176

My mother left a message reminding me that today is Lewis Carroll's birthday. Rex Stout, John Lennon, Alexander Woollcott, James Thurber, and Martin Gardner are numbered among his admirers. Mark Twain once met him, describing him as the shyest adult male he had ever met except Joel Chandler Harris, the author of the Uncle Remus stories.

A photographer, inventor, mathematician, satirist, clergyman, and amateur philosopher, Lewis Carroll is best remembered as the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking-Glass. The Hunting of the Snark (An agony in eight fits) is a favorite of mine; the Bellman reminds me of a great many leaders in my experience. "He had bought a large map representing the sea, without the least vestige of land: and the crew were much pleased when they found it to be a map they could all understand. 'What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators, Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?' So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply 'They are merely conventional signs! Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes! But we've got our brave Captain to thank,' (so the crew would protest) 'that he's bought us the best--a perfect and absolute blank!' This was charming, no doubt; but they shortly found out that the Captain they trusted so well had only one notion for crossing the ocean, and that was to tingle his bell. He was thoughtful and grave--but the orders he gave were enough to bewilder a crew. When he cried 'Steer to starboard, but keep her head larboard!' what on earth was the helmsman to do?"

Lewis Carroll turned 176 today.

Quotation of the Day

H[uckabee] doesn’t believe in evolution, which is like not believing in electricity. You have a constitutional right not to believe in it, but grab a live wire and you will still be eliminated from the gene pool.

KAMuston

Does a Theory Somehow Become a Law?

In a recent post I expressed a certain befuddlement over a notion that there is some sort of progression from hypothesis to theory to law. Not being a scientist myself I could only fall back on what I learned back in my school days. While stumbling about the internets looking for something or other I fell upon a Scientific American piece by John Rennie that observed:

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law.

Somehow I missed that bit; I remember that stuff about forming hypotheses, testing them, and developing theories from hypotheses that panned out--whether that came up in elementary or junior high school I no longer recall--but nothing about theories being between hypotheses and laws. If it ever came up in school I must have spaced it out completely, because that whole idea was absolutely new to me when I read it in a critique of a biology textbook, complaining that the author should have written of Newton's "Law" of gravitation rather than "Theory" of gravitation. John Rennie goes on to confirm what I thought I understood:

Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth.

The rest of the commentary on this point was also interesting:

In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'" The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.

All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less certain.

Nice to have a little common sense for a change. I've probably been reading too much of this creationist/ID stuff for too long.

Silence is Golden

One of the things that irritate me--and there are many--is the way certain people seem to think that they are privileged to do things to others that would annoy the hell out of them if the situation were the other way around. Like distributing bibles at school, for example. People who would be horrified if their little angel came home from school carrying her brand new Koran or The God Delusion under her arm claim to see no problem with sending other people's kids home with a Gideon Bible. "But it's THE BIBLE," they exclaim, with much arm-waving and gesticulation, as though that somehow made things better. Maybe so, but remember, it's somebody else's Necromonicon, and their horror is no different from your horror.

Not that I have a lot of sympathy with people who want to be protected from running into ideas they may find uncomfortable. There are lots of them out there, and one way or another we all have to develop thick hides to protect us from somebody else's notions of reality.

But there are many times when a little peace and quiet are appropriate, and as a bus rider myself, I feel strongly that people should be prepared to shut up rather than disturb other passengers. This especially applies to people who seem to think that it is appropriate to read from their chosen text, whether it be from the Bible or from a syndicated advice columnist, in a loud carrying tone, just in case there are people at the other end of the bus who can't hear it.

Which brings me to this story: A Fort Worth woman is claiming religious discrimination because she was asked not to read to her children from her Bible in a loud voice while riding the bus. When she refused to desist a supervisor came and escorted her off the bus, then drove her and her children to their church, allowing her to read on the trip as loudly as she liked. This woman is now demanding an apology. "She said in her mind, what happened this past weekend was religious persecution, and she refuses to go along for the ride." Her representative, a person from the Liberty Legal Institute, proclaims:

I'm extremely shocked that a bus driver would pull over and take time out of his busy schedule in order to kick off a lady and her two kids while they're trying to read the Bible on their way to church.... They should be ashamed of that.

Richard L. Ruddell, president of the bus company, however, sets the matter straight:

It was not what she was reading, it was the very loud and disruptive volume. She was asked to lower her voice, but refused. Other passengers on the bus were looking to the driver for proper enforcement of the rules.

This driver acted in a very courteous and professional manner to properly deal with the situation. The T, as a public transit authority, has no policy against reading any type of material on the bus. Only when behavior of a passenger reaches an extreme volume, such as in this case, is a supervisor called.

On this same excursion into Internetland I turned up this story:

BEIJING - A Chinese Christian businessman has been released from detention after police grabbed him from his home in the early morning hours over a month ago, says his wife. Zhang Jing said her husband, 37-year-old Shi Weihan, was set free on January 4 after being held in a cell for 37 days, the legal limit in China before formal charges have to be filed. He was arrested on November 28, while his two young daughters cowered in their bedroom, for "illegally" publishing Bibles and Christian literature for distribution in home churches. His family had been worried he would be sentenced to at least five years.

Now that sounds more like persecution to me.

Another Corrupt Politician Out

According to the New York Times, John T. Doolittle, who along with fellow-travelers Richard Pombo and Tom Delay did so much to gut environmental laws for the benefit of private corporations, is planning to step down.

WASHINGTON — Representative John T. Doolittle, a California Republican who has suggested he is almost certain to face criminal charges in a Congressional lobbying scandal, announced Thursday that he would retire from the House next year.

The announcement by Mr. Doolittle, 57, who is in his ninth term in Congress and was once seen as a rising star in the Republican Party, made no reference to the criminal investigation by the Justice Department, which has centered on his connections to the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Last April, Mr. Doolittle’s home in suburban Virginia was raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of that inquiry, and his wife, a campaign fund-raiser, was subpoenaed for her financial records.

The aptly-named Doolittle spent his time in Congress attempting to destroy the endangered species act and to make sure that nothing was accomplished on virtually any environmental front. Given this record it is no surprise that the California Republican had ties to corrupt lobbyists. The Times added:

Justice Department officials would not comment Thursday on the status of the criminal investigation against Mr. Doolittle, who is among nearly 20 House Republicans to announce that they will voluntarily leave Congress over the next year. Prosecutors appear to be focused on business connections between Mr. Doolittle’s wife and lobbyists, including Mr. Abramoff, who might have sought to influence his vote.

...Until this week, Mr. Doolittle publicly rebuffed calls for his resignation and said he was eager to seek another term. Branding his critics within the Republican Party as “weasels,” he continued until several days ago to seek donations for a re-election campaign this November.

I wonder what happened to change his mind.

On the Energy Front

First the bad news: oil hit $100 a barrel today.

The good news: demand is expected to drop as many consumers are priced out of the market.

Another Election Season Begins

The first shot of the 2008 election has been fired, and (as of this moment at least) it seems that Obama is the winner on the Democratic side, and Huckabee on the Republican. If past experience is anything to go by, we're probably looking at something like a Clinton / Thompson match-up when the dust settles, but past experience may well be meaningless. The field is depressing at best; an anti-science preacher, a right-wing actor, a guy bankrolled by racists, another fellow whose main asset is his famous name, and an ex-mayor of New York, whose chief claim to consideration is that he didn't entirely lose his head when his city was attacked by terrorists.

I can't cope with this.

Quotation of the Day

Anyone who supports torture is a traitor to the democratic form of government, and should be voted out of office, if not impeached.

P. Z. Myers

I'm Mad as Hell and I've Lost My Paxil

I spent a bit of this morning reading about a fellow in Lima--this is Lima, Ohio, by the way, here in the good old USA--whose life savings was stolen. Four hundred grand and change. And what are the authorities doing about it? Well, nothing. No, actually it's worse than nothing. The authorities--specifically the FBI--are the ones that stole the money.

Now I want to stress that this guy--Luther Hicks--has not been convicted of any crime. He has not even been charged with any crime. It is the mere fact of his possession of a large sum of money that appears to have excited the interest--might I say the greed?--of the FBI. They have presumed, without any evidence that I know of, and certainly without actually going to the bother of presenting any evidence to a court, that Hicks must have obtained it illegally, and are demanding that he present some sort of evidence to prove that he didn't. That is, they're demanding that he prove a negative, a difficult task at best, to get his money back. This is more anecdotal evidence, anyway, for a sort of crime that has become all-too-common under the bizarre forfeiture laws here in this once-great nation--laws that appear to be unconstitutional on the face of it several times over--violations of due process, excessive fines, unreasonable seizures at the very least.

Now there may well be more to the story; I haven't been able to find out and to be honest I'm not interested. Not unless it involves the presentation of hard evidence to a judge or at least some sort of legal cover. If Luther Hicks has not been convicted of a crime, then agents of the government have no business seizing his assets. Unless he owes back taxes or something of that sort, in which case the IRS should be doing the job. Not that I have any vast sympathy for the IRS approach to ripping people off first, and then asking questions about whether they owed the money, but at least owing money is some kind of excuse. A government lives on taxes; it's not surprising that it reacts to nonpayment like a dog deprived of a bone.

And as if that wasn't bad enough reading the inane comments here pissed me off even more. A certain Thomas writes, apparently seriously, "You are not supposed to have more than $10,000 in cash. Any amount over that and the government has the right to take it unless you fill out the proper currency transfer requests. You break the rules, you lose the money, period, end of discussion." Uh, no, Thomas; it is not illegal to have large amounts of cash on hand in this country. How do you think banks function? Stores? Other businesses? If it represents unreported income or something of that sort--or a payoff for a kidnapping, or the result of extortion, or whatever--then yeah, it can be illegal, though it would be just as illegal if it were in a bank or invested in stocks. An even more idiotic comment comes from a certain Cesar McKinley. In response to somebody who suggested that the NAACP should get involved (Luther Hicks is black), he wrote "They're too busy trying to get a pardon for six thugs who happened to be at a school where a noose was hung before they beat up a random kid." Apparently facts are of no concern to Cesar. What actually happened in the case he's referring to was that a racist kid picked a fight with a black jock and ended up with a black eye and other superficial bruises. (Had this kid actually been set upon by six jocks intent on doing him serious damage--attempted murder as the prosecutor claimed--he would have received some actual injuries, which didn't happen.) This minor schoolyard scuffle got blown up out of proportion by an overzealous prosecutor who appears to have been intent on making political capital from the case, though I don't pretend to know his actual motives. Maybe he was just the racist jerk he appeared to be. Who knows? But if Cesar and Thomas want to sound off, they might do at least a little research on the topics in question before waxing indignant.

And still another fellow pissed me off with this comment: "The '90s called...they want their paradigm back." Whenever I read an alleged joke in this form I hear David Spade's voice. Were these things ever funny? For me these are right up there with "I've heard of [fill in blank] before, but this is ridiculous." For some reason I hear those in Alan Alda's Groucho Marx voice. That's neither here nor there, I suppose, but the formula is tiresome. I'm reminded of an old movie parody, maybe from Humbug, in which a character asks "What language do you speak on this island?" "Here we speak fluent cliché," the native girl replies. If formula follows dysfunction, can misinformation be far behind?

But I digress. That's generous, maybe, in presupposing that I ever had a line of thought to digress from. Another thing--what is this fixation that readers of reason.com seem to have with Ron Paul? I was going to say that I don't get it, but on second thought, maybe I do. With all the unprincipled thugs wandering about, it could be refreshing to see a principled thug. Of course I mistakenly thought Robert Bork had principles, based on inaccurate media accounts, until I took a look at the guy's own words. And actions. If he has principles, they must be made of rubber. At least you know where you stand with Ron Paul. He's done right things for the wrong reasons, and wrong things for the right reasons, but at least most of the time you know where you are with him. Which is a lot more than I can say for some politicians I'm more likely to vote for.

But let me get back to the craziest of the comments at reason.com. A certain Joe at Joe.com (right...) claims to "work for an agency that seizes property under these exact circumstances." (I have my doubts.) "[N]o the us attorney's office," he writes, "nor my agency [whatever that is], would support a ridiculously unjust seizure like that. i don't know all of the facts of this particular case, but there is ALWAYS more than what is published in a simple news blurb." Now I'm not sure what "Joe" means by a "simple news blurb"--there's no such thing--but I'm sure there's more to the case than we've heard. However, as I said above, unless it involves due process or something strongly resembling it I'm just flat not interested. "[F]or all you conspiracy theorists and government haters," he goes on, irrelevantly as far as I can tell, "there has to be a substantial reason to seize that money; the punishment has to fit the crime. it's not as simple as this article makes it seem." But that's the problem with these seizure laws--the punishment does not have to fit the crime, nor does there have to be a substantial reason--or indeed any reason--to seize money. As I've seen in cases that have come to my attention the mere fact of possession of cash is often deemed proof of criminal activity, and it's up the the accused to prove that he is not up to something. If "Joe" has any evidence to support his claims, he ought to have presented it. As it stands his unsupported assertion backed by all the clout of an anonymous "agency" is singularly unconvincing. I'd love to know what his "agency" thinks would justify seizing substantial assets without criminal charges being filed. Still, "Joe" assures us "there is no possible way this seizure would be supported in the manner it is presented in this article." I don't believe it; I've seen too many instances in the real world of houses being seized from elderly grandmothers because a grandchild was growing a pot plant in the basement, and stolen cars seized because the thief used it to pick up a police officer posing as a prostitute to have any conviction that justice, or anything remotely resembling justice, is being served. Oh yeah, there's always supposed recourse--the grandmother can sue her grandchild for the value of the house seized by greedy government officials, or the car-owner can sue the thief for the value of his vehicle. That's justice for you, in some bizarre Humpty-Dumpty sense of the word. Ha. Put up or shut up Mr. "Joe" of the secret police.

Oh yeah, and another one--"Hit & Run-euphemism for moron infestation" writes in response to "Big Nanny"'s comment "If the founding fathers came back to life today...they would get sent straight to Gitmo", "Indeed, because as we all know, the Founding Fathers were notorious for slaughtering innocent civilians and harboring those that did the same." No shit. Has "moron infestation" ever looked into what the Founding Fathers did to win their revolution? Slaughtering civilians and harboring terrorists was indeed part of it. Not pretty, maybe, but history often isn't. I do agree with "moron infestation"'s shot, "The more I read this site, the more I realize it is chock-full of assholes so stupid, they can't tell their ass from a hole in the ground." As asshole-in-chief, he should know.

That Holiday Spirit Revisited

Hey there, bunky.

You say that you tuned in to your favorite morning radio show and found that it had just been replaced by Don Imus?

And when you went to watch the Dr. Who Christmas special, it was being picketed by a rabid Christian who had apparently confused the Doctor with Jesus?

And then you held open a door for a lady and wished her "Happy Holidays", and she jabbed you in the chest and snapped "This is Christmas and people like you just don't know what that's supposed to mean anymore!"

And you say you got all dressed up as Santa and went to deliver some presents to a children's party and some drug-dealers took a shot at you?

Is that what's on your mind, bunky?

Well put your head down low and take a run at a brick wall, with that dignity and fortitude that says you'll never give up, never give up, never give up that old holiday spirit, no matter who just stole your routine. So this is the old Rational Ranter saying Merry Christmas, and God bless you Eddie Lawrence, wherever you are.

What Propheteth a Man

Alan Jacobs is a professor of English at Wheaton College, and the author of a book on C. S. Lewis (not surprisingly I guess, considering the Wheaton College connection) that I haven't read. He is also the author of a translation of some of the Gnostic gospels that I have at least tasted. Speaking as one who has made his way through many of them in the "original" Coptic, sometimes at excruciating length while sitting in on the Nag Hammadi seminar Tuesday nights at the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity (how well I remember those golden evenings so long ago), Jacobs' poetic translations are a considerable improvement not only on the more scholarly translations available, but on the Coptic versions themselves. Of course for the most part we can only guess what the Greek looked like, and maybe they did resemble what Alan Jacobs has made of them in English.

It seems, however, that Jacobs is also no mean parodist. His review of Khalil Gibran's Collected Works in last month's First Things takes the form of a Gibran parody, and is really quite good. An excerpt:

And it is the voice of Sir Laurence
Reading the King James Bible
That I hear within me as I write these words,
Which echo resonates within and bequeaths to me
The Prophetic Strain,
At least as far as you know.
Once that voice enters the mind,
As it does when one has read hundreds and hundreds of pages of Kahlil Gibran,
Its abode is fixed within,
It refuses all notices of eviction,
It continues to loop within the sphere of one’s skull,
An earworm, dread and implacable.

This is sharp, accurate, and funny, and I hope some future Dwight MacDonald will include it in the next definitive parody anthology. The complete review appears here, and is well worth reading. And revisiting, for that matter. I conclude with one further excerpt:

The words I give you now are words of Life, and not Death,
Though I suppose the Prophet would proclaim that Death and Life are the same,
And that only the foolish would divide the two,
The Two which are One.
But He’d be wrong about that, I’m pretty sure.

[Oh, and thanks to Edward Cook at Ralph the Sacred River for turning me on to this.]

Something Indefensible?

From Bill O'Reilly at Fox News comes a strange report about a teacher presenting his religious views in a public classroom. Preaching, as it were, rather than teaching. Usually O'Reilly seems to have no problem with teachers evangelizing their classes, but in this case he is opposed to it. What is the difference? In this case the teacher in question, James Corbett of Capistrano Valley High, instead of promoting some variety of fundamentalist Christianity in his classroom, is accused of promoting anti-Christianity.

A student in James Corbett's Advanced Placement European History class, Chad Farnan, complains that he "demonstrates a sense of hostility toward religion," which makes his Christian students "feel ostracized and treated as second-class citizens". [source] The student's parents are suing over the issue, demanding that the teacher be fired.

Background

The LATimes reports:

Capistrano Valley High School Principal Tom Ressler described Corbett as a "solid" teacher who has been with the Capistrano Unified School District for more than 15 years. Ressler said Corbett's class was popular among Advanced Placement students and has a high pass rate.

...Teresa Farnan said her suspicions were aroused on the first day of school when her son -- a sophomore honors student required to take Corbett's class for college admission -- asked her whether America was founded on Christian values, which he said his teacher had denied.

"He had learned in the eighth grade that our country was founded by persecuted Christians," said the mother, who describes her family as nondenominational Christian, "so I sent him to school with a tape recorder."

During the next two months, Chad Farnan said, he taped Corbett's lectures with the recorder in plain sight on his backpack.

...Eventually the Farnans contacted Advocates for Faith and Freedom, a nonprofit organization based in Murrieta dedicated to "protecting religious liberty," a spokeswoman said.

The group filed the lawsuit on the family's behalf, attorney Jennifer Monk said, because it believed Corbett's behavior violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution.

"The teacher is a representative of the state and the Constitution requires government neutrality toward religion," she said. "This teacher's conduct and words clearly show he is hostile toward religion and is indoctrinating these kids, who are a captive audience."

The lawsuit -- based entirely on Corbett's comments during one Oct. 19 class that the Farnans describe as typical -- asks that the teacher be removed from the classroom. "We will not seek damages if the teacher is removed," Monk said.

Chad Farnan is quoted as saying "He's against Christianity and bashes it all the time. He's been indoctrinating us and not teaching the class; we don't need to be hearing his political views during school time when we should be learning."

The Recording

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any posting of the actual recording. Bill O'Reilly transcribes a couple of excerpts:

How do you get the peasants to oppose something that is in their best interest? Religion. You have to have something that is irrational to counter that rational approach. When you put on your Jesus glasses, you can't see the truth.

Conservatives don't want women to avoid pregnancies. That's interfering with God's work. You've got to stay pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen and have babies until your body collapses.

The news stories also say that he:

said that religion is not "connected with morality";

compared Christians to "Muslim fundamentalists"

suggested that churchgoers are more likely to commit rape and murder.

Analysis

At first glance this story seems to be the mirror image of the Coach Packy story (see here and here). The thing is, though, the available excerpts simply don't support the claims being made. Putting on my historian glasses for the moment, I would note that it is a commonplace that irrational factors (religion, patriotism, and the like) are used to move people to take actions against their own best interest. Now no doubt the teacher could have phrased this in less colorful and more politically correct words, and maybe the idea sounds shocking to a naive 16-year-old raised on the modern myth that "America was founded on Christian values", but there's nothing in it constituting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

As for the comment about conservatives not wanting women to avoid pregnancies, what of it? One news story suggests that this was part of the comparison of Christian to Muslim fundamentalists, in which case it is entirely accurate. (Conservatives in both groups have been opposed to the prevention of pregnancies; this is a matter of fact, not opinion.) It may well be an example of the teacher inserting comments on modern issues rather than sticking to European history, but it doesn't infringe on anybody's religious rights. (There is no right to ignorance, though many fundamentalists seem to think there is.) If the issue is the negative tone the teacher takes, it seems to me to be warranted--just as one might take a negative tone on the subject of slavery, female genital mutilation, and other practices sanctioned by one religion or another in the past. Christian and Muslim fundamentalists may be legitimately compared; the similarities and differences among the groups are instructive; lacking the context I really can't say whether there was something unjustified in the comparison.

As for the others, well, religion and morality are separate, though often confused, and I say bravo to the teacher for reminding his class of the fact. I don't understand why that should even be in there. Also that last comment about rape and murder needs a context--churchgoers are more likely to commit rape and murder than whom? Non-churchgoers? The population as a whole? Or what? As it stands, it appears to be a mere statistic. If the student and his parents can show that it was a bogus statistic that was part of an anti-Christian tirade not connected to the subject of European history, then they may have a point, but if so they should have presented the relevant parts of the tirade, rather than this irrelevant point.

As it stands, this looks to me like another example of a frivolous lawsuit emanating from conservative Christians attempting to impose their values on others. Of course I'm assuming that they put their strongest stuff out in front; if they have evidence to support their claims of anti-Christian discrimination, they really ought to present it first, rather than this irrelevant fluff. Perhaps James Corbett could use some sensitivity training in dealing with religiously confused and factually challenged students, or something like that, but there is nothing whatsoever in the material cited to "show he is hostile toward religion and is indoctrinating these kids, who are a captive audience", in something or other, as charged by Jennifer Monk, who speaks for the organization representing the family. If new material surfaces, that actually supports this claim, then I will revisit this issue, but for the moment I have to file this under frivolous lawsuits.

[Oh, yes, and before I forget, a special thanks to Archaeoporn, whose blog turned me on to this story.]

Quotation of the Day

Science, as an intellectual project is profoundly un-conservative. Science does not value tradition. Science requires authority to continually reprove itself. Science must follow the truth wherever it goes, regardless of the political and economic implications. Science is apolitical. However, while science may not be any friendlier to liberalism than it is to conservatism, liberalism, by virtue of that tolerance thing, is friendlier to science than conservatism is.

John J. McKay

Here Comes the Sun

Happy Solstice to all, and to all a good night.

In Justice to Huckabee

It has been widely reported that Mike Huckabee, the Baptist minister now running for president as a Republican, proclaimed a bold program for the US to become "free of energy consumption ... within a decade." This seems like a rather draconian back-to-the-stone-age sort of goal--interesting for a Republican. I seem to recall that not so long ago President Stay-the-Course was proclaiming massive energy consumption to be an integral part of being American. Turns out, however, that Huckabee has been misquoted. What he really said is that the US should become "oil free of energy consumption ... within a decade." Well, I'm glad that's cleared up. Of course it's still meaningless gibberish, as nutty as an Almond Joy, but at least it's different.

Unbelievable

This one comes from South Carolinians for Science Education, courtesy of Pharyngula. Apparently, for some unfathomable reason, the people responsible for approving textbooks for South Carolina got a pair of ignorant fools to review two reputable biology textbooks and actually held them up for approval based on their uninformed ramblings. The characterization of them as ignorant fools is mine, but is justified by their own words. Examples follow:

Authors incorrectly refer to the Theory of Gravity when it is the Law of Gravity. Just as there is a big jump from hypothesis to theory, there is another big jump from theory to law and proper citation should be noted. [p.3, RJL and S critique]

Now I'm not a scientist, nor do I play one on the internet. I'm perfectly willing to concede that things may have changed a great deal since I learned the basics. I was taught Newton's Theory of Gravitation along with Einstein's Theory of Relativity and so on. But I've never heard of this progression from hypothesis to theory to law. Theories contain laws, and put them into a larger context that presumably explains them, but I've never heard of a theory becoming a law. If Newton's theory of gravitation has become a law of some kind, I apparently missed it. And if I'm confused on this point, so are the authors of the Wikipedia articles on gravitation, since they still refer to Newton's theory. To me, this criticism sounds just plain ignorant. If in other respects these reviewers showed they knew what they were talking about, I'd be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. That, however, is far from the case.

Statement that earth was formed about 4.5 BYA is speculation. [p. 2 RJL and S critique]

It’s speculation in the same sense that the claim the Washington Monument is 555 feet high is speculation. The age of the earth is a matter of measurement, not speculation.

Reference to 3 billions years old is not on solid grounds since dating methods are unreliable. [p. 4, M&L critique]

For this, I'll let Kenneth Miller, one of the authors under attack, take it:

The reviewer claims that there are scientific data that do not support evolution. However, he does not say what that data might be. Instead, he claims (without any supporting data or reference) that information showing that living organisms appeared on the planet nearly 3 billion years ago is unreliable. Why is that information unreliable? Has the reviewer discovered patterns of radioactive decay that violate the laws of physics? He does not say, and therefore it is impossible to evaluate these critical comments.

I admire the author's politeness, considering the boorishness of the critique. But since I don't have any horse in this race, I'll say outright anybody this foolish, ignorant, or mendacious has no business reviewing a serious textbook. Period.

Eruption Mt. St. Helen in 1980 proved long ages are not needed for geological formations. Canyons in GA and WA states were formed in days or months, respectively, and not millions or billions of year. [p. 1, M&L critique]

Again, it's hard to say whether the reviewers are being deliberately obtuse, or are genuinely stupid. Volcanic eruptions don't form multiple layers of different kinds of rocks containing distinctive fossils, just to point out one of the most obvious flaws with this "argument". As Kenneth Miller pointed out with commendable restraint in his reply:

The fact that some geological features can be formed rapidly does not mean that all are formed that way. There is abundant evidence, taught as a required part of the earth science curriculum in South Carolina, that the well-defined geological ages of the earth extend over hundreds of millions of years. [p. 1, reply]

Again, I don't know where to begin with what appears to me to be rank idiocy, either real or assumed. Do these guys have a point, or think they do? Or is this just some kind of snow-job? Oh, and by the way, speaking as one of the many who shoveled ash from my yard in 1980, it's Mount St. Helens, not Mt. St. Helen. I'm just saying.

Now this next "point" is interesting, in that it occurs in critiques of both volumes:

Statements on vestigal organs are grossly misleading. In recent reports, it was shown that the appendix, often cited as a vestigal organ, provides beneficial bacteria to intestines. This whole section should be deleted or updated to accurately reflect the state of knowledge. [p. 3, RJL and S critique]

Statements on vestigal organs are grossly misleading. In recent reports, it was shown that the appendix, often cited as a vestigal organ, provides beneficial bacteria to intestines. This whole section should be deleted or updated to accurately reflect the state of knowledge. [p. 2-3, M&L critique]

This is extremely odd. It almost looks as though the authors pulled out a piece of boilerplate and stuffed it into their critiques without any regard for whether it had anything to do with the books they were supposedly reviewing. Of course a reputable reviewer would never do anything like that, and we can be certain that this comment was somehow relevant to both textbooks. Or can we? Miller wrote:

Curiously, the reviewer complains that the appendix has been mistakenly cited as a vestigial organ when it actually performs a useful, if non-essential function. This comment suggests that the review does not understand the meaning of the word “vestigial,” which does not imply that an organ is without function. Rather, it means that the organ is reduced in size and importance, a “vestige” of its appearance in other organisms, as our text correctly notes. The comment also suggests that the reviewer has not read our book carefully, since we do not cite the appendix as such an organ.

Gee, I wonder what we're supposed to make of that, then. An incompetent criticism that doesn't apply to the book supposedly being reviewed. Again, this appears to be rank idiocy--even I know that a vestigial organ may perform a function. This next example of blithering incompetence is beneath contempt:

Since Archaeopteryx was a bird, it should not be used to show “evolution of a dinosaur to bird”. [p.3, RJL and S critique]

A bird with reptilian teeth and a bony tail? Oh, come off it. This is just creationist-gibber, the same as I've been hearing since I was a kid. You know, people, it doesn't matter how many times or how loudly you proclaim the archaeopteryx was only a bird, it remains as much a transitional form as ever. Though of course in a sense, given a long-enough perspective, we're all transitional forms. Except for those of us who turned out to be dead ends. More silliness accompanies an illustration of a scorpion in amber:

Since scorpions are still scorpions after 25 millions of years (if date is accurate), what does this prove? [p. 4, M&L critique]

Miller replies:

This ancient scorpion, trapped in amber, is used to indicate that fossils provide reliable and detailed records of past life. The text makes no other claim about the scorpion shown within the amber, and therefore there is no reason for the reviewer to object to it.

Any questions?

Robins were and are still robins. No evidence is presented of one kind of animal changing to another kind of animal! Charles Darwin shifted his thinking on origins after he became anti-God. [p. 1, M&L critique]

Now it's getting creepy. What do the reviewers mean by "kind"? This sounds like more creationist-gibber to me--you know, how every animal is supposed to reproduce after its "kind" in Genesis. If they have some scientific definition in mind, they should use the appropriate word--say, "species" or "genus" or whatever. Otherwise it just seems like some sort of weasel word-trick--you know, if I show you one species of elephant changing to another in the fossil record, you come back with, yes, but they're still elephants! That's not what I meant by "kind"! (Yes, I've had this argument before.) If I show a larger series of fossils documenting a transition from say a shrew-like animal to an early primate, then you come back with, oh sure, but they're all still monkeys. That's not what I meant by "kind" at all! And if I ask you flat out what you do mean by "kind", it turns out that you don't have a definition at all. "It's up to you to define 'kind'," you reply virtuously. "All I'm doing is pointing out flaws in your argument." As a fellow named Burns once observed in our high-school English class, he would never believe in evolution until I could show him an example of a cow giving birth to a goat. My reply at the time was that I'd believe in creationism (or whatever they were calling it back in the Palaeolithic) when I saw a cow giving birth to a bicycle.

The comment about Darwin is inexplicable. Miller's observation that "The claim that Darwin “shifted” his views for theological reasons are not supported by any Darwin scholar I know of" doesn't go far enough. It is a matter of indifference how or when or on what occasion that Darwin came to his beliefs as far as the subject of biology is concerned. Further, this looks to me like creationist projection, an all-too-common failing among the biblical-literalist crowd. Creationists reach their conclusions for theological reasons; it makes them feel better to suppose that others do likewise. It puts them on the same footing, so to speak.

But these guys sink even lower than this in the next bit:

The Nebraska man used previously to show descent of man was fabricated from one tooth in 1922. And this tooth was proven to be an extinct pig’s tooth and in 1972 the extinct pig was found to demonstrate a fraud used to promote the evolutionary worldview point in textbooks for 50 years. [Pp.1-2 RJL and S critique]

This one is really unbelievable and shows a most profound ignorance of the simplest facts of the history of science. Only an uneducated boob would claim that the so-called Nebraska Man was “a fraud used to promote the evolutionary worldview point in textbooks for 50 years.” In the first place “Nebraska Man” was a mistaken identification, not a fraud, and in the second, the tooth (mis-)identified as a hominid tooth was correctly identified in 1927 as the tooth from a peccary. “Nebraska Man” had no influence whatsoever on evolutionary theory and as far as I can tell has never been used in textbooks of any kind, unless you count creationist “textbooks”. Finding a hominid specimen in North America would have been extremely surprising under any circumstances, which is one reason this identification was always under suspicion for the brief time that “Nebraska Man” was considered a possibility.

Can they go lower yet? Just how many sub-basements are there beneath contempt, anyway? Turns out the answer is, yes, they can. Although this next one looks like a parody, I am not making it up. They reviewers actually wrote:

Hitler, Stalin, Planned Parenthood, racists, and others have cited Charles Darwin in their genocide programs that have killed an estimated 300 million people. Social Darwinism is a dark side of Charles Darwin’s publications that is often overlooked or excused. High school students should be aware that thoughts and thought process and actions have serious consequences. [p. 2, M&L critique]

I particularly like the inclusion of Planned Parenthood among those with "genocide programs"; I guess they threw that one in just in case somebody started thinking they were actually sane people. That's a dead giveaway that the reviewers have a couple of chips missing in their motherboards. Social Darwinism, by the way, owes a great deal more to Calvin than to Darwin, and has no connection to biology at all. I would also note that the reviewers provide no evidence whatsoever linking Hitler or Stalin with Darwin, and I personally doubt that they can. Hitler came by his anti-Semitism strictly through Christian notions, leading back through Martin Luther to the Gospel of Matthew. Inane (and downright ignorant) remarks like this go far to discredit anything these reviewers have to say, if they hadn't already revealed themselves to be uneducated boobs with their remarks about archaeopteryx and Nebraska Man.

With advisers like these, it is no wonder that the US is falling behind in science education.

And the Bleat Goes On

From Florida we hear some strange remarks from those picked to supervise its educational standards. Nancy Bostock, under the bizarre impression that "the entire theory of evolution is not scientific fact," think that "intelligent design balances it out." Her solution to getting intelligent design into the classroom: "We can call it a different name if that makes a difference to critics." (It doesn't, Ms. Bostock; crazy talk by any other name is still crazy talk.) Another member, Carol Cook, babbles incoherently, "We should expose them [schoolchildren] to it [creationism]. I wouldn’t necessarily say teach them. They need to know both things are out there–both trains of thought, both theories [sic]. To teach one as if nothing else existed, I think we’re doing our students a disservice." Still another, Jane Gallucci thinks "that students should be given the opportunity to view all theories on how man evolved," a not unreasonable position. But then it turns out that she actually thinks that "god made us" is a scientific theory, and that "both theories should be presented to children. I think especially in a scientific world both theories should be presented to children," she notes. Why childish superstition should be presented to children alongside scientific fact, especially in a scientific world, she doesn't explain. But a certain Peggy O'Shea takes the cake on this one. In a world in which biology is increasingly important, where biotech is the wave of the future and in which biological advances have applications in everything from police investigations to the safety of our food supply, she can write about the central idea of biology, "I’d probably ideally like to keep it ALL out of the classroom. If it’s going to create this much controversy, how important is it?" She seems to think that the best approach is to allow parents to "opt out" and to let their kids skip being tested on it. Ah, yes, more special privileges for the "christian" children. Just what we need. And I suppose when they want to enter college they'll demand to be allowed in under some kind of special dispensation for the willfully ignorant, as is happening now in California. Affirmative action for those too lazy to learn. Give me a break.

That Holiday Spirit

Robert Bork, the "conservative" activist judge found too crazy to sit on the Supreme Court--a Court that today manages to include Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia--has endorsed Mitt Romney, the candidate who advertises his faith but refuses to talk about it. And the candidate is apparently proud of this endorsement. Go figure. The War over Christmas reached a new low when ten rabid Christians attacked a small group of Jews who wished them a Happy Hanukkah. "Oh Hanukkah--that's the day the Jews killed Jesus," one of them said. (Of course there are two things wrong with this statement--it was the Romans who executed Jesus and they did it on Passover. However) Fortunately a Muslim who apparently had not recently brushed up on his stereotypes joined in to help the Jews fend off the Christians until one of the victims could summon the authorities. What on earth was wrong with him? Doesn't he know that he was supposed to be out calling for the death of a teacher whose class named a teddy bear "Mohammad"? Jeez, people, get with the program, will you? Of course it should have been ten secular humanists who beat up a couple of Sunday-school students for wishing them a Merry Christmas, till a Creationist--no, that's right, an Intelligent Design proponent--came by and converted them all to Bill O'Riley fans. Or something like that. The no-fact zone pays off with a vengeance.

And we learn from the lawyer of one of the attackers that it was really all right after all--his client's mother was Jewish, which means, I guess, that it was okay for him to attack a Jew for wishing him a Happy Hanukkah. Or something of that sort. I'm not sure I get it, to be honest. And anyway Hanukkah is over this year. Time to move on, I guess.

It turns out that, according to a federal judge, White House visitor logs are public documents, something that you would think would go without saying, but apparently still has to be said. It looks like The Decider was trying to claim them as his own personal property or something. This is part of his brilliant "mushroom" strategy--keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit. And speaking of fertilizer what are we to make of Douglas Feith's recent claim that "A strategic alliance of the ousted Baathists and foreign jihadists was something that our intelligence community did not anticipate"? Who didn't anticipate it? Everybody anticipated it, except apparently The Decider and his neo-con advisers. If you're going to rewrite history, at least do it plausibly. This isn't 1984 and a lot of us still have access to the unrevised version of events, regardless of how much material goes down the oubliette.

Where the hell is Eddie Lawrence when we need him? Who else could put some perspective on this situation? Ring out the old, ring in the new--new what? New worries? As the old philosopher said--or maybe it was the bird Fred quoting Abraham Lincoln--"Will you shut up?"

Child of Prophecy

Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles. Mt 12:18 (KJV)

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God. Ez 36:26-28 (KJV)

A fellow over at the Azuza Street Survivors, an ex-Pentecostal forum, has an interesting post about what it was like growing up in a Pentecostal household.

Since I was at least age 6 my mother and her church friends have always told me about how my birth was "foretold." They say that while I was still in my mother's womb a "prophet" told my mother that I was to be, quote, "a prophet to the nations" and something along the lines of the next Billy Graham/Peter Wagner.

He goes on:

They said that the following verses applied to me:
Mat. 12.18 and Ezk. 36:26-28

Basically, they believe that I am their "chosen one" for "the end times"...

The pressure was considerable.

...I was supposed to keep this "calling" completely secret from outsiders. Like even other christians were not supposed to know if they were not a part of the "church elite" at that church and with my mother.

The Prophetic Child was homeschooled. My memories of homeschooling, speaking from the vantage point of one of those doing the teaching, rather than doing the learning, are generally positive. We explored the bypaths of science and history there is never time for in the structured environment of public school, and worked forward at the pace each child set for himself. The Prophetic Child's memories are very different:

Me, I remember the beatings and the fighting and yelling and insane rules and all the Bill Gothard bull**** and then trancing out...sh**......I'm still tranced out. I remember how it was like every day was Mission Impossible trying to keep the rules or not get caught and just....survive every single f***ing day. My mother's a f***ing psycho too, her and her whole church and christian family.

The Prophetic Child left both home and church behind, but couldn't shake the memories of The Nightmare (as he called it) so easily.

ok yeah, all these crazy memories. I can't fully remember and if i try too hard the room will start spinning and I'll go crazy. but yeah.....

Sometimes the depression gets so dark, and trying to live in the "real unsheltered world" gets so hard I start to think about returning back to what is at least "familiar," into a system I at least know how to behave and live in. I know there is a way out of this nightmare

No matter how hardcore cult-like these end of days dominionist pentecostal charismatic church members want to be...I'll never give in. They can make fun of me, harass me, and even break my back...but they won't break me.

I'm working on a way out here, time is going to wash away all pain.

He suffered from depression, and people said all the things they usually say about depression.

Everyone has the same unoriginal s*** to say: "Have you seen a therapist?" "Have you tried medications?" "Have you tried thinking positive happy thoughts about the world?" "Maybe you should try counseling?" "Maybe you should try to just not be this way" "Just try taking one day at a time work towards your degree in college" "Don't worry, it will all get better"

I remember all that from my years of depression. Nobody ever has anything useful to say, because depression makes it impossible to communicate. In The Hole logic and reason and hope and keeping busy are all powerless.

The Nightmare ... just goes on and on and ... some of my church friends just cannot even fully remember what all happened, much less understand why......

This is also the downward spiral here....no one has any real answers, only lame answers and fear of what me and my friends grew up in, and fear of the depressing aftermath.

The Prophetic Child felt unable to ever fully escape:

They will always be targeting me, hoping and praying I'll come back, waiting for some weakness (financial, health, or otherwise) so they can move in and re-convert me.

You see, there was still this goddamn prophecy:

Basically, they believe that I am their "chosen one" for "the end times" and according to the Ezekial passage they believe that I am going to go back to their church/system.

In this prophecy, they also believe that it was "prophesied" that I would rebel, but then RETURN to their church and that's helping to drive me crazy.

The problem right now is the fact that it appears that they are always going to pursue me throughout life(and they have said so), as I am supposedly the "chosen one." As far as I can tell they did not treat the other youth the same way.

Sometimes I fear I'll end up going back.

Well, I don't want to be their "chosen one" at all. I just wish I could find some way to wake up from this nightmare.

Not all of it was this discouraging

On the positive side, that fact that we've survived this long means we're a LOT stronger than most people, especially these lamers who are terrified of my poetry. We're stronger than these pentecostal Youth With A Mission assholes who said "you can't be writing down your feelings, especially not about depression." We've proven that we're a lot stronger than these sick bastards in the charismatic and pentecostal movement.

I'm not getting any younger and it's time for the abuse to stop. Just because I'm not one of the "Beautiful People," just because other people don't understand or because I'm not "popular" does not mean I need to take any more s*** from anyone.

If reports are true, The Prophetic Child finally found his way out of The Nightmare. He took a gun and murdered four other people before turning the gun on himself.

But why care about a world that doesn't care about me anyways? And why go on living in a world that doesn't want me?

Caring never felt so lame inside. There's just no answers.

Cherish your life

[NOTE: the fragments given above were taken from various posts left by "nghtmrchld26" here. Most of them were found on one of these threads.

News Roundup

Sparks from the Telegraph

Dallas—Robert Scott, education commissioner, yesterday defended the controversial decision by the Texas Education Agency to remove Chris Comer from her office. "My understanding is that the e-mail she forwarded," he explained, "let me rephrase that. She wasn't advocating for evolution. But she may have given the impression that ... we were taking a position as an agency–not as an individual but as an agency–on a matter." He elaborated, "...you can be in favor of a science without bashing people's faith, too. I don't know all the facts, but I think that may be the real issue here. I can't speak to motivation but ... we have standards of conduct and expect those standards of conduct to be followed." Asked if Chris Comer had in fact been forced to resign over forwarding an email notification of a talk by Barbara Forrest on opposing anti-science, Scott replied, "That's an absolute falsehood. It's a personnel matter. The really frustrating part about this is, if I start talking about activities and things that happened, I get sued. So all I can say is that there are other factors...." What those factors might have been he declined to say. (Dallas News)

New Delhi—Faced with traffic signals that don't allow enough time to cross the street, dangerous drivers, and inadequate crosswalks, thought to be responsible for the death of more than nine hundred pedestrians a year, the Indian government did the only logical thing. Police in New Delhi began handing out tickets for jaywalking. Pedestrians appeared puzzled and angered by this response. "We have to run, the lights don't turn green long enough for us to cross," D.K. Bhargav explained. Constable Suresh Sharma does not buy this explanation, attributing pedestrian behavior to rural migrants. "How would a villager know about these lights?" he asked rhetorically. "There are no traffic lights in their villages." Police issued violators twenty-rupee fines and lectured them on the proper way to cross the streets. "Our aim is not to prosecute people, our aim is to educate them," police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said. The message is apparently being received: "Next time I'll be watchful," observed Vasant Pant, a young courier late making deliveries. "I'll look to see if there's a traffic policeman before crossing." (Reuters India}

Des Moines—Mike Huckabee, a southern Baptist preacher now running for President as a Republican, became defensive when asked about his eccentric views on science. "That's an irrelevant question to ask me—I'm happy to answer what I believe, but what I believe is not what's going to be taught in 50 different states," he said evasively. He did admit to believing that an invisible man built the earth and the sky. "I wasn't there when he did it, so how he did it, I don't know," he snapped. When asked about the propriety of putting such notions on a par with hard science in schools, he conceded, "I don't think schools ought to indoctrinate kids to believe one thing or another." (Yahoo News)