Posts

On May 19, 2005, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) spoke out against filibustering judicial nominations of President George W. Bush, and said he was willing to give up the tool permanently, and not block future Democratic presidential nominees: “Republicans seek to right a wrong that has undermined 214 years of tradition - wise, carefully thought-out tradition. The fact that the Senate rules theoretically allowed the filibuster of judicial nominations but were never used to that end is an important indicator of what is right, and why the precedent of allowing up-or-down votes is so well established. It is that precedent that has been attacked and which we seek to restore…. My friends argue that Republicans may want to filibuster a future Democratic President’s nominees. To that I say, I don’t think so, and even if true, I’m willing to give up that tool. It was never a power we thought we had in the past, and it is not one likely to be used in the future. I know some insist that we will someday want to block Democrat judges by filibuster. But I know my colleagues. I have heard them speak passionately, publicly and privately, about the injustice done to filibustered nominees. I think it highly unlikely that they will shift their views simply because the political worm has turned." ...

As was mentioned last August by commenter Ktisophilos, Ian Plimer has a new book out on climate change, titled Heaven and Earth: Global Warming: The Missing Science, in which he challenges claims of anthropogenic global warming. Plimer is an Australian professor of geology who I criticized for his methods in debate with creationists, as well as for his reliability and accuracy. He responded by criticizing me with more misrepresentation in his book Telling Lies for God, which contained numerous errors, as well as multiple cases of failure to properly quote and cite sources that he used in writing the book. (The Creation Ministries International documentary for which I was interviewed, Facing the Fire, is about Plimer’s 1988 debate with Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research.) It now appears that Plimer’s latest work is also extremely sloppy and contains erroneous source attributions. Tim Lambert at the Deltoid ScienceBlog identifies a long list of problems in the book by page number, points out the facts about Plimer’s misleading figure 3, which doesn’t originate from the source Plimer has claimed, and about another misrepresented source and graph. Some Christians who found Plimer to be worthless as a source on creationism as a result of my critique have nonetheless found him to be a worthwhile source on anthropogenic climate change, such as Bill Muehlenberg and some of the commenters at his CultureWatch blog. This strikes me as an inconsistent position–Plimer has demonstrated unreliability in both debates, and shouldn’t be relied upon as a source for either. That doesn’t mean to ignore what he says, or that everything he says is wrong–it’s just that everything he says needs to be thoroughly checked for accuracy. If it checks out, then it’s better to cite the original source, not Plimer. UPDATE (May 26, 2009): Commenter Paul points out a review of Plimer’s book by Barry Brook, which also includes a link to a point-by-point critique of the book by Prof. Ian Enting of the University of Melbourne (PDF). (This link has been updated as of June 1, 2009 to point to a location that will continue to maintain the most recent version of the critique, as per a comment below from Prof. Enting.) UPDATE (May 28, 2009): Bill Muehlenberg still appears to be refusing to publish contrary opinions from me, continuing his past record. I posted the following two comments on his blog, which he has not allowed through moderation: 1. Comment submitted on the evening of May 22, 2009: I am a critic of creationism and skeptic who challenged Ian Plimer’s methods and reliability in his criticisms of creationism (cited by one of your commenters above). I am sorry to say that Plimer’s methods and reliability continue to be unsound in his contribution to the climate change debate. For example, see the following two blog posts that document errors and falsehoods in his new book: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/the_science_is_missing_from_ia.php http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/ian_plimer_lies_about_source_o.php I think that Plimer is mostly correct about creationism (it’s nonsense) and mostly incorrect about climate change (there are real trends that correlate with human activity), but given his record he shouldn’t be relied upon as a source in either debate without carefully checking up on everything he says.2. Submitted on the morning of May 23, 2009: Bill: I do hope you will let my comments through moderation. Here is another post from the Deltoid ScienceBlog about Ian Plimer misrepresenting one of his own sources: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/plimer_and_arctic_warming.phpUPDATE (September 2, 2009): Plimer has descended further into irrationality in his exchange with George Monbiot. UPDATE (December 17, 2009): Plimer engaged in a debate, of sorts, with George Monbiot, on Australia’s “Lateline” program. Monbiot offers his overview of how it went. ...

Yesterday’s New York Times has an interesting article about how security researchers at the University of Toronto have helped uncover online spy activity, apparently conducted by the Chinese government, against the Dalai Lama’s office in India. One odd comment in the article: “And why among the more than 1,200 compromised government computers representing 103 countries, were there no United States government systems?" I find this particularly odd in that I’ve seen compromised U.S. government systems plenty of times in my information security career, including spam issued from military computers. I don’t find it plausible that the U.S. government has recently improved the security of all of its computers and networks so that there are no more compromised systems. In the context of the article, it’s discussing more specifically compromises due to the particular spy ring being monitored. The preceding sentences point out that they weren’t able to determine with certainty who was running it, and the immediately preceding sentence asks, “Why was the powerful eavesdropping system not password-protected, a weakness that made it easy for Mr. Villeneuve to determine how the system worked?" The question should actually have asked why it wasn’t encrypted, rather than “password-protected,” but the possibilities suggested to me here are that (a) this particular activity is being run by amateurs or (b) this particular activity was intentionally detectible as either (i) a distraction from other, more hidden activity or (ii) to put the blame on China by somebody other than China. ...

The April 2009 issue of Smithsonian magazine prints two letters about February’s “Darwin and Lincoln” article under the heading “Twin piques.” The first reads: The only place Darwin and Lincoln are equals is in the mind of author Adam Gopnik ["Twin Peaks"]. What a stretch to weave their lives together because they share a birthday. “High peaks [that] look out toward each other”? Total hyperbole. Rick Munsell The Villages, FloridaUnfortunately, Dr. Munsell, a veterinarian from Florida who got his college degrees in Mississippi, doesn’t tell us which reputation he thinks is exaggerated. Given his status as a southerner, he could either be a fan of the Confederacy and southern secession, or he could be an anti-evolutionist. Then again, perhaps he just thinks nobody is ever equal to anybody else…

In any event, the next Carolina sighting is only briefly detailed, sadly, since it sounds even more interesting than most. On the afternoon of 16 September 1904, in the countryside near Troutman, North Carolina, Mrs John B Lippard and her children saw "30 or more large snakes sailing through the air" over their farm. Each was about 5ft (1.5m) long and 4-5in (10-13cm) wide. "They watched the snakes sail around and alight in a piece of thickety pine woods... Most assuredly these people saw something." (Statesville Landmark, 20 Sept) Quoted from p. 34 of Jerome Clark, "Sky Serpents," Fortean Times magazine, #248, June 2009, pp. 30-36. UPDATE (12 September 2014):  There are, in fact, gliding snakes in the jungles of south and southeast Asia. Gridman (2009-05-09): Darn, that sounds like a good one. Pity I let my subscription to the Fortean Times lapse. Obviously they weren’t really snakes but it might have been a primitive form of UFO. I believe that before they setup the Sedona Vortex UFO re-energizing portal UFOs had to generate their own dimension power by undulating wildly. ...

The Center for Public Integrity, an organization I support, has just published the results of an investigation into the roots of the recent economic crisis and the major players involved: The top subprime lenders whose loans are largely blamed for triggering the global economic meltdown were owned or backed by giant banks now collecting billions of dollars in bailout money — including several that have paid huge fines to settle predatory lending charges. The banks that funded the subprime industry were not victims of an unforeseen financial collapse, as they have sometimes portrayed themselves, but enablers that bankrolled the type of lending threatening the financial system. … According to the analysis: ...

In an op-ed at the New York Times, Charles Blow offers a rebuttal to the claim that most people follow particular religions because they are raised in those religions with the following: Maybe, but a study entitled “Faith in Flux” issued this week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life questioned nearly 3,000 people and found that most children raised unaffiliated with a religion later chose to join one. Indoctrination be damned. By contrast, only 14 percent of those raised Catholic and 13 percent of those raised Protestant later became unaffiliated. ...

Jinxiboo’s blog reports on Saint Sergius and Bacchus, officers in the Roman army exposed as secret Christians and martyred in the fourth century: A Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mt. Sinai in Israel. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman ‘pronubus’ (a best man), overseeing a wedding. The pronubus is Christ. The married couple are both men. … Prof. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the “Office of Same-Sex Union” (10th and 11th century), and the “Order for Uniting Two Men” (11th and 12th century). ...

Evidence continues to mount that human decision-making occurs in the brain prior to conscious awareness of the decision, which is evidence against the common religious view of a soul, separate from the brain, which is the seat of all of our mental capacities. It’s also at odds with an overly intellectualized view of human beings held by some atheists (as well as all Scientologists, who consider unconscious decision-making by the “reactive mind” or festering “body thetans” to be the cause of human unhappiness), on which we must strive to make all of our decisions based on conscious, deliberative reason. I don’t think this is a very common view among atheists today, who tend to have some familiarity with evolution and cognitive science, but there are still some out there who have an overly idealized view of what a rational human being should be. A view of human beings that focuses solely on the intellectual and reason is not only at odds with the facts about how our cognition works, it gives short shrift to the importance of social bonds and emotion, which are areas that some religions focus on to the exclusion of the intellectual–with great success in expanding their memberships, at least over the short term.

“It’s important for people to understand that in a democracy, there will be a full investigation. In other words, we want to know the truth. In our country, when there’s an allegation of abuse … there will be a full investigation, and justice will be delivered. … It’s very important for people and your listeners to understand that in our country, when an issue is brought to our attention on this magnitude, we act. And we act in a way in which leaders are willing to discuss it with the media. … In other words, people want to know the truth. That stands in contrast to dictatorships. A dictator wouldn’t be answering questions about this. A dictator wouldn’t be saying that the system will be investigated and the world will see the results of the investigation." And on the treatment of war crimes: “War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, ‘I was just following orders." The former quote is from the video below, the latter quote is from this March 2003 CNN transcript. (First quote via Dispatches from the Culture Wars, second quote via The Agitator.) And, for your edification, please read Scott Horton’s article, “Busting the Torture Myths." ...