how that turned out.

C'mon, guys. I know that your articles are written largely by third-string hacks and muppets*, but honestly. Couldn't you try just a little bit harder? It's kind of embarassing.

* With apologies to all muppets everywhere, who I genuinely adore and have done since childhood. And the Angel muppet from Smile Time too. And I even apologise to some of those creepy new muppets that turn up now and again on childrens' telly. By "muppets", I of course mean staggeringly imbecilic pillocks, not lovely articulated puppets enjoyed by all right-thinking people everywhere.

A Literary Aside

I wasn't going to cover this, originally, but antbus was the second person to bring it to my attention, and it ties in neatly with the general content of this blog, I'll go ahead and briefly mention the "continuation" of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The short version is this, as reported by the BBC and Reuter's: Irish author Eoin Colfer, best known for his Artemis Fowl series of books for children, has been selected by Jane Belson, the widow of Douglas Adams, to write a sixth and - presumably - final book for the Hitch-Hiker's trilogy.

I have mixed feelings on this subject. Here are some of those feelings, in no particular order:

1. Douglas Adams is the reason that I started reading science seriously again, seven years ago. After his untimely death in May, 2001, I devoured the tribute volume, The Salmon of Doubt. One of the sections that I read with particular interest was an interview in which he said that part of what led him to his ultimate atheism was reading the books of Richard Dawkins, especially The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene. I was also very moved by Professor Dawkins' eulogy for Douglas Adams, which to me is one of the most deeply-felt remembrances that I have ever encountered. Shortly thereafter, I found a copy of the Blind Watchmaker and started reading, and the rest, relatively speaking, is history.


2. I don't know much about Eoin Colfer, apart from the facts that (a) he is Irish, (b) he has written the Artemis Fowl series of books, and that (c) he claims to be a passionate fan of Hitch-Hiker's. I haven't read any of the Artemis Fowl books (yet), but I understand that they are quite popular. I can only hope that popularity translates into skill with the Hitch-Hiker's universe.


3. I hope that this isn't just an effort at cynical opportunism. The Hitch-Hiker's books were a cornerstone of my youthful reading, listening (the radio series), and viewing (the ambitious but flawed BBC television series). I can understand wanting to ensure that DNA's daughter and widow are secure, though, and honestly, I imagine that that is what Mr Adams would have wanted. If gullible types like me are bound and determined to drop twenty quid on a new Hitch-Hiker's book, then we should have to do just that. It should be like a penance. Or a tribute.


4. So, was Stephen Fry too busy to do this? I would have thought him a logical choice, but he's probably well over-committed as is.


5. I'm going to have to read it... just because it's a part of the series. Please, please, let it be good.

It's said that you can't go home again. You also can't go back to your youth. But I sincerely hope that the magic of this one thing can be captured once again.

Highs and Lows

A few quick notes from the worlds of astronomy and physics for you...

• Distant Gamma Ray Burst - at a distance of 12.8 billion light years (or "yesterday" for any young earth creationists lurking here and looking for a quick translation), the most recent gamma ray event detected by the Swift orbiting telescope in the region of the constellation of Eridanus on 13 September is also the most distant yet seen. The great thing about a record like that, though, is that it's just waiting to be broken. In the meantime, distant observations like this continue to push our knowledge back further and further in time, back to the threshhold of the Big Bang itself.


• Large Hadron Collider (LHC) sadness - the BBC reports that the LHC will be down for a least two months after an electrical fault caused some of the Collider's super-cooled magnets to heat up, damaging them. Sad for physicists and joy for doomsayers, this isn't exactly a surprise: if you take thirteen years to build a €3.3 billion (US$ 6.6 billion) machine, mechanical failure should be high on your list of possibilities.
• 
  
• Finally, the dangerous Hubble servicing mission - although more than anything, it's an excuse for me to post this very cool photo - two shuttles on the pad at once. As shuttle Atlantis could not reach the International Space Station in the event of a major problem during the Hubble servicing mission (Hubble's in a much higher orbit than the ISS, and the shuttle wouldn't have enough fuel), Endeavour must be on standby to effect a rescue should one be needed.

That's enough for now... on with the busy week-end.

What's the Harm?

Yet another fantastic website has hoven (hoved? heaved? havarti? -- mmmm... cheese...) itself onto my radar, thanks to the Skepticality podcast, and I just had to share. It's called What's the Harm?. Sounds innocuous enough, right?

What creator Tim Farley has done, and what he describes in detail in the interview (download here), has been to assemble cases of people be harmed by various practises - Christian Science, refusal to vaccinate, or homeopathy, for example - and to catalogue them on his site, by category, with links to the relevant news stories. More importantly, he has been tabulating the injuries, the lives lost, and the real monetary cost associated with adherence to "woo", as Orac and others love to call it. What's the Harm? will no doubt be as useful in the cause of skepticism and reason in general as Rebecca Watson's beloved Quackwatch is for quackery.

The other key thing for me mentioned by Mr Farley was a technical bit of internet joy - how to link to sites that you don't want to support. Tim also maintains a blog on which he discusses many useful skeptical applications of software tools. In this case, what I had forgotten that there was a "nofollow" tag that you can use in your HTML... if I ever knew it at all. But I'll be quite certain to go back and fix my old links, and to use it from here forward. For those who want to use it, here's the syntax, to be included in any URL:

rel= "nofollow"

Why use the "nofollow" tag in your HTML? Many people, myself included, don't want to link to sites which they find to be spurious, irresponsible, or wrong, thus increasing their relevance score with the Google and other search engines by virtue of having linked to the site. By using the "nofollow" tag, you can eliminate that (for Google, at least - according to the Wikipedia article, it doesn't work for Yahoo or Ask.com), and link to the Discovery Institute (see? I did it there) to show that Casey's said something lame again, and do it with moderate impunity.

I'm going to do some more looking into "nofollow", but for now, it seems like something that I will use quite a bit, and a feature I need to incorporate into some of my old posts. Such a tidbit was worth the price of admission by itself. Use it well. And check out What's the Harm? I know a few people who are going to get that link in their inboxes very soon.

Oh, and by the way...

...Aaarrrgh.

Just thought I'd mention it.

Tony Blair Rears His Head... on the Daily Show?

These are strange times indeed.

Former British Prime Minster Tony Blair appeared last night on Comedy Central's flagship programme, The Daily Show. Mr Blair appeared as skittish as though he were facing an extended bout with Jeremy Paxman, but all of the characteristic Blairisms were still in evidence: the smile activated and deactivated at will, the sombre demeanor tempered by the desire to appear warm and human, and, of course, that facial tick which makes him say that he and the current US President are still big mates and everything.

Really, we should never have been surprised by the relationship between Shrub and Blair, though. I remember the joke from The News Quiz, Radio 4's seminal topical comedy show, immediately after the 1997 election that put Blair and Co. into power, which was basically: "Tory rule was ended on 1 May 1997. It was reinstated the following day." (I'll pull my copy of the show and get the exact quote, if you like, just let me know.) The point of that is this: although Blair was nominally a Labour politician, he wasn't as far from Shrub ideologically as people might have been led to expect. For those who don't follow British politics, of course, this discussion will seem somewhat incomprehensible. In that case, let it go, accept that it's a deeply weird situation, and enjoy it.

We sat down to watch the Daily Show last night, and when Blair was announced, I must admit that the words "no eff-ing way" escaped my lips. As the BBC article linked above points out, Jon Stewart's position on the Iraq war - or at least, the editorial position of his show - is blindingly obvious. But the interview was fair and balanced in a way that Faux News never quite seems to manage, and probably moreso than Mr Blair deserved.

Perhaps the weakest moment of the interview was when Blair mentioned the September, 2001 attacks in a fairly sententious way, and Jon remarked that he did remember (the link takes you to archival video of the Daily Show from 20 September 2001. If that's still a raw nerve, then please skip it for now). For someone who was known for his use of media spin, it seems that Blair and his team dropped the ball on this one.

It's still staggering to me, though, when the line between entertainment and politics is so thoroughly blurred as this. Is everything now "entertainment"?

In the spirit of irony, then, for your entertainment, here are the clips:

First, Part I:

And Part II:

Missing Humph

Generally, about this time of year, I would start looking forward to a new series of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, but, for now, with the sad demise of Humphrey Lyttleton, that must be considered a pleasure deferred.

Fortunately, apart from my own collection of ISIHAC recordings, there are clips wandering around on YouTube, including this one, featuring comedian Jeremy Hardy. I'll warn you now, if you weren't a regular Clue listener, at first, this will make no sense at all.

So here are the jokes: first, the game "Pick Up Song is difficult enough to begin with (mind you, all of the games in Clue are utterly meaningless, except for Mornington Crescent - that's part of the fun). The second joke is that Jeremy Hardy is known for many things, but that the high quality of his singing is not one of them. If you listen to the whole clip, you'll see why.

You Always Remember Your First...

It's amazing... I feel as though I've arrived.

Following the piece that I wrote yesterday, something curious happened... would you believe it? A creationist comment troll manifested, spewed some venom, then spewed that mewling faux concern that they often produce in the same breath. According to my good friends at Sitemeter, the hit preceeding the comment was from Dallas, Texas, USA (just in case you suspected that there was another Dallas, Texas, somewhere in the wilds of Mongolia).

People of Dallas, your attention please. You will kindly raise your game. There are fruitbats among you. They demean your good city. Well, I say "good city", but honestly, I've been to Dallas. "Good" might be stretching a point. On the other hand, have you ever been to Kansas City? You Dallasians (sic? Dallasites?) might have the Institute for Creation Research (not linking to them again - once in a lifetime is enough), but we have Jack Cashill (thanks, MousieCat - knew I could depend on you for a link). I know. You're jealous, right?

Anyway, about viewing this troll "in the wild", as it were. It was quite a feeling. At first, I was annoyed, then I decided that ridicule was the best approach. Think that I must have struck a nerve somewhere, though.

The irony is that, if anything in yesterday's entry was weaker than I would have liked, it was that anyone commenting could have scored points off of me for overuse, even misuse of the word "and". No one did. Never mind, though. Next time, I'll edit a little more thoroughly before I click "Publish Post". Not a problem.

The Royal Society Cleans House

A few days ago, I mentioned a remark made by Professor Michael Reiss in passing. Essentially, he had made a statement suggesting that creationism should be discussed in lessons in British schools, rather than excluded. This remark was met with fairly widespread condemnation, and I can say that there is exactly zero chance that my disapprobation had anything to do with what has now happened.

The Royal Society, "the independent scientific academy of the UK and the Commonwealth dedicated to promoting excellence in science", was quick to take action. The BBC is reporting, and the Royal Society confirms, that Professor Reiss is stepping down from his post as their director of education, having been asked to do so.

Not exactly a victory, of course. It is unfortunate that it was necessary, and it was an unfortunate thing to say in the first place. Despite Professor Reiss' status as both a biologist and an Anglican priest, I haven't found any real malicious intent in his statement or in the reading that I've been able to do around these events, and it may well have been misinterpreted or blown out of proportion... but, as Professor Richard Dawkins has reportedly called the activities surrounding Professor Reiss' seat "a Monty Python sketch", perhaps the whole picture isn't clear yet. Regardless, we should all take the opportunity to also express the sentiment from the Royal Society press release, and wish Professor Reiss well for the future.

All the same, well done the Royal Society for acting so quickly and decisively in the interests of sound science.

---

AFTERTHOUGHT: I wonder if this now means that Professor Reiss is eligible to appear in a new, extended cut of Expelled?

There Is No Debate. Stop Saying That There's a Debate.

Before I start, I want to say a big "hello" to Britain - all sixty million of you. And, yes, you're welcome! You don't have to thank me - call it a bonus from the Anglo-American special relationship.

Every now and again, I have to admit to myself that I can see the potential advantage of being an unthinking ideologue.

You know what I mean by "ideologue", right? The dictionary on my desk (which is the Penguin English Dictionary, but don't judge) defines an "ideologue" as "1. a strong advocate or adherent of a particular ideology 2. a theorist, esp one who shows little concern for practicalities". And what I mean, in this case, is more the latter.

What the ideologues have quickly latched onto is the short attention span culture which we have created, with its profusion of idiotic television programmes filling every conceivable niche of banality. Suddenly, the logical concept of authority, that is to say, an unimpeachable source, no longer matters, because thanks to television and the web, there's an authority for everyone, no matter how mentally ungifted.

Somewhere along the way, probably back in the 1990s when the first personal websites were springing up like mushrooms after a rain, it seems that many people lost the ability to discern the difference between a credible source and some lunatic typing away like mad on the computer in the public library. And the ideologues came forth, and they were many, and raving noisily.

And technology, which as I recall was supposed to "democratise" information, and make it easier for everyone to have access to good information, has in fact done the opposite. This isn't the technology's fault. There were always little nut-job presses out there, like the Institute for Creation Research, with their oddly-printed books that bespoke "no budget for typography". There was always a subculture of speakers, slinking from church to church, slouching toward Pennsylvania, rallying a roomful of similarly-minded yokels with the clarion call of "god didn't make no man from no ape". And that, I have to say, was fine, as far as it went. The western world still maintains the view that you can believe whatever you like, as long as you don't inflict it on others.

Unfortunately, inflicting it on others is what these people most want to do. They want not only to have their insular point of view taught in schools, they want it to be given equal footing with real science. They don't just want it for their children, they want it for yours and mine, too. And that, I have to say, is a problem.

It would be so much easier, though, wouldn't it, not to have to support your claims with anything resembling evidence? If you can just say anything, unencumbered by fact, reason, logic, or sense... well hell, that's easy, because then I can just sit around in my pants watching cartoons and claiming that this bundle of mud and twigs that I just dug up in the back garden is really a dinosaur. Who are you to tell me that it isn't, right? And the same applies to creationists and ID-o-bots: they're the ones in their pants watching cartoons, pretending that what they think matters.

The Intelligent Design crowd would like you to believe that there's a debate in science, members of the public, members of the press. And you, dutifully, say that there's a debate, because someone told you that there were "two sides" to this question... and we're programmed to think, when someone tells us that there are two sides, that both sides must have merit. So let's look at the two sides for a moment. One is populated by hard-working scientists, researchers, teachers, assistants and support staff, gathering empirical data, researching, thinking, educating, and writing. The other is populated by people who, on the surface, look largely the same, apart from the funky 1960s-era photographs and the fact that their books seems to talk a whole lot less about what they actually did in the laboratory, and a whole lot more about things written down about a semi-literate nomad culture twenty-five hundred years dead. The debate, members of the public, members of the press, within science is compelling - it seeks to answer some of the most fundamental questions about life itself. The external debate - that which occurs between science and the ideologues - seeks to shut science down. It seeks to shut down all of our culture, and our freedom, and our moral compass, unencumbered by anything other than the baggages of "faith".

Here's a quick list of things that any creationist or group of creationists often say or do in response to various situations (and still expect to be taken seriously):

• Confronted by evidence? - The data were contaminated, misinterpreted due to experimental or sample bias, or were produced by biased scientists who hate our freedoms.


• Experiencing frustration or envy that no one will publish your work because it doesn't pass any of the tests for good science? - Create your own journals, and smear the journals who wouldn't publish you.


• Museum staff won't bend over backwards to accomodate your own particular delusions? - Build your own museum, make your own signs, and tout yourself once again as the emissary of truth.


• Independent scientists make a discovery that you don't like or can't understand? - Launch a campaign to make out that you have a case to be given all of the data, write angry letters about why no one will give you the data (because you're unqualified and possibly certifiable), and publicly pout in the hopes that someone will notice and care.


• Up against the fact that there is no debate over the veracity of evolutionary theory, only over the underlying mechanisms and processes? - Say that there is anyway, and recruit people with outdated or irrelevant credentials to say the same thing.


• Faced with an insurmountable loss in a public debate? - Lie about the debate, lie about the loss, then get back on the radio without your opponent and crow about how they "refuse to debate you".


• Called on the lies that you've told? Rinse and repeat - lie some more.


• Intent on terrifying an atheist or agnostic? - Grab a banana (honest, I'm not making this up - as if I could!).

Yes, the last one was completely gratuitous. But I'm being completely honest when I say that I don't know what to do about these people. It seems that, in the end, it can only be through constantly reiterating their errors, to say how wrong they are at every turn... these are the tactics that have been deployed against reason and knowledge themselves. Perhaps it's time to turn those tactics back on their source. To be an unthinking ideologue is to be immune to anything resembling reason, up to and including legal process (although a high number of the ID-o-bot crowd are lawyers). The difference between lawyers and scientists, though, is pretty basic: lawyers can argue either side of a question, based on who is paying them. Science can only argue from one side: the side on which the things that they observe make sense.

Oh, and about evolution? About science at all? There is no debate. Stop saying that there is a debate.

Enough.

Whale Evolution in Action

There's often a fairly simplistic argument made against paleontological view of natural selection, mutation, and evolution, which states that there are no transitional fossils demonstrating the development of species from one to another over time. Then, of course, something new is found which demonstrates very tidily that the gap is filled by what can only be described as a form which is partway between two known forms. To this news, the argument from cdesign proponentists then shifts to saying: "well, you claim to have a transitional form between two fossil forms. But I see it differently: to me, you now have two more gaps that need to be filled."

In this sense, intelligent design and creationism's view of the fossil record is like a shell game in which ever more shells are placed between the one under which you've put the pea. You can never find enough forms to fill all of the "gaps". And this, it seems certain, is much better for them, and certainly easier than doing anything that might look like real science.

In the spirit of fair play (which they lack), I offer yet another example from the contentious grounds of the evolution of the whale. A recently described, 42 million year-old form, Georgiacetus vogtlensis, provides yet another example of those things which are "impossible" if you believe in the immutability of species and the "created kinds". Georgiacetus clearly displays further transitional stages in whale development, including a blowhole placed further forward than in modern whales, a pelvic girdle in which the hip bone is not firmly joined to the skeleton, meaning that this early whale most likely could not walk on land.

The story has also appeared on NPR's All Things Considered, and is worth a few minutes' listening. As always, these stories are only a part of the discoveries which are continually being made and assessed by science, and can only be ineffectually sneered at by the forces of unreason.

In addition, I've learned from the NPR story that apparently, the greatest literary champion of the whale, Herman Melville, included a chapter on whale fossils in his chef d'oeuvre, the much discussed but less-often read Moby-Dick or, The Whale. Of course, this means that now I'm going to have to add it to my list of books to read, having steadfastly avoided it for something like twenty years. Damn you, science, for expanding my literary horizons!

Current Reading

I was more than a little pleased yesterday to pick up a few books that I have been looking for, including a copy of Tom Standage's The Neptune File, which I have read but want to read again without the time constraints imposed by inter-library loan. Thanks to The Dusty Bookshelf, I can now do just that.

I'm also engaged at the moment in what I am amused to call "opposition research", which I'll be writing about shortly on the book review blog, by delving into a vapid little volume called Evolution Exposed: Your Evolution Answer Book For The Classroom, published by the dreadful Answers in Genesis. For those of you who haven't yet encountered this group, they are ardent textual literalists, of Ken Ham and the Creation Museum fame. If you'd like the capsule summary of the book, then try to imagine the Index to Creationist Claims over at Talk Origins, (also extant in book form as Mark Isaak's The Counter-Creationism Handbook), only without the citations and evidence (or the science, or anything resembling research), and you'll have an idea of the merit of the publication. Unlike most ID texts, the AIG bunch don't try to cloak their belief and crusading "you shall all be like us" Christiness in talk of "design" and a "designer" - this is the young-earth creationist end of the spectrum, where they appeal directly to the dubious authority of the Old and New Testaments for their scientific literacy. Which, on reflection, is a bit like asking a child which is more aethestically pleasing, neo-Classical architecture or the toy drum on which they have been conducting an impromptu percussion festival.

Happily, this is countered by the 2008 edition of the Best American Science and Nature Writing, which contains some interesting articles, most of which I somehow missed the first time round. It's been a busy year so far, I guess. Sure, there's nothing by Natalie Angier represented this time, but I can live with that.

Finally, I've been picking up volumes in the Roadside Geology series when I see them at a reasonable price for a while now, and yesterday found one which struck me as being tinged with more than a subtle shade of irony... the Roadside Geology of Alaska. No, don't laugh. Originally written in 1988, it contains a lot of useful information about the landscapes and geomorphology of our northerly neighbour, most of which the current Governor of the State of Alaska would be too ignorant to understand. That could be considered an ironic twist, when much of her state's revenues - and her husband's employment - derive from the geological processes that any young-earth creationist is quick to disdain in favour of catastrophism (which has been discredited for how long... two centuries?). In a way, though, that provides a unifying theme for my reading at the moment.

For some people, "belief" and "faith" mean "immunity from argument and reason". And that, in itself, should disqualify them from any position of authority - whether it be running a bogus museum to running a country with the very real lives of three hundred million people riding on their inability to make a rational decision.

Driving Concerns

A snippet of a conversation in the car today, on the way back from a trip that included a stop at our favourite British goods store, as we drove along a stretch of turnpike...

She: What are you drinking, again?
Me: Shandy. It's good - you've had it before.
She (taking a sip): Yes, that is good. What's in it?
Me: It's just a sort of fizzy sweet drink made by Bass...
She (reading the ingredients): It's got beer in it.
Me: Well, sure, it does, but it's mainly lemonade.
She: Still, there's beer in it.
Me (reading the label, finding that "beer" is number two on the ingredients list, after carbonated water): Hmmm... still, it's mainly there for flavour.
She (after a moment's pause and consideration of another Rowntree Fruit Gum): So, basically, we're driving down the road with an open container of beer between us?
Me: Well, yes, I suppose that you could put it that way.
She: Hmmm. Well, if we're stopped, I'll say that it's mine.

Of course, we weren't stopped, although a State Trooper drove by as we were taking the flyover from I-70 onto I-635, we were hardly weaving and carousing our way down the road. But I maintain that the Bass Shandy is little more than beer flavoured (for the record, the can says "0.5% Alcohol by Volume" - which means that I could probably consume a dozen in quick succession and still not feel a thing). There's no age restriction on its sale, either, as far as I'm aware, however I've been over the legal age limit for nearly two decades. Honestly, I didn't even think about it. I'd never have an open container in the car - hell, I'd never even drink and drive at the same time. Yet there we were - technically, drinking and driving. In the loosest possible sense. So we stopped, and there were two-thirds of a can remaining by the time we got home. Next time, I think I'll get the barley water.

Primarily, though, I was thinking this: how sweet that, after three years, my dear wife would be willing to take a fall for me. I hear that prison is murder for pretty girls, but I'm sure that it would never come to that.

In honour of our flirtation with lawlessness, though, I think I'm going to make a proper shandy tonight with dinner. Yes, that sounds good.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Often, life is an unmitigated shambles: I think that I can say that pretty much without fear of contradiction. Something invariably seems out of balance, and you're left wondering - is it even worth it, bothering to try? You live your life, and regardless of what you do, the world continues indifferently on in its diurnal course. The world, after all, does not give a fig for you. It's been doing the same rounds, more or less without alteration, for something in the region of four and a half billion years, while you've only been struggling along for thirty or forty (or fifty, or sixty - correct as needed).

I can see that you're not with me, so I'll provide an example. In a conversation with the Amateur Astronomer today, I postulated that the resurgence of blinkered religiosity in western countries, and the pointless stupidity of trying to call creationism a science and forcing it on students as science, as is now potentially happening in Britain, and all of the rest of that... I had suggested that it might be the last gasp of a dying mode of thought. And that is genuinely what was in my head at the time: that the McPalins of the world, that the rabid fanatics of every stripe and their ilk - all of them could not possibly be what the future held. If nothing else, it had to be part of the pendulum swing. A particularly vicious swing, no doubt, but one which would eventually move back in the direction of comfortable secularism.

But that was when the AA shot back: "I don't think that it is. I think that it's only going to get worse. This is just the beginning. They won't be happy until they've dragged us right back into the Dark Ages."

Leaving aside the suspect, though attractive, notion of the "Dark Ages", I was suddenly struck by the thought that I really hope that it is the beginning of the end for religiosity, at least, in its least appetising forms. Frankly, I don't care what you want to believe, as long as (a) you don't try to inflict it on me, (b) you do not use your "beliefs" as grounds to harm or exclude others, (c) you can grasp why other people might not want to live under your particular brand of religious law, and (d) you realise that you are not entitled to have your particular flavour of belief taught as fact in taxpayer-funded schools.

In the meantime, if the fundies want, as Jeremy Hardy once said, to "drag us back to a time when we just bloody died", if the desire really is to bring back the good times that were the so-called Dark Ages of western European history, then the best advice that I can cull from the poets is this, the conclusion to the line quoted in the title: "Rage, rage, against the dying of the light." Don't yield, and don't stop fighting it. The world may not care, not now, but it may also thank you, someday.

Stormwatch

So tonight was a night of listening to storm sirens, watching the local weather ninnies prance about with their various kinds of radar and their inept live units for about ten minutes before remembering: "oh, yes - they have no idea of what they're talking about", and catching some of "Countdown" instead.

On days like this, I'm glad that there's XKCD in the world, among other things. Because when you laugh, just for a moment, the world doesn't seem quite so bad. Is that a trite notion? Abso-bloody-lutely. Go on - ask me if I care. I dare you.

Skeptical Musings

A call has gone out from Michael Shermer's organisation over at Skeptic, who publish Skeptic magazine (not to be confused with the Skeptical Inquirer, to be found at the Committe for Skeptical Inquiry's site) - Skeptic is holding a conference at CalTech in October: Origins. It sounds like it will be a fascinating outing, even if, as these things generally are, it will be more a reaffirmation for skeptics than anything else.

I regularly read both Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer, in an effort to keep up with all of the latest news. I also listen to podcasts, probably more than I should, but I do spend a lot of time driving: the New England Skeptical Society's podcasts, The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe and Skeptics 5 x 5 are two of my favourites, along with Skepticality, which is produced by Skeptic.

It's unfortunate that to be "skeptical" seems to have gathered such a negative connotation to itself. Personally, I'm inclined to put it down to the notion that to be skeptical is to somehow be persistently and unreservedly downbeat about all of the things that people seem to want in their lives: the supernatural, the paranormal, the unproven thing that just gives us a "good feeling"...

However, to me, that's not the essence of being skeptical at all. Frankly, wouldn't it be easier - albeit less freeing - if some of these things, and here we can use the example of religion, were in fact true? If one day there were to be clear definitive proof that religion strain "X" were the true one, that everyone should follow, wouldn't that make things generally easier for us? It would save all this tiresome debate, although, as I mentioned, with the track record of religion on tolerance and individual liberties, it might not be as freeing. But we would know, and some would argue that, whatever the answer, it would be good to just know, finally, irrefutably, once and for all.

The truth, though, is that we simply don't know. Not at all. And that's where skeptics enter the picture. When confronted with a mumble of religions, the skeptic says: "hang on a minute. All of these philosophies claim to be true and to be the divinely revealed word of whoever it is that they call a 'god'. But that's not possible. They can't all be true. Show me your evidence.

The same is true to the skeptical position with relation to purported psychic abilities: "You claim to be able to bend spoons using only the power of your mind, Mr Nude. We have a test that would allow us to ensure that you are in fact bending spoons with your mind, or reading playing cards, or healing the sick - a double-blind controlled trial." And if Mr Nude is the real thing, how much more interesting would that be?

Sadly, because of this, being skeptical is sometimes labelled as being an enemy of fun, harmless, entertaining pursuits. And what sort of dreadful old misery-guts would want to do that?

The problem, of course, is that skepticism also means that you see what an awful waste of time and energy and money that many of these activities turn out to be. And, believe it or not, you want to try to make a difference, to improve people's lives. I think that, in honest earnestness, some skeptics end up being too forceful with the true believers, and the result is the caricature of a miserable killjoy. So perhaps, just perhaps, our answer lies in the middle ground. "Sure, that would be great if what you say is true," one might say, "now why don't you show me why you think that it is true." Retaining the appearance of openness is just as important as retaining your critical faculties, and at the end of the day, any true skeptic could be convinced by evidence which meets the criteria: that's part of the game too.

It's just odd, how the evidence never seems to appear...

Laughing Aloud

I just have to say this quickly... I do look at my traffic (and it's low, but there are thousands of good blogs to read before you get to mine, so I don't begrudge you that), and occasionally, it either worries me (like when I wrote about dinosaur tracks in the south of the Arabian peninsula and saw that the Department of State had paid a call) or it makes me laugh aloud. As when I looked this morning, and saw that a visitor from Argentinia had arrived at one of my space-filling, video-posting entries after Googling "spoon bending with Mr Nude".

Speaking of which, if you're in the mood for some Stephen Fry anyway (and it's very seldom that I am not, tiger), then you should make a point of visiting his website, and also make sure that you download his podcast, which you can find on iTunes under Stephen Fry's Podgrams. The current installment, "Compliance Defiance", builds up slowly to one of the funniest and most delightful rants that I've heard in a while, and is well worth your time.

Fry has been an idol of mine for some time, really. I've read his novels, bought his telly work (and some parts of - makes air quotes with fingers - "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" remain genius these twenty long years later), to the sublime drama Kingdom, and follow QI as closely as I can. It's a delight that can make me laugh aloud, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, you should really have a look.

Big Bang Day

It's already 10 September 2008 in Europe as I write this - the day that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is scheduled to be powered up. As I've written briefly about this before, and had intended to follow the run-up more closely, it caught me by surprise to read that... well, it's now.

And here's something else that I didn't realise: BBC Radio 4 are dedicating a whole day to the powering on: they're calling it (and I love this): Big Bang Day. Andrew Marr will be hosting a whole day of programming devoted to it. Even Woman's Hour is on the list as getting into the game. And, perhaps, but not quite most exciting to my not-so-inner geek, there's to be a special radio edition of... Torchwood. Yes, that Torchwood.

Sure, it's going to seem a little dated... well, basically, it will be dated by tomorrow evening, most likely. But for now, I'm busily working out the time difference in order to listen to it via live streaming. The Big Bang sub-page also promises that an mp3 will be available for download for a week after the broadcast - so get it while you can.

The only thing that would make it more complete for me? If Humphrey Lyttleton had survived to host a special edition of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue for the day, generally taking the mick out of the seriousness of the whole thing. That, to my mind, would have made it perfect.

Ancient Forests Seen Once More... from Beneath

I've been meaning to post something about this for a couple of days, but haven't gotten round to it until now. It's another of those stories of the "things so cool, why would you need to make stuff up" variety has been reported by the BBC...the remains of ancient forests have been found in Illinois coal mines.

The trees, which are said to cover an area the size of Bristol, are remains of a three hundred million year old forest, and stand to provide a wealth of additional information of the ecosystems which are now a part of our coal reserves: it is the compacted leaf littler and debris of the forest floor which makes up - three hundred million years later - the seams of coal being excavated.

By examining the remains of the ancient forests, it is hoped that we will learn more about the forests of today's world, and what we might expect for them in the future.

Or, on the other hand, we could just stop looking, exploring, and seeking answers. Instead, we could just believe in stories of a talking snake, a bit of shrubbery that mysteriously caught fire, and then just bloody die from a minor infection. Your call.