The Justicar

New Threads!

2011-11-09T05:54:00.000-08:00

Here's one, and another, and another, and another, and this one!

Just trying to help everyone find me. =P

New Digs

2011-11-04T02:41:00.000-07:00

Ok, kiddies, I'm packing up shop and leaving this two bit blog for my new digs I've set up. I won't be deleting this place or anything (unless I can find some way to migrate all of the comments with it.) Anyway, you can now find me on my boards at my website: It's better than a crappy comment section on a blog anyway. More functionality, no more issues of my not being in control over how I want things to look. And, of course, I'm not the merchandise being sold by google to boot.=P

You all know how I feel about moderation; the boards will be lightly moderated to keep out the spammers and trolls, and topics might get moved from thread to thread if one gets posted in obviously the wrong thread. In other words - keeping out the pr0n sellers, and maintaining a logical structure for how the topics are organized, but not interfering with the content of what people are saying.

It's like freethoughtblogs but without the popunder, up, over, side-to-side ads to become ordained priests or whatever. Also, it's without all the censorship (I might introduce blogs on there at some point, but I'm struggling between not wanting any bloggers to censor their readers and my telling people how to run their blogs). It's a friendly(ish) place coupled with my gaming company (though under the same name, the two bits aren't closely related).

Anyway, do come over and say hi, start a thread, suggest a topic, or forum or whatever.

I plan on setting up some community 'guide'lines for the sake of organization and efficiency (like, if you want to talk about x topic, don't put it in ~x forum).

Magic Time!

2011-10-27T13:58:00.000-07:00

I am fairly ethically naive I must confess. I do not think this is an indictment against me so much as a strength of mine. Consider by way of an anecdote having an argument with someone. To my mind, an argument is an argument is an argument and it should be evaluated in light of its premises, necessary implications, internal coherence, logical consistency and, of course, any datum that bears on it. In this way, in broad terms, an argument can be either good (sound and valid), or bad (unsound or invalid, or both) or indeterminate (I'll leave this one alone for now). I see no benefit that enhances an argument by appending to it the label 'philosophical'. Are these arguments somehow unlike other arguments? Do they not fail or succeed on all of the criteria I've laid out?

If so, then certainly no argument is improved by calling it philosophical. Indeed, an argument is frustrated because it should immediately be called into question for not having to observe the ordinary conditions of what makes an argument. If an argument is improved by adding philosophical to it, then in addition to all of these criteria is added that isn't available to 'regular' arguments? I fail to see any benefit at all in adding that label - except, perhaps, in the ego of some minds as setting out some esoteric bar that lesser intellects should take notice not to dare apply tension. Of course, I don't find this a strength, but I am aware there are quarters in the world where obscurantism is a sign of enlightened thinking; I'm looking at you postmodernity.

Ethics seems to operate this way to my mind as well. Suppose for a moment that we have some ethical framework that seems to work in all but the strangest constellation of novel circumstances. For the moment, I am thinking of information and the exchange of ideas, knowledge, or even just raw information. I think an interesting discussion on states secrets would perhaps not be available to the general proposition that the free exchange of information should be encouraged (or at least not discouraged) in certain situations. Do we really want the Energy Department to disseminate the security protocols of the local nuclear facility to everyone on the web? I'd say not, but I am available to persuasion otherwise.

In the instant case, it is generally considered in a society that publicly educates its citizenry that the citizenry in response is available to hearing ideas, thoughts, opinions, recommendations and such like and then weighing all of the competing information to arrive at a decision. This is, after all, what is democracy, no? We take it to be a fundamental treachery of human dignity, reason, intellect, the Enlightenment, civic duty and so on to prohibit the ability of people to exchange information. We have a lot of words and noun phrases for this concept because it is important (so important in fact, that we're willing to wage war in its defense - that is to say that the concept of freedom of thought and speech is more important to us than whether or not some few--or even many--people might have to be slaughtered in armed conflict to make certain it persists).

Call this whatever you'd like, but this seems to my mind to fit squarely into the topic of 'ethics'. We also don't allow this to be modulated by group association: the blacks, say, can't be told they can't know something this week because the whites said so. Equality therefore seems to be now inexorably linked to this freedom of thought, speech and inquiry. This is, to my mind again, an ethical proposition and a proper ethical framework.

Like with throwing philosophy in front of the word argument does no work in improving an argument, so too is there no improvement by throwing medical in front of ethics. In fact, it would seem that medical ethics are inferior to just regular, garden variety ethics.

I am speaking, of course, about the HPV can now be given to little boys issue, on which Abbie yesterday wrote. I am, like most people, overjoyed that this is available to boys and men (even if not directly beneficial to either, though it is). The health of society is contingent on the health of its population. In fact, one is a subset of the other. We are all bound up in this lot of our lives together, and it is therefore in my interest to see to it that as many members of my population are taken care of because their survival is my survival. Their health is my health. Their security is my security.

These are not novel ideas, and I am certainly not breaking any new frontiers in moral thinking. But to question a statement asserting that it's unethical to give to boys the HPV vaccine in the context of how we distribute healthcare is to court controversy apparently. The long and the short of it is this: if it is true that a physician may not offer to a patient some potential treatment which has some indirect benefit to the patient through his (or her) membership in society even after (as required by law) making known to the patient the consequences of the treatment (up to and including death), then medical ethics are inferior to 'regular' ethics. Medical when preceding ethics seems to directly translate to 'inferior'. This is denied to a potential patient as even an available option - deciding for him or her on his or her behalf. What a gracious offer that is to excuse me from my responsibility to do that pesky thinking thing for myself.

Are patients expected to be unable to hear information, ask questions and then make a decision? Does this happen a lot? I am told that it happens often (a scandalous implication of our education system I note). Fair enough. So, the solution to that is therefore to have a class of elite ethical thinkers who can in advance determine what patients are allowed to be told, hear, evaluate and decide upon. To do their thinking for them - to act as a sieve through which it's determined when a patient (always selected by race, gender or gender identity I note, and even age) is a person deserving of being able to make his or her decisions for himself - or not.

I'll put this as Christopher Hitchens has earlier put it on an only-collaterally relevant point: how many of you here aren't grown up enough to hear information? Whom do you appoint to do your thinking for you, on your behalf? To whom do you delegate the task of reading the relevant information and deciding for you, relieving you of your responsibility of thinking for youself? Hands up, please. Who has a nominee?

Medical ethics boards and standards insist that such a person must exist. "We" have decided that not only is there one person good and smart enough to relieve all of us of our duty to be responsible for our own lives, to think, read, analyze and decide matters of our own health and risk as it relates to the health of our society and fellow creatures, but rather there are tens of thousands of people who are just that good, just that smart, just that wise, just that prescient to determine in advance what any of us will think about an optional vaccine. Well, so long as you have the right genitalia that is. Women - smart enough to think on their own. Men - on this issue, not allowed to even be informed, let alone determine whether it's an acceptable risk/benefit to them to take the vaccine. Well, that is, until all these people decided that you're now allowed to know about it from those medical professionals whom you pay to advise and treat you.

I've been here before and I do not like this circle.

Atheists Are Like Donkeys (not a pun)

2011-10-27T11:58:00.000-07:00

And that's why we're so lovably unfuckable according to a certain pastor. You see, good Christians are like oxen, docile and compliant whereas atheists are like doneys, rebellious and hard-headed. So, the babble explains why we shouldn't date one another: if you yoke together a donkey and an ox, you don't get any work done. Where the ~~atheist~~ donkey leads, the servile christian will follow. Therefore, to plow the field (use your imagination), you don't yoke unequal animals together because what matters isn't whether the animals get along. No. What really matters is plowing the field and harvesting a new crop. I'm sure this has to do sex.

Of course, one immediately notes this pastor's homily would cause a massive degree of panic for those miscegenists out there, or even those who espouse the virtue of heterosexual marriages. After all, you don't yoke together people who are different, and I'm told that women are from Mars and men like penis. Or some kind of limerickroll. See, gay marriage is awesome because, you know, 1.) bondage, 2.) of similar animals!

Anyway, youtuber soreta yuki does a fabulous job on this piece. Also, he's got coffee, bourbon and cigarettes*. So, you know he's like way cool and fuckable.

Nod to @gingeratheist
*also, we have cookies, drugs and hookers I'm told. How can you possibly turn that down?

This Is A Souper Sekrit

2011-10-25T15:26:00.000-07:00

But I have been stalking/investigating a certain someone - undercover, hiding under cars (the ones I'm not bombing), diving into trashcans and other moves I imagine spies in real life don't do. But after all of that, then I walked inside and went to youtube to start the real investigation.

It is with pride that I announce I have finally managed to track down Miranda's (@mirandachale) alpha.

DPRJones Strikes Again - Venomfangx Is NOT Gay!

2011-10-24T16:30:00.000-07:00

The video says it all. No commentary necessary here, except you have to watch it in full, and read the comments. DPRJones is now being fempecked - he's a homophobe, a misogynist, blah blah blah. No one tell Twatson!

Homeopathy, Fempecked

2011-10-23T20:26:00.000-07:00

It has been made known to me that Rebecca Watson, strong and competent advocate of science, has produced a video in which she brings to bear her much commended knowledge of the basic science on the matter of homeopathy, one of her specialties noted by PZ Myers. According to Myers, one needn't publish science papers to speak competently on science. True enough. But according to him, Watson (by name) has done a "fine job on explaining alternative medicine and how homeopathy doesn't work."

So, in his leisure time, when he's not white knighting, perhaps he should look at her doing this 'fine job'.In her most recent contribution to the public understanding of homeopathy, she sets on display the full weight of her penetrating knowledge. Please watch before reading on. I know, I know. You only need to get through the first minute forty-five or so.

She claims (claim 1) that if you asked a homeopath, the homeopath would tell you the following: if you bought some produce and failed to wash it such that when you ate it still had shit on it and you contracted e. coli, the homeopath would prescribe that you eat more shit because like cures like.

Well, I'm not normally in the habit of defending woo, but at least get the claim right, ma'am. Like cures like. Shit != e. coli. If one contracted a disease, the symptoms would be what are viewed as similar. The symptoms are the familiar results of gastroenteritis: diarrhea, pain, abdominal distention. These are hardly restricted to e. coli infection, and are certainly not a necessary consequence of shit. This all presumes, of course, that what is caused by the e. coli in question isn't just a UTI, or deadly meningitis. So, no, a homeopath wouldn't advise one to eat more shit - not even a little (see claim 2). What one might advise use of would perhaps be something silly like arsenicum album, or colocynthis, or gelsemium, or any host of other things that are conspicuously not listed as 'fecal matter'.

How do I know? Well, it's a little thing that's generally known as being educated about a topic before discussing it. It's not like this is secret information one has to go to quack school to learn about. One can spend a few minutes at Google University and see this. Of course, this depends on one being able to differentiate cause from sign from symptom from mechanism of infection. Watson seems to think that e. coli having a mechanism of infection riding on some shit means that the mechanism of infection is the thing to be treated. The homeopaths are quacks, but not retards. They at least know the thing to be treated are the symptoms, and the cause of the infection - not the medium through which the pathogen is transmitted.

Picture it: any trauma room, USA. The trauma team is scrubbed, gloved and awaiting arrival of a patient reported to be bleeding from the chest (sign), in pain (symptom), penetrating chest wound (cause) from a gunshot (mechanism). Our highly trained team then approaches the gurney, pull back the cover to begin treating a .357 revolver. This is the rough analogy Watson has drawn.

She goes on to say that dilution is like taking a 'tiny' amount of 'fecal matter', putting it in a glass and shaking that up, taking out 'a drop', putting it in a swimming pool, mixing that up, taking out a drop and puting it in the ocean, and then we're on our way to having a remedy.

Well, no. That's not how they prepare homeopathic remedies. It's not even the same scale. I linked to a video by a silly graduate student who did a replication of the actual advised process using household bleach, mathematics, scale, at (no real) risk to his own health to demonstrate the process. To include the process known as 'potentization', which is noticeably unlike a swimming pool or ocean. (video embedded at the end).

Also, there's an important number threshold that is passed in this process, but Watson clearly is unaware of this - hence the drop to swimming pool reference. And drop to ocean reference. She doesn't know the mathematics on it. Scale is meaningless, to say nothing of introducing to the 'sugar and water' confuction some seawater, chlorine, unmediated controls, a dubiously inaccurate method, and, of course, the mechanism of transmission instead of the pathogen or symptom thereof ultimately that is 'like' the thing to be prescribed (depending on the results of an exam and the totality of the circumstances).

Also of note is that she introduces a new element to the Periodic Table: shit. Apparently, one can have 1 atom of shit, which I've labeled a shatum (atomic number 2), not to be confused with a shmatum (its diatomic, natural state, usually found embedded in the most common element, atomic number 1).

Why does this matter? Normally, it wouldn't - one quack talking about other quacks is normally not a cause for my attention. Except a noted scientist is pointing to this quack and saying she does a 'fine job' of explaining this - presumably, fine means 'without any semblance of science education, or understanding' despite his having said she understands the basic science. No, PZ, what Watson does is what the creationists do - she fucking butchers science and then states a conclusion not borne out by her chain of reasoning (based on a complete absence of evidence one notes). It's just okay when she does it because she's saying the right conclusion, I guess.

To paraphrase a friend of mine, Watson only knows how to operate by taking another's position, mangling it and then attacking that MANglation.

Here are some screen shots of PZ lambasting one quack (Althouse) in favor of lauding another quack (Watson), noting that the first quack was no match for the second, and the ensuing exchange:


PZ Speaks

Someone who's literate responds

PZ speaks again - out of his ass, again

Remember, Rebecca Watson could be educating people near you. So long as people are happy with this dumbass who has delusions of mediocrity, then we'll continue having such a profoundly unlettered halfwit be a public (horse) face of our movement.

Here's Myles.

Jane Caro Contacted Me

2011-10-22T08:33:00.000-07:00

And since we all know that I have nothing to do in life, and that I'm not working on any projects right now, I thought that I'd finally put something on my plate! I'm going to labor under the premise that this is actually Jane Caro (I'm in the process of trying to verify that right now).

Assuming it is she, she has mentioned that she is, in fact, interested in and available for (no information on specifics - also something I'm working on learning) speaking/debating/whatevering she does best at events in the states.

Incidentally, the way Jane Caro came across me is my article reviewing her debate on IQ squared; a debate I might add in which she-quite appropriately rudely-spent a full nine minutes slapping around her opposition with that petty matter of facts. She was googling (shamelessly as she said) herself.

It is a real shame that she the top return in google for 'jane caro debate' is my youtube video of that debate. The same for other variations on that theme. The lowest my youtube video of that which I found either 4th or 5th. Constantly I am met with the bewilderment of the PZ stripe of atheists who are constantly bemoaning the lack of diversity in the movement. Why aren't there more women in atheism?

A fairly straightforward solution to my mind is that instead of finding the ones who have capacity to be good examples of smart, driven, educated, articulate and serious humans who are ignored, we're too busy recruiting the perky dilettantes we tirelessly see being paraded around as strong advocates of atheism - let alone, women in atheism. Consider for a moment a mere matter of style, to say nothing of substance.

We have choices, and since the time available for speakers at events is limited, some of the choices are mutually exclusive. To invite group a of speakers, means that you simply cannot have group b speaking. Thus, we should hope organizers are making group a as robust as possible.

You're a member attending some conference, anywhere, USA, on the issue of skepticism, atheism, and communicating the same. Two speakers are slotted for the same billet and you have to choose between them.

Speaker a begins opens with some variation on the following concept: "I'm still drunk", "So, I was in a bar last night with the event organizers"

Speaker b opens with: "the prima facie evidence that all gods are man made is, of course, their treatment of women."

As a mere issue of style, it would seem that we have two very different approaches.

Speaker b in this case is Jane Caro, and speaker A is Rebecca Watson. Their educational backgrounds are similar. The difference between them then is not a result of that. The difference is in capacity, drive, and desire. Whatever the differences between, one simply has more capacity, and yet is almost unheard of here in the states - though she's amenable to working the circuit here. She runs a successful business in marketing, is an author and invited panelist on Q&A, in addition to being an invited debater at an IQ2 debate. In short, she's not a slacktevist. She does the online thing, twitter, but she also debates, attends public discussions, travels in the business world and so on. She's also witty and well read - a clever wordsmith who's expert in bringing to bear her background in communications and marketing, she's a force to be taken seriously. Where is she in the states? Where is she at our events? Why is a woman of her capacity mostly highly ranked in google for my crap blog and youtube channel?

Why oh fucking why don't we have more women in atheism?! Why is so hard to get women speakers?! Well, it can't be that we don't want them - listen to all the Watsonistas - they love women. Sure, there's the caveat that they have to agree with Watson, but it's slim pickings out there. There just aren't any women who exist who can compete with Greta, Watson, Benson, and PZ - the four horsewomen. Except that there are: just no one who's organizing meetings/events is asking them.

What about substance? Well, Watson has released a video excoriating the "Church" for executing Galileo, decides to spend part of a keynote speech lambasting a conference attendee, wasted her time on a panel with Dawkins (on communicating atheism) to read us her e-mail and youtube comments, and to call down Paula Kirby for being too old, blind and successful to see that sexism exists.

Let's see if this slacktevism bit can be used for good. Let's get Jane Caro invited as a paid, key-note speaker at a convention here in the states. With all of the 'No." meme silliness running around, I'll be modifying that and instead of signing 'No." from here on out, I'll end it with "JaneCaro." I certainly hope others help get this message out.

She's on twitter @janecaro, where she frequently comments on @qanda (Q&A). Sometimes, she shows a wry wit:

JaneCaro Jane Caro #qanda gilding the lily, unfortunate phrase to use in a discussion of black and white relations.

And then there's Jane Caro. For contrast, here's a video of each:

Edit to add a list of debates with Jane:

- discussing 'spin', or how plain, effective communication is going the way of the dodo .

- should public funds be used to fund private education?

Richard Dawkins Is Coming to Visit Me!

2011-10-20T07:30:00.000-07:00

Did you know that he's scared to death of debating William Lane Craig (from Jerry Coyne)? So, Craig is putting out a chair at some Oxford shindig for Richard to sit in should he (Richard) so choose.

Well, Richard has accepted the invitation, with dignity. Not only will he not sit in that chair, but he's also got an entire lexicon of places with chairs he won't be sitting in (time permitting).

Therefore, I'm pleased to announce that a lifelong dream of mine is coming true: Professor Richard "The Dick" Dawkins will NOT be sitting in the chair I've set out for him in my shower. Man, I'm so excited. I hope his plans don't get canceled since this was a last minute non-addition to his schedule.

If you set it out, he will not come.

I'm Still Pro-Abortion!

2011-10-14T08:19:00.000-07:00

Apparently, there's very little in my country that needs attention. So, with a recession on, a couple of wars going on, inadequate healthcare for millions of people, the Congress buckled down and tackled an important issue: preventing abortions to women who will die without having one.

As I wrote over here:
"We're pro-life."

"Um, the mother is going to die."

"Not our problem - small government and all you see. We like it just small enough we can fit into your vagina."

Fucking assholes.

One of the commenters over there who supports abortion rights, still makes mention of having some moral reservation about. This make no sense to me as I've explained here.

State of the Blag - projects and design

2011-10-14T05:11:00.000-07:00

I have roughly a dozen distinct projects that I've been slowly working on for this blog, well that I've made publicly known anyway. There is another which only about 4 people are aware of, and here's the public announcement on it!

The immediate project is, in rough terms, a lecture series on mathematics which has several components to it. Many of which have to be done simultaneously one notes.

The gist of it is that I'm writing an electronic mathematics text. This will have quite a few features to it to include an accompanying lecture series. Each course will have two versions of it so that it can serve two different level of communities: students who need a reference, and those who want to learn on their own without paying out the ass to take a college class (and then pay out the ass again for *1* text book).

At the bottom, you'll find a link to a working draft copy of one subject (it's still in its early phase, be gentle), which will make the large scale idea crystal clear - though other things will attend the e-book.

Let's say you're a high school student, or an adult wanting to return to college and taking a remedial math class. Further, as is often the case, you find that you're struggling to learn how to properly factor trinomials, or recognize one of its special cases - the difference of perfect squares for example - you'd be able to go to the algebra tab in the headers here and click on the link 'factoring trinomials' or whatever, and download that discrete lesson.

In that section, you'll find 1 example of every potential variant of a quadratic that you'd ever work with in an algebra class, and the patterns fully explained. All of this is in text. But what if reading this doesn't necessarily make the information clear as is common when one reads a mathematics text? Well, every section, every problem, every concept (large or small) will have a cross-referenced hyperlink you can click. Do that and in a different window will open video lecture of that problem.

So, that would cover one population. What if you're just interested in learning mathematics on your own?

Well, there will be a different link one can click to download a full series on intermediate algebra. This would be a standard lecture course that one would get in a classroom, with complete lectures (probably about 60-70 hours worth of lecture material, depending on the topic).

And, of course, there will be a video available for every problem one finds at the back of any old chapter.

Naturally, this is going to be a long, long term project so the piecewise sections will be out first, one at a time. And then at some later time, the full courses will be available (this requires two sets of videos on notes).

And this is just one part of the project; there are other pieces to it which involve other people. I cannot say much about that, but 'we' are looking to hear from a chemist and a physicist. So, if you're one of those and you want to see what it's all about and perhaps participate in the larger project, please contact me.

As the astute reader will note, the working draft copy I'm making available needs to be formatted for a smoother e-reader experience, but the purpose of it is to give one a conceptual idea of how the whole shebang works.

All feedback is quite welcome!

Other projects are still ongoing as I find time (I'm really wanting to finish the Sam Harris series), but this mathematics (and the other unstated project) are really eating up a lot of time. Each discrete section takes about 50 or so hours worth of writing, editing, shooting video, editing video, rendering and uploading (the copies in the link are crap ones for proof of concept. The 'live' versions will be slightly different). The first finished section should be out in a week or so - depending on how quickly I can learn to format for epub.

Working Draft Copy Download

I'm Dying . . .of laughter

2011-10-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

Ever make an ass out of yourself? It's happened to me once or twice. So, I thought I'd share. In a recent post, I included a screen capture of an e-mail I sent off about the ACS giving the finger to atheists.

Well, I've received a reply!

It's awesome when you tell someone off. Even better when it's the wrong someone.

I deserve whatever snide comments are headed my way. Bring it on, motherfuckers. I can dish it, but unlike certain people, I can also take it.

American Cancer Society Can Suck It

2011-10-13T06:37:00.000-07:00

[Edit at bottom of page; please see]
So, always on top of things, I'm bringing you breaking news from two weeks ago. You're welcome. This year alone I've had to give up a couple of charities I have formerly donated to, to include a couple of ones in the atheist community. RDFRS is still on the list (of course), and MSF is on the list (of course), but the ACS is off the list (of course). Apparently, the ACS just makes way too much money to decline an offer of roughly half a million dollars from some lowly atheist scum family. Todd Stiefel must be extra special dirty, what trying to donate matching dollars to a cancer charity like that.

I was repulsed!

So, my contribution to ACS likely won't be missed (they're just swimming in money I suppose) because, well, I'm not Todd Stiefel's family. But I do what I can when I can, and this year when I donate again to MSF, it'll be in the name of the ACS.

So, if anyone wants to hop on board and donate to a charity that does actually need money (and uses it wisely I'm told), donate to MSF in the name of the ACS. Or wherever you donate already, I'm sure they'd love to know the American Cancer Society is supporting them this year.

Assholes.

So, um, for the response to this, please this post.

Pseudonymity - Is It Justified?

2011-10-10T23:10:00.000-07:00

Some of the more salient features of being a participant in an online community of ideas are that 1.) one is able to interact at one's own comfort level (weighing benefits against costs), and 2.) it gives one the benefit to reflect slightly longer than one has in a real-time conversation. For these two reasons, among many others, I enjoy the internet.

However, I blog, vlog and run a business online all pseudonymous like. Why? For one, it strikes the right cost benefit analysis. I'm unconcerned that someone might, say, contact my employer since I am my employer. But, I do have to factor in that some of my clients may or may not like some of what I say here on my blog - particularly given how unfriendly I am towards religious thinking. To be fair, I treat all irrationality with the same attitude. This could cost me money, though I'm not too concerned that it would a substantial amount. After all, a few of my clients are aware that I have this blog, and they're religious. They read it and sometimes we discuss it - other times not. Sometimes while playing a battleground. There's nothing quite as fascinating about modern technology than the ability to be in a virtual environment committing virtual acts of absolute barbarism while discussing the moral implications of, say, circumcision and abortion. Or the death penalty. Or whatever. It's an odd mixture and I love it.

There are other issues that come into play. For instance, I am not the only person whose welfare depends on my decisions, and what may or may not happen to me. In that way, I find it imprudent to make the task of anyone who seeks to do me ill (in whatever form) easier than it needs to be. It's why I don't keep my real name attached to any of my online presence - hack into my account and the name on it is my attorney's name. I thought about entering into this whole religious bit long and hard before I did so, and seeing what's happened to other people who've been involved and through their innocuous blogs, vlogs, novels, whatevers gave me counsel about being smart beforehand.

Of course, I'm not expecting that anything I'll say here will lead a mob of angry Muslims to my door even assuming I broadcast my home address. The funny thing about saying that, though, is the realization that it's a very, very small number of people who are found dead because of what they've said online ever thought otherwise. And, apparently, they were wrong. After all, if Asia McGowan had really thought that youtube user Anthony Powell (tony48219) was going to go gun her down for what she said on youtube, I question whether she would have proceeded with the video anyway. Consider this news report of his slaying of Asia McGowan. He doesn't seem all that far out there as far as a whackjob is concerned.

Yet, Asia McGowan is still dead, and he still killed her. Was it mental illness? Well, I'd argue that he wasn't exactly firing on all thrusters. But that's the problem - most of the people who wind up as the punchline of a recently killed joke are moments before they're killed vulnerable and generally completely unaware of what awaits. A couple of reasonably prudent steps could well have saved her life.

Is it paranoia? No. It's not like I check under my car for bombs, or send out the hounds before I leave the house or anything. But there's a difference between being prudent about one's concerns, and being fanatical about it. I take the onerous burden of sharing my copyright over my content with my lawyer (so that he can accept and respond to process on my behalf - if I'm going to be in court, I'll have a lawyer anyway so why not have that from the start?), and then I just don't tell people my name. For instance, I'm not scared of being killed in a car crash. Still, knowing the odds are what they are, I don't go out driving at two in the morning during Fourth of July celebrations. Most people who do won't be harmed, but some small few will be hurt and killed by drunk drivers. To eliminate that risk altogether, I simply don't step into that arena during a riskier than needs to be time. I also don't drive in the snow unless it's absolutely necessary.

None of these denote fear. However, there is a non-trivial risk of being in certain situations at certain times, or undertaking certain activities without certain precautions that renders them a lot more dangerous than a couple of simple reflective steps would handily dispense with. Another for instance is HIV/AIDS. I'm not afraid of the disease, and it's not what it was 20 years ago. Still, what you won't find me doing is sitting spread eagle at a glory hole taking on all comers, so to speak, without protection. For that matter, you won't find me there with it. But I still have sex, and I enjoy like most people do. Just a couple of minimalistic, reasonable and prudentially reflective precautionary steps all but eliminate the risk of contracting that disease. Or, you can say that I'm paranoid if you'd like; however, just know that this will garner you barely a courtesy scoff.

We routinely tell children to take certain preventive measures while online: don't give out your name, address and phone number to people you don't know. I fail to see why this becomes less sagacious advice simply because one crosses into adulthood. Particularly if one is going to say rather impolite things about topics held sacred by many people. Some of whom, if the news and history are any measure anyway, are more than perfectly happy to kill one in response. And themselves. After all, if there are actually people willing to die just so that the opposition will stop talking, I do not think it is unwise or rash of me to take people at their word when they tell me that the punishment for my 'sin' is death. It is enough to know that some segment of that population means it in the here and now.

It's a numbers game largely. But everyone who's on the receiving end of that fatal blow also knew it's a numbers game. If their number can be picked, I'd be foolish to think mine cannot be.

Why am I blogging about this? In part because of Thunderf00t and Dawahfilms on youtube. Dawahfilms is probably perfectly harmless - but he has nevertheless said that he and all true Muslims would send Thunderf00t to the god he wished he knew . . . not as a threat . . . not as a promise . . . but as a mandate of justice. Well, ok. He could be posturing. He could be a gasbag for all I know. Still, it is unwise not to give some attention to contemplating what he's said.

He's a guy who Tf00t didn't know, but who made a video to him telling him this. Just some random person out of the void who took offense at what Thunderf00t said, and this was his initial reaction. Fast forward a few months and we find Dawahfilms bebopping around on various fora saying things like it's all over for Thunderf00t if 'we' ever manage to get his doc[ument]s.

A year later, get them he did. And he calls up to what he thinks is Thunderf00t's employer, e-mailed everyone on the faculty and staff and sent Thunderf00t's personal information to some Islamic council something another. So, maybe Dawah is harmless. But as the circle of people he's e-mailing this widens, so too does the risk to Thunderf00t increase. Dawah responds that he himself didn't drop the documents; rather, a 'friend' of Thunderf00t's did it. Well, Thunderf00t learned a valuable lesson: online friends aren't friends. Unfortunately, it appears a close relative of Thunderf00t's is now just as at risk as is Thunderf00t himself since, like a good little shitbag, our wounded Muslim isn't content on only focusing on the target of his rage. No, he's saw fit to drag unrelated people into the fray against their will.

I like some people I've met online, and I have eventually come to befriend some of them in real life, over the course of many, many years of course.

So, what's the simplest way to keep one's personal information personal? It's a little something I recognized early on in life, say in primary school: those who will gossip with you will gossip about you. To that end, I devised a clever little aphorism which has served me well then since. Like the e-mails I get asking me about my research, or papers I've published, or even my name and the like, I respond back in roughly the same way: "can you keep a secret?"

Invariably, I'm told yes by these random people.

I reply: "so can I."

This also puts me in mind of an adage I heard years ago: three people can keep a secret . . . if two of them are dead. In other words, the only way I can make sure that my private details remain as private as I want them to be is to keep them to myself.

Others are free to take what risks they'd like with their own data, and how that plays with their family. For my own part, I am unwilling to lay all of that aside or take on additional, unnecessary sources of stress in my life for the sake of writing a blog, particularly given that this has already cost more than I anticipated. Apparently, I'm 'controversial' and adwords is afeared for the advertiserss images.

Also, this is a subtle plug for Thunderf00t, not that he requires my doing so, but I contribute money to him because I recognize there's a risk attending his public profile on the topics he addresses. It isn't much, but like here with my blog, he has it set up in such a way that you can take him out to a virtual coffee once a month as a token of appreciation. Or, more if you'd like. I do, and I will continue to help, in part, support those in this community who actually do a good bit for it and aren't intellectually vacuous.

Communities like this don't make a great deal advertising given the climate in which we atheists find ourselves embedded. It is therefore, to my mind, incumbent on the community to support and take care of its own, to include parting with a few dollars here and there. But, if everyone saw the world as I saw it, I suspect this conversation would be entirely pointless as one's home and family would remain unmolested while one is engaging one's society in a heated debate on difficult issues. And the more prominent figures in a given community wouldn't have to, for a moment, consider their safety as less secure expressly because they dare to dissent from a majority opinion.

Remember, we are met with an opposition that has hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars at its disposal. About 100 million was spent on Harold Campings May 22nd billboards and advertising. We have nothing approaching that, and only a few prominent names. Our impact is necessarily curtailed by this funding deficit. Thunderf00t's job is probably safe, I'm not sure. Ask him. But what I do is that there are online people who do good work in promoting atheism, skepticism, science and rationality. He is among them. So, support those who are working in your interests. The gratitude is reciprocal, and helping them by providing them time and space to ply their talents in the fight actually does serve your interests.

As always, the ball's in our court. So, do what you can: if you can write, write. If you can lecture, lecture. If you have skills which are useful, offer them up as is reasonably convenient. And yes, I hate to point it again, but all things cost money. So, think about your priorities and act according to your conscience on that matter.

Also, do not forget that not all of our enemies are religious. Sometimes, the rot comes from within, as Thunderf00t has recently found out.

Another Hitchslap

2011-10-10T18:16:00.000-07:00

This post is not well-considered on my part, and is meant to just document my feelings on Christopher Hitchens and his latest appearance. Had I known he was to be in attendance, I'd have found a way to make it to Texas this weekend past. Alas, I didn't, and I cannot reverse time. So, the very next best thing to being there is to have snippets of this powerful speech on video. I don't aim to say that it's powerful in the way that Hitchens always is, though it is that. I am put in mind of Ancient Greece, and I do hope my readers will indulge me for what may very well turnout to be a somewhat strangled association here. But in the Roman Senate, debates were undoubtedly worth seeing. I've always enjoyed debate.

But as I sat here watching for the third time his recent delivery, and how he struggled to retain his presence and fight against a bitter cough, the fatigue of cancer and its treatment, and to strain against what I imagine is mental cloudiness wrought at the hands of both strong pain killers and 'chemo brain', I was put in mind of the waning moments of a Senatorial debate. These debates raged up until nightfall on matters of great importance, and their legacy has echoed throughout the ages. It is up to one's imagination to decide what the chamber would look like in the waning hours of a waxing debate among the Senators. Senators of the era were generally elder members of the civilization (indeed, the word is derived from 'old man').

In modern times, Hitchens isn't elderly, but given the rigors of his condition, the currency he's expending to remain standing and speaking on matters of social importance roughly balance the equities in my imagination. The tragedy of these erstwhile debates is that they ended at nightfall. Darkness being a common metaphor for death, and the nightfall being the end of the debate puts Hitchens to my mind as a consul (or proconsul depending on how one views the matter I suppose) prolonging the debate on a matter of passion and duty. He knows the nightfall is looming, the alpenglow sounds the ominous approach of the end. Beautiful to behold, but unmistakably serious, and finite.

Hitchens knows he's staring that in the face, and yet knowing what it presages he doesn't for a moment fail to appreciate its beauty, majesty or pressing reminder that whatever work one needs to get done requires prompt and disciplined attention. Not for a moment losing the feeling of rapture at the privilege of seeing the sunset before him, he basks in its glow, faces it straight on, and dutifully attends his duties and concerns without a whimper of 'repine' for his situation.

What is more poetic than that to my mind is that he knows as the few remaining grains of sand cascade through the glass, this is a debate he's lost. Nevertheless there's still some time to press the argument until he must 'absolutely' stop - that is until the day is spent and with it his place on the floor. He does this with a solemn dignity, poise, and style that is his most powerful Hitchslap yet: to both the religious who cry that we turn to Jesus on our deathbeds, and to the 'spectre of death' itself - you may kill me, you may make me cease to be, but you not will silence my arguments. Like the tales of the Roman Senate, his thoughts and words will also echo through the ages because the work he's done in this world cannot be canceled out.

It is my sincerest hope that sometime soon I will get to see Christopher Hitchens live, in person. Barring some tremendous breakthrough in the human understanding of this strange world, he knows as well as you and I know that there are very few occasions left. And I naturally wanted to take a moment to disagree with him on a single point of note.

Last year, Hitchens debated William Dembski. During the debate, Hitchens pointed out to the audience that the theme park of the afterlife is a poisoned chalice to be pushed away. He goes on to explain that he wouldn't want to meet Shakespeare because he already can in the books he's left behind; that to meet the author would almost certainly be a disappointment. While it might be true that meeting Shakespeare would be a disappointment, the Cicero of the atheist movement? Not a chance.

I'm Condescending

2011-10-08T08:22:00.000-07:00

It is true. I am here to confirm the widely spread (by me) rumor that I am in fact condescending. I suppose I should slightly unpack that. If you say something stupid, the first time I address it I may or may not be a gender-neutral naughty word here about it. But the second time, not so much.

Why? Well, if it's something I'm taking my time to write back to one on, then it's on a matter that is owed some degree of intellectual pursuit. Or I'm drunk. Or both. Whatever.

Oh, right. Small detail: if you can't get the little bits right, you should probably not be overly surprised when people who've been successfully graduated from (a non-public?) high school don't take your more 'refined' claims all that seriously. For instance. You knew there would be one, right? After all, it's not like I just randomly blog about any old nothing! No, I blog about particular nothings. And here's one. Nothing exists outside of our minds.

It's a fair enough conversation to have if one wants to keep things out of the realm of science. But A. Hughman is clearly not happy with that. So, we have, apparently, philosophy, science and poetry all in one. He makes mention that sound is a pressure wave in air. Well, more than that. It's a wave of pressure propagating through air which hits an eardrum. But more importantly it is interpreted by a brain. (and ultimately, dear readers, it's really about language) This is important because of the non-thought experiment asked in circles of self-styled sophisticates: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? See. Well, Hear. Just ask yourself. Somewhere in the world a tree has just fallen. Did you hear it?

Apparently, you'll be happy to know, it doesn't. You ~~see~~ hear, if there isn't a brain connected to an eardrum in the equation, the displacement of air actually doesn't happen when a tree falls. That being settled, you'll also be happy to know that color works the same way. If there isn't an eye (and presumably a brain, though that part wasn't explicitly made a requirement) to see a given hue, it isn't there.

If Richard Feynman were still alive, I'd go kick him right in the nuts for filling my head with notions that it wasn't an antenna that made Moscow Radio exist, or that made the radio waves materialize. He lied to me saying that they were there the whole time.

Fair-minded readers might take his first sentence or two at face value: he's not really saying that things stop existing if a brain isn't there in the mix. Rather, only, our ability to comment on them is absent. Clearly, I'm not so generous because, again, he undertakes to explain physics in this sketch of his. This means it's not a 'what-if' or 'gee-whiz' question, the likes of which a properly educated philosopher might think is a legitimate variety of question a respectable person can straight-faced ask in polite society. No, he's drawing this as a direct model of our actual universe. A statement of how information propagates through a 'sound' wave (through air!).

Why does this matter, and why do I care, or why should you?

He's not alone. This is the kind of routine, fundamental lack of education in mathematics and the sciences that infects the core of the 'skeptic' movement as regards people of a certain generation. Or rather, I should say, is the apparent core of that generation. The skeptically competent are too busy working in careers of import on matters of relevance. No longer burdened by such mind-straining dilemmas as whether a displacement wave continues to propagate in the absence of an eardrum and the brain to which it's attached, they've cloistered themselves in 'labs' at 'research facilities' where they 'study' slightly more complex problems about this universe of ours.

But 'we' don't hear you. You run obscurely popular blogs (obscure to the public, popular among those who also do 'research', pr 'care' about knowing something about something) that most people aren't aware of. So, in your stead, your proxies are this ilk of vocal, intellectually curious but perhaps, um, academically wanting skeptics who are, talkative, funny and pleasant. I suppose they're also my proxies too because they're willing to ask the questions the average person is willing to ask. Unfortunately, unlike the competent, they're unwilling to answer these questions.

They have a show they run live each Tuesday. On blog tv. And they'll discuss anything (plush toys was one of the more heartwarming ones I watched. Got me right there.)

At bat, we have a musician who likes to contemplate philosophy, logic and say really stupid shit about science (Newtonian mechanics are almost entirely wrong; Relativity 'we know' is almost certainly entirely wrong) and other such pearls of wisdom.

There's a gentleman who likes to subtly peddle his vague religious hankerings and has a master's of science degree in an unspecified field and tells us about, say, water and 'other, more subatomic molecules'.

Michael Payton (yes, the one who had his ass handed to him by William Lame Craig) appears occasionally. He's the one who gave me the study to shore up the claim of "general knowledge' that 'everyone just knows' about 16 year old, black, runaway, homeless, crack addicted hookers (an awfully specific group!), and then rage quit when the publication to which he cited addressed none of the parameters noted above, with the reminder that 'it is kinda' common knowledge.

This is all an outcrop of youtube and, I'm not sure what it is that I'm aiming for here. I go there, and I address some of the issues, but, you know, I'm condescending and a jerk and an asshole (so I'm told!). So, maybe some of you other science types who have superior personalities can give it a go. Because, and you're welcome for the guilt trip, this is who quite a lot (if video views are an indication) of the skeptical, atheist community hear talking. And they think these people are making good sense, and talking about profound Deepities.

In the last month, I've heard that water is like other 'subatomic molecules', Galileo was executed, pressure waves are a language that doesn't exist unless and until someone is listening to it, General Relativity is almost certainly entirely wrong (twice I've heard this one), and I am nonplussed.

Why is it that these people who go around saying things and not immediately standing appropriately embarrassed and apologizing for saying such a stupid, stupid thing are garnering so much attention? Is there some wave that is sweeping the skeptic community where having delusions of mediocrity is a step in the right direction?

So, um, someone clue me in here. What. The. Fuck. Is. Happening?

I'm Pro-Abortion!

2011-10-07T17:36:00.000-07:00

I love abortion. Just love it, love it, love it.

Well, that might be slightly overstating things slightly.

I'm ambivalent about most abortions as I don't see how it is in anyway an ethical concern, for most abortions don't entail any suffering for anyone except the woman who is having it done (her consequences to bear, her decision on whether to bear them or not). For background, this is in my feed. It links to this article. The article, in case you don't want to read it, argues at base that abortion counselors should lie to pregnant women so long as abortion is for them a Big Honkin' Ethical Deal. Well, okay I guess. At first pass this might seem innocuous enough - after all, one is simply trying to save a human life, right?

An example that's been used is that of a police officer lying to an emotionally unstable mother who is, say, holding a knife to the throat of her toddler. This officer might say what the mother wants to hear such that an occasion arises to grab and save the toddler. Or for the mother to put down her knife. Or some happy-ending situation along those lines.

This has all of the smack of trying to shoehorn a stupid scenario into an unfit moral sphere. For one, the duties of a medical professional are not similar to the duties of a police officer. For instance, there isn't a situation that arises whereby a medical professional's job requires them to put a bullet in the head of one patient to force compliance with some commands. The police at all times have this duty to act. The RCMP graduating class of (if I recall correctly, 2000, or 2001) had a sign which read something like 'The use of deadly force is only authorized when someone is doing something so egregious that in order to stop them it no longer matters whether they live or die.' This isn't something one finds in any medical office anywhere, not even in a country like Canada where the government allows its employees to kill its citizenry.

For two, the police aren't sought out for advice on complex issues involving high education in specialized fields of academia. One doesn't go to the police to ask for advice, not even on the law. They are tasked with enforcing the law, but are prohibited from giving advice on it - and it's fairly well in their field. Why is this? Education, and professional obligations.

So, this example cannot be a close enough example to settle the issue even though medical professionals do make decisions that will favor, perhaps, one person's life over that of another person's. This is called triage, and the death that does happen isn't caused by the medical professional. It's simply left to happen (or not) as it would were the medical person not there. Unfortunate as this is, we are still restricted by the laws of physics and one medical professional cannot simultaneously undertake heroic efforts to save two people.

In what other areas of life would anyone care to extend this permission (I'll call it) to lie to people who depend on honest, accurate information to make decisions? Is it any time in any profession? Or is it just on issues that a given person responsible for the dissemination of accurate information has some ethical concern they think is sufficient to replace the judgment of others with their own? By lying?

Say, foodstuffs. For many people, eating meat is an ethical issue as it entails the suffering of the animals we execute for the meat. It'd be a real shame if some of those animals were dying and then not being eaten. After all, that makes their slaughter both unethical, and wasteful. So, now we have two ethical problems - wasting natural resources to feed animals we then slaughter not to eat. So, the very least we can do is if we're going to keep executing these animals, then we should make sure that we're not wasting their meat.

So, one of these individuals gets a job at the local market and gets promoted to the venerable position of tracking the expiration dates on raw meat products. All he or she is doing by extending those dates beyond when the meat can remain edible is to make an ethical judgment call that the product be used as it was meant to be. To be sure, some people who eat the past-its-real-expiry meat will die of various diseases (pick your meat wisely!), but all the animal rights activist did was misrepresent information. The choice to eat the meat, while perhaps partially influenced by information, was still freely undertaken by the people who bought it. Their decision was simply not as informed as it otherwise would have been had an ethical, honest person been stamping the packages.

If this latter situation seems unethical, then I argue for the precise same reasons it is equally unethical to lie to patients who are seeking medical advice. If you think abortion counselors are justified in breaching ethics but not the expiration tracking animal activist, then I'd submit your morals are corrupt. These two situations are close analogues of one another, except that the information given is different and one issue is declared to be less important than the other.

Anyone who has a job where the dissemination of information is required to help a particular clientele make informed decisions is ethically required to make that information as perfectly accurate as possible. Even if the decision the client makes is repugnant to the giver of the information. If you cannot handle the easy task of not lying to people, you should find a job where your ethical failings won't be responsible for killing some number of people.

Make no mistake: lying to women about the consequences of abortion gets some number of women killed each year. Women who, as it happens, would have otherwise lived had they aborted. Which they might well have done if they'd not been lied to. Or maybe they would have gotten the correct information and chosen not to abort and died anyway.

Whatever one makes of the relative probabilities of these situations, the consequences to be borne are those of the pregnant woman. She, and she alone, gets to decide which set of potential consequences are more to her liking. And this decision must not, not should not, be made upon receipt of false information given by some religious whack-job with a god complex.

The Good, The Bad, The Profoundly Stupid

2011-10-06T14:24:00.000-07:00

No, this isn't about Rebecca Watson. This is about a mathematics, err 'mathematics', cough 'book' I was introduced to today by the sheerest of accidents. I 'found' a new blog I hadn't before heard of, and I was reading a rather detailed discussion on category theory (absolutely interesting subject one notes). So, there are some mathematically bright people there, which is probably why I enjoyed the discussion.

The host of the place goes by the name MarkCC, and I must say that in my first few minutes of reading over there I am suitably impressed to have included his blog in my google reader doohickey.

However, his about page has a link on it left by a commenter. This link is um, special. Yeah, it's special. That's it. Mm hmm. It's to an online book which seeks to properly determine the value of pi. It is, I am assured, not ~3.14. No, it's 3.125. Oh here, take a look for yourself.

Well, I'm glad we have this all settled. I'll pick up the red math phone and let everyone know. First, I want to point out a couple other of the, um, interesting bits.

Squares are properly handled in 3 discrete cases.
Group 1.) perimeter> area
Group 2.) perimeter = area
Group 3.) area > perimeter

Now, I don't want to let mathematical genius of this caliber (calibre if you prefer) evade detection and proper citation, so I'll quote him directly (note u.l. and u.a. mean units of length/area as pertinent):

Squares with sides of 4 u.l. have a perimeter of 16 u.l. and an area of
16 u.a. Perimeter = 16 u.l. and area = 16 u.a. What I immediately
observed was the common number for the perimeter and the area.

So, our steely-eyed mathematician has discovered the secret most of us mathematicians have been too afraid to make known: 4s = s^2 for s = 4.

Now I know what some of you cynical fuckers out there just might be thinking, but please, please, hold your fingers. There is a method to his madness, or madness to his method. Or something.

If we ~~circumscribe a circle~~ if we draw a square around a circle, we immediately note there are four points of tangency. This is key here. For,

It is most important that one realise that circles are depended of
squares. This law does not imply for rectangles or triangles.

It is obvious that the squares (but not rectangles one notes) of the three different Groups from earlier can be ~~used to circumscribe~~ drawn around any circle. Since this can be easily shown, it is obvious that the circle will ~~inscribe~~ be inside the squares. Therefore, circles (and their areas!) will fit into one of those three categories above. Or, in the author's words:

Now we know that the square with 4.u.l is unique and solitary. And we also
recognize the unique circle with a diameter 4.u.l, which is placed inside the
square. The question is which constant or value is useable for calculation of a
circle.
By now we know that the squares grading-system is a law of nature. If in
every square there is a circle with its diameter equal as the side of the
square there must be a grading system for circles as well. The circle
grading-system is also a law of nature.

Now, we skip ahead slightly to see the real magic at work here. I promise you, Archimedes himself would indeed be taken aback by this process.

This is a consequence directly of taking the natural logarithm of the common logarithm of e. Except, of course, in cases where we take log[ln(e)]. Please see:

The first formulae is constructed and it with using into that ln of logarithm e,
which the formula are based on that. (1)
The basis I started with is logarithm e^ since I chose the ln of logarithm e^. The
squares side is put into the formulae which one give some values for each square.(2)

For more on this brilliant and shining beacon of intellectual light, please see the whole paper.
It's worth noting that you can earn yourself a copy of the book, which--I can state without any concern of peradventure--has even more information!

find a mistaken in the book and win 300,000 Swedish Crowns and a copy of
the book.

Atheists Are Wrong!!

2011-10-04T12:40:00.000-07:00

Jerry Coyne has an article up directing his readership to a video of an intelligence squared debate (they have some good ones I have to say) involving Russell Blackford. For some reason, and not to put too fine a point on it, all of the speakers seem to be faking Australian accents, but I can live with that.

He wants to know what, if anything, anyone who's seen it thinks about it.

I haven't seen it, but I'm watching it now and I'll post my thoughts in real time!

Introduction: a heartwarming, time-prolonging dedication of the debate to the husband of someone who died, and whose son is in the audience. Ian Carroll (spelling?), husband of Geraldine (co-chair of the whole shebang) died of cancer. :(

Anniversary of 9/11 being near is important to mention for some reason.

Pascal's wager . . . 'but of course this isn't a debate of Blaise Pascal and his argument of prudence."

Why bring it up?

Skipping ahead to debaters.

Remember the proposition under consideration for. this debate: atheists are wrong - full stop.

Debater 1: Most Reverend Peter Jensen:
He starts off noting he has an atheist mind and heart; he is, he says, skeptical of all gods. Except one. Christians and atheist don't believe in most gods, humans on steroids he calls them. He's thankful we atheists were around to get rid of those false gods. (I suspect we're about to bid farewell to the spirit of fraternity currently bouncing off his lips).

When he says atheists are wrong, he doesn't mean completely wrong - far from it. We're just 'basically wrong', and tonight's debate is about the problems with atheism. [ed note: No, the debate is that we're wrong, not that we have problems.]

Atheist bus campaign in England. Only the Brits would throw in 'probably' and god is notoriously hard to disprove in principle.

Atheists (contemporary, not dead ones) seem to him like flat Earthers. We look at the universe and say it can be fairly explained on materialistic principles. Um, does he disagree that it can be?

We're simplistic, seeing only gray on gray in this world of grandieur.

Galileo and Occam, we forget, are really 'theirs' and not 'ours'. Raucous laughter from audience

How can something come from nothing? What is love, where does the moral law come from, what is the good life? How do we account for religious experiences? He asks the hard questions

And then he notes that we have answers for all of these because we're serious thinkers. We see an interim meaning of life, but not an ultimate one. We use how questions instead of who and why questions.

Evolution is an idolatrous explanation of all things. We confuse mechanism for agency.

All in all a tedious man who does little more than cart out tired arguments which don't bear one jot on whether we're correct, or incorrect.

Oh, and Christianity is a self correcting mechanism by its objective, absolute standards. Presumably, this includes the objectively morally correct position on slave-holding.

Here we go. We're wrong because we've overlooked the chief demonstration of reality: revelation.

Ok, skipping ahead to the next speaker.

Thomas Pataki (atheist!):
Opening line, "I've been listening very carefully to the archbishop's [that's Jensen] homily."
He should have concluded with that too since nothing Jensen said really dealt with the motion of the debate: atheists are wrong. I suppose perhaps some lip service to the stupid idea that 'revelation' is a pathway to knowledge might be in order. Otherwise, his opening salvo pretty much dealt with Jensen quite handsomely.

He goes on to explain that the religion issue is more important than the god issue.

Since that doesn't bear on the topic under consideration, I'm spending little time on it.

Short version: since all religions have the same claim to credibility, the proper course is to ditch all of them, and by extensions the gods they represent. It's an ineluctable conclusion, but is subject to revision.

Dr. Tracey Rowland:

She starts off with noting that this is a conversation about what it means to be human. On atheism, apparently, an account of love, reason, human rationality is so 'emaciated' that it is 'impossible to defend' human dignity by listening to those rascally atheists. Richard Dawkins apparently agrees with her by noting that love is kind of an irrationality built into the brain by evolution that provided some selection advantage in mating and child rearing. Even worse, human beings are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as . . . wait for it . . . can you guess? GENES!

We're designed for our DNA, not the other way around.

We're only digital data.

Therefore, atheists believe in fate. And christianity liberated people from the fear of fate. Why, christianity itself revolutionize humanity by offering 'free will', and a 'rational intellect'. It transformed our 'selfish cruelty' through some unstated magic of the gospel 'into a vessel of divine grace'. And, you know, gave us love.

Apparently, love for atheists doesn't exist (even though she says Dawkins seems to think it does, which she evinces by explicating Dawkins' explanation of the process by which it emerged, and how it functions). Clearly, she doesn't understand the difference between x exists and x is explained by y. To explain how x operates is to accept that x exists.

Widows, unwanted babies, female babies who were left to die on hillsides. Starts quoting wikipedia about how hospitals came about. QED I guess.

Clearly, she's a scholar of the first order who no debate would be complete without her penetrating musings. I've heard quite enough of that. Moving on.

Jane Caro:
She starts off with a positive impression of being able to stay on point: 'the prima facie evidence that all gods are manmade is, of course (sung in a proper melancholy way), their treatment of WOMEN (also sung!)!" [applause, laughter, couple of whistles]

I like her already (sorry to spoil my misogynist cred at PeeZus' place).

'The idea that women are fully human' she goes on to say is an idea that 'man-made religion' seems to have difficulty understanding. [love her] She loves the paradise offered to Islamic jihad warriors. 'Nuff said.

I take that back! Not enough said! Holy shit, she's a pistol. Let me back up and quote this as it is grade-A brilliant phrasing.

Apparently as man is for Allah they will receive their reward in heaven by [virginal rewards]. As one would put it, imagine all of those obedient, god-fearing Muslim women who keep themselves pure behind all encompassing clothing out of their devout worship of their god only to find that when they die, their reward for all this virginal vigilance is to end up as whores for terrorists.

That's good wordsmithing right there. Obviously, the crowd ate it up.

You MUST simply watch her. I'm not despoiling the rest of her brilliant delivery. Sorry, people, this is one of those you have to see and hear to fully appreciate.

She ends taking on Buddhism, "how come the Dalai Lama hasn't been reincarnated as a girl?"

Scott Stephens:

This gentleman starts off with the accusation that we've reached a point in public life where we can't agree on any minimal level of moral consensus. What are our common threat? What are the sources of immorality, perversion servitude that we must protect ourselves from, he asks with a straight face. Religion and its gods are a fairly good candidate for quite a lot of that evil I'd suggest.

I think I've heard this one before. Jane Caro has just spoken on the fear tactics of the religious, and how they always manage to identify a target of its source.

Stephens wastes no moment proving her point. It's pathetic. Where do they find these, ahem, deep thinkers? Trust me, it is quite deep in there.

Tedious, boring, intellectually deficient.

Nihilism (both in and out of the church) is the gas we breathe. He's quoting Flannery O'connor (from 55 years ago as he notes).

Somehow this fetishization of health, safety and pleasure bears on the question of whether atheists are wrong.

If he's not going to pretend to address the topic, I'm not going to pretend to finish listening to him.

Oh yeah, Twitter is evil, and without god there is no good. QED I guess.

Russell Blackford:
Before he starts, I have high expectations of him. I hope he lives up to them.

Ok, he's starting off delivering like Dominoes. He's congratulating Jensen, the first speaker, on his skepticism with respect to all but one god. Jensen is, Blackford notes, 'getting there'.

Russell aptly sums up part of the affirmative side: they say we don't know yet what it is we owe to religion for how our world operates. Russell agrees, but points out that "we're starting to suspect."

He goes on a missive about the history of the church. While always worth repeating, it doesn't bear on whether atheists are wrong. All of the evils of religion could be done and their claims could be true. Except that he ties it together nicely by pointing out it has every hallmark of being man-made, not that of an all-wise creator. Nice work, Russell.

And now Russell quite rightly addresses the claims that secular/atheist thinkers and organizations have done bad things. It is true. So have the religious. It is true. What's the difference? And this is central (and has been pointed out by many, many people): we godless folks don't claim to have access to an all-knowing, all-wise creator who is all-good, all-loving and what not. And it is here that the religious claims must fail. Nothing about any religion indicates profound wisdom, let alone the kind of eternal, perfect benevolent leader they declare they follow.

Russell did a commendable job.

But Jane Caro. Wow. I've never before heard of her and that is to my own discredit. If she's ever in a state near me giving a lecture, speech or participating in a debate, I will be the proud owner of a ticket to hear it.

Mawwiage

2011-10-03T21:39:00.000-07:00

It's a precious, important public attestation of one couple's love and affection for another at any event where one can exploit a ready made audience to garner maximum attention to sell skepchick merch.

But Yours Truly, sleuth extraordinaire has managed to track down a certain set of public documents relating to someone's divorce. The participants shall remain nameless, but here's a snippet.

I grew tired of coming home day in and day out to find [my wife] fucking yet another stray homeless drunkard for some cheap booze, only to have her look up at me ask, "who the hell are you?" It was unbearable that she was always pretending not to recognize me in that way so as not to make her booze partner feel awkward.

Cat. Bag. It's Out!

2011-10-03T15:48:00.000-07:00

Ok, I am reserving this space for later. As I alluded earlier today, there's more to come on the Mikovits/WPI issue.

I am right now watching various fora and news sources and following twitter (I'm not linking as things are too fluid anyway. If you're not already following it you won't be caught up in time). One of the major reactions from people on the heels of Mikovits' unceremonious departure is surprise (even among some of the kookier people).

All that I'm going to say for the moment is stay-tuned at all of the prominent blogs on the matter as hearts will be broken, science and scientists rejoiced, and Mikovits completely destroyed in the eyes of almost everyone. Even some of the mild-grade kooks in her corner will likely distance themselves.

Edit 1: link to WSJ.
Edit 2: background, and original story by Trine Tsouderos.
Edit 3: there's a lot of speculation running around the intertubez about what is in the wind. What is the shoe that's going to drop(kick). One person so far seems to have it right!
Edit 4: new article by Trine.
Edit 5: might as well throw in Abbie's name as she broke the story about the same slide being used in two places. (also cited by Trine, naturally).
Edit 6: ok, I'm confused by the last article by Trine. *twiddles fingers*
Edit 7: ok, the person who guessed correctly guessed that it has to do with labels being edited. What remains curious though is that Trine's article references it, but doesn't show it. Curious indeed.
Edit 8: more background on Mikovits by @Zenmonkey

Finally. Now here's the goddamned picture I've been fuming the stupid journalist didn't put in her article.

This little darling is the original, unedited gel that was cropped in photoshop to be sent in to the Science paper. So, whoever did that (oh, Mikovits - since she submitted it) knew full bloody fucking well that they were lying. And honestly, editing in photoshop? And using the source file?

Protip, fraudsters: source => copy => save copy => edit copy => save edit => screen capture => then defraud the world. Sheesh.

Noobs.

Almost Skeptical

2011-10-03T14:33:00.000-07:00

So, I'm over at the blog Almost Diamonds where there's a discussion happening about Rebecca Watson. It's a hypothetical set of four propositions which purportedly is a way to convince people like me that what happened to Watson was actually bad. Like, you know, not 'zero bad'.

Anyway, I don't accept her hypothetical for one primary reason. After laying out the four propositions one is invited to take on board, she says this,

Just for now, just assume those things. I won’t hold you to them later. I may point out that it’s creepy to assume a woman is lying unless you’ve got corroborating evidence, but I won’t say, “Well, you said here….”

Well, it's that unless I've got corroborating evidence bit. I do. I've written about it. It's publicly available, independently verifiable and not contested by any of the relevant parties as being a genuine photograph of the time in question, the place in question, and the people in question. It is, therefore, direct evidence. And it is relevant.

Now, we are met with a story (I don't mean that in a pejorative sense one notes) about some set of events that are alleged to have happened. 1.) is that EG was at the bar and 2.) EG was listening to Rebecca Watson.

Ok then. 2 propositions. If either or both of them is correct, one should expect that a randomly taken photograph of the group at the table would have EG in it. It doesn't. Further, this is a wide shot of the bar, and seems to include everyone in the bar in it except for the photographer (PeeZus) himself. No one disputes this.

It is therefore a proper question (at least in keeping with the maxim that one should always name names) to ask of Rebecca Watson: which of these dozen people is the one in question?

And ask it of her I did. She answered. Apparently, she has an extremely rare and yet proven-to-be-congenital brain defect which prevents her from being able to recognize faces, called prosopagnosia. I'm no expert on this, but let's do that thing that skeptics do: analyze public information.

A person with prosopagnosia has difficulty recognizing faces in pictures of even people with whom they're familiar,

Experiments have shown that when presented with a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar faces, people with prosopagnosia may be unable to successfully identify the people in the pictures, or even make a simple familiarity judgement

The congenital variety is still, as I implied earlier, not yet established such as I know,

The reported cases suggest that this form of the disorder may be heritable and much more common than previously thought (about 2.5% of the population may be affected), although this congenital disorder is commonly accompanied by other forms of visual agnosia, and may not be "pure" prosopagnosia.^[1]

Whether it's pure or visual agnosia, one thing remains patent: those afflicted have difficulty in recognizing faces and/or familiar objects. So, let's have a look at Watson looking at pictures to see how she fares:

Watch this video (if you dare). At about the 9:20 mark, she puts up a photograph and correctly identifies 100% of the people in it, to include the stranger in disguise.

What is life for someone who is actually suffering from prosopagnosia?

Less severe case of a congenital variety, accepting it's pure prosopagnosia.

A clinician discusses it.

Note that people with this disorder tend to dislike watching movies (and presumably television shows because keeping track from one scene to the next is difficult if one cannot keep track of who's who).

But Watson loves Mythbusters, and seems to have no trouble picking out the cast at a crowd! Or picking out Dawkins, Myers, AronRa or anyone else for that matter.

If you know a good amount about this condition, I'd love to hear/read your take on the claim by Watson that she has it. Or, if you write an article, let me know and I'll link to it.

So, she claims to have this disorder, but could recognize EG in the elevator having never before met him (only having seen him in attendance at two disparate events), but can't pick him out of a picture the day after? Wow! This condition of hers is mysterious!

One also notes that, despite their attempts to suggest otherwise, it is not at all my problem that the public evidence freely available to all doesn't comport with Watson's versions of events. That's her problem entirely since she's the one expecting people to believe her.

What's likelier: that the picture is wrong and useless anyway because of this never before mentioned disease she has, that the inconsistencies in her story and inability to verify any of it is imaginary, or that a drunken ideologue might tell a lie? You decide!

Edit: Steph writes at her blog, almost diamonds,

Sure, Munkhaus, just like you’ve posted every disability you’ve ever had on the web for everyone to mock. Oh, wait. It’s not like anyone would ever mock Rebecca for anything, right?
Justicar’s basis for his “skepticism” is that Rebecca could name the people in pictures in her own PowerPoint. Are you saying you actually find that somehow compelling?

This is untrue. The 'reason' for my skepticism is that I'm being given a positive claim that obviates all need for Twatson to make any effort to identify her coffee-inviter. And it's a very, very rare condition that isn't demonstrated to be congenital. There's no information anywhere indicating she's taken a blow to the head. So, seeing all of that together, I decided to start looking through some of her 'lectures'.

The very first one I opened finds her accurately identifying and putatively recognizing 100% of the people in a photograph.

Add to this her perfect ability to recognize and intercept celebrity atheists at conventions and it makes one rather dubious of her ad hoc claim to having a very rare brain defect.

First, I was presented with a claim: she has that disease.
Second, I postulated a hypothesis: she doesn't have this disease.
Third: I went looking for evidence that might bear on it.
Fourth: I noticed that in all cases of which I can reasonably obtain she demonstrates no indication of having the disease.
Fifth: I rejected the claim she has the disease because all available evidence is inconsistent with how people with prosopagnosia seem to operate: namely, she can identify people in pictures.

Let's All Just Take a Deep Breath

2011-10-03T12:42:00.000-07:00

And then let it out. And in. And out. In. Out.

Shake out all of that tension, and let's do a couple Jack Lalannes while we're at it.

Three incidents have been central in academic circles over the last couple of weeks (and longer, depending). If you're a biologist, you'll be aware of Judy Mikovits. If you're anyone with a newspaper, you'll know of the faster than light neutrino issue. If you're a mathematician (or a physicist!) you'll know about the issue involving a Peano playing a wrong note.

If you read my blog (and you should read my blog) you know about all three. These issues taken together cover the bulk of what happens in the enterprise of science. There are three main columns one can find one's self in when doing science: right, wrong, or indeterminate.

What happens when one makes a discovery and it's correct? One publishes and the whole body of the relevant fields goes, "Sweet! Awesome! Thanks! Get back to work."

Perhaps the least favorable position to find one's self in is that pesky indeterminate category. You have data. It seems correct, but it still doesn't add up. What do you do? Well, if you can't find the error, you're really stuck in a pickle since you don't know what's good and what isn't. So, you do what the faster than light neutrino scientists do: you ask the whole community for help.

Say, gang, um, we've got all these data. They all seem correct, but the conclusion is odd. It's not impossible (faster than light travel is allowed in relativity after all) that we're right, but, still. Um, yeah, we just don't know.

This is honest. This is how it works. This is a group of scientists with a result saying, um, look, here it all is and seems to imply this, but it's probably wrong only we don't know why or where. Anyone have a bright idea?

And the world of scientists get excited with "what if" and then they settle into work mode.

And then there's the bread and butter of science: shit, wrong again. Well, let's see what worked right and what didn't and keep what works while changing what doesn't. Then we'll see what that does and go from there.

That happened this past week with a mathematician named Nelson who published a proof that seemed to imply the Peano axioms were inconsistent. If true, this would have presented quite a bit of difficulty in mathematics. So, Nelson, an honest academic by all accounts, no doubt spent a great deal of effort working on this proof. It must have taken him quite a lot of effort, and professional courage to finish it and make it public.

And publish it he did. Then the process starts: all the smart people in the field (and out of it!) start looking at the work to see where it went wrong. (And we were all fairly certain it was wrong as there are independent reasons to think that Peano arithmetic holds true). And two mathematicians in the world figured it out, and then we all look and go, oh yeah, totally wrong.

And Nelson was informed of the problems of his proof. He no doubt went back over it and thought very, very hard about it and then upon seeing that his proof was irreparable did what an honest person always does: admitted error and withdrew the work. And then the result from the mathematics community is exactly the same as if the paper had proved true: good work, nice try, thanks. Get back to work.

And then there's Judy Mikovits (and more is coming out on her I assure you). She was wrong and published and scientists did what they do: checked. And found she was wrong. Her response? Fuck you, I'm right, and I'm going to keep saying that no matter what. Or something.

So, where are they now?

Neutrino group: back to work, none the worse for the wear.

Nelson: back to work, none the worse for the wear.

Mikovits: out on her ass, ruined in science for all time.

We forgive honest mistakes without a second thought. We know what it feels like to think you have something you don't. We'd rather this never happened, but every scientist understands the all-too-human foible of being misled. Can't accept that you're wrong though? You're done in science as you've lost all utility. The next time you'll be useful to science is when the death certificate is signed and you're shipped off to be a cadaver.

Why Do You Care if I'm Christian?

2011-10-02T18:02:00.000-07:00

I'm responding to some of the questions in a video asked by someone on youtube. Some of them are stupid, so I'll ignore them.

Here are my responses, in order that you can read them.

I'd like not to care, I promise. The problem is that you just can't shut the fuck up about it, and so it's constantly being presented to me. Does that explain it? I didn't think so.

Let's see how this crops up and why I could possibly care. For starters, you run around telling me that I'm going to be tortured for all eternity. Fuck you for that.

You lie to my children by saying this country was founded on christian principles. Fuck you for that.

You lie to my children telling them that there's an invisible sky pixie who's watching them while they're naked in the shower. Fuck you for that.

You tell me that I'm morally bankrupt, or without any foundation to make any moral claims at all while in the same breath telling me that you worship and praise a leader who commits genocide. Fuck you for that.

You spend a lot of time worrying about what I'm doing in my bedroom with other consenting adults. Fuck you for that.

You're constantly ignoring the laws of the land, overtly breaking them, to have your particular god shoved down my throat at every turn. Fuck you for that.

You keep asking me why I care and then claim offense when I answer you. Preemptively, fuck you for that.

You ask me why you should follow my morality. In short, because it's far superior to yours. Notice that I'm capable of condemning genocide without a single caveat; you are not. I am capable of condemning human sacrifice without a single exception. You are not; indeed, Christianity is a religion that is founded on the notion that a single human sacrifice is an effective means of determining a code of ethics. Again, my morality is far superior to yours.

Would I join a resistance to help stop a government from executing Christians for simply existing? This question requires no response as my government will never do this. Further, you're asking me if I and others like me would go to war to prevent, say, ethnic cleansing. I think we've demonstrated over and again we're willing to take up arms to defend the innocent against those who would abuse them. Normally, one notes, this means fighting against someone's religion. A large part of western history, therefore, entails having to fight Christians for the ideas contained in your books.

Now that we've disciplined you for the most part, you're fairly well-behaved, you're pretending as though it's something that you just came up with or something. No.

Only the religious ask questions if I"d treat my children differently if they think differently than I do. Among atheists, this isn't a question that ever comes up. Again, superior morality.

How do I live knowing life is futile? This is like asking Liberace how he plays the piano with all of those rings. His reply will do nicely, "very well."

I do not accept your premise that there is disconnect between is and ought. Just because it's a mantra held by people doesn't make it an accurate model of our reality.

Dear Abbie

2011-10-02T10:39:00.000-07:00

There are many difficulties involved in getting into heaven. The easiest way seems to be accepting Jesus as one's personal lord and savior. All that's required is leaving forfeit one's reasoning faculties and any sense of self worth. This is repugnant to me, so I've turned my keen analytic mind towards devising another way in.

We know it's possible for humans to get there on our power. For instance, the roughly 300 foot tall Tower of Babel was one pathway. More reflective study of Biblical scholarship has lead me to figure the whole thing out. For instance, Jesus' bodily ascension into heaven is rather easily explained in contemporary physics.

What do you think all of those collected foreskins in the Bible were used for? A dowry? No. It's simple Biblical physics - hear me out. What are foreskins useful for? Nothing, which is why we cut them off and cast them away. Or are they? The reason God doesn't want us to keep them into adulthood is that big dicks have larger foreskins. Larger foreskins do more work than little ones; thus, cut them off before their work capacity is sufficient to arrange a transportation system from Earth to Heaven.

How? It's simple, elegant really. When dicks are warm, they expand and when they're cold they contract. We also know that sex organs are magically given to us by God. So, it stands to reason their properties are sufficient to open the gateway to heaven. (Why else would it be wired into us to scream "oh God!" when we're climaxing?)

Now, for the data we need. According to Bible scholar Kent Hovind, currently residing in an undisclosed, secure location in Pensacola, Florida, mankind is getting progressively smaller as time goes on (and according to youtuber Amenakin [at 1:20] we get smarter as we get whiter, and we all already know that white guys have smaller dicks, right?). Thus, we were bigger in the past - even our foreskins. Using some proprietary software (and hardware), I've worked out average cock size of dark men in the past.

So, we know the Tower of Babel wasn't quite tall enough to make it properly into heaven, so I figure another 100 feet would do it. Therefore, we need enough foreskins to traverse that distance. And we know that 200 foreskins were collected in the past, meaning that each foreskin when lain flat and at equilibrium was 2 feet long. Right? Ok then.

We also know about the heat death of the universe from the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, which deals with entropy (in troh pee). Entropy + the 2nd law literally translates to 'the shrinkage while peeing as heat is lost". The implication there is obvious.

And finally, we need to factor in an experiment that every little boy has tried at some point near puberty: when the penis is erect and one pushes it down, it springs right back up.

Putting all of this together and I think it's immediately obvious that Hooke's Law is the pathway to heaven.

I am right now writing a research grant so that we can determine the tensile strength of foreskins and thus their work capacity. Also, as a corollary research project, I'm interested in finally finding out how much the human soul weighs so that we'll know how many foreskins will be necessary to account for the rapid transition of souls during the rapture.

For more information on what led to this startling breakthrough, ask Abbie of ERV.