In case you haven’t noticed, we’re having problems all across scienceblogs. Few of us can post at all, and those who can are reporting errors all over (I will be amazed if this post makes it through). You are also unable to comment.
The crack team of Seed technical experts are delving deep into the guts of the software as I write this, butchering gremlins as they go. No word yet on when we’ll be able to post again.
Thank you to everyone who noticed that yesterday I was one day older than the day before! And a special thanks to Bora for collecting all the various links together in one place.
Now I do have to remind you all, though, that we’re all aging at exactly the same rate (unless you have access to a spaceship that travels at a significant fraction of the speed of light), and all I’ve got is a head start on many of you, and a bit of a delay relative to some of you. So don’t go getting cocky, you young whippersnappers — you’ll be here someday, too.
This excerpt reveals a surprising fact: it is clearly a Canadian conspiracy. I knew we shouldn’t trust those guys.
Now the odious Vox Day is ranting about how the discovery of dark matter and dark energy refute “rational materialist philosophy,” because somehow it ties into the inapplicability of naturalism to “justice, equality, and freedom”. Phil Plait quite rightly slams him back.
I have to give Blake Stacey the prize for the most succinct rebuttal, however.
I don’t understand how people can use the discoveries of science to argue that science is broken. It’s bass ackwards, that’s what it is.
Not surprising, though; Theodore Beale aka Vox Day is a notorious loon, well known for making the most absurd claims as if they were just ordinary common sense.
So a guy gets a little older, and what happens? All these people try to draw attention to my age, largely with a collection of photoshopped pictures of yours truly. Don’t they know I’m funny-looking enough that no photoshop is necessary?
By the way, I got a nice present from my family: a new, ergonomic Cephalopod Throne. You’ll be reassured to know that now, when I fling thunderbolts of furious vituperation about the web, I shall be doing so with excellent posture.
A reader brought to my attention this outrageously dishonest mangling of a quote by that creationist, Casey Luskin. He writes:
In January, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences weighed in on this debate, declaring that “[t]here is no scientific controversy about the basic facts of evolution,”1 because neo-Darwinism is “so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter“2 it. As an undergraduate and graduate student taking multiple courses covering evolutionary biology at the University of California San Diego, that is what I was told as well. My science courses rarely, if ever, allowed students to seriously entertain the possibility that Darwin’s theory might be fundamentally flawed.
First rule of reading creationist literature: never trust an ellipsis. They always leave something significant out to change the meaning. Second rule of reading creationist literature: if they don’t use an ellipsis, they’re still going to distort a quote. Basically, you can’t trust anything these guys say. Luskin is claiming to be quoting something from the National Academy of Sciences booklet, Science, Evolution, and Creationism. How honest is his scholarship?
The first part of the quote is from page 52, near the end of the book. Here it is in context:
1There is no scientific controversy about the basic facts of evolution. In this sense the intelligent design movement’s call to “teach the controversy” is unwarranted. Of course, there remain many interesting questions about evolution, such as the evolutionary origin of sex or different mechanisms of speciation, and discussion of these questions is fully warranted in science classes.
Where do you think we’ll find the second half of his quote? Page 53, maybe? Page 54? No. You’ll have to thumb backwards through the book, to a place near the beginning: page 16.
2Many scientific theories are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them substantially. For example, no new evidence will demonstrate that the Earth does not orbit around the Sun (heliocentric theory), or that living things are not made of cells (cell theory), that matter is not composed of atoms, or that the surface of the Earth is not divided into solid plates that have moved over geological timescales (the theory of plate tectonics).
So what Casey Luskin has done is to flip through the book and manufacture quotes by splicing together clauses from scattered sentences. Students who tried to pull this kind of unethical crap in a term paper would get an automatic “F” from me…yet Luskin reportedly has a law degree.
Aren’t journalists supposed to have some kind of ethical standards about this sort of thing? Do they simply suspend any regard for reasonable journalistic values when some right-wing think-tank like the Discovery Institute mails in some PR pablum?
Long time readers here, and fans of Creek Running North, the best-written blog on the internets, will remember Zeke…and if you don’t, you’ve been missing out. And now you can get a whole book of nothing but concentrated Zeke, which sounds like Dog Heaven to me.
Important news!
Daylight Saving TIme begins at 2am on Sunday, 8 March. Remember to set your clocks ahead one hour.
You better set those clocks correctly so you can catch Atheists Talk radio at 9am. This week, it’s interviews with some of the bigwigs of American Atheists.
Yeah, it’s my birthday on Sunday. I’ll be of the age that means I have three 17 year olds yammering at each other in my cranium, and I’m going to celebrate it with a quiet day spent getting some writing done.
In a special election and against long odds, Bill Foster has been elected to the house of representatives from Illinois. Not only is it another addition to the coming Democratic conquest of Washington DC, but the guy is a physicist. We need more scientists stepping into political leadership!
