You killed the white bird, not I.
Left her feathers scattered,
Head bit off discarded, body akimbo.
You killed her, not I
The crow shouting ALL ALL ALL.
I know what is and Dumbo's
Feather is just that- and you
And I are just that, say I over the ice shards
That break on the shore over my shouting
ALL ALL ALL.
I leave you to your despair if you wish,
Dear hawk, for you killed the white bird,
Not I sing I ALL ALL ALL!
Not I the unstoppable crow,
Not I sing I.
Commentary: The poem stems from an image in Daniel Dennett's book Freedom Evolves where Dennett uses the image of a crow telling people that all the myths they believe in are just that. Also the other week my son and I spooked a hawk that had just killed a white sea gull near the shore of a local lake. The poor hawk was then hounded by crows as commonly happens.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Conservatives and Evolution
Lest you are one of those people who think that belief in evolution is restricted to the "liberal elite", what ever that is, then I would urge you to take a gander at Darwinian Conservatism, the newest blog on my blogroll.
http://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/
I don't agree with everything there of course, but Larry Arnhart is one conservative who is out there tackling the demons from the Discovery Institute. See for instance:
http://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2007/12/questions-and-answers-for-john-west.html
and response to questions from the DI's John West:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/12/the_questions_larry_arnhart_wo.html#more
Also see this interesting exchange:
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/ArnhartDarwinDesign.shtml
http://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/
I don't agree with everything there of course, but Larry Arnhart is one conservative who is out there tackling the demons from the Discovery Institute. See for instance:
http://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2007/12/questions-and-answers-for-john-west.html
and response to questions from the DI's John West:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/12/the_questions_larry_arnhart_wo.html#more
Also see this interesting exchange:
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/ArnhartDarwinDesign.shtml
Essentialism and abortion
At the Journal World in Lawrence there has been a lively discussion of abortion-actually lots of name calling so discussion is used very loosely and over at Dangerous Ideas I attempted to bring some rationality to the discussion. But not too many people on either side of the abortion issue seem interested in rational arguments that cannot be encapsulated in a short sentence with consisting solely of 3 letter words one of which must be an expletive.
Some one did finally ask me when I thought an embryo or fetus becomes human. Here is my response:
By the way the discussion was sparked by a Cal Thomas article on Roe v. Wade. See the article and associated discussion here.
Some one did finally ask me when I thought an embryo or fetus becomes human. Here is my response:
"If you mean identifiably human as opposed to some other animal then even
the egg and sperm are human. Do you mean developing as a unique entity
potentially capable of developing into an adult? That would be the formation of
the zygote. Do you mean sufficient development of the nervous system to feel
pain? That is later at some stage of fetal development. Or do you mean
sufficient cognitive development to be aware of self? Exactly what are
you asking?
Maybe you are asking the wrong question. To illustrate consider another
one of my infamous thought experiments. Consider a mother whose life would be in
serious peril if she did not abort her potential offspring at different
developmental stages. Would the mother be more likely to put her life at risk
for a zygote or a 4 week old fetus, an 8 week old fetus? A 21 week old fetus? A
bet the mother's calculus would change the closer and closer the fetus is to
full term.
A mother would probably not risk her life for the zygote as readily as when
the fetus was close to term. According to my Church's teaching the zygote
is fully human but would even the best Catholic mother risk her life for a
zygote? For her child yes, but for a zygote?"
By the way the discussion was sparked by a Cal Thomas article on Roe v. Wade. See the article and associated discussion here.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Around the Cryosphere
Today I was looking for information related to changes in the Arctic sea ice and found the National Snow and Ice Data Center, (NSIDC) - yes there is such a thing- run out of the University of Colorado. There is even a word for the snow and ice and glaciers that make up the frozen water part of this planet-the cryosphere. Seems like a minor environmental niche until you think about the important role that ice plays not only in the energy budget of the Earth by altering the reflectivity of the planet, but also ecologically.
The NSIDC has a great series of graphics related to sea ice and glaciers. For instance, here are two shots of Muir Glacier from the same vantage point, one taken in 1941 and the second taken in 2004. The difference is quite sobering though I am sure those people who don't think we need to be concerned about climate change can put a positive spin on all the vegetation present in 2004. Of course not all glaciers are melting. Climate change is much more complex than we sometime think.
There is lots of information about the polar regions including some features, quite new to me. For instance, in the Antarctic, there are structures called megadunes. These features are so large that a person on the surface doesn't really notice them, and it is only with satellite imagery that they can be properly visualized. How they form is not clear, but they seem to be made by the winds carving into the ice rather than by wind deposited snow.
I don't think anyone is seriously thinking that the cryosphere will disappear completely. Also, the movie Waterworld may be a great story but it is just that-were all the ice to melt the Earth would not end up completely covered in water. Even during the warmest part of the Creataceous period roughly 90 million years ago, there is evidence of extensive glaciation. But the best available models predict rapid loss of the arctic sea ice as discussed in this post from RealClimate.
In fact, during the late 1960's and early 1970's the concern among some scientists was that we might soon enter another ice age. Global warming skeptics are fond of pointing this out. There were several reasons for thinking this might be plausible. First it was thought that statistically we have been in a relatively long interglacial period so the thought was maybe we are just due for a period of cooling. This was re-enforced by a short term cooling trend that began in the 1940's. Next, some scientists thought that the effects of dust and soot in the air, might counteract the warming due to the excess carbon dioxide produced by human activity.
Global warming skeptics often conveniently ignore the fact the issue wasn't the reality of human induced global warming, but that other factors might counteract it. New Scientist has an article discussing the global cooling idea that meshes well with what I remember of these debates, ongoing when I was an undergraduate.
Curiously the cooling idea has been been advanced again by some scientists who hypothesize that global warming might have the paradoxical effect of cooling the climate in Europe. The basic idea is that fresh water added to the North Atlantic would stop the flow of heat via ocean currents to Europe. However, scientists are still debating this possibility and improved understanding of ocean currents heat transfer in the ocean suggests that this cooling will not happen.
So the ice is melting. But we must be careful not to ascribe all that melting to human activity. For example, a recent report,summarized in Science Daily, suggests that at least some of the melting of the Greenland ice cap might be due to heat from inside the Earth. There is a Lawrence Kansas connection since one of the scientists involved, Timothy Leftwich from Oregon State University, is a post doc associated with a consortium called CRESIS, the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets. KU is the lead institution for the consortium.
The NSIDC has a great series of graphics related to sea ice and glaciers. For instance, here are two shots of Muir Glacier from the same vantage point, one taken in 1941 and the second taken in 2004. The difference is quite sobering though I am sure those people who don't think we need to be concerned about climate change can put a positive spin on all the vegetation present in 2004. Of course not all glaciers are melting. Climate change is much more complex than we sometime think.
There is lots of information about the polar regions including some features, quite new to me. For instance, in the Antarctic, there are structures called megadunes. These features are so large that a person on the surface doesn't really notice them, and it is only with satellite imagery that they can be properly visualized. How they form is not clear, but they seem to be made by the winds carving into the ice rather than by wind deposited snow.I don't think anyone is seriously thinking that the cryosphere will disappear completely. Also, the movie Waterworld may be a great story but it is just that-were all the ice to melt the Earth would not end up completely covered in water. Even during the warmest part of the Creataceous period roughly 90 million years ago, there is evidence of extensive glaciation. But the best available models predict rapid loss of the arctic sea ice as discussed in this post from RealClimate.
In fact, during the late 1960's and early 1970's the concern among some scientists was that we might soon enter another ice age. Global warming skeptics are fond of pointing this out. There were several reasons for thinking this might be plausible. First it was thought that statistically we have been in a relatively long interglacial period so the thought was maybe we are just due for a period of cooling. This was re-enforced by a short term cooling trend that began in the 1940's. Next, some scientists thought that the effects of dust and soot in the air, might counteract the warming due to the excess carbon dioxide produced by human activity.
Global warming skeptics often conveniently ignore the fact the issue wasn't the reality of human induced global warming, but that other factors might counteract it. New Scientist has an article discussing the global cooling idea that meshes well with what I remember of these debates, ongoing when I was an undergraduate.
Curiously the cooling idea has been been advanced again by some scientists who hypothesize that global warming might have the paradoxical effect of cooling the climate in Europe. The basic idea is that fresh water added to the North Atlantic would stop the flow of heat via ocean currents to Europe. However, scientists are still debating this possibility and improved understanding of ocean currents heat transfer in the ocean suggests that this cooling will not happen.
So the ice is melting. But we must be careful not to ascribe all that melting to human activity. For example, a recent report,summarized in Science Daily, suggests that at least some of the melting of the Greenland ice cap might be due to heat from inside the Earth. There is a Lawrence Kansas connection since one of the scientists involved, Timothy Leftwich from Oregon State University, is a post doc associated with a consortium called CRESIS, the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets. KU is the lead institution for the consortium.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
National Delurking Week...
Allegedly this week Jan 8-12 is National Delurking Week and over at Paper Napkin are some neat images that you can post to your blog. They look appropriate for all year use. So check them out over there after you delurk. My favorite is to the left. And the best way to delurk here is to scrounge around the blog and find something that strikes you one way or another, check out my tags and find something to comment on. Oh and when you leave, visit one of the fine blogs on my blog roll and do the same thing.Tip of the antennae to John over at Blogmeridian.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
God Created in the Laboratory?
OK actually the Flying Spaghetti Monster and it was created in a kitchen. But check this out. I wonder if Pastafarians would consider the construction of noodley likenesses to be OK. Are there noodley iconoclasts ready to riot in the streets of Ithaca NY?Could this be proof of the omega point getting closer and closer? A foreshadowing of what's to come when the whole universe is created in the eye of the FSM looking backward through time.
All hail the FSM!
Source:http://www.flickr.com/photos/oskay/2177296185/ via techorati
Poor Person
Some poor soul from Great Bend Indiana did the following Google search: "Paul Decelles" theology. I think he was looking for things such as this: http://www.unitypublishing.com/NewReligiousMovements/WhatSpirit1.html
Instead he blundered into my site and found http://theforcethat.blogspot.com/2007/03/lenten-message-theology-of-worm.html.
Strangely enough I have been confused with the other Paul Decelles (there is actually a third one in Vermont and yet another one who is an architect), and while I do have a theological bent, I suspect my theology and religious life is quite different from the other Paul Decelles's out there. Or are those differences just superficial? Maybe my reader will come back after reading our respective screeds and render an opinion.
Instead he blundered into my site and found http://theforcethat.blogspot.com/2007/03/lenten-message-theology-of-worm.html.
Strangely enough I have been confused with the other Paul Decelles (there is actually a third one in Vermont and yet another one who is an architect), and while I do have a theological bent, I suspect my theology and religious life is quite different from the other Paul Decelles's out there. Or are those differences just superficial? Maybe my reader will come back after reading our respective screeds and render an opinion.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Carnival of the Liberals is up!
Carnival of the Liberals is up at Greenbelt and deserves a look for some really good liberal blogging. Even conservatives and junior high students might enjoy it. Somehow the editor saw fit to include my post about Disney World but hey... no one's perfect.
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