Eleven Years Later, 9/11 Truthers Find Ways to Look Even More Ridiculous

Eleven years ago today, I was on sabbatical at the University of Arizona and listening to NPR when I heard the shocking news that the United States had been attacked by terrorists. Most of us quickly suspected Muslim religious extremists were the perpetrators, and we weren't wrong. My colleagues and I speculated that, despite the evidence, conspiracy theorists would quickly find some other group to blame: the CIA, Mossad, Bush, etc., and we weren't wrong either. Soon there were dozens of false claims circulating: that hundreds of Jews had been warned before the attack; that Larry Silverstein, owner of WTC 7, had given the order for controlled demolition of the building; and so forth. Only crackpots, we thought, would subscribe to these nutty claims.

But we were wrong. Many formerly respected academics, and some not so respected, signed on, and some spun elaborate and preposterous scenarios.

Nowadays, with extensive documentation of the role of Osama bin Laden and his henchmen in the attack, such as Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower, few rational people doubt the generally-accepted account of 9/11. Yet the truther movement lives on, although it has become more and more marginalized. They are reduced to creating self-appointed "expert panels" consisting of physical therapists, actors, and religious studies professors, that do "investigations" whose loony conclusions are pre-ordained.

The really sad thing is that these folks, with their zeal, could have actually done something useful about the real abuses of Bush and Obama: Guantanamo Bay, illegal dententions, the expansion of the surveillance state, and so forth. Instead, they advance lies, sow discord, damage the reputation of the United States, and discredit themselves.

Don't Hit That Moose!

From Recursivity reader D. S. comes this lovely tale of a driver who knows his priorities: avoid the moose at all costs!

Bad Referee Reports

Most mathematicians and theoretical computer scientists don't know how to write a referee report. Maybe this is not a surprise, since we don't explicitly teach this in graduate school, and we expect people to pick it up by reading the reports of others. But if most people don't do it well, how do we expect young professors to learn?

Good reports should

1. put the paper in context - is the subject well-studied? Or is it a backwater where people haven't worked in years? Will people want to read it?
2. evaluate the paper - Is it a real breakthrough in the area, or just one in a series of similar results? Does the author introduce some new useful technique?
3. evaluate the writing - is it clear? How could it be improved? Can arguments be restructured to be simpler and clearer? Are too many important subresults left to the reader?
4. evaluate the bibliography - is it complete enough, or (in the other direction) are many irrelevant papers cited?

Good reports should be specific. Don't just say "the writing is bad"; give specific examples of bad writing and how the writing could be improved.

Here is an example of a really bad report:

This paper is of absolutely no interest. I showed it to my colleague, Professor X, and she agrees. I recommend rejection.

A good referee report should be useful to the author. This report doesn't tell the author anything that he/she can use to improve the paper. Is it bad because the problem addressed is too trivial? Or because the results are already known? What is an author expected to do after receiving a report like this? Commit suicide?

Here's another example of a bad report:

Tiling problems have been studied for many years. They are of great interest in combinatorics and logic. This paper is a good contribution to the subject, and I recommend acceptance.

A good referee report should be useful to the editor, too. This report doesn't tell the editor anything useful! Are the results really deep and novel? Or is it just another in a series of similar small results? Not only that, a report like this suggests strongly that the referee didn't really read the paper with care, and just skimmed the paper in a few minutes. Are there really no papers that the author missed citing? Are all the equations really correct in all respects? Is there nothing that could be improved?

Michael Egnor Fails Intelligence Test

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Alvin Plantinga's EAAN (evolutionary argument against naturalism) is so mind-bogglingly flawed, that if you meet anyone at a party who claims to believe it has merit, you should immediately find someone more interesting to talk to, because it's really unlikely you're going to have a good conversation.

Any bright high school student can see the flaws in a few minutes. In this way, it functions as a sort of intelligence test for the philosophically inclined. The fact that some philosophers actually took the argument seriously and a few collaborated on a volume entitled Naturalism Defeated? illustrates the sad state of modern philosophy. It's the philosophical equivalent of taking a bogus proof that 2 = 1 and writing an entire book explaining why it is wrong. Yes, you can do it, but why bother?

So guess who accepts it and thinks it is "obviously valid"? Why, that paragon of ignorance and arrogance, Michael Egnor.

It's not surprising, since commenters at his site have tried over and over again to explain to Egnor what the theory of evolution says, but he just can't get it.

Painted Turtles

Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta), Rockwood Conservation Area, near Guelph, Ontario. The larger one is about 20 cm in length.

Photographer: A. Lubiw.

Green Heron

Green Heron (Butorides virescens), Rockwood Conservation Area, near Guelph, Ontario.

Photographer: A. Lubiw.

Bem's Silliness Debunked

Over at NeurologicaBlog the irreplaceable Steven Novella summarizes the case against Daryl Bem's silly "reverse causation" claims. I find it really hard to take precognition claims seriously, but I'm glad there are researchers who are willing to test these claims in a rigorous fashion.

Who's More Repulsive than Todd Akin?

If you were wondering if there is anyone more repulsive or ignorant than Todd Akin, I have a nomination for you: William Lane Craig.

Craig completely misunderstands Claire McCaskill's comments about the case, claiming her problem with Akin was simply that he was insensitive.

He also thinks Akin is right because Akin "trusts what experts in the field tell him. He listened to what the doctors told him." Which doctors exactly, Dr. Craig?

Craig thinks Akin is right because "The percentage of abortions that occur every year that involve rape cases is a very small percentage of the total number of abortions performed every year".

Craig says, "People who think that abortion is ethically justified in cases of rape simple reveal they don't understand the logic of the pro-life position". No, we understand your "logic" and we reject it. 

And yet there are people who continue to take both these clowns seriously.

If I Were King...

If I were king...

- it would cost nothing to register your car or renew your driver's license -- currently about $75 for both in Ontario. High fees such as these disproportionately affect the poor, who often need a car to get to a job, while they are almost nothing for the rich. Better to fund them through taxes.

- by contrast, gas taxes would be double or triple what they are now. The harmful externalities associated with driving cars should be borne by the people who use them. Yes to the carbon tax!

- if a legislator votes for a bill that is later declared unconstitutional, they lose their seat

- legislators would be chosen, either completely or in part, by random choice. They would be well-compensated and employers would be required to hold their jobs while they serve. After each legislative term ends (say 2 to 4 years), 30-60% would have their terms end and new ones would be randomly chosen to replace them.

- property taxes would be waived or strongly reduced for senior citizens.

- the whole regime of drug testing for professional sports would be done away with. Let athletes who want to achieve more modify their own bodies any way they like - provided they know the likely consequences.

- all places where people travel - airports, railway stations, rest stops, and so forth - would have a secure room with cots where people could take naps cheaply. It's odd how needs like food, drink, and toilets can usually be met for very low cost, but sleep cannot.

- all farm subsidies and price supports for agricultural products would be done away with.

- all local public transportation would be free to users and publicly funded, or there would be strong inducements to travel by public transit (e.g., your bus ticket is also a lottery ticket)

- players of professional sports would get to vote each year on who are the worst referees (or umpires) in their sport; the referees receiving the most votes would be demoted or fired

- all businesses would be required to prominently post the hours that they are open

- the terms of copyright and patent validity would be severely shortened

- the insane and fruitless war on drugs would be ended. Currently illegal drugs would be regulated through the existing prescription process, making them more uniform and safer. The taxes from marijuana alone would be a huge source of government revenue. A proportion of the taxes can be devoted to addiction programs.

Feel free to add your own in the comments.

The Mind of Doug Groothuis

If you want to see a prime example of the crazed, inchoate rage that Obama seems to induce in the Religious Right, you can do no better than to visit the blog of Doug Groothuis, professor at Denver Seminary.

According to Groothuis, Obama is "anti-American" and "a shameless con man". He "wants to preside over America's decline". He is the "quintessence of leftism, statism, and the destruction of our founding ideals". Electing him will be "The End of America".

This kind of unhinged rhetoric has no truth in it all: Obama is actually a timid centrist who continued most of George Bush's authoritarian policies, such as the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay. He can be justly criticized for his repeated failures to end right-wing foolishness.

Perhaps Groothuis is secretly worried that Obamacare will do for Obama and the Democrats what socialized medical care did for the reputation of Baptist minister Tommy Douglas and the NDP in Canada. But I guess that would require that he know something about other countries, which doesn't seem very likely.

Geologic Silliness

Earlier this year, at the Niagara Peninsula Gem and Mineral Show , there was a guy, Harry Johnston, selling what he called "The Mystery Stone", which appeared to me to be nothing more than common, ordinary quartz, being sold at rather high prices.

He's got a website in which he describes his rock as "a self cleaning stone of natural energies". It "enhances the energies of other stones, also clearing all Charkra points for most people". What does that even mean?

There was also a guy, Mars Islamov, selling Shungite, which is a form of noncrystalline carbon. Shungite is of genuine mineralogical interest, and there was an article about it by Buseck et al. in the Canadian Mineralogist 35 (1997), 1363-1378. But it's certainly not rare; the article of Buseck et al. says there are more than 10¹¹ tonnes of it near Karelia, Russia.

At his website you can find claims like "Shungite cures, purifies, protects, normalizes, induces recovery and promotes growth in living organisms. Everything which takes a toll on us, is killed; and everything health-giving is concentrated and restored by this miracle rock. Every scientist investigating shungite, declares it to be miraculous." This seems very dubious to me.

I wish geologists and mineralogists would speak up more strongly against these kinds of unsupported claims.

Authoritarian High School Superintendent of the Month

Our nominee for Authoritarian High School Superintendent of the Month is

Rick Martin, superintendent of Prague High School, who in a Kafkaesque move (Prague - get it?), wants to deny a high school valedictorian her diploma because -- gasp! -- she used the word "hell" in her valedictory address.

The people who run high schools in North America behave more like tinpot dictators than educators.

The Bible is Inerrant!

At least according to Doug Groothuis.

No need to even glance at all those lists of biblical contradictions, Doug. You've proved it with logic!

Canadian Solar Farm near Cornwall

If you take the train from Toronto to Montreal, about 10 minutes before you get into Cornwall, there's an interesting sight on the south side: the SunE Rutley Solar Farm. It consists of thousands and thousands of solar panels that generate enough electricity to power 1200 homes. It went by too fast for me to get a good picture, but there's one here that, unfortunately, doesn't really convey how big it appears.

George Jonas Is Very Confused

National Post columnist George Jonas is very confused.

He thinks free speech is "absolute", but then goes on to recite a list of familiar ways in which it can be and is restricted: defamation, fraud, etc.

The US, for example, doesn't have federal laws against "hate speech", but Canada does. So are we to conclude free speech in Canada is magically absolute, even though you can get away with saying something in the US that you could get convicted for in Canada?

He states, "I’ve always had an issue with expropriating public spaces for private or sectarian purposes" - yet all he needs to do is visit his local library, where private groups use public space all the time. Does he really want to end the local knitting club from using the library meeting room?

Jonas apparently seems not to understand that if the government grants permits to speak (say, at Queen's Park), then it can't restrict those permits on the basis of the kind of speech that will occur. Doing so is evidently a restriction on that "absolute" freedom of speech Jonas seems to cherish.

I sentence Jonas to reading Free Speech in an Open Society by Rodney Smolla.

I'll be Speaking in Ottawa

If you're not busy November 30-December 2 2012, you can come hear some really great speakers such as P. Z. Myers, Ophelia Benson, Chris DiCarlo, Udo Schuklenk, Eugenie Scott, Larry Moran, and others in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, at the Eschaton 2012 meeting, sponsored by CFI Ottawa.

Oh, and you can also hear me. I'll be speaking about numerology.

Two Online Courses

You have a choice. You can either shell out some unspecified amount of bucks to take a online course on "Darwinism & Intelligent Design" run by ID hack Tom Woodward.

Or you can take a free online course about genetics and evolution run by an actual biologist.

I doubt that Woodward could even pass a final exam in an evolutionary biology course. Of course, that doesn't prevent him from prattling on ignorantly about it.

Blame the Moose!

It's not easy to be a moose in Saskatchewan. If you're too successful, you end up targeted by hunters. Obviously, killing them is the best solution.

Too Bad This Guy Isn't a Mathematician

The guy at the city of Waterloo, Ontario who helped the mayor of Waterloo get online at the "Chinese Facebook", Sina Weibo, is named Max Min.

What a great name! Too bad he isn't a mathematician.

What's Norwegian and Commutes?

Why, an Abelian plane, of course!

Norwegian Airlines has pictures of famous Scandinavians on the tails of their planes, including the mathematician Niels Henrik Abel (1802-1829). You can see some of the other ones here. Oddly enough, the Norwegian Air website itself only lists a few of them.

Creationists Try to Do Mathematics - Again

It's always amusing when creationists try to do mathematics.

At the recent very silly Engineering and Metaphysics conference, there were at least three different talks with mathematical content.

But the funniest by far was by Eric Holloway, whose masterful work I admired once before. You can watch Eric

• claim that intelligent design will revolutionize all human thought
  
• shamelessly promote Dembski's "complex specified information", without mentioning that this bogus concept has been debunked in detail
  
• claim that physics deals with only two kinds of "agents"
  
• claim that a "search process" is not an "algorithm" - and then later talk about "search algorithms" (!)
  
• confuse the complexity classes NPC and EXPTIME
  
• claim that all polynomial-time algorithms depend on "incrementally find[ing] better solutions"
  
• confuse finding solutions with maximizing a function
  
• claim that the travelling salesman problem can be solved in polynomial time (at 19:14)
  
• claim that humans can solve the travelling salesman problem in linear time
  
• repeat Stephen Meyer's lie that "only intelligent agents create information"
  
• claim that "clouds" have "no information" (and hence imply that weather prediction can be done without any information at all!)
  
• claim that a specific instance of a maze can be changed, by removing a wall, into an NP-complete problem - thus making two fundamental errors in one sentence
  

All good stuff! You can see why creationists have to set up their own parallel pseudoscience conferences, because junk like this would be laughed out of any real scientific or mathematics conference.

Larry Moran Would Approve

It's pretty easy to get to: you go to Victoria Rail Station, and take the train to Bromley South. Trains run rather frequently. Once at Bromley South, you walk out of the station and up the street to the right a bit, and catch the 146 Downe bus. Your Oyster card works for the train and the bus - very convenient. The last stop is Downe Church, and then it's a short walk up Luxted Road.

The walk along the road is a bit unpleasant, since it is narrow and there is no sidewalk, so here's a tip: walk up until you see a sign on the left of the road that indicates the footpath to "Cudham". Follow this footpath until there is a sign indicating "Down House" to the right.

Inside you will find exhibits about Darwin's life and work, including his study and library. Outside, you find his gardens, and the famous Sandwalk. Not to be missed if you are in the London area!

Map Quiz

This is a rather famous map; indeed, it was even the subject of a recent book. What is it, who made it, and where was this picture taken?

The Death of Nano-Thermite

Did 9-11 "truthers" mistakenly identify ordinary epoxy, clay, and steel as "nano-thermite"?

That's what a new study concludes.

Gee whiz, it looks like the conspiracy crackpots got something wrong again. Who's surprised?

Strangest Textbook Title

There are a lot of strange textbook titles, but this one may be the strangest of all:

Discrete Mathematics with Ducks.

That's just silly! Everybody knows that you do discrete mathematics with geese, not ducks.

Friday Moose Blogging

Here's an account of canoeists who rescued two hypothermic moose.

Hat tip: Anna

Norwegian Moose Dance

You must see the famous Norwegian moose dance.

Hat tip: son #2.

Hard Questions?

Here a very silly person lists 20 questions he thinks atheists are incapable of answering.

Some of them are just question-begging, such as "What caused the universe to exist?". Ignoring the fact that causality is not very well-defined, how do we even know for certain that the universe was caused? And if atheists cannot answer this question, it's not like the theist answer ("God created it") provides any more insight.

Other questions are downright strange, such as "Why did cities suddenly appear all over the world between 3,000 and 1,000BC?" What this has to do with theism or atheism is beyond me. Mesopotamia had cities even earlier, in 4000-3500 B.C.E. In any event, probably the development of agriculture led to the formation of cities, and once this innovation occurred, it would have spread through trade.

Question 10 asks, "How do we account for self-awareness?" This has a relatively easy answer. Through natural selection, organisms come to model their environment. Sometimes this modelling is reflected in their geometric structure: a camel has a very different body profile than a shark. But organisms also sense the natural world and react to it. Having a better model -- one that allows an organism to predict future events in the world -- clearly would contribute to better survival and reproductive success. As the model becomes more sophisticated, eventually it will have to encompass the organism itself. Self-awareness is just when your model of the world becomes so detailed that it has to include yourself.

I won't spend any more time on this silly list, but readers should feel free to chime in with their own answers.

Don't Attend Crandall University

There are a lot of reasons not to attend Crandall University in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. For one thing, it used to be Atlantic Baptist College, and today it still describes itself as "Atlantic Canada’s Leading Liberal Arts University Devoted to the Christian Faith". Its motto is "Christ is preeminent". Not surprisingly, it gets crappy ratings, with this place rating it 7748 out of 11,000 North American universities, and 91st out of 98 Canadian universities.

Now there's yet another reason: the people who run it are bigots who won't hire a gay person in a gay relationship.

Programming Contest Results

The results from the 2012 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest are in, and Waterloo finished 9th in the world. Congrats to my colleague Ondrej Lhotak and to students Tyson Andre, Benoit Maurin and Anton Raichuk.

What's particularly interesting to me is the continued excellent performance of Russia and former-Soviet-Union countries such as Belarus and Kazakhstan. What accounts for their dominance? Is there some lesson from their educational system we can draw on in North America?

Well, This Should Certainly Help Baylor's Reputation

Here's a video by creationist professor Bob Marks that claims to be a lecture he gave at Baylor's "Introduction to Engineering" course, ENGR 1302, in Fall 2011 at the invitation of Professor Brian Thomas. It prominently features the logo of the Baylor University School of Engineering and Computer Science. I wonder why Baylor's Engineering department thinks it's a good idea to indoctrinate their freshmen engineers in creationist propaganda.



Watch Marks
- violate copyright by including videos of movies
- repeat the bogus claim that information only comes from an intelligent source (easy counterexample: weather forecasting)
- dramatically overstate the importance of the "No Free Lunch" theorem (which isn't very deep or important; nor does it have any real relevance to evolution). He claims it implies that "all algorithms kind of work on average the same as blind, exhaustive search". The only problem is that this assumes that the "average" is taken over a uniform distribution of all possible assignments of values to elements of the search space. Real search spaces don't look anything like this.
- claim that "The universe is not old enough or big enough to allow the evolution of complex life" (at 50:00)
- talk about his "active information" and "endogenous information" without revealing that the only people who use these measures are Marks and his creationist friends
- misrepresent Dawkins' "Methinks it is like a weasel" example
- claim that "In general, computer programs do not have the ability to create information". (Easy counterexample: write a program to map a string x to xx. By iterating this you can generate as much information as you like.)
- cite another creationist, John Sanford, to try to impugn Avida
- suggest that exhibiting other searches that are more efficient than evolutionary search algorithms casts doubt on evolution

Having faculty deliver creationist lectures like this is certain to improve Baylor's worldwide reputation. Why, I imagine the applications for graduate study will be rolling in. He needs to work on the cheesy sound effects and the hideous cartoons, though. Maybe adding some fart noises or stolen Three Stooges footage might help.

Doves Almost Ready to Fly

Back on May 6 I showed you how some mourning doves have taken over a former robin's nest at our front door. Now there are two baby doves just waiting to make their first flight.

Matthew LaClair: American Hero

Watch this documentary about student Matthew LaClair, who stood up to his Bible-thumping teacher (despite a lack of support from the school administration and fellow students) and struck a blow for the separation of church and state. The teacher, David Paszkiewicz, is exposed as a liar and a moron.

Prize for Dishonest Reporting

You can't make this kind of stuff up. The folks at PJ Media are offering a prize for dishonest reporting, and the committee includes Glenn Reynolds and Roger Simon.

Let's see, shall we nominate Glenn Reynolds for dishonestly attributing a right-wing columnist's views to the Kansas City Star? Or the time he misrepresented economic figures to blame it on Obama? There are just so many examples to pick from.

For Roger Simon, how about his recent interview of uber-fruitcake Jack Cashill about a meaningless error in a 20-year-old biography of Obama?

Or how about PJ Media's own Andrew Klavan for this dishonest commentary?

We could also nominate the Discovery Institute "News & Views" section, for having the most consistently dishonest reporting about evolution. There are so many DI lies to choose from, it's hard to know where to start. I'd nominate Denyse O'Leary, too, except the prize is for reporting, and it's hard to call what she does with that name. "Reprinting" would be a better word.

The Discovery Institute Gets a New "Expert"

I have to admit, I find it amazing how desperate the Dishonesty Institute folks are. They're willing to join forces with almost any nonentity, no matter how irrelevant their "expertise", if they toe the "evolution is a hoax and Darwinism is Nazism" party line. I mean, how else can you explain their fascination with David Klinghoffer? Casey Luskin? James Barham? John West? Not exactly Nobel Prize winners there, if you see what I mean.

Of course, their big tent has its limits. Michael Egnor got in a few columns at News & Views, but he's been quiet since this one. Even the Discovery Institute, it appears, has limits on the kind of nonsense they're willing to put up with.

Now they've got a new "expert" on their team: Stephen A. Batzer. Batzer is, at least judging from his cv, the person I might turn to if I wanted someone to give me a "review of recent glazing literature". But the theory of evolution? Not so much.

Here is Batzer's analysis of Sims' famous evolutionary simulation of locomotion strategies: "This program is modeling a very simplistic random search algorithm to produce an output, like a radar searching for an aircraft, or a robo-call computer punching out all the numbers inside of one area code, looking for a mark. The information, process, and therefore success have all been pre-loaded." I mean, you have to really work at it to miss the mark this much.

Congrats, Dishonesty Institute! You and Prof. Batzer deserve each other.

Yet Another P vs. NP Proof

From the Saudi Gazette we read about the truly astonishing work of Dr. Rafee Ebrahim Kamouna, who claims to have resolved the P vs. NP question.

“The paper has been on the site of Cornell University to conform its academic standards. This means the paper is of relevance and of interest to the scientific community."


No, it means he put it on the arxiv, a preprint archive that happens to be housed at Cornell.

"Dr. Kamouna is currently writing a book that will be entitled “Bi-Polarism Theory: The Death of Computer Science, The End of Mathematics, and The Birth of Logical Physics.”

... which we are all looking forward to read with breathless anticipation.

If this silliness isn't enough to satiate you, you can look at Gerhard Woeginger's page.

More Stupidity from Hoffmann

R. Joseph Hoffmann, the world's most boring atheist, is at it again with a new post telling us why the New Atheists are just so stupid and everyone should really be listening to R. Joseph Hoffmann and the even-more-boring Jacques Berlinerblau.

The reason why we laugh at Hoffmann is not because he has anything challenging or thought-provoking to say, but because he is so shamelessly contentless in such a sneering and supercilious manner. He claims the New Atheists do nothing but "shouting at people", but gives no examples, all the while getting in a few shouts himself. (Atheists need to "learn table manners"; they don't have "savvy"; they are "historically [incompetent]".)

Of course the Gnus (and I mean Dawkins, Harris, Rosenhouse, Hitchens, etc.) don't shout, but write intelligently and calmly almost all of the time. And they're fun to read, unlike Hoffmann, who is best read late at night when having trouble sleeping.

He claims that "Americn [sic] secularism hasn’t had the savvy to know how to preach its gospel in a way that (really) ups the numbers". Yet all the polls show just the opposite: atheists' numbers are rising faster than almost every religion. (Facts are not Hoffmann's strong suit. Don't bother correcting him, because he likes to remove comments that are uncomplimentary.)

Hoffmann wonders why there is "profound stress and anxiety about religion in these movements". He could, you know, actually ask someone involved in the "movements" to tell him why. No, it's much for fun for a pundit-wannabee to throw out a bunch of made-up explanations as if they were facts.

I'd be happy to tell Hoffmann why there is "profound stress and anxiety about religion", but first he has to remove the fingers he has inserted so deep into his ear canals.

Why Does the University of Toronto Demand Payment by Money Order or Certified Check?

Today we had to pay the residence fee for our older son at the University of Toronto. But unfortunately the Residence Office form says they only allow payment by certified check or by money order.

Look, this is the 21st century. I can pay my taxes online. I can buy airline tickets online. I can use a credit card, or a debit card, or paypal. But not, apparently, at the University of Toronto.

Each year thousands of new students move into residences. For each one of those students, parents have to make a special trip to the bank to satisfy this archaic requirement. The University of Toronto should be ashamed for wasting thousands of hours of time just because they can't move into the present.

Stephen Woodworth Refuses to Answer

Stephen Woodworth is a Conservative MP from Kitchener Centre, the Canadian riding (Americans would call it a "precinct") where I live. Although we disagree politically on many issues, I had always been impressed with his integrity and seriousness.

Recently he's become famous for trying to reignite a debate about abortion in the Canadian Parliament, by introducing Motion 312.

In a recent press release, Woodworth claims he "hopes to answer even more questions" about this proposal. He says, "I am more than willing to answer any questions Canadians may have".

Yet he refuses to answer my question, which I have asked twice: were abortion outlawed again in Canada, what should be the proper legal penalty for a woman who has an abortion?

He replied, saying it was premature to ask such a question. That's just avoiding the issue.

This is, I'm afraid, typical of those who advocate stricter controls on abortion.

Note to Slipglass: Your CEO is a Genius

Look! It's another genius who thinks "the existence of life refutes the Second Law of Thermodynamics". It's Mark Baisley, who is the CEO of a company called "Slipglass".

And everywhere we look, physicists are scurrying around trying to repair physics after Baisley's devastating refutation.

Your Weekly Dose of Woo

If you haven't had your anti-woo shot recently, you might want to avoid visiting the Gathering of Golden Dolphins.

A Golden Dolphin, you see, is "the aspect of one's self that is the highest vibration of one’s higher self". This group got started in "March 10, 2011, [when] Tyberonn placed a call to Nina/Anaya-Ra at the nudging of Archangel Metatron".

Good ol' Nina Brown -- otherwise known as Anaya-Ra -- "creates an infinity symbol throughout the field, by means of a large 144-facet Phi Vogel Crystal, to clarify the field to its highest potential."

And Nina's got a friend: James Tyberonn, who "began channeling Archangel Metatron in 2007, and is featured each month in the 'Sedona Journal of Emergence Magazine'".

I think I have to stop now. The woo is too strong.

(Hat tip: Anna)

The Discovery Institute Should Hire This Guy

The Discovery Institute should hire this guy, because he makes about as much sense as Bruce Chapman.

Why Build When You Can Rent?

A few years ago, some robins built a nest on our front porch, above the house light. It made it a little inconvenient, because everytime we came in and out, the robin would startle and fly off. After the baby robins hatched, we left the nest in place.

This year some mourning doves decided it was cheaper to move into this already-constructed nest instead of building their own. The mother dove is remarkably hard to startle, especially compared to the robin.

Authoritarian High School Superintendent of the Month

North American high schools are not places where free speech and criticism of authority are welcomed. Instead of teaching lessons about free speech, free expression, the Bill of Rights, and the Charter of Rights, principals and superintendents routinely impose arbitrary rules and punishments.

This month's Authoritarian Creep award goes to South Shore Regional School Board Superintendent Nancy Pynch-Worthylake from Nova Scotia, for suspending student William Swinimer for five days for wearing a shirt that said "Life is wasted without Jesus".

Swinimer's t-shirt expresses a moronic and wrong sentiment, and he sounds like the typical evangelical jerk who can't keep quiet about his own "good news". But when he says, "I believe this is worth standing up for — it’s not just standing up for religious rights, it’s standing up for my rights as a Canadian citizen; for freedom of speech, freedom of religion", he's absolutely right.

Superintendent Pynch-Worthylake could have turned this into a teaching moment. She could explain that in a multicultural society there will be people who assert that their religion is the only valid one, and that's the way life is. She could explain that the Charter guarantees "freedom of thought, opinion, and expression", and even though she disagrees with Swinimer's sentiment, she defends his right to express it in a non-disruptive way. Instead, she took the authoritarian route. Shame on her.

Christians Lose Special Rights; Respond With Threats

This is old news, but 2 weeks ago a local public school board here in Ontario finally ended the practice of distributing Gideon Bibles to students.

It should have been a no-brainer. Nothing prevents parents who want Bibles for their own kids from buying them, or asking the Gideons to supply a copy for free. Nothing prevents students from reading the Christian bible in their school library or elsewhere. But the local school board has no business distributing the holy book for one particular religion in the exclusion of all other religions.

How did some local Christians respond? "Several trustees received threats and hate mail, much of it anti-immigrant." Yes, that's exactly what Jesus would have wanted, I suppose.

Kudos to members of the local Christian community who spoke up against the hate.

Islam is So Weak, It Must Be Protected by Law

You can tell a religion can't stand up to criticism when its adherents have to resort to blasphemy laws to protect it.

That's the case with Islam. The film actor and comedian Adel Imam was recently sentenced to jail in Egypt for movies where he parodied conservative Muslim beliefs.

I won't be visiting Egypt anytime soon.

New Crank Proof of P = NP

For your reading pleasure, here is a new proof that P = NP. It contains other delights, such as a "nontrivial counterexample to Cantor's diagonal argument": a veritable garden of crankiness.

Friday Moose Blogging

Scientist at Work talks about moose populations in Isle Royale:

"Do they wonder why they suffer? Do they linger a few moments longer before getting up again and then sigh before plowing through the snow for another bout of foraging? Moose certainly have thoughts, and some we understand — the fear of being chased by a wolf, the pleasure of eating fresh blue-bead lilies in the spring. But our knowledge about the content of most moose thoughts — thoughts that are as real as any of my mine — lie at the fuzzy boundary between inference and imagination."

Religious Quiz

See if you can do this one WITHOUT google or other reference aids.

What alleged event from religious history does this bronze panel depict, and in what city in New York state is it located?

Periodic Table Goodness

Forget the stupid bell. Next time you're in Waterloo, Ontario, stop by the CEIT building on the campus and visit this awesome gigantic mural of the periodic table. It's so big that I found it really hard to photograph.

Sculptor of Rusty Junk Wins Award

This rusty piece of junk is, believe it or not, an award-winning piece of public sculpture that is the most prominent feature of a major downtown square in Waterloo, Ontario.

It is entitled "Waterloo Bell - Bell for Kepler" and was created by Royden Rabinowitch. Recently Rabinowitch accepted the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts for this and other work - an award that carries with it a cash prize of $25,000.

Here is how Rabinowitch described it: "The sculpture’s 3 stacked, major segments simultaneously appear to float and be at risk of falling down. They resemble someone attempting to stay in balance." No, it resembles a rusty piece of junk from a disused factory.

This has got to be one of the ugliest and most unappealing pieces of public art I've ever seen. Let's get rid of it.

Public Institutions Try to Avoid Giving Out Contact Information

One thing that really drives me crazy is trying to contact anyone who works in government or the civil service. In many jurisdictions, it seems like they do their best to keep all kinds of contact information (such as name, phone number, or e-mail address) secret from the public.

An example is our local public high school, the Waterloo Collegiate Institute. This high school is paid for with our provincial tax dollars; yet you will look in vain for the e-mail address of anyone who works there. I tried just now to get a work e-mail address for the webmaster over the phone, but no one would give it to me! This is insane.

Contrast that with the University of Waterloo. Not only are addresses and phone numbers available everywhere, there's even a web app to make finding this information easy.

This reminds me of the story about fire stations after the telephone was invented. Some refused to have telephones installed, saying that if they were to do so, people would constantly be calling them and they wouldn't have the time to put out fires.

I would favour a provincial or federal law saying that all civil servants and others paid with tax money must have their work phone number and work e-mail address posted in an easily-accessible place on the institution's web page.

World's Worst Journalist Continues Her Streak

Denyse O'Leary, the world's worst journalist™, continues her streak at Uncommon Decent with a posting that shows that she thinks that philosopher Hilary Bok is a man.

Really, you have to work at it to be this bad at your job.

Silly Philosopher Admired by Even Sillier Philosopher

How nice! Philosopher Bradley Monton, who doesn't really understand the problems with intelligent design, is pleased that Alvin Plantinga (author of one of the dumbest arguments against naturalism ever constructed) likes his book.

Well, of course, Brad! The useful idiot: an atheist who thinks there's something to intelligent design! What's not to love?

(Don't bother trying to leave comments at Monton's blog. He certainly doesn't allow that!)

Friday Moose Blogging

What to do when someone finds an exceptionally large and beautiful moose?

Why, kill it, of course.

Humans are really a violent species.

Robot Repair Store, Pittsburgh

Here are some photos from Fraley's Robot Repair in Pittsburgh. I highly recommend this place if your robot needs some tuning up. The service is excellent and the prices are reasonable.

Chemistry Quiz

I invented the chemical process by which a formerly expensive metal became commonplace. They erected this statue in my honor, cast in the metal I helped popularize. Who am I, and where is this statue?

When Geese Attack...

This is the result.

Hat tip: Jason K.

Congratulations to Bill Dembski!

Bill Dembski has a new job as the "Phillip E. Johnson Research Professor of Science and Culture" at the Southern Evangelical Seminary. I know all readers of this blog will join me in congratulating Prof. Dembski in obtaining this position, for which he is most suited.

Southern Evangelical Seminary's doctrinal statement says "We believe in the special creation of the entire space-time universe and of every basic form of life in the six historic days of the Genesis creation record. We also believe in the historicity of the biblical record, including the special creation of Adam and Eve as the literal progenitors of all people, the literal fall and resultant divine curse on the creation, the worldwide flood, and the origin of nations and diverse languages at the tower of Babel." I wonder if Prof. Dembski will be required to recant his belief in an old earth?

David C. Levy Should Not be Allowed Anywhere Near an Institution of Higher Learning

In the Washington Post, some moron named David C. Levy opines:


An executive who works a 40-hour week for 50 weeks puts in a minimum of 2,000 hours yearly. But faculty members teaching 12 to 15 hours per week for 30 weeks spend only 360 to 450 hours per year in the classroom. Even in the unlikely event that they devote an equal amount of time to grading and class preparation, their workload is still only 36 to 45 percent of that of non-academic professionals. Yet they receive the same compensation.

This guy is the president of some education group? And a former Chancellor at the New School? He shouldn't even be allowed near a university.

Anyone who thinks that the time spent in a classroom dominates the activities of a university or college professor is a moron. For each hour that I teach, for example, I spend 2-4 hours preparing - and that's for a course I've taught many times. Add in constructing assignments & course web pages, marking, helping students during office hours, and a conservative estimate is that the work needed for a 3-hour class is something like 10-15 hours per week. Now, how about creating new courses or revising old ones? Teaching a course you haven't taught before takes something like 10-12 hours preparation per lecture, at a minimum.

Then there are all the other activities: advising students, serving on committees, giving public lectures, and so forth. And I haven't even mentioned research: believe it or not, even at small colleges some faculty do research.

Yet David C. Levy thinks faculty members' workload is "36 to 45 percent of that of non-academic professionals". Get real.

Charles Rice: Question and Answer Session

There was a brief question-and-answer session after the main talk, which was unfortunately dominated by two questioners. I didn't take detailed notes. Again, my comments in brackets.

First questioner: "So, isn't the Enlightenment really another Dark Age for Catholics"?
Rice: Yes. Our culture has lost its mind. You should pray the rosary. One of the things we are missing is an appreciation of spiritual reality. We are more than material beings. We know this because we can do two things that a material being cannot: abstraction and reflection. An abstract idea does not exist in the material world. [Pure assertion. There is no reason why a "material being" could not abstract or reflect, and there is good evidence that some animals can do abstraction and reflection.]

Another questioner: The bible approves of slavery. Doesn't that make God unjust?
Rice: Slavery in the bible means something different from the slavery we think of today.

After the lecture was over, Rice suggested he would take additional questions informally. I approached him and tried to ask about a passage in his book, 50 Questions on the Natural Law. The passage in question reads:

"It would make no more sense to force a day-care center to hire an acknowledged or practicing homosexual than it would to make a bank hire an acknowledged or practicing thief."

Holding a copy of the book, I said, "I understand why a bank would want to not hire a thief, because a thief might steal from the bank. But why would a day-care center want to not hire a gay person?"

Rice responded, "Read the book." I replied, "I have. But it's not clear. What is the rationale you are implying?"

Rice said, "Look, I already said I'm not going to answer any questions on that topic." I replied, "It's a shame you don't have the courage of your convictions to defend your views." Rice began to look rather annoyed.

Rice said, "At least you bought my book." I said, "No, I borrowed it from the library." And that was that.

[In my view, a scholar has an obligation to defend his published views in his area of expertise. I don't know why Rice refused to do so; perhaps it is because the passage is indefensible. Even if he didn't want to do so last night, Rice could have said something like, "I don't want to get into that here, but if you give me your e-mail address, I'll address your question later." But he didn't. In my mind, he has spectacularly failed his obligation as a scholar.]

By the way, news reports say that Rice will give a secret, by-invitation-only seminar for faculty today and teach a philosophy class. In the past, these additional seminars have been publicized and available for everyone who is interested. But not this year. I guess the Pascal lecture committee would rather have secret seminars away from people who might dare to ask inconvenient questions - which Rice probably would refuse to answer, anyway.

Summary of Pascal Lecture by Charles Rice (Part 2)

I'm continuing with my summary of what Charles Rice said. My comments are in brackets.

Next, Rice asked, "How do you know using just your reason that there always had to be an eternal being?"

He quoted a line from Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Sound of Music: "Nothing comes from nothing; nothing ever could." [But quoting music lyrics doesn't constitute a coherent argument. It seems to be that assertions like "nothing comes from nothing" are just that; assertions. In the view of modern physics, particles and anti-particles can, in fact, come from nothing.]

Finally, he revealed his deep argument for why there always had to be an eternal being: "Of course there had to be an eternal being."

Pope John Paul asked, why is the something rather than nothing? The culture where we live rejects that. The principle of our society is the dictatorship of relativism. "All things are relative": but if true, then that statement must be relative. And legal positivism is the jurisprudence of relativism. The foremost legal scholar of positivism was Austrian philosopher Hans Kelsen (1881-1973). Philosophical relativism is the philosophy of democracy. If everybody agrees, no one can tell what is right or wrong, so philosophical absolutism leads to totalitarianism. Legal positivism says that a norm of any content can be a valid law, and that justice is an irrational ideal. However, Rice disagreed with all that, saying we could pass a "John North extermination law" and we would know it is wrong. Kelsen, however, would have said "stop emoting, for we can't know what is just." After World War 2, Kelsen wrote, "Auschwitz & the Soviet concentration camps were all based on valid law". What do we give up and what have we invited if we can no longer say that Auschwitz is unjust? [It's like Rice never heard of any other legal theory. How about John Rawls and his Theory of Justice?]

The three principles of modern society are secularism, relativism, and individualism. Take the Obama health care mandate as an example: is conscience important? Oliver Wendell Holmes said "The purpose of law is to enforce the taste of the dominant group." But John Paul said that relativism is the philosophy of totalitarianism; if you don't have common reason, then all you have left is force. Natural law says you can know objective reality.

Take a pen. Can it be a battleship?

A door presents itself to me. How do we know it is a door? Because of our senses, both internal and external. The internal senses are imagination, memory, instinct, and common sense. Our active intellect abstract the essence of the door and passes it to the passive intellect which forms an idea. Idea: that by which we know. [Shouldn't our models of perception and cognition be based on what we know about neuroscience, rather than archaic 13th century views of the world?]

Judgment is the 2nd activity of intellect. Truth is the conformity of a statement with reality. If I say, "that is a geranium" while pointing at the door, that is false. There is a principle of non-contradiction. Can a pen be a pen and not be a pen? No, a thing cannot be and not be at the same time in the same aspect. [I'm not sure this is precise enough to mean anything, but even so, in modern physics, it is possible to create a system that is both vibrating and not vibrating at the same time. The real world could well be more complicated than simple Aristotelian logic might suggest.]

What is good? "The good is that which all things seek." All things, not just persons. [What good does a rock seek?]

There are 5 basic inclinations that are natural and self-evident. Choosing to prove this, he asked people what they were. Answers from the audience were empathy, trust, happiness, sex, food, and understanding. But Rice was clearly disappointed by these answers, and gave these instead, from Thomas Aquinas:
1. seek good, including the highest good, God
2. self-preservation
3. preservation of the species
4. live in community
5. to know and to choose, to use intellect and will
[Again, why should we base our reasoning & law on what some 13th century philosopher, ignorant of biology and neurophysiology, said? In modern biology the idea that a "basic inclination" of an organism is the "preservation of the species" is laughable; that's group selection.]

You can reason from all basic inclinations to understand why theft, murder, etc., is wrong.

Nevertheless, sincere people will occasionally take opposite positions on a moral issue. How can you tell who is right? We have the ability to know objective moral wrong. You are culpable only if you know it was wrong.

John-Paul said that Catholics have a great advantage in the Magisterium. It is a positive and hopeful document that provides
- dignity of the person created in the image and likeness of God
- solidarity
- subsidiarity: social tasks should be performed by individuals, families, associations, and the State (in that order). The State exists for the person, not the other way around.

Cardinal Ratzinger said, "Adolf Hitler and Stalin could be saints if they really thought what they were doing was right." Synteresis: general moral faculty. Anamnesia: remembrance imprinted in us of the way things were before the Fall.

The Magisterium is an aid recalling to a person the anamnesis of his being. Cardinal Newman said, "I will toast my conscience first and then the Pope." Conscience is whatever you decide? No, that trivializes it and the State need not respect it. The reality is that conscience is transcendent.

Every state or corporation that has ever been has either gone extinct or will go extinct. But every human being who has ever lived will live forever. [You can't base a valid legal theory on a false claim.]

Only if you are willing to say human reason can reach moral truth can you say a law is just or unjust. Rosa Parks: was she morally obliged to disobey the law that said blacks need give up their seat to a white person and move to the back of the bus?
No: if a law is contrary to common good you have an obligation to disobey it unless doing so would cause scandal. Example: income tax. It may be unjust but you have an obligation to obey it. [A little ironic that he would refer to Rosa Parks, since what gay people want is similar to what Rosa Parks fought for.]

But laws that violate the divine good must be disobeyed even at the price of your life. If a doctor in the military were ordered to perform an abortion, would he be obligated to do so?

We must affirm the transcendence of the person over the state. If you're incapable of affirming moral truth, then the state has won. If you're a relativist, you get your rights from the state. Only if you can affirm that you are endowed with rights by your Creator, as in the Declaration of Independence, can you assert these transcendent rights. You have transcendent rights because you're going to live forever.

Rice said, "I ask you to think about this and pray about it. It comes down to a question of God and the common moral code of society, founded on objective reality, and ultimately God. God is not dead; he's not even tired."

He concluded by saying that "the protesters have my admiration and respect" and we "should convey this to them". [I don't buy it. Real respect means he would have addressed some of his bigoted statements about gays, instead of ruling all questions about them out of bounds at the beginning. He could have easily "conveyed" his respect himself, in person, by going to talk with the protesters before or after his talk.]

Summary of Pascal Lecture by Charles Rice (Part 1)

Here's the first part of my account of Charles Rice's Pascal lecture tonight. For background, see previous posts on this blog. I will try to report fairly what Rice said, but I'm evidently biased. Inside quote marks the quotes are exact to the best of my ability to take notes; other comments are just paraphrases of what he said. My comments are in brackets.

My guess is that there were about 100-150 protesters outside & inside the building, and about 150-200 listening to the lecture inside an auditorium that could hold 500. There were a lot of empty seats, despite the controversy.

Charles Rice: 80-year-old professor of law at Notre Dame & former Marine who looks 65.

Rice was introduced by David B. Perrin, the President of St. Jerome's University, the Catholic university that is affiliated with the University of Waterloo (it used to be called a "church college"). [Perrin pronounced "Pascal" as if it rhymed with the computer language Haskell, and pronounced "Marine Corps" as "Marine Cores", both of which I found odd.] Throughout the night, Rice behaved almost as if it were an undergraduate lecture, moving out from behind the podium, asking questions directly of audience members, and rambling a bit.

By the way, in contrast to all the previous Pascal lectures I've attended, no member of the University's administration was there to welcome and introduce the speaker: neither President nor Provost. This was a pointed statement that the University administration did not approve of the choice of Rice as speaker.

Rice started with a joke, saying he was a lawyer and that "99% of lawyers give the rest of us a bad name". Throughout his approximately one-hour lecture, he had some mild jokes, some of which were more successful than others. He said his talk would be about epistemology - "how do you know?" He quoted Pope Benedict as saying that "modern culture restricts reason to the empirical", but that this was unwise, since if reason can only reach the empirical, it can't reach objective moral truth or God. Questions about objective moral truth and God are dismissed as non-rational in our society, Rice claimed, because reason cannot know anything about them. "We lose the ability to ask if a law is unjust because if reason is limited to the empirical, we can't decide, what is justice?"

He then said he was "frankly surprised to the objection to my participation in these lectures. I'm just a guy from Mishiwaka, Indiana. Why should I get singled out?" [I found this disingenuous. He's not just "a guy", he's a law professor at a major university who has inserted himself into public controversies before, such as when he protested Obama's selection as commencement speaker at Notre Dame. So it's a little ironic that he claims not to understand why someone would protest his own selection as a speaker. I think he knows quite well.]

The objections, Rice said, are because "I advance the teaching of the Catholic Church. I plead guilty. I fully agree with all the teachings of the Catholic church. Jesus Christ, who is God, lives in and teaches through the Catholic church. I respect the protesters and their protest. I admire their tenacity."

He went on to rule out any questions about anything except the subject of his lecture: "Don't take what I say as disparagement, but I'm not getting into these subjects in this lecture. It would be a disservice to the foundational issues to allow the discussion to be diverted into another agenda. Questions will have to be limited to things covered in the lecture. I don't want the focus to be diverted." [I found this a transparent ploy to avoid answering any hard questions about his extensive record of bigoted statements. It is ascholarly and disgraceful.]

He said, "We're going to talk about conscience. What is it?" Thomas Aquinas said it is "how we judge the rightness of wrongness of a particular action." Is there an objective standard, or is it simply your decision? Pope John Paul 2 said our society says "whatever I decide is right for me".

The Enlightenment's goal was "to organize society as if God does not exist". That is its basic principle.

He then asked a number of people in the audience individually if they think God exists. First person: "No." Second person: "No." Third person (me): "No!" [I think he was taken aback by this; he's probably not used to so many people disagreeing with one of his basic beliefs. Well, Waterloo is not Notre Dame, where he's used to teaching.] Finally, someone in the audience said, "I do!"

Rice then tried to move to causality. He said, "If I drop a pen" and asked why it fell, and you said, "No reason", would anybody believe it? There are things, he said, that are self-evident. One is the "principle of sufficient reason": every effect has a cause. [I don't understand why people elevate this claim to a universal. Causality might fail, for example, at very small or very large scales. For example, when an individual U-238 atom decays, what is the cause of its decay? The modern view of physics at the quantum level (admittedly not shared by all physicists) is that randomness is really "built in" and some "causes" are only statistical, not the deterministic ones envisioned by Rice. It seems to me that as a scholar, he needs to deal with this objection forthrightly.]

God is "an eternal being" and people "are immortal". "Only spiritual beings, such as humans, can abstract and reflect." [This seems just like a groundless assertion to me. I think Rice needs to read some ethology, such as the work of Gordon Gallup and Frans de Waal. It is not clear at all that the ability to abstract and reflect is restricted to humans; indeed there is evidence that baboons and apes can do so.]

More tomorrow...

Photos from the Pascal Lecture Protest

Here are three photos from tonight's protest of Pascal lecturer Charles Rice. That's UW Philosophy prof Tim Kenyon at the bottom.

Tonight's Pascal Lecture and Protest

Tonight Charles Rice from Notre Dame will be on campus at the University of Waterloo to present the annual Pascal lecture. I wrote about Professor Rice and this invitation before, but here are some more thoughts in advance of tonight's talk.

1. There will be a silent protest before and during the talk, from 6 to 9 PM, in the Theatre of the Arts, Modern Languages Building, on the UW campus. One organizer is Shannon Dea, a philosophy professor at UW. The organizers ask that you (a) refrain from interrupting the lecture in any way (b) wear rainbow-themed clothing (c) bring posters (but not on sticks) (d) cooperate with UW security. This is a good, peaceful way to let Charles Rice and the Pascal lecture committee know your disapproval of Rice's views. (Sample Rice quote: "It would make no more sense to force a day-care center to hire an acknowledged or practicing homosexual than it would to make a bank hire an acknowledged or practicing thief." - 50 Questions on the Natural Law: What It Is and Why We Need It, Ignatius Press, 1999.)

2. I've been reading some of Professor Rice's writings on "natural law"; they are so boring and unoriginal I could probably give his lecture for him. Here is some of what we are going to hear:

• An objective natural law exists and is binding on all of us.
  
• Natural law effectively coincides with Catholic dogma on subjects like homosexuality, birth control, etc.
  
• Gay people are "objectively disordered"
  
• The best way to understand the world is by following medieval thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, ignoring 8 centuries of progress in science
  
• Animals have no rights
  
• Evolutionary biologists are wrong; people could not have descended from ape-like creatures because we have souls.
  

3. The local media coverage of the lecture and its protesters has been -- no surprise -- absymal. The Waterloo Region Record, our local paper, has spectacularly failed in its obligation to explain what the controversy is about. The coverage has been so bad that today's paper carries a letter to the editor in protest, written by student Stephanie Chandler.
I single out one reporter, Terry Pender, for his particularly egregious reporting. Here is an archive of some of the local coverage:

• Terry Pender, Choice of speaker at UW sparks protest, March 16 2012
  
• Luisa D'Amato, D’Amato: Campus can set an example as a home of free debate, March 17 2012
  
• Terry Pender, Pair of protests will accompany (post-departure) Charles Rice lecture, March 18 2012
  
• Editorial Staff, A teachable moment at UW, March 20 2012
  
• Greg Mercer, Lecturer at UW prompts silent vigil, March 20 2012
  
• Stephanie Chandler Letter to the editor, March 20 2012
  

4. The University of Waterloo has a well-deserved reputation for censorship in the past. Ironically, it's usually been the University administration that was responsible. From newsgroup censorship to removing newspapers from the University library with coverage of the Karla Homolka case to Ethics Committee harassment of Professor Ken Westhues for remarks he made in a course, to removing copies of the Imprint, the student newspaper, because of articles about sexual topics, the University administration has rarely stood up for the principles of free speech and academic freedom.

Students have, on occasion, unfortunately aped the administration. The most recent infringement was the shameful treatment of speaker Christine Blatchford, whose first talk had to be cancelled because three student protesters failed to move from the stage. Thankfully, this one time the UW administration did the right thing, and apologized and rescheduled the talk.

However, the impulse to censor lives on, as shown in this article that quotes a student, Ashling Ligate, as saying “He [University president Hamdallahpur] could cancel this. He could have sent a much stronger statement.”

More later...

"Proof" of Fermat's Last Theorem

One problem with the proliferation of "open access" journals is the decrease in quality. A good example is this "proof" of Fermat's Last Theorem by a guy who seems to specialize in rather eccentric papers. This paper was passed around to great laughter at the van der Poorten memorial conference in Australia. (The list of keywords alone is funny to a professional mathematician.)

This journal - the Journal of Mathematical and Computational Science - and its editorial board should be ashamed of publishing this junk.

Friday Moose Blogging

Here is a koala from Australia -- or, as it is commonly known -- the "Moose of the Treetops".

A Puzzle

Still here at the van der Poorten memorial conference in Newcastle, Australia. The following problem occurred to me:

What is special about the integer 2007986541?

The labels for the post may give some hints.

A Compass Puzzle

So I'm here for a week in Australia at the memorial conference for Alf van der Poorten.

I can tell it's really Australia because they are selling Kellogg's "Rice Bubbles" in the supermarket instead of Rice Krispies.

But there's another way to tell that it's the Southern Hemisphere, since I have a compass with me. Can you figure out what it is?

Shocked! Shocked!

This week's Shocked! Shocked! episodes are particularly funny.

David Limbaugh, who (if possible) seems even more talentless and vile than his brother Rush, is shocked! shocked! that people would dare to criticize his brother. Doing so constitutes "the most radical display of hate and intolerance" that he's witnessed in years! Bonus wingnut points for David -- he manages to mention Saul Alinsky. (Hat tip -- Ed Brayton.)

Lisa Kennedy Montgomery, aka "Kennedy", a Christian who hosts a morning radio show in Los Angeles, recently said something stupid about atheism and was shocked! shocked! to find that people would dare criticize her about it. That's what the good folks at Reason magazine think deserves a column. (And over at Uncommon Descent, they call the 39-year-old Ms. Montgomery a "girl".)

Ms. Montgomery's column is yet another example of something I've noticed before: the tendency of Christians --- who presumably think religion is a good thing --- to use religious terminology in a negative way to describe atheism and evolution. The criticism she received was a "Biblical floodgate"; the criticism exhibited "the same fervor the religious use"; atheists exhibit "intense—even religious—zeal". (Along the way, she hilariously misspells "Maimonides" -- pseud alert!)

Yet Another Creationist Misunderstands Information Theory

It's always funny to see a creationist try to use information theory, because they almost always get it wrong. Here we have Joseph Esfandiar Hannon Bozorgmehr, who posts under the name "Atheistoclast", demonstrating his ignorance:

---

"Matzke misunderstands what is meant by "new information".

He apparently thinks that new genes, produced by duplication, represent novel information. But if you copy one gene 1000 times over, the information content remains the same even though you have created many more genes.

---

Poor Bozorgmehr needs to sit in on my course CS 462 at the University of Waterloo, where we will shortly discuss this very issue. Then he can prove the following theorem:

Theorem: If K denotes Kolmogorov information, then K(xⁿ) - K(x) is unbounded as n tends to infinity.

This would be regarded as a relatively simple exercise in my course.

Yet Another Black Eye for the Pascal Lecture Series

The Pascal lecture series at my university, the University of Waterloo, has a history of inviting really terrible speakers. (Why a public university should be sponsoring an explicitly evangelical lecture series is a good and legitimate question, but not one I'll address today.)

You can read about last year's embarrassing choice, Mary Poplin, here, here, and here.

I didn't think it was possible, but this year's choice seems even worse than last year's. It is Charles E. Rice, an emeritus professor of law at Notre Dame. Rice is a big believer in "natural law", which (big surprise) just so happens to coincide with the Catholic Church's stance on everything from contraception to abortion to gay marriage. Here you can read Professor Rice's enlightened views about homosexuality.

You can watch 10 minutes of Rice in action here on Youtube. How many distortions and misrepresentations can you find? It'd be great to see the rest of this lecture, but I haven't been able to find it anywhere. Maybe some reader can help out.

Rice, by the way, is a director of the Thomas More Law Center, the legal organization that lost the Kitzmiller v. Dover intelligent design case. Here you can read Professor Rice's deep and penetrating analysis of the issues involved in that case.

While not an outright birther, he seems to have some sympathy with the birther movement, as evidenced by this column. Money quote: "The American people do not know whether the current President achieved election by misrepresenting, innocently or by fraud, his eligibility for that office."

I've been reading Rice's book, 50 Questions on the Natural Law. Stay tuned.

A Functional Equation

You might know the gamma function, which is one way to extend the factorial function to the complex plane. It obeys the functional equation

Γ(1) = 1

Γ(z + 1) = z Γ(z).

In fact, if we demand that it be logarithmically convex and obey the rules above, then the ordinary gamma function is in fact the only way to extend the factorial function to the positive reals. (Here Γ(n) = (n-1)!.)

Now the successor function z → z + 1 is on the lowest level of the Grzegorczyk hierarchy. The next higher level includes the function z → 2z. So, in analogy with gamma function, suppose we demand that

f(1) = 1

f(2z) = z f(z).

Then what's a "reasonable" function that satisfies this functional equation? My answer in the comments tomorrow, unless someone comes up with the same answer I did.

More Evidence that ID Isn't Science

Are you a young religious fundamentalist who feels threatened by the theory of evolution? Then this summer program run by the Dishonesty Institute may be right for you!

Of course, you'll need to prove that you are devoted to the Truth. That's why you'll need a "recommendation from a professor who knows your work and is friendly toward ID, or a phone interview with the seminar director."

Copy here, for when it disappears down the DI memory hole:



Yes, that's exactly how real science works. I remember well when I wanted to study theoretical computer science at Berkeley: one of the requirements was that I get a recommendation from someone who knew my work and was friendly toward computational complexity.

Not.

I mean, could it be any plainer that ID is a religious and political movement? It's just like when politicians set up "free speech zones" to keep out protesters, or when creationist organizations demand statements of faith.

No real scientific organization demands a "statement of faith" or that applicants to educational programs be "friendly" to the prevailing view. That kind of stuff is reserved for areas where questioning the evidence is not tolerated -- like intelligent design.