Daniel Morgan v. Jonathan Witt

Daniel Morgan has posted a response to Jonathan Witt's criticism of his summary of the Sternberg Saga.

Morgan has admitted where he's made mistakes--can Witt and the Discovery Institute give that a try?

Errors in the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision

It's an excellent decision. I did spot nineteen errors, none of significance to the legal arguments (three are typos, one's a mistaken word choice, and fifteen are instances of the same erroneous character substitution, probably facilitated by the ever-helpful Microsoft Word). Will ID advocates find them and make rhetorical use of them? The typos are on pp. 51, 114, and 120, the mistaken word choice is on p. 96, and the three examples of the incorrect character are on pp. 104, 106, 117, 118, 120, 124, 129, and 130. Warning: Reading these pages (which I strongly recommend--in fact, read the whole thing) will expose you to documentation of dishonesty and sleaziness by Christian school board members, including taking a mural depicting evolution from the classroom and burning it.

Buckingham and Bonsell come across as sleazy, lying, manipulative bastards, and the rest of the board come across as ignoramuses rubber-stamping their actions. The citizens of Dover certainly did the right thing by voting out the entire school board.

The science teachers of Dover, however, come across as very reasonable people who made a few compromises with the board early on in order to get the textbooks they needed to teach, but who were unwilling to teach unscientific materials or read a misleading disclaimer to their students.

Dover Decision: ID is religious

Judge John E. Jones III has issued his ruling in the Dover, PA intelligent design case--Dover's ID Policy violates both the Lemon Test and the endorsement test, and so the Dover Area School District must discontinue reading the statement at the beginning of the evolution unit about Intelligent Design and the availability of Of Pandas and People in the library. The decision covers much broader ground than this, and though the orders are only directed at DASD, this decision is likely to be influential in much the way Judge Overton's McLean v. Arkansas creation science decision was in 1982. Ed Brayton has the text of the decision and some key quotes and commentary up at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

1981? ...82?

I never cease to be amazed at how the White House's own web page is faithfully documenting and publicizing this administration's stupidities. In a way, I guess, it's strangely comforting. I mean, consider the alternative. What if all the embarassing Bushisms were whitewashed away, replaced by erudite prose? The implications, if that were the case, bring disturbing thoughts to mind--memory holes... Ministries of Truth... that sort of thing.

It seems we're not quite there, yet, as you can plainly see here, where Alberto Gonzales does a lot of hand-waving, dodging, and dashing in response to the question, "If FISA didn't work, why didn't you seek a new statute that allowed something like this legally?"

That question was asked earlier. We've had discussions with members of Congress, certain members of Congress, about whether or not we could get an amendment to FISA, and we were advised that that was not likely to be -- that was not something we could likely get, certainly not without jeopardizing the existence of the program, and therefore, killing the program. And that -- and so a decision was made that because we felt that the authorities were there, that we should continue moving forward with this program.

My translation: "It wasn't bloody likely that we would be able to do what we wanted legally, but we went ahead and did it anyway."

Billmon over at The Whiskey Bar has an even better translation.

Paul Mirecki situation

My opinion is similar to those of Ed Brayton and John Lynch. I think some skepticism about the attack is in order, it's unfortunate that the university took action against Mirecki and shut down his proposed course, and I wasn't impressed with the quality of Gary Hurd's defense of Mirecki at the Panda's Thumb and its speculations about martial artists inflicting just so much but no more injury on Mirecki.

Another stray puppy

In our neighborhood, we frequently see stray dogs, usually without collars or identifying information. We catch them when we can, and turn them into the pound. The puppies tend to get quickly adopted. Others, we point out to RESCUE, an animal rescue group we volunteer with, so that if they get put on the euthanasia lists they may have another opportunity for survival. Unfortunately, RESCUE can't save all of them.

This puppy had been given to a homeless man we know, who in turn gave him to us to take care of. Kat removed numerous ticks and gave her a bath (the first photo is pre-bath, the second is post-bath). We estimated her age at less than three months, and the breed could be some kind of Chow mix. I think this is the fifth stray we've turned in this year; last year we turned in about the same number, including at least three puppies.

Hot For [Pedagogical Agent]

As an individualist, I harbor no sentimental attachments to my species, any more than I do to my nation, my gender, or my race - in fact I despise the very notion of the collectivist "us-versus-them" mentality, and believe it to be a primary destructive force in the world today.

As a "natural", I lack belief in a human soul, whether mortal or immortal, so, in principle, I can't see any objection to the idea that someone will one day succeed in creating an "artificial intelligence."

Because of my naturalist and individualist bent, I'm really not bothered by the possibility that humankind might one day be destroyed, Terminator- or Matrix-style, by our machine offspring - at least not any more than I'm bothered by the possibility that I'll be bludgeoned to death in a dark alley, or waste away, uncared-for, in a convalescence home.

I wonder, though... Is the Terminator myth really a likely, or even possible, future? We're still not entirely sure what "intelligence" really is, let alone how to create it (aside from growing and interacting with human babies, that is). Is the ability to be introspective and/or self-aware a requirement for intelligence? What about feeling emotions? What about having an instinct for self-preservation? I'm not sure about any of those things - and I'm not sure anyone else is, either (in spite of the attractiveness of the thesis found in the hugely entertaining book, Gödel, Escher, Bach).

However, if there is a possibility for some sort of machine revolution, then we are surely doomed. If Congress's reaction to a vegetable that could follow the movements of a balloon is any indication, then, long before our simulated friends (in meatspace or virtual space) have anything approaching a human-level intelligence, we will have been completely beguiled. Our reptile and monkey-brains are too entrenched for our prefrontal and frontal lobes to counteract the instinctive and immediate reaction to an attractive face. Witness the recent craze over the Furby. We even have a hard time not anthropomorphizing skinless heads (see also here). Throw in a little skin, some pretty eyes, and some basic interaction and it's over. Even when it's miserably failing the Turing test, we're convinced in spite of ourselves that we're talking with something that has - for lack of a better word - a soul. Spielberg's prediction, in his film A.I., of the human reaction to our machines is dead on, I think--with the exception that we wouldn't even be able to kill any of the Mechas that look like walking television sets.

If I'm conveying the sense that I think any of this is bad, then I apologize, because I don't mean to. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this stuff, yet. Like any technology, there are good and bad aspects.

The return of private supersonic flight

Since the demise of the Concorde, there has been no private or commercial air travel at supersonic speeds. Now, however, Gulfstream, SAI/Lockheed Martin, and Aerion are working on developing technology that, through specially designed aircraft body shapes, can reduce the "sonic boom" and allow private jets to take flight paths that the Concorde was unable to use. There's more on this subject at The Economist (free audio interview; the print article is premium content).

Polar bears drown as ice shelf melts

Today's Sunday Times (London) has a story about polar bear drownings occurring off the north coast of Alaska. The bears have to swim longer distances now that average summer temperatures off the north coast of Alaska have increased by 2-3 degrees Celsius since the 1950s, leading to the polar ice cap receding last summer by 200 miles more than the average distance of two decades ago.

Today's Doonesbury on creationism/intelligent design

Of late I've often thought that drugs developed on the basis of evolutionary biology should have warning labels indicating that their effectiveness is predicated upon the fact of evolution, and creationists should not make use of them. Today's Doonesbury is along similar lines. (Of course, creationists will say that this is microevolution, not macroevolution, and they only disbelieve in the latter.)

This is as good a place as any to recommend Randolph M. Nesse and George C. Williams' book, Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine (1996, Vintage).