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February 10, 2010 · Leave a Comment

When God is watching – a good summary article on the effects of religion on morality. Also, clean smells improve outlook.

A Christian physicist declares the end of Intelligent Design, and the comments are predictable

Are mobile phones actually good for you?

What does “Opinion” mean in science journals?

The Freshwater case in the Guardian.

On fallacies and argument forms

Late addition: French philosopher taken in by literary hoax.

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Creationism and Intelligent Design · General Science · Logic and philosophy · Philosophy · Religion · Science · Technology

Thoughts on the periodic table

February 4, 2010 · 11 Comments

Eric Scerri has written the definitive history of Mendele’ev’s periodic table and how it came to be formulated. He also has a paper in which he proposes a new formulation, based on historical considerations of what it was that Mendele’ev was trying to do, and on more theoretical considerations of atomic number, not weight. Sciencebase discusses it here.

And of course, no post on the periodic table is complete without a link to Tom Lehrer’s “Elements” song. Here’s a fantastic version from YouTube:

[Hat tip: David Bradley]

→ 11 CommentsCategories: Basic Concepts · General Science

Pope gets tax-paid visit to UK to denounce equality of gays before the law…

February 2, 2010 · 26 Comments

I am glad to see I am not the only person who finds this unconscionable… I hope the Grauniad won’t sue me for reposting their piece below the fold.

Keep reading →

→ 26 CommentsCategories: Freedom · Politics · Religion

On fear and risk

January 31, 2010 · 16 Comments

I haven’t had a rant/sermon in a while.

My parents’ generation went through the second world war, fighting tyrants and ideologies that sought to control our everyday lives; for which reason they are sometimes called “the best generation”. Their parents’ generation fought world war one and went through the Depression. The generation I am the tail end of, the Baby Boomers, fought in Korea, Vietnam and the Cold War. Despite all this threat and challenge, liberty increased – by the early 1970s, there was an assumption that one had the right to behave in any way that didn’t harm another person, and that the law would eventually catch up. The right to free speech in countries that didn’t have it was increasingly taken, not asked for, and in countries that did, it was applied in ways that broke the comfortable conventions of the past.

What happened? In the past 30 years we have watched rights disappear under fear – fear of communism, fear of “moral decay”, fear of drugs, and now fear of terrorism. Our ersatz wars against these fearsome things has slowly eroded our rights – we are surveilled everywhere we go, we are prohibited from certain kinds of speech, and we are now inhibited in our movement across borders. In effect, as the old Soviet republics have become more open, the open world has become more Soviet. “Think of the children” justifies any restriction that makes the effects of these fears look trivial by comparison.

It’s about time we manned up. If our forebears can cope with risk and danger, and still be free, why can’t we? One in a hundred million are harmed by terrorist attacks, and we do exactly what the terrorists would like, and retreat from the modernism of free society and religious and political and economic choice across the board. Now we have democratic societies with warrantless wiretaps, indefinite detention without charge or legal redress, and my own country is about to implement censorship of the internet, without any oversight by judicial or public scrutiny! And both major parties accept this!

Keep reading →

→ 16 CommentsCategories: Censorship · Freedom · Media · Politics · Race and politics · Religion · Sermon · Social evolution
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On tattoos in Latin

January 29, 2010 · 4 Comments

This is why I haven’t yet acted on my desire to have Linnaeus’ definition of Homo tattooed on my chest (that, and you’d never see the thing under all that fur)…

Linne-nosce1.png

“Quia ursus pusilli ingenii sum verba difficilia fastidio”

→ 4 CommentsCategories: Humor

Woo medicine kills

January 27, 2010 · 1 Comment

A nice roundup from New Zealand; note the case of the baby with meningitis. The case is a coroner’s case.

→ 1 CommentCategories: Science
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Woo science kills: dowsing for bombs

January 26, 2010 · 14 Comments

The UK government has banned the purchase of a dowsing device that is supposed to “detect” bombs in Afghanistan. Even the Afghans know this doesn’t work. [H/T Russell McPhee]

→ 14 CommentsCategories: Science
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On nonscience smear campaigns

January 23, 2010 · 9 Comments

In Scientific American:

… the only strong evidence we have that Oklahoma Senator James M. Inhofe isn’t a clown is that his car isn’t small enough.

→ 9 CommentsCategories: Politics
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More civil insolence

January 22, 2010 · 48 Comments

My disclaimer/policy on comments here has occasioned a bit of discussion on the tubes. Isis reckons that those who say it is a bad thing to piss on the rug will do it anyway when things get heated. Golden Thoughts compares this to the Civil Rights movement, and that those who say “don’t piss on the rug” are comparable to the people who arrested Rosa Parks for sitting on a bus. I have to say that I can’t see it, myself. But it raises an interesting issue: when is it right to be nasty in debate?

Because, sometimes, it is, and everyone agrees that it is. What we are arguing about now are the circumstances. More below the fold.

Keep reading →

→ 48 CommentsCategories: Logic and philosophy · Philosophy · Truisms

Update: Genetic information paper

January 22, 2010 · 5 Comments

I have updated my paper on deflating genetic information. The new version is here. Details:

A deflation of genetic information

ABSTRACT: It is often claimed there is information in some biological entity or process, most especially in genes. Genetic “information” refers to distinct notions, either of concrete properties of molecular bonds and catalysis, in which case it is little more than a periphrasis for correlation and causal relations between physical biological objects (molecules), or of abstract properties, in which case it is mind-dependent. When information plays a causal role, nothing is added to the account by calling it “information”. In short, if genetic information is concrete, it is causality. If it is abstract, it is in the head.

If accepted, it will be published in Acta Biotheoretica, but I expect some more review revisions.

→ 5 CommentsCategories: Genetics · Logic and philosophy · Metaphysics · Philosophy · Science