For shame, New Scientist!

New Scientist is not a bad magazine. I read it regularly, despite the occasionally weirdly wanky physics story that looks as if it were published for sensational value only. But overall it is no bad, coming out strongly on the side of reason. However, I am very close to cancelling my subscription and encouraging others to do so.

Last week, the print issue carried an article by Amanda Geffer concerning creationist code-words and how to recognize them in pretend-science publications. It was an excellent, rational and thoroughly admirable article.

Apparently, someone complained to the editors about it and the article is currently removed from the online edition of NS, apparently "while they investigate".

I encourage everyone to follow the link and leave a complaint in the comment section. Demand that the editors restore the article immediately, or, at least, provide a reasonable explanation for their action (not that I think there can be one, besides intellectual cowardice).

Since the article in question is no longer available at the NS site, I reproduce the complete text of it below:

How to Spot a Religious Agenda, Amanda Gefter, New Scientist, Sat, 28 Feb 2009 22:35 UTC

As a book reviews editor at New Scientist, I often come across so-called science books which after a few pages reveal themselves to be harbouring ulterior motives. I have learned to recognise clues that the author is pushing a religious agenda. As creationists in the US continue to lose court battles over attempts to have intelligent design taught as science in federally funded schools, their strategy has been forced to... well, evolve. That means ensuring that references to pseudoscientific concepts like ID are more heavily veiled. So I thought I'd share a few tips for spotting what may be religion in science's clothing.

Red flag number one: the term "scientific materialism". "Materialism" is most often used in contrast to something else - something non-material, or supernatural. Proponents of ID frequently lament the scientific claim that humans are the product of purely material forces. At the same time, they never define how non-material forces might work. I have yet to find a definition that characterises non-materialism by what it is, rather than by what it is not.

The invocation of Cartesian dualism - where the brain and mind are viewed as two distinct entities, one material and the other immaterial - is also a red flag. And if an author describes the mind, or any biological system for that matter, as "irreducibly complex", let the alarm bells ring.

Misguided interpretations of quantum physics are a classic hallmark of pseudoscience, usually of the New Age variety, but some religious groups are now appealing to aspects of quantum weirdness to account for free will. Beware: this is nonsense.

When you come across the terms "Darwinism" or "Darwinists", take heed. True scientists rarely use these terms, and instead opt for "evolution" and "biologists", respectively. When evolution is described as a "blind, random, undirected process", be warned. While genetic mutations may be random, natural selection is not. When cells are described as "astonishingly complex molecular machines", it is generally by breathless supporters of ID who take the metaphor literally and assume that such a "machine" requires an "engineer". If an author wishes for "academic freedom", it is usually ID code for "the acceptance of creationism".

Some general sentiments are also red flags. Authors with religious motives make shameless appeals to common sense, from the staid - "There is nothing we can be more certain of than the reality of our sense of self" (James Le Fanu in Why Us?) - to the silly - "Yer granny was an ape!" (creationist blogger Denyse O'Leary). If common sense were a reliable guide, we wouldn't need science in the first place.

Religiously motivated authors also have a bad habit of linking the cultural implications of a theory to the truth-value of that theory. The ID crowd, for instance, loves to draw a line from Darwin to the Holocaust, as they did in the "documentary" film Expelled: No intelligence allowed. Even if such an absurd link were justified, it would have zero relevance to the question of whether or not the theory of evolution is correct. Similarly, when Le Fanu writes that Darwin's On the Origin of Species "articulated the desire of many scientists for an exclusively materialist explanation of natural history that would liberate it from the sticky fingers of the theological inference that the beauty and wonder of the natural world was direct evidence for 'A Designer'", his statement has no bearing on the scientific merits of evolution.

It is crucial to the public's intellectual health to know when science really is science. Those with a religious agenda will continue to disguise their true views in their effort to win supporters, so please read between the lines.

scientism and balderdash

An article in Catholic News tries to defuse the evolution "controversy" (itself a product of deranged creationist minds) by claiming that evolution is not to blame for the recent surge in atheistic books and the open spread of atheism. Rather, scientism is the evil beastie here (an old claim!). And they define scientism as "the use of science beyond its proper sphere of investigating physical nature".

Of course the dolts do not realize that such a definition is certainly begging the question of whether there is anything at all "beyond physical nature". Meh, they never cease to amuse me.

Kepler launch tonight

Kepler telescope, an instrument that will look for Earth-sized exoplanets, will be launched today. It may find thousands of them, another step in our search for life elsewhere in the Universe, and a boon for future navigators of sublight colony ships...;)

as if we need another reason

...to know that religion and the Church are great forces for evil in our world: here.

Excommunication may be a weak concept, but they are excommunicating the wrong people! These scumbags are punishing the people who have saved the life of the 9-year old girl while refusing to pass a moral judgement on the actual perpetrator. And they feel persecuted? they fucking dare to complain (about trivialities: notice the prominent place given to The Golden Compass in this one)?

bad eggs broken

So the bankers are saying that they do not need the TARP money and that taking is was a mistake. So, why don’t they give it back now, instead of possibly within 2-3 years. I am sure that I am not the only one puzzled by the discrepancy: for fuck’s sake, if they really don’t need it they should cough it up now...

I think, therefore I do.

According to the Typealizer, this blog is written by
INTP - The Thinkers


The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications. They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.


Now that's all good and fine, but WTF is the "thinker" in the silly pic doing with an Apple laptop? Unix ATW forever! ;)

Even more curious is the fact that my LJ, in which I hadn't written for a long time, is apparently written by A Doer. have I changed so much in the last six months? Or do I combine the best (or worst?) features of both?

Anyway, check it out. Good silly fun.

a dash of cynicism

You know how easy it is to report a blog as being a spam generator? Here. I have done so myself, on several obvious word-salad blogs. (I shan't provide any links to them, but no day passes by without at least one showing up in one of my daily alerts). Now this blog may be a lot of things: ill-kept, sub-par, irrelevant—but it is not spam in any sense of the word. However, it was apparently reported as such in early September, and I had to spend some time proving to Google that I am actually human (well, I am super-human, but one has to make some sacrifices occasionally) in order to have my blog and my email (!) unlocked. And then it happened again, three more times. It was not difficult, only annoying. To tell you the truth, I didn't even wonder what happened. Now, looking back, I realize that all of that brouhaha came within 24 hours of me publishing a mild (well, that is an exaggeration...) criticism of Sarah Palin on September 6th. A coincidence? Perhaps. The rational part of my brain insists that it is; the paranoid conspiracy circuit is naturally convinced that a typical action by some lil censorious Rethuglican was taken. Not that it would be something new for them. And I thought: it's amazing how they are the ones accusing us of suppressing free speech. Who moderates (read: censors) comments on their blogs? I have never seen any scientist/liberal/atheist do so, only theocrats/right wing crazies. Do you doubt it? It's hard to prove, but most of what I write as comments on religious blogs never makes it past moderation. What are they afraid of? Themselves? Reason? The very real possibility that their set of beliefs is utterly incorrect and will melt when exposed to the tiniest amount of logic, common sense and reality? Hmm. Food for thought.

the iniquitous fist of destruction

The communal vacuum-cleaner is a piece of shit. It moves the dust and the dirt and the beer-bottle caps across the room, but its wheezy lung is too weak to actually pick any of them off the floor. When you combine that pitiful weakness with my hippie-length hair, you end up in a contaminated disaster zone. I shed all the time, sitting naked in front of my desk, madly scribbling (can one use that term?) esoteric perl code, and feeling a soft tickle of spider legs on my back once in a while. A wayward insect? No, just another hair, slithering its way free of my scalp to join its compatriots in the jungle of a low-pile brown carpet. This subconscious delapidation turns the floor of my long-suffering bedroom into a waste-basket of doom, a horrid toxic sludge. You know the 20-second rule? If you drop a piece of food, it's okay to eat as long as you pick it up wihin 20 seconds? Well, it doesn't work in this neck of the wasteland. A piece of bread comes back up gladly, entangled in a forest of hair: some mine, some, naturally, belonging to the two house-cats and a house-dog that have a penchant for sitting down behind my chair and staring soulfully at me as I—oblivious to their presence—type in imprecations and insults into the interwebz.

No small children should be allowed here; they'd be coughing up hairballs the size of my fist after the first beer. And nothing I do seems to help. I raked my room once, coming up with enough hair for 10000 maleficient spells, and the next day the floor turned back into the jungle it was the day before. I suppose the most important question is where all that fucking hair is coming from. I am not going bald, far from it; with each passing day the stupid neglected garden on top of my head becomes wilder and more rebellious. Is it going forth and multiplying?

I should walk less and drink more, that doubtlessly is the answer. Orion is on top of my sky, glaring madly down upon me, daring me to do something utterly useless. I think I'll listen to him, for once.

Meanwhile, for those still confused...

Western news' slant on the Russian-Georgian war a few months ago was bloody clear to anyone who cared to investigate a bit and go past the mainstream platitudes and lies. Now, Georgian claims of being the victims of a Russian aggression are being dismantled quite rapidly. This movie should help.

Everything you need to know

Live election results, starting about 4 hours from now: http://politicalwire.com/aggregator/electionresults.html

Now, have YOU voted yet (assuming you are a registered US voter, of course). The future is really being decided right now...

For those about to vote...

Don't forget to visit http://stealbackyourvote.org/ .

The return of the wastrel

I came back! The Nordic Roots festival is over, and a wonderful time was had by all, including even me. So, for the next week or two, I will be listening to nothing but Fennoscandian roots music, which all can keep track of on my last.fm.

My dear friends and co-conspirators!

So I am leaving tomorrow, to go to MN for the weekend. I'll be in Minneapolis from Friday 26th till Mon 29th, going to all the Nordic Roots festival shows at the Cedar, and spending my time drinking and harrassing innocent Mid-Western wenches at several venues (assuming they still exist): Sgt Preston's, that awesome hot-dog place half a block from the theatre, that wondersome cheap dive a couple of blocks up from the theatre, or, if all else fails, in the lobby bar at the Holiday Inn. I shall wear black and be loud, so if you feel like stopping by for a philosophical discussion, a drinking competition, some nefarious plotting or a friendly game of fisticuffs, be my guests!

the fight is on

I do not have the right equipment, but any woman reading this should consider going to Women against Sarah Palin blog and adding her name to the already rather distinguished list. A short quote:

"We want to clarify that we are not against Sarah Palin as a woman, a mother, or, for that matter, a parent of a pregnant teenager, but solely as a rash, incompetent, and all together devastating choice for Vice President. Ms. Palin's political views are in every way a slap in the face to the accomplishments that our mothers and grandmothers so fiercely fought for, and that we've so demonstrably benefited from."

Yeah, that's absolutely correct.

A Palin for the rest of us

Come on, join the revolution: Michael Palin for President!

I mean, the other Palin has no chance...

More about truths and chuckling

From Atheist Comics:

Somebody is getting it right

The new Ecuadorian constitution will apparently include "rights of nature":

"Art. 1. Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.

Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.Art. 1. Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.

Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution."

For more details, see http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/09/04-7

The sadness of things

Adlai Stevenson, while running against Eisenhower for President, gave a particularly great speech and afterwards one of his aides came up to him and said "Mr. Stevenson, after that speech you will have the vote of every THINKING person in America!" Mr. Stevenson replied "That won't be enough. I need a MAJORITY!"

Does this remind you of anything? With all the right-wing bloggers and their sycophantic commenters frothing and cumming all over themselves at the thought of another authoritarian ignoramus (almost) at the helm, I haven't lost hope yet. Perhaps we have learned something. The funny thing about all the conservative ravings is their conviction that the Democratic party stands for some kind of hard left ideology, something only a blinkered idiot would consider to even approximate the truth. Remember, kids: Democratic party is center, wobbling between left- and right-leaning please-everyone stances. Republicans, on the other hand, are in the distinguished company of Mussolini and Franco, on the far right of things. Any further right, they'd be all over the sidewalk, running over pedestrians. Wait, they do that already! There is no mainstream left in the USA, despite all of your subliminal desires for a bogey-man to come and treat you like you deserve to be treated.

Oh, and by the way, still no word from the McCain campaign about those pesky science questions...

The Palin Beastie Part 2

Amazing. One of the questions asked of Sarah Palin was:

" 11. Are you offended by the phrase "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?

SP: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I'll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance."

The joke is that the words of the Pledge were not written until 1892, and the words "Under God" inserted into it in 1954. What do the founding fathers have to do with it?

We've known for sure that she was a medieval theocrat already, now she proves her ignorance beyond any reasonable doubt. Is this what USA wants to stand by the presidential throne: an ignorant, oppressive, bigoted, theocratic idiot? The mind boggles...wobbles...toggles....

The Palin Beastie

GOP has gone into an attack mode, accusing any critics of Governor Palin of sexism. Of course, such a charge coming from the conservative wing of a conservative party (opposed, for example, to Equal Rights Amendment) is somewhat funny on the face of it, but we can ignore that for now.

In any case, allow me to throw in my little bit of technicolour yawning. Firstly, my feminist and libertarian credentials are well established, and a charge of sexism against me is laughable, as anyone that knows me can attest. Secondly, I am not going to concern myself with irrelevant charges, such as her personal business, anything involving her family, or such.
But the problems with Palin go much deeper than that. Of course, her experience (or lack of it) is hardly relevant, as a number of bloggers on both sides of the fence have already pointed out. Her opposition to abortion is more troubling, but here, too, one must be given some slack (although her opposition to *all* abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, is quite frightening. One is reminded of a statement attributed to the then-Senator Jesse Helms, on the very same subject: "What's wrong with incest? That's how we get the best horses." Speaking of sexism...)

No, the issues that make her, in my opinion, unfit to hold the office, are her lack of understanding of the basics of our Constitution and her unabashedly theocratic tendencies. If I were in an uncharitable mood, I would be tempted to call her an ignorant fascist! She is completely unclear on the concepts of the separation of powers, freedom of speech and the Establishment Clause. In the past, she has called for the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in public schools, spoke favourably of the banning of certain books in public libraries and, apparently, attempted to pressure other state officials to join up in her private feuds. All of those make her appear positively medieval, in some ways, and certainly not a person who would be looked at as an ambassador of democracy by the whole world.

So, back to sexism: it appears that the selection of Sarah Palin is, on the one hand, a bone thrown to the right wing of the Republican Party (read: mad, ignorant theocratic fascists) to bring them around and rally their support behind McCain's questionable conservative convictions and, on the other hand, an attempt to play the discrimination and pseudo-feminist card. A transparent political gimmick, a ploy that may fool some but not most, hopefully.

Obama comes through

Finally! Barack Obama has answered the questions asked by the Science debate 2008 foundation, and his answers are, generally, cogent and well thought-out. Still waiting on McCain. And think of the hilarity we would have had if Brownback or his ilk still were in the race!

Anyway, the answers (and more info) can be found here

Presidential Debate '08

If it ever happens (yeah, right: none of the leading candidates seem to have any interest in participating, but we may be able to persuade them to), it looks like it will be in my front yard: at the PSU.

I, for one, would not miss that for all the oil in Iraq.

In other news, aren't democrats supposed to be the open-minded ones, with a well-known liberal bias, especially in places like Chicago, IL? ;)

Apparently not.

Yeah, I'll just repost this part of an exchange between Rep. Monique Davies, D-Chicago and Rob Sherman, on the question of the grants of public monies in the state of Illinois to churches!

Here (my bolds):"Davis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy — it’s tragic — when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school. I don’t see you (Sherman) fighting guns in school. You know?

I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous–

Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?

Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!

Sherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court—

Davis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon. "

Leaving aside a problem with Lincoln (he certainly was not a Christian, if one believes his own words, and was probably the most atheistic President this country has ever had), don't public servants have a responsibility to be familiar with the foundational laws of the land they serve? I have given up on demanding any signs of actual intelligence from them a long time ago, but simple knowledge of the laws they are sworn to uphold and defend should really count for something. Davis is obviously a bigoted idiot and all my friends living in her district should think about this very hard the next time they vote.

reality has a well-known liberal bias part 37

A funny bill is moving towards approval in the state of Oklahoma. HB2211 has passed the House and is moving right up, into Senate. It will do this:

"The bill requires public schools to guarantee students the right to express their religious viewpoints in a public forum, in class, in homework and in other ways without being penalized. If a student's religious beliefs were in conflict with scientific theory, and the student chose to express those beliefs rather than explain the theory in response to an exam question, the student's incorrect response would be deemed satisfactory, according to this bill.

The school would be required to reward the student with a good grade, or be considered in violation of the law. Even simple, factual information such as the age of the earth (4.65 billion years) would be subject to the student's belief, and if the student answered 6,000 years based on his or her religious belief, the school would have to credit it as correct. Science education becomes absurd under such a situation."

Doesn't the world already have enough to laugh/weep over when looking at the USA?

The sponsor of the bill is one Sally Kern, who appears to be one of the most bigoted, nasty religio-robots in this country; a vile human being by any standards. She claims that there is a vast gay conspiracy infiltrating our schools, among other nasty remarks; apparently, her son is gay and has been disowned by her. So it goes in the land of religious hypocrisy.