Canadian Muslim Group Invites Al-Zarqawi Supporter as Speaker

Well, I see my colleague Mohamed Elmasry is at it again.

Elmasry, you may remember, is the Electrical and Computer Engineering professor who claimed that Israeli citizens were fair game:

COREN: So everyone in Israel and anyone and everyone in Israel, irrespective of gender, over the age of 18 is a valid target?

ELMASRY: Yes, I would say.

Elmasry later apologized for his remark.

Now, in his role as "Chair and National President" of the Canadian Islamic Congress, he's bringing Al-Zarqawi supporter and general froot loop Yvonne Ridley to speak in Montreal, Toronto, and Waterloo. Yes, that's certainly the way to improve relations with the Jewish community.

A convert to Islam, Ridley has urged British Muslims not to cooperate with the police and has been an apologist for both Al-Zarqawi and a Chechen terrorist involved in the Moscow theater hostage crisis.

Recently she has blustered that "However if any of those Zionist idiots continue to try and paint me as an anti-semite I must warn you ... one of my closest friends is one of Britain's best defamation lawyers." Let's see, the last British journalist that blustered about libel in the same way was David Irving... and that didn't work out so well for him, did it?

In response to accusations of anti-Semitism, Ridley writes "Well a semite is a person who can be an Arab or a Jew ... hmm, so these dingbats are accusing me of hating the entire Jewish and Arab world?" Except that, as Robert Wistrich points out in Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred, "`Antisemitism' is a problematic term, first invented in the 1870s by the German journalist Wilhelm Marr to describe the `non-confessional' hatred of Jews and Judaism which he and others like him advocated... `Antisemitism' -- a term which came into general use as part of this politically motivated anti-Jewish campaign of the 1880s -- was never directed against `Semites' as such.... ...As a result, for the last hundred years, the illogical term `antisemitism', which never really meant hatred of `Semites' (for example, Arabs) at all, but rather hatred of Jews, has come to be accepted in general usage as denoting all forms of hostility towards Jews and Judaism throughout history."

I don't like the fact that B'nai Brith "would have supported" a ban of Ridley from Canada. By all means, let the attention-seeking froot loop speak. Her own words demonstrate her intellectual bankruptcy and the dangers of mixing religion with politics.

Mathematics in a Jack Reacher Novel

Lee Child is the author of a series of 11 novels involving Jack Reacher, an ex-Army MP who travels around the US, shooting up bad guys, saving the good guys (and gals), all while having no fixed address and no possessions. Think of The Saint, but more laconic, and on steroids.

In the latest Jack Reacher novel, Bad Luck and Trouble, we are suddenly informed that Reacher has "some kind of a junior-idiot-savant facility with arithmetic." (This characteristic never appeared before in any other Reacher novel.) Reacher uses the number 8197 as his ATM card PIN "because [97] was the largest two-digit prime number, and he loved 81 because it was absolutely the only number out of all the literally infinite possibilities whose square root was also the sum of its digits. Square root of eighty-one was nine, and eight and one made nine. No other nontrivial number in the cosmos had that kind of sweet symmetry. Perfect."

Of course, 0 and 1 also have the property that their square root equals the sum of their digits, but Reacher apparently dismisses these as "trivial".

This kind of property -- that a number's square root equals the sum of its digits -- is exactly the kind that most mathematicians would dismiss as uninteresting. There are at least two reasons. First is the privileged position given to base-10 numeration. In base 10, the square root of 81 equals the sum of its digits, but that's not the case in base 2, where 81₁₀ = 1010001₂, so the sum of the base-2 digits is 3. Why should we single out base 10, rather than some other base?

Second, the reason why 0, 1, and 81 are the only numbers with the Reacher property is essentially trivial: the sum of a number's digits grows, at most, something like 9 log₁₀ n which, as n goes to infinity, is much less than sqrt(n). So we already know, with essentially no calculation, that there can only be a finite number of Reacher numbers in any base; the fact that there are three of them is not particularly interesting.

[Exercise: 81 also has the property that its fourth root equals the sum of its digits, when expressed in base 2. Find another number besides 0 and 1 with this property. Extra credit: explain why nobody cares.]

Elsewhere in the novel, Reacher explains how he would choose a 6-digit password:

"Six characters? I'd probably write out my birthday, month, day, year and find the nearest prime number." Then he thought for second and said, "Actually, that would be a problem, because there would be two equally close, one exactly seven less and one exactly seven more. So I guess I'd use the square root instead, rounded to three decimal places. Ignore the decimal point, that would give me six numbers, all different."

So what's Reacher's birthday? Keep in mind that, according to the novels, he seems to be between 35 and 55 years old. I'll give the answer in another post - if anybody cares.

Update: (April 3 2015). Here's a genuine mathematical question. Fix a base b, such as 2 or 10. Are there infinitely many numbers n such that n is a power of the sum of the base-b digits of n? Reacher's number 81 works in base 2 and base 10, for example. For base 2, the first few examples are 0,1, 81, 625, 7776, 16807, 46656, 59049, 1679616, 1475789056, 6975757441, 137858491849, 576650390625 and form sequence A256590 at the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences.

Stupid Tory Tricks: Religious Schools In Ontario Could Teach Creationism, Get Public Funds

The aptly named Progressive Conservative leader John Tory, in his push to fund religious schools in Ontario, says it would be just fine with him if Christian schools teach creationism as a legitimate alternative to evolution.

For those outside Ontario: here, public funds are used for the public schools and for the "separate schools" -- those that are run by Catholic religious groups. These Catholic schools are a parallel system, with their own elections for school boards, and are an unfortunate result of the compromise that led to Confederation 140 years ago. As a result of the London Conference of 1866, separate schools were guaranteed in in Québec and Ontario, but not some other provinces. Section 93 (3) of the Constitution Act (formerly called the British North America Act) reads

(3.) Where in any Province a System of Separate or Dissentient Schools exists by Law at the Union or is thereafter established by the Legislature of the Province, an Appeal shall lie to the Governor General in Council from any Act or Decision of any Provincial Authority affecting any Right or Privilege of the Protestant or Roman Catholic Minority of the Queen's Subjects in relation to Education:

Not surprisingly, other religious groups, including Protestant and Jewish groups, have objected to the special treatment received by Catholics in Ontario. But instead of attempting to end public funding for all religious schools, the Progressive Conservatives have made funding of all accredited religious schools part of their party platform in the upcoming provincial elections. Polls show, however, that the majority of the public is opposed to this change. Rick Johnson, head of the Ontario School Boards Association, resigned his position to run for one of the opposition parties, the Liberals.

According to an interview with Tory I heard on the CBC this afternoon, “They teach evolution in the Ontario curriculum, but they also could teach the facts to the children that there are other theories that people have out there that are part of some Christian beliefs."

If I could vote in Ontario (I can't, since I'm only a permanent resident, not a citizen), I certainly wouldn't give my vote to someone who doesn't know the difference between a fact and a theory, and who thinks that creationism is a scientific theory that is suitable for teaching in Ontario's science classes.

Unbelievable!

Go read this column from an editor of the Galesville Republican, a small paper in Wisconsin. The writer, a certain Rose Eddy, compares the Freedom from Religion Foundation (an excellent organization devoted to the separation of church and state - I'm a member) to the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazis, and Al Qaeda.

There's been a lot of whining in my local paper about how "people of faith" are misrepresented in the mainstream media. The funny thing is, the kind of misrepresentation Christians get in the media is nothing compared to the abuse regularly heaped on atheists.

Shortest No More

Well, as I anticipated, my shortest google query that returns no results no longer qualifies. So I'll have to try another. This time, though, I'll cleverly disguise it so that google won't find it.

The first three letters of my query are "zk0".

And the last two letters are "q" followed by 1+6.

Can anyone find a query of 4 letters and numbers that returns no results?

A Google Query

What's the shortest string of lower-case letters and numbers (no spaces or other characters) you can type into google and not get any hits?

The shortest I've found so far, by non-systematic experimenting, is of length 5. I'd tell you what it is, but then it would be indexed by google and hence no longer work.

Oh, what the heck. I'll tell you anyway: zk4qj .

There. I've said it. And now. like Frankenstein, my lovely creation will soon be destroyed.

The Discovery Institute Lies Again

In this latest posting, the Discovery Institute shows once again why it has a well-deserved reputation for dishonesty.

The DI is touting William Dembski's No Free Lunch as "essential reading". But there is no mention that the book has received uniformly negative reviews from biologists and mathematicians, nor that the centerpiece calculation of the book, an estimate of a probability associated with the bacterial flagellum, is off by about 65 orders of magnitude. There is no mention that the definition of "complex specified information" is nonsensical and does not have the properties claimed for it. There is no mention that David Wolpert, co-discoverer of the "No Free Lunch" theorems mentioned in Dembski's book, criticized Dembski's argument as hopelessly imprecise.

But what else can you expect from the Dissembling Institute?

The Noncommutative Frobenius Problem is Solved!

I rarely get the opportunity to talk about research problems on this blog, but this is an exception.

Consider the famous "Chicken McNuggets problem": if Chicken McNuggets are sold at McDonald's only in boxes of 6, 9, or 20 McNuggets, what's the largest number of McNuggets you can't buy at McDonald's? The answer happens to be my favorite number, 43. (Why it is my favorite is a story that will have to wait for another day.) Notice that you can buy any number of McNuggets greater than 43. For example,

44 = 4*6 + 1*20,

45 = 5*9,

46 = 1*6 + 2*20,

47 = 3*6 + 1*9 + 1*20,

48 = 8*6,

49 = 1*9 + 2*20,

and any number greater than 49 can be obtained by adding an appropriate multiple of 6 to these.

In general, you're given a set S of integers, and you want to know the largest number that cannot be expressed as a non-negative integer linear combination of the elements of S. This is called the Frobenius number because Frobenius is supposed to have mentioned it often during his lectures.

Of course, such an integer may not exist. For example, if S = {4, 6}, then you can only get multiples of 2 by forming an integer linear combination of 4 and 6. So you need to impose an important condition: the greatest common divisor of the elements of S must be 1. If this is the case, then you can express every sufficiently large integer as a non-negative integer linear combination of the elements of S.

Now, solving the classical Frobenius problem is easy in some cases. For example, here's a well-known formula for the case when S has only two elements, x and y, and here it is: xy - x - y. So, for example, the Frobenius number of 5 and 7 is 23. Every number larger than 23 can be expressed as a non-negative integer linear combination of 5 and 7. 24, for example, would be 2*5 + 2*7, and so forth -- but 23 itself cannot.

Greenberg wrote a paper in 1988, and Davison wrote another paper in 1994, in which they gave an efficient algorithm for three numbers.

Unfortunately, the general problem was proved NP-hard (under Turing reductions) by Ramirez Alfonsin in 1996. Roughly speaking, this means the problem is at least as hard as many classical problems for which we still have no efficient solution, such as the traveling salesman problem.

About 6 years ago, I suggested generalizing this problem from numbers to strings of symbols (sometimes called "words"). This kind of generalization is a typical activity in mathematics and theoretical computer science. You take a well-studied problem over one kind of domain, and see how the problem translates in another. The classical Frobenius problem dealt with positive integers, so we'll replace them with strings. Now S will be a set of strings.

Now we have to find the analogue of a non-negative integer linear combination. This is no problem: strings like to join up with other strings, in a process called concatenation, so our non-negative integer linear combinations will be replaced by all possible ways to concatenate the strings of S, using any of them any number of times (including 0 times). This process is sometimes called Kleene closure after the American logician Stephen Kleene, and we write it as S^*. For example, if S = {0, 01}, then S^* = { ε, 0, 00, 01, 000, 001, 010, ... }. That funny ε at the beginning is the usual mathematical representation for the empty string: the string with no letters at all in it. Notice that order matters in concatenation (houseboat isn't the same as boathouse), so we've gone from a commutative setting to a noncommutative one.

So S^* is an infinite set of strings. (By the way, in this particular example, where S = {0, 01}, the set S^* happens to have a nice description: it's the set of all strings that don't begin with a 1, and don't have two consecutive 1's appearing anywhere.)

OK, now we've generalized the "non-negative integer linear combination" part. How about the condition that the greatest common divisor (gcd) of the elements of S must be 1? Well, the point of that condition was just to ensure that every sufficiently large integer had a representation, so rather than worrying about how to define the greatest common divisor of two strings, let's replace the gcd condition with: every sufficiently long string must be in S^*. There's another way to say this: the complement of a set T is the set of all strings occurring in the universal set that don't occur in T. Here the universal set is just the set of all strings. So our condition is that the complement of S^* should be finite. In the arcane lingo of mathematicians, we can abbreviate this as: S^* is co-finite.

Now, are there any examples where S^* is co-finite? Yes. One example is S = {1, 00, 01,10, 000, 01010}. It shouldn't be too hard to convince yourself that every string except 0 and 010 can be written as concatenation of strings in this set. So in this case S^* is co-finite.

Finally, we need an analogue of the largest integer not representable. That's not hard --- it's just the length of the longest string not in S^*. In the previous example, where S = {1, 00, 01,10, 000, 01010}, the answer would be 3, since 010 is the longest string omitted from S^*. Let's call this the Frobenius number of the set of strings S.

Now it's not too hard to show that if the longest string in S is of length n, and S^* is co-finite, then the Frobenius number is bounded by a function which is exponential in n. For example, over an alphabet of two letters, you can show that the Frobenius number is < (2/3)*(4ⁿ - 1). (In case the exponent doesn't show up well in your browser, that's 4 to the n power, minus 1, times two-thirds.)

I figured out this generalization a while ago, and the upper bound a year or so ago. But I could not find any example where the Frobenius number was anywhere near as big as that upper bound. Indeed, for a long time, the worst-case example I knew was when you took S to be the set of all strings of length n, together with all the strings of length n+1. In this case, the Frobenius number is easily shown to be n² - n - 1.

I gave the problem to my Ph. D. student Zhi Xu, who only started a few months ago. We tried many different possibilities, but eventually we figured out that you should try sets S that contain almost all strings of some lengths, omitting only a few. And recently he made a big breakthrough: he was able to construct examples where the Frobenius number is exponentially large in n, the length of the longest string. Here's one of his examples: take S to be over a binary alphabet, that is, over {0,1}, and let it contain all the strings of length 3, all the strings of length 5, except that you remove the strings {00001, 01010, 10011}. Then S^* is co-finite, and the length of the longest string not in S^* is 25. For example, 0000101001100000001010011 can't be gotten by concatenating the strings of S.

So our understanding of Frobenius problem for strings is now greatly improved, in the sense that there is an exponential upper bound and a class of examples that provides an exponential lower bound. The bounds are not exactly tight, but they are much tighter than ever before. Zhi Xu has many other results on this problem, and you can see our paper on the subject here. We wrote it together with Jui-Yi Kao, another student of mine who also made some very nice contributions. I expect this paper will form the basis of Zhi Xu's Ph. D. thesis. Of course, there is much more to be done in this area.

I hope you enjoyed this tour of my recent research, and congratulations to Zhi Xu for a job well done!

How Stupid Do They Think We Are?

I see that the crafty and unctuous Sal Cordova is up to his old tricks again, this time truncating a quote of Darwin to make it appear that Darwin endorsed intelligent design. No doubt when called on this dishonesty, he'll call it "street theater".

David Warren: Blowhard of the Month, Again

David Warren, who I previously celebrated as Blowhard of the Month back in January 2006, is at it again.

Take a look at this recent column, which believe it or not, was actually published in the Ottawa Citizen.

From the very first line, Warren demonstrates ignorance (or dishonesty). He calls Paul Feyerabend a "scientist", when in fact, Feyerabend was a philosopher.

He then celebrates Freeman Dyson, a once-respectable mathematician and physicist who has become slightly, uh, eccentric in his dotage. (Dyson even wrote a friendly foreword to Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer's credulous Extraordinary Knowing.) Why does Warren like Dyson? I doubt Warren could coherently explain even one of Dyson's contributions. No, what Warren likes about Dyson is that Dyson is a global warming skeptic. Of course Dyson's opinion about global warming is about as valid as mine, considering that Dyson has no training in climatology and has not published any papers on the subject.

Later, Warren refers to "Darwinist cosmology". Considering that Darwin was a biologist, not a physicist or a cosmologist, I can only wonder what Warren thinks he is talking about.

Finally, in Warren's crowning moment, he completely misrepresents Michael Behe's testimony in the Dover case, claiming that "Behe demurred" when attorney Eric Rothschild said, "So you believe astrology is valid science." Of course, this is false, as a glance at the testimony will show. Rothschild never said what Warren claims. Here's the crucial exchange:


Q Under that same definition astrology is a scientific theory under your definition, correct?

A Under my definition, a scientific theory is a proposed explanation which focuses or points to physical, observable data and logical inferences. There are many things throughout the history of science which we now think to be incorrect which nonetheless would fit that -- which would fit that definition. Yes, astrology is in fact one, and so is the ether theory of the propagation of light, and many other -- many other theories as well.


Warren finishes by saying


How I wish the high priests of Darwinism could restrain themselves in similar ways. They can’t, because Darwinism is a religion, and moreover, a false religion, in fear of free inquiry.


Why is it that theists, when they want to insult science, they call it a religion?

Return of the Vanity Scam

It seems the American Biographical Institute just won't give up.

They failed to entice me by selecting me as a "Great Mind of the 21st Century", so now they've upped the ante.

Now they're nominating me as "Man of the Year".

For only $195 (or $295 if I want it laminated on "Finland Birch Wood"), I can get a decree calling me "Man of the Year 2007", "based on his outstanding accomplishments to date and the noble example he has set for his peers and entire community."



Really, I wonder how vain you would have to be to fall for this transparent scam.

Oh. About this vain. Or this vain. Or this vain...

A New Word - "Outcheap" - and McCain's Unintentional Irony

On NPR this morning there were two items of linguistic interest.

The first was this interview with Joe White, the Detroit bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. White discussed driving a plug-in electric car, and in the discussion he used a word I've never heard before:

"The reasons why we don't have all-electric cars running around - and this goes back more than a century - is that battery technology simply hasn't evolved to the point where we can outperform and outcheap gasoline and the internal combustion engine."

The OED doesn't list "outcheap" as a word, but it's clear what it means: "to be able to be produced more cheaply than an alternative". It reminds me of a word my friend Jean-Paul once invented, as a translation for the French defenestrer: to "outwindow". He was disappointed to learn that "defenestrate" already existed in English.

I found some earlier citations using Lexis. An article in Crain's Detroit Business, April 15, 1996, quotes Farmington Hills retailing consultant Frederick Marx as saying , ''Anybody can add volume giving it away, and that's what it's becoming: a contest of who can outcheap each other.''

The second item was this interview with presidential candidate John McCain.

"One of the things that drove Harry Truman's decision to integrate our military was how shocked and angered he was by the lynchings of two African-American World War II veterans. Truman was certainly no - you know, he used racial epitats in private conversation, etc., but he believed that his oath to protect the Constitution made him responsible to protect the rights of all the American people."

Here McCain used the nonexistent word "epitat". He really meant "epithet", but was probably mixing it up in his mind with "epitaph", and so out came this mélange of both words.

Ironically, McCain also said, "Let's have some straight talk. Harry Truman was not the greatest intellect that ever inhabited the White House, but he had the right instincts, and frankly, he had the humility and inspiration to recognize that you have to suborn your personal ambitions for the greater good."

Here McCain demonstrates that he doesn't know what the relatively uncommon word "suborn" means. According to the OED, it has several meanings, but the ones that are most familiar are

• "to use illegal or underhanded means to induce someone else to do a misdeed"
  
• "to induce someone to give false testimony" (as in "to suborn perjury")
  

McCain probably meant to say "subdue" or "subjugate". I like the irony that he was calling Truman intellectually deficient while, in the same sentence, he exhibited some ignorance himself.

Talk Radio Hosts Fired for Debunking Phony Racist Memo

From the Washington Post comes this sad story about two radio talk show hosts who have been fired for debunking a rumor, long passed around in the African-American community, that the Carter administration secretly plotted to undermine domestic black leaders.

Casey Lartigue Jr. and Eliot Morgan hosted "The Casey Lartigue Show", a weekly political talk show on XM satellite radio. They discussed this phony memo which exists in various versions on the Internet. (One tip-off that it's phony? Brzezinski's last name was spelled incorrectly.) The version I've linked to is on (no surprise) the website of Louis Farrakhan.

Lartigue and Morgan were fired when they exposed the memo as a fake. In doing so, they went against the XM's lead talk show host, Joe Madison, who still believes that the memo is real.

Talk radio: where telling the truth can get you fired. I guess that's why people like Rush Limbaugh still have jobs.

Combinatorics on Words, A Puzzle, and a Silly Research Proposal

One of the areas I work in is combinatorics on words. In this field, we are interested in words (strings of symbols) and their properties.

For example, a square is a nonempty word of the form xx, where x is a word. Some examples of squares in English include tartar and murmur. If a word contains no subword that is a square, we say it is squarefree. Notice that the word squarefree is not squarefree, as it contains the square ee.

A classical question, first discussed a hundred years ago by the Norwegian mathematician Axel Thue, is whether there exist infinite squarefree words over a finite alphabet. Over a two-letter alphabet, this is not possible, as any binary word of length 4 or more contains a square. (Proof: let the first letter be a. Then if the next letter is a, we have a square. So assume the next letter is b. If the third letter is b, we have a square again. So assume the third letter is a. Now, whatever letter is chosen as the fourth letter, we get a square.)

But is it possible over a three-letter alphabet? The answer is yes, as Thue showed.

Erdős considered a variation on this problem. Instead of trying to avoid squares, let's try to avoid abelian squares. An abelian square is a nonempty string of the form x x', where x' is a permutation of x. Some nice examples of abelian squares in English include reappear (the first half of the word reappears in the second half) and mesosome. Can you find the longest word in English that is an abelian square? Hint: it represents part of the body. If you're interested in this sort of wordplay, see my page on repetitions in natural languages, where the solution to the puzzle is given.

For many years it was not known whether one could construct an infinite word over a 4-letter alphabet that contains no abelian squares. But in 1992, Veikko Keränen showed that one could. His construction involves constructing a map that sends each letter in {a,b,c,d} to a string of length 85. Starting with a, one then simply iterates this map. For more information, visit Keränen's page.

Now we've covered combinatorics on words, and the puzzle. It's time for the third item in the title. Go visit this silly research proposal by a professor of civil engineering and engineering mechanics at Columbia University. The proposal is so poorly written that I can't really tell what he has in mind, but he seems to suggest representing strategies for development in third-world countries by strings of symbols that specify a temporal sequence of events. I really hope this is a joke, but if it is not a joke, I hope it doesn't get funded.

New Study Shows "Cell Phone Tower Allergy" All in the Mind

I have two relatives who believe that electromagnetic fields are having a deleterious effect on their health.

Although I doubt this new study will convince them, it's still relevant. Elaine Fox, of the University of Essex, studied 44 people who claimed they were sensitive to cell phone towers and 114 normal people. They then exposed them to signals from the mast, sometimes telling them when the tower was on or off, and sometimes not telling them.

When the subject did not know whether the tower was on, they were not able to decide any better than chance whether the tower was on or not. When they knew, the sensitive people exhibited significantly more symptoms than the ordinary people.

This establishes with reasonable certainty that "cell phone tower allergy" is all in the mind. Their symptoms may be real, but they're due to fear and hysteria, not the signals.

Good and Bad Reporting

Contrast this article from yesterday's National Post about the rise of atheism with this series by local religion "reporter" Denyse O'Leary.

The National Post article points out that the non-religious in America have grown from 8% to 14.3% of the population between 1990 and 2001, and that a 2006 study shows 20% of young adults are non-religious, up from 11%. The article discusses the recent atheist books by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens, and quotes prominent atheists such as Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and Herb Silverman, an atheist mathematician who successfully challenged a South Carolina law that established a religious test for public office, in conflict with the US constitution.

Now, any sensible person would conclude from the statistics in the National Post article and the wave of best-selling atheist books that interest in atheism is increasing, and the Post reporter has a brief analysis why: former UW professor Michael Higgins is quoted as saying "There is a profoundly anti-religious sentiment that exists in the culture-at-large as a result of 9/11" and "There is a souring against religion. There is a general perception that most political and social problems have been generated by religion [and] this comes from the danger people fear as a consequence of 9/11."

Now look at O'Leary's "reporting". She calls the rise of atheism an "anti-God crusade". (Isn't it strange that when theists want to insult atheism, they resort to using explicitly religious language that recalls the bad aspects of religion?) And she suggests that the rise in the interest in atheism is really due to the failure of materialism. She even denies that atheism is on the rise, claiming "atheism ... is stagnant or withering away". Of course, no actual statistics are provided to support this claim. I wonder what it would be like to live in O'Leary's topsy-turvy world.

In her series, O'Leary doesn't do any actual reporting. You will look in vain to find O'Leary actually interviewing anyone, particularly an atheist, to find out what they believe. No, O'Leary resorts to quoting the work of real journalists, journalists who have actually bothered to do the legwork required for an article. Instead, the series consists mostly of sneers and insults directed at atheists and amateur psychologizing:

"...Materialist science is in trouble. And the trouble does not stem from traditional religions, though materialists are - as one might expect - quick to blame their troubles on traditional religions and to reassure themselves that - despite all the evidence - traditional religions are doomed. But, materialists are also smug and thus cannot imagine or respond to any source of trouble arising from their interpretation of the evidence.

They have apparently decided instead to target the Christian religion as the source of their problems. One outcome is that, as we shall see, many materialists want to start a new religion to compete with the traditional ones, including a Darwin Day (Christmas, Eid al-Fitr, and Chinese New Year all rolled into one?)..."

Along the way, O'Leary manages to plug her books. (No article by O'Leary is complete without self-promotion.) She resorts to the hoariest clichés, calling atheists "militant" and "dogmatic".

There is an interesting parallel here between O'Leary's parasitic use of other reporters' work to construct her series, and the behavior of creationists. Like creationists, O'Leary didn't do any actual research of her own. Like creationists, O'Leary isn't interested in exploring her subject, the evidence, or why people believe they way they do. Like creationists, O'Leary spends most of her time denigrating a view she doesn't accept.

My parents were journalists. Some journalists are friends of mine. Ms. O'Leary, you're no journalist.

Turku's Fibonacci Smokestack

From my student, Dalia Krieger, here's a picture of a smokestack in Turku, Finland, that displays, in neon, the first 10 Fibonacci numbers. Why is it there? I have no idea. But why should Finland have all the fun? Let's put the Thue-Morse sequence on some smokestacks.

Why Do They Always Lie?

Take a committed theist, ask him or her to say something about atheism, and just wait. The lies will come pouring out of their mouth like water from a fountain.

This article by Peter Berkowitz, who teaches law at George Mason, and is a "senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution", is no exception. How many lies can you find?

It starts in the smarmiest possible way, taking a cliché from Ecclesiastes to argue that the new wave of atheism books (which Berkowitz calls, unimaginatively, the "new new atheism") is confirmed by "biblical wisdom". This is the equivalent of the traditional response of the theist when an atheist makes a good point: ignore it, and say "God loves you anyway".

Next, Berkowitz sneers at Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and other atheist writers by describing atheism as a "profitable business" --- as if writing books that people want to read is somehow morally objectionable, and as if religious organizations haven't been raking in the tax-exempt cash for years.

We have to wait until the fourth paragraph before we get the first outright lie. Berkowitz claims "... the new new atheism proclaims its hatred of God and organized religion loudly and proudly from the rooftops". The only problem is, atheists don't hate the Christian God or any other god, any more than we hate the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny or Emma Bovary. You can't hate something that doesn't exist, and fictional characters don't inspire hatred the way real dictators do. Atheists might hate how a misguided belief in a deity or deities causes people to misbehave, and we might hate the division that religion causes, and we might hate some institutions of organized religion (and have a good reason to do so), but we don't hate Berkowitz's god.

The fifth paragraph has another lie. Berkowitz claims "[The new new atheists] contend ... we can now know, with finality and certainty, that God does not exist..." Really? Is that really what they say?

Nope. Take Richard Dawkins, for example. In The God Delusion, he makes the point that you can't know with certainty that there is no god. On page 51, for example, Dawkins defines a strong, or category 7, atheist as someone who says "I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung `knows' there is one." He then says "I'd be surprised to meet many people in category 7" and that he does not count himself in this category. He says he is "in category 6, but leaning towards 7 - I am agnostic only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden." A category 6 atheist says, according to Dawkins, "I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there."

There is much more to dispute in Berkowitz's piece, but I confess I grow weary at the weak excuses he uses to prop up religion, the straw men he erects to attack Hitchens, and the transparently sneering rhetoric. Hitchens, Berkowitz says, "shows no awareness that his atheism, far from resulting from skeptical inquiry, is the rigidly dogmatic premise from which his inquiries proceed, and that it colors all his observations and determines his conclusions." But modern atheism isn't a dogmatism, since it offers no creed to rigidly adhere to, only a disbelief in the creeds of others. To call this dogmatism is to insist that the barefoot man really does have a secret cobbler he visits on the side.

Berkowitz can't resist implying that his religion would never, ever result in the nasty kind of violence we see emanating from Islam: "today's bestselling atheists suppress crucial distinctions between the forms of faith embraced by the vast majority of American citizens and the militant Islam that at this very moment is pledged to America's destruction." What he fails to see is that that American majoritarian faith also results in reprehensible violence. To name just three examples from the last year:

• Charles Carl Roberts, home-schooled by religious parents, killed 5 and wounded 5 more Amish schoolgirls in October 2006 because he was angry at God.
  
  
• Brian K. White, a religious musician, beat to death a 75-year-old former Soviet political prisoner in New Jersey because the man refused to buy his religious CD's.
  
  
• Joshua Royce Mauldin, who claimed he was called by God to be a minister, seriously burned his 2-month-old daughter's face by jamming her in a microwave.
  

Berkowitz concludes by claiming, "Of all the Bible's sublime and sustaining teachings, none is more so than the teaching that explains that humanity is set apart because all human beings--woman as well as man the Bible emphasizes--are created in the image of God". Berkowitz may feel this is "sublime" and "sustaining", but I just regard it with sorrow. What could be more responsible for our ecological crisis than this silly, deluded view that man is somehow elevated above everything else in nature?

If this mess of lies and foolishness is the best the theists can offer, then the atheists have already won.

Innumeracy In "Zits"

The July 12 2007 panel for the "Zits" comic strip has the main character, Jeremy, computing how much he's getting paid.


Panel 1: "I can't believe I'm getting paid ten bucks an hour for this!"

Panel 2: "That's like, five bucks every half hour!"

Panel 3: "Or 16.6¢ per minute ... or, uh... only .0027¢ per second."

Panel 4: "Time flies when you're having fun, but it totally drags when you're getting paid by the hour."


Which one of the authors of this strip, Jerry Scott or Jim Borgman, can't divide?

Added July 23 2007: I received the following reply from Jim Borgman:
"You're right. Jeffrey. Sorry for the error. Maybe we should have you
look over our syndication contract?"

Literal Answers to Rhetorical Questions

As mentioned on Weekend Edition, here is a funny page giving literal answers to rhetorical questions, many inspired by popular songs.

But the number of examples is not very large. We need some other examples. Here are a few:

---

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

Joltin' Joe is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, California.

What's new, pussycat?

Nu is the frequency of a wave in physics, an Egyptian god, a Chinese ethnic group, and a former Burmese prime minister.

---

Can you come up with some more questions and answers that deserve to be on that page?

Intelligent Design: The Scientific Theory That Improves Your Bottom Line

I see that William Dembski, fresh from raking in thousands of dollars for not testifying in the Dover trial, has now branched out into explaining his business savvy to the masses. Look at this announcement for a conference at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for a conference entitled "Intelligent Design in Business Practice: How design assumptions impact management, leadership & organization".

This page has more details. Since ill-conceived ideas like this have a history of vanishing without a trace, I'll repeat the description below:

Successful business leaders are intelligent designers, guiding organizations along innovative paths to achieve ends otherwise unattainable. Intelligent designers are not micromanagers, who short-circuit the freedom and creativity that organizations need to thrive. At the same time, intelligent designers do not encourage unbridled autonomy, which sets organizations adrift, causing them to lose focus and discipline. By striking a proper balance between guidance and autonomy, intelligent designers promote a synergy between organization and leadership that can actualize undreamt possibilities. Intelligent design for now is best known as a scientific alternative to Darwinian and self-organizational approaches to biological origins. This conference brings together scholars and business leaders to discuss the implications of intelligent design for business practice. In particular, this conference will explore how design principles shape the beliefs of leaders about the people they lead, the nexus of innovation, the incentives to entrepreneurship, and the methods for managing organizational change. The overarching theme of this conference is "the business leader as intelligent designer."

Wow. A conference not to miss! Probably they can have breakout sessions entitled "Destroying Darwinism for fun and profit", "God wants you to be rich", and "Street theater: fruitful career choice?"

A Mystery Story by Joseph Shallit

My father, Joseph Shallit, was a journalist who also wrote short stories and books. Here's a short story he published in 1947, in Dime Mystery Magazine, called The Witch's Way. It is evidently based on some experiences he had in the Philippines while in the Army in World War II, and was anthologized as recently as 10 years ago, in the volume 100 Crooked Little Crime Stories.

Academic Vanity Scams

Today I was delighted to receive a letter from the American Biographical Institute (ABI) nominating me for an award.

"Dear Dr. Shallit," it began. "You have been chosen for a distinct honor that is unparalleled in regard to this Century's historical records... Your nomination is endorsed by the Governing Board of Editors for Great Minds of the 21st Century."

For only US $395, I learn, I can get a "Hardbound Luxury Keepsake Issue of the 2007/2008 Edition of Great Minds of the 21st Century embellished with gold engravings". For US $595, I can get a "Great Minds of the 21st Century Medal, a two-inch diameter medal stamped from a solid piece of metal with a hand crafted die and bearing the image of Great Minds of the 21st Century also finished in a radiant golden tone". For US $295, I can get a "Proclamation Plaque, a beautiful two color 8 1/2 inch by 11 inch certificate hand inscribed with your name and chosen citation proclaiming you as a Great Mind of the 21st Century and confirming your inclusion in this reference title."

How pleased I was to share such a prestigious award with someone like Tan Man Ho. Not.

Yes, it's an academic vanity scam.

No legitimate award requires you to pay for anything related to the award, and no legitimate institution would send a prestigious award announcement via bulk mail.

Believe it or not, a lot of people fall for this "nomination" and send off hundreds or even thousands of dollars for books and plaques commemorating awards and titles that exist only in the remarkable and lucrative imagination of the American Biographical Institute. (The "director" of the ABI also runs related organizations such as the "United Cultural Convention" (UCC) and the "World Academy of Letters" (WAL) .) My nomination letter helpfully includes a section where I can nominate ten colleagues (presumably suckers even more gullible than I am) for their own special recognition: a vanity scam combined with a chain letter.

This Wikipedia article helpfully summarizes some of the bizarre titles that people accept, such as "Ambassador of Grand Eminence" and "Genius Laureate of the United States".

Here are a few people, some notable, some not so notable, who have fallen for this solicitation, or from similar ones from the "International Biographical Centre" (IBC) in England:

Irving John Good, the renowned mathematician and statistician, lists on his CV the following dubious honors:

• "International Order of Merit" from the IBC
  
• "Man of the Year" from the ABI
  
• "Most Admired Man of the Decade", from the ABI
  
• "500 Leaders of Influence", from the ABI
  
• "International Cultural Diploma of Honor", from the ABI
  
• "The Key Award", from the ABI
  
• "American Medal of Honor", from the ABI
  
• "Hundred Most Intriguing People of 2002", from the ABI
  
• "Congressional Medal of Excellence", from the ABI (How much do you want to bet that the US Congress had nothing to do with this award?)
  

Timothy Goodwin, who is a "web analyst/developer by profession, a systems analyst, computer hardware technician, computer programmer and karate practitioner", has so many "awards" from the ABI and related organizations on his web pages that I can't list them all. Just a few highlights:

• "Ambassador of Grand Eminence", ABI
  
• "Congressional Medal of Excellence", ABI
  
• "Genius Laureate of the United States", ABI
  
• "World Medal of Freedom", ABI
  
• "One of the Genius Elite", ABI
  
• "Da Vinci Diamond Award", IBC
  

Helpfully, Mr. Goodwin also has a web page showing off all his medals.

Mr. Goodwin is listed as a "Life Patron of the International Biographical Association", which is probably more true than he realizes. I wonder how much he's paid for all those plaques and medals. Patron, indeed.

Erhard Kremer, a mathematician at the University of Hamburg, lists more than 20 honors from the ABI or the IBC, including "Genius Laureate of Germany 2005" (ABI).

Jagdish C. Ahuja, a statistician at Portland State University, lists 19 awards from the ABI and the IBC, including being named "One of the Genius Elite" and "Ambassador of Grand Eminence".

The pastor of Christ Church in Pleasanton, California, Robert W. Evans, is evidently not above a little worldly recognition: `In 1992, Dr. Evans was selected as the “Most Admired Man of the Decade” by the International Biographical Institute, and in 1993 he was selected as the American Biographical Institute’s “Man of the Year.” '

Paul Bartlett Ré, an artist at the University of New Mexico, "has been the recipient of a dozen major awards honors, including The Legion of Honor from the United Cultural Convention, The Order of American Ambassadors and The Genius Laureate of the United States, The World Lifetime Award from the American Biographical Institute, and The Da Vinci Laureate and Hall of Fame from the International Biographical Centre in Cambridge, England."


Although most who accept these honors seem to be men, a few women also display them with pride.

Dana Barry, a researcher at Clarkson University, lists on her web page the following nominations:

• "Woman of the Year", ABI
  
• "Leading Educator of the World", IBC
  
• "International Peace Prize", UCC
  
• "Einsteinian Chair of Science", WAL
  
• "International Educator of the Year", IBC
  
• "One Thousand Great Scientists", IBC
  
• "One Thousand Great Scholars", IBC
  

Sandra Breitenbach, a researcher at Oslo and Amsterdam, lists many of these awards. Just a selection:

• "American Hall of Fame", ABI
  
• "Great Minds of the 21st Century", ABI
  
• "Da Vinci Diamond", IBC
  
• "International Cultural Diploma of Honor", ABI
  
• "International Peace Prize", UCC
  
• "Ambassador of Great Eminence", ABI
  

Even the former president of Richard Stockton College, Vera King Farris, a woman with many genuine accomplishments, lists, apparently without irony, her “The Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Higher Education” from the UCC.

The UCC even awards a "Noble prize" (check the spelling; Alfred Nobel had nothing to do with it). Among its recipients is Shri V. K. Choudhry, a creator of horoscope software. I can think of no one more deserving.

The number of people who have accepted these "awards" (do a web search) is really remarkable. I guess everyone, particularly in academia, craves a little (or in some cases, a lot of) recognition. As for me, I guess I'll have to settle for "3rd place - egg carrying contest", that I received in 1962. But it did come with a nice ribbon.

Liars for Moses

So many fundamentalist Christians end up lying to defend their faith against evolution that it's easy to forget that other flavors of theist also play the same game.

Read this column by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, for example. In it, he repeats some of the dumbest creationist lies about evolution, such as

1. The second law of thermodynamics is in contradiction to evolution
   
   
2. Nearly all mutations are deleterious
   
   
3. Gould's theory of "punctuated equilibirum" means "giant leaps" in the fossil record
   

Add in the usual misunderstanding of what it means for evolution to be a theory, and the curious charge that "many scientists who harbor an unreasonable objection to faith are making science into a new religion", and the resulting mix shows Boteach to be about as smart as your average fencepost and not as honest. Perhaps sensing this, he includes a comment where a physicist praises him for his sagacity.

Just another liar for Moses.

Kirk Durston: Apologist for Genocide

Kirk Durston is a graduate student in biology at the University of Guelph, and the director of something called the New Scholars Society. This Society's mission statement is

"TO PROMOTE CHRISTIAN SCHOLARSHIP IN EVERY FIELD, WITH A SPECIAL INTEREST IN THOSE AREAS WHERE PHILOSOPHY, FAITH, AND SCIENCE INTERSECT, ESPECIALLY THE PROBLEMS AND ISSUES THAT ARISE OUT OF THAT INTERSECTION.

TO PROMOTE THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION WITH RESPECT TO THE SPIRITUAL ASPECT OF LIFE.

TO BE A RESOURCE TO THOSE FACULTY AND SCHOLARS WHO HAVE AN INTEREST IN DEVELOPING THE SPIRITUAL AREA OF THEIR LIVES, FROM A CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE."

You can find their "statement of faith" here. It's the usual fundagelical claptrap about the bible being "uniquely, verbally and fully inspired by the Holy Spirit, and that it was written without error (inerrant) in the original manuscripts."

Durston is active in fundagelical affairs. For example, look at this interview supporting intelligent design. How many misrepresentations can you find there?

Durston spoke last Wednesday, June 20, at the University of Waterloo on the topic "Is Genocide Wrong? What are moral absolutes and where do they come from?"

Durston made the usual nonsensical argument that moral absolutes exist, and that they only make sense if they come from a god. He claimed, for example, that if morals are relative, we would have not justification for claiming that the Nazi genocide of Jews was wrong. He claimed that those who follow "traditional moralilty" are happier and more successful. He insisted that Christians have a lower divorce rate than non-Christians. However, Durston's claim is at odds with a Barna survey that showed that atheists and agnostics actually have the lowest divorce rate (21%). When asked about this, Durston dismissed the evidence, invoking the classic "no true Scotsman" fallacy by claiming that many people say they are Christian when they are actually not.

Durston surveyed various ways to obtain moral guidance, but totally omitted a naturalistic approach to ethics, namely the view that ethical principles are part of our evolutionary heritage. There is a reasonable amount of evidence for this latter view, such as the work of primatologist Frans de Waal (e.g., Chimpanzee Politics, showing that chimpanzees apparently have a moral code) and the field of evolutionary psychology (e.g., Robert Wright, The Moral Animal). In general, his presentation was barely at the level of freshman philosophy paper.

But the most repulsive part of Durston's talk was when someone from the audience asked why Durston's condemnation of genocide would not apply equally well to the god of the Old Testament, who indulged in genocide himself, in particular the genocide of the Canaanites. Suddenly Durston's tune changed. Instead of condemning this genocide, Durston sought to justify it. Genocide was OK, he claimed, if his god ordained it. Indeed, he said that the only thing that prevented him from going and out murdering people for his advantage was his religious belief.

If God ordained genocide in our modern day, Durston said, he would obey. However, he said he would have to be very convinced that this call was correct. God would have to appear to all Canadians in an unmistakable way. If that happened, we would have to obey and kill those we were instructed to.

If there is any better example of how fundamentalist Christianity is morally bankrupt, I can't think of it. Any crime, no matter how vile, is OK if their god commands it. What else but religion could make a good person become an apologist for genocide?

Addendum (added October 26 2007): Kirk Durston has asked me to post this clarification regarding his views on genocide. He agrees that he would participate in genocide if God ordained it, but he says the conditions must be extremely stringent: it must be that (for example) God simultaneously appears to every Canadian, in an impressive and undeniable show, so that every single Canadian is convinced of his existence (even atheists) and also convinced that God wants us (for example) to kill Americans. Only under these very strong conditions, he says, would genocide be permitted.

In my opinion, I already summarized this view in the paragraphs above, so I don't understand the need for the "clarification", but I've added it anyway.

Dembski Misrepresents Me - Again!

Although I wrote a long critique of William Dembski's work back in 2002, he has never really addressed those criticisms.

However, he's been happy to insult me -- at one point calling me a "maniac", misrepresenting a conversation I had with Ruse, and misrepresenting the reason why I didn't testify in the Kitzmiller case.

In a recent interview, William Dembski misrepresents me again. He says: "Jeff Shallit, for instance, when I informed him of some work of mine on the conservation of information told me that he refuse to address it because I had not adequately addressed his previous objections to my work, though the work on conservation of information about which I was informing him was precisely in response to his concerns."

That's not accurate. Here's what I actually said in my e-mail message of March 3 2005:

I already told you - since you have never publicly acknowledged even
one of the many errors I have pointed out in your work - I do not intend
to waste my time finding more errors in more work of yours.

I find your failure to acknowledge the errors I have pointed out
completely indefensible, both ethically and scientifically.


It's not a matter of "adequately address[ing]" something, it's a matter of publishing a retraction to claims that are demonstrably false. At that point in time, Dembski had not done so, although eventually he did get around to admitting that the centerpiece calculation in his book was off by 65 orders of magnitude.

If Dembski thinks I have some obligation to read everything he's written and give him extensive comments, he's wrong. And, of course, those who do make the effort to wade through his pseudomathematics get labeled as "obsessive" - that's what he called Richard Wein.

You just can't please a creationist.

Groundhog Day

We have groundhogs in our backyard. It started with one, but now there are babies (see the photo).

Groundhogs, also known as woodchucks, are marmots; their scientific name is Marmota monax.

While I enjoy seeing them, my wife is not so happy that they are eating up the garden.

When the babies get a little older, we'll try to trap them with a live trap and relocate them.

America is Doomed

When travelling, I like to read the local newspapers.

On our way back to Canada from Utah, we spent the night in rural Illinois. The local paper, the Bureau County Republican carried an article about two young women who recently entered the 2007 State 4-H contest in Urbana, Illinois.

Heather and Hannah Pierson gave a speech entitled "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Back". According to the newspaper article,

The girls' speech was about raindrop therapy for horses using essential oils.

"We apply then to certain areas of the horse, like the pressure points," Heather said. "It's used to calm them down, to help realign their spine and helps their immune system."


Now, you might wonder why a horse would need to have its spine "realigned" to begin with.


Hannah said they learned about the therapy a couple of years ago when their mother had a toothache. A neighbor gave her an essential oil, and the toothache was gone ina few hours. Then the girls watched a video on the subject.


Wow. A video! No wonder these young women are such experts in equine medicine.

My guess is that these girls have been suckered by a mixture of the quack therapy of Donald Gary Young or Heather Mack and homeopathy.

But, never fear, you reassure me. Certainly such foolishness. could not win a prize.

Wrong. The Pearsons took first place.

With such incompetence on display, it was not a surprise to learn that the girls are creationists.


Heather said her speech was about the evolution of the horse versus creation, and she had to do lots of studying to prepare.

"My mom bought me three books, and I also get things off the Internet," she said.


Wasn't there anyone advising these young women about quack health claims, or the scientific method, or the importance of evidence beyond the anecdotal?

America is doomed.

Here's a Journal I Won't Be Subscribing To

Today I received an invitation from Emerald Group Publishing to subscribe to the International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow. I have to admit, the topic is quite far from my research interests, and so I wouldn't dream of subscribing to it just for that reason alone. But something about the solicitation made me want to look more closely.

The letter inviting me to subscribe was headed, in large-point type, "Subscribe today and receive £75 worth of Marriott Cheques!"

What kind of journal, I thought, would use such a blatant marketing ploy, offering me the equivalent of US $147 worth of hotel vouchers that, according to the flyer, "can be used for accommodation, dining, spa or golf, in any of over 2,600 luxurious Marriott Hotels world-wide!"? The flyer adds "Go on - treat yourself!"

The mystery was resolved when I consulted the cost of subscription. For volume 17, issues 1 to 8, I would have to pay US $9,899 for one year of this journal. I'm used to exorbitant subscription prices, but this is ridiculous. No wonder they can afford to give away $147, when they're charging nearly $10,000 a year.

Everyone who is involved in this journal, from the publishers to the editorial board, should be ashamed of themselves. There is simply no rationale for such a price, other than making bucketloads of cash. Professional societies publish analogous journals for as little as $200 a year, and there are many electronic journals offering analogous content entirely free.

I am particularly offended by the idea that by subscribing, I would receive hotel vouchers to "treat [myself]". I would venture to guess that most people who make the decision to subscribe are not paying out of their pocket, but rather using grant, university, or industry funds -- in which case providing the subscriber with personal benefits could be seen as unethical.

I encourage all academics to boycott journals like this one, sending their scholarly work to journals that charge sensible prices, particularly electronic journals with free access.

A Parthenogenetic Lizard

Here's a picture I took of the Plateau Striped Whiptail ( Cnemidophorus velox), a lizard I saw in Chaco Canyon, northwest New Mexico.

Plateau Striped Whiptails are unusual because, like several whiptail species, they are primarily parthenogenetic; that is, females usually reproduce without the assistance of males.

Parthenogenesis in Plateau Striped Whiptails was first noted by biologist T. Paul Maslin [Science, 132 (1962), 212-213], who collected these lizards and found 102 females and only 2 males, both juvenile. Because of the presence of 2 males, Maslin cautioned that parthenogenesis was not conclusively established. Later, however [Copeia (1971), 156-158] Maslin reported raising whiptails in captivity without the presence of males, thus establishing parthenogenesis beyond doubt.

Another interesting thing about whiptails is the difficulty in distinguishing one species from another, so take my tentative identification with a grain of salt. In 1906, Hans Gadow wrote "Most of the 'species' are so plastic, so variable, that they may well drive the systematist to despair. Not two authorities will, nor can, possibly agree upon the number of admissible species." [Proc. Zool. Soc. London 75 (1906), 227-375; note that this reference is given incorrectly as "Proc. Roy. Soc. London" in several places online]. When a creationist natters about "fixity of species", this is a useful comeback.

There's a volume called Biology of Whiptail Lizards that's not in our library at Waterloo, but is at Toronto. I've ordered it by interlibrary loan. For those who don't want to wade through it, there's a summary by Donald Blanchard available.

Why I Won't Be Voting for Ron Paul

If you read Reddit, or Wikipedia, you might think that Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul is the best thing since sliced bread. After all, he "believes in maintaining and restoring civil liberties". He's "both deeply principled and wholly uncompromised". He's "honest". Sounds great, right?

Unfortunately, he's also a total loon.

He's anti-choice. He's against human embryonic stem-cell research. He wants to return to the gold standard. He would deny US citizenship to those born in the US to illegal immigrant parents.

If that's not enough, read this piece, entitled "The War on Religion", penned by Representative Paul. In it, he subscribes to the absurd claim, advanced by the wacko right, that there is a "war on religion", conducted by "the elitist, secular Left". He claims (falsely) that the US constitution is "replete with references to God". (Actually, the Constitution, a profoundly secular document, does not mention "God", "Jesus", "Christianity", or "Savior". It does have one reference that could be construed as religious; namely, the formulaic "Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven" at the end.)

Having a president that is deeply principled can be a good thing. First, though, I'd want to make sure his principles are based on reality, not some bizarre Christian persecution syndrome.

Why Are Atheists Always Described as Militant?

Gustave Flaubert wrote a lovely book, Dictionnaire des idées reçues, published posthumously in 1913. (The title roughly translates as "Dictionary of Platitudes".) In it, he poked fun at, among other things, nouns that are nearly always accompanied by certain adjectives. Germans, he noted, are always described as "blond", a professor is always "learned", and jealousy is always "unbridled".

In a similar vein, the comedian Robert Klein once noted that President Garfield is nearly always described as "shot by a disappointed office-seeker". Klein went on to claim that if you look up Garfield in the dictionary, it says "See office-seeker, disappointed".

The intelligent design crowd plays the same game with "Darwinists". They never refer to their ideological opponents as scientists or biologists; they are nearly always "Darwinists", or, as Wesley Elsberry has pointed out, "dogmatic Darwinists".

Now look at this otherwise unnoteworthy article by Associate Press religion reporter Rachel Zoll, about the reaction to recent books by atheists Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Notice anything, well, trite about the title? Yes, it's the "militant atheist" platitude. Atheists must never be described as intelligent, thoughtful, friendly, questioning, or thought-provoking. Instead, they must be described as "militant".

From the meaning of "militant", you might expect that Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens are burning down churches, or at least leading protests, stirring up crowds with their fiery rhetoric. You would be disappointed, of course. What Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens have done is write books. Hitchens is more of a curmudgeon than a militant, and Dawkins and Harris are both rather mild-mannered. Nobody is leaving their public events carrying torches and singing the atheist analogue of the Horst Wessel song.

I'm not sure when the juxtaposition of "militant" and "atheist" became a cliché. The earliest citation I've been able to find so far is a 1928 book review of Edward Lucas White's book Why Rome Fell by Elmer Davis. Davis wrote, "Militant atheists ought not to read it; they will be too likely to swallow it all uncritically."

Whatever the origins, the term "militant atheist" eventually became a description to be used whenever the writer wanted to express disapproval about nonbelievers. Madalyn Murray O'Hair was often so described; a 1970 article in Time sneered at her attempt to found a new church. True, O'Hair was, by all accounts, a nasty person. However, when she was killed in 1995, obituaries routinely referred to her as "militant". Her murderer, however, was not so categorized.

When Jerry Falwell died recently, newspaper obituaries rarely described him as "militant", even though the adjective fit him much better than mild-mannered atheists like Harris. Ironically, however, the Associated Press obituary by Sue Lindsey, referred to Falwell's father and grandfather as "militant atheists".

Flaubert would have appreciated the "militant atheist" cliché. In Dictionnaire des idées reçues, he reported the following platitude about atheists: "A nation of atheists could not survive." Sadly, that cliché is still prevalent today among the morons of the Religious Right.

Added June 6 2007: over at Pharyngula, commenter Jurjen S., whose command of history is evidently better than mine, tells me about the League of Militant Atheists, an anti-religious group in the Soviet Union from 1925-1947. Probably this is the source of the term "militant atheist"; indeed, many of the 1920's citations for this phrase discuss actions in the Soviet Union.

Added January 4 2011
Google's n-gram viewer

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=militant+theist%2Cmilitant+atheist&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

has now revealed some earlier uses of the term: the earliest I have found is from Progress: a monthly magazine of advanced thought, Volume 6 edited by George William Foote, in 1886. On page 466 he writes "He was not only an Atheist, but a militant Atheist..." Perhaps this is the earliest usage of the term. But as the google n-gram viewer indicates, the term really took off in the 1920's, with the rise of the "League of Militant Atheists" in the former Soviet Union.

Oddly enough, the term "militant theist" gets no citations at all.

Creationist Crackpots Create Canadian Museum

If there are any Recursivity readers from Alberta, I'd like to hear about their impressions of this new creationist museum that recently opened near Calgary.

Darwinism = Fascism?

You know the intelligent design advocates are losing the game when they have to refer to Darwinists as fascists.

They've been playing this silly game for a while now, and Wesley Elsberry has been collecting these comparisons; see here and this article by Elsberry and Perakh.

Here's the most recent example of this kind of over-the-top rhetoric. Local ignoramus Denyse O'Leary calls Darwinists "brownshirts". With an epithet that strong, you might expect something really awful. Perhaps Larry Moran has been beating up ID advocates in the streets of Toronto? Setting fire to their homes and businesses?

No, the offense in question was that someone in Toronto put up posters about the BBC documentary A War on Science, Evolution vs. Intelligent Design showing at the local theatre, and happened to put a few in a location that Denyse didn't like. How... awful. Why, that's just the same as the Nazi brownshirts!

Of course, O'Leary offers no evidence at all that it was "Darwinists" that carried this dastardly deed. I'd be willing to bet it was someone who works for the theatre.

But maybe I should be kinder towards poor Denyse. In the comments to her article, she reveals that she didn't know the origin of the term "brownshirt" and suggests "blackshirt" instead. What a command of history Denyse has!

That's Denyse, the deep thinker and charitable Christian, for you.

Theist Crackpottery Invades CACM

Communications of the ACM (CACM) used to be an interesting publication. Back when I was a teenager, I remember reading articles such as Ritchie & Thompson's on UNIX, and Aho & Corasick's on string matching using automata. Later, CACM published breakthroughs like RSA, and the Turing award lecture of Kenneth Iverson.

Now, however, I barely find CACM worth reading. True, occasionally the "Inside Risks" column has something interesting to say, but most of the articles seem to be about software systems. For example, the April 2007 issue has articles entitled "Consumer Support Systems", "Designing Data-Intensive Web Applications for Content Accessibility Using Web Marts", and "Managing Risk in Offshore Systems Development". Long gone are the days when one could actually find an algorithm or a proof in CACM.

However, the April 2007 issue did carry one item of interest: a long, rambling, and incoherent letter to the editor from one Tim Croy of Houston, Texas, entitled "Stop Chasing the AI Illusion".

Croy starts by praising the Turing award lecture of Peter Naur, an embarrassingly cranky piece of work. Although Naur won his award for "fundamental contributions to programming language design and the definition of Algol 60, to compiler design, and to the art and practice of computer programming", he chose instead to talk about artificial intelligence (AI) and its perceived inadequacies. Naur has been apparently peddling these ideas for some time, but hasn't been able to get them published in a reputable venue, so he put them in his Turing award lecture.

Next, Croy goes on to say that AI "is based on an article of faith (held by atheistic materialists) that the human person is merely a highly evolved biological machine it is theoretically possible to replicate as an electromechanical machine, or computer". (Note the terminology shared with intelligent design crackpots.) I don't see why this is "an article of faith"; I see it as a working hypothesis that seems to be widely supported by our current knowledge of neuroscience, physics, and computer science.

Croy then goes on to claim that dropping a pencil is proof of the existence of God. (I kid you not.) Here's what he says:
"We have discovered the `what' and the `how' (description) but not the `why' (cause). Forgetting this distinction, when someone asks why the pencil falls to the table, we mistakenly answer `gravity'. In the realm of description (physical science) the experiment is a demonstration and confirmation (proof) of the theories of motion and gravity. But in the realm of causes it is a proof for the existence of God."

Wow.

Croy concludes that "Naur also aimed much-needed light on the dishonesty, not to say totalitarianism, of the American academic-scientific establishment."

Whenever you hear anyone raving about the "dishonesty" and "totalitarianism" of the "scientific establishment", better get out your crackpot-o-meter. "Dishonesty" here appears to mean "they refuse to publish drivel in their journal".

CACM has really jumped the shark with the publication of this letter.

Towards a Canadian Republic

I'm an American citizen who has lived in Canada for nearly 17 years. People often ask me, why haven't I adopted Canadian citizenship? After all, it's now possible to hold dual citizenship; both my kids, for example, are dual citizens of the USA and Canada.

My answer has always been the same: I'll seriously consider becoming a citizen when Canada removes one citizenship requirement: that I swear allegiance to "Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, her Heirs and Successors".

As an American who is proud of the republican tradition (small "r" in "republican", please), the citizenship requirement that one swear allegiance to a person seems unappealingly feudal to me. Paul McCartney famously observed that the current Queen is a pretty nice girl, but that doesn't mean I want to swear allegiance to her. As for her heirs, Prince Charles seems like a sanctimonious git, and he'd be one of the last people I'd swear allegiance to. And who knows what further heirs might be like?

Now a Toronto lawyer, Charles Roach, has brought a class action suit against the requirement. This press release argues that "the government should not force people to swear to things they don’t believe in to gain citizenship".

I entirely agree, although I don't know how strong his legal argument is. Canada's Attorney General, though, is not convinced, and apparently is trying to have the complaint dismissed on the grounds that it is "frivolous".

Canada should follow the lead of Australia and remove this archaic and childish requirement.

Canadian Libel Law Needs Revision

I've written before about how Canadian libel law stifles open and robust public debate on the issues. Canadian politicians such as Tony Clement, Jacques Parizeau, Lucien Bouchard, and Brian Mulroney have all engaged in reprehensible libel suits meant to stifle criticism and investigation of their activities.

Now there's yet another disgraceful example. Wayne Crookes, a Vancouver businessman and former Green party organizer, is apparently suing Wikipedia, Google, and openpolitics.ca for libel for articles about him.

In the US, such a suit would have little chance of success because of the "public figure" exception. Crookes is clearly a public figure and the public is not served by attempting to censor the discussion about his record.

For more about Canadian libel law, read Kimberley Noble's Bound and Gagged.

Why Respect Religion?

The latest issue of Canadian Humanist News has this quote from American journalist H. L. Mencken:

"The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected. Its evil effects must be plain enough to everyone."

Mencken's warning seems appropriate when we read this utterly ridiculous opinion piece by Cardinal George Pell of the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, Australia.

Pell claims that global warming is "nonsense" purveyed by "zealots" who paint "extreme scenarios to frighten us". Pell knows that global warming is nonsense, because "January also was unusually cool".

But the worst is yet to come. In arguing against human causation for global warming, Pell states, "We know that enormous climate changes have occurred in world history, e.g. the Ice Ages and Noah’s flood, where human causation could only be negligible."

That's right. Cardinal Pell thinks that Noah's flood was an actual, historical event.

Can someone explain to me why this kind of moronic religious commentary deserves any respect at all?

If Fascism Comes to North America, High School Principals Will be Leading the Way

There are good high school principals. I remember one I had that was willing to break the rules and allow me to enroll in a high school chemistry class even though I was rather young.

But many high school principals seem to be fascists-in-training. All over North America, high school principals are abrogating the right of students to speak their minds, even out of school.

By now, most people have heard about the "bong hits 4 Jesus" case. That case, which is currently before the US Supreme Court, high school student Joseph Frederick unfurled a nonsenical banner with the message "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" while the Olympic torch passed through his town. His principal, Deborah Morse, confiscated the banner and suspended him. The outcome of that case is still pending, but we can depend on authoritarians like Scalia to side with the principal.

In another case, Bloomington, Minnesota Principal Steve Hill confiscated a student's Blackberry pager and erased photographs he had taken after a protest at the school. Ironically, the name of the high school is Thomas Jefferson High School.

Principals don't always win, however. In another case, the Indiana Court of Appeals has ruled that a student cannot be ruled a juvenile delinquent for criticizing her principal, using 4-letter words, in an online forum. Judge Patricia Riley found that the student's speech was protected by the Indiana Constitution.

Principals clearly have a lot of authority, and they can and should wield that authority inside the school in a responsible fashion. Students have the right to political speech, and what students do outside the school is their own business. Instead of being so thin-skinned, principals should use these kinds of events to teach the students a thing or two about the importance of free speech in an open society. By doing so, they would earn the respect of their students far more than any respect gained from the usual two-bit authoritarian posturing.

The Discovery Institute Lies Again

That fountain of lies, the Discovery Institute, has produced yet another lie.

In an opinion piece published in today's Dallas Morning News, John West and Bruce Chapman claim that comparing intelligent design proponents to faith healers or Holocaust deniers is absurd because "Faith healers and Holocaust deniers are not on the faculties of reputable universities. Scientists who support intelligent design are."

Well, Messrs. West and Chapman, welcome to my university, the University of Waterloo, which is consistently rated as the number 1 or number 2 comprehensive university in Canada. We have, on our faculty, Clifford Blake, a professor who claims that he has a supernatural gift to heal people. I wrote about his claims in three blog posts: Number 1, Number 2, and Number 3.

Messrs. West and Chapman also must think that Northwestern University is not reputable. Northwestern has a man named Arthur Butz on their faculty. Butz is the author of The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, a book claiming that the Holocaust is a hoax.

So the Discovery Institute lies again. Big surprise.

Here's what Messrs. West and Chapman should have said: "Like faith healers and Holocaust deniers, supporters of intelligent design can be found at many reputable universities. Their claims, however, say more about a dogmatic adherence to religion or nationalism than they do about a dispassionate search for the truth."

Rick Warren, Clueless Hypocrite

Newsweek has printed a debate between minister Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, and atheist Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith. Although I don't agree with Harris on everything, he certainly gets the better of nearly every exchange. Warren, on the other hand, comes off as a clueless hypocrite. Here are few excepts from their exchange, which, thanks to Newsweek's unpleasant site design, requires one to manually page through 10 pages of text.

Harris points out, "There is so much about us that is not in the Bible. Every specific science from cosmology to psychology to economics has surpassed and superseded what the Bible tells us is true about our world." Warren has no response.

Warren claims, "I believe [the Bible is] inerrant in what it claims to be." What? Has he never read any lists of contradictions to be found in the Bible?

In response to Harris's description of natural selection, Warren asks, "Who's doing the selecting?", proving he has no understanding of evolution. When Harris answers, "The environment. You don't have to invoke an intelligent designer to explain the complexity we see", Warren comes up with this non sequitur: "Sam makes all kinds of assertions based on his presuppositions."

Warren then describes his reason for believing that God answers his prayers: "One of the great evidences of God is answered prayer. I have a friend, a Canadian friend, who has an immigration issue. He's an intern at this church, and so I said, "God, I need you to help me with this," as I went out for my evening walk. As I was walking I met a woman. She said, "I'm an immigration attorney; I'd be happy to take this case." Now, if that happened once in my life I'd say, "That is a coincidence." If it happened tens of thousands of times, that is not a coincidence."

This is the sort of post hoc, propter hoc reasoning that leads people astray in so many fields, from reason to medicine. I never pray, and yet beneficial coincidences happen to me, too. Warren seems to have this childish conception of his god as cosmic favor-granter, routinely rearranging the universe for his personal benefit.

About the virgin birth of Jesus, Harris says "I consider it such a low-probability event that I—" and Warren cuts him off, saying, "A low probability? When there are 96 percent believers in the world? So is everybody else an idiot?"

Warren seems to think the probability of an event is related to the number of people who believe in it. Then we get this exchange:


HARRIS: It is quite possible for most people to be wrong—as are most Americans who think that evolution didn't occur.

WARREN: That's an arrogant statement.


But later we get this:


Interviewer: Rick, let's be blunt. Is Sam's soul in jeopardy, in your view, because he has rejected Jesus?

WARREN: The politically incorrect answer is yes.

HARRIS: Is that the honest answer?

WARREN: The truth is, religion is mutually exclusive.


So in other words, according to Warren, it's "arrogant" when Harris says it's "possible" most people could be wrong about religion. But Warren admits that he thinks (not it's "possible", it definitely is the case) that everyone who doesn't believe in Jesus has "their soul in jeopardy".

Now I've justified my charge that Warren is a hypocrite. How about clueless? Well, consider this exchange:


WARREN: ... I say, "God likes order," and the more we understand ecology, the more we understand how sensitive that order is.

HARRIS: Then God also likes smallpox and tuberculosis.

WARREN: I would attribute a lot of the sins in the world to myself.

HARRIS: Are you responsible for smallpox?

WARREN: I am responsible to do something about it.


Here Harris is clearly asking, is Warren the source, the cause of smallpox? But Warren misunderstands, choosing a different meaning of "responsible". Deep inside, he probably doesn't want to deal with the implications, which is that the god he worships as all-good is also the source of this scourge.

Rick Warren, clueless hypocrite.

An Incompetent Plagiarist

I edit a mathematics journal, the Journal of Integer Sequences (JIS). It's a completely free online journal, where submission, refereeing, and publication are all done electronically.

Recently I got a submission, and, as usual, I sent it to a referee for his opinion. I was a little surprised to get the following response (redacted so as not to display any names):


Dear Professor Shallit:

I downloaded and read [the submission] by [Mr X]. Also in JIS, there is another article by the same name, which I wrote in 2000... Unfortunately, [Mr. X] is a plagiarist. He literally copied and pasted my article. If you peruse the two articles yourself, you will see what I mean. His is mostly a verbatim copy of mine. The only instances where [Mr. X] deviates from my article are when he adds his own results. His results have two qualities: one, they are trivial cases of the main result from my paper (which was a simple result in its own right), and two, they are written awkwardly, as though by somebody who does not know how write about mathematics. This is by far the most ridiculous "submission" to a journal I have ever come across. I am speechless. If you wish, I can still write a formal referee's report; please let me know.

All the Best,

[The Referee]

PS This is priceless. Here's a guy who plagiarizes an article, and then submits it to the very same journal from which he plagiarized the article in the first place!


I don't think I need to add anything more.

Canadian Preachers Rake In the Cash from Gullible Flock

From the Toronto Star, one of the few newspapers in Canada that still does some investigative reporting, comes this appalling story about a family of Pentecostal preachers that have been apparently raking in tons of cash from their poor parishioners.

According to the Star, Paul Melnichuk and his sons Tim and Tom "lead lavish lives in contrast to the mainly working-class black families that make up the bulk of the church."

"Between them, the pastors have amassed a real estate fortune worth about $12 million. Each owns a multi-million-dollar country estate north of Toronto (Tim's is worth as much as $5.5 million), they share a Florida vacation villa, and the pastors and their wives drive luxurious cars – among them a Porsche Cayenne SUV, a Lexus RX 330 SUV and a Mercedes-Benz CLK 320 convertible."

Melnichuk's Prayer Palace claims to fund charities, but "a continuing Star investigation into Canadian charities has found the church devotes little money to charitable work. In fact, the church's most recent financial statements show that only $9,443 was spent on 'benevolent and charity' activities in 2005. The church's annual 'missions' fluctuate between $500 and $36,704 in the past few years."

The Star deserves a lot of praise for investigating these creeps. But the parishioners don't seem to care: a follow-up article reveals that the reporters who blew the whistle were called "wicked" by congregants. But these letters from Star readers show not everyone is fooled.