HintWiki Picking Up Steam
It looks as though word is getting out about the
HintWiki. Since last week, two people, complete strangers, have put up pages of hints for
AGON Episode 3: the Pirates of Madagascar and
Trace Memory.
Très cool.
Dreamfall on HintWiki
I’ve added
hints for
Dreamfall
(the sequel to
The Longest Journey)
to the
HintWiki.
Have You Been Saved?
On the
Apr. 21, 2006 edition
of
Point of Inquiry,
Lauren Becker has an excellent and non-mushy editorial on environmentalism, “Have You Been Saved?” (the show is
here;
the editorial starts at the 1:50 mark). Go listen to it. The rest of the show has Bill Nye, so it’s all good.
Her main point (echoed later by Nye) is that environmentalism isn’t about Saving The Earth. The Earth is a giant rock that we couldn’t destroy if we tried. The Earth will be around long after we’re all dead.
Environmentalism is about Saving The Humans. About not shitting in your and your children’s dinner plates. The reason to care about what happens to whales or spotted owls isn’t that they’re cute and cuddly, but rather that what’s killing them today is likely to kill us tomorrow, if we don’t do something about it.
Discovery Institute Shills Lie About Their Connection
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There’s a new site on the block:
Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity.
Not much new there. It’s just “30 Helens agree. Evolution doesn’t work” (sadly, their list of Helens doesn’t include a single Steve).
But 
finn2 over at LiveJournal did some investigative work and found some interesting stuff:
Here’s a meta header that appears on all of PSSI‘s web pages:
<meta name="keywords" content="intelligent design theory,Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity, PSSI, Physicians and surgeons that dissent from Darwinism, Charles Darwin, Stephen C. Meyer, Michael Behe, William Dembski, Bruce Chapman, Center for Science & culture, charles darwin theory of evolution, creationism, eugenie scott, natural selection, survival of the fittest, Cambrian Explosion, Richard Sternberg, Phillip Johnson, dinosaurs, national center for science education">
and here’s one that appears on all of the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture:
<meta name="keywords" content="intelligent design theory, Discovery Institute, Charles Darwin, Stephen C. Meyer, Michael Behe, William Dembski, Bruce Chapman, Center for Science & culture, charles darwin theory of evolution, creationism, eugenie scott, natural selection, survival of the fittest, Cambrian Explosion, Richard Sternberg, Phillip Johnson, dinosaurs, national center for science education">
I’ve highlighted the similarities and differences between the two. Perhaps the Isaac Newton of information, Bill Dembski, will be good enough to tell us the amount of specified complexity in those strings, and calculate the odds that they’re related. The rest of us can probably agree that there was copying involved.
So I went for the direct approach, and sent this message to PSSI’s contact address:
Hi! I just ran across PSSI today. Could you please tell me
what connection exists, if any, between PSSI and the Discovery
Institute?
Here’s the answer I got:
There is no affiliation between Discovery Institute and PSSI. Discovery Institute is located in Seattle, Washington and we are located in Clearwater, Florida.
Does anyone buy that? Can we just add this to the list of creationist lies?
Update, May 18, 2006: Logan Gage of the Discovery Institute answered my email with:
There is no real connection to Discovery Institute. They are, however,
a friendly group. They just noticed that we do not really add MDs to
our list “A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism.” And since polls show
that at least 60% of MDs don’t buy orthodox neo-Darwinism, they thought
that this is an important voice which should be added to the debate.
Update, Jul. 28, 2006:
Evolgen lists “Stanley B. Gathinston III” an immunologist on the list.
Here
and
here,
“snex” confesses that he signed the petition under that name, and points out that “Stanley B. Gathinston III” is an anagram for “creationist Drs believe anything”. He even listed his address as “123 Kafe Ave.” (anagram of “fake”) for good measure.
Breaking: Pope Does Not Have Magic Powers, Says Vatican
An article in the Scotsman says that
BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.
The rest of the article goes on to say that the god of the creationists is a “nature god”, harking back to the days when there were different gods to explain thunder, tides, spring, etc.
From this I infer that the Catholic church (or at least the Vatican astronomer) has adopted more advanced theology that basically boils down to “dude, this can’t be right” and accepts that scientific explanations are a hell of a lot better than “goddiddit” in a lot of cases.
“Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism – it’s turning God into a nature god.
So kudos to Consolmagno for aligning himself with the reality-based community, at least on this issue. I can’t tell which gap he’s put God into, but I think it’s clear that he’s a lot closer to a deist than Joe Average Baptist Preacher.
And here’s the bit that I wasn’t expecting:
Brother Consolmagno, who was due to give a speech at the Glasgow Science Centre last night, entitled “Why the Pope has an Astronomer”, said the idea of papal infallibility had been a “PR disaster”. What it actually meant was that, on matters of faith, followers should accept “somebody has got to be the boss, the final authority”.
“It’s not like he has a magic power, that God whispers the truth in his ear,” he said.
Okay, this is blindingly obvious to just about everyone, but it’s nice to have Consolmagno acknowledge it. It’d be nice if the Vatican would stress this a bit more, to make it clear that when the Pope makes a pronouncement, that’s just a referee’s judgement call, not Ye Final Word from God Almighty. (And hey, maybe you won’t go to hell for using a condom.)
Personally, I’d like to see this trend continue: if they’ve conceded astronomy, evolution, etc. to science, perhaps they’ll concede large chunks of morality and ethics to evolutionary psychology, game theory, and philosophy. And thus God will be pared down bit by bit until all they have left is a lot of pageantry in a dead language. And then maybe they’ll become upscale Unitarians.
(Hat tip to PZ Mhmhmrrrrz.)
And Speaking of Satan…
Why don’t Christians and Muslims pray for Satan to be saved?
If they think that Satan causes a lot of bad things to happen, and if they believe that prayer works, wouldn’t it be a Good Thing if Satan became good? Attacking evil at its root, as it were.
God and Free Will
This may be an old argument, but I just ran across it on a random podcast:
One argument for the lack of clear evidence of God is that it would undermine free will: anyone who knew for a fact that God exists would be overcome with goodness or something, and in the presence of such a cosmic carrot, would effectively lose the ability to sin.
To this the counterargument is, what about Satan? Satan supposedly had direct proof of God, talked to him, met him at the workplace, and so forth. But he still rebelled.
One might retort that Satan was angelic, not human. But then either Satan had more free will than humans do (in which case one must wonder why God didn’t build humans the same way), or Satan had less free will, in which case the whole thing was a setup.
Discuss in the comments. Next week, we’ll address an equally weighty question: whether the Millennium Falcon can beat the Enterprise in a fight.
Terrorist Shoes
Would someone please explain to me why the TSA requires passengers to
take off their shoes at the airport? Seriously.
I understand that it’s a reaction to
the shoe bomber,
but what I’m asking is what security benefit this procedure provides.
Presumably what they’re looking for when they x-ray your shoes is something that
- Shows up in x-rays.
- Doesn’t show up in a metal detector.
- Is small and flat enough to fit inside a shoe.
- Can’t be shoved into one’s sock or duct-taped to one’s shin.
I submit that the last two items are mutually-exclusive, and that
therefore, the practice of requiring airline passengers to take their
shoes off is just security theater: something that makes it
look as though the government is doing something about
terrorism, without actually doing anything.
I don’t mind a certain amount of security theater: a lot of security
measures, like wiretapping and closed-circuit surveillance, are
invisible, and it’s good to put on a show to make up for that. But the
shoe thing is both annoying and pointless.