Unicef bombs the Smurfs

Via Wiley Wiggins' blog, here's a Belgian anti-war PSA in which the Smurf village gets bombed.

Kirk Cameron on Evolution (he's against it)

Dispatches from the Culture Wars points out a video available from Google's experimental video search, that features Kirk Cameron of "Growing Pains" arguing against atheism and evolution. The most entertaining argument in the video is the argument that the banana was clearly intelligently designed. Troy Britain quotes a more extensive list of banana features (several of which are used in this video):

The banana—the atheist's nightmare.

Note that the banana:

1. Is shaped for human hand

2. Has non-slip surface

3. Has outward indicators of inward content: Green—too early,Yellow—just right, Black—too late.

4. Has a tab for removal of wrapper

5. Is perforated on wrapper

6. Bio-degradable wrapper

7. Is shaped for human mouth

8. Has a point at top for ease of entry

9. Is pleasing to taste buds

10. Is curved towards the face to make eating process easy

To say that the banana happened by accident is even more unintelligent than to say that no one designed the Coca Cola can.

Troy's rebuttal: OK, now explain the pineapple.

There's also some amusing commentary on coconuts.

For more on Cavendish bananas (the particular variety Americans are familiar with), see this Popular Science article. They are seedless, sterile plants that are all clones of each other, and the variety familiar to us was, in fact, the product of human intervention (artificial selection).

The video is filled with the usual nonsense and misrepresentations--Darwin is quoted out-of-context about the eye, it's falsely claimed that Einstein wasn't an atheist, fails to recognize the differences between human artifacts and self-reproducing biological organisms, etc.

UPDATE (May 12, 2008): A 1954 letter from Einstein to philosopher Eric Gutkind says:

The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.
...
For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.

UPDATE (June 25, 2008): Ray Comfort concedes that the banana argument is not a good one.

UPDATE (July 11, 2009): Ray Comfort has apologized for the bad argument, but is still completely clueless. Adding the Coke can back to the example doesn't improve the argument at all.

Michael Behe Disproves Irreducible Complexity

In the Dover trial, Behe was questioned at some length about what was demonstrated in the paper he co-authored with David Snoke, "Simulating Evolution by Gene Duplication of Protein Feature that Requires Multiple Amino Acid Residues," which the Discovery Institute lists as a peer-reviewed journal article supporting intelligent design.

At the Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog, Ed Brayton quotes a long section from Behe's cross-examination about this paper about what it actually demonstrates. It has been represented as demonstrating that a particular kind of irreducibly complex system cannot evolve. What it actually shows is something rather different. As Ed puts it:

Yet what does he admit under oath that his own study actually says? It says that IF you assume a population of bacteria on the entire earth that is 7 orders of magnitude less than the number of bacteria in a single ton of soil...and IF you assume that it undergoes only point mutations...and IF you rule out recombination, transposition, insertion/deletion, frame shift mutations and all of the other documented sources of mutation and genetic variation...and IF you assume that none of the intermediate steps would serve any function that might help them be preserved...THEN it would take 20,000 years (or 1/195,000th of the time bacteria have been on the earth) for a new complex trait requiring multiple interacting mutations - the very definition of an irreducibly complex system according to Behe - to develop and be fixed in a population.

In other words, even under the most absurd and other-worldly assumptions to make it as hard as possible, even while ruling out the most powerful sources of genetic variation, an irreducibly complex new trait requiring multiple unselected mutations can evolve within 20,000 years. And if you use more realistic population figures, in considerably less time than that. It sounds to me like this is a heck of an argument against irreducible complexity, not for it.

The full exchange quoted at Dispatches is worth reading, and more commentary can be found at The Panda's Thumb, where John Timmer points out that

Based on the math presented there [in Behe & Snoke], it appears that this sort of mutation combination could arise about 10^14 times a year, or something like 100 trillion times a year.

Cool toy

Speaking of old science fiction movies, there's a cool toy available from the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog, if you have a spare $50K.

AmEx sues Savvis CEO for nonpayment of strip club tab

American Express has filed a lawsuit against Savvis CEO Robert A. McCormick for his failure to pay a $241,000 credit card bill full of charges from the strip club Scores in October 2003, where he was present with "at least three other men."

I remember hearing stories of similar activity by sales executives at Genuity before the dot-com bust (no pun intended).

Savvis' deputy general counsel says that he disputed the charges with AmEx and that they believe he was the victim of fraud by Scores.

This is apparently the third such lawsuit from AmEx involving disputed Scores bills (the other two were for $28,000 and $129,000). Scores spokesman Lonnie Hanover says that high rollers who visit the "super elite President's Club" at Scores often spend thousands of dollars on single bottles of champagne and give strippers tips as large as $10,000. Sounds like a clip joint to me.

The Sanctity of Marriage

I just had to weigh in on the Maggie Gallagher post at Volokh. She's a wacko.

Nkem Owoh's "I Go Chop Your Dollar"

A Nigerian actor/musician/comedian has made a song and music video about 419 scams. The chorus is "Oyinbo man, I go chop your dollar, I take your money and disappear, 419 is just a game, you are the loser, I am the winner."

As this site complains (along with the next link), the video does nothing to raise confidence in Nigeria. The song is popular in Cameroon, and is apparently based on a tract authored by Nkem Owoh.

UPDATE (December 10, 2009): Nkem Owoh was recently kidnapped while driving down the highway in eastern Nigeria, and the original ransom was 15 million naira ($99,000), but allegedly reduced to 1.4 million naira and his car. (Source: "Go for the locals," The Economist, November 28-December 4, 2009, p. 56.)

More on Behe and "review"

This exchange occurred during Behe's cross examination:

Q But you actually were a critical reviewer of Pandas, correct; that’s what it says in the acknowledgments page of the book?

A that’s what it lists there, but that does not mean that I critically reviewed the whole book and commented on it in detail, yes.

Q What did you review and comment on, Professor Behe?

A I reviewed the literature concerning blood clotting, and worked with the editor on the section that became the blood clotting system. So I was principally responsible for that section.

Q So you were reviewing your own work?

A I was helping review or helping edit or helping write the section on blood clotting.

Q Which was your own contribution?

A that’s — yes, that’s correct.

Q that’s not typically how the term “critical review” is used; would you agree with that?

A Yeah, that’s correct.

Q So when the publishers of Pandas indicate that you were a critical reviewer of Pandas, that’s somewhat misleading, isn’t it?

MR. MUISE: Objection. Assumes that he understands what their purpose for listing him as a critical reviewer.

THE COURT: He just answered the question that that’s not a critical review, so the objection is overruled. You can ask that question.

BY MR. ROTHSCHILD:

Q Advertising you as a critical reviewer of this book is misleading to the students, isn’t it?

MR. MUISE: Objection, that’s argumentative.

THE COURT: it’s cross examination. it’s appropriate cross. Overruled.

THE WITNESS: I m sorry, could you repeat the question?

BY MR. ROTHSCHILD:

Q Telling the readers of Pandas that you were a critical reviewer of that book is misleading, isn’t it?

A I disagree. As I said, that’s not the typical way that the term “critical reviewer” is used, but nonetheless, in my opinion I don’t think it is misleading.

Nice optical illusion

Watch as a pink dot moves around a circle of pink dots, then becomes a green dot and the other pink dots disappear...

Intelligent Design and Rigorous Peer Review

In the Dover intelligent design trial, expert witness for the defense Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box, testified that his book received rigorous peer review--more rigorous than a paper in a scientific journal:

At the same time, Behe agreed, when asked by plaintiff's counsel Eric Rothschild if the "peer review for Darwin's Black Box was analogous to peer review in the [scientific] literature." It was, according to Behe, even more rigorous. There were more than twice standard the number of reviewers and "they read [the book] more carefully... because this was a controversial topic."

It turns out that the deciding factor in the book's being published came from the rigorous peer review of Dr. Michael Atchison of the University of Pennsylvania, who has described his involvement:

...I received a phone call from the publisher in New York. We spent approximately 10 minutes on the phone. After hearing a description of the work, I suggested that the editor should seriously consider publishing the manuscript. I told him that the origin of life issue was still up in the air. It sounded like this Behe fellow might have some good ideas, although I could not be certain since I had never seen the manuscript. We hung up and I never thought about it again. At least until two years later. [...]

In November 1998, I finally met Michael Behe when he visited Penn for a Faculty Outreach talk. He told me that yes, indeed, it was his book that the publisher called me about. In fact, he said my comments were the deciding factor in convincing the publisher to go ahead with the book.

The key reviewer, whose comments were the determining factor in the publication of the book, spent ten minutes on the telephone with the publisher, whose wife was a student in one of his classes, and he never saw the book itself until after it was published.

Ed Brayton and John Lynch give more detail and comment.

There were four other reviewers: Robert Shapiro (prof. of chemistry, NYU, author of Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth), K. John Morrow (formerly at Texas Tech University Health Sciences, published critic of Dembski and Behe), a forgotten Washington University biochemist, and another whom Behe has completely forgotten. Perhaps they gave it a more rigorous review than Atchison, who didn't actually review it at all.