hrynyshyn | August 30, 2006This week we've been asked to comment on James Robbins' ridiculous essay in The National Review, Hooray For Global Warming. Although a more appropriate response would probably be to ignore such twaddle, that would be contrary to the whole blogging thing. Others might argue that it's obviously satire. I will go out on a limb and assume Robbins is serious.
Seriously ignorant, that is.
Robbins' notion that global warming will be good for the world, give or take a few isolated locales, is so misinformed that it's not even wrong, to borrow a very clever phrase from Wolfgang Pauli.
Pointing out all…
hrynyshyn | August 30, 2006I will second David Ng's plea for everyone to watch or read the farewell speech of the outgoing UN ambassador for AIDS, Stephen Lewis. It's a rare combination of passion and reason, one that should leave every civilized person seething at what can best be described as a colossal failure of democracy's promise.
Lewis' speech is a 16-part list of axioms that too many politicians and bureaucrats have ignored for years. Each one is there primarily because public and government sentiment have abandoned the accomplishments of science and rationalism in favor of prejudice and dogma.
At the top is an…
hrynyshyn | August 29, 2006The first reports of the changing of the guard at the Vatican Observatory suggested evil-doing were afoot. The outgoing George Coyne is known as a stalwart defender of science and evolution in particular. But the Vatican later insisted Coyne was just tired of the job, which he had held for 30 years, Plus, it appears the poor guy had just had an operation to remove a tumor in his colon. His replacement, Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, has yet to make any objectionable remarks on that score and the celebratory remarks of some intelligent designer proponents would seem premature. And yet...
And yet,…
hrynyshyn | August 28, 2006Astrology is not usually at the top of my worry list. Sure, there are far too many gullible readers of daily horoscopes, and it did bother me a bit to learn Ronald Reagan was consulting an astrologer while sitting in the White House. The space those astrology columns waste in the newspapers could be put to better use, but most the time, it seems like harmless silliness. At best, one could argue that astrology represents a misguided, primitive form of scientific inquiry into the forces that govern the universe, and it is true that the first modern astronomers were also the last sincere…
hrynyshyn | August 25, 2006Can someone please carry out a fact check on Katherine Harris' resume? Because I have to wonder about any institution that would bestow a degree on someone so ignorant of just about everything. Joan took a whack at her in the Refugee, but I want to grab the torch and run with it.
What prompted this outburst was an interview the Republican candidate for one of Florida's Senate seats gave to the Florida Baptist Witness. Just about every word she uttered was an offence to reason and sanity. But to remain calm, I'll just settle on just one part:
Question: What role do you think people of faith…
hrynyshyn | August 24, 2006The government spokesthingies say it's just a oversight. "On its own, it's not really a smoking gun," Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education tells New Scientist. "Inadvertant" is the explanation supplied to the New York Times. But the white space where "evolutionary biology" used to be in a list of science majors eligible for federal student assistance sure looks suspicious to me.
Here's a screen grab of the controversial list, taken from a pdf at the AC/SMART grant website.
See? Right where 26.1303 should be.
The conspiracy theory is weakened, however, by the fact that…
hrynyshyn | August 24, 2006I envy Nature reporter Jenny Hogan, who's been blogging from the International Astronomical Union's big meeting in Prague for the past couple of weeks. I've always considered science journalism the most fascinating sector of the industry (that's why I'm one), but Hogan appears to be having an unusually fun time as the conference delegates lose their calm, rational demeanor in favor of an obsessive, impulsive approach to redefining the planets.
Her latest post, made just a few hours ago, has a breathless quality to it:
IAU: invasion!
What a madhouse. I was skipping down the stairs of the…
hrynyshyn | August 23, 2006Carl has added Jack Kemp to his pantheon of creationist-friendly pols after coming across the Republican presidential-wannabe's latest column, which attempts to cast doubt on the notion that pro-evolution forces aren't doing as well as the liberal media would have us believe.
I second Carl's motion and draw your attention to what has to be one of the most absurd comments to follow the publication of everyone's favorite anti-intellectual screed, Ann Coulter's Godless. Here's Kemp describing the reaction to the book:
Despite bitter denunciations by liberals, funny thing, there has been a…
hrynyshyn | August 23, 2006A paper due to be published next month by Adrian White, a psychologist at the University of Leicester, makes a sincere effort to compare global happiness rates. This sort of thing has been done before, and surprises are few. As you might expect, happiness is correlated with health, wealth and education. But what happens if you compare the happiness rankings with religiosity?
Well, I'll show you.
Back in the early days of the Island of Doubt, I wrote about an attempt to find any correlation between social well being and religious commitment. Self-taught sociologist Gregory Paul's study found…
hrynyshyn | August 21, 2006If Richard Dawkins spends much time in the blogosphere, he's probably quite pleased with himself these days on account of the success of the meme meme. By that, I mean the "unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another" that describes the idea of a meme itself, something Dawkins proposed in The Selfish Gene 30 years ago.
These days, it's hard not to stumble across a reference to one alleged meme or another. A common one seems to be the "book meme," a ten-part list in which bloggers share their…
hrynyshyn | August 17, 2006The juxtaposition in recent news lineups of the debate over the definition of a planet and the depressing debacle in Lebanon puts the lie to the idea we live in a global village. While some of us are lucky enough to be paid to argue over whether "hydrostatic equilibrium" is enough to warrant planethood, others are trying to figure out whether it's worth rebuilding their family homestead, which has just been bombed into rubble. Again. Given this particular historical context, it only seems to fair to check on what astronomy is really good for -- other than giving us something more valuable to…
hrynyshyn | August 16, 2006Word is the proposal on the table at the International Astronomical Union meeting in Prague calls for a new definition of planet that would widen the category to include Ceres, Charon and "Xena." I say, bring it on!
Why?
Because change is good. It sends a great message to schoolkids everywhere: Science does not stand still; there's nothing wrong with revising our list of planets every now and then. Mix it up a bit. I especially like the elevation of Charon from mere moon to planet, making for the system's first double-planet. Tres cool.
hrynyshyn | August 15, 2006If only we could teach our kids what science is really about before they get too old, then they'd be better equipped to deal with intelligent design and other anti-intellectual propaganda that poisons the noosphere. At least, that's a common theory, one that's taken up again this week by Jonathan Osborne, the chairman of science education at King's College in London. There's nothing particularly new about his argument, but it's important to be reminded that the problem transcends North America, and that the case is worth making, repeatedly, until school board trustees get it through their…
hrynyshyn | August 14, 2006I have resisted reposting pre-ScienceBlog posts as the lazy way out, but seeing as how many of my fellow bloggers have done it, what the heck? This one comes from a year ago, on the heels of the discovery of "Xena," what might be a tenth planet. It seems appropriate given that newspaper columnists are doing the same kind of recycling as we anticipate the outcome of a big meeting in Prague later this month, when astronomers will announce just what it is that gets to be called a planet.
Astronomers have been finding new planets on an almost weekly basis for years. Until last week, though, they…
hrynyshyn | August 10, 2006This week's issue of Science includes the results of a survey that doesn't exactly provide cause for celebration. LiveScience has a preview for those averse to reading journal papers:
A comparison of peoples' views in 34 countries finds that the United States ranks near the bottom when it comes to public acceptance of evolution. Only Turkey ranked lower.
Only Turkey. Sigh.
The meta-survey found:
A dichotomous true-false question format tends to exaggerate the strength of both positions. In 1993 and 2003, national samples of American adults were asked about the same statement but were offered…
hrynyshyn | August 10, 2006If any member of the medical profession wonders why more than a few people prefer to seek "alternative" treatments, wonder no longer. While ignorance and gullibility among the lay public are rampant, there is also the very serious problem that people simply don't believe that conventional, accredited doctors always have the patient's best interests at heart. Yesterday I came across a recent study that offers some good justification for that lack of confidence.
The paper, in the June 2006 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (subscription required), reports the findings…
hrynyshyn | August 8, 2006The news that Pat "700 Club" Robertson finally admits that climate change is something to worry about is a few days old, but I thought it worth mentioning.
His Road to Damascus conversion is all the more remarkable when this quote, when you recall that
In October, Robertson, a former Republican presidential candidate, said the National Association of Evangelicals was teaming up with "far left environmentalists" for saying global warming was caused by humans and needed to be mitigated.
Contrast that with last week's declaration:
"We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels,"…
hrynyshyn | August 7, 2006Here's a depressing way to start your week, courtesy of The New Statesman:
.."psychic schools have never been so busy, and it's not the Doris Stokes brigade who want to learn, but the young, the prosperous and the educated. Stephen Armstrong uncovers a paranormal boom."
If you don't know who Doris Stokes is, that's probably a good thing; those familiar with the name are more likely to have enrolled in the aforementioned schools. Plus, The New Statesman piece deals with the situation in England. But things aren't much better this side of the pond.
Earlier this year came the results of a…
hrynyshyn | August 4, 2006I've finally gotten around to reading The Next Big Storm, Can Scientists and Journalists Work Together to Improve Coverage of the Hurricane-Global Warming Controversy? -- the Skeptical Inquirer's monumental review of media coverage of the hurrican-climate change links, by our own Matthew C. Nisbet and Chris Mooney. Wow. So much to chew on, especially for a science journalist who has done a bit of writing on the subject myself.
The nub of their argument is that improving the sorry state of most of the reporting on this hopeless complex subject will:
require getting beyond the tyranny of…
hrynyshyn | August 3, 2006I used to be dead-set against the idea of letting Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists deny their children conventional treatment for life-threatening illnesses. It still makes me angry to know that there are mothers and fathers out there who love their god more than their sons and daughters. And yet...
And yet, there is a case to be made for letting parents determine the fate of their children. The libertarian argument against the state forcing a course of treatment on a child against their parents' wishes is a compelling one. This meditation on the dilemma in Reason magazine hits…