Now on ScienceBlogs: The Galaxy's Biggest Valentine
Finding the fun in good math; Shredding bad math and squashing the crackpots who espouse it.
Mark Chu-Carroll (aka MarkCC) is a PhD Computer Scientist, who works for Google as a Software Engineer. My professional interests center on programming languages and tools, and how to improve the languages and tools that are used for building complex software systems.
Category: Chatter
This is really off-topic for GM/BM, but I just can't resist mocking the astonishing stupidity of the Conservapedia folks. I'm sure you've heard by now that Andy Schafly and his pals are working on a "new translation" of the...
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 2:55 PM • 62 Comments •
Category: Bad Probability
I normally try to ignore things like this, but this is just too funny. In general, I find arguments like this to be extremely silly. This is, basically, like playing with gematria - only instead of doing real gematria...
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 3:29 PM • 101 Comments •
Category: fundamentalism
Another piece of junk that I received: "The Invisible Link Between Mathematics and Theology", by a guy named "Ladislav Kvasz", published in a rag called "Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith". (I'm not going to quote much from this,...
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 4:34 PM • 32 Comments •
Category: Debunking Creationism
Fellow SBer Tara from Aetiology pointed me at this bit of inanity, which I can't resist mocking: The mystery of the human genome has come into clearer focus as scientists have discovered that each individual person is at least ten...
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 3:35 PM • 40 Comments •
Category: Debunking Creationism
So, as promised, it's time for part two of "The Creationists and the Shrinking Sun". The second main tack of the creationists and the shrinking sun is to not use the bare measurements of an allegedly shrinking sun as their...
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 5:27 PM • 33 Comments •
Category: bad physics
One of the more pathetic examples of bad math from the creationist camp is an argument based on the claim that the sun is shrinking. This argument has been thoroughly debunked by other folks, so I haven't bothered to add...
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 5:26 PM • 31 Comments •
Category: Debunking Creationism
The stupidity and innumeracy of Americans, and in particular American fundamentalists, never ceases to astound me. Recently on Yahoo, some bozo posted something claiming that the bible was all correct, and that genetics would show that bats were actually birds....
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 11:00 AM • 118 Comments •
Category: bad math
This weekend, I came across Granville Sewell's article "A Mathematicians View of Evolution". My goodness, but what a wretched piece of dreck! I thought I'd take a moment to point out just how bad it is. This article, as described...
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 9:45 AM • 75 Comments •
Category: bad math
A reader sent me a link to this amusing blog. It's by a guy named George Shollenberger, who claims to have devised The First scientific Proof of God (and yes, he always capitalizes it like that). George suffers from some...
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 1:48 PM • 51 Comments •
Category: fundamentalism
Last night, a reader sent me a link to yet another wretched attempt to argue for the existence of God using Bayesian probability. I really hate that. Over the years, I've learned to dread Bayesian arguments, because so many of...
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 4:10 PM • 37 Comments •
Orac 02.13.2012
Tim Lambert 02.01.2012
PZ Myers 02.02.2012
ERV 11.26.2011
Orac 01.26.2012
