Faith Based Science?

A commentary in the New York Times reminds us about the damage that George Bush and other creationists are doing to science in this country. Seems that NASA has been spinning science to make it theologically palatable....Or should that be theological pablum for Bush's conservative religious base. Seems that a political appointee was upset at the mention of the so called big bang theory telling a web designer that:

"... the Big Bang was "not proven fact; it is opinion," and thus the word "theory" should be used with every mention of Big Bang."

Aside from the obvious failure to understand what a theory is in science-much more than an opinion- the appointee is clearly mixing his religion with science. The latest flap involves attempts to censor comments related to how the universe might end:

"An e-mail message from Erica Hupp at NASA headquarters to the authors of the original release at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said, "NASA is not in the habit of frightening the public with doom and gloom scenarios."

Of course the issue is not so much how the universe might end...that is just an excuse. After all the Bible has plenty to say about the end of time in a theological sense and it is down right scary. The real issue is that end of the universe is a long ways off...maybe a zillion years in the future. If the universe is expected to have a long life into the future then clearly the universe could be as empirical science claims 13 or 14 billion years old. This is what is really frightening to Biblical literalists- to be reminded that the Bible is a science text book.

I can only wonder what the next assault on science will be: gutting the NSF? Giving grants for creationist research into the Grand canyon? Or maybe research to prove that human life begins at conception, or that there is life after death.

Of course here in Kansas the Board of Education has already shown the way by redefining science to include supernatural causes. So lets not only put the proper spin on our warming climate, and evolving(no wait adapting) viruses: let's put the cabash once and for all on all this disturbing cosmology!

George Deutsch, the appointee I mentioned, got canned, but I think that is only because he got caught. Of course that is only my opinion, not a theory.

Civil disobedience or something else?

There is no trend here that I have two posts in a row dealing with pregnancy but the Lawrence Journal World today reported the latest on a growing trend- pharmacists and other medical workers refusing to treat or give substandard care to patients who are asking for treatments or medication that the patient requested. Commonly as in this case a pharmacist refuses to dispense emergency contraception because he or she is morally opposed to it.

Now I am all for people living their lives according to moral principles but it seems that there is another principle that this has to balanced against, namely the rights of patients to medical treatment that is in their own interest. Medical professionals do have an obligation here to be non judgmental. After all the patient is living his or her life based on some set of values, so unless the patient is doing something medically risky to the patient, the medical professional should fulfill the request.

The pharmacist's actions are not, as some might claim, a form of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience involves believing so strongly that a government action is wrong that you put yourself at risk to disobey a government action and you willingly take the consequences. By the way, back in the 1960's some antiwar protesters who allegedly practiced civil disobedience didn't want to face the consequences either and I thought that was wrong as well.

Pregnancy tests and frogs...

Now this is so bizarre at first glance it has to be true. According to an article from Reuters, a chytrid fungus that is currently devastating frog populations around the world may be linked a formerly common test for pregnancy. Urine from the a woman was injected into female African clawed frogs and if the woman was pregnant the frogs would be stimulated to ovulate by the hormones in the woman's blood.

The tie in to the fungus? It turns out that the African clawed frog is a vector for the fungus, not harmed by it but able to carry it to other frogs when the African clawed frogs were inadvertently or intentionally released in areas in which they are not native. The fungus is believed to be be a major factor in the decline of at least some frog populations.

The African Clawed Frog is a common aquarium animal and in certain parts of the world is an invasive pest in it's own right. See for instance http://www.calacademy.org/science_now/invasive_species/African_clawed_frog.html

The African Clawed frog or Xenopus is a common experimental animal. In fact, as an historical aside, a gene from Xenopus was the first animal gene cloned and inserted into the genome of another organism back in 1973 (http://www.genome.gov/Pages/Education/Kit/main.cfm?pageid=11).

Image from http://www.werc.usgs.gov/fieldguide/xela.htm

Second Life

In my limited spare time I have started playing Second Life(SL. This is one of those massively multiple user universes in which you can create and interact with other people. I think these sorts of systems have a lot of potential for education as well as recreation. Indeed I belong to a second life group that is exploring these possibilities. The hardware and software both at the server end and the user end are not yet up to that task.


Second life has a nice scripting language that can be used to make sophisticated objects and simulations and it is lots of fun to build, and create your own avatars-alternate personas.

The first picture shows, Simeon Gateaux, my avatar in SL. He is pretty conventional.


But you can really modify just about all aspects of your avatar. For instance, I created a female avatar. Notice she is dressed in a traditional Japanese Kimono. I had just finished reading Memoirs of a Geisha, which by the way is a wonderful book (forget the movie) and the Kimono I bought from a clothing designer in SL.

I like the way you can do most anything in SL and some times some really amusing things happen such as one of my neighbors foam machine went crazy and covered my Heliport with blue foam.

I got a really neat Oriental type image that I hope to use as a basis for a real life(RL) painting:

The blue bubbly material is the foam and I am hovering above the ground inspecting the foam. The heliport itself actually is to the left just outside the frame. I was most interested in getting that sort of ethereal looking foam. SL has weather, and you might be able to make out a bit of late afternoon fog.

For more about second life go to http://www.secondlife.com

There is also a Second Life Wiki: http://http://secondlife.com/badgeo/wakka.php?wakka=HomePage

A basic SL membership is currently free, but if you want to do anything serious you need to buy land and there are a number of pricing tiers or levels. SL has its own currency the Linden which is convertible to dollars and players can buy and sell objects in game. Some players actually make their real life living out of what they do in the SL economy. Needless to say I am not one of them.

Oh if you join Second Life, tell them Simeon Gateaux sent you (I get a bonus) and look for me online in one guise or the other.

Beer and Present Danger

From Heather Havrilesky via the LA times comes this way of making it through the President's State of the Union Address using a little drinking game:

In part the game goes like this:

"The game is simple enough for even your average registered voter to understand. Basically, every time Bush says "terror," "terrorism," "terrorist," "war on terror" or "Terror Dome," you drink.Also drink when the president winks, nods and points at someone in the audience in rapid succession; drink each time he refers to 9/11 or uses the word "nuke-u-lar," and drink something bitter when he says that "the state of our union is strong." Whenever there's a close-up of a sour-faced Democrat, drink. If it's Hilary Clinton, Ted Kennedy or Harry Reid, drink twice."

Well I think you get the idea. Personally I did not not watch the speech figuring I could catch the wrap up on Yahoo today. Besides drinking only encourages stupification, a fancy way of saying drunkenness, not the mental state we want to encourage given the state of our country.

Nice Orchid Bloom

I am always gardening in one way shape or form and this weekend have a new flower in bloom in my indoor garden, namely a Cymbidium orchid. So I hope it will brighten everyone's day. Actually I am pretty excited about this plant since my growing space tends to relatively warm and Cymbidium's need cool temperatures.

But I kept the plant outside until the beginning of November to set buds before bringing it inside. I was not sure if my tactic worked, since no spike was visible when I finally gave up playing chicken with the frost and brought the plant inside.

Enjoy!

Intelligent design opponents gather in Kansas

Today I attended the conference at the University of Kansas's Dole Institute of Politics which featured the attorneys who won the recent suit against the Dover PA. School district. This was a wonderful event which not only included the Dover attorneys but also some of the major players in the recent political and religious controversy in Kansas. The conference was moderated by Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education.









Steve Harvey, Eric Rothschild and Richard Katskee, plaintiffs in the Dover Case made the following key points:

1. Intelligent design is just creationism repackaged They made this point by documenting the changes made to that creationist text, Of Panda's and People to hide the religious agenda of the ID movement. For instance changing a reference to an "intelligent creator" to the more neutral sounding "intelligent agent". Harvey's comment was that the ID proponents "Didn't even switch Horses, just changed the name of the horse." Indeed the lack of candor on the part of the ID proponents became a central theme in the hearings and in the judge's decision. (pdf).

It is worth quoting from Judge Jone's decision here:

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the
Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals,
who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would
time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID
Policy."

2 . Intelligent design is not science. Eric Rothschild showed how he was able to counter Michael Behe's arguments about irreducible complexity by documenting that the scientific literature abundantly contradicts Behe's claims. I wonder if Behe has learned to spell exaptation yet.

3. Judge Jones who rendered the decision against ID has been criticisms as being an activist judge who should not be able to rule on what constitutes science. Rothschild counters that judges rule on what is science all the time for instance in the case of expert witnesses.

Richard Katskee from Americans United for Separation of Church and State discussed what we can expect in the future from the creationists. He expects more Dover cases,attempts to use stickers to single out evolution as in Cobb County GA, and creationist teachers to attempt to sue school boards who forbid teaching of ID. Also expect more attempts to sneak ID into other classes.

Pedro Irigonegaray who ran the cross of the Board of Education's summer hearings on the teaching of evolution pleaded with the ID board not to force this issue into litigation. The other attorneys agreed and pointed out that litigation arises from a failure of the political process to work properly.





Steve Case from the Center for Reasearch on Learning at the University of Kansas noted that education in Kansas is not broken but the politics in Kansas is.

Of course politics came up and one thing I asked Board of Education member Sue Gamble was what can be done about the new conservative Board commissioner, Bob Corkins. Are we stuck with him? According to her, he serves at the pleasure of the board. So it seems to me likely that Corkins will be an additional issue in the upcoming election as he has been widely criticisms as being unqualified for the job. Well you be the judge when a newly hired employee wants to hire a consultant to help him learn the job. Corkins is important because he appoints the representatives to the standards writing teams.

Red State Rabble (Pat Hayes) was also here and I am sure he will have plenty more to say about this meeting.




Chris Haufler has graciously given me permission to use his group photo from the meeting. He was sitting next to me with his super camera and I am sure he enjoyed watching me with my camera phone.

Update 1/31/06






I just got the names to associate with the people in the photo:

This is courtesy of Jack Krebs from KCFS. He should be in the picture as well for all he does!


Left to right, front front:

Richard Katskee, AU lawyer for the plaintiffs
Michael Manely, lawyer in the Selman trial in Cobb County
Pedro Irigonegaray, lawyer at the Kansas "Science Hearings"
Genie Scott, Execultive Directo of NCSE
Eric Rothschild, lawyer for the plaintiffs at Dover
Steve Harvey, lawyer for the plaintiffs at Dover

In the back

Michael McIlrath, lawyer with GE, stationed in Italy, NCSE Board
member also
Kevin Wolf, lawyer with firm in Washington, D.C.

Political tomfoolery

Lot's of things have happened while I was away over break. First the Dover school intelligent design trial has finished and intelligent design ruled to be religion NOT science. What many people forget is that this controversy is just part of a larger problem namely the politicization of the educational process and use of the educational system as a battle ground in the "culture wars".

For instance at UCLA a mysterious group called the Bruins alumni association (http://www.uclaprofs.com/)offered pay for students to tape professor's classes and give the group notes and handouts from classes to document left wing bias among UCLA professors. Since this has been exposed, the group has retracted the pay offer but still wants student volunteers to weed out what is billed as non professional behavior. Of course looking at the list of targeted professors , they are all liberal or granted in some cases radical left wingers.


The politicalization of education is nothing new in this country, after all in the 1970's scientists such as E.O. Wilson who is hardly any sort of extremist got assaulted from the left because of his views on genetics and human behavior. Public schools are of course pawns in these sorts of political wrangling. As anyone knows who has followed the various book censorship controversies. For instance our esteemed board of education is getting into the act by asking if certain books might be in violation of state obscenity laws.

Of particular note is that while school districts do (as they should) offer parents options for their kids reading one of the board members chairman Steve Abrams claimed that this in some way stigmatizes kids. Naturally there is no evidence for this and I can't help but wonder if Dr. Abrams would support programs to promote tolerance of LGBT students whom the data shows are victims of bullying. Gee.