Monthly Archive for April, 2009Page 2 of 6

Earth Day Lash Back

Published
by
Zeolite
on April 24, 2009
.
My B.S. degree is in "Conservation" which included a variety of environmental science classes. But I now think conservation is the worst way to address our climatic/energy problems.

People suck at conserving - we're generally glutinous monsters which consume mindlessly and then are surprised when our resource dries up, and then quickly move on to the next consumable.

Its useless denying this instinct, its actually a very puritan technique - to deny our instincts - and you all know how successful that strategy has been

We need to develop sustainable ways of generating energy and encourage people to consume, consume, consume from those energy sources, so they will economically out-compete the fossil fuels.

What if we could develop methods of generating energy that actually cleaned the air, or the water, or had a net positive benefit? Wouldn't it be mind-blowing to have environmentalists telling you to leave your lights on and drive like a mad-man because the energy your using is good for the environment. That's a message I think most people could embrace.

Is This Really News?

Published
by
Zeolite
on April 24, 2009
.
News Flash - Girls can be good at sports!

Is This Really News?

Published
by
Zeolite
on April 24, 2009
.
News Flash - Girls can be good at sports!

How to "Know"

Published
by
HumanistDad
on April 24, 2009
.
Frequently I run into people who say that "science doesn't know everything" or "there are many ways of knowing". This drives me crazy! Here we are living in an age of science and technology that is gathering knowledge at an exponential rate and yet, people want to turn their back on it and declare it to be wrong.

Matt Dillahunty, host of The Atheist Experience TV show brought up an excellent point to remember when talking to people about this issue. Ask them:

"If you had a better way of acquiring knowledge and truth, how would you demonstrate it?"


Of course, the answer would be to use a scientific approach! In other words, we'd need to use science to prove a better method than science...

Matt also had another great example on the show. He told a caller to pick Heads or Tails. The caller said, "heads", Matt flipped the coin and it came up Heads. There is no way the caller could have known heads would come up but yet, they made a correct prediction - one could say the caller 'knew' it would be heads. However, what benefit is there to studying how the caller knew this? Did the caller 'know'? Did the caller have a currently unexplainable method of 'knowing' how the coin would land? Maybe, but in order to find out, we'd have to test his claims! In order for the caller's claims to knowledge to have any validity, the caller would have to demonstrate that they can predict the coin flip with a far higher frequency than chance on repeated trials. In other words, use the scientific method, to know.

How to "Know"

Published
by
HumanistDad
on April 24, 2009
.
Frequently I run into people who say that "science doesn't know everything" or "there are many ways of knowing". This drives me crazy! Here we are living in an age of science and technology that is gathering knowledge at an exponential rate and yet, people want to turn their back on it and declare it to be wrong.

Matt Dillahunty, host of The Atheist Experience TV show brought up an excellent point to remember when talking to people about this issue. Ask them:

"If you had a better way of acquiring knowledge and truth, how would you demonstrate it?"


Of course, the answer would be to use a scientific approach! In other words, we'd need to use science to prove a better method than science...

Matt also had another great example on the show. He told a caller to pick Heads or Tails. The caller said, "heads", Matt flipped the coin and it came up Heads. There is no way the caller could have known heads would come up but yet, they made a correct prediction - one could say the caller 'knew' it would be heads. However, what benefit is there to studying how the caller knew this? Did the caller 'know'? Did the caller have a currently unexplainable method of 'knowing' how the coin would land? Maybe, but in order to find out, we'd have to test his claims! In order for the caller's claims to knowledge to have any validity, the caller would have to demonstrate that they can predict the coin flip with a far higher frequency than chance on repeated trials. In other words, use the scientific method, to know.

BLASPHEMY – COGNITION II

Published
by
Riker
on April 23, 2009
.
When it rains, it pours.  Or in my case, drizzles... but it's a drizzle in a drought, so don't complain :)

I just read Jerry Coyne's latest article lambasting the National Academy of Sciences and the National Centers for Science Education for their accomodationist standpoints with regard to the harmony of evolutionary theory and religious faith (he must've gotten the idea from me), and I gave myself another opportunity to think about the issue.  Here was my reponse:

I tend to see the posturing of the NAS and the NCSE as more of a logistical matter than anything else; these organizations need money to function, and they have to be sure not to alienate potential sources of funding. But then there's a side issue: they don't need to pander to us as naturalists/rationalists/atheists, because we're already on the same side of the fence. The people for whom those statements were written are those who might be *on* the fence. And the surest way to knock them back to their side is to require them to abandon a component of their belief system before we grant them admission. If a theist comes to the NCSE or NAS website, they're looking for encouraging words, not challenging ones. We should give them to them and let the merits of the science itself argue its cause. The NCSE and NAS have a tough enough job just promoting evolution in this religiously saturated country. But if you want them to take a hard line stance, then you're effectively asking them to incorporate the inordinately larger task of debunking religion. In our non-ideal world, they have to pick their battles. It might offend me that they have to speak disingenuously to do so, but I'm going to have to live with that.


So, I don't like it any more than I disliked it before*... but I acknowledge the rock to their left and the hard place to their right, and will let them play at this mild little version of fighting dirty** to gain a little ground on our tiring uphill battle.


* - I think that's a valid sentence
** - I mean, they're totally lying to their audience.  It's a classic bait-and-switch.

BLASPHEMY – COGNITION II

Published
by
Riker
on April 23, 2009
.
When it rains, it pours.  Or in my case, drizzles... but it's a drizzle in a drought, so don't complain :)

I just read Jerry Coyne's latest article lambasting the National Academy of Sciences and the National Centers for Science Education for their accomodationist standpoints with regard to the harmony of evolutionary theory and religious faith (he must've gotten the idea from me), and I gave myself another opportunity to think about the issue.  Here was my reponse:

I tend to see the posturing of the NAS and the NCSE as more of a logistical matter than anything else; these organizations need money to function, and they have to be sure not to alienate potential sources of funding. But then there's a side issue: they don't need to pander to us as naturalists/rationalists/atheists, because we're already on the same side of the fence. The people for whom those statements were written are those who might be *on* the fence. And the surest way to knock them back to their side is to require them to abandon a component of their belief system before we grant them admission. If a theist comes to the NCSE or NAS website, they're looking for encouraging words, not challenging ones. We should give them to them and let the merits of the science itself argue its cause. The NCSE and NAS have a tough enough job just promoting evolution in this religiously saturated country. But if you want them to take a hard line stance, then you're effectively asking them to incorporate the inordinately larger task of debunking religion. In our non-ideal world, they have to pick their battles. It might offend me that they have to speak disingenuously to do so, but I'm going to have to live with that.


So, I don't like it any more than I disliked it before*... but I acknowledge the rock to their left and the hard place to their right, and will let them play at this mild little version of fighting dirty** to gain a little ground on our tiring uphill battle.


* - I think that's a valid sentence
** - I mean, they're totally lying to their audience.  It's a classic bait-and-switch.

I Never Wanted To Be A Munchkin

Published
by
Nobody's There
on April 23, 2009
.

munchkins

When I read the Wizard of Oz aged seven I wanted to be either the Wizard or one of the wicked witches, not a munchkin. Now, at the advanced age of 61 I find myself cast as Larry in Michael McKeever’s “Splat.”

It’s not the hat, or the wig, or the big silver boots that make me quake… I just don’t like saying the F word on stage… and it’s almost the first word I say.

“Splat” is a minute slice of Munchkin life just after Dorothy dances off along the Yellow Brick Road leaving the house and witch to be cleaned up by the road gang. Thereby hangs the tale, a socialist reconstruction of life in a dictatorship and how moral decisions sometimes have to be passed by in order for natural justice to prevail.

Or…

A slight comedy. You decide.

The play is crafted within an inch of it’s life making demands of the actors that combine long internal journeys to truth with horrendous moral decisions. All taken at a breakneck speed and with juxtapositions of language and incident that, while they make may an audience laugh, are utterly real to the characters.

Nothing is exaggerated. The statements made by Larry, a socialist, and the wrestle with morality for all the characters simply echo the problems faced every day by ordinary people in extraordinary positions.

You come across Mr. “Evil Personified” in a road accident. Do you dial 911?

Silly Popes and Slippery Slopes

Published
by
Riker
on April 22, 2009
.
The last two months have seen me get a year older, get even busier at work, move into a new house, and spend even more time on the car.  Hence, the 'not blogging' thing I've been trying out.  I just wanted to post this link in case it hasn't been seen yet...


If I afford myself some time between projects at the new place, I'll follow up with a critique.

Thanks for your patience!

And, I feel like I owe an apology for not making a 'BLASPHEMY - BIG WORD' title for this post.  It had to happen sooner or later.


Silly Popes and Slippery Slopes

Published
by
Riker
on April 22, 2009
.
The last two months have seen me get a year older, get even busier at work, move into a new house, and spend even more time on the car.  Hence, the 'not blogging' thing I've been trying out.  I just wanted to post this link in case it hasn't been seen yet...


If I afford myself some time between projects at the new place, I'll follow up with a critique.

Thanks for your patience!

And, I feel like I owe an apology for not making a 'BLASPHEMY - BIG WORD' title for this post.  It had to happen sooner or later.


Atheist Crucified On Stage

Published
by
Nobody's There
on April 22, 2009
.

rompers-with-names

It’s rather odd to be cast in a short play where you are crucified on stage. “Paul and Eddie” by Ken Brisbois is  about ten minutes long and is a small slice of life on Golgotha Hill just before JC arrives.

Both actors (myself and Quincy Perkins)  and the director (Mike Marrero) are either atheist or agnostic and despite the initial puzzlement the rehersal process had certainly led me in a better understanding of the power of the story of the crucifixion.

It’s horrendously uncomfortable on those crosses. Even after five minutes our breathng is laboured and concentratiing is difficult. Arms, legs chest and necks ache and we take every advantage of the humour to deliver us from the internal processess of this hightly unpleasant method of execution.

I can’t move anything except my fingers, head and hips. I wear nothing but a loin cloth. All that work at the gym on my pecs disappears as the position of my body exploits bone and cartilage – not muscle.

Quincy stars. He has the most lines, is face on to the audience right at the edge of the stage. I get three or four word lines until near the end when I have a soliloquy. Every repetition of the hope in this short speech brings me to tears – and at the audition I noticed the other directors had wet eyes.

It is such a wonderful story. I can’t blame anyone for desperately wanting it to be true. I want it to be be true…. but it still isn’t.

Acting is, I think, the strangest of arts. Ken Brisbois dictates the manifestation of my internal world for me and I have to dig back, like an archaeologist, to that world.

Mike Marrero pushes me into a shape and in a direction that I have little control over. Then I take over. I’m left alone, with Quincy, to move people in a way that they don’t expect and may not want to go.

We have a five week run. During that time the short scene will develop, alter, shift, change in infinitely subtle ways and eventually we, the actors, get enriched and changed by what we do.

I have no idea whether or not Ken Brisbois is a theist. I suspect not. There seems to be no way that a believing christian could have developed a scenario and a script that contains such subtleties.

We open next week.

Part of me hopes for raving crowds of Christians outside the theater demonstrating against the play.

We’ll see.

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New Religions!

Published
by
Michel
on April 22, 2009
.

Quantum Theology and Quantum Spirituality!


Something hinted at by the great fraud Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Transcendental Meditation inventor, parasite of Beatles fame) is now becoming more widespread. The book review for "Quantum gods don't deserve your faith" by Amanda Gefter on New Scientist Opinions is revealing.

Maharishi claimed that transcendental meditation gave practitioners access to the "quantum field of cosmic consciousness". This, he said, was identical to SU(5), the model physicists were then investigating in their search for a grand unified theory. Sadly for cosmic consciousness, real experiments later falsified SU(5).

As for the notion of creating our own reality, this relies on brains in some sense operating quantum mechanically - and there is no evidence for this. As Stenger says, the scales of distance involved in brain processing are more than a thousand times too large for quantum effects to necessarily come into play. Likewise, physicist Max Tegmark has shown that the timescales of events in the brain are 10 or more orders of magnitude longer than the timescales of "decoherence", the process by which quantum effects "leak" out of the quantum system.


Let's get real! Let's not grab any new idea and flex it into our needs for imaginary food without some verification or validation...

From One Life

New Religions!

Published
by
Michel
on April 22, 2009
.

Quantum Theology and Quantum Spirituality!


Something hinted at by the great fraud Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Transcendental Meditation inventor, parasite of Beatles fame) is now becoming more widespread. The book review for "Quantum gods don't deserve your faith" by Amanda Gefter on New Scientist Opinions is revealing.

Maharishi claimed that transcendental meditation gave practitioners access to the "quantum field of cosmic consciousness". This, he said, was identical to SU(5), the model physicists were then investigating in their search for a grand unified theory. Sadly for cosmic consciousness, real experiments later falsified SU(5).

As for the notion of creating our own reality, this relies on brains in some sense operating quantum mechanically - and there is no evidence for this. As Stenger says, the scales of distance involved in brain processing are more than a thousand times too large for quantum effects to necessarily come into play. Likewise, physicist Max Tegmark has shown that the timescales of events in the brain are 10 or more orders of magnitude longer than the timescales of "decoherence", the process by which quantum effects "leak" out of the quantum system.


Let's get real! Let's not grab any new idea and flex it into our needs for imaginary food without some verification or validation...

From One Life

Too funny!

Published
by
salient
on April 19, 2009
.
He actually seems like a sweet guy, but one expects him to pull out a banjo at any moment.

Disappointment at lack of banjos aside, I particuluarly loved his use of charts and schematics and his imaginative use of colour-coordinated props. Someone ought to tell him that ID's ridiculous argument from analogy relies upon unfounded comparisons between biological complexity and designed complexity (in materials that, unlike the chemicals of life, lack the capacity for self-replication).



Unfortunately, I was laughing so hard that I missed much of what he said. OminousVoice is, imo, hilarious, but this kid has him beat. The difference is that OminousVoice is consciously amusing.

I thought that the video above was the funniest, but the video below greatly tickled my beloved's fancy. It's a journey into pathos as he says goodbye to one of his props.

expression as battle with the enemy

Susan Boyle: A Divine Dream In The Midst Of Misery

Published
by
Daniel DiRito
on April 16, 2009
.

Every now and again, inspiration pushes its way through the mundane and the miserable and into our everyday consciousness. The most recent instance of this all too rare occurrence comes in the unlikely embodiment of a 47 year Scottish charity worker and self-reported virgin...Susan Boyle.

On the latest episode of Britain's Got Talent, Boyle made her way to the stage, endured the cynicism of the audience and the judges, and then proceeded to bring the house to its feet with her spectacular rendition of the acclaimed Les Miserables tune, I Dreamed A Dream.

You can see Boyle's performance in the following YouTube video. As of this moment, the video has been viewed over eight million times...jumping by well over two million views just today. Her story was featured on tonight's national news and you can expect to see her in numerous other interviews and appearances.

I suspect Susan Boyle symbolizes the ray of hope many are seeking in these times of economic uncertainty. Her story also begins the difficult task of restoring our faith that living a decent life will not go unnoticed. While Wall Street weasels wag the dog, the Susan Boyle's of the world serve to remind us that fame need not be flashy...in fact it is far more real when it is authentic. Susan Boyle, thank you for helping us put our feet back where they belong...firmly planted in the solid soil of sincerity.

Having watched this video numerous times, it sent my synapses into overdrive...connecting this event with other inspirational moments long seared in my memory banks. What they all have in common is the simplicity that comes with knowing something is right...even when the darkness seems destined to distort our ability to distinguish it from the demons that surround us.

With that in mind, I've included two videos from a little known 1991 movie, Hear My Song, featuring Ned Beatty as the renowned true life tenor Josef Locke. In the movie, a nightclub owner believes he can save his struggling business by booking Locke, an iconic figure in self-exile from the UK due to pending tax troubles. Locke, in a daring and risky return to the UK, makes his triumphant appearance before an adoring crowd eager for inspiration. Hear My Song is a story of triump reminiscent of Susan Boyle's roof-raising moment. Both are a reminder of the power of the human spirit so often found in song.

Torna a Surriento - Ned Beatty as Josef Locke in Hear My Song

Goodbye - Ned Beatty as Josef Locke in Hear My Song

The final video is from Alejandro Amenabar's 2004 movie, The Sea Inside, chronicling the true story of Ramon Sampedro's efforts to end his life many years after an accident has left him a quadriplegic. In this video, Sampedro (played brilliantly by Javier Bardem) employs the only tactic that has enabled him to endure his dilemma...he imagines himself flying out his bedroom window...across the beautiful terrain on his way to the sea...the singular source of tranquility in his troubling existence. He does so while listening to one of the quintessential tenor arias in opera, Nessun Dorma from Puccini's Turandot.

Nessun Dorma - Javier Bardem as Ramon Sampedro in The Sea Inside

Each of these stories have at their core the unyielding nature of the human spirit...a belief that beauty and bounty can be found in all that encompasses our often exasperating and existential existence. All remind us that this life is precarious at best...but also that a life well-lived and a life well-ended may be the essential elements over which we're able to exert any meaningful influence. When we do either well, all of humanity is enhanced. Susan Boyle may be our most recent protagonist to prove as much.

Tidal and Wave Power

Published
by
HumanistDad
on April 15, 2009
.
Slightly different thoughts today. I was reading about tidal and wave power and it looks like it could be a viable technology that could provide a significant (15%?) amount of power, clean power. But then I got to thinking...

One person talked about how mother nature is providing tidal power for free and we are just wasting it by not using it. But, what did they mean by that? How is tidal power being 'wasted'? In other words, if we aren't using the energy, where is it going?

If a tidal power generation operation were to take 50% of the energy from the tide, that means that 50% of the energy the tide used to provide is not being used naturally. So, if we take tidal energy, what effect does that have on nature?

Lots of questions.

My first thought is heat. Eventually, all energy is lost as heat. Therefore, current tidal energy must be being converted into heat. Is that heat warming the water? Will the removal of the tidal energy result in lower water temperatures thereby affecting life in the water? Tides also cause mechanical erosion so a reduction in tidal energy will slow erosion - that's probably a good thing but I'm not sure if erosion provides benefits to sealife in the form of releasing minerals?

I think back to when people would have looked at an untouched forest of trees and marvel at all the wood they could cut down and then eventually cut the whole forest. Or when the nearly inexhaustible supply of cod on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland let to the virtual destruction of it. By siphoning tidal power on a large scale, what effect will we have?

Opinions and links to resources would be appreciated!