So yeah, I was listening to The Howard Stern Show a few days back and they were talking about this…but apparently you can download your own “spin-free” Bill O’Reilly merchandise. For example, you can get your own official tote bag…or perhaps a Bill O’Reilly-modeled jacket…
I hate that man…
I’ve added some new quotes to the New-ish Quotes section…here’s a sample:
“Let’s be honest – this electorate has switched because that Christian right has taken over the Republican Party. They started it in the 80s with Reagan and Pat Robertson. And like a parasite on a host, they now own it. Let’s examine what ‘moral values’ are. Because I don’t think religion always corresponds with moral values. To me, and they’re very good at conflating morality with religion, just the way George Bush won election by conflating integrity with monogamy. He ran against Bill Clinton and his terrible blowjob by saying ‘I have integrity.’ That’s different than monogamy. Okay, the same way, when we talk about values, I think of rationality in solving problems. That’s something I value. Fairness, kindness, generosity, tolerance. That’s different. When they talk about values, they’re talking about things like going to church, voting for Bush, being loyal to Jesus, praying. These are not values.”
— Bill Maher; “Real Time with Bill Maher”
…so, so true…glad he got another show after ABC canned his ass for speaking the truth…
So, Tony sent me this link from FOX News…ironically… Apparently, an astronomer from the Vatican has said that Intelligent Design has no place alongside evolution in the science classroom. He’s the highest-ranking Catholic to make such a statement.
a). FOX News finally put out some useful information that isn’t conservative in nature.
b). The Catholics apparently aren’t completely incompetent in leadership as previously believed…
c). Now, we just need to get the Catholics to admit that open communion and women in the clergy are alright and we’ll be making some progress…
Hey, it’s a step in the right direction, right?
The Kansas Board of Education has, again, voted in favor of Intelligent Design instead of Evolution in high school classrooms. Two-page article…don’t forget to click “next” at the bottom… A few good quotes from that article:
?This is a sad day. We?re becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that.??? said board member Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat.
…and…
In 1999, the board eliminated most references to evolution. Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould said that was akin to teaching ?American history without Lincoln.??? Bill Nye, the ?Science Guy??? of children?s television, called it ?harebrained??? and ?nutty.??? And a Washington Post columnist imagined God saying to the Kansas board members: ?Man, I gave you a brain. Use it, OK????
Also, Jerry shot me this e-mail with a note passed on by Dr. Lockhart at Truman, a Biology professor, essentially outlining “not-so-intelligent design” in humans…kinda amusing, really… Things like high blood pressure, colon cancer, etc…if we were so well designed, wouldn’t we have better defenses against such things? Who knows…not I…
Apparently, the Dover, Pa. school board members that were up for re-election have all been booted…and there were 8 of them… This is where the infamous Scope’s Monkey Trial took place many a year ago, and the site of a new trial where the board was trying to force ID on high school students…w00t!
And finally, there’s an essay in TIME Magazine this week written by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist that discusses his opinion on the issue…and I whole-heartedly agree… It tells us how ID does nothing really to forward scientific thinking and really hampers it by placing all of current knowledge in a box (with everything outside this box being in “God’s realm”).
You all know my opinion(s) on the matter, so I won’t rehash them… Actually, that last link is probably the best descriptor of my views on the subject that I’ve read yet, so if anything, check that one out… And if you go to school in Kansas, my apologies…start voting so that you don’t remain the laughing stock of the world, yo…
More on this later, I’m sure…this issue isn’t going away anytime soon…
Excerpt from the November 2005 issue of Popular Science, where they reported their annual “Worst Jobs in Science” article:
#3. Kansas Biology Teacher
On the front lines of science’s devolution.
“The evolution debate is consuming almost everything we do,” says Brad Williamson, a 30-year science veteran at suburban Olathe East High School and a past president of the National Association of Biology Teachers. “It’s politicized the classroom. Parents will say their child can’t be in class during any discussion of evolution, and students will say things like ‘My grandfather wasn’t a monkey!'”
First, a history lesson. In 1999 a group of religious fundamentalists won election to the Kansas State Board of Education and tried to introduce creationism into the state’s classrooms. They wanted to delete references to radiocarbon dating, continental drift and the fossil record from the education standards. In 2001 more-temperate forces prevailed in elections, but the anti-evolutionists garnered a 6-4 majority again last November. This year Intelligent Design (ID) theory is their anti-evolution tool of choice.
At the heart of ID is the idea that certain elements of the natural world?the human eye, say?are “irreducibly complex” and have not and cannot be explained by evolutionary theory. Therefore, IDers say, they must be the work of an intelligent designer (that is, God).
The problem for teachers is that ID can’t be tested using the scientific method, the system of making, testing and retesting hypotheses that is the bedrock of science. That’s because underpinning ID is religious belief. In science class, Williamson says, “students have to trust that I’m just dealing with science.”
Alas, for Kansas’s educational reputation, the damage may be done. “We’ve heard anecdotally that our students are getting much more scrutiny at places like medical schools. I get calls from teachers in other states who say things like ‘You rubes!'” Williamson says. “But this is happening across the country. It’s not just Kansas anymore.”
…so now that I’m living in St. Louis, I’m listening to radio quite a bit more than I was able to over the past few years. Therefore, I’m now getting exposed to Howard Stern on weekday mornings as I drive to class. As many of you may know, Stern’s show draws a great deal of FCC criticism (among others…) and, thus, he’s leaving “terrestrial radio” and heading to Sirius satellite radio beginning in early January. Therefore, he’s being replaced by a few different personalities depending on the listening region (Adam Carolla and David Lee Roth, among others).
Stern, in the past few weeks, has been really laying it on thick for how glad he is to be moving to satellite, and how much easier it will be to do his own thing, keeping the FCC and conservative groups off his back, etc. All this discussion has gotten me thinking about my thoughts on the subject, generally relating to free speech…which also spills over to video games and TV, I think.
In my opinion, which is generally correct, Stern shouldn’t be censored as much as he is. He’s being censored because the FCC and various groups don’t want children listening to his program. Stern’s show is (primarily…I think…) a morning show, beginning at 7:00 or 8:00 and going to 10:00. When will children listen to it? They’re supposed to be in school! And if they aren’t in school, they’re supposed to be supervised by an adult! During summer is the only time I could think when children would listen to the stuff…and even then, I’m pretty sure that kids would either a). not be awake yet or b). would (read: should) be under supervision of an adult.
Of course, the same thing goes for video games and TV. If you aren’t willing to raise your own kids and keep an eye on them, then you shouldn’t be complaining. If kids are “exposed” to such things, it’s (more often than not) the fault of the parents, not the fault of the person broadcasting/producing the game).
I listen to Stern ’cause there isn’t much else on. There are many times when I’ll switch to something else since I’m not being entertained anymore… There are times when it’s funny and there are times when it isn’t so funny… Stern is a very arrogant person and it shows almost every minute of the show. There are people who love the show and listen to it religiously, and I have no problem with that. But I believe that he has a right to say what he wants if he wants to under the First Ammendment to our Constitution, just like the rest of us. I can write anything I want here and not be regulated. I can actually type out everything that he says and not be regulated. It’s very easy to access…arguably more accessible since a website can be viewed from anywhere in the world, while Stern can only be heard on the radio in certain venues. The fact that he’s moving to satellite is bad not because I like his radio, but because the man is giving up and laying down before The Man. Granted, he put up a good fight over the years, but it’s finally coming to this. The FCC will only begin to regulate satellite radio as it becomes more prevalent. They’ll continue to regulate the internet and censor it. They’ll continue to regulate TV. They’re currently trying to regulate video games as well. This isn’t stopping anytime soon. Mark my words, by the time I’m 40, the face of broadcast television, radio, etc. will change dramatically to the proverbial “right” and our children will be so “protected” that they won’t be able to think for themselves. These kids will be mindless and void of creativity. Just like everything else, there need to be liberals and conservatives, good vs evil, Spider-Man vs Green Goblin… You can’t have one without the other. Howard Stern is a “necessary evil,” of sorts, to allow for the rest of us to think for ourselves and to put ideas out there that cause contention and debate.
Reading over this, I realize I’m not making a whole lot of sense, but I think the basic idea has been presented. I summarize with a good quote from a great movie: “Damn the Man.”
So yeah, any thoughts?
So, Dr. Zassenhaus is teaching right now in my lecture class about basic Mendelian genetics. He told us earlier this week that he was making a presentation today in reference to Intelligent Design and Evolution, so I’ve been looking forward to this all week because I haven’t heard much discussion amongst Ph.D. scientists that I know and the sources I’ve read through discussing the subject rarely consult pure molecular biologists and biochemists…and I came away from the presentation with a few interesting points…
First of all, Zassenhaus began the discussion talking about the Kreb’s Cycle. For those who don’t remember, this is a pathway in mitochondria (an organelle in our cells) that converts relatively simple carbon chains into other forms, generating ATP, which is the “currency” that creates energy in our bodies. Since it is a cycle, the products begin in one state, are converted to another state, and are then returned to their original state to start the cycle once again. One of the classic Intelligent Design arguments is that this process is not reducible; one cannot remove a part of this cycle and still have it function, leading them to suppose that an intelligent creator must have created this pathway. The process couldn’t have simply “appeared” on its own, already functioning.
The problem with this assumption, as Zassenhaus further enumerated, is in the fundamental argument for Intelligent Design: that life is too complex to have just happened. The argument, as he states, is the classic “Watchmaker Analogy,” such that if you are walking in a field and see a watch, you know that it didn’t simply appear, but that someone had to make it. The problem is that all of Intelligent Design arguments stem from that one analogy. There is no evidence besides it. The one scientific study he could find that tried finding true evidence was carried out by a mathmetician (Dembski) who said that the chances of such a thing appearing is something like 10^-170 (that’s one time in 1,000,000[continue to 169 “0”s…]), which is unbelievably small…bordering on impossible…
As Zassenhaus concluded, these probabilities outline a huge flaw in the thinking: where Intelligent Design advocates believe such a pathway just sprung into existence, and was created by someone else, biologists for years have viewed the formation of proteins/enzymes/etc. differently, as individual subunits that are added on and removed to provide a different function that wasn’t there originally. Therefore, those statistics don’t apply to the way we know biology to work. Sure, it says that such a thing as the Kreb’s Cycle appearing out of a soup of random amino acids is really small…but the chances of a different protein forming out of that soup is very possible, and then that protein adding on other parts of different proteins is also possible…slowly adding together to form the pathway we know as the Kreb’s Cycle.
In short (’cause I wasn’t, overall…), the moral is: Intelligent Design advocates have yet to produce true, testable, scientific evidence beyond the flawed probability studies. Is Intelligent Design still possible? Of course it is! But, as Zassenhaus said, teaching it alongside Evolution on equal footing as a viable scientific theory is, quite simply, nuts. In that room of 20+ Ph.Ds., there were none that defended Intelligent Design in the way it has been portrayed as a science. They all believe it should be relegated to a philosophy class, not the science classroom. Unfortunately, the “powers that be” refuse to listen to the scientific community on what should be taught and what shouldn’t be.
Figures…
So, in that vein, can anyone give me evidence to the contrary that isn’t based on “evidence by analogy?” I know that Andy S. already gave me information on another theory…hehehehe…
step up on soap box
From an article at ABC News regarding the most recent “Intelligent Design” trials in Dover, TN (which you all should be paying attention to…since the U.S. Constitution itself is being undermined and trivialized…), the following was quoted. “Miller” refers to Kenneth Miller, a biologist at Brown University; “the statement” refers to a reading that the faculty at Dover’s public schools have to read prior to discussions on evolution in science classes, also offering an “alternative” textbook that was referred to by me in a previous posting…:
The statement read to Dover students states in part, “Because Darwin’s theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered.” Miller said the words are “tremendously damaging,” falsely undermining the scientific status of evolution.
“What that tells students is that science can’t be relied upon and certainly is not the kind of profession you want to go into,” he said. “There is no controversy within science over the core proposition of evolutionary theory,” he added. On the other hand, Miller said, “intelligent design is not a testable theory in any sense and as such it is not accepted by the scientific community.”
During his cross-examination of Miller, Robert Muise, another attorney for the law center, repeatedly asked whether he questioned the completeness of Darwin’s theory.
“Would you agree that Darwin’s theory is not the absolute truth?” Muise said.
“We don’t regard any scientific theory as the absolute truth,” Miller responded.
Well played, Miller…well played… Indeed, the beauty of science is that things can be proven and disproven, including Newton’s Laws (and in some instances, they’ve been proven wrong…quantum physics, for example…). Intelligent design advocates, however, are unwilling to allow for proof/disproof (because what they advocate cannot be proven or disproven). Therefore, by definition, what they advocate is not science at all and has no place within the science classroom (except for mention that theories alternative to evolution exist…I have no problem with that…it’s just treating theories other than evolution as “just as plausible”…’cause there aren’t any…).
…I just love how the Constitution is being tossed around like it’s nothing by folks…it was written for a reason, protecting civil liberties and separating church and state. It was done for a reason. That’s the way it should stay, or we may as well rename our country as “Saddam’s Iraq: where you have to believe what I tell you or I kill you.”
step down from soap box
So, a “palter” is a lie, for the record… Secondly, I refer to a book that is being pushed in Kansas and other states/communities that masquerades as a science “textbook” known as Of Pandas and People.
I only bring this up because I’ve been watching “The Daily Show” this week while they’ve been doing their “Evolution shmevolution” series, looking at the “evidence” for or against evolution, intelligent design, etc. Overall, there’s been something of a liberal bias (…not unexpected…), visiting sites like Dover, TN (the side of the Scope’s Monkey Trial) and talking to the conservatives there (they’re like those crazy townies that live in the trailer park on the other side of town…freaky, yo…).
Anyway, last night, Lewis Black brought up this book…and actually showed it to the audience. He showed the cover…and then slid it around to its side… The stupid thing is only 170 pages long!!! How much “science” can you learn anything from a book like that? There are some classes in college where you read that much in a night! I also found this website (web hosted by the Kansas Citizens for Science) by a professor at Brown University and he points out some serious flaws, places in this book that the author (Percival Davis) refuses to acknowledge (like extinction…something we know to be fact, but it isn’t mentioned in the book). An excerpt:
“When I first opened the pages of Pandas and read the fine words presented by its authors in the name of free and open inquiry, I expected a text that might genuinely challenge students to examine the assumptions of what they had learned and evaluate scientific theory in an objective manner. To say that I was disappointed is to put it mildly. What I found instead was a document that contrived not to teach, but to mislead. The many errors and misrepresentations that inhabit the pages in Of Pandas and People will, quite honestly, serve to hinder teachers as they attempt to cover the stunning range and diversity of contemporary biology.”
So yeah, let me line this out… Scientists and most teachers don’t agree with the book. The politicians are pushing it on teachers. Can’t we trust the teachers and scientists to know what to teach in their classes? Do we want politicians coming into our classrooms and teaching? Do they even have a right to dictate what teachers are supposed to teach their students? It’s bad enough that teachers are having to teach their classes based on standardized tests and can’t teach what’s really important…
…important like…oh…I don’t know…real scientific studies and evidence rather than dogma? 😛
…dontcha think?
“Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.” — Cardinal Christoph Schanborn
That quote comes from an article posted at New Scientist, submitted by Steve Hosack.
I’m not even going to comment on this except to say that the irony of the statement is staggering and ignorant. I’m very glad I’m not Catholic… 😛
