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Carpenter on NY Gay Marriage Ruling

Dale Carpenter has had a series of interesting posts at Volokh about last week's ruling from the NY Court of Appeals (which is their state supreme court) that said that gay marriage was not required by the state constitution of New York. Carpenter is a law professor who advocates gay marriage but is opposed to having it imposed by the courts, which makes his points even more compelling. In the most recent post, he looks at the court's analysis of the rational basis test as applied to gay marriage (Kuznicki also wrote on this the other day, arguing that the court had misapplied the rational…

Thomas More Law Center Sues MSU

Continuing their crusade to insure that gay couples are punished as much as possible for being gay, the Thomas More Law Center has sued Michigan State University over their policy of providing health care benefits to gay couples employed by the university. This is the second such lawsuit the TMLC has filed, the first being against Ann Arbor Public Schools (that case was dismissed by the appeals court on a technicality). In addition, the ACLU and the National Pride at Work organization has filed suit against Governor Granholm from the other side of the issue because Granholm voided the…

The Dave and Larry Show

DaveScot and Larry Fafarman really should take their act on the road, I think. I'd pay money to see these keystone cops try and explain legal concepts to each other and argue about it, wouldn't you? Dave's post on jury nullification continues to provide much amusement. As Dan said in a comment, when Larry is the voice of reason in a thread, that's frightening. Dave's claim is that there should be a right to trial by jury in such cases because of the 7th amendment. But even BarryA, an ID supporter and apparently an attorney, has debunked Dave's argument: The phrase "suits at common law" is…

Luskin's Breathtaking Hypocrisy

Some of you may recall the exchange I had with Casey Luskin in early 2005 about ID advocates comparing evolution advocates of being Nazis, and vice versa. It started when he wrote an essay for the IDEA club website (this was before he went to work for the DI) screaming bloody murder about folks on our side comparing ID advocates to holocaust deniers. I pointed out that Luskin was barking up the wrong tree, throwing a fit about us comparing them to holocaust deniers while the ID advocates he admires and, now, works for have long been comparing us to actual Nazis, not to mention Stalinists, the…

Frickin' Lasers

I haven't posted much about life in the lab lately, because even though I'm getting to spend a bit of time in the lab, I've been so fried from this past term that I haven't had much energy for blogging. Things are finally settling into the summer routine, though, and I've gotten a little rest since handing in my grades, so I'll try to post occasional updates on what's going on in the lab. Of course, life in the lab has its own frustrations, chief among them being equipment failures for stupid reasons. We've had another such event in my lab, so I'll be spending a bit of time wrestling with my…

Assume a Spherical Cow

Over at bento-box, there's a nice response to my recent post about simulations. He makes the very good point that the Sandia press release in question could sensibly be read as referring to the fact that recent computer technology requires fewer simplifying approximations: Well, it isn't really until quite recently that computers have gotten fast enough that many of these approximations can be toned-down. Simulations are starting to match up on a more than qualitative level with experiment on more than simple and uninteresting systems. But computers have been around for a long time and there…

Notes Toward "Weird Quantum Phenomenon"

I'm teaching our sophomore-level modern physics course this term, which goes by the title "Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and Their Applications." The first mid-term was a couple of weeks ago, on Relativity (special, not general), and the second mid-term is tomorrow, on Quantum Mechanics, and then we get three weeks of applications (basically, whatever topics out of atomic, molecular, solid state, nuclear, and particle physics I can manage to fit in). I like to end the quantum section with one lecture on superposition and measurement, which isn't covered particularly well in the book. It's…

The Bottleneck Years by H. E. Taylor - Chapter 1

The Bottleneck Years Chapter 0 Table of Contents Chapter 2 by H.E. Taylor Chapter 1 The Burning Lake, May 11, 2055 I don't know what Matt said to dad, but whatever it was, it didn't take long. I had a quick shower downstairs and changed clothes, thinking to head back to university. By the time I got back upstairs, Jon had arrived. He had been in the Arctic doing community outreach work for a mining company and now he was in the kitchen talking to dad. For a second I stood at the top of the stairs watching them. Jon looked incredibly straight --- like an advertisement for the chamber of…

Replying to Razib

In Sunday's post I wrote the following: People like [Kevin] Shapiro, George Will, or Charles Krauthammer are lonely voices in the conservative wilderness, accorded about as much respect in the Republican party as pro-lifers are in the Democratic party. Every conservative politican of any prominence is anti-Darwin, and virtually every right-wing media outlet publishes anti-evolution articles on a regular basis. Indeed, as Chris Mooney documented at book length, hostility towards science is an integral part of Republican politics today. Over at Gene Expression, Razib took issue with these…

Cosmic Awe

“...the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.” -Carl Sagan As many of you know, I'm fortunate enough to live in a city that values science and scientific knowledge so highly that the our local news station, KGW, routinely brings on scientists to talk about the lastest developments in our endeavors to understand the Universe around us. Just last week, I was invited to share five wonderful minutes of airtime with the viewers of not just Portland, OR, but (thanks to the web)…

The Secret to Writing Your Dissertation

"I spent every night until four in the morning on my dissertation, until I came to the point when I could not write another word, not even the next letter. I went to bed. Eight o'clock the next morning I was up writing again." -Abraham Pais, physicist You've been in graduate school for many years now, and you've come a long way. You've completed all of your coursework, formed your Ph.D. thesis committee, passed your preliminary/oral/qualifying examinations, and have done an awful lot of research along the way. There's a glimmer of hope in your heart that maybe -- just maybe -- this will be…

Weekend Diversion: The Physics of Happy Gilmore

"What a shot by Happy Gilmore! <aside> Who the hell is Happy Gilmore?" -Announcer, from Happy Gilmore As I prepare to write this, it occurs to me that some of you may not have seen the greatest* movie of all time, Happy Gilmore. The movie begins with a montage of Happy's disastrous and violent childhood, where he -- a wannabe hockey player -- is raised by his very sweet grandma (played by Frances Bay, RIP one year today) while the you're treated to the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic, Tuesday's Gone. Happy has an amazingly powerful slap shot, which isn't quite enough to land him with a minor…

Mitt Romney, theistic evolutionist…and this is supposed to be a good thing?

What is going on here? I read Mitt Romney's comments on evolution on TPM Cafe and was surprised at how many people think it was a positive development. Is this a first? Mitt Romney isn't pandering to religious right voters or flip-flopping on an issue important to them in this interview, in which he reveals that he opposes the teaching of intelligent design: "I believe that God designed the universe and created the universe," Mr. Romney said in an interview this week. "And I believe evolution is most likely the process he used to create the human body." He was asked: Is that intelligent…

The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

Scientists in all disciplines agree with climate scientists that global warming is real and caused by humans. The vast majority of climate scientists, very close to 100%, understand that the phenomenon known as “global warming” (warming of the upper 2,000 meters of the ocean, the sea surface, and that atmosphere at the surface of the land) is happening, and is caused by human greenhouse gas pollution. (eg. Anderegg W R L, Prall J W, Harold J and Schneider S H 2010 Expert credibility in climate change Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 107 12107–9) Unsurprisingly, the vast majority, very close to 100…

Dark Matter: what it does, what it doesn't do

"You still don't get it, do you? He'll find her! That's what he does! That's ALL he does! You can't stop him!" -Kyle Reese, the Terminator Now that we've all survived Judgment Day, we can stop looking for ways to stop the Terminators, and go back to the search for dark matter. Let's back up a bit, though, and take a look at normal matter first. As you well know, normal matter here on Earth is always subjected to the force of gravity. You throw something up into the air, and the Earth's gravity always works to pull it back down. In general, something moving under only the influence of the…

What did the President know, and when did he Know it?

Below is a nice video from Move On Dot Org, as well as a link to a petition of theirs. I would like to take this opportunity to caution everyone who is trying to figure out what is going on in the White House to avoid being misled by confusion, ignorance, or intentional misdirection. I have five points. 1) Be prepared to hold multiple competing hypothesis in mind at once. I promise you this: Whatever you think now, or come to realize over the coming months, is not a good historical description of what happened (or is happening). We can look back to Watergate to understand this. For…

Outing ID Advocates

Daniel Morgan has posted several items at his blog attempting to figure out the real life identity of "Mike Gene", a pseudonymous ID advocate who blogs at Telic Thoughts. Mike Gene has been a staple in the evolution/ID debate for many years. He's not really a Discovery Institute-type of ID advocate, he's more of an "ID evolutionist" than an "ID creationist", or at least that is my reading of him which is admittedly not too thorough (unlike many of my Panda's Thumb colleagues, I never took part in the discussion boards at ARN where Mike Gene has been a major figure for a long time debating…

Balkin on Big Business and Regulation

Jack Balkin has an interesting post picking up on David Bernstein's comments on Samuel Alito and originalism. There are many different issues jumbled together in the post, some of which I don't agree with, but I want to point out one statement that I think will come as a surprise to many people, especially many on the left. Many on the left believe that libertarianism is favored by big business because it would get rid of government regulation that reduces their profits. But in fact, big business often uses that regulation to its advantage to keep competitors out of the market and thus they…

Fake White House "Conversation"

Okay, did anyone else see the White House's fake "conversation" between Bush and the troops? It was absolutely brutal. I know that all presidental appearances are well choreographed, but for crying out loud this thing was so badly done that it was embarrassing to watch. There needs to be a word for that embarrassment you feel for someone else when you watch them do something that is so bad that it makes you uncomfortable to watch it, and that's exactly how I felt watching this thing. The fact that the President's press secretary gave a huffy, "What are you suggesting?" response when a…

Second Response to Rusty on the 9th Amendment

Rusty at New Covenant has posted a reply to me concerning the 9th amendment. He begins with this statement: I think part of Ed's issue is that he really doesn't understand what I'm saying, or that I'm not communicating it clearly enough... or a little of both. He seems to think that I'm advocating that we have no other rights other than those enumerated in the Constitution. He's right, that is what I thought. When he said, "The examples listed of rights we enjoy, but which have not been enumerated in the Constitution, do not reveal valid rights inasmuch as they reveal the rulings of judges",…

The Logical Leaps of Anti-gay Marriage Arguments

Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has an op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal entitled "One Man, One Woman: A citizen's guide to protecting marriage." It's a perfect example of the wild leaps of logic inherent in arguments against gay marriage. He starts out with a statement that he appears to think is uncontroversial: No matter how you feel about gay marriage, we should be able to agree that the citizens and their elected representatives must not be excluded from a decision as fundamental to society as the definition of marriage. This is a serious misrepresentation of the issue at…

What are the real top ten science stories of 2012?

This is the time of year when we list the “top ten” stories or events of the year. That we do this in late December is not totally arbitrary. A year, unfortunately (given it’s odd number of days and uncomfortable near-synchronization with lunar cycles), is not arbitrary, but rather, imposed on us by the realities of orbital geometry. That we often list the top, best, worst, funniest, most important, or whatever “ten” items is of course arbitrary. Had tetrapods evolved differently so that humans had 9 fingers on each hand, perhaps we’d be listing 18 items. Or if the development of numbers and…

Satan playing air guitar on his pitchfork in your local public school?

What about a picture of Charles Darwin burning in hell to teach kids about flames? I don't think so. Although I personally am not like some of my fellow secularists in reacting viscerally to any and all stylistic or symbolic references to Judeo-Christian religious themes, I am aware that there are recognizable religious visual or literary elements which, if used as part of a teaching tool, can be easily construed as promotion of a religion. "Promotion" is not standing on a soap box preaching, or telling students that a particular religion is bad while another is good, or giving extra credit…

Let The (Golden) Eagle Soar

Golden Eagle I hope I won't disappoint you ... this is not about John Ashcroft. It is about golden eagles (actually, maybe its about one golden eagle in particular). A timely repost. The golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) has been in decline for a very long time, so you may not know it formerly bred in a much wider range of habitats, across the entire U.S. Today it is known as a mountain eagle because this is where it is generally found, at least in North America. Any experienced birder will tell you that in places like Minnesota nine out of ten, or maybe 99 out of 100 golden eagle…

A Maasai Marriage

A young woman, "of age" but unmarried, appeared out of the forest near the base of the hill, a few of her relatives and friends staying in the woods while she headed alone up the well worn path. Before she had taken a dozen steps, six or seven women, of her age or a bit older, spotted her and ran down the hill to greet her. They had never met before, but as soon as the women got close they touched her, hugged her, held her hand, fondled some of her jewelry and patted her hair, and all the while they shouted the worst invectives and insults they could think of at her, laughing cruelly while…

Fraggin' … frickin' … frackin' … oh, that f-word again

I've tried a different tack now — I've left several comments on Matt Nisbet's very own blog, in the fading hope that he'll actually pay attention to what I'm saying, rather than what he imagines I'm saying, or what other people tell him that they imagine I'm saying. Comments there are held up for moderation, so in case you really want fast feedback, I've tossed my comments below the fold here where you can savage them instantly … or you can head on over to Framing Science and state your piece there. Nisbet writes about Steve Case on Framing and Dawkins, which is basically a post of some fan…

Tradition!!!!

Tradition. Not just a song from Fiddler on the Roof. You know the refrain: "The Papa, the Papa! Tradition." It's a great play but it is firmly rooted in the patriarchy, as "tradition" often is. There are many ways to define "tradition" and we can look it up somewhere and have a flameware over dictionary meanings if you want. But instead I'll tell you what I think the word means, roughly, generally, and subject to revision. First, "tradition" is a feature of culture that simply refers to practices that are habitual. A subset of "traditions" are formalized or regularized, like holidays in…

Bone-marrow transplants as a ‘cure’ for AIDS? IV

Welp, I cant blame this one on pop news. The latest controversy over the HIV-1 patient functionally cured of HIV/AIDS shouldnt be that big of a deal.  Scientists are asking the question "What does it mean to be 'cured' of HIV? What is our definition of 'cured'? How will we know 'cured' when we see it?" Those are actually damn good questions.  HIV-1 can infect cells and remain dormant for years and years and years.  You might *think* the virus is gone, but it really isnt.  Its just hiding.  Or, maybe those 'hiding' viruses are stuck, and finding them doesnt mean the person is at risk of…

Active Learning Experiment: Nearly the End

As noted in previous posts, I've been trying something radically different with this term's classes, working to minimize the time I spend lecturing, and replace it with in-class discussion and "clicker questions." I'm typing this while proctoring the final exam for the second of the two classes I'm teaching, so it's not exactly the end, but nearly everything is in but for the student evaluations, so here are some semi-final thoughts on this experiment: -- On the whole, I think it went reasonably well, though things definitely flagged toward the end, particularly in the regular mechanics class…

Why So Many Theorists?

When I was looking over the Great Discoveries series titles for writing yesterday's Quantum Man review, I was struck again by how the Rutherford biography by Richard Reeves is an oddity. Not only is Rutherford a relatively happy fellow-- the book is really lacking in the salacious gossip that is usually a staple of biography, probably because Rutherford was happily married for umpteen years-- but he's an experimentalist, and you don't see that many high-profile biographies of experimental physicists. When you run down the list of famous and relatively modern scientists who have books written…

Photogenic teens sue US government

To be fair, only one of them is known to be photogenic1. Bizarrely, according to Slate, the young plaintiffs "range in age from 9 to 20"2. Brian reports but doesn't comment on the weirdness of having 9-year-olds suing in the courts. Are we really to believe that a 9-year-old has sufficient command of the issues? It seems utterly weird to me, more of a piece of performance art than a real thing, but the USA is a funny place. Apparently, climate change violates their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property by causing direct harm and destroying so-called public trust assets such as…

Bad Reporting About Women in STEM

This is apparently my day to be annoyed at the reporting of pieces about gender differences in STEM, because a bunch of people are linking to this PBS NewsHour article about women in engineering, which is linked to an interview with Maria Klawe of Harvey Mudd College, who I ran across a few weeks back thanks to a New York Times profile/article. While the general thrust of the piece is very good, there are a couple of areas where the reporting really breaks down, in a way that is pretty annoying. One of these is just the usual breakdown whenever anything remotely quantitative comes up in media…

Scalia

I spent this weekend playing in the annual chess extravaganza known as the US Amateur Team East (epic blog post to follow). On Saturday night, I was having dinner at an excellent Japanese restaurant with some of my teammates. One of them, who happens to be a lawyer, had his phone out and said, “Hey, you know who just died?” Since he knows the kinds of things I'm interested in, I was afraid he was going to say Richard Dawkins, who recently had a minor stroke. But then he said, “Scalia.” Now, this particular friend is supporting Bernie Sanders in the primary, so that at least suggests he…

No Concern for Truth or Consistency

The state trial judge in the Terry Schiavo case, George Greer, has shown incredible fortitude in the face of villification and even death threats. The FBI has arrested a man for putting out a $250,000 bounty on the head of Michael Schiavo and a $50,000 bounty on the head of Judge Greer. It's not the only threat he has received, and Greer and his family must now be under constant armed guard. This is a perfect example of how religious extremists will eat their own in the cause of their own extremism. Greer is a conservative Republican and a devout Southern Baptist. And he is doing exactly what…

Kuznicki Answers Arguments Against Gay Marriage

And does so with his usual brilliance and clarity. His post is in response to this one by Mark Olson. Jason sums it all up so perfectly: I must begin by saying that I do not seek respect for the gay community. Far too often, the gay community has been spoiled, immature, ignorant, and yes, purely anti-family. I don't seek to apologize for these people. In return, I ask that you do not judge me along with them. I ask to be considered as an individual--not as a member of some shadowy, vaguely-defined gay community. The gay community is the receptacle, Mr. Olson, of all the stereotypes you have…

That's My Father

This Saturday, we are having a multiple-family reunion of sorts at the home of my parents. We are celebrating four birthdays simultaneously - my brother Rick's 35th, my brother Mike's 45th, my brother Jack's 50th, and most importantly, my father's 70th. All of my family, my father's family, my stepmother's family and dozens of friends will gather together for the first time ever in one place. The night before last, as I laid in bed, it occured to me that I should propose a toast to my father and I began to think of all the things I wanted to say. I could not stop my mind from thinking about…

More Prevarication from IDers

Al Mohler, head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (and Bill Dembski's new boss), has weighed in with a profoundly silly and dishonest article about Stephen Meyer's now-infamous peer-reviewed article. It begins with the standard boilerplate "evolution is a theory in crisis" nonsense: The theory of evolution is a tottering house of ideological cards that is more about cherished mythology than honest intellectual endeavor. Evolutionists treat their cherished theory like a fragile object of veneration and worship--and so it is. Panic is a sure sign of intellectual insecurity, and…

Iraq and the Election

The new classified National Intelligence Estimate on the situation in Iraq, according to sources in the government, is very pessimistic about the outcome of our policies in Iraq: The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms. "There's a significant amount of pessimism," said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50…

More on Gay Purge in Republican Party

The LA Times has a story about some religious right leaders pushing for gays to be purged from the Republican Party. In the wake of the Foley scandal, there are increasing calls to get gay people out of the party entirely. "The big-tent strategy could ultimately spell doom for the Republican Party," said Tom McClusky, chief lobbyist for the Family Research Council, a Christian advocacy group. "All a big-tent strategy seems to be doing is attracting a bunch of clowns." Now the GOP is facing a hard choice -- risk losing the social conservatives who are legendary for turning out the vote, or…

The Danger of Ignorant Legislators

I have a friend who, about 15 years ago, went from being a high school teacher to being the chief lobbyist of a very large company. A couple weeks ago we had a conversation in which he said that if he was still teaching advanced government, now that he's actually worked up close with the legislature at both the state and federal level, he would teach it very differently. I asked him what he meant and he said, "When I taught government, I used to think that legislators are the experts, that they have access to all this information and expertise that the average citizen doesn't have, so we…

Messier Monday: A Dusty Open Cluster for Everyone, M25

"The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star." -Henry David Thoreau Welcome to another Messier Monday here on Starts With A Bang! Each week, we take a look at the 110 deep-sky objects that comprise the Messier catalogue, the first comprehensive catalogue of fixed, deep-sky objects that could possibly be confused for potential brightening comets. Image credit: Giacomo Bongiorno of Le Meraviglie del Cielo. Today, to mark our hitting the quarter-century mark in looking at these nebulae…

I get email

Another morning, another creationist whine out of the blue. Here's another letter, and as usual with these well-thought out rants, I'm an afterthought—it's addressed to Ken Miller, but then the guy figures he might as well clog a few more mailboxes while he's sending it out. As is traditional, the formatting is exactly as I received it. What is it with kooks and Comic Sans, anyway? And could they possibly trade in a few bold/italic font changes for an occasional paragraph break? Dear Professor Myers: I’d dearly love to have someone show me where I am wrong in my analysis here. Dear Professor…

The Tenure Process

Mark Trodden gave a nice outline of the tenure process over at Cosmic Variance, laying out the general criteria used by most colleges and universities: The typical criteria in physics are: Excellence in research, as demonstrated through peer-reviewed publications and (by far the most important thing) letters of recommendation solicited from a selection of external referees, a few chosen by the candidate and many others not. Funding of one's research at some level. Competence in teaching, as demonstrated through peer review, innovations in teaching and, to a lesser extent, student evaluations…

Classic Edition: Why I Don't Like Christmas Music

The AV Club (I promise I'm not actually turning this blog into theonionavclubwatch.com, but I do like their stuff) had a discussion of Christmas music a little while ago, which collides with last night's campus holiday party in interesting ways. Let's just say that there are few things in this world as horrible as a not-all-that-good cover band doing "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree"... It does, however, suggest a blog topic for the day. This is going to take two parts-- ao "Classic Edition" post of something I wrote on the old blog, and one new post about an experiment I'm going to try…

Dawkins and Theology

This week's New York Times Book Review features a review of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion that judges the book fairly harshly: The least satisfying part of this book is Dawkins's treatment of the traditional arguments for the existence of God. The "ontological argument" says that God must exist by his very nature, since he possesses all perfections, and it is more perfect to exist than not to exist. The "cosmological argument" says that the world must have an ultimate cause, and this cause could only be an eternal, God-like entity. The "design argument" appeals to special features of the…

"Quantum Mechanics Is Magic": The Making of "Spin polarization and quantum statistical effects in ultracold ionizing collisions"

This was the last of the experiments that I did for my thesis (it's not the last xenon paper I'm an author on, but the work for that one was done while I was writing up), so my memories of it are bound up with the thesis-writing process. My favorite story about this stuff was when I gave a talk about this work at NIST-- I don't recall if it was before or after my defense-- and somebody asked the obvious question about how the quantum statistical rules are enforced. That is, how is it that you never get two identical fermions colliding in an s-wave state? Since an s-wave collision is just a…

Peer-Reviewed Egoboo: The Metastable Xenon Project

I've been slacking a bit, lately, in terms of putting science-related content on the blog. Up until last week, most of my physics-explaining energy was going into working on the book, and on top of that, I've been a little preoccupied with planning for the arrival of FutureBaby. I'd like to push things back in the direction of actual science blogging, so I'm going to implement an idea I had a while back: I'm going to go back through the papers in my CV, and write them up for ResearchBlogging.org. This offers a couple of nice benefits from my perspective. First of all, I already know what's in…

Exploring Hidden Dimensions at the World Science Festival

Since I was going to be down here anyway to sign books at the World Science Festival Street Fair, Kate and I decided to catch one of the Saturday events at the Festival. It was hard to choose, but we opted for the program on Hidden Dimensions: Exploring Hyperspace (Live coverage was here, but the video is off), because it was a physics-based topic, and because I wrote a guest-blog post on the topic for them. (No, we didn't go to the controversial "Science and Faith" panel, opting instead to have a very nice Caribbean dinner at Negril Village, just around the corner. I'll take excellent…

Guardian's editorial on Copenhagen

The Guardian has run a front page editorial on the Copenhagen summit along with 56 papers in 20 languages. I read it at Real Climate who "takes no formal position" on its statements. I suppose it is to avoid the acusation of being political... Well, I have rarely read an editorial I agree with more. And I say that with the utmost formality! It was released under Creative Commons license, so I will reproduce it here in its entirety: Copenhagen climate change conference: Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step…

The Ecological Crunch and the Dyer Scale

The following article is a guest post by H. E. Taylor, who you might recognize as the one who graciously provides us with the weekly GW news roundups. The Ecological Crunch and the Dyer Scale When I saw the headline, "50 percent of all species disappearing"[2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] my first thought was of the Dyer scale. In his 2004 book, Future Tense, Gwynne Dyer defines a logarithmic scale of disasters in order to get a sense of proportion about terrorism. The idea can be applied more generally.Here is how he defines it:"If we are ever to get some sense of proportion back about terrorism, we…