I saw a squirrel! He was goin' like this!
Wednesday, April 30
Headline News
I love this headline from Slashdot:
Kraken Infiltration Revives "Friendly Worm" Debate
It's like a newspaper headline taken from a 70's science fiction novel to show that we really are in the 21st century. You get a few items that you understand, like:
California Expands DNA Identification Policies
India Launches 10 Satellites At Once
First Superheavy Element Found In Nature
And then they drive the point home, with one that doesn't even give you a frame of reference.
Mind you, Usability Testing Hardy Heron With a Girlfriend is pretty obscure as well.
I love this headline from Slashdot:
Kraken Infiltration Revives "Friendly Worm" Debate
It's like a newspaper headline taken from a 70's science fiction novel to show that we really are in the 21st century. You get a few items that you understand, like:
California Expands DNA Identification Policies
India Launches 10 Satellites At Once
First Superheavy Element Found In Nature
And then they drive the point home, with one that doesn't even give you a frame of reference.
Mind you, Usability Testing Hardy Heron With a Girlfriend is pretty obscure as well.
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The Derb Delivers
In this case, he delivers a righteous serving to Ben Stein and the Intelligent Design movment as a whole.
And quotes yours truly in the process. (And pops the bubble on the worst-kept secret in the blogosphere, but hey...)
I may disagree with him on quantum consciousness, but he's right on the money on this one.
Oh, and NRO have truly hideous URLs. Worse even than Youtube.
In this case, he delivers a righteous serving to Ben Stein and the Intelligent Design movment as a whole.
And quotes yours truly in the process. (And pops the bubble on the worst-kept secret in the blogosphere, but hey...)
I may disagree with him on quantum consciousness, but he's right on the money on this one.
Oh, and NRO have truly hideous URLs. Worse even than Youtube.
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Tuesday, April 29
Global Warming, Come Home
Overnight lows of 3 degrees? In Sydney, in April? July, okay, but April?
We had about two weeks of lovely Autumn weather this year. Six months of Summer, two weeks of Autumn, then foom, it's Winter.
Overnight lows of 3 degrees? In Sydney, in April? July, okay, but April?
We had about two weeks of lovely Autumn weather this year. Six months of Summer, two weeks of Autumn, then foom, it's Winter.
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Sunday, April 27
To Sleep, A Chance To Successively Approximate
I'm sure that many of my readers are quite capable of figuratively extracting square- and cube-roots in their sleep, but does anyone else literally do this?
Just woke up from a nap with an accurate but unhelpful answer to a problem in my head...
I'm sure that many of my readers are quite capable of figuratively extracting square- and cube-roots in their sleep, but does anyone else literally do this?
Just woke up from a nap with an accurate but unhelpful answer to a problem in my head...
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07:36 PM
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Saturday, April 26
The Triumph Of Technology Over Talent, Part XVIII
I was pretty impressed by this. I showed it to my cousin - a SMPTE Fellow - and he was impressed. That probably means it's impressive.
(I mistakenly filed this under Books, and got Ermintrude the cow as an icon. Which was cool-looking, but not quite what I'd intended.)
I was pretty impressed by this. I showed it to my cousin - a SMPTE Fellow - and he was impressed. That probably means it's impressive.
(I mistakenly filed this under Books, and got Ermintrude the cow as an icon. Which was cool-looking, but not quite what I'd intended.)
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Fuzzy Kittayns
Kittens at this stage of development are known as "meepers", for reasons that shall shortly become evident.
Kittens at this stage of development are known as "meepers", for reasons that shall shortly become evident.
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The Historical Stupid Files
Much nonsense has been written on the subject of human consciousness, from both those whom we would expect to know better, such as Roger Penrose in The Emperor's New Mind* and those whom we wouldn't, such as John Searle in his Chinese Room piffle.**
But one of the stars in this particular field of nonscience has to be Julian Jaynes, author of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
Jaynes claims that until very recently - as late as the 10th century BC - the human mind was not unified as we find it today, but bicameral, the left hemisphere disconnected from the right. Humans of the day were effectively schizophrenic, not in the soap-opera sense of having multiple personalities, but in the genuine clinical sense of paranoia and hearing voices.
Jaynes' evidence for this is literary. He argues that older works such as the Iliad display no sign of such modern mental faculties as introspection, where more recent works, such as the Odyssey, do show this.
Now, perhaps it happened that in both translations of the Iliad that I have to hand*** the obvious implications of introspection were the result of careless editing. Jaynes is a psychologist, not a historian or linguist, but perhaps he reads fluent Ionic Greek. Never mind that.
Never mind that even if these two poems were not the work of the same man (which is historically uncertain), they were likely created only about a century apart, not a very long time for such a significant evolution of human mentality. Never mind that people not only write poems and stories like this today, but act like this today, and yet are often not diagnosably schizophrenic. Never mind either that this is not at all the behaviour we see in unfortunate individuals who do suffer from a bicameral mind or split brain.
Never mind that.
Instead, let's go to the oldest one in the book, the Epic of Gilgamesh.
In the story, Gilgamesh rejects the advances of the goddess Ishtar because he has read the myths and knows that this never ends well for the hero.
Yes folks, it's a trope subversion, and one that predates the Iliad by hundreds of years, if not a thousand and more. This particular passage is only found in the Akkadian version of the Epic; the much older Babylonian version is incomplete and doesn't appear to refer to this part of the tale. Nevertheless, the entire tale of Gilgamesh is deeply and incontrovertibly introspective, rendering Jaynes' thesis incoherent on a literary basis as well.
And the whole topic arose only because I was browsing the TV Tropes wiki for a subject that I have now entirely forgotten.
* Penrose argues three points: First, that human consciousness is non-algorithmic, which is very likely true; that human-like consciousness could not arise from a Universal Turing Machine, which is unsupported by logic or evidence; and that human consciousness is directly dependent on quantum events, which is impossible.
** Searle's argument goes like this: Suppose we have a man locked in a room with a library full of books. He receives via a slot in the wall, pieces of paper covered with illegible symbols. Following instructions in the books, he writes a new set of symbols on another piece of paper and feeds that back out through the slot.
Unbeknownst to the man in the box, the symbols are Chinese; the pieces of paper he receives are questions, and the pieces of paper he returns are answers. He neither speaks nor reads a word of Chinese, and yet via the Room he is conducting fluent conversations.
Searle argues that since the man does not understand Chinese, artificial intelligence is impossible.
If you experienced a Huh? moment there, you are not alone. The argument rests on a multitude of fallacies, including - depending on where how you slice it - self-contradiction, circularity, assuming the consequent, the fallacy of composition, and a good old-fashioned helping of non-sequitur.
To put it most simply, though the man doesn't understand Chinese - because Searle stipulated that - the room does - because Searle stipulated that. There are more subtle arguments to Searle's incorrectness, but it's not necessary to go into those here, because Searle's response is always the same, to wit, "Artificial intelligence is impossible because I said so."
*** E. V. Rieu's prose version and Richmond Lattimore's verse translation.
Much nonsense has been written on the subject of human consciousness, from both those whom we would expect to know better, such as Roger Penrose in The Emperor's New Mind* and those whom we wouldn't, such as John Searle in his Chinese Room piffle.**
But one of the stars in this particular field of nonscience has to be Julian Jaynes, author of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
Jaynes claims that until very recently - as late as the 10th century BC - the human mind was not unified as we find it today, but bicameral, the left hemisphere disconnected from the right. Humans of the day were effectively schizophrenic, not in the soap-opera sense of having multiple personalities, but in the genuine clinical sense of paranoia and hearing voices.
Jaynes' evidence for this is literary. He argues that older works such as the Iliad display no sign of such modern mental faculties as introspection, where more recent works, such as the Odyssey, do show this.
Now, perhaps it happened that in both translations of the Iliad that I have to hand*** the obvious implications of introspection were the result of careless editing. Jaynes is a psychologist, not a historian or linguist, but perhaps he reads fluent Ionic Greek. Never mind that.
Never mind that even if these two poems were not the work of the same man (which is historically uncertain), they were likely created only about a century apart, not a very long time for such a significant evolution of human mentality. Never mind that people not only write poems and stories like this today, but act like this today, and yet are often not diagnosably schizophrenic. Never mind either that this is not at all the behaviour we see in unfortunate individuals who do suffer from a bicameral mind or split brain.
Never mind that.
Instead, let's go to the oldest one in the book, the Epic of Gilgamesh.
In the story, Gilgamesh rejects the advances of the goddess Ishtar because he has read the myths and knows that this never ends well for the hero.
Yes folks, it's a trope subversion, and one that predates the Iliad by hundreds of years, if not a thousand and more. This particular passage is only found in the Akkadian version of the Epic; the much older Babylonian version is incomplete and doesn't appear to refer to this part of the tale. Nevertheless, the entire tale of Gilgamesh is deeply and incontrovertibly introspective, rendering Jaynes' thesis incoherent on a literary basis as well.
And the whole topic arose only because I was browsing the TV Tropes wiki for a subject that I have now entirely forgotten.
* Penrose argues three points: First, that human consciousness is non-algorithmic, which is very likely true; that human-like consciousness could not arise from a Universal Turing Machine, which is unsupported by logic or evidence; and that human consciousness is directly dependent on quantum events, which is impossible.
** Searle's argument goes like this: Suppose we have a man locked in a room with a library full of books. He receives via a slot in the wall, pieces of paper covered with illegible symbols. Following instructions in the books, he writes a new set of symbols on another piece of paper and feeds that back out through the slot.
Unbeknownst to the man in the box, the symbols are Chinese; the pieces of paper he receives are questions, and the pieces of paper he returns are answers. He neither speaks nor reads a word of Chinese, and yet via the Room he is conducting fluent conversations.
Searle argues that since the man does not understand Chinese, artificial intelligence is impossible.
If you experienced a Huh? moment there, you are not alone. The argument rests on a multitude of fallacies, including - depending on where how you slice it - self-contradiction, circularity, assuming the consequent, the fallacy of composition, and a good old-fashioned helping of non-sequitur.
To put it most simply, though the man doesn't understand Chinese - because Searle stipulated that - the room does - because Searle stipulated that. There are more subtle arguments to Searle's incorrectness, but it's not necessary to go into those here, because Searle's response is always the same, to wit, "Artificial intelligence is impossible because I said so."
*** E. V. Rieu's prose version and Richmond Lattimore's verse translation.
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, then a long time approaching fixation. The time frame is exactly what you'd expect for something with a selection differential of around 10%, of which we have several established examples in humans. Again, not controversial.
No Habla PHP
Just got a spate of error reports from Minx...
Because someone's trying to run a phpBB attack against my blog. The gobbledegook that's supposed to decode into a code injection decodes instead into a request for a null page, which raises an exception.
Just got a spate of error reports from Minx...
Because someone's trying to run a phpBB attack against my blog. The gobbledegook that's supposed to decode into a code injection decodes instead into a request for a null page, which raises an exception.
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The Stupid Files
Today's dose of burning stupid comes to us courtesy of Lynne McTaggart of The Intention Experiment.
What is The Intention Experiment? Well, about 13 hours from now, McTaggart plans to change the spectroscopic fingerprint of a sample of water by thinking at it.
Yes, you read that correctly.
She's planning to point a Raman spectrometer at a beaker of water, and think good (or perhaps bad) thoughts at it for a few hours, in hopes that it will change. Change what? Well, she doesn't exactly say. There are three things that can change a spectroscopic fingerprint: A change in the actual chemical structure of the compound you're studying; uneven mixtures of impurities; and random variation because you're running an experiment with no controls and no clearly stated goals.
It's a bit like modern "ghost hunters": Get hold of an extremely sensitive scientific instrument that you don't understand, and wave it about until it registers a reading that it wasn't showing before. It doesn't matter what the reading is, because you haven't bothered to make any predictions or set up any controls. Any reading at all will do.
More generally, this is termed a unicorn hunt: Go out, find something, and call it a unicorn.
McTaggart brings real scientific expertise to the table, in the form of, well, I'll let her tell it:
In short, it's unicorns all the way down.
McTaggart is no fool: She's using the notoriety of this ludicrous bit of pseudo-science to flog her books and DVDs, which I can recommend highly to no-one at all.
Today's dose of burning stupid comes to us courtesy of Lynne McTaggart of The Intention Experiment.
What is The Intention Experiment? Well, about 13 hours from now, McTaggart plans to change the spectroscopic fingerprint of a sample of water by thinking at it.
Yes, you read that correctly.
She's planning to point a Raman spectrometer at a beaker of water, and think good (or perhaps bad) thoughts at it for a few hours, in hopes that it will change. Change what? Well, she doesn't exactly say. There are three things that can change a spectroscopic fingerprint: A change in the actual chemical structure of the compound you're studying; uneven mixtures of impurities; and random variation because you're running an experiment with no controls and no clearly stated goals.
It's a bit like modern "ghost hunters": Get hold of an extremely sensitive scientific instrument that you don't understand, and wave it about until it registers a reading that it wasn't showing before. It doesn't matter what the reading is, because you haven't bothered to make any predictions or set up any controls. Any reading at all will do.
More generally, this is termed a unicorn hunt: Go out, find something, and call it a unicorn.
McTaggart brings real scientific expertise to the table, in the form of, well, I'll let her tell it:
Scientists like Dr. Rustum Roy, who is an expert on water, at the University of Pennsylvania, have recorded the structuring of water with electromagnetic radiation.Professor Roy is an elderly but respected materials scientist specialising in ceramics, which is not notably a category featuring water among its members. He famously lent his name to a paper proposing structures in water as a potential mechanism for homeopathy based entirely on Raman spectroscopic analysis of alcohol. Which is not only not a ceramic, but also not water. Said paper also lacked any proper controls, or any relevant discussion of what was being measured and how. Again, all they were looking for was anomalies, with no prior definition of what would be considered anomalous.
In short, it's unicorns all the way down.
McTaggart is no fool: She's using the notoriety of this ludicrous bit of pseudo-science to flog her books and DVDs, which I can recommend highly to no-one at all.
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Friday, April 25
Joy In The Mid-Afternoon
CPanel does its daily update thing, and promptly commits suicide by segfault. I've managed to get CPanel going again, but WHM is still down. Bleh and double bleh.
Update: Nothing I tried seem to fix it, so I waited a day and did a forced update of the entire mess. And now it works.
Automatic updates: They're good for you. Yep.
Well, to be fair, that's the first time in four years of running CPanel that it's spontaneously combusted in that fashion. Which is rather better luck than I've had with Windows.
CPanel does its daily update thing, and promptly commits suicide by segfault. I've managed to get CPanel going again, but WHM is still down. Bleh and double bleh.
Update: Nothing I tried seem to fix it, so I waited a day and did a forced update of the entire mess. And now it works.
Automatic updates: They're good for you. Yep.
Well, to be fair, that's the first time in four years of running CPanel that it's spontaneously combusted in that fashion. Which is rather better luck than I've had with Windows.
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Why People Laugh At Creationists
Part 23,The Larch Ben Stein
Which reminds me - we need to add another letter to the Latin alphabet; either that, or standardize on duodecimal arithmetic. At the moment, the upper and lower case letters plus the digits give us 62 symbols, which is not enough for handy base-64 encoding, which is what Youtube uses for their public IDs. Which means a Youtube ID can begin with -, which is not exactly obvious when you're cutting and pasting. (Not in this case, but in general.)
This article at Real Detroit Weekly includes some snippets from an interview with Expelled associate producer Mark Mathis (scroll down to the bottom to find the section titled Unevolved) who shows a depth of understanding of Evolutionary Theory rivalling Stein's. True masochists can find an hour-long discussion betweent Mathis and the editors of Scientific America here.
Part 23,
Which reminds me - we need to add another letter to the Latin alphabet; either that, or standardize on duodecimal arithmetic. At the moment, the upper and lower case letters plus the digits give us 62 symbols, which is not enough for handy base-64 encoding, which is what Youtube uses for their public IDs. Which means a Youtube ID can begin with -, which is not exactly obvious when you're cutting and pasting. (Not in this case, but in general.)
This article at Real Detroit Weekly includes some snippets from an interview with Expelled associate producer Mark Mathis (scroll down to the bottom to find the section titled Unevolved) who shows a depth of understanding of Evolutionary Theory rivalling Stein's. True masochists can find an hour-long discussion betweent Mathis and the editors of Scientific America here.
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ANZAC Day
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:This is why.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
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Of Cheetahs And Men
A little background is needed for this one.
I was recently arguing in the comments at LGF with someone who claimed that the Theory of Evolution provided the basis for the Holocaust, much as Ben Stein does in Expelled.
He (the commenter, not Stein) provided a blatantly racist quote from T. H. Huxley in support of this claim. I countered that Huxley was morally and scientifically wrong; that such racism was endemic in the mid-19th century, even among abolitionists; and that the quote was taken from an essay Huxley wrote arguing for the abolition of slavery. And I provided a similarly racist quote from a abolition speech by Abraham Lincoln.
So said commenter asked me - rather condescendingly - what grand change had taken place in Evolutionary Theory since Huxley's day to make him scientifically wrong in this. And I pointed out that while race is a valid evolutionary concept, it doesn't apply to humans, because we lack sufficient genetic diversity. We're all one race.
The response asked, don't I think that this is miraculous? Clearly implying the hand of you-know-who.
And I said no; it just means we went through a genetic bottleneck in recent times, evolutionarily speaking. Much like cheetahs, which almost went extinct. But, I speculated, humans are more diverse than cheetahs, so we likely weren't as close to extinction as they.
But still too damn close for comfort. Just 70,000 years ago, our species may have been reduced to as few as 2000 individuals.
(via Slashdot)
A little background is needed for this one.
I was recently arguing in the comments at LGF with someone who claimed that the Theory of Evolution provided the basis for the Holocaust, much as Ben Stein does in Expelled.
He (the commenter, not Stein) provided a blatantly racist quote from T. H. Huxley in support of this claim. I countered that Huxley was morally and scientifically wrong; that such racism was endemic in the mid-19th century, even among abolitionists; and that the quote was taken from an essay Huxley wrote arguing for the abolition of slavery. And I provided a similarly racist quote from a abolition speech by Abraham Lincoln.
So said commenter asked me - rather condescendingly - what grand change had taken place in Evolutionary Theory since Huxley's day to make him scientifically wrong in this. And I pointed out that while race is a valid evolutionary concept, it doesn't apply to humans, because we lack sufficient genetic diversity. We're all one race.
The response asked, don't I think that this is miraculous? Clearly implying the hand of you-know-who.
And I said no; it just means we went through a genetic bottleneck in recent times, evolutionarily speaking. Much like cheetahs, which almost went extinct. But, I speculated, humans are more diverse than cheetahs, so we likely weren't as close to extinction as they.
But still too damn close for comfort. Just 70,000 years ago, our species may have been reduced to as few as 2000 individuals.
(via Slashdot)
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Thursday, April 24
An Exemplar Of Exactitude
Not.
Ben Stein, quoting Charles Darwin in Expelled Exposed in an effort to tie Evolution to Nazism:
(Thanks to Scientific American, who go on to list five more things that Ben Stein doesn't want you to know.)
Not.
Ben Stein, quoting Charles Darwin in Expelled Exposed in an effort to tie Evolution to Nazism:
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.And what Darwin actually said:
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.Quote mining is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.
(Thanks to Scientific American, who go on to list five more things that Ben Stein doesn't want you to know.)
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Wednesday, April 23
Nonstandard Library
(xkcd, obvy.)
(xkcd, obvy.)
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On Comporting Oneself In The Arena Of Public Discourse
Matoko of Ghost Blog called Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit a "theocon shill" for linking to Captain Ed's (formerly of Captain's Quarters, now blogging at Hot Air) favourable review of Expelled without linking to any of the unfavourable reviews she'd emailed him.
The problem with this is that it's (a) rude and (b) inaccurate. Mostly (b); as I said earlier, if you're going to be rude it helps to be right.
But here's the thing: In the film, Ben Stein blames the Holocaust on Charles Darwin.
That's beyond rude, beyond being idiotic bigoted ahistorical claptrap. It's essentially a blood libel against science.
You can see how a scientist might be a little irked.
Matoko of Ghost Blog called Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit a "theocon shill" for linking to Captain Ed's (formerly of Captain's Quarters, now blogging at Hot Air) favourable review of Expelled without linking to any of the unfavourable reviews she'd emailed him.
The problem with this is that it's (a) rude and (b) inaccurate. Mostly (b); as I said earlier, if you're going to be rude it helps to be right.
But here's the thing: In the film, Ben Stein blames the Holocaust on Charles Darwin.
That's beyond rude, beyond being idiotic bigoted ahistorical claptrap. It's essentially a blood libel against science.
You can see how a scientist might be a little irked.
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Tuesday, April 22
The Early Internet
Real early. Like 1901 early.
(Click to enlarge.)
Real early. Like 1901 early.
(Click to enlarge.)
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Not About Expelled. Really!
Okay, it's about Expelled.
Remember that wonderful video, Beware the Believers, featuring Richard "Dick to the Dawk" Dawkins and Pimp Dan Dennet?
There was considerable debate about the video's origins. On the one hand, it refers to the film Expelled; there clearly was some connection. On the other hand, it's witty and intelligent, and presents the case for science in a rather amusing way. As such, it appeared on quite a few science blogs.
So if it was produced by the Expelled people, it must be considered as something of an own goal for their cause, and yet a greater artistic and intellectual achievement than the main feature. Some argued that because of all this, it couldn't have been produced by the humourless clods behind Expelled.
They were sort of right.
The producers of Expelled hired another studio to produce Beware the Believers:
(via The Panda's Thumb)
Update: Both the animator and the lyricist appear in this comments thread at Pharyngula to explain how the whole thing came about. Pharyngula is the blog of biologist and cephalopod fancier PZ Meyers, who appears in both the film and this video.
Okay, it's about Expelled.
Remember that wonderful video, Beware the Believers, featuring Richard "Dick to the Dawk" Dawkins and Pimp Dan Dennet?
There was considerable debate about the video's origins. On the one hand, it refers to the film Expelled; there clearly was some connection. On the other hand, it's witty and intelligent, and presents the case for science in a rather amusing way. As such, it appeared on quite a few science blogs.
So if it was produced by the Expelled people, it must be considered as something of an own goal for their cause, and yet a greater artistic and intellectual achievement than the main feature. Some argued that because of all this, it couldn't have been produced by the humourless clods behind Expelled.
They were sort of right.
The producers of Expelled hired another studio to produce Beware the Believers:
(via The Panda's Thumb)
Update: Both the animator and the lyricist appear in this comments thread at Pharyngula to explain how the whole thing came about. Pharyngula is the blog of biologist and cephalopod fancier PZ Meyers, who appears in both the film and this video.
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All Expelled, All The Time
Okay, probably not.
I haven't seen the film, and probably won't bother, and as soon as I get a chance to take a look at the new anime season I'll have something more interesting to talk about.
But the deceit and wilful ignorance displayed by the film, and the near-total lack of understanding of science displayed in the thread at LGF, have irked me.
So here's a review of the movie that takes director Nathan Frankowski and presenter and co-writer Ben Stein solidly to task, not just for being comprehensively dishonest, but also for producing a crappy film.
Be sure to stay for the surprise ending. No, not the film, the review.
Okay, probably not.
I haven't seen the film, and probably won't bother, and as soon as I get a chance to take a look at the new anime season I'll have something more interesting to talk about.
But the deceit and wilful ignorance displayed by the film, and the near-total lack of understanding of science displayed in the thread at LGF, have irked me.
So here's a review of the movie that takes director Nathan Frankowski and presenter and co-writer Ben Stein solidly to task, not just for being comprehensively dishonest, but also for producing a crappy film.
Be sure to stay for the surprise ending. No, not the film, the review.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
02:12 PM
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Monday, April 21
The Stupid On Sunday
Like Glenn Reynolds, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has linked to Expelled Exposed, drawing the predictable ire of many of his readers in a thread that's 1600 comments and growing fast. (Update: 2300 comments, and still growing.)
Let's be clear: Charles - again like Glenn - comes down firmly on the side of science. And does so in the full knowledge of what will happen. I can rant freely here and rarely get more than a handful of comments. PZ Myers can point out Ben Stein's follies and be guaranteed a mostly supportive audience. Charles knew he was going to ignite a flame war, but he waded in anyway, because this stuff matters.
Also because, hey, who doesn't love a flame war?
Like Glenn Reynolds, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has linked to Expelled Exposed, drawing the predictable ire of many of his readers in a thread that's 1600 comments and growing fast. (Update: 2300 comments, and still growing.)
Let's be clear: Charles - again like Glenn - comes down firmly on the side of science. And does so in the full knowledge of what will happen. I can rant freely here and rarely get more than a handful of comments. PZ Myers can point out Ben Stein's follies and be guaranteed a mostly supportive audience. Charles knew he was going to ignite a flame war, but he waded in anyway, because this stuff matters.
Also because, hey, who doesn't love a flame war?
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
12:55 PM
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Sunday, April 20
The Stupid, It Burns, Local Edition
Tim Blair has an update - 21 updates, in fact - on the world-class inanity that is Australia's new federal government.
And we have another 30 months of this crap to look forward to.
Update: Learned a new word: woftam. Much like a wombat, but no brains involved.
Tim Blair has an update - 21 updates, in fact - on the world-class inanity that is Australia's new federal government.
And we have another 30 months of this crap to look forward to.
Update: Learned a new word: woftam. Much like a wombat, but no brains involved.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
06:06 PM
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The Stupid, It Burns
Some of the later comments come from people with some sort of clue, but there really are people who think Expelled has some sort of value, rather than being a lie based on a lie based on a lie.
Congratulations. The Religious Right has found its Michael Moore.
(Via Instapundit, who writes At any rate, according to the comments, at least, there's more to the film than I.D. twaddle. Yeah. The film blames the Holocaust on Charles Darwin. That's something more than the usual I.D. twaddle alright.)
Update: Stupidity abounds. Again, some well-informed souls brave the fires of wilful ignorance, but the post and the comments thread alike are, for the most part, hot air.
Update the Second: Glenn has now added a link to Expelled Exposed - possibly because I emailed that link to him, though he adds:
Some of the later comments come from people with some sort of clue, but there really are people who think Expelled has some sort of value, rather than being a lie based on a lie based on a lie.
Congratulations. The Religious Right has found its Michael Moore.
(Via Instapundit, who writes At any rate, according to the comments, at least, there's more to the film than I.D. twaddle. Yeah. The film blames the Holocaust on Charles Darwin. That's something more than the usual I.D. twaddle alright.)
Update: Stupidity abounds. Again, some well-informed souls brave the fires of wilful ignorance, but the post and the comments thread alike are, for the most part, hot air.
Update the Second: Glenn has now added a link to Expelled Exposed - possibly because I emailed that link to him, though he adds:
I hate writing about this stuff because -- pardon me while I speak plainly -- the people on both sides of this issue are assholes. I mean, even by the low standards of Internet discussion. I'm getting email calling me a "theocon shill" for mentioning Stein, and email telling me I'll burn in hell for calling Intelligent Design "pernicious twaddle." Frankly, the rabid atheists and the rabid creationists seem an awful lot alike, and no proper hell could be truly hellish without the both of them yammering away at each other. Feh.There's a certain degree of truth in this, but the two groups are not equally detestable. While I dislike unnecessary rudeness at any time, if you insist on being rude, it helps to also be right. cf. Gregory House.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
06:03 PM
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The Only Thing Worse
Than an ever-expanding cloud of rogue self-replicating robots is an ever-expanding cloud of rogue FTL self-replicating robots.
That can really ruin your entire day.
Than an ever-expanding cloud of rogue self-replicating robots is an ever-expanding cloud of rogue FTL self-replicating robots.
That can really ruin your entire day.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
02:30 AM
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Saturday, April 19
This Would Make A Great Anime
Lexx, Season 2 Episode 13, Twilight
Aboard the Lexx, Stanley Tweedle (captain of the Lexx, arch-traitor, and the only human among the regular cast) has taken ill and collapsed. 790 (a robot head) diagnoses him with elevated levels of hydrogen peroxide in his blood and a depressed immune response, but lacks the facilities or specialised knowledge to determine the cause.
Luckily, the Lexx is near the planet Ruuma, and the planetary governor promises them medical assistance. This is actually a scheme to get the Lexx to rescue the governor and his family before they are eaten by the zombie bodies of the Divine Predecessors - Ruuma has long been used as the burial ground for former hosts of His Shadow because of the unusual effects the planet has on dead bodies. (By coincidence, the brains of the Divine Predecessors happen to be aboard the Lexx... Or at least they were; their numbers have taken something of a beating of late.)
So Xev (half love-slave, half cluster-lizard, all hot chick) and Kai (last of the Brunnen-G, an undead alien assassin) take the comatose Stanley down to the planet, where the medical robot 792 diagnoses him with a selenium deficiency due to eating nothing but the goop generated by the Lexx's galley, and prescribes the governor's anti-dandruff shampoo as a treatment. (Which is not entirely absurd - some anti-dandruff shampoos do contain selenium, and selenium deficiency can cause serious health problems and even death.)
Meanwhile, Kai has started feeling the effects of the planet, being, after all, dead himself, and has taken to spouting very, very bad poetry. The governor's family lock Xev out of the fortress to be eaten by zombies while they make off with the Lexx. 792 opens the door again to assist the zombies, but not before Xev is bitten. The zombies eat the Moth, the flying machine that is the only way the crew can return to the ship. Everyone rushes upstairs to the communicator to contact the Lexx, with the zombies close behind.
Back aboard the Lexx, Lyekka (an alien space plant spore and hot chick) has woken up hungry. Nothing edible is left aboard, so she heads down to the planet and there devours the governor's daughter and wife, while Xev, rapidly degenerating into zombiehood, eats the governor's brain.
Stanley makes it to the roof of the fortress, to find Lyekka and Kai and a Moth waiting. Zombie-Xev tries to attack them, but they subdue her and return to the ship, where they effect a rather icky cure.
Then, before Stanley can order the Lexx to destroy Ruuma as a hideous waste of silicon, the entire planet is eaten by Mantrid drones.
Lexx, Season 2 Episode 13, Twilight
Aboard the Lexx, Stanley Tweedle (captain of the Lexx, arch-traitor, and the only human among the regular cast) has taken ill and collapsed. 790 (a robot head) diagnoses him with elevated levels of hydrogen peroxide in his blood and a depressed immune response, but lacks the facilities or specialised knowledge to determine the cause.
Luckily, the Lexx is near the planet Ruuma, and the planetary governor promises them medical assistance. This is actually a scheme to get the Lexx to rescue the governor and his family before they are eaten by the zombie bodies of the Divine Predecessors - Ruuma has long been used as the burial ground for former hosts of His Shadow because of the unusual effects the planet has on dead bodies. (By coincidence, the brains of the Divine Predecessors happen to be aboard the Lexx... Or at least they were; their numbers have taken something of a beating of late.)
So Xev (half love-slave, half cluster-lizard, all hot chick) and Kai (last of the Brunnen-G, an undead alien assassin) take the comatose Stanley down to the planet, where the medical robot 792 diagnoses him with a selenium deficiency due to eating nothing but the goop generated by the Lexx's galley, and prescribes the governor's anti-dandruff shampoo as a treatment. (Which is not entirely absurd - some anti-dandruff shampoos do contain selenium, and selenium deficiency can cause serious health problems and even death.)
Meanwhile, Kai has started feeling the effects of the planet, being, after all, dead himself, and has taken to spouting very, very bad poetry. The governor's family lock Xev out of the fortress to be eaten by zombies while they make off with the Lexx. 792 opens the door again to assist the zombies, but not before Xev is bitten. The zombies eat the Moth, the flying machine that is the only way the crew can return to the ship. Everyone rushes upstairs to the communicator to contact the Lexx, with the zombies close behind.
Back aboard the Lexx, Lyekka (an alien space plant spore and hot chick) has woken up hungry. Nothing edible is left aboard, so she heads down to the planet and there devours the governor's daughter and wife, while Xev, rapidly degenerating into zombiehood, eats the governor's brain.
Stanley makes it to the roof of the fortress, to find Lyekka and Kai and a Moth waiting. Zombie-Xev tries to attack them, but they subdue her and return to the ship, where they effect a rather icky cure.
Then, before Stanley can order the Lexx to destroy Ruuma as a hideous waste of silicon, the entire planet is eaten by Mantrid drones.
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11:59 PM
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Friday, April 18
Lexx
Finally started watching this, after having it on the shelf since about 2002.
Let me get this out of the way: this is classic bad sci-fi, cheesy as hell. But it's fun, and the actress who plays the original Zev (I'm still watching season one) is stunning. Shame they had to replace her in season two.
Apart from Zev, you have to admire the Lexx, a miles-long intelligent (but not exactly bright) organic spaceship that demolishes entire planets and uses the debris as a delousing spray.
Here, I'll let Lexx tell you the story.
Finally started watching this, after having it on the shelf since about 2002.
Let me get this out of the way: this is classic bad sci-fi, cheesy as hell. But it's fun, and the actress who plays the original Zev (I'm still watching season one) is stunning. Shame they had to replace her in season two.
Apart from Zev, you have to admire the Lexx, a miles-long intelligent (but not exactly bright) organic spaceship that demolishes entire planets and uses the debris as a delousing spray.
Here, I'll let Lexx tell you the story.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
02:40 PM
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