Grey Thoughts

Why Socialism Makes the Rich Richer

2010-03-26T12:51:00.000+10:00

With the historic passing of Obamacare in the U.S., much hype is being made by it's proponents that it will help fix the widening gap between rich and poor.

Unfortunately, this isn't what will happen. A quick example will show why government taxes, which is what Obamacare really is, make the poor poorer and the rich richer.

Caterpillar has announced they will take a 100 Million dollar hit from the extra taxes due to Obamacare, as will other farm machinery construction firms. This extra cost will be passed on to the consumers, that is, the farmers. So now the farmers are paying more, so their extra costs will be passed on to the people who buy the food, milk, leather and so on. So, essentially, everyone's expenses will go up.

If you have millions and millions of dollars you can cope with the expenses. You can still buy everything you need, and have money left over to invest. Investments that make you more money.

If you don't have lots of money, then these extra costs significantly reduce your ability to invest.

So a big effect of the new taxes is to reduce the pool of people who have spare money to invest. In essence, leading the lower end of the income spectrum even further away from being more than just workers.

With the reduced pool of people with spare money to invest and less money to invest, the average return on investments made will increase. Leaving the rich, who still have the capital to invest, with higher returns for their money.

The rich get richer.

Shock: Sir John Houghton Admits He Would Never Tell The Truth

2010-02-18T08:21:00.001+10:00

Last week, the Independent published an article in which Sir John Houghton admitted that he was not the sort of person to be honest.

"There are those who will say 'unless we announce disasters, no one will listen', but I'm not one of them," Sir John told The Independent.
"It's not the sort of thing I would ever say. It's quite the opposite of what I think and it pains me to see this quote being used repeatedly in this way. I would never say we should hype up the risk of climate disasters in order to get noticed," he said.

So when Piers Ackerman documents the many cases where Sir John does announce disasters and scaremonger, it is clear that all Sir John is really saying, is that he would never be so truthful as to admit he announces disasters to scaremonger about global warming.

Nice work Sir John...that's for coming clean and admitting you are a liar. In other news, an evil robot on another planet just imploded in front of William Shatner.

Abbott says women are valuable...feminists up in arms

2010-01-27T07:54:00.002+10:00

Opposition leader Tony Abbott is reported in todays news to have said that women "shouldn't give themselves away lightly".
"Deputy" Prime Minister Julia Gillard of course was upset at the marks, saying that Abbott shouldn't tell women what to do....Julia prefers her women cheap obviously.

In other news, the government has withdrawn it's campaigns to discourage smoking, not wearing seat belts and getting a tan, as they don't want to tell people what to do....

Update: More of the context of Abbott's comments are available in this abc article.
Talking about his daughters he said
"Because in the end these are all very personal things. But if someone asked my advice, I would say, don't do anything that you will live to regret if you can possibly help it, and try to act in ways in which a self-respecting person would act."

Once again, this shows the pathetic dishonesty of Julia Gillard and many commentators.

Women Demand Equal Jail Time

2010-01-22T15:11:00.001+10:00

Following on from France's legislating that females must comprise 40% of the boards of public companies, women's groups are demanding women must also make up at least 40% of the prison population.

Like the boardrooms of France's public companies, prison's only have 10% female representation, and women's groups are demanding gender equity is prison.

"Women will only be equal once this terrible inequity is resolved." one spokeswoman commented.

PZ Myers shows why evolution is unfalsifiable

2010-01-11T17:15:00.002+10:00

PZ Myers, on the Panda's Thumb, has a great post up which highlights just how plastic the claims of common descent evolution are.

The change has to do with finding evidence of a tetrapod 18 million years further back than currently accepted. The evidence also shows more advanced features than Tiktaalik, which was a fossil that seemed to give great joy to evolutionists like PZ.

The first diagram (which appeared in Nature) is useful.

PZ, tells us "Notice what you don't see? They didn't publish this as a direct, linear relationship that could be disrupted by a minor anachronism."

Yep. The diagram cannot be disrupted. No direct relationships are given. We can't actually tell any relationship from the diagram. 'Unexpected' findings will merely cause the modification of relationships, never the questioning that common descent evolution is true.

Notice too, that PZ tries to pass of the new finding as a 'minor anachronism'.

Lets quickly review what the scientists and science journalists say about it

Creation Safaris has a good round up here

“These results force us to reconsider our whole picture of the transition from fish to land animals” said co-discoverer Per Ahlberg in Science Daily.
The finding “could lead to significant shifts in our knowledge of the timing and ecological setting of early tetrapod evolution.” – Ted Daeschler in National Geographic News.
“The team says the find means that land vertebrates appeared millions of years earlier than previously supposed.... the Zachelmie Quarry tetrapods break the neat and simple timeline.” (BBC News).
“The fish–tetrapod transition was thus seemingly quite well documented.... Now, however, Niedzwiedzki et al lob a grenade into that picture.” – Janvier and Clement, commenting on the find in Nature.²
“It blows the whole story out of the water, so to speak.” – Jenny Clack (Harvard), in PhysOrg.
“We didn’t know they existed at this point, and we would not have expected to have found them in this environment.” – Per Ahlberg, co-discoverer, in Live Science.

It seems other people think it a little more than minor..

The next couple of diagrams neatly show how evolution simply adapts any time an 'unexpected' finding happens...

Notice how the diagram is simply extended and modified to adjust to the new findings. ANY new finding can thus be adapted, BECAUSE a direct relationship is never given.

Creating a morphological tree is not evidence for evolution, as a tree can be created for pretty much any dataset.

But don't tell PZ that, because his faith in evolution is blind and un-shakeable.

Malcolm Turnbull is a moron

2009-11-26T14:13:00.002+10:00

I normally reserve the 'M' word for Richard Dawkins, but Malcolm Turnbull is a moron.

Lets review the facts...

Malcolm wants to try and force all his liberal friends to vote FOR Labors Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). This is insanely stupid on so many levels.

1) Politically, agreeing with the opposing party gains you no benefit and considering every new survey that comes out shows the population becoming more and more skeptical, there is only political benefit from opposing the scheme, which looks to cost the average Aussie around $1,100 per year at least. It is ironic to find a Liberal supporting an environment scheme even the Greens won't support.

Worse still, he is trying to force a party line vote, which has never been how the Liberal party does things. That is how Labor does things.

Copenhagen will not be swayed by whether Australia has an ETS, so there is no sensible reason to hurry and try and pass the legislation.

2) Economically, there is no benefit to Australia as the ETS as our impact on temperature (even according the to alarmists) that any reduction in our green house gas emissions will be non-existent. Hence ANY cost hurts Australia economically.

Naive, nice sounding programs that actually hurt us all in the long run are Labor's specialty, not the Liberals.

3) Scientifically, the case that man-made global warming is a world ending threat are unravelling. The data has been manipulated and fudged by a bunch of scientists desperate to have their religion change the world. The climate computer models are broken and unreliable.

The recent climategate emails are only the latest in a long line of evidence that this is the case.

4) Morally. Everyone keeps telling us that global warming is a moral issue. And it is. People have died because of this scam already. Supporting the impoverishment of people on uncertain science, and bad economics is morally reprehensible.

I assume Malcolm isn't a moral monster, so the only other reasonable conclusion is that he is a moron, and more than likely a closet Labor party member.

Welcome to your lying Prime Minister

2009-07-17T11:14:00.002+10:00

Kevin Rudd is blogging (apparently), and of course, it is about climate change.

Right out of the bat, Krudd lets go the biggest whopper you can image

The latest scientific research on climate change confirms our worst fears. Climate change is happening faster than we previously thought, creating a more serious threat to our economy, our environment and to future generations.

Sorry Kev, but you are lying to the public. Even the global warming alarmists over at Real Climate are saying that temperature is not going to rise till 2020.

How then can you say with a straight face that climate change is happening faster than we previously thought? Oh...that's right, you are a Labor Politician.

Domestic Abuse By Women Soars

2009-06-22T07:14:00.002+10:00

It's a serious problem, that is often overlooked, and the number of cases reported to police has nearly tripled in the last 8 years.

Of course, the media headline on news.com.au's front page, covering for abusive women, gives the head-line 'Record bashings by stressed-out wives'. I seriously doubt that would paint an abusive male partner in such a sympathetic light.

Stealth Bomber pics

2009-05-18T12:17:00.004+10:00

Okay...a somewhat giant geek attack, but I saw this cool photo of a b-2 stealth bomber breaking the sound barrier.

It immediately made me think of another advanced plane, which contains a few similarities...what I would like to call the version 1 stealth bomber.

Is it just me, or are there a few similarities there (and not just that it was a T2)

Tactics in defending evolution

2009-05-13T12:36:00.003+10:00

Charles, from Little Green Footballs posts about a redstate article which defends the idea that conservatives are not anti-science, but that it is the liberals, using the frame of the ID-evolution debate.

Charles, from what I understand is a conservative or libertarian who has a strong dislike of anyone questioning evolution.

A few things stick out about Charles' post though.

A quick problem is that he uses the term 'creationist' to describe 'Intelligent Design' (ID), thus trying to link the ID movement with young earth creationists like Answers in Genesis and progressive creationists like Reasons To Believe. This is a common debating tactic of trying to make your target seem less main-stream than they really are. But Charles seems unable to consistently use this categorization as he then goes on to claim that 'We’ve dealt with this silly argument so many times at LGF that it gets tiresome to keep repeating it, but “intelligent design” creationism has absolutely no legitimacy as a scientific theory; there isn’t a single peer-reviewed paper that supports it, there is no research behind it, there are no reputable scientists who promote it, and the most famous (actually, the only) biologist identified with ID, Michael Behe, has been explicitly denounced by his own department at Lehigh University.' Charles is trying to have it both ways, using the small size of the ID movement as a negative, but lumping it with 'creationists' to also cast it in a negative light. Of course, someone should remind Charles that the vast majority of Americans would agree with the statement that 'God was directly involved in some way in the creation of the various forms of life on the planet.' So really it is Charles' position which is the fringe position (amongst the general population). There are many creation scientists, from all strands of science, but of course, the vast majority of scientists support evolution.

So Charles accepts the authority of some scientists but not others. Preferring the majority to the minority. Nothing wrong with that, but he doesn't seem to do the same thing with Global warming, which he calls the "international left’s newest article of blind faith".

Charles is probably a very intelligent guy, but at some point we all choose which authorities to accept.

The question is why do you choose some authorities and not others to believe. Do you fairly evaluate the alternatives or do you dismiss arguments simply because they mention God? Do you think evidence for Intelligent design is even possible? Because if not, then your begging the question, not weighing the options, and that isn't reason, that's blind faith.

Intelligent Design is a concept that has been discussed and promoted for thousands of years by philosophers and religious folk, all the way back to luminaries such as Socrates. To ridicule it and dismiss it out of hand is to show yourself to be ignorant, not educated or intelligent.

Consequences of the Death of Education

2009-04-12T08:08:00.002+10:00

There has been a concerted effort to push real education out and replace it with a shallow, foundationless indoctrination. Nowhere is this more evident than in politics.

It used to be that you had to do a western civilization component for any university degree, where you would be taught the foundational ideas that underly both the conservative and liberal movement. Watching the debates (and I used the term loosely) that go on about politics show clearly that almost no-one knows or understands any of the foundations. (The one exception I would say is that libertarians do understand the foundations of libertarianism - Atlas Shrugs continues to be widely read)

Consider this Huffington Post piece as a typical example of the political discourse that goes on today. The Author, Steven Weber, is an actor. Which is to say, that his chief qualification is playing make believe. Yet our political discourse is so retarded that some people consider actors as experts (Consider the cast of Battlestar Galactica being asked to talk at a U.N. function on international/religious relations).

A quick read of the article leaves you with one impression (actually two, but I will refrain from talking about Weber's character). That republicans are apparently irrational, evil, fearful, outdated monsters. The enemy of all that is good. You may however, have trouble finding anything even remotely considered a logical argument to support this case.

And that seems to be the plan. Insult the right. It's easy to do. The left-wing ideals are all so very shiny...universal health care, higher minimum wage, progressive tax, redistribute wealth to the poor, open the borders, release the prisoners, stop the war. All very noble sounding....help people, make peace, be 'excellent' to each other.

The ideas sound so nice...why only irrational, evil, fearful, outdated monsters would oppose them. Or so it seems to the likes of Weber.

The situation is only marginally better on the right. Conservatives are looking for a conservative G.O.P., and finding it hard to find. The population, lacking foundational education, is swayed easily by the fast-food ideals of the left, and so many in the G.O.P. are trying to add sugar to their buns, in order to stay 'relevant'. Instead of educating (a very difficult thing to do out of school in our sound-bite culture), conservative movements from around the world have become fiscal liberals (Even here in our recent QLD state election). Is it any wonder our economy is in so bad shape.

And that is the problem today. The left peddles short-term nice sounding goals. Kevin Rudd in Australia is popular, and why not...he is giving everyone $900! Yet anyone who takes the time to think about it should realise that that $900 will actually cost them at least $1200. If anyone thinks this is a good deal, feel free to message me...I will happily give you $900 if you give me $1200. Short-term feel good fast-food.

Universal health-care sounds nice....but doesn't work - which is why people fly from Canada to the U.S. to get many types of health-care. People not having to pay for their own health-care is a moral hazard, as it encourages poor life-style choices. This means everyone else has to pay for the smokers health-care. The only 'reasonable' way forward then is to mandate what people can and can't do (or abandon universal health-care...unthinkable and evil don't you know)

Large scale Social security/welfare sounds nice....but doesn't work - which is why welfare spending in Australia now accounts for nearly half the Australian government budget....and is only going to get worse. Or consider Europe, where there aren't enough young people to make enough money to pay for the welfare of the elderly. Or America, where the welfare system is essentially bankrupt.

Beating our swords into ploughshares sounds nice....but doesn't work - Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, Somalian Pirates, just to name a few that are becoming more emboldened and militant in their actions because of the perceived weakness of America.

Releasing the prisoners sounds nice....but doesn't work - consider how many guantanamo bay releasees have gone straight back into fighting the west through terrorist activities.

Opening the borders sounds nice....but doesn't work - consider the massive social upheavals across the globe (Cronulla riots in Australia, no-go zones in Europe) where large scale cultural differences are prominent, mostly due to open borders policies allowing more into the country than can be culturally assimilated.

So what is the chief foundation that is missing? What is it, that makes all these nice sounding ideas implode in the long-term?

Morality...people are moral beings...but more than that, people are fallen moral beings. No-one lives up to even their own moral code, let alone the moral code of a transcendent omnipotent God. The western world is no longer being taught that it is full of sinners. Full of people, who no matter how hard they try, continue to do things they consider wrong, things that negatively affect themselves and others.

It has been said that the fallen nature of man is the most empirically established fact in history. History declares that we are sinners who cannot perfect ourselves....

To ignore this fact is the height of stupidity, yet our educational institutions no longer teach it...the most important aspect of human nature is ignored.

I would suggest their are several reasons....
Firstly, we have been told that 'self-esteem' is more important than understanding that everyone...you, me, politicians...everyone, is a sinner.

Secondly, we live in a fast-food, sound-bite culture. Depth of understanding is disintegrating, and it is so much easier to pander to short-term desires than to real needs.

Thirdly, there is a campaign by the left to indoctrinate the world into their vision. It is a matter of record that universities and schools are predominantly left-leaning (since the 1960's). Teaching western civilization has been removed because it would challenge the left-wing vision.

So, next time you read a contentless article decrying the evils of conservative ideology, and you wonder how anyone with a brain and a heart could be a conservative, just remember, maybe it is because the person is actually using both their brain and their heart.

Show me a young conservative and I'll show you a man without a heart. Show me an old liberal and I'll show you a man without a brain.

-Winston Churchill

The Testing Begins - MSM Strangely absent

2009-02-04T13:54:00.002+10:00

Agreeing with Joe Biden, I was pretty sure that major enemies of freedom would start to move as soon as Obama was in power, testing the resolve of the new President, who already appeared weaker than Bush.

Of course, the only news I had read around Obama's inauguration was that Iran was trying to get Obama to apologise.

That's what I get for relying on the Obama-infatuated MSM....

The real news...
1) China released a new Military white paper announcing it's intent to secure regional hegemony within the decade.
2) Iran launches a satellite on a rocket capable of being an ICBM. Troubling with their soon to be nuclear capability
3) Russia bribes Kyrzygstan to kick out a U.S. base, essentially stopping U.S. building up power in Afghanistan.

The world is moving in a bad bad direction, and the MSM doesn't seem to care, or want anyone to know.

How to tell if an Atheist is not objective

2008-12-15T13:32:00.002+10:00

1) If they quote a worthless study by Gregory S Paul (who draws dinosaurs) which claims that religion is bad for society.

Many atheists claim to be skeptical and rational in their approach. In fact, they oft claim they are more rational and more skeptical that theists.

Yet when it comes to having reviewing evidence that supports their belief system, that rationality and skepticism seems to vanish.

Add PZ Myers to the long list of atheists who have shown their lack of objectivity, and therefore their trustworthiness.

Why I Don't Vote Labor

2008-12-15T09:16:00.002+10:00

Let me get this straight.

We are told we are in the worst financial crisis since the great depression, and that unemployment will rise, and more people will fail to make ends meet.

So what does the government do?

Firstly, they change IR laws to make it tougher for businesses to make ends meet.

Secondly, they raise immigration, increasing the pool of workers which are going to compete for fewer jobs.

Finally, they push through climate change legislation (unlike pretty much every other nation which has decided not to) which will increase the cost of living.

None of these effects are disputed.

So essentially, under Labor's brain dead actions, more businesses will go bankrupt, more people will become unemployed and more people will fail to be able to support themselves.

Congratulations for all those who voted for Labor. At least you got your apology for the not so stolen generations.

The Global Warming Lies That Bind

2008-11-07T10:38:00.002+10:00

It is a curious thing, when a global warming alarmist has their work checked.

Take the case of Michael Mann, whose infamous hockey stick temperature graph was soundly discredited by people who actually understood statistics. The essential problem was that Mann's statistical methods derive a hockey stick shape from random noise.

So how did Mann respond? He wrote another paper, this time 'all new and improved' with many many more sources of data and a refined statistical method, and lo and behold....another hockey stick appears.

The obvious question remains...if Mann's original study was essentially statistical rubbish, how did he get to a hockey stick shape? Was it sheer fluke (unlikely), or perhaps instead it was an attempt to show the preconceived notion that Mann held that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) was real. For Mann, the hockey stick is an article of faith. It must be real so that his faith in AGW is real.

It is no surprise then, that when the same people who checked over his previous hockey stick paper, checked over his latest paper, they find a host of similar problems. (For the mathematically minded, you can view the investigation at Climate Audit (Search for mann 2008).

Mann isn't the only global warming alarmist whose scientific efforts seem somewhat unreliable.

Enter Santer, a scientist who has showed us, time and again, that the spread of temperature in the atmosphere is what we would expect if AGW was real. An earlier Santer paper from 1995 made it into the findings of IPCC reports (as "[the] pattern correlation coefficient [was increasing with time] as the human signal emerged from the background noise of climate variability"), where Singer (1997) noted that he had removed all of the trend lines, including zero and negative trends, except the one that suggested an increasing correlation in the last 50 years. Santer claimed he had done this for "pedagogic reasons". One can only think he was trying to 'educate' (and I use the term loosely) us that AGW was real.

Santer also had another part in the IPCC where he one again, used selective data to to supposedly show that altitude and latitude patterns matched AGW expectations.

Singer, Douglass , Pearcey and Christy published peer-reviewed articles highlighting Santer's paper's failings.

But, like a faithful global warming alarmist, Santer released a new study (Santer et al 2008) which was 'new and improved' and showed the signal Santer tried to show in his 1995 paper.

So once again, we have an AGW alarmist scientist, whose original paper was not valid, amazingly finding the same answer as before. Another lucky coincidence...or is this just another example of the failure of the scientific method. Santer and Mann should be trying to disprove their hypothesis, not to select the data and methods which confirm it.

Climate Audit also looks into this Santer paper as well.

Evolution and Creation - Summary

2008-10-30T14:06:00.006+10:00

Conflict of paradigms

Thomas Kuhn, in his famous work ‘The structure of scientific revolutions’ brought the wider worldview concept of his day into understanding science. His (and Polanyi’s) concept of paradigmic science, where scientific investigation is done within a wider ‘paradigm’ moved the debate over what exactly science is towards real science requiring two things
1) An overarching paradigm which shapes how scientists view data (i.e. theory laden science)
2) Solving problems within that paradigm

Kuhn claimed that Karl Popper’s ‘falsification criteria’ for science was not accurate, as there were many historical cases where a result occurred that could be considered as falsifying the theory, yet the theory was not discarded as the scientists merely created additional ad hoc hypothesis to explain the problems.

It is through the view of Kuhnian paradigms that I view the evolution and creation debate.

(Curiously, Karl Popper obliquely referred to Kuhn’s scientific paradigm concept when he said “Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory but a metaphysical research programme.” )

Here I define evolution (Common Descent Evolution or CDE) as: The theory that all life on earth evolved from a common ancestor over billions of years via the unguided natural processes of mutation and selection (and ‘drift’) and creation (Young earth creation or YEC) as: The theory that various kinds of life were created under 10,000 years ago and variation within these kinds occurs within limits via mutation and select (and ‘drift’).

I believe CDE and YEC can both be properly and most accurately defined as being scientific paradigms.

Whilst CDE proponents claim that CDE is falsifiable (E.g. Haldane and Dawkins saying a fossil Rabbit in the Precambrian era would falsify CDE), it is easy to see how the theory laden-ness of science makes such a find unlikely. Classification of rock strata was initially (and still commonly) done via the presence of index fossils. (Note: The designation of these fossils as representing a certain historical period was done within the CDE paradigm) The finding of a fossil Rabbit in a rock strata would almost certainly result in classification of the strata as something other than pre-cambrian, or the inclusion of other ad hoc explanations for the fossil (Overthrusts, reworking etc). It is worth noting that many smaller (only 200 million year) similar type surprises are happily integrated within CDE. (A recent example is pushing back gecko’s 40 million years in time) The main point here is that the claimed falsification is not a falsification of CDE, but merely falsifies the assumption that fossils are always buried in a chronological fashion. CDE can clearly survive as a theory even if only most fossils are buried in chronological fashion.

Many other events and observations exist which could be said to falsify evolution (e.g. the origin of life, soft tissue remaining in dinosaur fossils), but are happily left as unsolved issues. It is because of these types of occurrences that I suggest CDE is properly assigned as a scientific paradigm. Which is to say that CDE is not viewed as falsified by these unexpected observations, but instead these problems within CDE are viewed as the grist for the mill for making hypothesis and evaluating hypothesis within the paradigm.

YEC can also be properly identified as a scientific paradigm although significantly less well funded and so significantly less able to do research into the problems that existing observations create within the paradigm. One such example of research done is the RATE project. Specifically the helium diffusion study which predicted levels of helium in zircons to be approximately 100,000 times higher than expected if CDE were true.

What placing YEC and CDE as scientific paradigms does is make sense of the argument. CDE proponents (properly) place significant problems within CDE as being something that will be solved in the future (E.g. origin of life) within the CDE paradigm. YEC can also do the same (E.g. Endogenous Retroviral Inserts).

Comments
1) Ideas like Stephen Gould’s non-overlapping Magistra (NOMA) are self-evidently false. If God did create the universe 7000 years ago, there will definitely be implications for science.
2) Ruling out a supernatural God as a possible causative agent is not valid. As with (1) such an activity is detectable for significant events (like creation of the world/life) and so can be investigated by science.
a. To argue otherwise is essentially claim that science is not looking for truth, but merely the best naturalistic explanation. If this is the case, then science cannot disprove God, nor can science make a case that YEC is wrong.
b. Anthony Flew, famous atheist turned deist makes the point quite clearly when talking about his reasons for becoming a deist

“It was empirical evidence, the evidence uncovered by the sciences. But it was a philosophical inference drawn from the evidence. Scientists as scientists cannot make these kinds of philosophical inferences. They have to speak as philosophers when they study the philosophical implications of empirical evidence.”

Certainty in science

Flew’s comments highlight another significant issue. The role of inference. Especially in ‘historical’ (I prefer the term 'non-experimental') science.

Much rhetorical use is given to the notion that YEC proponents discard the science that gave us planes, toasters and let us visit the moon (sometimes called ‘operational’...I prefer ‘experimental’ science). Yet CDE is not the same type of science that gave us these things. CDE is making claims about the distant past by using present observations and there is a real disconnect when doing this.

One of the chief functions of experiment is to rule out other possible explanations (causes) for the occurrence being studied. Variables are carefully controlled in multiple experiments to do this. The ability to rule out competing explanations is severally degraded when dealing with historical science because you cannot repeat and control variables. You may be able to repeat an observation, but there is no control over the variables for the historical event you are studying.

Scientists dealing with non-experimental science have to deal with this problem, and they generally do so by making assumptions (sometimes well founded, sometimes not). A couple of clear examples are uniformitarianism (Geological processes happening today, happened the same way, the same rate in the past) and the idea that similarity implies ancestry.

A couple of quotes will make my point for me. Henry Gee chief science writer for Nature wrote "No fossil is buried with its birth certificate" ... and "the intervals of time that separate fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything definite about their possible connection through ancestry and descent." It's hard enough, with written records, to trace a human lineage back a few hundred years. When we have only a fragmentary fossil record, and we're dealing with millions of years -- what Gee calls "Deep Time" -- the job is effectively impossible... Gee concludes: "To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story -- amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific." (Taken from Icon’s of Evolution). Gee’s response to this quote of him supports my point “That it is impossible to trace direct lineages of ancestry and descent from the fossil record should be self-evident. Ancestors must exist, of course -- but we can never attribute ancestry to any particular fossil we might find…. Again, this is a logical constraint that must apply even if evolution were true -- which is not in doubt, because if we didn't have ancestors, then we wouldn't be here.”

Colin Paterson’s infamous quote about the lack of transitional fossils makes the same point. “The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question.”

A simple thought experiment highlights this concept. Assuming at some point in the future, scientists find some scientific knowledge that makes the naturalistic origin of life a more plausible possibility given the time constraints. (For instance...given completely arbitrary probabilities, say there is a 15% chance of OOL from unliving chemicals driven by natural processes in the lifetime of the earth to date) Does this mean that it must of happened that way in the past? Clearly the answer is no.

But even claims of certainty about experimental science is unjustified. The history of science contains many examples of widely held scientific beliefs being overturned. Phlogiston is probably the most famous, but geosynclinal theory (preceding plate techtonics) is a more non-experimental science example. So even claims about experimental science should be made with this in mind, evoking a more humble stance. Comments about CDE being a ‘fact’ or being on par with gravity are unfounded and display a profound ignorance of science and history. Such comments are not scientific, but faith based.

So how to evaluate between the two paradigms?

This is the question that matters... Controversially, Kuhn claimed that choosing between paradigms was not a rational process. Whilst not subscribing to complete relativism, I believe there is a real subjective nature between paradigms. Objective problems play a part, but how much those problems are weighted seems to be a fairly subjective decision.

From my perspective, the cascading failure of many of the evidences used to infer CDE is a clear indication of the marginal superiority of the (admittedly immature) YEC paradigm. Chief examples are things such as embryonic recapitulation (found to be a fraud), the fossil record (Found to exhibit mostly stasis and significant convergence), the genetic evidence (Found to exhibit massive homoplasy). Update: And the disagreement between molecular and morphological data.

It is curious however, that even with the near monopoly of the CDE paradigm in science education in America, that only a small fraction believe it. (CDE hovers around 10%, whilst 50+% accept YEC and the remainder Theistic evolution) This certainly indicates to me, that perhaps it is CDE that is not as compelling an explanation than YEC.

Whatever the decision, it is more appropriate to say that YEC is the “better inferred explanation” than CDE or vice versa. Such an understanding of the debate leads to a far more productive discourse and avoids the insults, derision and anger that seems to be so prevalent.

(Note: Post updated to fix spelling errors, highlight the distinct is between experimental and non-experiment science.

Anti-Creationist Gets It Wrong

2008-09-29T14:23:00.002+10:00

Not surprisingly, John Timmer, Ars Technica's Science Editor and PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology, doesn't like a new science textbook 'Explore Evolution' which was created by Intelligent Design proponents. His review goes for 4 pages, and it essentially accuses the authors of bad science, and bad motivations. Predictably, John's perceptions are largely coloured by his emotional distaste for Intelligent Design and Creation Science.

Let me give you just one example where John either fails to understand current science or is willfully participating in a campaign of misinformation.

From his review (page 2)- Emphasis mine

Darwin's Origin of Species proposed a mechanism by which a selective pressure, acting on inherited variations, could transform a single species or bifurcate it into two distinct species. Reasoning that there was no inherent limitation to this branching process, Darwin's single illustration in the book was a tree, with existent species being derived from a single trunk. Darwin concluded that life had been initially breathed, "into a few forms or into one," and all current species were derived from that event.

Darwin's conclusion has been spectacularly confirmed in the 150 years since. The basic biochemistry of the cell is shared by all known organisms, a fact that supports a common origin, while everything from fossil evidence to modern genomic sequencing has supported the tree-like pattern of common descent within the animal kingdom. There are some scientific debates remaining—some argue that horizontal gene transfer has created a web of life at the microbial level, rather than a tree—but scientists don't debate the general outlines of limited origins and organisms related through descent from a common ancestor.

But EE, in seeking to present a case against evolution, argues that there are viable alternative models of the history of life on earth. It favors what it calls an "orchard model," one in which there are many origins of life. In the orchard, current species are the product of severely restricted variation from an undefined number of origin events. Any time a problem with evolution is discussed, a separate origin is the implicit or explicit alternative, and that undefined number of separate origins appears to be very, very large. If that sounds familiar, it should—it's essentially biblical special creation of kinds.

So has creationism's orchard model achieved a sudden surge in scientific attention? Again, turning to PubMed, the answer is no.

Thankfully, I have been recently focusing on the 'tree of life' and can clearly say that current science is no way, especially not 'spectacularly' confirms the tree of life that Darwin puts forward. Timmer notes that microbes have a 'web' of life, but the problems are not just with microbes, but with all life.

For instance, this paper: Michael J. Sanderson, “Phylogenetic Signal in the Eukaryotic Tree of Life,” Science, 4 July 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5885, pp. 121-123, DOI: 10.1126/science.1154449.

Using the broad number of animal genomes available, Sanderson set very low criteria for inferring a genetic relationship between species and found that he could only infer a relationship 12% of the time. 12%! With low standards. Sanderson (a committed evolutionist who believes there must be such relationships), suggested a solution....he needs more data!

Timmer obviously didn't talk to Sanderson, otherwise he would know his claims of spectacular confirmation are spectacularly wrong. Don't count on many of Timmer's readers to be up to date on the science, so you expect willing evolutionists everywhere to parrot his claim.

Timmer also, in looking for 'orchards' has not read this paper: Antonis Rokas, Sean B. Carroll, “Bushes in the Tree of Life,” Public Library of Science Biology, 4(11): e352. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040352.

In this paper the authors note that genetic investigation for the 'tree of life' has instead produced multiple bushes of life. It even makes the situation seem hopeless as homoplasy (i.e. convergent evolution) is a pervasive influence, thus making it nearly impossible to get a true relationship. Even in reviewing 100 genes of Human and Chimp DNA, they could only find support for a relationship in 55% of the cases.

The DNA says no! Pity John Timmer hasn't bothered to read the current literature before making bold claims....

How to lie in video

2008-09-02T14:21:00.003+10:00

Zombie has a post up showing indepth how a video supposedly showing the cruel and violent police assaulting and arresting a peaceful protester is essentially a lying piece of propaganda.

How the media and left-wing blogs combined to create a police scandal out of thin air

The real story behind the Alicia Forrest/Carlo Garcia arrests.

On Tuesday, August 27, during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, I witnessed an incident that seemed at the time to be rather minor, but which over the subsequent days turned into a major scandal — primarily due to a video posted online by the Rocky Mountain News. This carefully edited video shows Officer Stewart of the Denver Police knocking Alicia Forrest of Code Pink to the ground during a protest, and then, after an edit, Forrest getting arrested by other officers. This video has created a firestorm among left-wing blogs, and also engendered many follow-up stories in the Denver Post, the Rocky Mountain News, Westword, and other mainstream Denver media outlets.

Check out the voluminous amount of context Zombie provides to show how the protester was indeed breaking the law and trying to provoke a reaction that could be creatively edited to slander the police.

One thing that Zombie gets wrong though, is that he says the police hit the woman on the head or sunglasses
Here’s the contextless video again. You can hear Forrest saying “%#&!$’ do it again!”, and then Stewart taking her up on her offer and saying “Back it up, bitch!” as he clonks her on the forehead or on the sunglasses, causing her to fall backwards. The “crack” you hear is not the sound of his baton on her skull, but rather that of her pink plastic bullhorn hitting the pavement and all its batteries falling out.

Carefully watch the video on the site again though, and you can see the officer, using the full length of the baton in a horizontal position to shove the protester backwards, actually connects with her upper body, nowhere near her head.

The protester then clearly stage manages her 'fall' (probably learned by watching soccer matches) and pretends to be stunned by the blow and fall.

CSIRO blocks for Rudd and AGW

2008-07-13T15:42:00.004+10:00

CSIRO came out in the last week with a scare campaign about the price of oil that was gleefully repeated over and over in the news media.

PETROL could hit $8 a litre within a decade as oil production begins to dwindle and demand continues to soar, a CSIRO study to be released today says.

The study, Fuel For Thought, warns this would add up to $220 a week to the cost of running a medium-sized passenger vehicle by 2018, resulting in severe social and economic consequences.

Their solution? The already fatal idea of biofuels, currently causing massive food shortages in a country near you. (Although CSIRO want to use biofuels that don't reduce food production....a self-refuting notion)

But what really struck me was how this report was really just running interference for Kevin Rudd and the global warming delusion crowd.

As almost every news article talked about (ergo the comment was in the CSIRO press release), how Kevin Rudd's emission trading scheme (ETS) would add 10 to 25 cents to the cost of fuel.

See...the ETS isn't really that bad (comparing a $6.50 rise to a mere 10 to 25 cents)....Clearly, the CSIRO wants everyone to get behind the delusionists ETS.

The problem is, CSIRO is relying on peak oil rubbish, which is claiming the world is going to run out of oil. It was rubbish back in 1956 when it first came about, and it is rubbish now.

The reason peak oil is rubbish, is that there are many many more sources of oil that are untapped.

As this graph (HT: Powerline) from the Institute of Energy Research shows, the US alone has vastly more shale oil reserves than the normal oil reserves available today. Only a few years ago, it was thought that shale oil could be retrieved at a cost of $40 a barrel. Compared with todays prices of $140 a barrel, this is economically viable and would actually reduce petrol prices.

The real problem is that for years, environmentalists have pressured the U.S. into not developing ANY of it's undeveloped oil reserves, shale oil or not.

The upshot is that the CSIRO is using dodgey science (unsurprising for global warming delusionists) in order to block for Kevin Rudd, so that his ETS is not seen as a large cost to consumers.

Ocean Acidification - Propaganda and Lies

2008-07-09T08:47:00.002+10:00

There has been a rash of discussion about Ocean Acidification due to increased CO2 concentrations, and how this will damage coral and other sea life.

William Briggs has a good discussion of how this 'new' scare tactic is just propaganda. (forgetting that the ocean is actually on the base side of the scale, and ocean 'acidification' is actually making the water more neutral)

Here’s the problem. You are a scientist, working on measuring the levels of aragonite in ocean water. It’s not very sexy and nobody beyond a small cadre seems to care. But it’s grant time and you and your team are “figuring out how to make the issue more potent” so that you can bring in the bucks.

How do you do it?

The first thing you should immediately consider these days is “turning up the heat on the issue through the media.” However, convening a press conference on “The Importance of Aragonite in Ocean Water” is unlikely to interest even the New York Times.

You need to be clever. Your job in “expanding awareness” has to start with a snappier moniker. You need a term that is “easy to comprehend” and, if you’re lucky, sounds “alarming.”

Renaming is thus “a critical step.”

Now, Jennifer Marohasy has gotten some photographic research showing teeming coral reefs and sea life right next to an almost pure CO2 source.

.

So, scare words and incorrect conclusions. Sounds like most of the global warming alarmists 'science'

EU Carbon Trading Scheme - Little economic impact. No Effect.

2008-06-16T11:46:00.002+10:00

Brilliant MIT scholars have assured us that the European Union's Carbon emissions trading scheme has been working with limited economic impact.

For the past three years, the European Union has been operating the world's largest emissions trading system and the first system to limit and to trade carbon dioxide emissions. An MIT analysis of this initial "trial" phase finds that—despite its hasty adoption and somewhat rocky beginning—the European Union cap-and-trade system has operated well and has had little or no negative impact on the overall EU economy.

Let's see how that trading scheme has impacted the EU's efforts at reaching their Kyoto targeted emission reductions...

Japan, Italy and Spain face payments of as much as $33 billion combined for failing to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions as promised under the Kyoto treaty.

The three countries are the worst performers among 36 nations that agreed to curb carbon dioxide gases that cause climate change. The 1997 Kyoto accord designed to slow global warming demands that polluting nations buy credits for their excess emissions from other industrial polluters or investors.

Yep...that scheme is working well....

Moronic Government Science

2008-06-11T08:32:00.002+10:00

News has an article saying that the government committee is ready to give licenses to clone humans to two research groups who have also applied for million dollar funding.

This is the stupidest thing ever. The government has already wasted millions of dollars in red tape to green light a process (Embryonic Stem Cell Research) that has produced zero therapeutic applications compared with adult stem cells (which has around 70 therapeutic applications and counting already).

Worse than this, techniques have already been found to turn adult stem cells into stem cells that have all the flexibility of embryonic stem cells, thus avoiding a costly and difficult procedure and being able to use cells from a patients own body, avoiding any cell rejection issues.

This is on top of the immorality of creating human life to harvest cells and then discard that life. Involuntary human experimentation is an obvious evil.

So, the government has chosen a process that fails morally, scientifically and monetarily. It's a pity we don't have a three strike rule for politicians.

The Story of Stuff - Another Error Ridden Propaganda Piece

2008-05-13T19:33:00.003+10:00

A friend emailed me through a link to 'The Story of Stuff' (TSOS) which after having the unfortunate tenacity to watch, and after I stopped retching, I decided to look into a couple of the 'facts' so blithely proclaimed in this anti-capitalistic, 'progressive' mockumentary.

Whilst I might be tempted to check all of the claims made in the film, I'll just start with a couple of early claims....

1) America spends over half of it's budget/tax on the military.

A quick look at wikipedia shows that this is obviously wrong. (Scroll down to 'How Congress Spends' diagram) Health and Human services spends more, and also increased more in the last year, so there isn't even a trend towards spending half the budget.

2) Around half of the top 100 budgets/sized organisations are companies (With TSOS so unbiasedly picturing the small government man polishing the shoes of the much larger company man)

CNN lists the top 500 companies and the CIA lists the GDP of every county. Whilst remembering that there are not that many countries (the 100th ranked country has a GDP of only 35 billion - so really this is just a propaganda claim anyways), a quick squiz at both charts show just how wrong TSOS is. The 66th top country has a GDP of 98 billion, and the 34th top company has a revenue of 97.5 billion. Making the split 66/34, not 51/49 as TSOS makes out.

And this is just the first two factual claims of a one-sided propaganda piece.

If you are looking for education, not indoctrination, ignore the story of stuff.

Update: Lee Doren has created a comprehensive rebuttal of The Story of Stuff's errors and propaganda. Be Sure to check it out.

Bad Arguments in Global Warming

2008-05-12T22:25:00.003+10:00

In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore makes the claim that Big Oil buying scientists is the only reason there are any scientists who are man made global warming skeptics. Other global warming scaremongers echo this cry..."the debate is over - except for a fringe group of scientists funded by Big Oil." ..."It was just the same with smoking and health".

The problem with this attempt to link the tobacco companies attempted perversion of science with global warming realists is this. Tobacco had no where to go for profit....Oil companies can always diversify into 'clean energy' and carbon trading (Much like Al Gore is using the global warming scare to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars)

It comes as no surprise then, that Enron, a huge Oil/Natural Gas company, financed a lot of attempts to create a global warming consensus. It seems 'Big Oil' does have a hand in the debate, but it is on the side of the alarmists. (And yes...NASA scientist James Hansen worked as a consultant to Enron in their efforts to make billions of carbon trading and kyoto).

So...whose science is dodgey now?

Why Man-Made Global Warming is not Science

2008-05-12T12:04:00.002+10:00

With pseudo-science, you commonly see failed predictions ignored. Falsifiability is thrown out the window, not because of some limitation of method, but because it is inconvenient.

A recent presentation by scientists to the European Geosciences Union General Assembly certainly shows that the predictions of the IPCC do not model reality, and thus fail scientifically.

Even though man-made global warming (AGW) is such an important claim, this simple verification process has not really been undertaken previously, another indication that the AGW claims are not about science, but an irrational belief.

A True Believer

2008-04-16T13:14:00.003+10:00

Whilst no one is perfect and Rick Warren has been criticised for several poor choices, what is clear is that he not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. Consider this

Warren then shifted gear and started talking about the success of The Purpose Driven Life and how he dealt with the fame and fortune that followed. He had to ask himself what has God put in his hands – tens of millions of dollars and enormous attention.

“If I wanted to after the book came out I could have bought an island and retire and have people serve me little drinks with umbrellas the rest of my life,” Warren joked. “But when you write a book and the first sentence of the book is, ‘It’s not about you,’ then you kind of figure the money is not for you and the fame is not for you,” he said drawing laughter.

Rick Warren and his wife, Kay, after prayer decided to not change their lives “one bit” even though they now had millions of dollars at their disposal. He said he still drives an eight-year-old Ford truck, lives in the same house before he wrote the book, and wears a watch from Target.

In addition, he stopped receiving salary from Saddleback Church in 2002 – the year the book was released; repaid all the salary he ever received from the church; set up foundations; pays for all his own travel expenses; and practices reverse tithing – where he gives 90 percent of his income and lives on 10 percent.

“I don’t want anybody doubting why I do what I do,” Warren explained. “I know with this book God has put me under the spotlight and I didn’t want anyone doubting why I do what I do,” he said, noting his main goal in life is to simply save one more soul.

The best-selling author said it was easy to resolve the money that God had put in his hands – simply give it away, but the influence was trickier to deal with. But after reading in Psalm 72 about King Solomon asking God to make him more influential so he could help the needy and oppressed, Warren understood that his fame was meant to be used to help the voiceless.

So following that model, Warren and Kay advocate for the poor and oppressed by sometimes speaking to politicians and businessmen, or by mobilizing the church to help the weak and poor, especially children orphaned by AIDS.

Compare this to the global warming alarmists like Gore who continue to jet around the world, have massive energy consuming houses and make large amounts of money off their scare mongering.

Update: Tom Nelson lists some specifics of Al Gore's hypocrisies. Listing a partial list of the scores of plane trips around the world Gore has taken in the last year and other facts such as....

For example:

Gore is a businessman these days —— sitting on the boards of Apple Computer Inc. and Current TV, the cable and satellite channel he started with investor Joel Hyatt —— "and those take him (to the Bay Area) pretty regularly for board meetings and the like," said his spokeswoman, Kalee Kreider.

When he's not in a fossil fuel-powered jet, maybe Gore is relaxing in one of these three homes:

[Al and Tipper] have a new multimillion-dollar home in a tony section of Nashville and a family home in Virginia, and have recently bought a multimillion-dollar condo at the St. Regis condo/hotel in San Francisco.

A video of Gore taking a private jet is here.

A related article is here, entitled "Gore home's energy use: 20 times average".

Is Creation Scientist Dr Russell Humphreys Todays Einstein

2008-03-20T13:26:00.002+10:00

Albert Einstein dramatically changed Cosmology with his theories of relativity. Dr Russell Humphreys certainly seems in line to duplicate that feat, even though the secular scientific community has been very reticent to credit him for his revolutionary ideas.

In 1984, Humphreys published a paper predicting the magnetic fields of both Uranus and Neptune. Subsequently, the Voyager mission measured these planets fields, and Humphreys predictions were confirmed, whilst secular sciences predictions were not. The only problem that the secular world had with Humphreys work was that it was based on the Bible and his young earth beliefs, including the idea that water formed the building blocks of the planets.

To calculate the magnetic moment of a planet at creation, we must know the original material. In the previous article I presented Scriptural evidence that God originally created the Earth as a sphere of pure water. One of the Scriptures is the last part of 2 Peter 3:5 (NASB): ". . . and the earth was formed out of water and by water." Shortly after that, God must have transformed much of the water into other matter, such as iron, silicon, minerals, and rock.

I know of no explicit Scripture which says that God created the heavenly bodies in the same way He did the Earth. But there is a hint, perhaps. The Hebrew word translated "heavens" in Genesis 1 consists of two other Hebrew words which mean "there, waters."5 Let us assume that God created the Sun, Moon, and planets as water, which He then transformed.

Now, two articles in the March 14th issue of Science are discussing recent discovery of evidence for water around the star AA Tauri. The cosmologists of course, are still operating on many existing assumptions about the structure of the universe, but are quite excited about the possibilities of water being a principle component of planet formation.

Later, in 1994, Humphreys published his ideas of White Hole Cosmology, where he discarded two antitheistic assumptions of current cosmology, that the universe isotropic, unbounded and homogeneous (AKA, the Cosmological Principle). This new cosmology used Einsteinian relativity to show how the earth could be young whilst the universe could still be 'old'.

Now, scientist George Elis has released a paper in the March 13th edition of Nature showing how the problem of missing mass in the universe (currently explained by the unobserved pseudoscientific 'dark energy' concept), vanishes if you discard the Cosmological Principle. Yet another instance where Humphreys is well ahead of the secular scientists who seem hamstrung by antitheistic assumptions. George Elis has this to say about the Cosmological Principle

That assumption is consistent with observations, but it is not a direct consequence of them. It is the favoured solution both because it is the simplest and because it rests on a cherished cosmological assumption. This is the ‘copernican principle’: that the characteristics of the Universe in our neighbourhood are not special in any way, but are typical of the whole.

This idea of us not being 'special in any way' is because the alternative would support the notion of creation, and caused Hubble, on noting the red shifts seemed to indicate we were at the center of the universe, to say "Such a condition would imply that we occupy a unique position in the universe...This hypothesis cannot be disproved, but it is unwelcome....the unwelcome position of a favored location must be avoided at all costs....such a favored position is intolerable" (The Observational Approach to Cosmology, pp. 50-55, 1937).

Science was built on the Christian worldview, but now atheistic assumptions are commonplace, degrading the progress of science. Some day in the future, it is quite possible that Russell Humphreys ideas will become 'mainstream'. Unfortunately, many many years later than they should have been.

Global Warming News & Inconsistency

2008-03-11T11:01:00.002+10:00

A global warming scaremonger scientist converts to skepticism after a colleague finds an error in an 80 year old equation, whilst other scientists turn up their nose and with the completely unscientific comment that

Reto Ruedy of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies says greenhouse theory is "200 year old science" and doubts the possibility of dramatic changes to the basic theory.

Science should never be beyond question, it only faith that makes such comments. Especially considering how uncertain most of climate science really is.

In other thoughts, man made global warming skeptics and global warming has been said to be worse than nazi's and the holocaust. Hansen, probably the most prominent scientist in the global warming debate said that

If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains -- no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.

So more coal-fired power plants is the same as death trains...then why aren't we invading China to stop them from committing this great moral evil. China is creating more coal-fired power plants every year than the rest of the world combined. If this is such a great evil, why are we not stopping it? After all, it is supposedly affecting all of us, and thus our own people will be on those trains....Why is our focus on the western world crippling itself, when this will surely mean that China will be able to kill us all with CO2 with impunity?

We've heard people say that a democratic government is not enough to stop climate change problems, and that our government should take drastic action to reduce carbon emissions by up to 90% or even 100% due to the dire moral nature of the destruction that will be wrought. Yet not one of these prophets of global warming doom has mentioned how they intend to stop other sovereign nature from killing us all with global warming CO2 emissions...

Israel in Gaza - Does this look familiar?

2008-03-02T16:55:00.005+10:00

Via Israellycool comes this photo from the AFP with the caption "Tiny victim : A Palestinian medical worker rushes a baby into the hospital in Gaza City. (AFP/Said Khatib)"

That looked very familiar to me, quite a staged looking shot. For instance, why is he holding an injured child like that, and where is he passing the child to?...check out similar pictures that were staged for by Hezbollah in Lebanon back in 2006...

Check out other photos the AFP has posted here, and compare them again to the shots from Lebanon.

What do you think?

Newsflash - Bible inspires less violence than Koran

2008-03-02T16:35:00.003+10:00

Hard to believe I know, but a Dutch public broadcaster has had to dump a show that was meant to document the moral equivalance between the Bible and the Koran after failing to find enough examples of Biblically inspired violence. From Hot Air.

After extensive research, linking Bible quotations with real political events and acts of violence however produced an insufficient basis for a thorough journalistic production.”

NYT Lets the Global Warming Cat out of the Bag

2008-03-02T16:27:00.002+10:00

With the last 12 months giving everyone an incredible display of global cooling the New York Times, in it's attempts to keep on the man made global warming band wagon, actually lets slip that something is very wrong with all the global warming scare mongering.

If anything else is afoot — like some cooling related to sunspot cycles or slow shifts in ocean and atmospheric patterns that can influence temperatures — an array of scientists who have staked out differing positions on the overall threat from global warming agree that there is no way to pinpoint whether such a new force is at work.

Let me restate that. Scientists from all sides of the debate agree that there are many other factors that affect global climate, but have no way to tell which factors are currently affecting said climate.

It's basic science that you need to be able to rule out other possible causes [variables]. In experimentation, they run multiple experiments modifying the desired variable, whilst keeping the other variables constant in order to rule out the other variables. Yet, here we have it, in climate science, where the debate is meant to be over and the science is meant to be solid, that a host of other possible causes are not only possible, yet so poorly understood and unable to be ruled out.

The shallow confidence shown by the warming scaremongers is clearly a scam.

Bureaucracy will save us all!

2008-02-27T11:25:00.002+10:00

Now there is a phrase I would never have thought I would save, but I believe red tape and the slow grind of bureaucracy will save us from doing untold amounts of damage to the world economy and throwing hundreds of millions of people into poverty and starvation.

Although UN aid and the U.S. are already experiencing pain over the foolish green push to use ethanol which has driven up basic food crops prices as well as being worse for the environment, it isn't too late to stave off even worse crises (I wonder if the high oil prices are more to do with OPEC trying to make money before someone cuts off their demand? That would be unexpected)

And bureaucracy is our only hope. Kevin Rudd, whilst talking big on Climate change, is, like most politicians, taking his time in doing anything real about it (Yay for bureaucracy!), and whilst the Democrats may win the US presidential elections, they too will be slowed by the inordinate amount of red tape involved in any massive political change. All this means is that in a few years, the weather will turn cold (just look at the last 12 months), and global warming will be dismissed as a concern and the red tape will appear victorious in the battle against stupid leftist scare mongering. The result will as embarrassing as the non implosion from y2k bugs, but will leave climate scientists happy they have had billions of dollars of funding for the past few years, and Al Gore and Tim Flannery as richer men from all their ridiculously high speaking fees and Carbon Trading scams. Oh well...Lets hope they at least revoke Gorey's nobel prize....

Climate Change Reports and Science Update

2008-02-22T10:57:00.002+10:00

Whilst most people have heard that the report on Climate Change and Australia by Dr Ross Garnaut recommended drastic cuts to carbon emissions to avoid climate change catastrophe, there are sections of the report that the media is strangely silent about. Andrew Bolt has a good roundup.

Professor Ross Garnaut has discovered a debate on catastrophic man-made global warming that Al Gore, and most journalists and politicians, keep claiming was over years ago.

In fact, he’s even wondering if some scientists have played funny buggers.

Garnaut, hired to tell Labor how to cut greenhouse gases, yesterday released his interim report, saying most scientists felt we were running out of time: “The world is moving towards high risks of dangerous climate change more rapidly than has generally been understood.”

This was honey to alarmists, but Garnaut also admits his review of the global warming science “takes the work of the IPCC as its starting point”.

That’s a problem. This Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change is the United Nations body that persuaded governments we’re doomed unless we get less gassy.

But Garnaut concedes the IPCC has in fact been accused - not least by an all-party British House of Lords inquiry into climate change - of using dodgy science, excluding dissenters and sexying up findings.

Or in Garnaut’s more polite words, of lacking “objectivity” and giving in to “political considerations”.

As Garnaut says, its critics include top scientists such as hurricane expert Chris Landsea, who quit the IPCC to protest (in Garnaut’s words) the “mispresentation of climate science” by colleagues.

What’s more, despite claims the “science is settled”, Garnaut found the science of man-made warming was of a “qualified and contested nature”, and he was in “no position to adjudicate on the relative merits of various expert scientific opinions”.

He just had to go “on the balance of probabilities” - with this controversial IPCC and the majority of scientists whose views it represented.

But he urged that the global debate be made “open to alternative perspectives beyond the IPCC”, and said he’d recommend a “strengthening (of) the pluralist character of the Australian research efforts”.

Debate not over? Check.
IPCC Reports not objective or scientifically created? Check
Still using scare tactics? Check.

Jonathan Lowe does the math and works out just what this excessive hardship of cutting our emissions by 90% would give us.

But how much is Australia's deadly greenhouse gas emissions killing the world? Well Australia emits around 326 million metric tonnes a year. That's compared to a world wide rate of 27 billion metric tonnes. Hence Australia emits around 1.2% of the worlds greenhouse gas.

Now lets assume that we reduce our emissions by 60%, and lets assume that 100% of all warming has been caused by greenhouse gas (note that this assumption is clearly ludicrous but hey for the sake of the example...). With the world increasing at a rate of 0.6 degrees per 100 years, this means that if Australia were to cut our emissions by 60% by 2050, we would cool the globe by around 0.000043 degrees per year.

Yep. Hundreds of billions of dollars, massive inflation and increase in poverty and hardship for almost all Australians, all for cooling the globe .000043 degrees per year, for a grand total of under .002 of a degree. And that is definitely an inconvenient truth for all the scaremongering fear merchants.

Finally, Anthony Watts, (The man doing the job that climate scientists should have done themselves by checking out whether weather stations are recording temperature without biases...hint: they aren't), reviews a recent scientific paper on correlations between temperature trends and CO2, Total Solar Irradiance, and Oceanic cycles. Anthony prints the conclusion of the paper

Clearly the US annual temperatures over the last century have correlated far better with cycles in the sun and oceans than carbon dioxide. The correlation with carbon dioxide seems to have vanished or even reversed in the last decade.

Given the recent cooling of the Pacific and Atlantic and rapid decline in solar activity, we might anticipate given these correlations, temperatures to accelerate downwards shortly.

It seems Oceanic cycles and Solar Cycles show far better correlation than CO2 with temperature. Don't expect to hear about it in the news though.

Why Science Tells us What We Already Know

2008-02-05T13:05:00.000+10:00

Science Daily reports of a study titled Why The Web Tells Us What We Already KnowIn this study, using our tax dollars, the scientists have discovered the amazing truth that people are biased and don't change their views readily

"Our research shows that, even if search engines do find the 'right' information, people may still draw the wrong conclusions -- in other words, their conclusions are biased."

Yep....hard earned tax dollars at work. In other news, scientists have discovered that water is wet and girls lie.

Super Tuesday - Why the World Should Hold It's Breath

2008-02-05T10:10:00.001+10:00

U.S. Politics are vital to the interests of the world. Why? Because the U.S. is really the only country able to project effective military power. Consider the paths of Afghanistan and Iraq. In one country the U.S. (with minor allies) has a large scale military presence. In another, NATO, has been responsible for military operations (with a very minor U.S. presence).

Whilst many believe the U.S. to be incompetent in their handling of Iraq, consider the mess of Afghanistan. War is messy business. Nothing goes to plan. Things are constantly changing. Those brought up on TV in the 80's and 90's may think that everything always works out first time without casualties (I call this 'A-team mentality'), but the reality is that they almost never do.

U.S. politics matter to the world. The far left recognizes this. This is why you see excess death reports for Iraq from the far left Lancet team (and another report just recently), but you will have to search far and wide for a similar study done on Afghanistan.

The next American president will have to decide how to handle Muslim extremism, Russian military and communistic resurgence and China's expected invasion of Taiwan. Additionally, the Supreme Court (who now essentially decide what law governs America), will have another retirement or two, enough to swing the power of the court either seriously to the left or right. It is indeed a big election.

Which brings us to Super Tuesday (today in the U.s.), the second most important date in the U.S. 2008 elections. It is the day when most of America decides who the democrat and republican candidates for the election will be. On the democrat side, the choice is between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama. On the republican side, the choice is between John McCain and Mitt Romney (Unfortunately, Huckabee has slide out of contention, with his decline starting around the same time as Joe Carter stopped working for him..hmmm)

So who will be running for president? By the end of super tuesday, it will probably be very clear. I'm not sure I like any of the remaining candidates. Romney is essentially trying to buy the election, which makes me nervous (ever wonder why the democrats almost always seem richer than the capitalists on the right?), but McCain seems to be the least conservative option. But then, which of them can beat Hillary or Obama?

From my view, it will probably be McCain (and maybe Huckabee running for vice) versus Obama (with maybe John Edwards as vice)

So hold your breath, the future of the world is indeed on the line.

A Caveat - I realize that Australia has been able to effect some good in Timor and the Solomons, but these are minor fields of operations. Whilst the Australian military is very good, they are still small.

Abortion leads to infanticide

2008-02-05T09:56:00.000+10:00

The UK has just released details showing how doctors are leaving born babies to die and indeed, are instructed by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists to lethally kill any baby born who they were trying to abort. 66 babies were killed this way in the UK last year.

A slippery slope indeed. I only hope these 'doctors' are thrown in jail, but I expect they won't be, as arguments for abortion that relate to a human not being born yet are merely pathetic window dressing to the real reasons for abortion...

Next time someone tries to defend abortion, using an argument about the baby in the womb, mention this report, and ask them why the doctors weren't prosecuted....

Stupid Media Quote on Stem Cells

2007-12-18T15:12:00.001+10:00

Highlighting the breakthrough in turning skin cells into essentially embryonic stem cells, Time names it the top scientific breakthrough of 2007. Of course, in the rationalizing of still needing to kill humans for research comes the winner of the top stupid quote of 2007.

His and Yamanaka's work is still in its early stages, and it's unclear whether reprogrammed skin cells will turn out to be as useful as embryonic stem cells; for now, stem-cell experts agree that embryonic research must continue.

Newsflash, being as 'useful' as embryonic stem cells is easy...you just have to not be able to do anything useful. Compared to adult stem cells where over 70 therapies are currently helping humanity, embryonic stem cells are the vapourware of the medical world. Great for keeping researchers paid, but that is about it.

Breaking News - Evidence of Interstellar War

2007-12-18T09:58:00.000+10:00

New Scientist has the scoop.

A jet of hot gas and high-energy particles is shooting out from the core of a galaxy called 3C321 and hitting a neighbour, a new study reveals.

Yay For Krudd

2007-12-14T16:55:00.001+10:00

Now that Kevni Rudd has signed the Kyoto protocol, but refused to set emissions targets (and if someone can explain to me how those two things work together, I'd appreciate it), it's time to check out just how effective the protocol has been.

The Kyoto treaty was agreed upon in late 1997 and countries started signing and ratifying it in 1998. A list of countries and their carbon dioxide emissions due to consumption of fossil fuels is available from the U.S. government. If we look at that data and compare 2004 (latest year for which data is available) to 1997 (last year before the Kyoto treaty was signed), we find the following.

* Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
* Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
* Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
* Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.

Useful thing, this Kyoto Protocol....great idea Kevni

Climate Change Nonsense Consensus

2007-12-14T15:46:00.000+10:00

It is easy to claim there is no debate when you don't let people who have a different opinion speak. Such is the case at the Bali International Climate Science Coalition. All contrary opinions and evidence are being suppressed, even when it has appeared in scientific journals.

The International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) has been denied the opportunity to present at panel discussions, side events, and exhibits; its members were denied press credentials. The group consists of distinguished scientists from Africa, Australia, India, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The scientists, citing pivotal evidence on climate change published in peer-reviewed journals, have expressed their opposition to the UN's alarmist theory of anthropogenic global warming. As the debate on man-made global warming has been heating up, the UN has tried to freeze out the scientists and new evidence, summarily dismissing them with the claim "the science is settled."

It isn't science...it is a power play. The stench is getting stronger.

Leftwing Inclusive Double Speak

2007-12-13T13:38:00.000+10:00

Yesterday, I mentioned that many who complain about 'hate crimes' are just using double speak in order to push their own agenda. Today, another instance shows itself. 18 Democratic senators voted 'no' or abstained from a resolution honoring Christmas and the Christian faith. 17 of those same senators voted 'yes' for similar resolutions honoring Islam and Indian religions. (The 1 who didn't wasn't present for those votes).

Being inclusive is merely a propaganda tool for these people. Absolutely shameful.

Hate Crimes Against Christians

2007-12-12T08:57:00.000+10:00

With all the talk of hate crimes against homosexuals and Muslims, no one seems to take note of hate crimes against Christians, which seem to be on the rise thanks to the deluded rantings of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. Hate crimes against Christians far outstrip any of the groups we normally hear about, but obviously, the people who scream about hate aren't really about getting rid of all hate crimes...just the ones they want to get rid of.

From the web writings of the shooter..."I'm coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. ...God, I can't wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don't care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you ... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world."

Kevin Rudd Breaks First Election Promise

2007-12-07T08:31:00.000+10:00

No surprises there....

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd last night did an about-face on deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, days after Australia's delegation backed the plan at the climate talks in Bali.

A government representative at the talks this week said Australia backed a 25-40 per cent cut on 1990 emission levels by 2020.

But after warnings it would lead to huge rises in electricity prices, Mr Rudd said the Government would not support the target.

The repudiation of the delegate's position represents the first stumble by the new Government's in its approach to climate change.

Mr Rudd said he supported a longer-term greenhouse emissions cut of 60 per cent of 2000 levels by 2050.

No government can implement the targets without being voted out or worse, expelled by a very angry population, due to the costs involved and the poverty it would cause.

Reality always has a way of dampening the unrealistic notions of the left wing moonbats....

The War is Twice as Popular as the US Congress

2007-12-07T08:24:00.000+10:00

The War: 40%
US Congress: 20%

They need to pull out of congress now! Bring the politicians home! Cut their funding!

(HT: Instapundit)

Embryo's No Longer Needed For Stem Cells

2007-11-27T10:09:00.000+10:00

The pro-life movement is awash with news of the successful production of 'embryonic' stem cells from adult cells. The 'progress at all costs' movement is mostly silent, including the politicians who supported the killing of human life for medical research. One response I have found from the dark side, is this article by John Tierney on a New York Times blog.

Some Republican presidential candidates are breathing easier because of the news on stem-cell research, and some religious leaders are proclaiming a truce in their conflict with scientists. But I wouldn’t bet on any longterm peace, for a couple of reasons.

Yep..the article already sounds like a 'they were right, but so what' childish response.... John doesn't disappoint.

First, despite the breakthrough in producing stem cells without using embryos, researchers will continue working with embryos. Some still believe it’s the most promising approach for stem-cell therapy, as Nature reports. Shoukhrat Mitalipov, the scientist who reported the first creation of stem cells from cloned monkey embryos (the other big news last week), says that the embryos is the only “perfect reprogramming machine” and is confident that this method of producing stem cells will be the first to show therapeutic value.

Someone should tell these 'intelligent' and 'objective' scientists that there are already some 70+ therapeutic uses of adult stem cells, so his 'confidence' is, well, stupid...uneducated...wrong.

But don't let the facts get in the way of a good whinge. John then precedes to play dumb (I kid you not), about what 'scientism' (here is a hint...wikipedia talks about it - 'As a form of dogma: "In essence, scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth."') and whether scientists actually think there is no difference between humans and animals (Here is a hint...metaphysically and morally, many scientists do). But the facts aren't really convenient for John, so he continues to play dumb...funnily enough...it suits him.

Global Warming Reporting Sucks

2007-11-14T11:24:00.000+10:00

I saw an article in the Sunday Mail last weekend, a clear example of Global Warming fearmongering by Chicken Littles who have been doing it for decades. The article claims that the Antarctic was warming faster than everywhere in the world (wrong - no warming trend exists in the Antarctic) and that the melting ice was due to global warming (wrong - wind patterns unrelated to warming have been fingered as the likely culprit) and that the melting antarctic threatened to catastrophically raise sea levels (wrong - the Antarctic ice is continue to increase in size and reaching record levels)

Blatant falsehoods presented as fact are a staple of the man-made global warming moonbats.

Coyote blog has noted a similar themed newspaper article. Of course, he has pretty graphs...the show off. Check it out

Climate Change - Anatomy of Bad Science

2007-11-09T10:19:00.001+10:00

More and more, Climate Change shows itself to be bad science.

Real science, I am told by my evolutionist friends,
1) follows the evidence where it leads and is based on skepticism
2) is repeatable
3) is open
4) always tries to refute itself (I've lost track of the number of times I have been told that evolutionists always try to disprove evolution, as they would become famous if they did!)

Enter 'Climate-Audit', and Steve McIntyre, who is auditing the statistics used to underpin all the alarming man-made global warming claims. Steve has had several successful projects about various statistical flaws (for instance, the Hockey Stick graph and NASA revising data).

For the most part, Steve has faced an uphill battle because most of the papers are based on data and statistical methods that have not been released (thus breaking points 2 + 3), but even so, he has managed to identify significant issues.

So how do major science blogs react to Climate Audit winning the best science blog (subject to the organisers verifying the numbers)? Bad Astronomy...ostensibly run by a skeptical astronomer? He calls Climate Audit an 'anti-global warming site' and was thinking of endorsing Pharyngula to try and beat Climate Audit so that 'a real science site would win the award'

Pharyngula shows a similar bent, saying of Climate Audit "Then there are the myopic little nitpickers, people who scurry about seeking little bits of garbage in the fabric of science" but the real clarify about these 'science blogs' comes from another comment "You can quit whining that you and McIntyre are finding valid errors; it doesn't matter, since you're simultaneously spreading a plague of lies and ignorance as you go.". Finally, he comments "Everyone else, please do vote for Bad Astronomy. Real scientists can see the big picture and understand that the real power of science lies in the explanations, not the pettifoggery with statistics — not that I expect the right-wing gomers at the Weblog Awards who nominated the purveyors of junk science for their award"

You see, to these people, it doesn't matter if their are valid errors. It doesn't matter how much global warming is really happening, the statistical significance of the claim, or even how much of the change is due to humans interference (try and find and fast numbers for that one). What matters is 'the big picture', the meta-narrative that it is all evil capitalist greed's fault. It doesn't matter that there are competing explanations either...as long as it agrees with their own ideological bias, they are happy, and to hell with repeatability, openness, accuracy or skepticism. Just like most of the man-made global warming community.

And, to answer Steve McIntyres question, that is why the debate seems to line up on left/right lines. Because the science isn't settled, but left wing moonbats have tried to settle the debate with propaganda, not science. Which is why they don't deal with Steve's statistics, but instead just hurl insults.

Tim Flannery was wrong about the drought

2007-11-01T14:55:00.001+10:00

Tim Flannery, who has wrongly predicted that global warming will cause Syndey's dams to dry up (they're full), blames the droughts on global warming (never mind we have had a lot of droughts in Australia's history...he is sure, this time, that it is global warming. For sure!)

Now the UN's World Meteorological Organisation, tells us that it is because the water is too cold!!! Tricky stuff this global warming.

Another win for the Australian of the Year!

Of course, read the full article, and note how the climate scientist from Hobart contradicts the journalist (I doubt the science writer noticed, as the article is written as if they agree)

Election 2007 - Politicians and Lies

2007-11-01T08:55:00.000+10:00

At least John Howard waited until a few years of being in power before being caught lying. It seems Kevin Rudd is too stupid to manage that political feat and has already obviously lied multiple times to the public before the election...and no, I'm not referring to the numerous political backflips Rudd has done in the name of electioneering (whilst simultaneously hanging his front benchers out to dry....maybe his campaign motto should be, "There is no team in Kevin 07"

First, there was the Strip Club incident, where he "couldn't remember a thing" because he was too drunk, and then suddenly turned around and said he remembered completely and was a 'perfect gentleman'.

Now, we have Kevin's ear wax eating in parliment caught on video, where Kevin says he was apparently just 'scratching'.

If he is too dumb to avoid being caught in multiple lies before the election, he sounds like the perfect labor party candidate, and is probably not politically astute enough to be the leader of Australia.

Global Warming Research is Useless

2007-10-26T08:25:00.000+10:00

From the horses mouth, Kevin Trenberth, head of the large US National Centre for Atmospheric Research and a lead author for the IPCC has made comments on Nature magazines blog about the computer models (General Circulation Models or GCM's) used in scaring people about global warming. Some of his comments

...there are no (climate) predictions by IPCC at all. And there never have been". Instead, there are only "what if" projections of future climate that correspond to certain emissions scenarios.

[GCM's] do not consider many things like the recovery of the ozone layer, for instance, or observed trends in forcing agents"

None of the models used by IPCC is initialised to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models corresponds even remotely to the current observed climate

The state of the oceans, sea ice and soil moisture has no relationship to the observed state at any recent time in any of the IPCC models

There is neither an El Nino sequence nor any Pacific Decadal Oscillation that replicates the recent past; yet these are critical modes of variability that affect Pacific rim countries and beyond . . . the starting climate state in several of the models may depart significantly from the real climate owing to model errors" and "regional climate change is impossible to deal with properly unless the models are initialised

[GCMs] assume linearity [which] works for global forced variations, but it cannot work for many aspects of climate, especially those related to the water cycle . . . the science is not done because we do not have reliable or regional predictions of climate".

The Media is not objective

2007-10-25T08:00:00.000+10:00

I'm both saddened and angered daily by the main stream media's (MSM) constant efforts to influence public opinion whilst pretending to be 'objective'. Nothing shows the massive bias towards the left of the MSM like their treatment of Fidel Castro and Cuba.

Exactly a half century ago both The New York Times and CBS--between hailing him as a 'humanist" "a Christian" a "Robin Hood" and an "anti-communist"--reported that the Cuban rebel chieftain Fidel Castro commanded "hundreds" of guerrillas in a "war" against Cuban dictator Batista. On clandestine trips to the war zone in Cuba's Sierra Maestra mountains reporters for the two most prestigious media outlets in America had seen these hundreds of rebels first hand.

Two years later Castro himself cackled while recounting how he'd ordered his eighteen "rebels" to march in front of the gaping U.S. reporters then scurry into the bushes, change uniforms and march through again. The U.S. embassy's public affairs officer in Havana, Richard Cushing had performed the role of tour guide for these valiant and intrepid reporters, as well as for their media colleagues who soon formed a veritable parade..

By 1958 reporters for every magazine from Look to Boys Life had braved the furtive journey to Castro's campsite. Ever hospitable to the U.S. media, Castro had his people erect a sign saying "Press Hut" to more easily direct the traffic flow of this camera and notebook-toting (and ever-friendly) throng, with their amazing immunity to harm from the Fascist hordes of Batista's diabolical army and police.

During this time the wire dispatches from New York on the Cuban rebellion, including those from the Associated Press, were being concocted and written word for word by a Castro's own agent in New York, Mario Llerena, who admits as much in his book, The Unsuspected Revolution. Llerena was also the contact with Castro's most famous publicity agent, the New York Times', Herbert Matthews. National Review's famous 1960 cartoon showing a beaming Castro, "I got my job through the New York Times!" nailed it.

In the words of (leftist) British historian Hugh Thomas: "In all essentials Castro's battle for Cuba was a public relations campaign, fought in New York and Washington." "Fought" and also won, I might add.

In 1979 David Halberstam's book, The Powers That Be was all the rage in Beltway circles. The book claimed that the major media had "stopped following the news and was now making the news...an account of the rise of the modern media as an instrument of political power," reads the jacket. The major media, claimed Halberstam, had supplanted both the Executive and legislative branches of the U.S. Government as a power broker, and he listed the main players in that brokering. Reportedly, this became one of Fidel Castro's favorite books. Not that he probably learned anything from it. Simply that he received smug confirmation of something he'd proven decades earlier.

Yep. The MSM put a communist dictator into power by their fawning naivety for all things leftist.

The MSM continues to promote Casto's propaganda today...

Along with the above, the intervening half-century witnessed many events that might have prompted the U.S. media (and their readers) to question the Castro regime's press releases. Alas, such is the case in too few quarters. Castro's propaganda ministry retains an influence (more of a spell, actually) over worldwide media and academic circles that simply will not abate and that has proven impervious to refutation, however thorough, consistent and authoritatively documented.

But Michael Moore's parroting of Castro's claims in Sicko gagged even some in the U.S. mainstream media. An ABC producer, amazed by pictures smuggled out of Cuban hospitals and posted on the website The Real Cuba, decided to counter Sicko by using ABC's Havana Bureau to interview Cuban dissidents. These would reveal the actual conditions in Cuba's hospitals.

ABC's Havana Bureau shuffled nervously and finally said OK--but first they'd have to ask the Stalinist regime's permission for such an interview. Think about that for a second. Then remind yourself that these people are probably clinically sane. Then ask yourself what's in Cuban water.

ABC's Havana Bureau (like any news agency's Havana Bureau ) proved utterly useless in reporting anything unsanctioned by a Stalinist regime's propaganda ministry--and dared not raise a peep of public protest over this totalitarian censorship. This is the very same ABC, by the way, that on its World News Tonight bemoaned the Dixie Chicks canceled concerts (in completely private-sector venues) as a form of "censorship."

Thwarted by their own Havana Bureau, some ABC producers resolved to get their hands on any evidence regarding conditions in Cuba's hospitals, feature them on 20/20, and blow the case wide open. For this they contacted George Utset who runs The Real Cuba website whose pictures had originally impressed them. George now turned to contacts inside Cuba. The evidence was to come from the very belly of the beast, in the form of smuggled videos.

Michael Moore's reputation inside Cuba helped the clandestine project..Two years ago Fidel Castro hailed Michael Moore as "that outstanding American!" For weeks Fahrenheit 9-11 was featured on Cuba's state TV.

All this instantly made its director suspect among Castro's subjects. Sicko confirmed the worst. This American millionaire, by spreading a Stalinist regime's lies, struck many Cubans as a simple accomplice to their oppression-- one of many. The friend of my oppressor is also my oppressor, they reasoned. The Castroite propaganda in Sicko so outraged some Cubans that, now knowing the truth could reach millions of Americans via ABC's 20/20, they risked their lives by using hidden cameras to film conditions in Cuban hospitals--but only those hospitals that were genuinely Cuban, meaning that they served Cubans.

The ones showcased by Michael Moore exclusively serve rich foreigners and high Communist party officials. Watching Moore reading from Castro's cue cards by claiming these hospitals served average Cubans, knowing this propaganda would be spread worldwide (and swallowed by many), was more than these desperate Cubans could stomach.

At enormous risk, two hours of shocking--often revolting--footage was obtained with tiny hidden cameras and smuggled out of Cuba. The man who assumed most of this risk was Cuban dissident--a medical doctor himself-- Dr Darsi Ferrer, who was also willing to talk on camera, narrating much of the video's revelations. Dr Ferrer works in these genuinely Cuban hospitals daily, witnessing the truth. More importantly, he wasn't cowed from revealing this truth to America and the world.

Alas, with the videos finally n their hands ABC started getting cold feet. The 20/20 segment kept getting smaller and smaller. That on-again, off-again funeral extravaganza widely expected in Havana has raised the perceived importance of Havana press bureaus, and ABC's Havana staff had already whimpered objections to this project. They were unaware of the smuggled videos but many of their colleagues stateside apparently "felt their pain." More cutting and more paring ensued. On Sept. 12th 20/20 ended up running a short segment on the matter, barely 5 minutes long and with almost none of the smuggled video footage.

Even so, viewer response was thunderous. 20/20 was deluged with atta-boy! e-mails. The Cuban regime responded also. The Cuban Communist party's Central Committee called a meeting to discuss the issue then called in ABC's Havana bureau for talking-to. John Stossel's follow-up shows on Sicko included no mention of Cuba's healthcare.

So it isn't just leftist bias anymore (although there is plenty of that), it is cowardice as well. The MSM like to pretend they are brave when they attack conservative causes at "great risk" to themselves, but it is clear they don't believe their own lies, because when a real risk turns up, they run for the hills.

Perhaps this is why the military is filled with a higher proportion of conservatives. They are the ones who are much more likely to have courage.

Thankfully, Fox News has some people with a backbone.

Enter Fox News, and the Hannity & Colmes Show in particular. Fox producers got word of these smuggled videos and immediately requested a look. They promptly got to work editing, translating and subtitling. On Oct 10th they ran huge segments of the smuggled videos. Fox viewers saw naked patients covered with flies while laying on "hospital beds" consisting of a bare mattress. They saw building that would be condemned by the health board of any U.S. municipality serving as "hospitals." They saw and heard Dr Darsi Ferrer along with other Cubans who described their inability to obtain something so basic as aspirins.

"Greed," was the motif of Michael Moore's Sicko, right?

Well, Fox viewers saw footage of Cubans being told that aspirins and other medicines just might be available to them--but only if they paid in U.S. dollars, not the Cuban pesos they held out in desperation.

I have had well meaning, but uninformed friends tell me that we should abolish private health care because then politicians will be forced to fix public health care as 'No politician will wait 8 months to get surgery'. The cold hard truth is that the politicians will never wait 8 months to get health care, whether there is private health care or not. Castro shows this fact quite well....I'm willing to bet you will find the same in any country that only has public health care. Those in power get 'special treatment'.

The New Republic's RatherGate

2007-10-25T07:29:00.001+10:00

The New Republic (TNR) has been investigating how Scott Beauchamp managed to get a story about how brutal and mean the US army was in Iraq so wrong. Whilst no information has been released, Drudge has a few leaks.

SHOCK DOCS: THE NEW REPUBLIC 'SHOCK TROOPS' STORY COLLAPSES
WED Oct 24 2007 12:29:44 ET

The DRUDGE REPORT has obtained internal documents from the investigation of THE NEW REPUBLIC'S "Baghdad Diarist", Scott Thomas Beauchamp, an Army private turned war correspondent who reported tales of military malfeasance from the Iraq War front.

The documents appear to expose that once the veracity of Beauchamp's diaries were called into question, and an Army investigation ensued, THE NEW REPUBLIC has failed to publicly account for publishing slanderous falsehoods about the U.S. military in a time of war.

Document 1: Beauchamp Refuses to Stand by Story (Beauchamp Transcript Part 1)

THE NEW REPUBLIC has been standing behind the stories from their Baghdad Diarist, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, since questions were first raised about their accuracy over the summer. On August 10, the editors at TNR accused the Army of "stonewalling" their investigation into the stories by preventing them from speaking with Beauchamp. The DRUDGE REPORT has since obtained the transcript of a September 7 call between TNR editor Frank Foer, TNR executive editor Peter Scoblic, and Private Beauchamp. During the call, Beauchamp declines to stand by his stories, telling his editors that "I just want it to end. I'm not going to talk to anyone about anything really." The editors respond that "we just can't, in good conscience, continue to defend the piece" without an explanation, but Beauchamp responds only that he "doesn't care what the public thinks." The editors then ask Beauchamp to cancel scheduled interviews with the WASHINGTON POST and NEWSWEEK.

Document 2: Beauchamp Admits to "Gross Exaggerations and Inaccurate Allegations" (Beauchamp Transcript Part 2)

The DRUDGE REPORT has also obtained a signed "Memorandum for Record" in which Beauchamp recants his stories and concedes the facts of the Army's investigation -- that his stories contained "gross exaggerations and inaccurate allegations of misconduct" by his fellow soldiers.

Document 3: Army Investigation: Tales "Completely Fabricated," Beauchamp Wanted to be Hemingway

The third document obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT is the Army's official report on the investigation into the allegations made by Private Beauchamp. The Army concluded that Beauchamp had "completely fabricated" the story of mocking a disfigured woman, that his description of a "Saddam-era dumping ground" was false, and that claims that he and his men had deliberately targeted dogs with their armored vehicles was "completely unfounded." Further the report stated "that Private Beauchamp desired to use his experiences to enhance his writing and provide legitimacy to his work possibly becoming the next Hemingway."

The report concludes that "Private Beauchamp takes small bits of truth and twists and exaggerates them into fictional accounts that he puts forth as the whole truth for public consumption."

Developing...

Obviously Private Beauchamp didn't read the playbook properly....if only had claimed there was a consensus and all debate was over, he would have gotten away with it.

Must Read - Inconvenient Lies

2007-10-23T09:19:00.000+10:00

Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth has won him an oscar for Best Documentary and a part share of a Nobel Piece Prize. (Which is a growing trend after the mostly fictional Michael Moore 'documentaries' also won awards)

Yet the real inconvenient truth is that the documentary is wrong on almost every point of fact. Chris Monckton has an article outlining the near constant errors in the documentary. With so many errors, I'm surprised Al Gore managed to get his own name right.

The documentary creators have said that it was made to be intentionally one sided so that no ambiguity could be seized upon by governments to avoid action. Some people may call that 'giving the truth scope', I call it intentionally lying to the people in order to achieve your own ideological ends.

No wonder Al Gore is too scared to debate anyone on the topic.

Must Watch - Climate Change and CO2

2007-10-23T08:34:00.000+10:00

Bob Carter, a research professor in the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, Australia has a fantastic presentation on the massive problems with the man-made global warming scare campaign. This was recently presented at a public forum in Australia.

Watch the whole thing.....

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Note that Tim Flannery didn't turn up to the forum. Much like Al Gore, he much prefers to spread the propaganda than have a scientific debate.

Al Gore - The Face of Global Warming

2007-10-18T07:48:00.000+10:00

Al Gore, the man everyone, including the Nobel Prize Committee, thinks of as the face of the global warming propaganda campaign, is a veritable science dunce.

For all of Gore's later fascination with science and technology, he often struggled academically in those subjects. The political champion of the natural world received that sophomore D in Natural Sciences 6 (Man's Place in Nature) and then got a C-plus in Natural Sciences 118 his senior year. The self-proclaimed inventor of the Internet avoided all courses in mathematics and logic throughout college,

Although apparently having an IQ of 133, he was lazy and did badly, avoided logic and math, and spent too much time playing pool and smoking dope.

Just your average hippie really....not the sort of person who should inspire confidence in their pronouncements...

Moveon Democrats

2007-10-04T15:19:00.001+10:00

I wonder how many of the Democrats who refused to condemn Moveon.org's despicable newspaper ad attacking General Petreaus, jumped on board to condemn Rush Limbaugh after several people dishonestly twisted Rush's condemnation of 'Phony Soldiers'.

Truly these people have no shame.

Cowardly Liberals Strike Again

2007-10-04T08:09:00.001+10:00

Verum Serum has details of a recent Cold Case episode which attacks Christianity and abstinence.

In the September 30 episode of the CBS forensics show, the devoutly religious teens in an abstinence club turn out to be sexually active hypocrites who murder one of their own members – by stoning her, as the Bible teaches – to keep their sins secret. Their youth pastor encourages one girl to describe her impure dreams to him, and masturbates while listening.

Of course, the cowardly liberals would never dream of attacking Muslim's in this way, as that would be 'intolerant' and open them up to being killed.

Mandela

2007-10-04T07:57:00.000+10:00

There is a common psychological feature where people will uncritically believe anything that agrees with their preconceptions.

Trying to correct their mistakes often shows just much they want the falsehood to be true, as opposed to rationally weighing the evidence.

If there is one thing that President Bush is good at, it is showing just how irrational many of his critics are....

The latest is the wildly incorrect claim that Bush thought that Saddam Hussein killed Nelson Mandela. Tim Blair has a few examples. As Tim Blair has noted, the crowd who claims they are nuanced, seem woefully unable to get it.

What most people don't know, is how Saddam Hussein killed Mandela. After extensive research, I have uncovered that he did it by force feeding him a US Government supplied plastic turkey.

Reality Debased Community Strikes Again

2007-09-25T15:27:00.000+10:00

The fine folks over at Daily Kos show their great grasp of reality. In an online poll, 35% (as of 3:27pm est) of them would prefer Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be in charge of America as opposed to George Bush.

All I can see is that these guys are completely deranged. If Iran's president had control of the US, Israel would be destroyed, all US citizens would be under Sharia Law, and Islam would be promoted by the sword to many many countries.

Perhaps those 35% should go live in Iran for 3 months and see just how wonderful living under Mahmoud really is.

Iraq, Oil and Money

2007-09-25T08:02:00.000+10:00

Given Alan Greenspan's recent book proclaiming the Iraq war was all about the oil (which he later said was not the Governments motive), it is important to note just where the wealth of our richest is coming from.

In the first Forbes 400 [1982], oil was the source of 22.8 percent of the fortunes, manufacturing 15.3 percent, finance 9 percent, and technology 3 percent. By 2006 oil had fallen to 8.5 percent and manufacturing to 8.5 percent. Technology, however, had risen to 11.75 percent and finance to an extraordinary 24.5 percent.

"No war for finance" just isn't as catchy though.

(HT: Evangelical Outpost)

Methodological Naturalism

2007-09-20T15:34:00.000+10:00

There has been a bit of talk about methodological naturalism (MN) around lately, with David Heddle and Joe Carter posting about it and I just wanted to bring a few things together...

David's definitions will suffice

Philosophical Naturalism: the belief that the natural world is all that there is.

Methodological Naturalism: the belief that the natural world is all that is accessible for scientific inquiry.

Joe makes the following claim

Conclusion: If God can be discerned from the evidence of creation, than the evidence of God is detectable by empirical observation and study of the natural world. The Christian must therefore completely reject philosophical naturalism. We might also conclude that methodological naturalism is flawed and a hindrance to science. Though the method may be adequate for some purposes, it is unnecessarily self-limiting and should be rejected.

This all makes sense, but many scientists claim that supernatural explanations (and class Intelligent Design as one) are also outside the scope of science, mostly arguing that supernatural causes can never be observed.

Let me make this very clear...this is a gigantic double standard....Craig Rusbult explains why

Can scientists logically infer the existence of things they cannot observe? Yes, if an unobservable cause produces observable effects. This cause-and-effect principle is used in operations science. For example, even though electrons and ideas cannot be observed, modern theories propose electrons (in chemistry) and ideas (in psychology). Why? Because our observations are explained in the most satisfactory way by theories proposing the existence of unobservable causes (electrons and ideas) that produce the effects we observe.
Similarly, in historical science we can logically infer the existence of causes we did not observe, if these unobserved causes produced effects we can observe. Therefore, when skeptics ask "Were you there? Did you see it?", they are ignoring the principle that scientific logic depends mainly on observable effects, not observable causes. Because of this principle, even if an event or process was not directly observed, a plausible scientific theory can propose that the event or process did occur.

So when someone excludes supernatural causes from science on the basis of that they cannot be observed, yet include the vast multitude of natural causes that cannot be observed as science, what they are really doing is practicing philosophical naturalism (PN).

This assumption of PN essentially means that science is no longer looking for the best explanation or 'the truth', but instead merely looking for the best naturalistic explanation. The once noble aim of science is reduced to an atheistic propaganda machine.

Climate Change Skepticism - Another Reason

2007-09-16T14:24:00.001+10:00

Whilst the media repeatedly talks about the Arctic ice sheet melting (and it is!), the public is almost never told that the Antarctic ice is increasing in size. From the graphic at University of Illinois website 'The Cryosphere Today', the increasing trend can be seen. In fact, since the 1970s, it appears that the amount of ice has increased by 10%)

Considering that the Antarctic contains 90% of the worlds ice (yes, you read that correctly...90%), this is especially significant. (Note that Wikipedia says 90%, however, The Cryosphere Today lists the Arctic as containing 2.92 Million square and the Antarctic containing 16.26 million sq. km. However, this is surface area and not volume - The Antarctic ice has an average depth of 1.6km!)

So really, is the amount of ice actually decreasing or isn't it? I certainly seems like the increase in ice from the Antarctic is more than enough to offset the loss of ice from the Arctic....but that just isn't useful information if you are a scaremongering warmenist.

(HT: Hot Air)

Internet Power Shift - Global Warming

2007-09-09T08:38:00.000+10:00

I mentioned the other day that the internet has shifted power to individuals because it has allowed them to form large communities of like minded people (over a distance).

Today, Climate Audit, run by Steve McIntyre has shown a second reason that the internet has shifted power to individuals.

Climate Audit has been pushing NASA and head climate scientist Hansen to release the source code used in determining the extent of global warming. Note that this release should have been done with the initial papers in 1999, as the scientific method requires disclosure of method so that findings can be replicated AND peer reviewed correctly (Note: lets just say that I doubt that many statisticians ever get to peer review scientific papers, even though statistics are vital to a lot of science).

Climate Audit brings the great news that NASA has released the source code (albeit, most of it seems to have been edited quite recently, ...the changes will probably never be verified, but I reckon it is probably just adding comments or removing comments that could be seen to be damaging to Hansen's objectivity).

This success shows that the internet allows people to publish and discuss issues at a very low cost of production, where as previously, only larger and better funded bodies could do so.

Internet Power Shift

2007-09-07T09:23:00.000+10:00

This article outlines how online communities like Facebook have allowed and will allow groups of individuals to organise for causes and political goals.

It is just another example of the power shifts that the internet has wrought (with a shift away from media power being another), and a great reason to watch Google, as it seeks to control all things internet.

Slouching Towards Totalitarianism

2007-09-04T09:23:00.000+10:00

The true agenda of the secular left is slowly revealing itself. Under the guise of freedom of choice, millions of babies every year are murdered in the womb. Yet when a womans 'reproductive freedom' (aka the right to murder for convenience) is touted as a universal right, the crawl towards a totalitarian government continues to gain momentum, showing just how real the secular left considers this 'right' to be.

In the UK the social work stupidity craze has shown that the government knows what is best for you and your yet to be born children. In this case, well... I'll let the article tell you

A pregnant woman has been told that her baby will be taken from her at birth because she is deemed capable of "emotional abuse", even though psychiatrists treating her say there is no evidence to suggest that she will harm her child in any way.
# Leader: Unnatural justice of secret courts
# More use of a vague reason to remove children

Social services' recommendation that the baby should be taken from Fran Lyon, a 22-year-old charity worker who has five A-levels and a degree in neuroscience, was based in part on a letter from a paediatrician she has never met.

Hexham children's services, part of Northumberland County Council, said the decision had been made because Miss Lyon was likely to suffer from Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy, a condition unproven by science in which a mother will make up an illness in her child, or harm it, to draw attention to herself.

Under the plan, a doctor will hand the newborn to a social worker, provided there are no medical complications. Social services' request for an emergency protection order - these are usually granted - will be heard in secret in the family court at Hexham magistrates on the same day.

From then on, anyone discussing the case, including Miss Lyon, will be deemed to be in contempt of the court.

When the government starts deciding who is fit to raise children, before they have done anything wrong, it is time to be afraid. Be very afraid.

Of course...it is all for the 'good' of the baby.

No Global Warming Consensus

2007-08-31T07:24:00.000+10:00

Despite the shrill complaints and name calling of the man-made global warming crowd when anyone calls into question their latest research cash cow, a study of the research journals over the past 4 years shows that quite clearly, there is still a large debate going on, with only 45% of articles supporting the notion of man-made global warming. 6% reject it outright, and the remainder are neutral, neither rejecting or accepting man-made global warming.

It just goes to show, the louder they yell, the less solid their case is.

P.s. Of course, logically, people must have an impact on the climate. The real question is whether it is significant or not.

(HT: Verum Serum)

Why I Am Skeptical of Man Made Global Warming Pt2

2007-08-27T16:09:00.000+10:00

It is because I am told to believe it because of things like this

Since the late 1960s, much of the North Atlantic Ocean has become less salty, in part due to increases in fresh water runoff induced by global warming, scientists say.

—Michael Schirber, LiveScience, 29 June 2005

The surface waters of the North Atlantic are getting saltier, suggests a new study of records spanning over 50 years. They found that during this time, the layer of water that makes up the top 400 metres has gradually become saltier. The seawater is probably becoming saltier due to global warming, Boyer says.

—Catherine Brahic, New Scientist, 23 August 2007

Both science sources, complete opposite events, yet still it is global warming's fault? Please. This is not science, this is pseudoscientific crap used for political ends....

Pink and the President

2007-08-26T10:57:00.000+10:00

'Dear Mr President' is a song that Pink wrote, according to wikipedia, because "I read The New York Times every day, and watch the news. And I was completely disgusted with it. I just felt like....I just needed to write a song. I really wanted to write a song to piss my dad off because he is a Bush supporter."

I'd be completely disgusted if I had to read the New York Times every day as well....

Of course, what is really pathetic is the closing verses of the song where Pink tells off the president because he doesn't know anything about hard work....this coming from a spoilt rock star with diamonds embedded in her teeth, who hasn't had a real job her entire life. Lame.

FYI, her dad is a Vietnam Vet

Expelled The Movie

2007-08-23T15:16:00.000+10:00

There is a lot of buzz in both the Intelligent Design camp and some creationist writers about a new documentary coming out next year called Expelled. The synopsis of the film is exposing the crushing of dissent in the debate over Darwinism. I've only just heard about it, and was looking forward to it providing a very public presentation of the unscientific attitude and actions of many zealous evolutionists.
From PR News Wire

Ben Stein, the lovable, monotone teacher from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Wonder Years is on a journey to answer one of the biggest questions ever asked: Were we designed or are we simply the end result of an ancient mud puddle struck by lightning? Stein, who is also a lawyer, an economist, a former presidential speechwriter, author and social commentator, is stunned by what he finds on his journey. He discovers an elitist scientific establishment that has traded in its skepticism for dogma. But even worse, along the way, Stein uncovers a long line of biologists, astronomers, chemists and philosophers who have had their reputations destroyed and their careers ruined by a scientific establishment that allows absolutely no dissent from Charles Darwin’s theory of random mutation and natural selection.

Sounds like it would be good. But I was very disappointed to find that it seems they have interviewed some evolutionists, like PZ Myers, under false pretenses. It appears that they told Myers they were filming for a different documentary. Underhanded tactics like this are a poor way to operate, especially if you are trying to take the moral high ground (of course that never stopped Michael Moore).

P.S. At one point in his post, PZ Myers refers to the infamous Dawkins pause in the documentary 'A Frog to a Prince'.

By filming under false pretenses, much like the example of the case of Richard Dawkins' infamous "pause", they've undercut their own credibility … not that that will matter. I suspect their audience will not question whatever mangling of the video that they carry out, and the subterfuges used to make it will not be brought up.

Just to be clear. There was no mangling of video in the Richard Dawkins interview. In fact, the editors shortened Dawkins pause to 11 seconds (from 19) and then switched off the cameras to allow him to think about the answer. Then taped his answer when he said he was ready.

If you read the link above, Dawkins tries to claim this pause was due to him realizing he was duped into doing an interview with creationists as "It is the kind of question only a creationist would ask in that way". Yet, the unedited tapes show clearly that when this question was asked, Dawkins had already known he was talking to creationists and had already agreed to continue. See this timeline for the details.

Whilst the interview was probably obtained under false pretenses (I've seen nothing that actually contests that point), Richard Dawkins is not being honest about it.

Update: As PZ Meyers himself would have probably known. Ed Brayton, another strident creationist and ID critic, has posted about how Richard Dawkins recollections were flawed and there was no alterations made that cast any additional negative light on Dawkins' response.

Kudos to Ed Brayton regarding his post.

Global Moose Warming

2007-08-23T09:32:00.000+10:00

Apparently, Global Warming is Bullwinkles fault....

researchers in Norway claiming that a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year -- equivalent to the CO2 output resulting from a 13,000 kilometer car journey

This reminds me of the guy who farts and then blames his dog.

Skeptic Presidents Open Letter to Militant Atheists

2007-08-20T10:31:00.000+10:00

Michael Shermer, president of Skeptic has published an Open Letter to Militant Atheists
in the Scientific American (if you ever thought the scientific american was a science magazine, look no further than them publishing non-scientific writings about how best to deal religion to see it's true purpose)

Shermer of course, talks about "rational atheism" (can we expect rationality from people who believe the universe came from nothing and that our accidentally created minds can find truth, whilst defending non-material and therefore non-existent notions of morality and justice?). But sure...lets humour ol Michael and see how rational he is.

Since the turn of the millennium, a new militancy has arisen among religious skeptics in response to three threats to science and freedom: (1) attacks against evolution education and stem cell research; (2) breaks in the barrier separating church and state leading to political preferences for some faiths over others; and (3) fundamentalist terrorism here and abroad. Among many metrics available to track this skeptical movement is the ascension of four books to the august heights of the New York Times best-seller list....Whenever religious beliefs conflict with scientific facts or violate principles of political liberty, we must respond with appropriate aplomb. Nevertheless, we should be cautious about irrational exuberance. I suggest that we raise our consciousness one tier higher for the following reasons.

Sounds great so far.. Shermer seems to be castigating the new atheists and instead says that atheists should be nice, calm and polite...and proceeds to give reasons for why....let me summarize..

Michael thinks that it is the best way for atheism to achieve victory over other religions. Yep. Not because of any intrinsic value in tolerance and respect of others. Just because it is not the best strategy for Athiests to achieve their goals...

But what is really interesting is the last reason Michael gives...

5. Promote freedom of belief and disbelief. A higher moral principle that encompasses both science and religion is the freedom to think, believe and act as we choose, so long as our thoughts, beliefs and actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others. As long as religion does not threaten science and freedom, we should be respectful and tolerant because our freedom to disbelieve is inextricably bound to the freedom of others to believe.

Michael concludes with

Rational atheism values the truths of science and the power of reason, but the principle of freedom stands above both science and religion.

Read the quotes again. Michael tells the new atheists to play nice except in the case where religion threatens science and freedom. Yet the very first thing he wrote was that religion is threatening science and freedom...So essentially Shermer has told the new atheists to keep going whilst putting forward a nice calm sounding article to placate those who are somewhat disturbed by the rabid zealousness of the high profile new atheists.

Of course, the last paragraph really sums it up....freedom should trump science and religion. But if that is the case then why does Michael tell us that "As long as religion does not threaten science and freedom, we should be respectful and tolerant" Shouldn't that comment have said 'As long as religion does not threaten freedom'? Michael has placed science on the same level as freedom, all the whilst saying freedom trumps science. Hardly a pinnacle of rationality.

25 Crazy Wierd animals

2007-08-19T21:37:00.000+10:00

See how many of these you have seen before

(via Instapundit)

Random Evolutionary Thought

2007-08-19T21:27:00.000+10:00

Why is it that evolutionists decry creationists for not doing any positive research are the same ones who keep saying that evolutionists are constantly trying to disprove evolution (not just uncritically accepting it as true?

All Religions Are Not The Same

2007-08-16T11:22:00.000+10:00

For the dumb story of the day, comes a Roman Catholic Bishop who suggests everyone call God 'Allah' in order to foster religious understanding. The irony is palpable....calling God the same name Allah, a different being, fosters confusion, not understanding.

Bishop Muskens reasoning?

"Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn't we all say that from now on we will name God Allah? ... What does God care what we call him? It is our problem."

God doesn't care if we call Him the same name as a false god? Yeah...right...

Global Warming Called Off

2007-08-10T16:01:00.000+10:00

NASA has quietly corrected a few faulty warming figures and Hot Air has the story. Some of the good stuff

Update (Bryan): “Former NASA guy” hat on for a second, this is a pretty big deal. Money quote from Coyote Blog:

I cannot get over the irony that in the same week Newsweek makes the case that climate science is settled and there is no room for skepticism, skeptics discover a gaping hole and error in the global warming numbers.

The discontinuity in the data should have been a serious red flag for Hansen et al, but what we’re probably seeing here is the effect of personality and agenda on the scientific process. They assumed they were right, and either discounted or didn’t even notice the discontinuity that occurred at 2000.

Coyote Blog also has a lot more background for those who are interested.

Today, the GISS admitted that McIntyre was correct, and has started to republish its data with the bug fixed. And the numbers are changing a lot. Before today, GISS would have said 1998 was the hottest year on record (Mann, remember, said with up to 99% certainty it was the hottest year in 1000 years) and that 2006 was the second hottest. Well, no more. Here are the new rankings for the 10 hottest years in the US, starting with #1:

1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938, 1939

Three of the top 10 are in the last decade. Four of the top ten are in the 1930's, before either the IPCC or the GISS really think man had any discernible impact on temperatures.

Seriously, read all of the Coyote Blog Post. It is long, but worth it.

Update #3: I labeled this "breaking news," but don't expect to see it in the NY Times anytime soon. We all know this is one of those asymmetric story lines, where if the opposite had occurred (ie things found to be even worse/warmer than thought) it would be on the front page immediately, but a lowered threat will never make the news.

Oh, and by he way. This is GOOD news. Though many won't treat it that way. I understand this point fairly well because, in a somewhat parallel situation, I seem to be the last anti-war guy who treats progress in Iraq as good news.

Yep...global warming isn't nearly as bad as we were told, the world isn't ending quite as soon as we thought, and many people won't think it is good news...perhaps they have an agenda they were simply using the threat of global warming to try and achieve....

Daily tech gives the kudos to Steve McIntyre, who runs the site Climate Audit, and also has a lot to do with surfacestations.org which documents the large number of dodgey weather/temperature data collection stations that have been used by the crazed left to tell us that the sky is falling, so that we give all our power to the governments and up that much closer to a socialist world government.

(HT: Tim Blair)

Life Imitates Worms

2007-08-07T10:57:00.001+10:00

Explosive sheep!

Anti-War Rhetorical Tricks

2007-08-06T16:43:00.000+10:00

The reality debased moonbats over at DailyKos have a great example of a rather lame rhetorical trick that is commonly used by anti-war nutters.

Author’s note: Both Michelle Malkin and Matt Drudge are still young enough to enlist in the military. As such strident war supporters, it’s anyone’s guess as to why neither of them has yet felt the need to pick up a gun and help out, while other troops—some under the age of 25—are beginning their fifth and sixth deployments. With morale plummeting over the war, the military is in desperate need of the type of motivated troopers I’m sure both Malkin and Drudge would make.

Ignoring the fact that the military does not actually have a morale problem, it's actually an ironic attack on Matt and Michelle. Considering the American military is essentially unbeatable on the battle field, the real battle is always going to be the propaganda war. In the military, Matt and Michelle would probably be just your average soldier, hardly a noticeable boost. But in the propaganda war, Matt Drudge and Michelle Malkin are force mulitpliers. They are big guns which is why the loony anti-war nuts over at DailyKos want to get them out of the way.

The deranged dingbats at Kos want to be able to win the propaganda battle and getting Michelle and Matt out of the way would be a big boost to that goal. Fortunately, neither Matt or Michelle are so stupid as to listen to the Kos writers (I mean...who really would be that dumb?). Unfortunately, it seems like the Kos writers want the same outcome to the propaganda war as the enemies of America and the western world.

Complexity, Causation and God

2007-08-02T11:00:00.000+10:00

I found this list of thoughts about God, complexity and causation. I felt it was worth responding to, as there are a couple of points worth noting and it seems to be a common response.

Here are my collective thoughts:

1. It takes something complex to create a complex being.
2. God is complex.
3. Something more complex than God must have created him.
4. Something even more complex must have created that.
5. This leads to irreducible complexity.
6. Alternately, you may say God has always existed.
7. This goes against the Second Law of Thermodynamics, that states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.
8. The counter-argument is either:
8a. God created the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Or:
8b. God is immune.
9. Rebuttals for these are:
9a. God could not have created the Second Law of Thermodynamics, because it negates his existence.
9b. There is no proof to show God is immune. And besides, he just twiddled his thumbs for all eternity?

Premise 1 is wrong and/or incomplete. It would have to read that 'It takes something more or equally complex to create a complex being.' in order for it to be useful.

Of course, most Intelligent Design (ID) people would argue that it requires Intelligence (not necessarily complexity) in order to create a certain level of specified complexity. So Premise 1 then requires an additional premise that intelligence requires greater complexity.

Premise 2 is an assumption, and arguable based on the definition of 'complex' being used.

Premise 3 assumes that God is created (we'll deal with this later)

Premise 5 is wrong. This leads to an infinite regress, not irreducible complexity.

Premise 7 says that the idea that God always existed contravenes the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (2LOT) which says that energy cannot be created or destroyed. This is wrong. The 1st law of thermodynamics says that energy cannot be created or destroyed. The 2LOT says that energy in a closed system always moves towards a less useful form. (I.e. Entropy always increases)

Premise 9a & 9b get really strange. The 2LOT clearly applies to the material universe, so there is clear case (not really an ad hoc addition) for saying that God, being non-material, is not bound by the laws of the material universe. Even ignoring this, it is not the case that the 2LOT negates God's existence, unless you argue that the universe and the 2LOT have existed for an infinite period of time.

The infinite regress problem (Premise 5) is where things really need to be thought about. Essentially, this problem requires that unless you have something that was uncaused at the start of the chain of causation, otherwise you get an infinite regress of causation, which is an impossibility. So something must have never been caused and thus eternal and self-existent. This uncaused, eternal thing must either be material or non-material, but the 2LOT would mean that it could not be a material thing as all useful energy would have disappeared (This is known as the low entropy past mystery by philosophers). So in order to avoid the infinite regress problem you MUST have a non-material entity as the cause of the material.

It is somewhat strange hearing these arguments from people arguing against God, as in reality, they are stronger arguments for God than against God.

A Multicultural Shamboles

2007-07-27T09:03:00.000+10:00

The UK continues to lead the way in multicultural madness. The latest instance is 'Shambo', a "sacred" bullock, who resides at the Skanda Value multi-faith temple, and has contracted TB. Shambo's Hindu owners have been trying to save him from the destruction he is due on the grounds of religious principles and human rights.

The high court, in the general manner of such courts, has decided to quash the destruction order, once again proving the principle that men wearing dresses aren't necessarily the best judges of what is good for society.

In disease of multiculturalism may now infect thousands of other cattle.

Shambo's case is just another clear example of why multiculturalism is unlivable.

Update: Well, the courts over turned the over turning of the kill order, and the monks tried to use a human shield tactic, but police have come in and removed them. Shambo is on his way....The UK has dodged a bullet, or more accurately, sent the bullet towards Shambo, and away from themselves...

Endagered Coral Reefs?

2007-07-26T09:47:00.000+10:00

The Sunday Mail on the weekend had a scarifying section on how man made global warming was going to destroy our precious great barrier reef.

Like most things the global warming fearmongers claim, this is a stupid and obviously false claim. Consider the headline of this news article.

Climate change may kill Great Barrier Reef by 2050

The article goes on to quote the IPCC which claims the coral reef will be 'functionally extinct' by 2050.

The clues of the moronicity of the IPCC report are even there in the article

"Coral bleaching can occur for a number of different reasons, but more recently, its been occurring because the seas in the tropical parts of the world are becoming too warm," Hoegh-Guldberg said.

Yep. A number of different reasons can bleach coral (essentially killing it), but they know it is all global warmings fault how?

Of course, the real kicker comes from Australian coral geneticists.

Coral geneticists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science have found that many corals store several types of algae, which can improve their capacity to cope with warmer water.

"The potential for this hidden back-up type (algae) to step in and provide nutrition to coral during heat stress is far greater than currently thought," said Jos Mieog, a PhD student involved in the coral study.

The Australian scientists said this "shuffle" ability might explain why coral reefs have been able to survive for thousands of years during various climate changes.

Wow...'Ancient' Coral reefs survived lots of climate change...but somehow the current climate change is going to kill them all off...

Global... Warming... Idiots...

(HT: Tim Blair)

Evolution of Math Teaching in America

2007-07-24T15:23:00.000+10:00

The Neo-atheists are complaining that religion and creationism is destroying the education of the nations children, as evidenced by the declining competitive ranking between America and other nations...of course, the real reason is the changing way that math has been taught....

Teaching Math In 1950
---------------------
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is
4/5 of the price. What is his profit?

Teaching Math in 1960
---------------------
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is
4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

Teaching Math In 1970
---------------------
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is
$80. Did he make a profit?

Teaching Math In 1980
---------------------
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is
$80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

Teaching Math In 1990
---------------------
A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and
inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the
preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of
$20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class
participation after answering the question: How did the birds and
squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong
answers.)

Teaching Math In 2000
---------------------
Un ranchero vende una carretera de madera para $100. El cuesto de la
produccion era $80. Cuantos tortillas se puede comprar?

(Source: Anonymous - Received via email)

God as Foundational - Materalistic Evolution Must Be Wrong

2007-07-13T14:22:00.000+10:00

That's a pretty big claim. Certainly many philosophers have defended God as a necessary being, but the point I want to talk about is that to even begin to think about truth, materialism must be wrong.

Richard Dawkins provides a clear example of this. In 'The God Delusion' he puts forward the notion that we all evolved, as did our religious beliefs and moral sense of empathy.

Clearly, Dawkins believes that peoples religious beliefs are false (hence a delusion), yet evolution, according to Dawkins (and most other materialists), is responsible for those beliefs. Perhaps those beliefs had some evolutionary/survival benefit he says.

And this is the big point...if we evolved, our beliefs (knowledge) is gained not for it's truth value, but for it's survival value. So what confidence do we or can we have that any of our beliefs are true? Well, none. Certainly there may be many true beliefs that also have survival value, but Richard Dawkins clearly defends the idea that evolution may have generated false beliefs with survival value.

So the big question remains....how do you tell the difference? When your beliefs (and your beliefs about your beliefs) can be believed merely due to survival value and not their truth value, there is no way you can have any confidence about ANY belief being 'true'.

So, if evolution is true, then we could never know it.

Global Warming Data Dodgey

2007-06-28T09:36:00.000+10:00

A former TV meteorologist, Anthony Watts, has started to investigate the numerous surface stations that are used to gather data for research into global warming. Watts had concerns about the reliability of the many surface stations which were said to be providing highly accurate information on surface temperatures. Watts has started a website www.surfacestations.org documenting the stations, with temperature data and photographic evidence.

Compare the two examples on the home page
The first is a well maintained site

Note the temperature trend.

The second is a not so well maintained site

Note the temperature trend, and note the horribly controlled environment with many different temperature affecting entities which have been building up over time.

Strangely, even though I am skeptical of human caused global warming, I had alway accepted that the measured temperature increase was a fact. I mean, it is a simple observation. Yet this data, with a significant number of the sites surveyed showing corrupt data, calls into question even this basic data. If they can't get the basic data gathering right, how much confidence can we have in the hypotheses derived from it, which is many orders of magnitude more complex?

As the faq says

the USHCN has been established since 1994, and in that time, the NCDC scientists managing the network have not done this most basic of quality control checks; visiting each station, doing a photographic survey, and determining if the climate monitoring station temperature and rainfall measurement been compromised by any local influences.

I guess this is what happens when you shut down debate. No one bothers to check the data because 'everybody knows' global warming is real.

Homosexual Marriage

2007-06-28T09:28:00.000+10:00

Considering the lack of real interest in homosexual marriage, it seems pointless to wage a war against it. Of course, I would still call it a civil union, and still don't think it is loving to encourage homosexual activity, which is inherently destructive. But thinking about it, perhaps the best way to 'protect' marriage, is to bring it back to where it was. To do that, we should get rid of the corrosive concept of a fault free divorce and common law marriage. These are concepts that have done more damage to family, and consequentially, country than any granting of homosexual rights has ever done.

Whilst the homosexual marriage rate is already plummeting in Cananda, removing fault free divorce would nail to coffin shut, whilst helping society to recover from this stupid marxist idea that has be eroding western civilization from within.

Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Hacked

2007-06-22T15:45:00.000+10:00

A hacker has claimed to have gotten his hands on an electronic copy of the seventh and final Harry Potter book, 'Deathly Hallows'. Of course, the publishers are saying it is all fake. I would recommend not going to the hackers posting. Talk about a lose lose situation for readers...if you go to the site to get the possibly accurate spoilers, then you still are not sure what happens in the book. Your curiosity is not sated, as you don't have concrete answers. If the answers do end up being accurate, then the book will be a giant let down, as you already sort of thought it would go that way...there is no mystery or suspense.

So if you are a Harry Potter fan (and I wouldn't recommend it...there are far better stories out there), the smart thing to do would be to sit back and wait, and ignore this sort of thing.

Public Schools Get Wierder

2007-06-19T11:18:00.000+10:00

Religion in an American school? Where is the ACLU?

The lesson began with the striking of a Tibetan singing bowl to induce mindful awareness.

With the sound of their new school bell, the fifth graders at Piedmont Avenue Elementary School here closed their eyes and focused on their breathing, as they tried to imagine “loving kindness” on the playground.

Eastern religious ideas are apparently okay....it's those darned Christian ones (where did Christianity originate again?) that are not good....

In other related school madness, a public school doesn't like GI Joe action figures as they come with weapons...one inch plastic weapons....Scary stuff...

Yep...the government is definitely the right organisation to educate our kids...

(Hat Tip: Hot Air)

For bonus points, there are a couple of more stories...

The first is that, surprise, sex education classes are horribly biased towards condoms and against abstinence. Maybe we should start calling that child abuse?

Secondly, a school has a no physical contact rule. Not just fighting or kissing, but hugs, back slapping, hand holding, shaking hands....and you thought those southern baptists were control freaks...

Leading Climate Change Profit Satirizes Self

2007-06-18T20:00:00.001+10:00

Tim Blair has a great roundup of Tim Flannery, leading climate change scareitian.

Moving from Flannery's climate change predictions of Sydney's dams being dry, nature has played a cruel joke on him and filled the dams to their highest level in 3 years. If leading climate change proponents can't get such a simple short term prediction right, then why do we think they know any better about long term climate predictions?

Of course, the most telling part is now Flannery says we should stop worrying about 'transient' climate effects like the drought and instead focus on 'the new climate'? As Tim Blair says

In May, the drought was “the most extreme and the most dangerous situation arising from climate change facing any country in the world right now”; a few weeks later, and we should stop worrying about a “transient” weather phenomenon. Flannery is in flat-out flip mode. Not that he’s given up making ridiculous predictions:

Environmental researcher Tim Flannery has warned that Brisbane and Adelaide - home to a combined total of three million people - could run out of water by year’s end.

I’ll take that bet. According to these figures, Adelaide has enough water to last until late January, 2008, even if not a further drop arrives before then. Brisbane has sufficient supplies to last until October next year.

It's all about fear and propaganda. Not about truth.

Episcopalians Go Beyond The Pale

2007-06-18T19:51:00.000+10:00

From Powerline,

The Seattle Times runs a long profile of Episcopal priest Ann Holmes Redding. Redding has converted to Islam. "Until recently," she was director of faith formation at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle. She doesn't hold an ecclesiastical position at the moment, though she appears not to have been a believing Christian even when she did. Quoth the bishop:

Redding's bishop, the Rt. Rev. Vincent Warner, says he accepts Redding as an Episcopal priest and a Muslim, and that he finds the interfaith possibilities exciting. Her announcement, first made through a story in her diocese's newspaper, hasn't caused much controversy yet, he said.

Quoth Doug Thorpe:

Doug Thorpe, who served on St. Mark's faith-formation committee with Redding, said he's trying to understand all the dimensions of her faith choices. But he saw how it deepened her spirituality. And it spurred him to read the Quran and think more deeply about his own faith.

He believes Redding is being called. She is, "by her very presence, a bridge person," Thorpe said. "And we desperately need those bridge persons."

Logic isn't the strong point of the US Episcopalians. Islam and Christianity make competing, contradictory truth claims. They cannot both be right.

A quote from Redding says it all

"It wasn't about intellect," she said. "All I know is the calling of my heart to Islam was very much something about my identity and who I am supposed to be.

FYI Feelings are a poor indicator of truth...

It's no shock the Episcopalian church membership is is free-fall.

Update: Life imitates Scrappleface.

UN Security General Blames Darfur Genocide on Climate Change

2007-06-18T19:48:00.000+10:00

Yep. We never had genocides or racial conflict before climate change....Those warmingmongers are getting battier. I thought Kofi was a nutter, but the new guy is taking the cake.

Of course, when they start claiming that the US invading Iraq was all about climate change and not oil, I will know the climate change movement has completely assimilated the moonbat left.

What is Wrong With The World?

2007-06-15T16:03:00.000+10:00

The world is a nasty place. Fighting in Israel, Iraq, Sudan, Zimbabwe. Terrorist attacks. Massive Poverty. Abuse. Rape. Corporate fraud. The list could go on and on.

I heard Ravi Zacharias state that the fallen nature of people is the most empirically supported concept in history, yet oddly many still seem to think that somehow we can 'save' ourselves, becoming perfect.

Whilst it would be easy to blame Islam. Or Secular Humanism or capitalism for all the ills of the world, we often use others faults to take the focus off the one thing we really should be looking at. We often focus on the evil outside, but seem to forget that we also need to deal with the evil within.

It is easy to think we are so much better than the Hitlers or the Paris Hiltons of the world, but really, we can never really be sure that we would do better with the same upbringing and opportunities. Power corrupts. Another lesson well supported by history.

Instead of always worrying about everyone else. Perhaps for a change we should worry about the evil within ourselves. The hate, jealously, pride and fear that seems beyond our ability to remove.

Thankfully though, we can get help. Not from others, but from God. Only help from a perfect being makes victory over the evil within us truly possible.

Look within once and a whilst, it is a lesson I often forget.

What is this animal?

2007-06-13T12:37:00.000+10:00

Identify the Species/Breed of this animal.

(Ko and KitKat can't answer!)

Who Designed The Designer?

2007-06-13T09:55:00.001+10:00

Who Designed the Designer? Who Made God? That's one of the common complaints made by atheistic and materialistic scientists when someone talks about the intelligent design movement.

What is interesting is that this question is incompatible with another charge those same people make. What is the charge? That creationism or intelligent design is a science stopper!

Think about it....if they thing the first question is valid, then there is always going to be more to investigate...'who designed the designer' means that another question still remains to be investigated...

This is just another clue that people who make these claims are not interested in truth...only in peddling their own beliefs.

Climate Change Must Read

2007-06-11T15:00:00.000+10:00

Vaclav Klaus, Czech President, has a very insightful speech on climate change. You can read a great excerpt here, or read the whole thing here. Some of the goodness

It becomes evident that while discussing climate we are not witnessing a clash of views about the environment but a clash of views about human freedom....The environmentalist paradigm of thinking is absolutely static. They neglect the fact that both nature and human society are in a process of permanent change, that there is and has been no ideal state of the world as regards natural conditions, climate, distribution of species on earth, etc. They neglect the fact that the climate has been changing fundamentally throughout the existence of our planet and that there are proofs of substantial climate fluctuations even in known and documented history. Their reasoning is based on historically short and incomplete observations and data series which cannot justify the catastrophic conclusions they draw. They neglect the complexity of factors that determine the evolution of the climate and blame contemporary mankind and the whole industrial civilization for being the decisive factors responsible for climate change and other environmental risks.

Read the whole thing!

Seriously. Now. Read it.

It seems I am not the only one to notice that the new environmentalist movement is a veiled push towards totalitarian control.

(Hat Tip: Tim Blair)

Old Earth Christians - A Questionnaire

2007-06-09T08:18:00.000+10:00

There are many different beliefs in the Christian community regarding science, and what the Bible says about the age of the earth. This questionnaire is an attempt for me to come to an understanding of these different beliefs. If Christian Old Earth proponents could take 15 minutes or so to provide, I would be grateful. Please be succinct as possible.

1) What is science?

2) What separates science from non-science?

3) Is 'Young Earth Creation science' such as that practiced by members of Answers in Genesis or Creation Ministries International 'science'? Why or why not?

4) Is 'Intelligent Design' such as that practiced by members of the Discovery Institute 'science'? Why or why not?

5) Is it possible for there to be evidence of young earth creationism?

6) What are the reasons you hold for interpreting Genesis 1 as allowing or supporting long ages?

6A) Exodus 20:11 (written by the finger of God Exodus 32:16) refers to God making the world in 6 days. What are the reasons you hold for interpreting Exodus 20:11 as allowing or supporting long ages?

7) Was there death before the fall?
Was it only physical?
Was it only non-human?

7A) The fossil record displays evidence of disease and violent death before the time of humans. Were disease and violence part of God's good design and consistent with his nature? If not...what caused it?

8) Was there a global flood? What are the reasons you hold for interpreting Genesis 6-8 to support this position?

9) Did you become a Christian before or after studying science?

9A) Were you taught young earth creation, old earth creation or old earth evolution at school/university?

10) Is young earth creation damaging or dangerous to the Christian faith and evangelism? Why or why not?

11) Are all miracles in the Bible descriptions of actual events where God acted outside of what we would normally consider natural law? If not, which ones are excluded and why?

12) Is the bible, in it's original form, the inerrant word of God, accurate and truthful on whatever topic it speaks on?

Stem Cell Breakthrough

2007-06-07T08:32:00.000+10:00

A new technique has been found that is able to turn non-stem cells (from skin no less) into essentially what are embryonic stem cells.

Now, three research groups claim to have done just that - by reprogramming adult mouse cells into cells that are virtually indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells (ESCs). If they can repeat their success in humans, hopes are high that such cells could one day be used to regenerate healthy tissues in people with a range of illnesses.

Great news (Will this have any effect on the NSW Government vote on funding human cloning to get a supply of ESC for research?

Note however, that the New Scientist article ignores that Adult stem cells already are "used to regenerate healthy tissues in people with a range of illnesses.".

Heads in the sand until the end....

Update: David from Creation Safari's asks

Keep an eye on this story and on the pro-ES advocates. The article quoted one who said that research on embryonic stem cells remains “absolutely essential.” Why? It is still too early to tell, but if all barriers are removed for use of iPS instead of ES, the reaction of the embryonic stem cell advocates will be instructive. Will the Hollywood celebrities still seek air time for tear-jerking commercials, when no law will be required to overcome ethical barriers that no longer exist? Will the $3 billion California stem cell institute switch to the newer, safer, ethical iPS? Will Big Science lobbyists cease their rhetoric about how ethical objections to ES will leave America scientifically behind the rest of the world?

Some good questions. This new technique is easier and cheaper and has the advantage of the cells already being from the patients body (much like adult stem cells), so now we will see whether those pushing for 'compassionate science' (where compassion means killing human life for research that may some day help someone somewhere) are simply trying to push an agenda that isn't so much about science, but about making the destruction of human life acceptable for scientific ends (eugenics anyone?)

Bad Old Earth Creationist Arguments

2007-06-03T10:43:00.000+10:00

I keep hearing these arguments, from both scientists and laypeople. They are not good arguments.

If he did build it all in a week in 4006BC, I don't understand why he would create so much evidence that makes it look a lot older.

People who have been taught the world looks 'old' need to remember that for most people throughout time, the world looked 'young'. The age of the earth is an inference, based upon assumptions in both cases. It doesn't look 'old' or 'young', we merely are trained to view it that way.

YEC material have a lot of errors and are deliberately misleading and dishonest.

I here this a lot, but have yet to be told one reasonable example. Some have made reference to "Telling Lies for God" by Ian Plimer, but Ian Plimer is not exactly a reputable source, and independent investigations of his accusations of dishonesty found them all to be without substance. Heck, even talk origins, a very popular anti-creationists website, disparages the book as poor reasoning. That Christians would make these claims without evidence is troubling.

If the 'young earth creationists' are right, all the world's biological and earth scientists are either fundamentally mistaken, or engaged in a dishonest conspiracy.

This is mostly true, but not an issue. 'All' the scientists would not wrong because there are some young earth creation scientists who would be right. The history of science is completely (and I mean completely) filled with cases where 'all' the scientists were fundamentally wrong (For instance Phlogiston, Geosynclinal geology). As Thomas Kuhn detailed, science progresses through a series of revolutions where the old scientific paradigm is replaced by a revolutionary new one.

This complaint is actually an unfounded self-important claim, as if somehow, in today's scientific age, we know we have finally found the truth. Scientists have ALL been wrong before and will be again. As a physics lecturer once said at the start of semester "80% of what we are about to teach you is wrong. we don't know which 80%".

I know lots of scientists who have integrity and a passion for truth.

As did all the other scientists in the past who were wrong as well. Integrity and passion for truth do not been they are right. It is possible to be sincerely wrong.

Scientists are all trying to disprove evolution as this would make them the most famous scientist in the world.

This is not how science works. Scientific Paradigms (cf Thomas Kuhn) such as particles to people evolution or old ages are not questioned or challenged, but are used as a framework within which scientists investigate problems. Thus, when scientists find soft tissue in a supposedly 68 Million year old fossil, they don't doubt the millions of years age, but instead refer to an 'unknown process' which has preserved the soft tissue even when everything they know about soft tissue goes against it.

Or when scientists get experimental support that essentially falsifies evolution (by showing beneficial mutations conspire against each other to reduce fitness and so taken together are not beneficial) or other lab work showing beneficial mutations trigger a process of mutational meltdown and extinction, these are ignored and other 'solutions' are searched for. Thomas Kuhn's explanation for scientific paradigms makes sense of this, however Old Earth Creationist complaints about scientists trying to disprove evolution do not.

The final example is how so many of the scientific things we do depends on particles to people evolution. One example would be 'why we experiment on mice'. Yet this is another bad (and circular) argument. The similarities between creatures is used as evidence for evolution. This same similarity is what makes experimenting on mice useful, not that we evolved.

These common examples are actual just examples of rhetoric, not meaningful discussion.

Michael Leunig and Tim Blair

2007-05-31T08:01:00.000+10:00

Tim Blair enjoys showing the moonbat lefty cartoonist Michael Leunig for all his deranged anti-western views. In the latest post, he points out how the Australian Catholic University showed its support for Michael by giving him an honorary doctorate. You have to wonder if the university is really a place filled with intelligent, educated people. Obviously, the leftist bias common at other universities also infects the ACU.

The ACU release on the doctoring of Leunig's qualifications also has an amusing final comment.

“As with all artistic expression, Michael’s work is sometimes misinterpreted or misundetsood, but his champions far outweigh his critics.”

Of course his champions far outweigh his critics....have you seen Michael Moore?
Or Bryan Law?

The Science of Morality - Ideology as Science

2007-05-29T12:43:00.000+10:00

Allahpundit seems quite happy that a study reported in the Washington Post claims to have found a biological basis for altruism. Of course, it is probably better to go to a proper scientific news wire for more reliable details of studies. The study in question is reported on Science News Daily.

Lets just take a quote from the Washington Post article to see how strong this finding is

The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.

Interesting eh? It seems however, that their aim was to destroy the notion of free will. If altruism is 'hard-wired' it isn't a choice. If it isn't a choice, then it isn't a moral decision.

Also, the whole argument that finding an area of the brain that activates for a particular activity means that materialists are right. Just as with the creation evolution debate, where the similiarities between animals could be due to either common design or common descent, so too this finding could merely highlight God's design or evolutions activity.

The Washington Post continues

What the new research is showing is that morality has biological roots -- such as the reward center in the brain that lit up in Grafman's experiment -- that have been around for a very long time.

Assume we evolved and obviously this is a logical conclusion. Otherwise, it is just more begging the question about reality.

Perhaps the scientists or journalists have been reading Richard Dawkins, because the Post continues.

The more researchers learn, the more it appears that the foundation of morality is empathy. Being able to recognize -- even experience vicariously -- what another creature is going through was an important leap in the evolution of social behavior. And it is only a short step from this awareness to many human notions of right and wrong, says Jean Decety, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago.

Straight from the Secular Humanist handbook. What they don't tell you though, is that if empathy is the foundation for right and wrong, and this empathy evolved, then there is no rational reason to judge another persons actions as wrong, because that person is just following their own empathy.

Of course, this is all considering that the Washington Posts article is the whole story. Moving to Science News Daily, we get a description of the research methodology for the main study being reported...

One study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,* involved about 20 people, each of whom had the potential to walk away with a pot of $128. They also were given a separate pool of funds, which they could choose to distribute to a variety of charities linked to controversial issues, such as abortion and the death penalty. A computer presented each charity to the subjects in series, and gave them the option to donate, to oppose donation, or to receive a payoff, adding money to the pot. Sometimes, the decision to donate or oppose was costly, calling for subjects to take money out of the pot.

It turned out that a similar pattern of brain activity was seen when subjects chose either to donate or take a payoff. Both types of decisions were associated with heightened activity in parts of the midbrain, a region deep in the brain that is known to be involved in primal desires (such as food and sex) and the satisfaction of them. This result provides the first evidence that the "joy of giving" has an anatomical basis in the brain – surprisingly, one that is shared with selfish longings and rewards.

Jordan Grafman, Ph.D., the scientist who led the work, was more interested by what happened when subjects donated, or opposed donation, at a cost to themselves. In either case, an area of the brain toward the forehead, known as the anterior prefrontal cortex, lit up. When Dr. Grafman and his team asked subjects to rate their charitable involvement in everyday life, he found that those with the highest ratings also had the highest level of activity in the prefrontal cortex.

Okay. Now we see that the findings are not so clear cut. The subjects got the same 'reward' whether they were altruistic or selfish. Hardly a useful finding.

The last paragraph also talks about how people who donated OR opposed donation at a cost to themselves got the same response. Considering the 'charities' for the study were ones that supported or opposed hot button issues like abortion and the death penalty, this is hardly surprising.

You could probably restate the findings of the research as 'Scientists find out that people get a brain response when they spend money on causes they already believe are important'. Those causes could be believed important for selfish or unselfish reasons...the study didn't control for that at all.

All in all, the only use for this study was to encourage the materialist believers who don't bother to think through what things really mean.

One last thing, on the prolife cause, from the Washington Post article

Hauser said that if his theory is right, there should be aspects of morality that are automatic and unconscious -- just like language. People would reach moral conclusions in the same way they construct a sentence without having been trained in linguistics. Hauser said the idea could shed light on contradictions in common moral stances.

U.S. law, for example, distinguishes between a physician who removes a feeding tube from a terminally ill patient and a physician who administers a drug to kill the patient.

Hauser said the only difference is that the second scenario is more emotionally charged -- and therefore feels like a different moral problem, when it really is not: "In the end, the doctor's intent is to reduce suffering, and that is as true in active as in passive euthanasia, and either way the patient is dead."

Hauser just agreed with all pro-lifers who argue that there is no logical difference. I bet you he is not pro-life though.

What is worse than consensus science?

2007-05-26T20:35:00.000+10:00

Andrew Bolt has done a great public service. In commenting on how the ABC is going to air 'The Great Global Warming Swindle', he has put together a good list of the many scientists who doubt that global warming is significantly caused by man.

Not surprisingly, the moonbat leftoids that frequent the payroll at the ABC are besides themselves with angst. It seems a shock to them that anyone would consider even showing both sides of the issue.

You would think that the moonbats, after reading Andrew's article, would admit that the thousands of climate scientists who doubt man-made global warming mean there was no consensus and the question was not settled scientifically. But no! Instead, the 'reality based' community pretend that because many scientific organisations support the hypothesis of man-made global warming, there was a consensus and the question settled.

Here is the rub. When the man-made global warming alarmists get three times as many signatures from climate scientists than Andrew has listed, perhaps then we can think the debate is over. Until then, claiming the debate is over just shows them to be dishonest and gives us even more reason to doubt their claims.

The list Andrew has compiled is below for those who are interested....

1. Scientists who doubt there’s a scientific “consensus” that we face dangerous man-made global warming.

Prof John Christy, IPCC lead author and head of Alabama’s Earth System Science Centre: “I’ve often heard it said that there is a consensus of thousands of scientists (who say) humans are causing a catastrophic change to the climate system. Well, I am one scientist, and there are many, that simply think that is not true.”

Prof Charles Wax, Mississippi state climatologist: “There isn’t a consensus among scientists.”

Dr Roy Spencer, formerly NASA’s senior climate scientist: “The only consensus I’m aware of is that it’s warmed in the last century.”

Prof emeritus Joel Kauffman, University of the Sciences in Philadelphia: “(M)any professors of climate science realise that carbon dioxide generated by human activity has caused little or no global warming.”

2. IPCC scientists who doubt even the IPCC, said to represent 2500 scientists who all believe in dangerous man-made warming.

Prof Yuri Izrael, IPCC vice-chairman: “There is no serious threat to the climate.”

Richard Lindzen, former IPCC lead author and meteorology professor at MIT: “There is no substantive basis for predictions of sizeable global warming due to observed increases in minor greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons.”

Dr Vincent Gray, IPCC reviewer: “The continued fairly unchanging warm weather since 1998 shows no signs of increasing, and is probably influenced by changes in the sun.”

Dr Christopher Landsea, former IPCC author and hurricane expert: “It is beyond me why my (IPCC) colleagues would utilise the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming . . . I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound.”

3. Petitions of scientists who doubt the faith.

A 2006 letter to Canada’s Prime Minister signed by 60 experts in climate-related fields: “ ‘Climate change is real’ is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified.”

The Oregon Petition of Dr Frederick Seitz, US National Academy of Sciences past president, with the verified signatures of 17,800 scientists and technicians, including 2600 climate scientists: “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere.”

The 2005 Leipzig Petition of Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental science at Virginia University, and signed by about 80 prominent scientists and academics: “(W)e cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes and calls for hasty actions.”

4. Experts who once believed but now doubt.

Prof Nir Shaviv, Hebrew University astrophysicist: “Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming.”

Dr David Bellamy, famed green activist: “Global warming is largely a natural phenomenon.”

Dr Reid Bryson, top climatologist and founding chairman of Wisconsin University’s meteorology department: Temperatures are rising “because we’re coming out of the little ice age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air”.

Prof Tim Patterson, Carleton University paleo-climatologist: “The temperatures match very closely with the solar cycles.”

Prof Emeritus Jan Veizer, Ottawa University environmental geochemist: “The past record strongly favours the solar/cosmic alternative (to human gases) as the principal climate driver.”

5. Local doubters.

Bob Carter, research professor at James Cook University: “That 20th century warming - the most recent of many previous warm phases of similar or greater magnitude - was dangerous or human-caused, or even that the warming has continued after 1998, all yet remain to be demonstrated.”

William Kininmonth, former National Climate Centre head: “(A)larmist predictions have no sound basis.”

Dr David Evans, former plant modeller and climate accountant at the Australian Greenhouse Office: “(N)ew evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause. I am now sceptical.”

Ian Plimer, professor of mining geology at Adelaide University: Blaming humans is “pseudo-science”.

6. Interesting doubters.
Prof Antonio Zichichi, World Federation of Scientists president: Plausible “man is not to blame”.

Prof Edward Wegman, who led an inquiry for a US Congressional committee to check IPCC statistics: “The assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported.”

The late Roger Revelle, the professor Al Gore says first warned him of warming: The science is “too uncertain to justify drastic action”.

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of Russia’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory: “Solar irradiance began to drop in the 1990s, and a minimum will be reached by approximately 2040. It will cause a steep cooling of the climate on earth in 15 to 20 years.”

There’s dozens more, but I’ve run out of space. Now count: How many has the ABC let speak? Why so few?

The Six Day War

2007-05-20T08:07:00.001+10:00

The 40 year anniversary of the Six Day War waged against Israel by the Arab world is almost here. Charles Krauthammer has a good article outlining some of the history of the war, and why Israel is reluctant to simply return to the territorial boundaries it had before this unprovoked attack.

that three-week period between May 16 and June 5 helps explain Israel's 40-year reluctance to give up the fruits of the Six Day War -- the Sinai, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza -- in return for paper guarantees of peace. Israel had similar guarantees from the 1956 Suez War, after which it evacuated the Sinai in return for that U.N. buffer force and for assurances from the Western powers of free passage through the Straits of Tiran.

It is also of note that he mentions that the USSR, who had been trying to turn the Muslim world against the west and its allies (including Israel), fed false information to Egypt which directly led to the war.

For more information check out the Wikipedia entry on the Six Day War. Wikipedia of course refers to 'Palestinian Refugees', which is actually a little misleading, as

It is important to note however that Palestine was never an independant nation and that Palestinians refers to those people who claim residency in that area. Prior to 1948, they were immigrants of Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon. After 1948, those Arab countries refused to allow them to return forcing them into lives as refugees.

Yep. People immigrated, attacked Israel. Got defeated and their Arab friends refused to take them back (How often has the west been derided for it's refugee policies?).

Reading a bit more about the history also has uncovered other crumbs of interesting information. "4,255,120 Palestinians are registered as refugees with UNRWA; this number includes the descendants of refugees from the 1948 war, but excludes those who have emigrated to areas outside of the UNRWA's remit." Curiously, in 1947, the UN records that only around 800,000 arabs where in the Palestinian territories. Over 40 years, this is a population increase of around 4.5% a year. Pretty impressive for an 'oppressed' people.

The Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt in 1948 (who also disbanded the Palestinian Government in 1959) and so Egypt only wanted the area returned to the Palestines after they lost control of the region.

The West Bank was ruled by Jordan from 1948 and they only demanded it's return to the Palestinian's when they lost control of the region to Israel.

It seems a key goal of the Arab world was to marginalise the Palestinian people so that the Arab world could divvy up the areas for their own rule. They didn't want a Palestinian state. They wanted the land for themselves. Ironically this means that if Israel had been destroyed in any of the wars waged against it by the Arabs, there would still not be a Palestinian state.