Ken Miller op-ed on "Expelled"

Brown University biology professor, textbook author, and Catholic Ken Miller has written an op-ed about "Expelled."

Scott Bloch gets raided by the FBI

Bush's head of the Office of Special Counsel at the Department of Justice, Scott Bloch, has had his offices and home raided by the FBI. The FBI raided his offices in D.C. yesterday, seizing computers and shutting off email. Bloch himself was interviewed. It's not clear exactly what prompted the raid, but Bloch has long been under fire for refusing to investigate claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation. There are also allegations that he has retaliated against employees and obstructed investigations.

Bloch also has a tie to the Sternberg case, the crown jewel of "Expelled," in that one of his like-minded appointees, James McVay, a man with no previous experience in employment law, whistleblower law, or federal sector work, took on the Sternberg case and wrote a preliminary report on it despite having no jurisdiction. His preliminary report managed to draw conclusions in contradiction to the actual evidence.

UPDATE: The New York Times also covers the story.

UPDATE (October 27, 2008): Scott Bloch has been fired.

UPDATE (March 30, 2011): Scott Bloch has been sentenced to a month in jail for destroying evidence on his computer.

The superstitions of John McCain

John McCain carries thirty-one cents of lucky change, a lucky compass, and a lucky feather. He won't throw a hat on a bed, or pick up a new lucky coin that's showing tails instead of heads. He won't take a salt shaker passed to him; it has to be set on the table first. He carries a laminated four-leaf clover in his wallet. He wears lucky shoes. He makes use of a magical lizard belonging to his trip director, Lanny Wiles, to help win golf bets and cause the right college sports teams to win.

John McCain is a superstitious nut.

April's Trustee's Sale Notices

Based on this chart, Ray Kurzweil would undoubtedly predict that in late 2009 or early 2010, Maricopa County will reach its foreclosure singularity - the moment at which all homes will simultaneously be served notices of foreclosure and beyond which it is impossible to predict what will happen.

April's 6184 notices were yet another unprecedented high.

Michael Behe: Expelled from Expelled

Intelligent design advocate Michael Behe was interviewed for the film "Expelled," and even included in one of the trailer previews, but does not appear in the final film, even though he has been one of the most prominent ID advocates. Why not?

There are several likely explanations:

1. He is a counter-example to the claim that intelligent design advocates are being persecuted by academia. He is an intelligent design advocate who is also a professor at Lehigh University. (Point due to Tegamai Bopsulai.)

2. He has become something of a heretic in intelligent design circles as a result of his latest book, The Edge of Evolution, in which he affirms common ancestry, he calls using the Bible as a science textbook "silly," he doesn't think intelligent design is necessary to explain lower taxonomic levels of life such as species, genera, families, and orders, and he doesn't see the need for continued miraculous interventions into the process of evolution by God. (Points due to Larry Arnhart.)

3. His latest book conflicts with the idea of The Fall when he argues that malaria was intentionally designed to kill people. (Where's Ben Stein on this one? Point due to RBH.)

It appears that ID's big tent has become too small to allow Michael Behe to remain inside.

Via:

Larry Arnhart at Darwinian Conservatism
Brian Switek at Laelaps
John Lynch at Stranger Fruit

Gene Healy on The Cult of the Presidency

Last night I went to hear Gene Healy of the Cato Institute speak about his new book, The Cult of the Presidency, at the Goldwater Institute. I had a chance to speak to him briefly before his talk, and said I'd buy a copy of his book if I liked his talk. I did like his talk, and did buy his book--the clincher was the "illegal" cover of his book. He said that he had sent the galleys to John Dean, former Nixon White House counsel who has become a vocal critic of overreaching executive power, for a blurb, only to receive word back from Dean that his book cover violates U.S. law regarding the use of the presidential seal. (This was ironic in light of Healy's previous book, Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything.) The Onion was sent a cease-and-desist letter by the Bush administration in 2005 for using the presidential seal on its website. In my non-lawyerly opinion, neither The Onion nor the book are actually in violation of the law since the law prohibits the use of the presidential seal in a commercial context that suggests presidential endorsement or approval, and it's pretty obvious in both cases that no presidential endorsement or approval is implied.

Healy's talk criticized the expansion of executive power from the original description in the U.S. Constitution. While George Washington described himself as "chief magistrate" and refused to start wars with the Indians without Congressional approval, subsequent presidents have expanded their power. Academics of both conservative and liberal stripes have ranked as the "best presidents" those who have engaged in bold exercises of power, while those who have taken more limited roles in line with the Constitution are ranked among the worst (such as Warren G. Harding, whom Healy identified as the best president). Even William Henry Harrison, who served only 30 days as president, receives low poll rankings. By contrast, presidents such as Woodrow Wilson (whom Healy identified as the worst president, for actions such as throwing Eugene V. Debs in jail for criticizing the draft) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who put 110,000 Japanese into internment camps and attempted to subvert the U.S. Supreme Court by packing it with six additional appointees loyal to him) are identified as among the best presidents in polls.

And today, we have Hillary Clinton saying that she's prepared to be "commander-in-chief of our economy" from the moment she takes office, yet that's clearly not the job of the president described in the Constitution, where the only reference to CIC is "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." Healy identified his first moment of apprehension that things had gotten ridiculous about public expectations of the role of the president as a 1992 presidential town hall debate, in which Denton Walthall said (p. 132 of Healy's book):

The focus of my work as a domestic mediator is meeting the needs of children that I work with, by way of their parents, and not the wants of their parents. And I ask the three of you, how can we, as symbolically the children of the future president, expect the two of you, the three of you to met our needs, the needs in housing and in crime and you name it ... [emphasis in Healy]

None of the candidates challenged Walthall's assumption that citizens of the United States should be treated "symbolically" as children of a president-father.

Healy also spoke about what he called "situational Constitutionalism," where Republicans oppose expansions of executive power when a Democrat is president, but are happy to expand it with a Republican president, and Democrats do the opposite. It occurred to me that the timing of his book could lead to such a criticism of his work, except that he has been a consistent critic of the Bush administration's abuses. It's too bad it didn't come out before Bush's re-election, though I doubt it would have made any more difference to the outcome than James Bovard's The Bush Betrayal, which came out in August 2004, just before that election.

In the Q&A, a self-identified liberal* asked if Healy thought that Bush was the worst abuser of executive power in light of his signing statements refusing to enforce, follow, or be bound by various laws. Healy answered that he didn't consider the signing statements to be the worst of Bush's actions, since at least they were written openly and not hidden. He said he considered the internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII to be worse than anything Bush has done to date, and that he found other actions of Bush's to be worse than the signing statements, such as his warrantless wiretapping, his misuse of military commissions, elimination of habeas corpus, etc. He followed that up by saying that what he fears most from Bush's legacy is that by expanding executive power under a "time of war" doctrine for the "war on terror"--a war that will likely never end--he has effectively made the powers permanent. The similar abuses of the past were during wars that at least were temporary conditions.

I look forward to reading his book.

* There were a few liberals in attendance, including a member of the Green Party who asked me if it was considered gauche to go for seconds on the food provided--I said no, I was taking seconds myself.

UPDATE (May 6, 2008): Also see Mike Linksvayer's report on Healy's talk in San Francisco.

YouTube's double standard on Scientology

A couple weeks ago, YouTube removed Mark Bunker's xenutv1 account on the grounds that his previous account, xenutv, had contained copyright infringements and thus violated YouTube's terms of service--even though his xenutv1 account did not. This caused a video interview of actor Jason Beghe, who recently left Scientology, to be temporarily unavailable.

YouTube has also removed an account that the Church of Scientology was using to attack its Anonymous critics, anonymousfacts, for terms of service violations because it personally identified some individuals and referred to them as "terrorists."

But now that Scientology is paying for an account (and for ads on YouTube), it's being allowed to stay.

(Hat tip to Bob Hagen.)

Heartland Institute publishes bogus list of 500 scientists who doubt anthropogenic climate change

Dennis Avery and the Heartland Institute issued a list of "500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares" earlier this week. DeSmogBlog contacted 122 of the people on the list that they found email addresses for, and received replies from 45 of them within 24 hours, indicating that they did not agree to be on such a list and felt that the Heartland Institute had misrepresented their views.

Here are some of the quoted responses:

"I am horrified to find my name on such a list. I have spent the last 20 years arguing the opposite."

Dr. David Sugden. Professor of Geography, University of Edinburgh

"I have NO doubts ..the recent changes in global climate ARE man-induced. I insist that you immediately remove my name from this list since I did not give you permission to put it there."

Dr. Gregory Cutter, Professor, Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Old Dominion University

"I don't believe any of my work can be used to support any of the statements listed in the article."

Dr. Robert Whittaker, Professor of Biogeography, University of Oxford

"Please remove my name. What you have done is totally unethical!!"

Dr. Svante Bjorck, Geo Biosphere Science Centre, Lund University

"I'm outraged that they've included me as an "author" of this report. I do not share the views expressed in the summary."

Dr. John Clague, Shrum Research Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, Simon Fraser University

"I am very shocked to see my name in the list of "500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares". Because none of my research publications has ever indicated that the global warming is not as a consequence of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, I view that the inclusion of my name in such list without my permission or consensus has damaged my professional reputation as an atmospheric scientist."

Dr. Ming Cai, Associate Professor, Department of Meteorology, Florida State University.

"Just because you document natural climate variability doesn't mean anthropogenic global warming is not a threat. In fact I would venture that most on that list believe a natural cycle and anthropogenic change combined represent a greater threat."

Peter F. Almasi, PhD Candidate in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Columbia University

"Why can't people spend their time trying to identify and evaluate the facts concerning climate change rather than trying to obscure them?"

Dr. James P. Berry, Senior Scientist, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

"They have taken our ice core research in Wyoming and twisted it to meet their own agenda. This is not science."

Dr. Paul F. Schuster, Hydrologist, US Geological Survey

"Please remove my name IMMEDIATELY from the following article and from the list which misrepresents my research."

Dr. Mary Alice Coffroth, Department of Geology, State University of New York at Buffalo

This demonstrates a very serious ethical lapse by the Heartland Institute--they've clearly tried to pull a fast one and been caught on it.

Arizona State Rep. Pamela Gorman (R-District 6, Anthem) is on the Legislative Advisory Board to the Heartland Institute; her hobbies as a legislator apparently include both denying the existence of anthropogenic climate change and promoting legislation for the Church of Scientology.

UPDATE (May 11, 2008): Pharyngula comments. The Heartland Institute, rather than issue a retraction or apology, has simply renamed their list to "500 Scientists Whose Research Contradicts Man-Made Global Warming Scares."

UPDATE (August 1, 2009): The Center for Inquiry has released its analysis of a similar list of dissenters promoted by Sen. James Inhofe.

Ben Stein thinks science leads to killing people

In an interview in Christianity Today:

I believe God created the heavens and the earth, and it doesn’t scare me when scientists say that can’t be proved. I couldn’t give a [profanity] whether a person calls himself a scientist. Science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists told Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists told Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to kill 50,000,000 people in order to further the revolution.

In an interview on the Trinity Broadcasting Network with Paul Crouch, Jr. (video is available if you follow the link):

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

Note that he offers no qualifiers. He doesn't say science must be complemented with ethics. He doesn't say that science (like any knowledge of truths about the universe) may have negative as well as positive consequences. He simply says that science leads to mass murder.

If Stein really believes this, then he must be a genuine opponent of the practice of science, and his promotion of "Expelled" can be seen as an aspect of that anti-scientific attitude, despite the fact that he certainly takes personal advantage of many of the positive contributions of science. If he doesn't genuinely believe it, then he's not only engaging in a defamatory slur against scientists, he's also dishonest.

Either way, he's demonstrated that he is a despicable character.

And some people claim not to understand why scientists are angered by this film and its creators.

Others on this subject:
John Lynch at Stranger Fruit
Larry Moran at The Sandwalk
P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula
Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Institute for Justice wins San Tan Flat outdoor dance ban case

Yesterday, Arizona Superior Court Judge William O'Neill struck down a Pinal County Court ruling that Dale Bell's San Tan Flat steakhouse is a "dance hall," freeing Bell from a ban against customers dancing outside his establishment. Pinal County's attempt to ban dancing and extract fines from Bell had been hanging over his business since he opened in 2005.