The Sagan Circle
A very Carl Sagan edition of the Skeptic's Circle is now up over at Humbug Online. Go check it out, and be sure to get any of your demons exorcized!
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Extraordinary Ignorance
I'd already gotten an idea for a post formed up for the Carl Sagan Blogathon, but another great subject just fell into my lap, so I'm going with this one first. You see, I have an interesting ability to be completely ignorable when I don't go out of my way to draw attention. Sometimes it's a blessing, often it's a curse. Today, it led to a couple of guys on the elevator having an extremely bigoted exchange, completely oblivious to my presence.
The target of their bigotry? Atheists. In America, there's a ton of hate directed towards atheists, and many say that they're the only group it's still alright to hate. But this was Canada, which is supposed to be better. Not only that, this was at the University of Waterloo, Canada's answer to MIT. One would hope such a bastion of intellect would also lead to increased tolerance, but such is apparently not the case.
I kept my mouth shut during the conversation (well, it was more a rant on the part of one of them), as I figured it would be more interesting to see where it would lead than to interfere. Here's a paraphrase of the conversation, with my thoughts italicized:
It started when one of the boys (not men, boys) noticed a "Bad Religion" button worn by the other. "Bad Religion, you mean like atheism?"
"Nah, just Bad Religion. Atheism sucks."
"Really?"
No, not really.
"Yeah, it's like a cop-out."
I think you're thinking of agnosticism there. That's where you just say you don't know. Atheism is where you say you believe that there is no supernatural god or gods. Even so, I wouldn't call agnosticism a cop-out. We can't know, so admitting it isn't a cop-out.
The first guy commented, "My friend, Ben, is an atheist." I considered mentioning that I was as well, but decided against it.
The second guy continued with his rant, "Well, it's just stupid. Religion's good and all, who are they to go against it?"
So many problems in so few words. As for it being stupid, is there some obvious evidence for religion we're all missing? No? Then how is it stupid not to believe any of it? And Religion good? Do I even have to go into all the atrocities committed by religion? There were crusades, inquisitions, the burning of the Library of Alexandria, putting us 1,000 years back, the Church's stranglehold on medieval Europe preventing any progress, and that's just Christianity.
"And when I ask atheists why they don't believe in religion, they're like, 'Well, science has proved religion so it's not true.' And why is there nothing then? 'Well, I don't know, there's just not.'" When mimicking atheists there, he used an overblown "stupid" voice.
And now he's mixing scientism up into it. He's also implying the old mantra of "Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence." The problem there is that sometimes it is - when evidence would be expected if the proposition were true. In the case of religion, if it were true, we'd expect to see some evidence for it. The fact that we haven't is evidence against it. The second statement is even worse; just a strawman built up to mock them. Might work when no atheists are around, but this wasn't to be the case.
This was the end of the elevator ride, so I didn't hear if he continued his rant. What I did hear was enough to sadden me with the current state of affairs. Not just in the hate for atheists, but the reasoning for it. The criticism of the scientific approach is what really struck me.
And this is where we get to the Carl Sagan connection, in his famous quote:
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Religion is one of the most extraordinary claims made by humans. To back it up, we should have equally extraordinary evidence. Except we have next to none. But for some reason, people accept it anyways. The comments this guy made made it clear that this was at least partly out of ignorance for what atheists actually said. Maybe I should have tried to explain it to him, but the elevator ride was too short. Perhaps, with this is mind, another line should be added to Sagan's line:
"Though for many, extraordinary ignorance suffices."
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Paul Barnes: Haggard II
This just in from Reuters, Paul Barnes, evangelical church leader, has resigned after an accusation (and his admission) of him having homosexual sex. Sound familiar? He wasn't quite as outspoken against homosexuality as Ted Haggard, but this is yet one more nail in the coffin of the Christian myth the homosexuality is a choice or can be cured.
And you know what's really cool? I've caught this story before any other blog I read regularly. That's worth celebrating.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Quantum Post Tunneling
Well, I'd written up a post all about how woos misuse the term "Quantum," but apparently it's tunneled accross the internet to a more appropriate location at Rockstar's Ramblings. If you want to read it, you can find it at Doggerel 17.1: "Quantum" (Take Two),
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Stop the Squid!
What is even more tenctacle-y than an octopus, yet not as smart?
What animal does C'thulu most resemble?
For that matter, what does Bel'Shamharoth resemble?
That's right, the squid! And the squid is winning. Will you lay back and let the Sender of Eight, the Soul Eater, the Soul Render, Pharyngula take over?
I thought not. So, here's what you have to do: At this point, there's only one man who has a chance of taking down the squid: Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer (the Rincewind of our story, if you will). Now, go out and cast your vote for Bad Astronomy. Vote every day from now until Friday. There are other blogs there that may tempt you, but that's just The Sender of Eight and his eight minions, so ignore them.
And if the Soul Eater decides to come after you in revenge, just remember: Running away may get you into more trouble, but you can run away from that as well.
Monday, December 11, 2006
We apologize for the inconvenience
Well, the spammers are hitting full-force. In order to save myself the headaches of deleting every spam that comes by, I'm going to temporarily (I hope) enable word-verification for comments. Don't blame me; they're the ones forcing this.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
A note to spammers
Telling me that your spam is not spam will not work. Take the following spam I recently received:
Wazzzup. You site is realy cool!
viagra
viagra
Its'not a spam [Links removed. I'm not going to help their business.]
It's hard to imagine what could be going through someone's mind when they think that simply saying it's not spam will fool us. Especially after they've just linked to viagra twice, which is in contention with penis enlargement for the most-often spammed product.
This isn't, however, the strangest spam I've ever received. In response to my post, Quantum Mechanics for Dummies: Wave Nature of Matter, I received the a very long-winded e-mail trying to prove a claim that an electron is a heavy photon.
Very pleased 82 years young research scientist very plwased with your arcticle and its insights on the wave character of matter ---you wrote " Then things got stranger. We tried firing things that we were pretty sure were particles through a double-slit experiment, such as electrons. They, too, showed a diffraction pattern. We went bigger and shot atoms through it. Same deal. Our record so far has been shooting Bucky Balls (spherical molecules of 60 carbon atoms) through it, and even they act like waves.
Now that you have cleverly mastered problematic math, try catching up with where Einstein left off with mechanical visualization of matter and its energy transport using event local determinism at the individual freqency pulse level.. As Maxwell knew by gut feel only --all measure is by molecular size electron quantum. You are bright and young enough, figure out how to prove in a deterministic way that an electron is a helical string of 1/h-squared Higgs particles and a tandem linked 1/h quantum waves---literally a maximum density extrusion that can tandem link as a continuous pulse series of electrons, across open space--- to span the distance from the surface of a bright moon to your romantic eyeballs --to touch your very soul in real time--per E = Mc-squared! I offer you my latest short theory paper as just posted --- pasted below
So, you're 82 years young, yet don't have the courtesy to use proper grammar, and you haven't figured out how your backspace key works (judging by "posted --- pasted")? Somehow I doubt that. Seems a bit more likely you're a failed up-and-comer who failed because he wasn't smart enough to properly understand quantum mechanics or particle physics, and then crossed over to the dark side. Now, fast-forwarding to the end of the e-mail:
1. The quantum wave is one helical world line turn around R of 1/h G-size Higgs particles that pulse- move from one R to another R next door in one of just 6 directions. When 1/h such quantum one turns around R build a wavy line around a single line of R's as a ray of radiation propagating through DM space, you have one electron segment of the wave string of radiation. When a ray of radiation of whatever frequency, including the light range thereof, extends from the moon, say, to one's retina, the radiating surface of the moon has touched our eye! In well recorded fact, the ray of moon radiation has literally touched our very soul in terms of a measurable sequence of extruded electrons that travel to us per E = Mc 2! Deny this in any way and you destroy the commonly held foundation of physics as we best know it today!
2. It takes 1/h electrons in helical strong Higgs particle tandem to equal a unit of mass and DM granulates so that E = Mc2 is always numerically equal to nhf, where n is the count of electrons in parallel and/or series, and f is the number of such electrons pulsing per second through the measurement aperture. We do not now nor did we ever have the ability to measurement parse series versus parallel electron passage and do not even bother to understand fully what is meant here by "aperture". How could we be so Wheeler-announced stupid for so long --and still have prediction? By the h-symmetry that lets h be both quantum energy in ergs and quantum mass in grams. Any systematic approach could get there like a dumb "Piece of cake"!
I really have no idea what he's talking about, but I'm guessing he doesn't either. Take the following quote for example:
Maxwell knew that molecular sized electrons were ubiquitous in our measure of physical reality...
Yeah... no such thing as "molecular sized electrons." All electrons are the same size (well, size is hard to define at that scale), and that's much much less than the size of an atom. Now, there are other leptons that are similar to electrons but much more massive, such as muons and taus, but that's not what we're talking about here.
So anyways, here's a quick list of reasons an electron is not simply a heavy photon:
1. Electrons have charge (classical electrons have negative, but there are also positrons with a positive charge), photons don't.
2. Electrons have a spin of 1/2, photons have a spin of 1. It follows that electrons are fermions while photons are bosons.
3. Photons have polarization, electrons don't.
So a quick word to the wise: Spamming bloggers is not a good way to get a scientific theory accepted. Submit it to a scientific journal like everyone else. Also, please make sure your theory doesn't have obvious holes like this one does.
Houdini rises from the grave...
...to prove that such nonsense as "Rising from the grave" is impossible. Go see what I'm talking about at the 49th Skeptic circle courtesy of Autism Street.
And, if I may be granted a moment to grumble: He forgot Mythbusters. Come on, they're skeptical, and they blow stuff up! What's not to love?
Monday, December 04, 2006
Alright, I admit it...
Your 'Do You Want the Terrorists to Win' Score: 98%
You are a terrorist-loving, Bush-bashing, "blame America first"-crowd traitor. You are in league with evil-doers who hate our freedoms. By all counts you are a liberal, and as such cleary desire the terrorists to succeed and impose their harsh theocratic restrictions on us all. You are fit to be hung for treason! Luckily George Bush is tapping your internet connection and is now aware of your thought-crime. Have a nice day.... in Guantanamo!
Do You Want the Terrorists to Win?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz
FYI, the only reason I didn't come out as 100% is because I didn't vote in the 2004 election, which was because I legally couldn't (not an American citizen). If I had, I would have voted for Kerry, so I think I've earned a 100%, at least in spirit.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Excuse me while I spasm uncontrollably
Well, the campus newspaper has done it again. The highlighted piece of woo this week: Global Orgasm Day. In the Science section of the paper no less. Granted, it was a "Community Editorial" (which is what they call very long letters to the editor), but they still did make the decision to print it, and what section to put it in.
Now, it isn't posted online yet, so I can't give quotes (without typing the whole thing up myself, which I am not looking forward to doing) or link to it just yet. When it is, expect to see that here.
Edit: You can see the entire article here.
The article justifies the possible effects of GOD (no, not God, GOD) by bringing up Princeton's Global Consciousness Project. This was inspired by work done in PEAR (The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research), which is about to be shut down because it's a collosal waste of money and effort. Good thing to appeal to there.
About half of the article is spent just explaining how things work over there, when it could be summed up in one sentence: They watch random numbers and see if they deviate from expected patterns during big events. Yeah, well I've got a newsflash for you: Deviations are to be expected in small time frames. The laws of probability demand it.
When the article finally gets around to an actual claim, it says:
During times such as natural disasters, wars, 9/11 or mass meditation and prayer, the numbers generated deviated from the pattern.
So, around the times of these events, the numbers didn't have a perfectly chance distribution. Maybe that would mean something, if there weren't a few huge problems with how they work:
1. There's no set time-frame for when the deviation has to be found, so it's judged subjectively. For instance, the deviation associated with the World Trade Center attacks occured a couple hours before the attacks. Opening it up like this increases the likelihood of them finding some period where the numbers deviate a little.
2. There's no set criterion for how much the numbers deviate for it to be considered significant. Again, this is all done subjectively, allowing for very weak deviations to be counted as significant.
Using guidelines as loose as these, I betcha I can find a deviation to match any given event. In fact, I'll predict right now that there'll be some slight deviation right at the time I'm typing this post.
The article goes on to claim that this is because "information, or the perception thereof, will exert an effect on the quantum energy and will change the way the numbers are produced." Odd, in my quantum mechanics classes, we never talked about how macroscopic information could effect whatever he means by "quantum energy." And the closest we ever got to talking about the effects of sex on quantum mechanics was the "Bra" in "Bra-Ket."
In fact, you know the thing about Quantum Mechanics that rules stuff like this out? Quantum Mechanics may have very weird results on small scales and with individual particles, but once you blow it up to macroscopic scale, they all get averaged out. It's only very precise experiments on very small numbers of particles that show any quantum effects. Just wait, I'm sure that one of these days "Appeal to Quantum Mechanics" is going to become a recognized logical fallacy or pseudo-fallacy. It's getting more and more popular by the day.
With this in mind, I've currently finished two of my three sample articles for getting my own column (which is apparently desperately needed). If anyone's available to look over them and comment on them, please drop me an e-mail (address in my profile) or comment here.
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