Kurt Greenbaum is the "director of social media" at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Last Friday, he posted a topic for discussion, What's the Craziest Thing You've Ever Eaten?
One not-particularly-clever commenter wrote in the answer, "pussy", and Greenbaum's authoritarian streak took over. How dare anyone refer to oral sex in his space! How shocking! How vulgar!
Greenbaum then did what every good little fascist-in-training would do: he tattletaled on the commenter to his employer:
A few minutes later, the same guy posted the same single-word comment again. I deleted it, but noticed in the WordPress e-mail that his comment had come from an IP address at a local school. So I called the school. They were happy to have me forward the e-mail, though I wasn’t sure what they’d be able to do with the meager information it included.
About six hours later, I heard from the school’s headmaster. The school’s IT director took a shine to the challenge. Long story short: Using the time-frame of the comments, our website location and the IP addresses in the WordPress e-mail, he tracked it back to a specific computer. The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot.
Not surprisingly, the reaction to Greenbaum's misconduct was negative. What to do? Why, shut off the comments, of course!
Comments are still open on here, in case you want to pile on.
Update: the Post-Dispatch deleted my comment, although it contained no profanity - just criticism. Big surprise.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Sarah Palin: Pathological Liar
Huffington Post demonstrates that Sarah Palin's pathological liar tendencies continue in her new book.
Wow, what a surprise.
I guess now she'll have to threaten them with a lawsuit, too.
Meanwhile, you can watch this video from two clueless Palin supporters.
Wow, what a surprise.
I guess now she'll have to threaten them with a lawsuit, too.
Meanwhile, you can watch this video from two clueless Palin supporters.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Paper Rebutting Dembski Finally Out
Back on my previous sabbatical, in 2001-2, I spent a couple of months reading WIlliam Dembski's book, No Free Lunch, which he was kind enough to send me. I chose to do that for a number of reasons: first, I was interested to see if his claims about a mathematical refutation of Darwinism were true; second, a sabbatical is the time to tackle some unusual project you don't usually have time for; and third, I have an interest in pseudoscience and pseudomathematics. Reading it led to some fun discussions with Wesley Elsberry and we eventually produced a long, 54-page refutation of many of Dembski's claims.
But then, what to do with it? I had heard Dembski and Ruse were co-editing a voume, so I briefly entertained the idea of submitting it for inclusion there. But I was worried Dembski would refuse because the paper was sharply critical of his work, and after talking to Ruse I had second thoughts and decided to look for another venue. We chose a journal whose subject matter included biology and philosophy, but the paper was eventually rejected -- not because of the quality of the paper, but because the referees felt that spending 54 pages to debunk what they perceived as anti-evolution crackpottery was not a good use of their journal's space.
Finally, we were invited to submit the paper to a special issue of the journal Synthese, and we did so. The paper went through multiple rounds of refereeing, with the referees suggesting that more and more be cut. Now that it has finally appeared, it is down to a measly 34 pages. Luckily the long version is still available online.
If you can't read the Synthese version because you don't have a subscription, just write me and I'll be happy to send you a copy.
This is the longest interval I've ever had between finishing a paper (2002) and the time it appeared (2009). And it's likely to be my only paper in a philosophy journal. I predict that the intelligent design community will continue to ignore all the criticisms (which have been available to them for years) and continue to pretend that CSI is actually a coherently-defined entity, and that the "law of conservation of information" holds. I predict lots of breast-beating, and excuses for not addressing our criticisms, but no response that deals forthrightly with all the errors we found in Dembski's work.
But then, what to do with it? I had heard Dembski and Ruse were co-editing a voume, so I briefly entertained the idea of submitting it for inclusion there. But I was worried Dembski would refuse because the paper was sharply critical of his work, and after talking to Ruse I had second thoughts and decided to look for another venue. We chose a journal whose subject matter included biology and philosophy, but the paper was eventually rejected -- not because of the quality of the paper, but because the referees felt that spending 54 pages to debunk what they perceived as anti-evolution crackpottery was not a good use of their journal's space.
Finally, we were invited to submit the paper to a special issue of the journal Synthese, and we did so. The paper went through multiple rounds of refereeing, with the referees suggesting that more and more be cut. Now that it has finally appeared, it is down to a measly 34 pages. Luckily the long version is still available online.
If you can't read the Synthese version because you don't have a subscription, just write me and I'll be happy to send you a copy.
This is the longest interval I've ever had between finishing a paper (2002) and the time it appeared (2009). And it's likely to be my only paper in a philosophy journal. I predict that the intelligent design community will continue to ignore all the criticisms (which have been available to them for years) and continue to pretend that CSI is actually a coherently-defined entity, and that the "law of conservation of information" holds. I predict lots of breast-beating, and excuses for not addressing our criticisms, but no response that deals forthrightly with all the errors we found in Dembski's work.
Creationists Handing Out Origin of Species at MIT
As you probably know, creationist moron Ray Comfort has created a new version of Darwin's Origin of Species with his own introduction, and his minions are now handing them out at college campuses in the US. Above is a picture taken 15 minutes ago at MIT, showing a creationist happily distributing this bizarre book.
While these morons are distributing Ray Comfort's sleaze, MIT researchers are getting ready for a symposium on the evolution of the eye on November 20.
Ironic, isn't it?
New Blue Pigment Discovered
Here's an interesting article about an apparently new blue pigment discovered serendipitously by chemists at Oregon State. The color is reported to arise from Mn3+ "introduced into the trigonal bipyramidal sites of metal oxides". The new pigment is said to be better than alternatives such as cobalt blue, ultramarine, Prussian blue, and azurite, because it is stable and non-toxic.
I'm a little skeptical that it's commercially viable, since the examples the chemists have produced so far are based on compounds using the rare metals yttrium, indium, lutetium, and gallium.
Perhaps it is just a coincidence, but there is exactly one known mineral that crystallizes in the trigonal bipyramidal form, and it is also known for its blue color: benitoite (BaTiSi3O9).
I'm a little skeptical that it's commercially viable, since the examples the chemists have produced so far are based on compounds using the rare metals yttrium, indium, lutetium, and gallium.
Perhaps it is just a coincidence, but there is exactly one known mineral that crystallizes in the trigonal bipyramidal form, and it is also known for its blue color: benitoite (BaTiSi3O9).
Monday, November 16, 2009
Stupid Creationist Letter Award for November
A creationist has responded to this post about the dirty rhetorical tricks of creationists, as follows:
There is really no scientific evidence that proves evolution happened. No animal has developed extra chromosomes that we have recorded and none of the findings of supposedly ancestors have any DNA evidence. Evidence does not hold up in court.
Darwin had a theory, based on observation. Fine.
Creationists have a theory based on the Bible.
Intelligent design mongers are clueless and belive in Star Trek.
No one knows where we come from, but the fact that Darwinism was used as en excuse to justify fascists regimes is a fact. They refer to Darwin as their substitute for God all the time in their literature, comparing fascism to "Survival of the Fittest. Why? He is dead, he can't defend himself.
Let me explain where they are wrong. Nature doesn't work by "survival of the fittest". "Survival of the species" trumps that. Observe bees, bacteria, herds of animals, even predators like lions depend on socialization for survival. Where is the "survival of the fittest?". The economists, in their greedy ways twist science to justify a consumerist society in which a few have wealth and the rest suffer.
It really is remarkable for its stupidity, ignorance, and arrogance, all rolled up into one. Isn't it?
There is really no scientific evidence that proves evolution happened. No animal has developed extra chromosomes that we have recorded and none of the findings of supposedly ancestors have any DNA evidence. Evidence does not hold up in court.
Darwin had a theory, based on observation. Fine.
Creationists have a theory based on the Bible.
Intelligent design mongers are clueless and belive in Star Trek.
No one knows where we come from, but the fact that Darwinism was used as en excuse to justify fascists regimes is a fact. They refer to Darwin as their substitute for God all the time in their literature, comparing fascism to "Survival of the Fittest. Why? He is dead, he can't defend himself.
Let me explain where they are wrong. Nature doesn't work by "survival of the fittest". "Survival of the species" trumps that. Observe bees, bacteria, herds of animals, even predators like lions depend on socialization for survival. Where is the "survival of the fittest?". The economists, in their greedy ways twist science to justify a consumerist society in which a few have wealth and the rest suffer.
It really is remarkable for its stupidity, ignorance, and arrogance, all rolled up into one. Isn't it?
Boston's Monument to Foolishness
This prominent building, in Boston's downtown, is probably the city's largest monument to foolishness. Although its supporters make extravagant health claims, these are not supported by evidence. Nevertheless, the group's political power has helped pass laws in dozens of states to allow it to avoid prosecution.
What building is it?
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Phony Calls for "Civility"
You know a call for "more civility" is completely phony when the person who issues it only cites examples from one side of the debate.
That's the case with this recent opinion piece by Casey Luskin, spokesman for the Discovery Institute.
Luskin lists three examples of incivility, and all of them are from the pro-science, anti-creationist side. He fails to cite a single example of incivility from a creationist, even though there are many examples to choose from. As Wesley Elsberry has documented, Luskin's friends routinely compare evolutionary biologists to Nazis, communists, the Taliban, and Satan. Luskin himself has labeled materialists an "ominous force" that will "consume" people. William Dembski proudly sponsored an animation that used fart noises to make fun of Judge Jones, who decided the Kitzmiller v. Dover case.
No one is going to be fooled by this dishonest posturing.
That's the case with this recent opinion piece by Casey Luskin, spokesman for the Discovery Institute.
Luskin lists three examples of incivility, and all of them are from the pro-science, anti-creationist side. He fails to cite a single example of incivility from a creationist, even though there are many examples to choose from. As Wesley Elsberry has documented, Luskin's friends routinely compare evolutionary biologists to Nazis, communists, the Taliban, and Satan. Luskin himself has labeled materialists an "ominous force" that will "consume" people. William Dembski proudly sponsored an animation that used fart noises to make fun of Judge Jones, who decided the Kitzmiller v. Dover case.
No one is going to be fooled by this dishonest posturing.
Authoritarian High School Principal of the Month
Our nomination for authoritarian high school principal of the month goes to Thomas Murray, principal of Danvers High School in Danvers, Massachusetts, who has chosen to ban the word "meep" from the campus.
Students reportedly had been using the nonsense word to disrupt classes. But isn't disrupting class already an offense at the school? Why would a word need to be banned, too?
Instead of using this opportunity to talk about free speech and preserving a good learning environment, the principal chose a heavy-handed and authoritarian approach to the problem. Shame on him.
Students reportedly had been using the nonsense word to disrupt classes. But isn't disrupting class already an offense at the school? Why would a word need to be banned, too?
Instead of using this opportunity to talk about free speech and preserving a good learning environment, the principal chose a heavy-handed and authoritarian approach to the problem. Shame on him.
NPR Examines Consciousness
An NPR series called "The Really Big Questions" has recently examined the question, "What Can the Animal Mind Tell Us About Human Consciousness?"
The people they interviewed included neuroscientist Christof Koch, ethologist Colin Allen, primatologist Frans de Waal, and philosopher Colin McGinn. Now, who do you suppose had the most moronic things to say? Take a guess.
No surprise, it was the philosopher. Whenever scientific subjects are discussed, you can count on some philosopher to chime in with something really stupid. McGinn made all sorts of dubious unsupported claims, like "There are very strong reasons to think that reductionism is not true". He said, "I think there are problems of principle. In the very project you're trying to understand how the phenomenological might arise from the organic, because we're trying to bring together two different conceptual schemes, two different types of knowledge we have of the world, knowledge which we derive from first person awareness of our own consciousness and then the knowledge we have of the physical world, and these two types of knowledge simply don't fit together." Luckily Christof Koch was there to answer some of this kind of fuzzy thinking.
Unfortunately, the interviewer, Lynn Neary, didn't help things out. Although it should be obvious to anyone who thinks about it for even a few minutes that what we call "consciousness" is multifaceted, involving things like memory, planning, anticipation, modelling of the environment, and self-awareness, it took nearly half an hour before these ideas were brought out explicitly, and even after that, Neary persisted in conflating them. She seemed to want to have some very simple definition of what consciousness is before discussing it. Is it too much to ask that interviewers do a little homework before beginning their job?
If there's any consolation, at least they didn't interview Mario Beauregard.
The people they interviewed included neuroscientist Christof Koch, ethologist Colin Allen, primatologist Frans de Waal, and philosopher Colin McGinn. Now, who do you suppose had the most moronic things to say? Take a guess.
No surprise, it was the philosopher. Whenever scientific subjects are discussed, you can count on some philosopher to chime in with something really stupid. McGinn made all sorts of dubious unsupported claims, like "There are very strong reasons to think that reductionism is not true". He said, "I think there are problems of principle. In the very project you're trying to understand how the phenomenological might arise from the organic, because we're trying to bring together two different conceptual schemes, two different types of knowledge we have of the world, knowledge which we derive from first person awareness of our own consciousness and then the knowledge we have of the physical world, and these two types of knowledge simply don't fit together." Luckily Christof Koch was there to answer some of this kind of fuzzy thinking.
Unfortunately, the interviewer, Lynn Neary, didn't help things out. Although it should be obvious to anyone who thinks about it for even a few minutes that what we call "consciousness" is multifaceted, involving things like memory, planning, anticipation, modelling of the environment, and self-awareness, it took nearly half an hour before these ideas were brought out explicitly, and even after that, Neary persisted in conflating them. She seemed to want to have some very simple definition of what consciousness is before discussing it. Is it too much to ask that interviewers do a little homework before beginning their job?
If there's any consolation, at least they didn't interview Mario Beauregard.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Dover Trial Reunion
I attended the reunion for the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial over the weekend, which was held at Lauri Lebo's house in York Haven, PA. Lauri was a reporter for the York Daily Record at that time, and wrote the most intimate account of the trial in her book, The Devil in Dover. It is a terrific book, funny and sad at the same time, and definitely worth reading.
(As you may know, I played an extremely small role in this historic event - I had been asked to testify as a rebuttal witness against William Dembski. But Dembski withdrew from the trial, so my testimony was never needed.)
Lauri Lebo lives with the folk-rock-country musician Jefferson Pepper in two houses in rural Pennsylvania. I stayed in the famous beer can house, which houses the world's largest collection of beer cans. (I stayed in the German room, in case you want to know.)
I got to meet some of the important figures of the trial for the first time, including Vic Walczak of the ACLU, Richard Katskee of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and some of the plaintiffs, including Bryan Rehm, Cynthia Sneath, and Steven Stough. (There were others, but I'm bad with names.) And I got to see old friends, including the NCSE's Genie Scott, superstar biologist Ken Miller, and Behe-destroying lawyer Eric Rothschild.
Above: me with Genie Scott and some beer cans.
Above: Ken Miller.
In the evening there was a concert at the very cool Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg, PA. (If you are ever in the area, this is definitely a place to visit. I picked up three books about snakes for my youngest son, who is a snake enthusiast, and two books about intelligent design for my anti-evolution & pseudoscience collection -- all at very reasonable prices.)
Above: ironic sign in the bookstore.
The concert featured a brief reading by Genie Scott, some terrific music by Jefferson Pepper and the Varmints of Heaven, a lecture by Kenneth Miller, and evolutionary rap by Baba Brinkman.
Above: Baba Brinkman and Eric Rothschild.
Above: rockin' out with Jefferson Pepper and the band. At right, on rhythm guitar, is York Daily Record columnist Mike Argento, who wrote some of the funniest newspaper columns about the Dover trial; he also has a blog.
Above: Baba Brinkman.
All-in-all, it was a fun weekend. Thanks to Lauri, Jeff, and the others who made it possible.
(As you may know, I played an extremely small role in this historic event - I had been asked to testify as a rebuttal witness against William Dembski. But Dembski withdrew from the trial, so my testimony was never needed.)
Lauri Lebo lives with the folk-rock-country musician Jefferson Pepper in two houses in rural Pennsylvania. I stayed in the famous beer can house, which houses the world's largest collection of beer cans. (I stayed in the German room, in case you want to know.)
I got to meet some of the important figures of the trial for the first time, including Vic Walczak of the ACLU, Richard Katskee of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and some of the plaintiffs, including Bryan Rehm, Cynthia Sneath, and Steven Stough. (There were others, but I'm bad with names.) And I got to see old friends, including the NCSE's Genie Scott, superstar biologist Ken Miller, and Behe-destroying lawyer Eric Rothschild.
Above: me with Genie Scott and some beer cans.
Above: Ken Miller.
In the evening there was a concert at the very cool Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg, PA. (If you are ever in the area, this is definitely a place to visit. I picked up three books about snakes for my youngest son, who is a snake enthusiast, and two books about intelligent design for my anti-evolution & pseudoscience collection -- all at very reasonable prices.)
Above: ironic sign in the bookstore.
The concert featured a brief reading by Genie Scott, some terrific music by Jefferson Pepper and the Varmints of Heaven, a lecture by Kenneth Miller, and evolutionary rap by Baba Brinkman.
Above: Baba Brinkman and Eric Rothschild.
Above: rockin' out with Jefferson Pepper and the band. At right, on rhythm guitar, is York Daily Record columnist Mike Argento, who wrote some of the funniest newspaper columns about the Dover trial; he also has a blog.
Above: Baba Brinkman.
All-in-all, it was a fun weekend. Thanks to Lauri, Jeff, and the others who made it possible.
Friday, November 06, 2009
Journal Editor in Libel Suit
According to this article in the Press-Gazette, Mohamed El Naschie, former editor of the journal Chaos, Solitons, and Fractals is suing Nature because of a November 2008 article. That article, written by Quirin Schiermeier, raised the issue of the very large number of papers authored by El Naschie and published in that journal CSF, and the quality of those papers.
I don't think El Naschie has a case, but who knows in Britain, where libel laws are insane?
I don't think El Naschie has a case, but who knows in Britain, where libel laws are insane?
Monday, November 02, 2009
Misunderstood Mathematics
One of my long-term book projects is about mathematical theorems that give people fits. A good example is Cantor's theorem that the real numbers are uncountable. The proof is simple enough that you can explain it to a 10-year-old, but some adults simply don't get it, no matter how many times it is explained.
For example, see this thread over at Mark Chu-Carroll's blog. It just goes on and on, with one poster ("Vorlath") babbling away, but making no progress at all in comprehending this very simple proof.
I'd be interested in understanding the psychological mechanisms behind this kind of misunderstanding. It reminds me of the difficulty that some religious people appear to have in understanding evolution - you just go 'round and 'round with them, but they make no progress. Is it willful? That is, do they secretly know they are talking nonsense, but can't accept it because of their preconceptions? Or are they truly baffled?
For example, see this thread over at Mark Chu-Carroll's blog. It just goes on and on, with one poster ("Vorlath") babbling away, but making no progress at all in comprehending this very simple proof.
I'd be interested in understanding the psychological mechanisms behind this kind of misunderstanding. It reminds me of the difficulty that some religious people appear to have in understanding evolution - you just go 'round and 'round with them, but they make no progress. Is it willful? That is, do they secretly know they are talking nonsense, but can't accept it because of their preconceptions? Or are they truly baffled?
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Very Funny Story By Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker writer and author of Blink and The Tipping Point recounts a very funny story about a wedding song gone completely wrong in an episode of "The Moth Radio Hour".
To listen, go here, and click on the arrow that appears immediately under "The Moth Radio Hour 4". The story starts at 35:10 -- but the other two stories are worth listening to, also.
A more direct link is here, but I don't guarantee it will work.
To listen, go here, and click on the arrow that appears immediately under "The Moth Radio Hour 4". The story starts at 35:10 -- but the other two stories are worth listening to, also.
A more direct link is here, but I don't guarantee it will work.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Liveblogging President Obama at MIT
12:13 PM. Woman is singing the national anthem.
12:14 PM I'm in a room in the Stata Center with about 50 others. We didn't get tickets to the event, held in MIT's Kresge Hall, but it is being broadcast here. People are talking about all the Secret Service agents around the campus, some people on roofs. Kids outside Kresge Hall, shouting "Obama!" over and over. Airspace near Logan was closed, with Air Force authorized to use deadly force against aircraft that didn't obey the temporary flight rules.
12:17 PM Stage is empty.
12:31 PM Presidential seal is affixed to podium.
12:42 PM Finally, some action. Susan Hockfield, President of MIT, is introducing Obama, talking about the MIT energy initiative.
12:44 PM Ernest Moniz, head of the MIT Energy Initiative, is speaking. "The President has expanded our energy vision..."
12:46 PM Obama on the stage. Large amount of applause. "Thank you, MIT!" "It's always been a dream of mine to visit the most prestigous school in Cambridge, Massachusetts..." "Students put my motorcade on top of Building 10." "Everybody hands out periodic tables - what's up with that?"
12:48 PM He thanks Eric Lander and Eric Moniz. Also acknowledges Governor Deval Patrick, Lt. Governor Tim Murray, Attorney General Martha Coakley, etc.
12:50 PM He's talking about some of the energy innovations of MITEI: windows that funnel sunlight to solar cells, etc.
"You just get excited being and seeing these young people here at MIT" "It's the legacy of a nation who supported those intrepid few willing to take risks that might fail".
12:54 PM "There will be a debate of how to move from fossil fuels to renewable fuels ... but no question that we must do it."
"Rising energy use imperils the planet." "Nations everywhere are racing to find new ways to produce and distribute energy."
"I want America to be that nation" [to win the race]. Bill we passed in January "makes the largest investment in renewable energy in history".
12:56 PM Initiative by Deval Patrick will allow researchers to test very large wind turbine blades, the size of a football field, as part of the Recovery Act.
12:58 PM Recovery Act, the Stimulus Bill, is responsible for the largest increase in funding of science in history.
12:59 PM Renewable energy will be the profitable kind of energy in America. A bi-partisan issue. We'll have an energy system that is more efficient, cleaner, and independent. Safe nuclear power, sustainable biofuels, wind & solar power. Consensus is growing. Pentagon has declared energy-dependence a security threat.
1:02 PM Climate denier's only purpose is to "defeat or delay the change that is necessary". Pessimism is also a problem.
We can do it. "This is the nation that pushed westward and looked skyward." "This is the nation that has led the world for 2 centuries in the pursuit of discovery."
1:05 PM Speech is over, Obama is shaking hands.
12:14 PM I'm in a room in the Stata Center with about 50 others. We didn't get tickets to the event, held in MIT's Kresge Hall, but it is being broadcast here. People are talking about all the Secret Service agents around the campus, some people on roofs. Kids outside Kresge Hall, shouting "Obama!" over and over. Airspace near Logan was closed, with Air Force authorized to use deadly force against aircraft that didn't obey the temporary flight rules.
12:17 PM Stage is empty.
12:31 PM Presidential seal is affixed to podium.
12:42 PM Finally, some action. Susan Hockfield, President of MIT, is introducing Obama, talking about the MIT energy initiative.
12:44 PM Ernest Moniz, head of the MIT Energy Initiative, is speaking. "The President has expanded our energy vision..."
12:46 PM Obama on the stage. Large amount of applause. "Thank you, MIT!" "It's always been a dream of mine to visit the most prestigous school in Cambridge, Massachusetts..." "Students put my motorcade on top of Building 10." "Everybody hands out periodic tables - what's up with that?"
12:48 PM He thanks Eric Lander and Eric Moniz. Also acknowledges Governor Deval Patrick, Lt. Governor Tim Murray, Attorney General Martha Coakley, etc.
12:50 PM He's talking about some of the energy innovations of MITEI: windows that funnel sunlight to solar cells, etc.
"You just get excited being and seeing these young people here at MIT" "It's the legacy of a nation who supported those intrepid few willing to take risks that might fail".
12:54 PM "There will be a debate of how to move from fossil fuels to renewable fuels ... but no question that we must do it."
"Rising energy use imperils the planet." "Nations everywhere are racing to find new ways to produce and distribute energy."
"I want America to be that nation" [to win the race]. Bill we passed in January "makes the largest investment in renewable energy in history".
12:56 PM Initiative by Deval Patrick will allow researchers to test very large wind turbine blades, the size of a football field, as part of the Recovery Act.
12:58 PM Recovery Act, the Stimulus Bill, is responsible for the largest increase in funding of science in history.
12:59 PM Renewable energy will be the profitable kind of energy in America. A bi-partisan issue. We'll have an energy system that is more efficient, cleaner, and independent. Safe nuclear power, sustainable biofuels, wind & solar power. Consensus is growing. Pentagon has declared energy-dependence a security threat.
1:02 PM Climate denier's only purpose is to "defeat or delay the change that is necessary". Pessimism is also a problem.
We can do it. "This is the nation that pushed westward and looked skyward." "This is the nation that has led the world for 2 centuries in the pursuit of discovery."
1:05 PM Speech is over, Obama is shaking hands.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Roger Penrose is Much Smarter than I Am. But...
Roger Penrose is much smarter than I am. But I think he is completely wrong when he says
In my view the conscious brain does not act according to classical physics. It doesn’t even act according to conventional quantum mechanics. It acts according to a theory we don’t yet have. This is being a bit big-headed, but I think it’s a little bit like William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood. He worked out that it had to circulate, but the veins and arteries just peter out, so how could the blood get through from one to the other? And he said, “Well, it must be tiny little tubes there, and we can’t see them, but they must be there.” Nobody believed it for some time. So I’m still hoping to find something like that—some structure that preserves coherence, because I believe it ought to be there.
We don't have any evidence at all that brains don't follow physical theories.
In my view the conscious brain does not act according to classical physics. It doesn’t even act according to conventional quantum mechanics. It acts according to a theory we don’t yet have. This is being a bit big-headed, but I think it’s a little bit like William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood. He worked out that it had to circulate, but the veins and arteries just peter out, so how could the blood get through from one to the other? And he said, “Well, it must be tiny little tubes there, and we can’t see them, but they must be there.” Nobody believed it for some time. So I’m still hoping to find something like that—some structure that preserves coherence, because I believe it ought to be there.
We don't have any evidence at all that brains don't follow physical theories.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Looking for Graduate Students
My sabbatical will end on July 1 2010, and I'm looking for good graduate students -at either the master's or the PhD level - in computer science who are interested in working on problems in automata theory, formal languages, combinatorics on words, complexity theory, number theory algorithms, or algebraic algorithms, beginning September 2010.
You can see the kinds of things I've been working on lately here.
The University of Waterloo offers excellent financial support for graduate students. You can get information about our School of Computer Science and about the application process for admission to graduate school by clicking on the links.
If you're interested, send me e-mail (which you can find by going to my home page, and tell me what you've done and what you're interested in doing.
You can see the kinds of things I've been working on lately here.
The University of Waterloo offers excellent financial support for graduate students. You can get information about our School of Computer Science and about the application process for admission to graduate school by clicking on the links.
If you're interested, send me e-mail (which you can find by going to my home page, and tell me what you've done and what you're interested in doing.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Why Do Web Page Creators Make It So Hard to Contact Them?
One of my pet peeves is that if you see an error on a web page, and you want to notify someone in charge, it is usually difficult or impossible to do so. As a challenge, try to find the web page where you can report an error in Google Maps. It's not easy.
Here's another example. I recently bought a Canon scanner, and was curious about the technology. So I turned to their web pages, and found this page, which discusses it.
In the middle of the discussion, however, you find this bizarre sentence:
Yes, but I'll change it.
Obviously this was left in from the editing process. But how can you report it? Canon's web page doesn't have a "report error on this page" link, and their on-line form demands you pull down menus to pick a particular product (which isn't really apppropriate). Then, after I went through the whole process of filling out their form, and clicked "send", it reported that there was an error with their server.
I guess Canon is simply not interested in people pointing out silly errors on their pages.
Here's another example. I recently bought a Canon scanner, and was curious about the technology. So I turned to their web pages, and found this page, which discusses it.
In the middle of the discussion, however, you find this bizarre sentence:
Yes, but I'll change it.
Obviously this was left in from the editing process. But how can you report it? Canon's web page doesn't have a "report error on this page" link, and their on-line form demands you pull down menus to pick a particular product (which isn't really apppropriate). Then, after I went through the whole process of filling out their form, and clicked "send", it reported that there was an error with their server.
I guess Canon is simply not interested in people pointing out silly errors on their pages.
I've Never Liked Bill Maher
I've never liked Bill Maher, and I've felt that way ever since I saw a video he did mocking Dan Quayle. Now to me, Dan Quayle exemplifies everything that is wrong about American politics: his frat-boy ignorance, his contempt for learning, his loony religious cult wife, etc., etc. So I was certainly prepared to like the video and laugh at Quayle. Instead, the treatment was so sneering, and so insulting, that I was left with a bad taste in my mouth and I was sorry I had wasted my time.
Sure, Maher is funny sometimes. But a lot of the time he is just ignorant. And now Orac has been showing us in detail that Maher is a raving lunatic when it comes to medical issues. How he was ever given the Richard Dawkins Award is beyond me.
Sure, Maher is funny sometimes. But a lot of the time he is just ignorant. And now Orac has been showing us in detail that Maher is a raving lunatic when it comes to medical issues. How he was ever given the Richard Dawkins Award is beyond me.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Big Surprise
Michele Bachmann, intelligent design advocate, is a pathological liar. Who would have guessed?
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
No, Really! Stalin Was Really a Nice Guy!
I suppose we should be grateful that a Russian court has ruled against a descendant of Joseph Stalin in a suit brought by Stalin's grandson against Novaya Gazeta because the paper described Stalin as a "bloodthirsty cannibal".
What gets me is that apparently you can sue under Russian law for defamation against a dead person. That's a law that's ripe for abuse.
If this trend is adopted elsewhere, we can expect see a lawsuit brought by Alessandra Mussolini to restore the reputation of her grandfather, Benito; a lawsuit brought by Michael Reagan against Eric Alterman for calling his adopted father, Ronald Reagan, a "moron" and a "pathological liar"; and a lawsuit brought by the Catholic Church against Christopher Hitchens for his book about Mother Teresa, The Missionary Position.
What gets me is that apparently you can sue under Russian law for defamation against a dead person. That's a law that's ripe for abuse.
If this trend is adopted elsewhere, we can expect see a lawsuit brought by Alessandra Mussolini to restore the reputation of her grandfather, Benito; a lawsuit brought by Michael Reagan against Eric Alterman for calling his adopted father, Ronald Reagan, a "moron" and a "pathological liar"; and a lawsuit brought by the Catholic Church against Christopher Hitchens for his book about Mother Teresa, The Missionary Position.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Attention Francophones
If you are Francophone, you can read Jean-Paul Allouche's brief discussion of my paper on optimal coin systems here.
William Lobdell - Losing My Religion
William Lobdell is an American journalist. He rediscovered religion at age 29, became a "fully developed Christian", and got a job covering religion for the Los Angeles Times. As a reporter, he was exposed to the many misdeeds of organized religion, and in covering the religion beat, he eventually lost his religion - and wrote a book about it, called Losing My Religion (HarperCollins, 2009).
I wanted to like the book - but I didn't. Here's why.
1. The writing is clunky. Just because you're a journalist doesn't mean you can write a full-length book; the two crafts are very different. Reporters tend to write short, punchy sentences, and most don't have the time, inclination, or mandate to get deep into details. And reporters are always writing about other people, which means that when it comes time for self-reflection, they're often at a loss. The result is often self-indulgent (think of Anna Quindlen).
Here's an example:
So I began to pray. I asked God for a religion-writing job at the Los Angeles Times. I prayed for it in the morning, at night, and in between. On my weekly runs, I asked again. So did Hugh. We prayed and prayed and ran and ran -- and nothing happened. The prayers continued for four years. But my faith remained strong, and I didn't think about giving up.
And for a book by a reporter, there are surprising lapses. A Muslim football team is described on page 80 as being called the "Infitada". Where was the editor there?
2. Lobdell comes off as gullible and not particularly bright. I never got the impression that he thought deeply about his conversion -- or his deconversion. He calls C. S. Lewis "one of the great Christian minds of the 20th century", which doesn't convince me of Lobdell's acuity. And he actually liked The Screwtape Letters, one of the dreckiest books ever written. Lobdell writes that he was "moved" by the story of Charles Colson, former Watergate criminal who now spends part of his time lying about evolution and homosexuality.
He "eagerly read[s]" Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ, a book whose entire premise is so clearly dishonest that any reporter should immediately be tipped off. Lobdell writes that Strobel's book "chronicles the author's spiritual journey from skeptic to devout evangelical as he investigates the scientific and historical evidence for Christianity". But this is a very misleading description of what Strobel does. In his books, Strobel typically doesn't present evidence on both sides of the questions he considers -- we get just one side, the evangelical Christian side. This dishonest presentation doesn't escape skeptical reviewers, but it seems to have entirely escaped Lobdell.
Lobdell's conversion seemed more emotional than rational, more about how religion and the church made him feel. And his deconversion (see below) was largely along the same lines.
3. Lobdell seems impressed by the argument from authority. For example, he writes "I needed to hear Christians more intelligent than I who had the utmost confidence -- and evidence to back it up -- in what the Bible said, even those uncomfortable passages that most believers skip or ignore." But why didn't he make any effort to seek out people who didn't have that confidence, and also had evidence to back it up?
4. Lobdell doesn't seem to understand the role of a reporter. The job of a journalist is to "print the truth and raise hell", to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable". But not, it seems when reporting about religion. He writes, It's drilled into journalists that "if your mother tells you she loves you, better check it out." But such journalistic standards can't be applied to much of faith reporting. But it's precisely this mistaken belief that explains why so much religion reporting consists of little more than taking dictation from believers, instead of challenging them on their claims.
Here's an example: Lobdell writes, The worst a cynic could say about them [Billy Graham and Rick Warren] is that they encourage belief in things that might not be true. Really? That is the worst that a cynic could say about them?
Hardly. How about calling Rick Warren a clueless hypocrite who encourages his followers to vote against gay rights? Or that Warren's highly-publicized crusade against AIDS actually involves sidekicks who advocate burning condoms and arresting homosexuals?
5. His deconversion, when it comes, comes for the wrong reasons. He didn't give up Christianity because its claims are false or not supported by the evidence, but largely because of the wrongdoing of many Christians (especially Catholic priests). It wasn't an intellectual decision, but an emotional reaction to the wrongdoing by Michael Harris, Michael Pecharich, John Geoghan, and other priests. While we agree that the Catholic child abuse scandals are symptomatic of a unredeemably corrupt institution, I don't agree that these scandals are a particularly good reason for giving up Christianity. There are so many better reasons!
To be fair, there are also some things about the book that I liked. Lobdell appears to have done some genuinely good investigative work on Catholic child abuse scandals, and he wasn't scared off by the hostile reaction of many Catholics. He also broke the story on Paul Crouch's attempt to buy the silence of an employee about their sexual encounter. But in the end, I found the book unsatisfying. I hope that wherever his future career takes him, William Lobdell makes more of an effort to investigate claims skeptically, and to rely more on reason and less on emotion.
I wanted to like the book - but I didn't. Here's why.
1. The writing is clunky. Just because you're a journalist doesn't mean you can write a full-length book; the two crafts are very different. Reporters tend to write short, punchy sentences, and most don't have the time, inclination, or mandate to get deep into details. And reporters are always writing about other people, which means that when it comes time for self-reflection, they're often at a loss. The result is often self-indulgent (think of Anna Quindlen).
Here's an example:
So I began to pray. I asked God for a religion-writing job at the Los Angeles Times. I prayed for it in the morning, at night, and in between. On my weekly runs, I asked again. So did Hugh. We prayed and prayed and ran and ran -- and nothing happened. The prayers continued for four years. But my faith remained strong, and I didn't think about giving up.
And for a book by a reporter, there are surprising lapses. A Muslim football team is described on page 80 as being called the "Infitada". Where was the editor there?
2. Lobdell comes off as gullible and not particularly bright. I never got the impression that he thought deeply about his conversion -- or his deconversion. He calls C. S. Lewis "one of the great Christian minds of the 20th century", which doesn't convince me of Lobdell's acuity. And he actually liked The Screwtape Letters, one of the dreckiest books ever written. Lobdell writes that he was "moved" by the story of Charles Colson, former Watergate criminal who now spends part of his time lying about evolution and homosexuality.
He "eagerly read[s]" Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ, a book whose entire premise is so clearly dishonest that any reporter should immediately be tipped off. Lobdell writes that Strobel's book "chronicles the author's spiritual journey from skeptic to devout evangelical as he investigates the scientific and historical evidence for Christianity". But this is a very misleading description of what Strobel does. In his books, Strobel typically doesn't present evidence on both sides of the questions he considers -- we get just one side, the evangelical Christian side. This dishonest presentation doesn't escape skeptical reviewers, but it seems to have entirely escaped Lobdell.
Lobdell's conversion seemed more emotional than rational, more about how religion and the church made him feel. And his deconversion (see below) was largely along the same lines.
3. Lobdell seems impressed by the argument from authority. For example, he writes "I needed to hear Christians more intelligent than I who had the utmost confidence -- and evidence to back it up -- in what the Bible said, even those uncomfortable passages that most believers skip or ignore." But why didn't he make any effort to seek out people who didn't have that confidence, and also had evidence to back it up?
4. Lobdell doesn't seem to understand the role of a reporter. The job of a journalist is to "print the truth and raise hell", to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable". But not, it seems when reporting about religion. He writes, It's drilled into journalists that "if your mother tells you she loves you, better check it out." But such journalistic standards can't be applied to much of faith reporting. But it's precisely this mistaken belief that explains why so much religion reporting consists of little more than taking dictation from believers, instead of challenging them on their claims.
Here's an example: Lobdell writes, The worst a cynic could say about them [Billy Graham and Rick Warren] is that they encourage belief in things that might not be true. Really? That is the worst that a cynic could say about them?
Hardly. How about calling Rick Warren a clueless hypocrite who encourages his followers to vote against gay rights? Or that Warren's highly-publicized crusade against AIDS actually involves sidekicks who advocate burning condoms and arresting homosexuals?
5. His deconversion, when it comes, comes for the wrong reasons. He didn't give up Christianity because its claims are false or not supported by the evidence, but largely because of the wrongdoing of many Christians (especially Catholic priests). It wasn't an intellectual decision, but an emotional reaction to the wrongdoing by Michael Harris, Michael Pecharich, John Geoghan, and other priests. While we agree that the Catholic child abuse scandals are symptomatic of a unredeemably corrupt institution, I don't agree that these scandals are a particularly good reason for giving up Christianity. There are so many better reasons!
To be fair, there are also some things about the book that I liked. Lobdell appears to have done some genuinely good investigative work on Catholic child abuse scandals, and he wasn't scared off by the hostile reaction of many Catholics. He also broke the story on Paul Crouch's attempt to buy the silence of an employee about their sexual encounter. But in the end, I found the book unsatisfying. I hope that wherever his future career takes him, William Lobdell makes more of an effort to investigate claims skeptically, and to rely more on reason and less on emotion.
Friday, October 09, 2009
Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!
I attended the NPR radio show Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me! last night in Boston, with son #2, in the absurdly overdecorated Wang Theatre. Somebody's making some serious bucks there - 3000 people at roughly 50 bucks a head... I only hope some of it goes to WBUR, our local station. Impressions: Carl Kasell is surprisingly spry and graceful at age 75; Peter Sagal looks a little like a Jewish version of Jack Nicholson; the bell is not rung by Carl, but by a producer.
Guest was actress Ashley Judd (who was not very funny, but very, very earnest and rather pleased with herself, and gave the host a heart attack by being in the loo when it was her turn to appear); panelists were Roxanne Roberts, Charlie Pierce, and Tom Bodett. (I would have preferred to see Mo Rocca and Paula Poundstone, but at least the obnoxious and unfunny P. J. O'Rourke wasn't there.) No real side-splitters, although the funniest line of the night was after the show taping ended, when somebody asked host Peter Sagal if he ever does bar mitzvahs. He replied that he did one once, but it didn't work out very well.
If you want to hear my own appearance on Wait, Wait back in 2003, go here and click on the "Bluff the listener" link. They gave me some Wait, Wait gear in honor of the event, but I didn't get Carl Kasell's voice on my home answering machine.
Guest was actress Ashley Judd (who was not very funny, but very, very earnest and rather pleased with herself, and gave the host a heart attack by being in the loo when it was her turn to appear); panelists were Roxanne Roberts, Charlie Pierce, and Tom Bodett. (I would have preferred to see Mo Rocca and Paula Poundstone, but at least the obnoxious and unfunny P. J. O'Rourke wasn't there.) No real side-splitters, although the funniest line of the night was after the show taping ended, when somebody asked host Peter Sagal if he ever does bar mitzvahs. He replied that he did one once, but it didn't work out very well.
If you want to hear my own appearance on Wait, Wait back in 2003, go here and click on the "Bluff the listener" link. They gave me some Wait, Wait gear in honor of the event, but I didn't get Carl Kasell's voice on my home answering machine.
Monday, October 05, 2009
The Worst Piece of Classical Music
I attended the Boston Symphony Orchestra on Saturday, and while much of it was enjoyable (for example, Beethoven's 4th) and all of it professional, there was one piece that I would nominate for the worst piece of classical music ever written: Elliott Carter's "Mosaic" for harp and chamber ensemble. It was absolutely unlistenable. When a cell phone went off in the middle, I sighed with relief: at last, some tonality.
What are your nominations for the worst piece of classical music ever?
What are your nominations for the worst piece of classical music ever?
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Jonathan Wells: Another ID Creationist Who Doesn't Understand Information Theory
Intelligent design creationists love to talk about information theory, but unfortunately they rarely understand it. Jonathan Wells is the latest ID creationist to demonstrate this.
In a recent post at "Evolution News & Views" describing an event at the University of Oklahoma, Wells said, "I replied that duplicating a gene doesn’t increase information content any more than photocopying a paper increases its information content."
Wells is wrong. I frequently give this as an exercise in my classes at the University of Waterloo: Prove that if x is a string of symbols, then the Kolmogorov information in xx is greater than that in x for infinitely many strings x. Most of my students can do this one, but it looks like information expert Jonathan Wells can't.
Like many incompetent people, Wells is blissfully unaware of his incompetence. He closes by saying, "Despite all their taxpayer-funded professors and museum exhibits, despite all their threats to dismantle us and expose us as retards, the Darwinists lost."
We don't have to "expose" the intelligent design creationists as buffoons; they do it themselves whenever they open their mouths.
In a recent post at "Evolution News & Views" describing an event at the University of Oklahoma, Wells said, "I replied that duplicating a gene doesn’t increase information content any more than photocopying a paper increases its information content."
Wells is wrong. I frequently give this as an exercise in my classes at the University of Waterloo: Prove that if x is a string of symbols, then the Kolmogorov information in xx is greater than that in x for infinitely many strings x. Most of my students can do this one, but it looks like information expert Jonathan Wells can't.
Like many incompetent people, Wells is blissfully unaware of his incompetence. He closes by saying, "Despite all their taxpayer-funded professors and museum exhibits, despite all their threats to dismantle us and expose us as retards, the Darwinists lost."
We don't have to "expose" the intelligent design creationists as buffoons; they do it themselves whenever they open their mouths.
Innumeracy in a Ken Goddard mystery
From Ken Goddard, First Evidence, Bantam Books, 1999:
[the scientists sequence some alien DNA and find two new bases, M and J, in addition to the usual 4]
"The average DNA molecule is made up of approximately three billion base pairs ... code units, whatever," Jody said, as much to herself as the other two. "Which gives us six possible codes instead of four at the first base-pair position; a total of thirty-six possibilities instead of sixteen in the first two positions; one hundred and ninety-eight possibilities instead of sixty-four in the first three..."
Yup, Jody actually claimed that 63 = 198.
And, one page later, we find one of the most unintentionally funny lines I've ever seen in a mystery novel:
[they're discussing what creatures with this unsual DNA might look like]
"But what would you do with a DNA molecule like this?" Melissa asked, her dark eyes gleaming with excitement. "What could you do?"
"If this were human DNA, I'll bet you could change your shape at will," Jody Catlin ventured.
Yup, that's exactly what I would first guess.
[the scientists sequence some alien DNA and find two new bases, M and J, in addition to the usual 4]
"The average DNA molecule is made up of approximately three billion base pairs ... code units, whatever," Jody said, as much to herself as the other two. "Which gives us six possible codes instead of four at the first base-pair position; a total of thirty-six possibilities instead of sixteen in the first two positions; one hundred and ninety-eight possibilities instead of sixty-four in the first three..."
Yup, Jody actually claimed that 63 = 198.
And, one page later, we find one of the most unintentionally funny lines I've ever seen in a mystery novel:
[they're discussing what creatures with this unsual DNA might look like]
"But what would you do with a DNA molecule like this?" Melissa asked, her dark eyes gleaming with excitement. "What could you do?"
"If this were human DNA, I'll bet you could change your shape at will," Jody Catlin ventured.
Yup, that's exactly what I would first guess.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
When Wish Replaces Thought
When Wish Replaces Thought is the title of an interesting but flawed book by Steven Goldberg.
It seems particularly appropriate, though, when looking at this bizarre press release from a guy who calls himself "Adam Dreamhealer" and claims to "[conduct] unique group energy treatments around the globe as he coordinates the energy of all participants into a coherent frequency."
I'd be willing to bet that this guy really believes he has magic powers. But wishing doesn't make it so. I'd be more convinced he's got some powers if he could heal a few amputees on camera.
[Hat tip: Terry Polevoy]
It seems particularly appropriate, though, when looking at this bizarre press release from a guy who calls himself "Adam Dreamhealer" and claims to "[conduct] unique group energy treatments around the globe as he coordinates the energy of all participants into a coherent frequency."
I'd be willing to bet that this guy really believes he has magic powers. But wishing doesn't make it so. I'd be more convinced he's got some powers if he could heal a few amputees on camera.
[Hat tip: Terry Polevoy]
Friday, September 25, 2009
Fatuous Letter to the Editor
Here is a fatuous letter to the editor, published in the Princeton Alumni Weekly.
The author claims "Life is like a great stage. Besides myriad performers, there are two principal ones. The crucial choice in life is how to specify them as to their order and manner of spelling. One choice is “Me, god.” The other is “God, me.” My theory is that this choice determines one’s choice of ethics."
But what if your choice is "Family, students, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and me" and "god" doesn't even figure at all?
If you're god-soaked, you think everyone else spends all their time thinking about your god. But you're wrong.
The author claims "Life is like a great stage. Besides myriad performers, there are two principal ones. The crucial choice in life is how to specify them as to their order and manner of spelling. One choice is “Me, god.” The other is “God, me.” My theory is that this choice determines one’s choice of ethics."
But what if your choice is "Family, students, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and me" and "god" doesn't even figure at all?
If you're god-soaked, you think everyone else spends all their time thinking about your god. But you're wrong.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
The Voynich Manuscript
The Voynich manuscript is a strange book, written in a strange script, with strange illustrations.
Yesterday I attended a talk on the Voynich Manuscript (VM), at MIT, by Kevin Knight of USC's Information Sciences Institute. Here's a brief summary of his talk:
The manuscript consists of 235 pages on vellum, with color drawings of plants, nymphs, stars, etc. It contains about 30,000
words written in an unknown script, and is owned by Yale University.
It has a character set that has not been observed in any other document. It is broken up into sections called "herbal",
"astrological", "biological", "cosmological", "pharmacological", and a pure text section at the end. These names reflect the pictures in each section. For example, the "herbal" section contains pictures of unknown plants being grafted onto other plants. The "biological" section depicts small nudes in baths with interconnecting tubes of liquids. The "pharmacological" section shows something that has been interpreted as a medicine jar.
A cover letter of Joannes Marcus Marci of Cronland was found tucked in the manuscript. The letter claims that the book once belonged to Emperor Rudolf II and that Rudolf beliefed that Roger Bacon was the author.
There have been many attempts to decipher the book. One was made by William Newbold at the University of Pennsylvania, He claimed that each letter consisted of many other Greek letters, which were anagrams holding the real meaning of the manuscript, and "deciphered" it on this basis. His decipherment is now regarded as completely bogus.
Athanasius Kircher once owned the book, from 1665-1680.
The Voynich script consists of between 23 and 40 distinct characters. (It is hard to say for sure, since some characters appear to be compounds of others.) There are no signs of corrections, which suggests that the manuscript was copied from some other source. There is an unusual distribution of word lengths - most "words" are of lengths 3, 4, and 5 letters. Many words are doubled, and some are tripled.
The cryptographer William Friedman worked on the manuscript during World War II. There are many claimed decipherments. A 2004 Scientific American article by Gordon Rugg, however, suggests that the manuscript is just gibberish. Perhaps Voynich faked it himself.
Kevin Knight discussed some of his own attacks on the manuscript using clustering techniques. For example, if you try breaking up the English alphabet into two types, say a and b, and use expectation maximization to generate two clusters, you get AEIOUy as one cluster, and the consonants in another. Doing the same for the Voynich manuscript, however, doesn't generate anything particularly meaningful.
You could also try this kind of clustering with the words of the manuscript instead of the letters. When you do so, you get two clusters: the words in the "herbal", "astrological", and "pharmacological" sections predominantly fall into one cluster, and the words in the "biological" and "cosmological" sections predominantly fall into another. [To me, this suggests that the manuscript probably had at least two authors.]
Voynich "B" is the "biological" + "astrological" sections. You can then try to divide the words in this section into more classes. If you do this for English, you get a cluster with words like "my, a, an, the,..."; another with "and, but, next,...", another with "had, asked, could, have, are, is, would,...", another with "for, at, in, no, that, be, but,..." etc. If you do this for Voynich you also get clusters but the meaning is less clear.
My guess is that the manuscript is some form of hoax, but I'd be delighted to be proved wrong.
Yesterday I attended a talk on the Voynich Manuscript (VM), at MIT, by Kevin Knight of USC's Information Sciences Institute. Here's a brief summary of his talk:
The manuscript consists of 235 pages on vellum, with color drawings of plants, nymphs, stars, etc. It contains about 30,000
words written in an unknown script, and is owned by Yale University.
It has a character set that has not been observed in any other document. It is broken up into sections called "herbal",
"astrological", "biological", "cosmological", "pharmacological", and a pure text section at the end. These names reflect the pictures in each section. For example, the "herbal" section contains pictures of unknown plants being grafted onto other plants. The "biological" section depicts small nudes in baths with interconnecting tubes of liquids. The "pharmacological" section shows something that has been interpreted as a medicine jar.
A cover letter of Joannes Marcus Marci of Cronland was found tucked in the manuscript. The letter claims that the book once belonged to Emperor Rudolf II and that Rudolf beliefed that Roger Bacon was the author.
There have been many attempts to decipher the book. One was made by William Newbold at the University of Pennsylvania, He claimed that each letter consisted of many other Greek letters, which were anagrams holding the real meaning of the manuscript, and "deciphered" it on this basis. His decipherment is now regarded as completely bogus.
Athanasius Kircher once owned the book, from 1665-1680.
The Voynich script consists of between 23 and 40 distinct characters. (It is hard to say for sure, since some characters appear to be compounds of others.) There are no signs of corrections, which suggests that the manuscript was copied from some other source. There is an unusual distribution of word lengths - most "words" are of lengths 3, 4, and 5 letters. Many words are doubled, and some are tripled.
The cryptographer William Friedman worked on the manuscript during World War II. There are many claimed decipherments. A 2004 Scientific American article by Gordon Rugg, however, suggests that the manuscript is just gibberish. Perhaps Voynich faked it himself.
Kevin Knight discussed some of his own attacks on the manuscript using clustering techniques. For example, if you try breaking up the English alphabet into two types, say a and b, and use expectation maximization to generate two clusters, you get AEIOUy as one cluster, and the consonants in another. Doing the same for the Voynich manuscript, however, doesn't generate anything particularly meaningful.
You could also try this kind of clustering with the words of the manuscript instead of the letters. When you do so, you get two clusters: the words in the "herbal", "astrological", and "pharmacological" sections predominantly fall into one cluster, and the words in the "biological" and "cosmological" sections predominantly fall into another. [To me, this suggests that the manuscript probably had at least two authors.]
Voynich "B" is the "biological" + "astrological" sections. You can then try to divide the words in this section into more classes. If you do this for English, you get a cluster with words like "my, a, an, the,..."; another with "and, but, next,...", another with "had, asked, could, have, are, is, would,...", another with "for, at, in, no, that, be, but,..." etc. If you do this for Voynich you also get clusters but the meaning is less clear.
My guess is that the manuscript is some form of hoax, but I'd be delighted to be proved wrong.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Review of The Numerati
I reviewed Stephen Baker's book, The Numerati, for the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, and you can read it here.
Irving Kristol and Evolution
With all the hagiography going on for conservative "intellectual" Irving Kristol, who died on September 18, let's not forget one of his many idiotic statements: that Darwinism is on the way out because it "is really no longer accepted so easily by [many] biologists and scientists."
As Glenn Morton has exhaustively shown, the trope that "more and more scientists doubt evolution" is one of the oldest falsehoods in creationism. But then, Kristol believed that not all truths were suitable for all people, an echo of Martin Luther's view that lying for his god was acceptable.
Anti-evolution idiocy seemingly ran in the family. In 1959, Kristol's wife Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote a terrible book, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, demonstrating a lack of understanding of biology and a warped view of Darwin's influence. One perceptive reviewer penned that Himmelfarb had "an advanced case of Darwinitis, a complaint that afflicts those of a literary bent and strong attachments to pre-scientific culture, who find in the theory of evolution a disturbing and mysterious challenge to their values". Kristol wrote a favorable review of Himmelfarb's book for Encounter, without bothering to mention that he was Himmelfarb's husband. So much for Kristol's ethics.
Kristol wrote a piece for the September 30 1986 New York Times about evolution. Here are a few excerpts:
Practically all biologists, when they engage in scientific discourse, assume that the earth's species were not created by divine command. As scientists, they could not make any other assumption. But they agree on little else - a fact which our textbooks are careful to ignore, lest it give encouragement to the religious. There is no doubt that most of our textbooks are still written as participants in the ''warfare'' between science and religion that is our heritage from the 19th century. And there is also little doubt that it is this pseudo-scientific dogmatism that has provoked the current religious reaction...
Though this theory [the neo-Darwinian synthesis] is usually taught as an established scientific truth, it is nothing of the sort. It has too many lacunae. Theological evidence does not provide us with the spectrum of intermediate species we would expect. Moreover, laboratory experiments reveal how close to impossible it is for one species to evolve into another, even allowing for selective breeding and some genetic mutation. There is unquestionably evolution within species: every animal breeder is engaged in exemplifying this enterprise. But the gradual transformation of the population of one species into another is a biological hypothesis, not a biological fact.
Moreover, today a significant minority of distinguished biologists and geneticists find this hypothesis incredible and insist that evolution must have proceeded by ''quantum jumps,'' caused by radical genetic mutation. This copes with some of the problems generated by neo-Darwinist orthodoxy, but only to create others. We just don't know of any such ''quantum jumps'' that create new species, since most genetic mutations work against the survival of the individual. So this is another hypothesis - no less plausible than the orthodox view, but still speculative.
And there are other speculations about evolution, some by Nobel prize-winning geneticists, that border on the bizarre - for example, that life on earth was produced by spermatozoa from outer space. In addition, many younger biologists (the so-called ''cladists'') are persuaded that the differences among species - including those that seem to be closely related -are such as to make the very concept of evolution questionable.
So ''evolution'' is no simple established scientific orthodoxy, and to teach it as such is an exercise in dogmatism...
I imagine we'll be seeing some biographies of Kristol coming out. I can only hope that any honest biographer will make space to assess Kristol's ignorance of biology and his arrogance in thinking that he understood it better than professional biologists.
As Glenn Morton has exhaustively shown, the trope that "more and more scientists doubt evolution" is one of the oldest falsehoods in creationism. But then, Kristol believed that not all truths were suitable for all people, an echo of Martin Luther's view that lying for his god was acceptable.
Anti-evolution idiocy seemingly ran in the family. In 1959, Kristol's wife Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote a terrible book, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, demonstrating a lack of understanding of biology and a warped view of Darwin's influence. One perceptive reviewer penned that Himmelfarb had "an advanced case of Darwinitis, a complaint that afflicts those of a literary bent and strong attachments to pre-scientific culture, who find in the theory of evolution a disturbing and mysterious challenge to their values". Kristol wrote a favorable review of Himmelfarb's book for Encounter, without bothering to mention that he was Himmelfarb's husband. So much for Kristol's ethics.
Kristol wrote a piece for the September 30 1986 New York Times about evolution. Here are a few excerpts:
Practically all biologists, when they engage in scientific discourse, assume that the earth's species were not created by divine command. As scientists, they could not make any other assumption. But they agree on little else - a fact which our textbooks are careful to ignore, lest it give encouragement to the religious. There is no doubt that most of our textbooks are still written as participants in the ''warfare'' between science and religion that is our heritage from the 19th century. And there is also little doubt that it is this pseudo-scientific dogmatism that has provoked the current religious reaction...
Though this theory [the neo-Darwinian synthesis] is usually taught as an established scientific truth, it is nothing of the sort. It has too many lacunae. Theological evidence does not provide us with the spectrum of intermediate species we would expect. Moreover, laboratory experiments reveal how close to impossible it is for one species to evolve into another, even allowing for selective breeding and some genetic mutation. There is unquestionably evolution within species: every animal breeder is engaged in exemplifying this enterprise. But the gradual transformation of the population of one species into another is a biological hypothesis, not a biological fact.
Moreover, today a significant minority of distinguished biologists and geneticists find this hypothesis incredible and insist that evolution must have proceeded by ''quantum jumps,'' caused by radical genetic mutation. This copes with some of the problems generated by neo-Darwinist orthodoxy, but only to create others. We just don't know of any such ''quantum jumps'' that create new species, since most genetic mutations work against the survival of the individual. So this is another hypothesis - no less plausible than the orthodox view, but still speculative.
And there are other speculations about evolution, some by Nobel prize-winning geneticists, that border on the bizarre - for example, that life on earth was produced by spermatozoa from outer space. In addition, many younger biologists (the so-called ''cladists'') are persuaded that the differences among species - including those that seem to be closely related -are such as to make the very concept of evolution questionable.
So ''evolution'' is no simple established scientific orthodoxy, and to teach it as such is an exercise in dogmatism...
I imagine we'll be seeing some biographies of Kristol coming out. I can only hope that any honest biographer will make space to assess Kristol's ignorance of biology and his arrogance in thinking that he understood it better than professional biologists.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Giving a Bad Talk at a Scientific Conference
Here are some tips to give a really bad talk at a scientific meeting. The more tips you follow, the more likely you are to be memorably awful.
These are all based on talks I have witnessed.
1. Come with a retinue of students of the same ethnic background, assert a proof for a famous unsolved problem, give a proof for completely elementary simple cases and omit the proof of the main result, assert your results have been overlooked by those of a different ethnic background, insult established scientists who have recently made progress on similar problems, and have your students cheer wildly when you are done. Extra points if your talk is in "call and response" format.
2. Speak so softly that even with a microphone you are completely inaudible.
3. Speak rapidly with an extremely strong accent, and have your slides full of incomprehensible sentences that look like they were drawn randomly from a bag of scrabble tiles.
4. Sigh frequently during your talk, as if giving it is the most boring thing you can possibly imagine, and you can't wait for the damn thing to be over.
5. Give your talk by writing with a marker on overhead transparencies, and when you run out of transparencies, lick off one of the ones you already used. While it is still wet, put the slide, wet side down, on the projector so the ink mixes with your saliva and spreads all over the glass plate of the overhead.
6. Begin by insulting the organizers. State that you are so important, they should have found a larger room for you to speak in. Say that everyone else is stupid. Do not give any details, simply refer the audience to your web page.
7. Consistently point at the screen of your computer with your finger, as if you are convinced that by doing so the audience will magically see what you are pointing at on the screen of the projector.
8. Give results in your talk that are identical to those of the previous speaker. When you are questioned about it, deny that the results are the same.
I'm sure these helpful tips will create a memorable experience for you and your audience.
These are all based on talks I have witnessed.
1. Come with a retinue of students of the same ethnic background, assert a proof for a famous unsolved problem, give a proof for completely elementary simple cases and omit the proof of the main result, assert your results have been overlooked by those of a different ethnic background, insult established scientists who have recently made progress on similar problems, and have your students cheer wildly when you are done. Extra points if your talk is in "call and response" format.
2. Speak so softly that even with a microphone you are completely inaudible.
3. Speak rapidly with an extremely strong accent, and have your slides full of incomprehensible sentences that look like they were drawn randomly from a bag of scrabble tiles.
4. Sigh frequently during your talk, as if giving it is the most boring thing you can possibly imagine, and you can't wait for the damn thing to be over.
5. Give your talk by writing with a marker on overhead transparencies, and when you run out of transparencies, lick off one of the ones you already used. While it is still wet, put the slide, wet side down, on the projector so the ink mixes with your saliva and spreads all over the glass plate of the overhead.
6. Begin by insulting the organizers. State that you are so important, they should have found a larger room for you to speak in. Say that everyone else is stupid. Do not give any details, simply refer the audience to your web page.
7. Consistently point at the screen of your computer with your finger, as if you are convinced that by doing so the audience will magically see what you are pointing at on the screen of the projector.
8. Give results in your talk that are identical to those of the previous speaker. When you are questioned about it, deny that the results are the same.
I'm sure these helpful tips will create a memorable experience for you and your audience.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Louise Shallit (1919-2009)
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Poor Michael Behe
Poor Michael Behe.
The eminent professor Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box, which was named the 92nd best book of the last century by the geniuses at National Review, is unhappy. I guess he has a lot to be unhappy about, what with his University department posting a disclaimer about his work on their web pages. But no, it's not that his colleagues think his work is junk that is bothering him this time.
This time, it's about something much more sinister. It seems that John McWhorter, a linguist with no biological training that I can detect, recently interviewed Behe on bloggingheads.tv. In the interview, McWhorter gushes that "I just read your book The Edge of Evolution from 2007 and I found it absolutely shattering. I mean, this is a very important book. And yet I sense that from the reputation, or the reception of your book from 10+ years ago, Darwin's Black Box, that it may be hard to get a lot of people to understand why the book is important." Later, he claims that The Edge of Evolution was one of the most important books he's ever read. It seems that McWhorter didn't bother to read or understand the criticism of Behe's claims by actual biologists, such as Dawkins, Coyne, and Miller. Instead, Behe was able to babble without being challenged.
What happened next? Predictably, people who actually know something about evolution and Behe's misrepresentations complained, McWhorter had second thoughts, and the video was removed from bloggingheads.tv. Although I wouldn't have published this gushing, ignorant interview to begin with, I wouldn't have removed it afterwards, either -- it's a useful record of McWhorter's fawning stupidity and Behe's unsupported claims. Luckily, it's been archived.
What interests me more is Behe's reaction to the whole affair. He describes those who complained as "cyber bullies" and "internet mobs". (A bully, in Behe's view, apparently being someone who does not buy his bogus claims, and an "internet mob" is a few people who complained.) He also compares himself to Nikolai Yezhov and his detractors to Joseph Stalin.
Poor Michael Behe. While bloggingheads.tv showed very poor judgment in getting a non-biologist to interview Behe, and even poorer judgment in deleting the interview after posting it, Behe's reaction to the affair is hyperbolic. Behe had an interview deleted; he wasn't murdered in a basement. And the irony is even greater, since Behe posted his complaints on a blog which does not allow any comments!
When you make stupid and unsupported claims, you're going to get criticized -- and sometimes harshly. That's science. Deal with it.
The eminent professor Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box, which was named the 92nd best book of the last century by the geniuses at National Review, is unhappy. I guess he has a lot to be unhappy about, what with his University department posting a disclaimer about his work on their web pages. But no, it's not that his colleagues think his work is junk that is bothering him this time.
This time, it's about something much more sinister. It seems that John McWhorter, a linguist with no biological training that I can detect, recently interviewed Behe on bloggingheads.tv. In the interview, McWhorter gushes that "I just read your book The Edge of Evolution from 2007 and I found it absolutely shattering. I mean, this is a very important book. And yet I sense that from the reputation, or the reception of your book from 10+ years ago, Darwin's Black Box, that it may be hard to get a lot of people to understand why the book is important." Later, he claims that The Edge of Evolution was one of the most important books he's ever read. It seems that McWhorter didn't bother to read or understand the criticism of Behe's claims by actual biologists, such as Dawkins, Coyne, and Miller. Instead, Behe was able to babble without being challenged.
What happened next? Predictably, people who actually know something about evolution and Behe's misrepresentations complained, McWhorter had second thoughts, and the video was removed from bloggingheads.tv. Although I wouldn't have published this gushing, ignorant interview to begin with, I wouldn't have removed it afterwards, either -- it's a useful record of McWhorter's fawning stupidity and Behe's unsupported claims. Luckily, it's been archived.
What interests me more is Behe's reaction to the whole affair. He describes those who complained as "cyber bullies" and "internet mobs". (A bully, in Behe's view, apparently being someone who does not buy his bogus claims, and an "internet mob" is a few people who complained.) He also compares himself to Nikolai Yezhov and his detractors to Joseph Stalin.
Poor Michael Behe. While bloggingheads.tv showed very poor judgment in getting a non-biologist to interview Behe, and even poorer judgment in deleting the interview after posting it, Behe's reaction to the affair is hyperbolic. Behe had an interview deleted; he wasn't murdered in a basement. And the irony is even greater, since Behe posted his complaints on a blog which does not allow any comments!
When you make stupid and unsupported claims, you're going to get criticized -- and sometimes harshly. That's science. Deal with it.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Learning to Speak Bostonese
I had this conversation this morning in a Shaw's supermarket:
Me: Can I buy a Charlie Card here?
Clerk: A Jolly Cahd?
Me: No, a Chcharrrlie Card.
Clerk: Oh, a Chahlie Cahd!
Me: ???
OK, time to go watch the Kingston trio now:
Me: Can I buy a Charlie Card here?
Clerk: A Jolly Cahd?
Me: No, a Chcharrrlie Card.
Clerk: Oh, a Chahlie Cahd!
Me: ???
OK, time to go watch the Kingston trio now:
Thursday, August 20, 2009
One Difference Between Canada and the US
When I first moved to Canada in 1990, I was struck by how unfriendly it seemed compared to places in the US that I had lived. For example, if you meet someone in the hallway at an American university, and say, "Hi, how are you?", you will nearly always get a response along the lines of "Fine, how are you?" But not so in Canada. Instead, you will typically get the response "Fine." -- and then the person will walk on, without inquiring about your own health.
For many years I found this astonishingly rude; sometimes I even resorted to mumbling "And yes, I'm fine too, thank you very much for asking" under my breath. Then someone explained to me that in fact it was I who was being rude, since in Canada inquiring about someone's health is considered too intrusive. Instead of rudeness, what I was witnessing was the clash of expectations. Although I understand this on a rational level now, I still continue to find it rude viscerally.
Here's another example: go to any American city, stand on a street corner, open up a map, and look at it. Within 30 seconds, someone will ask you, "Can I help you find something?" or "Do you need any help?" Yet I've done the same experiment over and over again in Toronto, and after 10 minutes still no one volunteered any help. The one time someone did, it was an American tourist! As my wife explained, this is not an example of Canadian rudeness; Canadians simply have a different notion of personal space. They find it rude to approach a stranger and casually offer assistance when none may be needed. Americans find it simple friendliness.
I am struck by this difference now that I've temporarily relocated to the Boston area for my sabbatical. We were standing in Kendall Square looking at the map, and just as the stereotype dictates, within 15 seconds someone asked us if we needed help. Just now we came back from a brief bike ride in a Boston suburb; as my son and I looked at the street map, a woman asked "Can I help you find something?"
For the moment, I'm glad to be living in a place where my cultural expectations match those of my neighbors.
For many years I found this astonishingly rude; sometimes I even resorted to mumbling "And yes, I'm fine too, thank you very much for asking" under my breath. Then someone explained to me that in fact it was I who was being rude, since in Canada inquiring about someone's health is considered too intrusive. Instead of rudeness, what I was witnessing was the clash of expectations. Although I understand this on a rational level now, I still continue to find it rude viscerally.
Here's another example: go to any American city, stand on a street corner, open up a map, and look at it. Within 30 seconds, someone will ask you, "Can I help you find something?" or "Do you need any help?" Yet I've done the same experiment over and over again in Toronto, and after 10 minutes still no one volunteered any help. The one time someone did, it was an American tourist! As my wife explained, this is not an example of Canadian rudeness; Canadians simply have a different notion of personal space. They find it rude to approach a stranger and casually offer assistance when none may be needed. Americans find it simple friendliness.
I am struck by this difference now that I've temporarily relocated to the Boston area for my sabbatical. We were standing in Kendall Square looking at the map, and just as the stereotype dictates, within 15 seconds someone asked us if we needed help. Just now we came back from a brief bike ride in a Boston suburb; as my son and I looked at the street map, a woman asked "Can I help you find something?"
For the moment, I'm glad to be living in a place where my cultural expectations match those of my neighbors.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
US Consulate in Toronto Cuts Back Again
I've lived in Canada since 1990 (not counting our sabbaticals). As an American citizen living in Canada, I occasionally have to consult the American Consulate in Toronto - for example, to renew a passport - and over the past 19 years, the service has gotten steadily worse... and worse.
It used to be you could call and actually reach a human to ask a question - no longer. Now you're stuck with the information provided on the Internet (which is often out of date, incorrect, or loaded with broken links).
It used to be you could show up at the Consulate in person without any advance notice and get your business done. But not any longer. I just got e-mail from the Consulate saying "an appointment will be required for all services at the U.S. Consulate General in Toronto".
The last trip we made to the Consulate to get US passports for our kids took up the whole morning. First, we were forced to go all the way back to our car (parked blocks away) because they would not allow us to take our cell phones in. The final indignity was that they would not even pay to mail the passports to us; we had to go out of the consulate and across the street and provide the Consulate with self-addressed express mail envelopes (a requirement not mentioned anywhere in any of the application forms).
The Consulate General is supposed to represent the interests of US citizens living abroad. At least in Toronto, they're doing a really poor job of it.
It used to be you could call and actually reach a human to ask a question - no longer. Now you're stuck with the information provided on the Internet (which is often out of date, incorrect, or loaded with broken links).
It used to be you could show up at the Consulate in person without any advance notice and get your business done. But not any longer. I just got e-mail from the Consulate saying "an appointment will be required for all services at the U.S. Consulate General in Toronto".
The last trip we made to the Consulate to get US passports for our kids took up the whole morning. First, we were forced to go all the way back to our car (parked blocks away) because they would not allow us to take our cell phones in. The final indignity was that they would not even pay to mail the passports to us; we had to go out of the consulate and across the street and provide the Consulate with self-addressed express mail envelopes (a requirement not mentioned anywhere in any of the application forms).
The Consulate General is supposed to represent the interests of US citizens living abroad. At least in Toronto, they're doing a really poor job of it.
On Sabbatical
Well, most of the boxes are unpacked, and we're working on getting the kids registered for school. I have an office (sort of) and we've found a local place for bagels. My sabbatical has begun!
I'm looking forward to a year of working on papers and book projects, learning new things, and catching up on work that has been postponed for too long.
Where are we? Well, the picture is a hint. I'll give another hint tomorrow.
Monday, July 27, 2009
I Need a New Irony Meter
Serial liar Sarah Palin, in her farewell address as governor of Alaska, said,
"And first, some straight talk for some, just some in the media because another right protected for all of us is freedom of the press, and you all have such important jobs reporting facts and informing the electorate, and exerting power to influence. You represent what could and should be a respected honest profession that could and should be the cornerstone of our democracy. Democracy depends on you, and that is why, that's why our troops are willing to die for you. So, how 'bout in honor of the American soldier, ya quit makin' things up?"
If I were in the media, I'd say "You first, Sarah."
As it is, my irony meter broke reading that.
"And first, some straight talk for some, just some in the media because another right protected for all of us is freedom of the press, and you all have such important jobs reporting facts and informing the electorate, and exerting power to influence. You represent what could and should be a respected honest profession that could and should be the cornerstone of our democracy. Democracy depends on you, and that is why, that's why our troops are willing to die for you. So, how 'bout in honor of the American soldier, ya quit makin' things up?"
If I were in the media, I'd say "You first, Sarah."
As it is, my irony meter broke reading that.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Website Weirds Wikipedia
Check out http://www.zaped.info/, a website that changes Wikipedia content into something bizarre and occasionally delightful.
From today's page:
"Harrison was built-in in North Bend, Ohio, and at age 21 confused to Indianapolis, Indiana, area he became a arresting accompaniment politician."
"During a accent in Montreal, French President Charles de Gaulle declared "Long reside chargeless Quebec!", a account that was interpreted as abutment for Quebec independence from Canada."
"Judy and Alfred were two 90-inch (2.3 m) alpine beef locomotives distinctively advised to fit beneath a arch at Par that was alone 96 inches (2.4 m) high?"
"Today's featured picture: A radar angel of the surface of Venus, centered at 180 degrees east longitude... This blended angel was created from mapping by the Magellan probe, supplemented by abstracts aggregate by the Pioneer orbiter, with apish hues based on blush images recorded by Venera 13 and 14."
It's like moving to a Bizarro world!
My guess is that the algorithm simply chooses words at random from a Wikipedia page, and then replaces them with a random synonym in a consistent way.
From today's page:
"Harrison was built-in in North Bend, Ohio, and at age 21 confused to Indianapolis, Indiana, area he became a arresting accompaniment politician."
"During a accent in Montreal, French President Charles de Gaulle declared "Long reside chargeless Quebec!", a account that was interpreted as abutment for Quebec independence from Canada."
"Judy and Alfred were two 90-inch (2.3 m) alpine beef locomotives distinctively advised to fit beneath a arch at Par that was alone 96 inches (2.4 m) high?"
"Today's featured picture: A radar angel of the surface of Venus, centered at 180 degrees east longitude... This blended angel was created from mapping by the Magellan probe, supplemented by abstracts aggregate by the Pioneer orbiter, with apish hues based on blush images recorded by Venera 13 and 14."
It's like moving to a Bizarro world!
My guess is that the algorithm simply chooses words at random from a Wikipedia page, and then replaces them with a random synonym in a consistent way.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Greedy Publishers Love Open Access
In the "open access" model of scholarly journal publishing, articles are freely available online for anyone to read. Sounds great, right?
There's a problem, though. Where does the money come from to provide editorial staff and web hosting? Typically, it comes from fees charged to authors. This is nothing new - some scholarly journals have had "page charges" for years. Authors are charged a fee on the size of the article, and this fee is usually paid for by your university or your research grant, if you are luck enough to have one.
Print journals have traditionally waived page charges for authors with no grant or authors from third world countries. Unfortunately, some greedy publishers have not chosen to issue the same kinds of waivers for their open access journals.
Scholarly Research Exchange is one such greedy publisher. They recently sent me a solicitation to submit articles to their journal SRX Mathematics. When I asked the "journal publishing editor", Michael Fayez, what their waiver policy is, he replied "SRX Mathematics totally depends on those mandatory charges to run the journal. So, I regret to inform you that we cannot grant waivers." Considering that their fee is $400 per article, which is more than most people in 3rd world countries make in a year, their policy ensures that only papers from rich countries will be included. That's a shame.
I won't be submitting to this journal.
There's a problem, though. Where does the money come from to provide editorial staff and web hosting? Typically, it comes from fees charged to authors. This is nothing new - some scholarly journals have had "page charges" for years. Authors are charged a fee on the size of the article, and this fee is usually paid for by your university or your research grant, if you are luck enough to have one.
Print journals have traditionally waived page charges for authors with no grant or authors from third world countries. Unfortunately, some greedy publishers have not chosen to issue the same kinds of waivers for their open access journals.
Scholarly Research Exchange is one such greedy publisher. They recently sent me a solicitation to submit articles to their journal SRX Mathematics. When I asked the "journal publishing editor", Michael Fayez, what their waiver policy is, he replied "SRX Mathematics totally depends on those mandatory charges to run the journal. So, I regret to inform you that we cannot grant waivers." Considering that their fee is $400 per article, which is more than most people in 3rd world countries make in a year, their policy ensures that only papers from rich countries will be included. That's a shame.
I won't be submitting to this journal.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Stephen Meyer's Honesty Problem
Like most intelligent design advocates, Stephen Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, has a little problem telling the truth.
I first encountered his dissembling at an intelligent design conference held at Calvin College in May 2001. Meyer had written in 2000 that "Systems that are characterized by both specificity and complexity (what information theorists call "specified complexity'') have "information content''."
The only problem is, information theorists don't use the term "specified complexity" and they don't refer to "specificity" when discussing information. At the time, there was precisely one mathematician who was pushing the term "specified complexity", and that was William Dembski, who tried (but failed) to create a new, mathematically-rigorous definition at information which (were it coherent) would be at odds with how information is defined by other mathematicians and computer scientists.
I went up to Meyer at the conference and asked him, "You wrote that 'information theorists' (plural) talk about specified complexity. Who are they?" He then admitted that he knew no one but Dembski (and Dembski himself is not much of an information theorist, having published exactly 0 papers so far on the topic in the peer-reviewed scientific literature).
So the use of the plural, when Meyer knew perfectly well that information theorists do not use the term "specified complexity", was just a lie - and a lie intended to deceive the reader that his claims are supported by the scientific community, when they are not.
(Another anecdote: while I was waiting in line to ask Meyer this question, I was behind a woman who couldn't wait to meet Meyer. She gushed as she shook his hand, saying she was so honored to meet the man who was responsible for recruiting so many people for Christ through his work. He smiled and thanked her. And they claim ID is not religious!)
Meyer was also caught dissembling about the "No Child Left Behind" education bill, falsely claiming that it obligated Ohio to teach about alternative theories.
Now Meyer is back with a new book, and an op-ed in the Boston Globe to help flog his book. In the op-ed, Meyer claims, "Information - whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in a radio signal - always arises from an intelligent source." But this is the same old bogus ID claim that is repeated endlessly and endlessly, and it's not true. At least it's not true if you understand "information" in the sense that it is understood by mathematicians and computer scientists. For example, in the Kolmogorov theory, any random source produces information.
But then again, Meyer, with his little honesty problem, doesn't seem too concerned with the truth. What's important is, as that woman ahead of me in line told him, saving souls for Jesus.
Martin Luther once said, "What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church...a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them." It seems that Stephen Meyer would agree.
I first encountered his dissembling at an intelligent design conference held at Calvin College in May 2001. Meyer had written in 2000 that "Systems that are characterized by both specificity and complexity (what information theorists call "specified complexity'') have "information content''."
The only problem is, information theorists don't use the term "specified complexity" and they don't refer to "specificity" when discussing information. At the time, there was precisely one mathematician who was pushing the term "specified complexity", and that was William Dembski, who tried (but failed) to create a new, mathematically-rigorous definition at information which (were it coherent) would be at odds with how information is defined by other mathematicians and computer scientists.
I went up to Meyer at the conference and asked him, "You wrote that 'information theorists' (plural) talk about specified complexity. Who are they?" He then admitted that he knew no one but Dembski (and Dembski himself is not much of an information theorist, having published exactly 0 papers so far on the topic in the peer-reviewed scientific literature).
So the use of the plural, when Meyer knew perfectly well that information theorists do not use the term "specified complexity", was just a lie - and a lie intended to deceive the reader that his claims are supported by the scientific community, when they are not.
(Another anecdote: while I was waiting in line to ask Meyer this question, I was behind a woman who couldn't wait to meet Meyer. She gushed as she shook his hand, saying she was so honored to meet the man who was responsible for recruiting so many people for Christ through his work. He smiled and thanked her. And they claim ID is not religious!)
Meyer was also caught dissembling about the "No Child Left Behind" education bill, falsely claiming that it obligated Ohio to teach about alternative theories.
Now Meyer is back with a new book, and an op-ed in the Boston Globe to help flog his book. In the op-ed, Meyer claims, "Information - whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in a radio signal - always arises from an intelligent source." But this is the same old bogus ID claim that is repeated endlessly and endlessly, and it's not true. At least it's not true if you understand "information" in the sense that it is understood by mathematicians and computer scientists. For example, in the Kolmogorov theory, any random source produces information.
But then again, Meyer, with his little honesty problem, doesn't seem too concerned with the truth. What's important is, as that woman ahead of me in line told him, saving souls for Jesus.
Martin Luther once said, "What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church...a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them." It seems that Stephen Meyer would agree.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Academic Publisher Elsevier Looking for More Revenue in Odd Places
Academic publisher Elsevier, not content with raking in the money from all the expensive academic journals they print, is now following in the footsteps of illustrious organizations such as the American Biographical Institute: when your article gets published, they are offering wooden plaques celebrating the glorious occasion.
I recently got the following e-mail from Elsevier:
New! To commemorate your publication, you can now order printed author copies of the journal issue featuring your article, a unique Certificate of Publication, and/or customized full-color posters featuring your article. Please visit https://authororders.elsevier.com/
to learn more.
And indeed, you can find there a wide variety of choices to "commemorate" your publication, including:
- copy of the journal issue in which your article appears;
- "A customized full-color poster commemorating the publication of your article, featuring the article first page and a personalized reference."
- a "Certificate of Publication" which is "delivered ready to display in a high-quality frame, dark brown wood with gold trim."
- "A full-color, 16.5" x 23.4" sized poster of the cover of the issue in which your article appears, displaying a personalized reference to your publication."
Way to be classy, Elsevier!
I recently got the following e-mail from Elsevier:
New! To commemorate your publication, you can now order printed author copies of the journal issue featuring your article, a unique Certificate of Publication, and/or customized full-color posters featuring your article. Please visit https://authororders.elsevier.com/
to learn more.
And indeed, you can find there a wide variety of choices to "commemorate" your publication, including:
- copy of the journal issue in which your article appears;
- "A customized full-color poster commemorating the publication of your article, featuring the article first page and a personalized reference."
- a "Certificate of Publication" which is "delivered ready to display in a high-quality frame, dark brown wood with gold trim."
- "A full-color, 16.5" x 23.4" sized poster of the cover of the issue in which your article appears, displaying a personalized reference to your publication."
Way to be classy, Elsevier!
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Another Academic Scam
Every month or so I get a solicitation in the mail like the following one:
Dear Author
Hello?
As a general chair of GESTS, I am happy to invite you for the acceptance of yourpaper to be published in the GESTS International Transactions.
The GESTS is a nonprofit academic society organized by voluntary members aroundthe world since 2002. Every month, we publish the GESTS international transactionswhich are the regular paper journals on CSE and CSP, written by noble authors in more than 50 different countries.
This e-mail has been sent only to the authors who chose as a high quality paper that had been accepted as one of two parts of GESTS international transactions as follows:
-Part 1:
Paper Number : CSE775-727
Paper Journal: GESTS International Transactions on Computer Science and Engineering
Paper Field : Computer and Its Application
Volume Number: Vol.54 and No.3
ISSN Number : 1738-6438
Publication date: July 30, 2009.
Journal Type : hard copy with a green color cover
Online Journals: publication on the web in parallel to the printed journals.
-Part 2:
Paper Number : CSP775-112
Journal Title: GESTS International Transactions on Communication and Signal Processing
Paper Fields : Information Communication Engineering, Signal Processing, Image and Video Processing, Acoustics, etc.
Volume Number: Vol.13 and No.7
ISSN Number : 1738-9682
Issue Date : July 30, 2009.
Journal Type : hard copy with an orange color cover
On-line Issue: publication on the web in parallel to the printed journals.
Please, click the mouse on the "Major Conference Author's Paper Submission" at the home page, http://www.gests.org/. If the paper will be submitted through the web page, we will e-mail back with the details of how to proceed the submission of registration fees and copyright format.
Important dates for publication of the GESTS international transactions are :
- an improved paper and copyright format by July 27, 2009, ( http://www.gests.org/gests-full.rtf )
- the acceptance notification within ten days receiving your paper,
- the registration format with fees by July 30, 2009,
- the publication of GESTS International journal by July 30, 2009,
- and delivery start from GESTS to authors by August 10, 2009.
If you have a new paper or an improved version to be issued in GESTS international transactions, please, send us the final camera-ready version by July 27, 2009. At least one author of each paper must be accomplished with the registration.
We are looking forward to see your contributions at GESTS.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Bruce M. Bae, a general chair of GESTS,
http://www.gests.org/
I particularly like the "noble authors" part -- not to be confused with authors who have won the Nobel prize, of course.
The idea is, of course, that you submit your paper to this journal that nobody reads and then they charge you "registration fees". You'd have to be pretty dumb to fall for this one.
Dear Author
Hello?
As a general chair of GESTS, I am happy to invite you for the acceptance of yourpaper to be published in the GESTS International Transactions.
The GESTS is a nonprofit academic society organized by voluntary members aroundthe world since 2002. Every month, we publish the GESTS international transactionswhich are the regular paper journals on CSE and CSP, written by noble authors in more than 50 different countries.
This e-mail has been sent only to the authors who chose as a high quality paper that had been accepted as one of two parts of GESTS international transactions as follows:
-Part 1:
Paper Number : CSE775-727
Paper Journal: GESTS International Transactions on Computer Science and Engineering
Paper Field : Computer and Its Application
Volume Number: Vol.54 and No.3
ISSN Number : 1738-6438
Publication date: July 30, 2009.
Journal Type : hard copy with a green color cover
Online Journals: publication on the web in parallel to the printed journals.
-Part 2:
Paper Number : CSP775-112
Journal Title: GESTS International Transactions on Communication and Signal Processing
Paper Fields : Information Communication Engineering, Signal Processing, Image and Video Processing, Acoustics, etc.
Volume Number: Vol.13 and No.7
ISSN Number : 1738-9682
Issue Date : July 30, 2009.
Journal Type : hard copy with an orange color cover
On-line Issue: publication on the web in parallel to the printed journals.
Please, click the mouse on the "Major Conference Author's Paper Submission" at the home page, http://www.gests.org/. If the paper will be submitted through the web page, we will e-mail back with the details of how to proceed the submission of registration fees and copyright format.
Important dates for publication of the GESTS international transactions are :
- an improved paper and copyright format by July 27, 2009, ( http://www.gests.org/gests-full.rtf )
- the acceptance notification within ten days receiving your paper,
- the registration format with fees by July 30, 2009,
- the publication of GESTS International journal by July 30, 2009,
- and delivery start from GESTS to authors by August 10, 2009.
If you have a new paper or an improved version to be issued in GESTS international transactions, please, send us the final camera-ready version by July 27, 2009. At least one author of each paper must be accomplished with the registration.
We are looking forward to see your contributions at GESTS.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Bruce M. Bae, a general chair of GESTS,
http://www.gests.org/
I particularly like the "noble authors" part -- not to be confused with authors who have won the Nobel prize, of course.
The idea is, of course, that you submit your paper to this journal that nobody reads and then they charge you "registration fees". You'd have to be pretty dumb to fall for this one.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Does Reality Exist?
From Friday's Waterloo Region Record, in the Letters section, comes this gem, from Ray Zehr of Shakespeare, Ontario.
"...My answer is, true reality can only exist if God alone created intelligence because God is perfect then intelligence is true and reality is true.
"If you believe in evolution without God then you have to accept the fact that reality probably does not exist. This is probably the universal question that science has shied away from for centuries and left our youth hanging in the closet..."
It's not our youth, but somebody's brain, that was left hanging in the closet.
"...My answer is, true reality can only exist if God alone created intelligence because God is perfect then intelligence is true and reality is true.
"If you believe in evolution without God then you have to accept the fact that reality probably does not exist. This is probably the universal question that science has shied away from for centuries and left our youth hanging in the closet..."
It's not our youth, but somebody's brain, that was left hanging in the closet.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Monday, July 06, 2009
The Strangest Book on the Theory of Computation
Based on the description of the book in the World Scientific Press catalogue, I asked my university library to order a book entitled Automata Theory by Matthew Simon. I did so because it seemed to cover many topics not available elsewhere. I now regret my decision, although looking at the book did provide some amusement value. It is weird.
The first thing that a reader notices is each chapter begins with lengthy quotations about the history of slavery. No, I am not kidding. Chapter 1, for example, begins as follows:
TABLE OF MIXTURES
TO BECOME WHITE
White and Negro produces mulatto
Half white, half black
White and mulatto produces quadroon
Three-quarters white and one-quarter Negro...
etc. This strange choice is explained by the author as follows: "While this book focuses upon language, a reminder of the relationship between language, social being, responsibility, and historical context will start each chapter."
The typesetting and notation are really awful. For example, the author uses the capital letter "X" to represent ×, the cross product symbol. Terms are used without being defined: for example, "semi-automata" is used on page 7 but has not been defined. Some material is simply repeated; for example, both pages 9 and 11 contain a definition of semigroups (which are sometimes written "semi-groups"). The author frequently uses notation and abbreviations that are unique to him, such as "NDFSA" for what everyone else calls "NFA", etc.
Most of the book consists of pages and pages and pages of examples, with little explanation of what the examples are intended to illustrate. When theorems are stated, they often miss the point. For example, the pumping lemma for regular languages is stated as follows: "If an FSA has n+1 states and accepts a string ω where ω = a0 a1 ... an+1, thus |ω| = n+2, then the FSA accepts an infinite number of strings." But this is not the pumping lemma, which is a statement about languages, not automata.
This is, without a doubt, the strangest book I have every read on the theory of computation. I honestly don't know how this book ever got published.
There is also an interesting positive review of the book on Amazon:
Automata Theory by Matthew Simon is an unusually welcome book. The many examples shown include subjects not often covered, such as: the Chomsky-Schutzenberger Theorem, Kuroda Normal Forms, Ginsberg-Griebach Theorem, Simple Pushdown Automata, Syntactic Pattern Recognition, and Shape Grammers. The use of a consistent and standard notation throughout the book is also welcome, as many different subjects are discussed. The focus of the first chapter is upon Semigroups and Automata Theory(including wreath products), from a more elementary, less abstract, less mathematical viewpoint than that found in the dozen or so books covering this subject. Thus examples from automata theory are emphasized. While departures from the notation of Clifford and Preston do take place, the notation is as close as one can come to being standard, as no standard notation currently exists. Each chapter starts with a commentary or quotes relating to subjects that arise in socially oriented linguistics and automata theory. Such commentary is often omitted in books covering automata theory but is of interest to people studying Anthropological Linguistics, General (historical)Linguistics, Philosophical Linguistics, and other academic areas dealing with linguistics, but often neglected by the engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics communities.
I leave it up to the reader to try to figure out who might have written this review.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
United Way Finally Sees the Light?
For many years I have boycotted the local United Way because of their unwillingness to fund Planned Parenthood. My attempts to address the issue with the leaders of United Way KW were always met with evasion, and in some cases, misleading accounts of the reasons for their refusal. The real reason, of course, was that at Planned Parenthood one could learn about abortion as an option for an unwanted pregnancy (although the local Planned Parenthood does not actually do abortions). At the same time, the local United Way was happy to fund Birthright, an organization which refuses to refer women for abortions if that is their choice.
Now, I'm happy to say, the local United Way has seemingly seen the light. They gave a grant of $8,000 to PP for their "Women's Wellness" educational day and for a pilot project concerning Sudanese and Afghan women. Strangely enough, though, the United Way's list of funded agencies doesn't include Planned Parenthood. Maybe the local United Way still isn't willing to be forthright about their decisions.
I'm going to continue to boycott United Way until they fund Planned Parenthood and proudly say so on their website.
Now, I'm happy to say, the local United Way has seemingly seen the light. They gave a grant of $8,000 to PP for their "Women's Wellness" educational day and for a pilot project concerning Sudanese and Afghan women. Strangely enough, though, the United Way's list of funded agencies doesn't include Planned Parenthood. Maybe the local United Way still isn't willing to be forthright about their decisions.
I'm going to continue to boycott United Way until they fund Planned Parenthood and proudly say so on their website.
Clueless Palin Sinks to New Low
Just when you thought the saga of clueless and soon to be ex-governor Sarah Palin couldn't become any stupider, she (via her law firm) is now threatening to sue people who say bad things about her for defamation:
"To the extent several websites, most notably liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, are now claiming as “fact” that Governor Palin resigned because she is “under federal investigation” for embezzlement or other criminal wrongdoing, we will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation. This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law. The Alaska Constitution protects the right of free speech, while simultaneously holding those “responsible for the abuse of that right.” Alaska Constitution Art. I, Sec. 5. http://ltgov.state.ak.us/constitution.php?section=1. These falsehoods abuse the right to free speech; continuing to publish these falsehoods of criminal activity is reckless, done without any regard for the truth, and is actionable."
Considering that Palin is a documented serial liar, it's pretty rich when she threatens to sue others for what she claims is lying.
"To the extent several websites, most notably liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, are now claiming as “fact” that Governor Palin resigned because she is “under federal investigation” for embezzlement or other criminal wrongdoing, we will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation. This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law. The Alaska Constitution protects the right of free speech, while simultaneously holding those “responsible for the abuse of that right.” Alaska Constitution Art. I, Sec. 5. http://ltgov.state.ak.us/constitution.php?section=1. These falsehoods abuse the right to free speech; continuing to publish these falsehoods of criminal activity is reckless, done without any regard for the truth, and is actionable."
Considering that Palin is a documented serial liar, it's pretty rich when she threatens to sue others for what she claims is lying.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Janis Ian Demo Tape
I heard something on WHYY-FM (Philadelphia) last Sunday that positively gave me goose bumps. On the 2nd hour of the show American Routes, they played the demo-tape version of Janis Ian's song, "Society's Child". Janis Ian arrived in New York at the age of 14, and one year later, in 1966, she recorded "Society's Child" on the home tape recorder of Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen, publishers of Broadside.
It is a phenomenal recording for anyone, let alone a 15-year-old. You can listen to it here: click, choose the June 24th show, and then click on "Listen to Hour 2". Or you can go directly to the show as an mp3 file here. In both of these links, "Society's Child" begins at 16:20 into the show, so don't expect to hear it right away.
It is a phenomenal recording for anyone, let alone a 15-year-old. You can listen to it here: click, choose the June 24th show, and then click on "Listen to Hour 2". Or you can go directly to the show as an mp3 file here. In both of these links, "Society's Child" begins at 16:20 into the show, so don't expect to hear it right away.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Interview with Joseph Shallit
Here's a rarity: a July 1967 interview with my father, Joseph Shallit, conducted by interviewer Gene Poll, about my father's piece in the Reader's Digest, "We're Up to Deuteronomy". Yes, we really did read and discuss the Bible at dinner when I was 9 years old. The interview is in mp3 format.
Happy Canada Day!
This fine moose is decked out to celebrate Canada Day. But it lives in Bennington, Vermont.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Arrow
Just in case you didn't know what an arrow was, this sign on a Kitchener street helpfully explains it.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Logo Fail
Whenever I pass by this dry cleaner's, I am always struck by the logo. The arrow through "speedy" is obviously meant to convey speed, but for me it just looks like the word "speedy" has been struck out. They used to be speedy, it says to me, but aren't any longer. Logo fail!
Christian Science Peddled at the University of Waterloo
Yesterday I attended a talk by Christian Scientist Barbara Fife entitled "The Power of Prayer", held at the University of Waterloo in the building where I work, the Davis Centre. Although the room can hold about 250 people, I would estimate that no more than about 25 people were present.
For those who don't know much about it, Christian Science is a sect of Christianity that maintains unsupported claims about "spiritual healing". (For a critical look at Christian Science claims, see my article here.)
Supposed evidence for Christian Science claims is nearly always anecdotal, and Barbara Fife did not disappoint there. She started with an anecdote about her husband who wanted to quit smoking. She prayed for him, and he was able to quit. This was offered in support of the idea that prayer can bring about change. From a scientific point of view, however, this kind of claim is essentially worthless, since it does not have any control. What if she had not prayed? Maybe her husband would have quit even sooner! Without a control, it is impossible to conclude that prayer was effective.
Ms. Fife discussed various definitions of prayer. In one definition, a prayer is a petition. Prayer, she claimed, is more effective if it is for self-improvement rather than material gain. Her prayer for her husband was unselfish and so it was answered.
Ms. Fife discussed various aspects of Mary Baker Eddy's life. She claimed Ms. Eddy was "scientific", when in fact Eddy conducted no experiments, had no scientific training, and was completely unfamiliar with the notion of double-blind study.
Ms. Fife related the story of her son, who had a bike accident and hit his head while at Principia College, the only Christian Science institution of higher learning in the world. Afterwards he threw up. Although his face was gouged, he was only treated with prayer and cleaning and bandaging of the wound and quickly recovered. Three weeks later at graduation his wounds were hardly visible. Again, this was offered as proving the power of prayer. But it is not surprising at all that one can naturally recover, without prayer, in three weeks from a wound like that. And it is certainly irresponsible, after a head injury with vomiting, that one does not get checked out by a competent neurologist.
She said that "God had a divine purpose" for everyone and nothing could change that, certainly not a bike accident. It makes me wonder, what was the divine unchangeable purpose behind Pol Pot?
Prayer, Ms. Fife claimed, helps us see and think differently. It is not to help God hear us; it is for us to be close to God.
She told the story of a woman who had uterine fibroid tumors. After she took up Christian Science the tumors shrank and disappeared. She did not mention the fact that fibroid tumors often shrink spontaneously, and this is perhaps due to changes in estrogen levels.
Ms. Fife claimed that Mary Baker Eddy's book Science and Health actually heals; there is a 130-year history of healings. Mary Baker Eddy "proved everything she wrote". There is a law of God underlying Creation. Anyone can pray and find healing.
All told, it was a fairly typical Christian Science performance: vague stories of healings, usually with no names given; claims of miraculous healing following prayer; no controlled studies ever referred to. After tepid applause, Ms. Fife did not take questions from the audience.
I went up afterwards and asked her, if Christian Science healing is effective, why is Principia College one of the very few universities in the US that has recurring measles epidemics? Why did Mary Baker Eddy need glasses? Why didn't she heal herself of poor vision? Why do Christian Scientists live shorter lives than non-Christian Scientists? Fife had no answers to any of these questions, saying only that Christian Science healers "need to do better". She said she had not read Simpson's study comparing longevity of Christian Scientists and non-Christian Scientists and she also said she was uninterested in reading it. Clearly, Ms. Fife is a woman whose mind is not open to evidence against her point of view.
Why was the University of Waterloo chosen as the venue for this talk? Possibly it was due to a wildly optimistic forecast of the number of attendees, but I would guess it was partly to give a "scientific" veneer to the claims made.
For those who don't know much about it, Christian Science is a sect of Christianity that maintains unsupported claims about "spiritual healing". (For a critical look at Christian Science claims, see my article here.)
Supposed evidence for Christian Science claims is nearly always anecdotal, and Barbara Fife did not disappoint there. She started with an anecdote about her husband who wanted to quit smoking. She prayed for him, and he was able to quit. This was offered in support of the idea that prayer can bring about change. From a scientific point of view, however, this kind of claim is essentially worthless, since it does not have any control. What if she had not prayed? Maybe her husband would have quit even sooner! Without a control, it is impossible to conclude that prayer was effective.
Ms. Fife discussed various definitions of prayer. In one definition, a prayer is a petition. Prayer, she claimed, is more effective if it is for self-improvement rather than material gain. Her prayer for her husband was unselfish and so it was answered.
Ms. Fife discussed various aspects of Mary Baker Eddy's life. She claimed Ms. Eddy was "scientific", when in fact Eddy conducted no experiments, had no scientific training, and was completely unfamiliar with the notion of double-blind study.
Ms. Fife related the story of her son, who had a bike accident and hit his head while at Principia College, the only Christian Science institution of higher learning in the world. Afterwards he threw up. Although his face was gouged, he was only treated with prayer and cleaning and bandaging of the wound and quickly recovered. Three weeks later at graduation his wounds were hardly visible. Again, this was offered as proving the power of prayer. But it is not surprising at all that one can naturally recover, without prayer, in three weeks from a wound like that. And it is certainly irresponsible, after a head injury with vomiting, that one does not get checked out by a competent neurologist.
She said that "God had a divine purpose" for everyone and nothing could change that, certainly not a bike accident. It makes me wonder, what was the divine unchangeable purpose behind Pol Pot?
Prayer, Ms. Fife claimed, helps us see and think differently. It is not to help God hear us; it is for us to be close to God.
She told the story of a woman who had uterine fibroid tumors. After she took up Christian Science the tumors shrank and disappeared. She did not mention the fact that fibroid tumors often shrink spontaneously, and this is perhaps due to changes in estrogen levels.
Ms. Fife claimed that Mary Baker Eddy's book Science and Health actually heals; there is a 130-year history of healings. Mary Baker Eddy "proved everything she wrote". There is a law of God underlying Creation. Anyone can pray and find healing.
All told, it was a fairly typical Christian Science performance: vague stories of healings, usually with no names given; claims of miraculous healing following prayer; no controlled studies ever referred to. After tepid applause, Ms. Fife did not take questions from the audience.
I went up afterwards and asked her, if Christian Science healing is effective, why is Principia College one of the very few universities in the US that has recurring measles epidemics? Why did Mary Baker Eddy need glasses? Why didn't she heal herself of poor vision? Why do Christian Scientists live shorter lives than non-Christian Scientists? Fife had no answers to any of these questions, saying only that Christian Science healers "need to do better". She said she had not read Simpson's study comparing longevity of Christian Scientists and non-Christian Scientists and she also said she was uninterested in reading it. Clearly, Ms. Fife is a woman whose mind is not open to evidence against her point of view.
Why was the University of Waterloo chosen as the venue for this talk? Possibly it was due to a wildly optimistic forecast of the number of attendees, but I would guess it was partly to give a "scientific" veneer to the claims made.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Canadian "Journalist" Sinks to New Low
Denyse O'Leary is a local Roman Catholic pro-intelligent-design, anti-evolution "journalist" whose writing is typically at the grade six level -- perfect for her audience. Based on what I've seen, she seems impervious to actual argument, preferring instead to slam what she delightfully calls "Darwinbots". In her writing, she rarely interviews people who disagree with her, and she elevates people who agree with her to the status of authorities. For example, she routinely refers to creationist David Tyler as a "physicist"; I guess that sounds better than admitting that he is a professor of "clothing design and technology".
But today she has sunk to a new low, by attempting to blame the recent murder at the Holocaust museum on Darwin's theory of evolution. Nearly all the commenters point out how insane this is, but, as usual, O'Leary is completely impervious to their reasoning.
If O'Leary were consistent, she'd also be blaming the crash of Air France 447 on Newton's theory of gravity.
Update: no surprise here - O'Leary's claimed "breaking story" isn't original with her; it comes from the odious David Klinghoffer.
But today she has sunk to a new low, by attempting to blame the recent murder at the Holocaust museum on Darwin's theory of evolution. Nearly all the commenters point out how insane this is, but, as usual, O'Leary is completely impervious to their reasoning.
If O'Leary were consistent, she'd also be blaming the crash of Air France 447 on Newton's theory of gravity.
Update: no surprise here - O'Leary's claimed "breaking story" isn't original with her; it comes from the odious David Klinghoffer.
Friday, June 05, 2009
Reviews that Hurt
Mathematical Reviews is a journal that attempts to provide a brief review of every legitimate paper published in the mathematical literature. Reviews are intended to summarize the content of the paper and put it into context, but sometimes the opinion of the reviewer shows through.
Here is one that I stumbled on today: "In the paper under review, ... performs elementary manipulations to produce several equations. The first few of these formulas involve Pr(n,k), the number of partitions of n into k relatively prime parts, while the last few involve R(n,k), the number of decompositions of n into k relatively prime parts. These formulas do not provide insight into the behavior of Pr(n,k) and R(n,k) so much as they demonstrate what sort of formulas result from certain elementary manipulations."
Ouch, that one's gotta hurt.
I have to admit, I wrote a review like that once, too. Here's an excerpt: "Their main result, Lemma 2.1, is equivalent to the statement that multiplication of 2 × 2 matrices is associative."
Here is one that I stumbled on today: "In the paper under review, ... performs elementary manipulations to produce several equations. The first few of these formulas involve Pr(n,k), the number of partitions of n into k relatively prime parts, while the last few involve R(n,k), the number of decompositions of n into k relatively prime parts. These formulas do not provide insight into the behavior of Pr(n,k) and R(n,k) so much as they demonstrate what sort of formulas result from certain elementary manipulations."
Ouch, that one's gotta hurt.
I have to admit, I wrote a review like that once, too. Here's an excerpt: "Their main result, Lemma 2.1, is equivalent to the statement that multiplication of 2 × 2 matrices is associative."
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