Stephen Woodworth Goes Down in Flames

Stephen Woodworth, our local MP, introduced a private member's bill to have the House study the question of whether a child is a "human being before the moment of complete birth".

Of course, the whole thing is a scam -- one that our local journalists couldn't or didn't see through.

Deep down, I don't believe Woodworth isn't interested at all in this question. I think that what he really wants to do is ban abortion (in consonance with his Catholic duty), and he's using this bill to try to achieve his goal through semantic games.

Suppose you're building a house. You dig the foundation. Is it a house yet? You pour the concrete. Is it a house yet? You start framing the house. Is it a house yet? You put in the window frames. Is it a house yet?

When does it become a house?

Some people might say it is a house as soon as you start building it. Others might say it is a house when it is ready to move in. There's no correct answer here, because the word "house" covers a lot of ground -- think of "abandoned house", "ruined house", "half-built house", "reconstructed house", and so forth.

Any line that you draw is arbitrary.

Of course, for legal reasons, sometimes we have to draw these arbitrary lines. Why should a 19-year-old be able to drink in Ontario, but not someone who is aged 18 years 364 days? This distinction makes no sense at all; it's purely an artificial legal construct that represents a guess about responsibility and maturity.

Arguments about DNA miss the point, too. It's not about whether the fetus has human DNA, because it clearly does. The argument is all about at what stage the fetus becomes a "person" (another ill-defined word!) that has the rights we expect people to have in a free society. And it's about how long those rights can be subservient to the rights of the woman in whose body the fetus is growing.

Viewed in this way, deciding whether a child is "a human being before the moment of complete birth" is just a political game. I don't expect much different from politicians, but I did expect more from Woodworth -- I had much more respect for him before this.

If he were sincere, he would answer my question, "What penalty would be appropriate for a woman who has an abortion?" He refuses to answer, and our local journalists are too cowardly to ask.

I'm happy to see that the bill went down to defeat, 203 to 91. But the main thing is to elect someone else to Parliament next time around.

Three Cheers for Carol Wainio!

Carol Wainio, who has been exposing the sloppy habits (or worse) of certain Canadian newspaper columnists, including David Warren and Margaret Wente, for a couple of years now, is finally getting some well-deserved attention.

For anyone with a brain, Wainio's carefully-documented examples of what appears to be Wente's serial plagiarism would have required, at the very least, a serious investigation at the Globe and Mail. Instead, Wainio was ignored or insulted.

Not any more.

When the Globe's public editor issued a whitewash of Wente's behavior, they were inundated with complaints.

The CBC -- displaying the journalistic integrity apparently lacking at the Globe and Mail -- has dropped Wente from their media panel.

Will there be further repercussions for Wente? Personally, I think the examples Wainio has assembled amount to a good case for firing Wente. She wouldn't be missed.

Meanwhile, Wainio is shunning the publicity. She deserves an honorary degree, at the very least, for having the courage to persevere in face of the shameless silence of most Canadian media. Or maybe even the Order of Canada.

Religious Philosophy Exposed!

This is great!

Jerry Coyne reports that Maarten Boudry, philosopher at Ghent University in Belgium, succeeded in getting a fake theological/philosophical abstract accepted at two theology conferences. Both accepted it, and Reformational Philosophy put it in the proceedings (look under the pseudonym "Robert A. Maundy").

For those of us who have suspected for quite a while that there is something seriously wrong with some parts of modern academic philosophy (where, for example, Alvin Plantinga is "respected" and his EAAN gets serious treatment instead of laughter), this is some small vindication, although perhaps not proof.

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.