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Maybe you're not dead yet...
posted by GJ on May 2, 2007 @ 12:16PM

This story is way more than just interesting.

4 comments | Tags: science

 
     
     
 

The Great Debate
posted by GJ on May 9, 2007 @ 1:30PM

The grand debate between the Way of the Master folks (Ray Comfort and Kurt Cameron) vs the Rational Responders (Kelly and Sapient) took place on May 5, and will air tonight on Nightline.

I've seen a few clips so far. Ray and Kurt's idea of scientific proof used the word "scientific". That's about as close to science as they got. As for not using the Bible, well, that lasted about five minutes. Then we got the standard Ray spiel, probably trying to convert the 50 atheists in the audience.

Kelly and Sapient weren't very polished--and didn't drive home the points that would have won this debate handily. Instead of refuting the silly arguments that Ray and Kurt were using, they instead went the route of "religion bad, atheism good." Duh. That of course plays well to the atheism crowd, and not at all to the other half. In effect, they were doing almost exactly what Ray and Kurt were doing. Egads.

I'll be watching it tonight--perhaps the small clips I saw weren't all that indicative. Feel free to post long winded comments if you end up watching it too.

6 comments | Tags: religion, science

 
     
     
 

Grrrr. Or Why Intelligent Design Supporters are SOOOO Stupid.
posted by GJ on June 7, 2007 @ 12:54PM

I heard the following crap make it's way out of John McCain's mouth during the Republican debate the other day.  It went like this:

"School boards should have the right to set their own education policy.   It's my opinion that all views, all theories need to be taught to our children."

This is code for "I want schools to be able to teach Intelligent Design if they so choose."  The backers of ID say, hey, evolution as a theory has lots of holes, and this ID is a competing theory.  We've been over this before in the blog--ID is not a theory.  See, a theory about the origin of species has so say something other than "Evolution is wrong, and here's why."

So, ignore for a second about me not thinking too fondly of ID.  Imagine, instead, that the 9/11 conspiracy nuts get in on this argument.  Shouldn't then "Loose Change" be shown along with "Fahrenheit 911" when talking about the events of that day in history class?  How about letting Holocaust deniers have a say when talking about what the Germans did to the Jews and other undesirables during WWII?  What about the moon landing hoax supporters?  Should they not get to counter the "theory" that we actually landed on the moon?

Of course not, right?  These are all crackpot ideas.  You have to draw the line somewhere, and you draw it with the evidence stick.  Have evidence to back up your theory?  Is it compelling?  Are there any obvious flaws that your theory cannot explain?  That is how we figure out what theories are the wheat, and what are the chaff.  Not all wheat theories hold up, but the chaff ones never do, so why bother wasting time with them?

So, let's be clear.   The proponents of ID want ID taught in school to counter the teaching of the theory evolution and show students that there is a "scientific" alternative to evolution that leaves room for some kind of something:  God, The Force, something.  However, it's not scientific, as it makes no provable claims about the origin of species.  Nada, nothing.   Does evolution have holes?  Of course it does--any theory does, and you work to close those holes over time.  Maybe someday we'll find a problem with evolution model, and discard it in favor of a better working model...but until that model comes around, evolution is the best explaination for the origin of species.

So, of course, the IDers want to push the teaching of ID in via the political process.  This is the problem--just because a bogus theory is popular, it does not make it any more functional or valuable.  There are a lot of people in the world that believe that 9/11 was an inside job--but they have virtually nothing beyond circumstantial evidence, and a lot of problems within itself that cannot be corrected.  As a result, we will not be teacing that in school--so why try to teach ID?  It doesn't pass the theory test, either.

So, thank you John McCain, and the rest of you politicians who have stated this opinion.  You're not getting my vote to help turn our science education in this country into a joke.

7 comments | Tags: woo, religion, politics, science

 
     
     
 

Watch this court ruling closely
posted by GJ on June 11, 2007 @ 10:03AM

The court ruling I'm referring to is reported here.  You may think that religion is my favorite target of scorn (or second-favorite, since it's obvious the disdain I have for all things related to mediums, astrology, talking with the dead, etc.).  Nope...it's medicinal woo that drives me insane.  Why?  Because ignorence is a killer.

A little background.  Autism appears to be a growing phenomenom, although whether it is because we recognize it more now, or that it's actually occuring more is a hotly debated.  Of course, the loonies are certain that it's on the rise, I mean, after all, THEIR kid got it, for crying out loud.  This leads into the next realm of disaster:

What causes autism?  Truth:  not known.  Theories:  lots of them, none even remotely proven yet.  Falsehoods:  thermisol (contained in the MMR vaccine until recently as a preservative) causes autism.

Mercury, as you probably know, is a poison.  Some doctors with the surname of Geier have taken on a life mission of trying to prove that there is a link between mercury poisoning and autism.  Never mind that....the amount of mercury in a vaccine is very small; that there has been no proof to date that this level of mercury causes *any* harm, let alone autism; and that the Geiers have shown themselves to be less than reputable scientists (I use that term loosely).  Their priorities are likely different than they appear, if you catch my drift.  Now go reread that article, and notice the details about the large fund at stake.  This starting to make some sense now?

Much like a medium, the Geier's (father and son) play to what their audience wants to hear.  Parents of autistic children have a strong need to understand why their child has the disease:  they (rightly) figure that if we can find out what causes it, we can both figure out how to prevent it, and possible correct the disease in affected children.

Now, of course, is where this gets dangerous.  A lot of these parents came away from the Geier's research with two nuggest of info:  any mercury in a child's body is bad, and that vaccines are bad.  Believe it or not, even though thermisol is no longer in the MMR vaccine (it's still in flu vaccines), they are still being discouraged from getting vaccines.  As a result, things like POLIO are making a comeback.  Read up on herd vaccination theory to see why lettting a few knuckleheads that decide vaccines are a bad thing can muck everything up for the rest of us.

Then, we get to removing this nasty mercury from the child.  They recommend chelation therapy: this is a method to cleanse heavy metals (like mercury) from the body with the use of chemical like DMSA.  As you'd guess, this is a legit method to remove heavy metals from someone who has heavy contamination.  As such, it has risks and must be done by qualified personnel.  Well, surprise, a lot of altie clinics will do this for you.  Never mind it has never been shown to have a demonstratable effect on a child's autism.  Worse...in August 2005, a boy died due to improperly applied chelation therapy.  He may have been the first, but he won't be the last.  Like I said, it's a risky procedure and does have significant side effects...with no demonstrated benefit.

So what's my point in all this?  First, the court case.  The anti-vaccine crowd has realized they can't win in the science world, where facts rule supreme.  Instead, they're trying to win in court, which is often only partially based on fact--much like the antivax crowd's science.

Second, some or all of us will have children, or already do.  There is a lot of antivax literature out there that *sounds* good.  If you are at all considering not getting your kids vaccinated, I urge you to research that with the utmost diligence and base your decision on fact, not emotion.  Word to the wise--anything that references Big Pharma is a red herring.  I'll point you to one of my favorite bloggers, Orac, who has frequent columns on this whole autism - vaccine controversy.

3 comments | Tags: woo, politics, science

 
     
     
 

Uh oh, here comes synthetic biology!
posted by GJ on June 29, 2007 @ 11:10AM

OK, first the disclaimer.  This link will take you to PZ Myers' blog, which I'm not even going to attempt to spell.  He's a biologist professor from Minnesota U, and is also one of the best known atheist bloggers on the web--mostly, because he's a jerk.  ;)  So, prepare to be offended if you troll around the site some--he takes no prisoners among theists.

Anyhow, this short article deals with something called synthetic biology.  It's a good read.  I guarantee you'll see a Michael Cricton novel in the next 6-8 months that takes this technology and turns it into a techno-horror story.

By the way, I am not looking for a DOES GOD EXIST discussion in the comments.  We've done that seven ways to Sunday and I think we all know where those of us who've bared our, um, souls, stand.  I'm more interested in what you think of this development.  What good can come out of it?  What bad?

13 comments | Tags: science

 
     
     
 

Want to learn something?
posted by GJ on July 27, 2007 @ 4:41AM

SciFi Channel is running Derren Brown's Mind Control series.  Now, this is no John "Cold Reader" Edwards--but he does what Edwards does, what Sylvia "I talk to your angel in heaven" Browne does, and what James "Ice Cold Reader" VanPraagh does...only he does it without claiming that he's psychic.  He'll show you just how easy it is to fool the human brain into thinking magically, when there is really nothing magical occurring at all.

Check out the site here.

5 comments | Tags: woo, science

 
     
     
 

Ethanol....the fake solution for our oil problems
posted by GJ on August 1, 2007 @ 5:07PM

Rolling Stone has a damning article on the boondoggle that is ethanol.  You should read it!

2 comments | Tags: politics, cars, science

 
     
     
 

Irradiated food--what do you think?
posted by GJ on August 9, 2007 @ 4:35PM

Read this.

Then this

Finally, the wikipedia entry.

See why they call folks who wrote the first two articles cranks?

 

PS.  You irridate your food every time you microwave it--you're just using a different wavelength of radiation.  And no, microwaving food doesn't wipe out food nutriets any more than a conventional oven does. 

No comments | Tags: woo, science

 
     
     
 

Asteroid Collision spelled doom for the dinosaurs
posted by Steve on September 5, 2007 @ 7:51PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A collision 160 million years ago of two asteroids orbiting between Mars and Jupiter sent many big rock chunks hurtling toward Earth, including the one that zapped the dinosaurs, scientists said on Wednesday.  

Their research offered an explanation for the cause of one of the most momentous events in the history of life on Earth -- a six-mile-wide (10-km-wide) meteorite striking Mexico's Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago.

That catastrophe eliminated the dinosaurs, which had flourished for about 165 million years, and many other life forms, and paved the way for mammals to dominate the Earth and the eventual rise of humankind, many scientists believe.

The impact is thought to have triggered a worldwide environmental cataclysm, expelling vast quantities of rock and dust into the sky, unleashing giant tsunamis, sparking global wildfires and leaving Earth shrouded in darkness for years.

U.S. and Czech researchers used computer simulations to calculate that there was a 90 percent probability that the collision of two asteroids -- one about 105 miles wide and one about 40 miles wide -- was the event that precipitated the Earthly disaster.

The collision occurred in the asteroid belt, a collection of big and small rocks orbiting the sun about 100 million miles from Earth, the researchers report in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

The asteroid Baptistina and rubble associated with it are thought to be leftovers, the scientists said.

Some of the debris from the collision escaped the asteroid belt, tumbled toward the inner solar system and whacked Earth and our moon, along with probably Mars and Venus, said William Bottke of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, one of the researchers.

DEADLY COLLISION

The collision is believed to have doubled for a while the number of impacts occurring in this part of the solar system.

In fact, while the bombardment of this region of the solar system due to this shower of debris peaked about 100 million years ago, the scientists said the tail end of the shower continues to this day. Bottke said many existing near-Earth asteroids can be traced back to this collision.

"Imagine breaking up a big, big boulder on top of a hill and all the fragments rolling down the hill. And somewhere at the bottom is a village called Earth," Bottke said in a telephone interview.

The dinosaur-destroying meteorite, thought to have measured 6 miles across, plunged into Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and blasted out the Chicxulub (pronounced CHIK-shu-loob) crater measuring about 110 miles wide. The researchers looked at evidence on the composition of this meteorite and found it consistent with the stony Baptistina.

The researchers estimated that there also was about a 70 percent probability that the prominent Tycho crater on the Moon, formed 108 million years ago and measuring about 55 miles

across, also was carved out by a remnant of the earlier asteroid collision.

Philippe Claeys of Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, who was not involved in the research, said by e-mail the findings were "clear evidence that the solar system is a violent environment and that collisions taking place in the asteroid belt can have major repercussions for the evolution of life on Earth."

Bottke emphasized that point. "Dinosaurs were around for a very long time. So the likelihood is they would still be around if that event had never taken place," Bottke said.

"Was humanity inevitable? Or is humanity just something that happened to arise because of this sequence of events that took place at just the right time. It's hard to say."

7 comments | Tags: science

 
     
     
 

Maybe H.R. Giger was right
posted by GJ on September 6, 2007 @ 5:18PM

...about the set of jaws inside a set of jaws.  Check out this story--the quicktime movie they have is the best image I've seen yet of the moray eel's inner jaw, which was apparently just recently discovered.

1 comment | Tags: science

 
     
     
 

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