Internal criticism

Denyse O'Leary (an appallingly bad journalist who blogs in favor of Intelligent Design) wrote that she won't become an internal critic of ID because she opposes the "academic fascism" of ID critics. I find that an appallingly weak justification for being a propagandist. Internal criticism tends to strengthen the quality of arguments and evidence, not weaken them--unless, of course, what you're advocating is false.

Evolution and economics / Daily Show and Evolution

A couple of items from Pharyngula:

1. P.Z. wonders, citing John Allen Poulos, why there's not more affinity between economists and evolutionists. What, no mention of Rothschild's Bionomics? There are some interesting comments on this Pharyngula entry, worth the read.

2. The Daily Show is going to settle the evolution vs. creation battle once and for all with a special called "Evolution Schmevolution: A Daily Show Special Report," filling the "Daily Show" timeslot during the week of September 12. This should be a good one...

Empirical argument for billboard restrictions

The Economist reports on research from Steven Most at Yale into a condition called "emotion-induced blindness" (apparently similar to and named analogously to motion-induced blindness). Most's research shows that gory and erotic images trigger a condition which lasts for two-tenths to eight-tenths of a second during which the viewer fails to process what they see immediately afterwards. This is attributed to "an information-processing bottleneck in the brain when it is presented with important stimuli," the categories in question being relevant to avoiding dangers and reproductive success, respectively.

This phenomenon provides grounds for an argument that some content-based restrictions on visual material in certain locations (e.g., alongside highways) are justified on the basis of their potential to cause physical harm. (Or that liability should be incurred for resulting accidents by those who put such material in place.)

Photography and the Occult

The NY Metropolitan Museum of Art has an exhibition on "The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult" that appears quite interesting.

Bush vs. Reality: New Orleans disaster

Pharyngula points out this latest example of a Bush statement at odds with reality:

George W. Bush, September 2005:
"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

Scientific American, October 2001:
"New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. The city lies below sea level, in a bowl bordered by levees that fend off Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south and west. And because of a damning confluence of factors, the city is sinking further, putting it at increasing flood risk after even minor storms. The low-lying Mississippi Delta, which buffers the city from the gulf, is also rapidly disappearing. A year from now another 25 to 30 square miles of delta marsh--an area the size of Manhattan--will have vanished. An acre disappears every 24 minutes. Each loss gives a storm surge a clearer path to wash over the delta and pour into the bowl, trapping one million people inside and another million in surrounding communities. Extensive evacuation would be impossible because the surging water would cut off the few escape routes. Scientists at Louisiana State University (L.S.U.), who have modeled hundreds of possible storm tracks on advanced computers, predict that more than 100,000 people could die. The body bags wouldn't go very far."

It seems to me there's at least as much blame to place on Louisiana state and New Orleans city government as on the feds for this one.

The Words of the President

I've become somewhat of a fetishist regarding President Bush's speeches, starting from around January, 2002, up to the present day. They're all available at the White House web site in transcript form, with many also in video. For some reason I find it fascinating to watch his mind-numbingly repetitive talking points evolve over time. It's also fascinating to read his stammering--faithfully transcribed, mind you--when he gets asked that oh-so-rare "tough" question by one of the press corp. Reading his words like that, you wonder (or I do, anyway) why his lies weren't immediately clear to everyone.

So I found this little Daily Show video essay particularly enjoyable. It's hard to imagine a more brilliantly funny parsing of presidental spin. I keep half-seriously wondering when that show is going to get yanked off the air and Jon Stewart sent to Guantanamo Bay.

Theo's Prophecies

As President of the Internet Infidels, I occasionally get some interesting email. Yesterday, a guy named Theo sent me a list of three prophecies which he claims will prove the existence of precognition. Here are his three prophecies:

1. Between September 7-9 (probably on the 8th) police make dramatic news of a crazy person doing something. Lots of drama. Alot of people die.

2. On September 17 someone of importance is assasinated in the middle east. This may be related to terrorism.

3. On September 26 thousands of people are forced to relocate due to either tornado or earthquake.

I objected that the first happens every day somewhere, and asked him to make it more specific--by "crazy person" did he mean someone who is mentally ill? Is the crazy person causally related to the people dying? How many people is "a lot" (at least give an order of magnitude).

On the second, again I said that is nearly a daily event. Could he narrow it down to a country, or the field in which the assassinated person is "someone of importance"?

On the third, I asked whether the date is the date of the event or the relocation, and whether he could be specific about the nature of the disaster and add a geographic location.

Theo also claims that he predicted Hurricane Katrina "right to the day" (but didn't say which day of the multi-day event he predicted), and in a later email said that he had made three similar prophecies (presumably one of them was about Katrina) last month, but he hasn't yet given me the specifics. I'll press him, and post here if I get the details. (Update: Theo says I can find the information in AOL's "Christian Living" chat room logs, but didn't provide them. In response to my request for specifics about what he said, he says "Several weeks ago I predicted that a major catastrophe would occur in this country and that thousands would be forced to relocate between August 29-30." What happened to a "right to the day" prediction of a hurricane?)

In my response, I asked him if he could be more specific, in which case I'd be willing to entertain a $500 wager on it with him (with proceeds donated to the charity of his choice if he gets all three right, and donated to the Internet Infidels otherwise). He told me that I don't understand how precognition works and that my demands are unrealistic.

How to Stop Worrying...

Ever been walking along somewhere, when suddenly you wonder, "If the bomb went off now, would I be vaporized instantly, or would I be one of the unlucky ones? Could I 'duck and cover' and be okay?"

Well, wonder no more! This site has come to your rescue!

Now you can know your minimum safe distance from, e.g., a 50 Megaton thermonuclear detonation. In my case, if we assume the Capitol building as Ground Zero, then out here in Reston, VA, I'm just outside the "widespread destruction" radius, but well within the "3rd degree burns" radius. Uh oh.

Or, just for fun, plug in the historical values for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki fission blasts (a quaint 0.15 and 0.22 Mtons, respectively).

You'll gain a new appreciation of Seizo Yamada's picture of the Hiroshima mushroom cloud, taken at about 7 km.

Or, perhaps even better, this shot of the "Buster Dog" troop test in Nevada, 1951. These guys are roughly 13 km away.

"What seems to be the trouble, soldier? You look a little bit worried."

The Discovery Institute misleads the New York Times

That they are primarily involved in a PR effort is made clear by the way they declare victories where they've lost, as they did with regard to science standards in New Mexico. This time, they suckered the NYT into repeating the falsehood.

Things the Intelligent Design camp doesn't talk about

An excellent article at The Panda's Thumb about the evolution of the blood clotting system and the flagellum (Michael Behe's examples of "irreducibly complex" systems) that ID theorists don't seem to want to discuss, as evidence that ID advocates aren't practicing science.