Phil Plait, the new James Randi

Phil Plait is taking over as President of the James Randi Educational Foundation, or JREF. Let me start by saying that James "The Amazing" Randi is awesome. He is actually the subject of an Isaac Asimov Black Widower's story, known as "The Amazing Larri". The JREF is everything I stand for, better science and critical thinking education. Still, he is getting on in years, and this will allow him to finish working on a couple of books, as well as probably performing more magic, and possibly relaxing (though knowing him, that may not happen). Phil Plait is the Bad Astronomer. Now, you'd think James Randi could find a good astronomer to take over, but you have to take what you can get. Anyway, Phil Plait could be my long lost twin, we are so much alike in many ways, the major difference being that he is a big Doctor Who fan. This is exciting for science and skepticism. Hopefully this will mark the advent of a new age in reason.

Deep Geeking

A cool new website Deep Geeking has grown out of the cool old (internet years) Babylon Podcast. I've submitted my first deep geek, and it's very deep. It's about the new X-Files movies, titled I Don't Want to Believe, I want the Truth. Please leave any comments about the post on the Deep Geeking forum.

Arthur C. Clarke, last of the Big Three

Arthur C. Clarke died today at the age of 90. He is the last of the Big Three, having outlived Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. He is one of the classic hard SF writers, having ushered in the age of SF greatness and being the elder statesman of the field. I've read many of his short stories, looking over at the Collected Stories, there are quite a few memorable ones. My favorite novel of his is Songs of Distant Earth. The story is fairly simple, there are no plot twists really, but the texture is very subtle. Philosophical ramifications of quick dialog abound, and the characters are all excellently established. I highly recommend it. I may go read it again myself.

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

This post is particularly apropos seeing as today is Darwin Day .

I just finished reading Carl Sagan's excellent non-fiction work Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors , which doesn't seem to have a wikipedia page, so either I or one of my readers will have to create one. This book is about the creation of the stars and universe, as well as evolution, and particularly, evolution of higher order behavior, social structure, culture, sexual behavior, especially amongst our closest relatives, chimps and bonobos. The science is a bit out of date, however the ideas are still revolutionary. Sagan presents with such a clear view his ideas on how we got here, and briefly touches on what this might mean to where we are going, as a culture and a species. A must read for any fan of Sagan or evolution.

On a personal note, I have now read almost every Sagan work of popular non-fiction. All that's left is to borrow Kirsten Dunst's copy of "The Varieties of Scientific Experience"

Scientists create synthetic genomes: Don't jump to conclusions

Scientists have created the first entirely synthesized bacteria genome . I like looking for connections in things, whether it be in literature, science, math, or music. This news article heavily connects with yesterday's post about zeros and ones. The impression that first jumps to mind when reading this story is that "Oh my God, we'll be genetically engineering a master race any day now". The fact of the matter is, writing assembly code is a lot different than writing in Java, the programming language I'm using, these days. To create higher structure than just a single cell will require a massive amount of research as well as engineering. I don't know the direction it will take, but from analogies to computers, I imagine they will need subroutines, to take common pieces of DNA and use them in different ways. DNA has developed by duplicating the same sections and then evolving subtle changes which confer a reproductive advantage. Decades of work, maybe more, is needed for this research to reach its pinnacle.

Still, this is an amazing achievement. Too much C02 in the atmosphere, create a bacteria to process it. The ability to engineer bacteria to suit our needs could open up whole new worlds to us, and greatly increase the standard of living for all humanity in the next century.

Awesome Video

It's often difficult to imagine the sheer size and immensity of the stars compared to the planets. This minute long video goes from the smallest worlds to the largest stars, and the contrast is made stark. It was a fabulous spent minute, although it took quite a bit longer for me to constantly stop to look up various stars on Wikipedia.

Planets and Stars in scale

Cosmos

I discovered a few weeks ago that Cosmos , the groundbreaking, inspirational series by Carl Sagan was going to air on the Science Channel, in HD, on Tuesday nights. Of course, I don't get this channel, so I had to call and upgrade my cable. Yes, that's great this series is. I've read the book several times, and seen several of the episodes, but never had a chance to watch the whole series. I urge everyone who has this channel, or knows someone who does, to watch it.

Creationism in Linguistics?

Over at the Language Log, there is a post about this insane book, I kid you not, The Origin of Speeches: Intelligent Design in Language (Paperback) . Now, I must say, centuries of linguists haven't been able to trace language relationships back more than several thousand years. Proto Indo-European seems to have been spoken between 5,000 and 9,000 years ago, although those error bars could extend back farther into time.

You might ask, "Why is that a problem?", to which I would have to explain that the thesis appears to be that in the garden of Eden, we all spoke the same language, and that languages diverged due to the tower of Babel. We have no estimates for the time when PIE merged with Hebrew, but it would certainly have been more than 10,000 years ago. However, the Creationists put the date of the garden of Eden much more recently than that.

Let me cite some reviews, "Origin of Speeches is a great way to learn about language, any language. You also learn alot about history and how academic fads or theories, like Darwinism can obscure important and accessible information." Ignoring the obvious misunderstanding of what constitutes a "theory", this reviewer refers to Darwinism (by which they mean evolutionary biology and related fields) as an "academic fad". When I write my first book, I'll make sure to have my mother be the first one to review to.

I may have to find this book at a library (since I won't be purchasing it) and carefully examine all of the arguments.

An Ape's view of evolution

Enough is Enough: A Thinking Ape’s Critique of Trans-Simianism

This is a hilarious view of evolution from an ape's perspective. Obviously the logical fallacies are rampant, not the least of which is the idea that the evolution chimpanzees was directed towards humanity, but obviously is was all in jest. It does a great job of lampooning many of the straw man arguments put forth by those who oppose evolutionary theory.

Dropping the APM bomb on Computers

Brad (last name unknown), a College Football analyst on ESPN radio's the Sports Bash was discussing Hawaii's chance of being in the top 12 of the BCS standings. He said, "I don't think the voters in the polls are disrespecting Hawaii, if anything it's the computer polls that are disrespecting them, if a computer can disrespect a team".

No Brad, a computer can't disrespect someone. That computer is actually a computer model which was designed by a person, probably a statistician, to describe how good teams are. This anthropomorphism* is troubling, because it reveals a complete misunderstanding of what is going on. There aren't some evil computers out to get Hawaii. A statistician came up with a model which calculated that teams who have lost games against good opponents are better than teams which consistently beat poor opponents.

There are certainly flaws with computer models. Computers may not take into account all the factors that voters can, but they are able to ignore factors that human voters take into account, like the "feel good" story of a small conference team Hawaii. These stories, however intriguing they are, are correctly ignored by computers, an objective ranking source.

Computers aren't that difficult to understand. All you have to do is ask, and any of us CS majors will wax eloquently, something CS majors usually aren't that good at. Please, know what you're talking about before going on national radio and spouting nonsense.


*: Dropping the APM bomb refers to gratuitous use of the word anthropomorphic, especially to make yourself or your writings sound smarter. I employed this technique on a college paper, but it didn't seem to help my grade.

Texas teacher firing over Education

Who'd have thought that evolution was so controversial that a woman was FIRED for forwarding an email about a lecture about it. The battle in my current home state is coming, and as a citizen and voter, I'm going to need to start steeling myself for the eventuality that things are going to get bad before they get better.

The View, Epicurus, and Idiocy

This news article from the New York Post describes a conversation that occured on the view. Joy Behar mentioned my favorite philosopher Epicurus , who was pretty much in line with my favorite Founding Father, Thomas Paine. Epicurus was probably one of the first Deists, at least that's what he proclaimed, proclaiming otherwise at the time would probably have been bad for his health.

Sherri Shepherd, the dumb one, claimed that Christianity predated Epicurus, the Greeks, and the Romans. When Whoopi Goldberg, that fountain of sanity, attempted to correct her, she said that "Jesus came first". Let's not mention the fact the Bible says otherwise, or history, or you know, everything ever written. Sherri doesn't believe in evolution either, and she's not sure whether the Earth is flat.

Presidential Debate on Science

There is a growing movement for a Presidential Debate on Science . There are so many political issues involving science that are important to us all. The spread of diseases, like avian flu (which would require evolution to effect humans), birth control, climate change, space exploration, all of these things require knowledge of science. Bill Clinton was a well educated man, who prided himself on being well read. George Bush scoffs at the "reality based community", who use "facts", to back up their scientific "theories". As we move towards the future, technology will play an increasing role in American life, even more than it does today, and understanding those technologies is an essential attribute in any leader.

Terry Schiavo Redux

After the Bears/Broncos game ended (w00t!), I didn't bother to change the channel until 60 minutes came on. Anderson Cooper started with "Two years ago, Terry Schiavo sparked a nationwide debate...", at which point I turned off the tv. No she didn't! There was no debate. Every agreed, what in God's name is the Congress doing involved in this? This, to me, was one of the major reasons the Democrats took power, everyone was sick of the Big Government Republicans. The problem with news coverage today is not only do they beat on dead horses, but they periodically dig them up to beat again!

Harvard Physicist Stops and Starts Light at will

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/15-11/st_alphageek

My favorite part is:

That's just freaky. Hey, Einstein may have set that initial speed limit of light, but he only theorized about BECs. "It's not breaking relativity," Hau says. "But I'm sure he would have been rather surprised."

Tags

I've started to become enamored with whole tags thing, so I'm going to make a list of tags for myself to keep track of.

INFO : general information about the blog
MUSIC, MOVIES, TV : Shows/bands that I like, dislike, or otherwise have some sort of feeling about.
COMEDY : Either jokes or the entirely unfunny discussion on why things are funny. Also, fawning about Del Close.
SPORTS : I typically follow MLB, NFL, NBA, NCAAFL, NCAABB, and a scattering of other stuff.
SCIENCE : I'm fascinated by how things work, how scientists figure out that work, and why people sometimes don't believe it.
BOOKS : I read lots of books, and before now I've just kind of put them down. Hopefully I can use this blog to track what I read and how I feel about it.
WORDS : Words are fun. See Wordie . I think I will occasionally post about a word that I like.

As time goes by I will probably add, remove, and change these categories around.