It's been a while since I did the "quick links." Here's some for you:
- Handlers returned an escaped Arkansas chimp to her cage after she cleaned the toilet and refrigerator. I'm betting he "accidentally" escapes once a month from now on.
- The good news? A cheap, safe drug has been found that kills most cancers. The problem? It's cheap and unpatentable. Drug companies aren't going to be interested in it. Since the medicine is currently in use for other illnesses, I'm curious if doctors will begin "off-label" prescriptions. And yes, if I didn't have to worry about the parrots, I could make this stuff in my basement.
- Mimicry: to copy another's actions exactly. Imitate: to adapt another's actions to oneself. Cirrus our African grey parrot mimics the phone and microwave. With words, though, she will sit there for hours attempting variations on the tone, inflection, and even combination of words. She's imitating, not mimicking. I had no idea I could have gotten a paper out of it. Yeah, that's Dr. Pepperberg and Alex again, along with another bird they're working with.
- Pesquet parrot babies hatched! The strange thing is, looking at the babies, I can tell the difference between them, budgerigar, lovebird, and cockatiel babies.
- Parrots do not have to "parrot" human speech, but they usually do. There's a cute story from Thailand that explains why.
- The Unseen Blogger links to a article by a chemical engineering company that claims CO2 is being driven by the temperature, not the other way around. To do so, you have to ignore the energy balance equation. This is the sort of nonsense that's being done to block doing something about global warming. If you read down the paper, you'll find a new reason they're promoting for not doing anything: It's too late.
- Funky of Ales Rarus sent me a link to this post. I think this is a nice response to the militant atheists.
- Patients with Multiple Sclerosis appear to do better if they are infected with parasites. In fact, the improvement is "dramatic." This seems to promote the "hygiene hypothesis."
- Strange, right around the time people are being encouraged to quit smoking, the most addictive substance in cigarettes — nicotine — increases. The cigarette companies claim this is pure "coincidence."
- Muslims are denouncing Sheik Feiz Mohammed, who released a series of DVDs calling for child martyrs and called Jews "pigs." Pretty much everyone else is denouncing this menace, too.
For a more reasoned and sensible view of climate change, I'd recommend New Scientist's Environment Special Report.
Well jeez I kinda liked those “I am not afraid” videos. And no I don’t think praying for them is the way to go. They don’t need fairy tales and trinkets. They’re strong. I also would like to know where these militant atheists are meeting so I can join up…probably the unitarian church. By the way I also have a longer response to the other post that you made at my site so don’t do your superior dance just yet…turn off that music! Stop the prancing. Terrifying hellfire preview: yes there are magical properties in science but if you can’t validate them they’re thrown out and ridiculed! Get back to me when you can dismiss the virgin birth and the eating of the flesh (you cannibal!)…
Uh, I’m not Catholic, first off….
Second, given the existence of a God who could affect the material world, the virgin birth is trivial. I don’t see why that would be a problem. If you think it is, then either you don’t understand the concept of “god” or you don’t understand biology — and honestly, I think it’s a bit of both.
The video you posted did not inform the debate, did not contribute anything but misinformation and illogic, combined with a large dose of basic and over-used propaganda technique. Like I said, I could do the same to QM and have it be equally as valid.
Actually, your entire attack was ad hominem and didn’t address their individual points. Just as an example: they made the point that the Mormon bible was silly. Silly in its origins and silly in its history, unless you think that there were romans thousands of years ago in the New World…a real counter argument is to say the Mormon Bible was right and here’s why Phil you mititant atheist you! But you can’t make that argument because there’s none to make. I mean, I like the Mormons I’ve met but their religion is silly, not scientology silly but silly nonetheless. Where was the misinformation? And yes you could say those things about QM or string theory but science is testable. That’s why science is better than religion.
And yeah I know you’re catholic. I thought every Christian drank his blood and ate his flesh. I did and I grew up methodist.
One more point: why do you need a virgin birth? Why do you need fairy tales of flying angels and Super Jesus and Pals and the eternal helfire given to you by this “loving god” of yours? A lot of times when people attack Dawkins they say many intelligent people are Christians but its not really about intelligence. It’s about courage. Are you strong enough to challenge the conventions of your day or if you were born in Saudi Arabia would you be the kind of person who thinks women shouldn’t be allowed to drive. I’m making the argument that you don’t have the courage to accept the bible as an interesting piece of mythology. Its too terrifying for you. Well, as I point my hands toward the stars and raise my mighty fist, some of us have the courage to do that. We are not afraid…well, actually, I’m a little afraid but that’s okay.
String theory? Testable? You really don’t know what you’re talking about. As it stands, one of the big problems with string theory is that it cannot be tested with any technology we currently have. A cyclotron large enough to perform some needed experiments might be a bit difficult to build — it would need to be the diameter of the Milky Way (not including the dark matter halo). String theory has so many variables that any test designed to disprove it can be accommodated by some tweaking of string theory. Other theories — loop quantum gravity and a few others — have the same problem. Because of the situations involved, it may not even be possible in principle to perform any calculation that might give you a number that would distinguish between the theories.
With dark matter, it’s even worse. We can calculate the distribution for something that might not exist.
Do you deny that the video you posted used standard propaganda techniques to avoid debate and rational thought on the subject in an attempt to program the user to reach a certain conclusion?
Ad hominem? Not at all. The misinformation in the description of the Christian religion was obvious to someone that actually knows the basics of theology. The person who wrote it obviously didn’t.
Ooops! Should have said “Know you’re not Catholic”. Funky Dung is the delusional crazy Catholic…
“And yeah I know you’re catholic.”
No, I said I’m not catholic. Please read my comment again.
“I thought every Christian drank his blood and ate his flesh. I did and I grew up methodist.”
Someone wasn’t paying attention, I’m guessing. Methodists do not believe in a literal interpretation.
You’re putting up comments faster than I can reply.
Actually, and you know that I peruse the science blogs as much as you do, there may be some proofs for String Theory forthcoming. But you know what, if they can’t prove it, or apply it to interdimensional travel so I can meet the cool aliens who want to eat me, then perhaps it has limited worth. Science evolves, changes grows. The Pope still wears a funny hat.
And: Not all propaganda techniques promote falsehoods. What? Christianity doesn’t use the tactics of fear and propaganda? And you better say it doesn’t or Super Jesus will fry you in Hell forever and ever and ever…
I started my reply before you entered your second reply. Like I said, you’re putting up comments faster than I can reply.
Why do I believe in these things?
You won’t believe me if I told you. I could produce witnesses. You won’t believe them. It sounds crazy, especially to me, but it’s the sort of thing I’m forced to live with.
Is it worth the effort even trying?
Try looking at this way: You’re a radical islamist saying the same thing. What should I say? Is it even worth the effort to try…your most heartfelt beliefs are geographical not logical.
Let’s take a simple example:
Everyone walks into the cafeteria in 6th grade. We start flipping coins — nickels, actually. If you win, you get to keep calling and you get the other guy’s coin and you play against the next person. When it got to me, I called it right.
For 20 minutes. Along the way, everyone else ran out of money. We kept going, just to see how long I could do it. 20 minutes. Figure 3x a minute — that’s 60 heads/tails called in a row, different coins, different flippers. No way to rig the table, coin called before the flip, lands on the table to prevent some of the standard magic tricks we all knew. 60 is a lowball estimate, and the odds would be 2^60 — over a billion billion.
Finally, I offered everyone “double or nothing.” They’d get their money back. I called edge. The coin was flipped to ensure it couldn’t possibly land “edge.” But it did.
I still haven’t figured out the odds on that. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen a coin come up edge on a hard table — ever.
How do we explain this? The null hypothesis, that it was random, requires this to be a once in the history of humanity, dating back to at least Homo habilis. And that’s without the “edge” call. There’s no way a scientific paper with that bad a P value would ever be accepted. The null hypothesis would, under any other circumstance, be considered absurd. If this were a lone event, one might consider it, but this isn’t.
Scientific explanation? I’d love to see that.
Fraud? If there’s a way to gimmick it, I don’t know it, even now, and neither would any of the others. The table was chosen at random, coins switched, different people flipping the coins, except me. I wound up with everyone else’s money, although I did give it back just because I’m a nice guy and they were all (but Floyd, who was used to this sort of stuff happening when I was around) terrified of me — I tried buying my way back into their good graces.
You could claim I’m lying. There was no video. Video could be gimmicked. I can’t do this on command. I’ve got witnesses, but you could claim they’re lying, too.
You could claim I’m crazy and that all the witnesses are crazy, that we all hallucinated it. From a neuroscience perspective, that would make no sense, but you don’t seem to be up on your neuroscience — or string theory and the criticism thereof.
One way or the other, you’ll deny this, and that’s the problem. This is what happened.
There’s no way to treat this from a scientific perspective. Irreproducible events cannot be quantified scientifically.
If we can’t even come to terms on something simple like this, something that most people who know me would consider “common” and “unremarkable,” how do we discuss the existence of a hyper-dimensional being who doesn’t seem to want to cooperate in providing scientific proof of his/her/it’s existence?
See the problem? But can you see why I might be forced to consider the existence of a being not of our universe?
And like I said, the coin incident isn’t unusual, except that it’s the one event that lends itself to some mathematical analysis.
What’s been happening lately has just gotten a lot more personal and nasty. Taking care of sick, dying and dead I don’t know was fun; when I know them it’s miserable. The whole thing leading up to me recently calling a version of CYS in another city to report on the activities of a child molester — that I’d love to forget.
And by the way, FD is a fine individual. I still can’t figure out your obsession with him. I’m also not sure what the pope’s haberdashery has to do with anything. It looks juvenile on your part.
BTW:
For some reason, your comments have started winding up in moderation. I don’t understand why. If you post and you don’t see it after I’ve had a chance to moderate, it’s possible it wound up in the spam list. I got 200+ spams in a couple hours — anything that winds up in the spam list is deleted without me looking at it.
I’m not trying to delete your comments, just so you know. I’m just getting deluged by spam.
Also, for what it’s worth, I seem to have annoyed the Christians as much as I’ve annoyed you. I find that fascinating.
Many spam filters have a setting that puts comments in moderation if too many arrive within a set span of time.
This is just a quick question (I saw your added posts to my commentary page…): Do you believe in intelligent design? Do you think it should be taught alongside or instead of the theory of evolution?
I’m a biochemist. Intelligent Design is complete bunk. I wouldn’t object to ID being taught in a class about critical thinking or scams or fraud.
I do believe in design by an Intelligence, which is one more reason I don’t believe in ID. Think of the universe as a computer simulation. The better the programmer, the less jury-rigging is required. An ultimate intelligence would create a seamless universe without the glitches that ID thrives on.
At what scale God designed the universe is an interesting question. If parallel universes of the QM kind are out, then we’ve got the old anthropic principle that might indicate the action of a creator. A recent paper purported to show that the multiverse evolution idea (universes that beget black holes that beget more universes) is not true for our universe, although I’m not convinced that paper one holds water, although it does appear to at least place some constraints on the concept.
Interesting concept: If there is a creator of our universe, where would be the best place to leave a message for the creation? It would have to be the Cosmic Micrwave Background. Theory indicates the CMB could hold a 5K byte (or is it bit — I forget) message that would be visible for all time from everywhere. We’re close to being able to see such a message, if it exists.
Note that I used a small “c” on creator there. There are plenty of scenarios (universes created in a lab, universe as computer simulation, etc.) that would not involve the classical concept of “God” that would still result in a creator at least theoretically capable of leaving a message on the CMB. It’s a long shot, but it can be checked with experiments already envisioned.
What you could say in 5K bytes or bits worth saying that could be understood by any intelligence and wouldn’t be trivial and could not be mistaken for a naturally occurring message is an exercise for the reader.
I’m with you (at least this far - the rest is too speculative for me).
I should add that I think teaching that evolution is entirely random is going too far. There are lots of ways to play with pseudo-random number generators to make the pseudo-random numbers they generate seem truly random. Take the digits of pi, for instance. If you were presented with a sequence of digits drawn from the digits of pi, you’d think they were entirely random and that the digits are distributed uniformly. However, the sequence is not random, just non-repeating. Since the digits of pi never repeat in any predictable manner, one cannot predict the next digit in the sequence with a success rate greater than 1/10 - the uniform distribution from which the digits are drawn. If one universal constant can be used to generate a pseudo-random sequence, why not sue all of them together to create a pseudo-random universe that isn’t really random at all?