Utah fails to condemn Satan, aka the Democratic party

A delegate to the Republican party in Utah had a marvelous resolution for his party.

Don Larsen, a Springville delegate, offered the resolution, titled “Resolution opposing the Hate America anti-Christian Open Borders cabal,” warning delegates that an “invisible government” comprised of left-wing foundations was pumping money into the Democratic Party to push for looser immigration laws and anti-family legislation.

Larsen said Democrats get most of the votes cast by illegal immigrants and people in dysfunctional families.

But it’s not the Democrats who are behind this strategy, Larsen said. It’s the devil.

“Satan’s ultimate goal is to destroy the family,” Larsen said, “and these people are playing a leading part in it.”

Larsen’s resolution contained quotes from the New Testament on the battle between good and evil. The copy of the resolution handed to delegates stated it “fulfills scriptural prophecies about our times.”

I am not at all surprised — it’s not just Utah, but these kinds of loons are everywhere in this country, and they do not get laughed off the podium when they bring up these claims. I am impressed that they Utah GOP actually managed to reject the resolution … but it was for entirely pragmatic reasons. They said it would cost them Latino votes if they openly professed that Satan was shipping immigrants to America. They didn’t say that that was crazy or wrong, just that it might hurt their image with Latinos. That also didn’t surprise me.

Crank science is as crank science does

I was sent this story about genes and IQ, and right from the beginning, my alarm bells were ringing. This is crank pseudoscience.

Gregory Cochran has always been drawn to puzzles. This one had been gnawing at him for several years: Why are European Jews prone to so many deadly genetic diseases?

Tay-Sachs disease. Canavan disease. More than a dozen more.

It offended Cochran’s sense of logic. Natural selection, the self-taught genetics buff knew, should flush dangerous DNA from the gene pool. Perhaps the mutations causing these diseases had some other, beneficial purpose. But what?

At 3:17 one morning, after a long night searching a database of scientific journals from his disheveled home office in Albuquerque, Cochran fired off an e-mail to his collaborator Henry Harpending, a distinguished professor of anthropology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

“I’ve figured it out, I think,” Cochran typed. “Pardon my crazed excitement.”

The “faulty” genes, Cochran concluded, make Jews smarter.

Why are European Jews prone to certain genetic diseases? My first answer would be to consider that they are a sub-group isolated by a history of bigotry from the outside, and strong cultural mores from the inside that promote inbreeding. These are variations amplified by chance and history.

I would not be offended by this. It’s logic, too. Natural selection is important, but it’s not everything — but so often, “self-taught genetics buffs” get the emphasis all wrong, and think of evolution as a machine that churns out generations that are relentlessly optimized for the best of all possible solutions, and these are the people who are also unsatisfied that evolution also churns out mistakes that are perpetuated over and over again. Errors happen, and their existence does not need an explanation; there is also no tendency by a benign nature to balance every individual’s shortcomings with a beneficial mutation.

Mr Cochran’s flaw is in his premise. There is no reason to assume that the frequency of every allele in a population must be the product of a selective advantage. The mathematics was worked out in the last century, and we know that even deleterious alleles can go to fixation in a population. His frenzied scribblings and off-the-wall database searches were driven by a need to reconcile the facts with his naïve and erroneous vision of evolution, and are not very convincing.

Here’s another explanation: this isolated subgroup of Ashkenazi Jews also had a culture with a deep historical respect for scholarship, and emphasized and supported education and learning to a greater degree than the larger culture surrounding them. Their children therefore begin life with a leg-up on intellectual pursuits. We don’t need a genetic explanation for their better performance (on average) on academic tests. Note also that this does not exclude a genetic component, but now at least we’re talking about an environmental factor that favors selection for intelligence. Again, though, I haven’t seen any convincing evidence for such a thing; personally, I think our intelligence is built on a shared genetic/development core that enables a wide range of kinds and degrees of intelligence to be expressed in response to environmental conditions.

But here’s the final confirming evidence that Cochran is a crank and a non-scientist.

It would be easy to test the theory, said Steven Pinker, a Harvard cognition researcher: “See if carriers of the Ashkenazi-typical genetic mutations score higher on IQ tests than their noncarrier siblings.”

Cochran and Harpending readily acknowledge the need for such experiments. But they have no plans to do them. They say their role as theorists is to generate hypotheses that others can test.

“One criticism about our paper is ‘It can’t mean anything because they didn’t do any new experiments,’ ” Cochran said. “OK, then I guess Einstein’s papers didn’t mean anything either.”

I don’t agree with Pinker that it would be easy — there’s going to be a lot of individual variation in performance, and I think it’s very hard to split the variables of culture and genetics apart in these kinds of tests. But at least he’s offering a positive approach to the problem, and that would be a good starting point.

But Cochran isn’t interested in doing them? He’s just a theorist? That’s where he begins to sound exactly like an intelligent design creationist.

Say…isn’t this called treason?

The governor of Texas is ranting about seceding from the United States.

Speaking to an energetic and angry tea party crowd in Austin Wednesday evening, the Lone Star State governor suggested secession may happen in the future should the federal government not change its fiscal polices.

“There’s a lot of different scenarios,” Perry said. “We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.”

I seem to recall from my history books that some states tried that, once upon a time, long, long ago. How did that work out?

I also seem to recall from not too long ago that Republicans were rather free in slinging accusations of treason at Democrats (Ann Coulter wrote a book about it, and Jonah Goldberg tried to imply it), yet here is a governor actively inciting mobs with the idea of secession, which is a rather blatantly anti-patriotic act. Funny how their attitudes change.

Oh, and for comic relief: Chuck Norris offers to run for president of the independent nation of Texas. I’m almost tempted to agree that they should leave the union, just for the hilarious spectacle.

No One May Ever Have the Same Knowledge Again

I have a t-shirt with those words on it; it’s from the Museum of Jurassic Technology exhibit of letters to Mount Wilson Observatory, a fascinating collection of crackpot letters written to astronomers between 1915 and 1935, containing the astounding theories created by people around the world, who all thought they could revolutionize science with their insights. It’s an exhibit well worth browsing—here’s one sample letter.

To whom it may concern:

This is to certify, That I have found the Key To all Existance. And all I ask of any one Is for them to read What I am about to say. Because it is not my purpose to tell What you already know. And consequently the proof Shall follow and establish My work to make it law.

For the key to all existance Is the key to the Law By which all things Come into existance and therefore my word Is the key to that law to be verified by proof Listen therefore to what I say As follows:

The Moon Is practically all Water frozen or Ice It was formed By water evaporating From the earth Which arose and gathered Between the Earth and Sun It is hollow Like a pumpkin The inside is composed of that part of the air known as Nitrogen And very very cold Consequently its water is frozen.

If the crust of the moon Was removed, it would be a Sun bright enough To destroy the earth. There is no life upon the moon, but Without the moon There would be no life upon the earth.

And it goes on, at length.

Now Pascal Boyer has put together a brief ontology of crackpottery. He seems to have rediscovered the Salem Hypothesis — ‘scientists’ who claim to have disproven evolution are often actually engineers — in a rather more general form, and has a few other generalizations, like that all crackpots are male, that are only roughly true (I can think of many exceptions: famous ones would be Madame Blavatsky and Ayn Rand). Come to think of it, though, most but not all of my raving mad anti-fan mail does come from males…

It’s an interesting read, if you find yourself fascinated by the psychopathology of pseudoscience.

Gingi is angry

She’s so mad about how mean pro-choice people are, that she’s making up new facts. She says she received death threats over her callous use of the death of children, which may be entirely true (and if it is, I’m pissed off at you: no, it doesn’t matter how vile her behavior is, you don’t threaten physical harm over it), but she also makes strange claims about how harmless the raving loonies of the anti-choice movement are. Part of it is fallacious context. The anti-choicers haven’t blown up as many buildings as the number of churches that have been burned down! (Never mind that there is no group advocating the destruction of churches.) EarthFirst! and ALF/ELF have done more property damage than they have…and we people who believe that women should have a right to choose endorse those actions. Wait, what? She couldn’t have really said that. Yes, she did.

It’s astounding that the open-minded abortion-loving crew can’t seem to wrap their heads around the concept of hostility towards buildings that house infanticide and mass assembly-line slaughter, all while they support and applaud the regular targeting of churches, synagogues, forestry companies, corporate and university-based medical research laboratories, medical-supply firms, fur farms and other industrial buildings.

It’s the first time I’ve ever been accused of applauding the destruction of laboratories, anyway. I also don’t think of women’s health clinics as places of mass assembly-line slaughter.

She also makes up some weird numbers. How about this?

In the entire history of the struggle over abortion, only 7 pro-abortion activists (including three abortionists) have been murdered. Compare that to the 520 murders by pro-aborts and the 360 fatal botched abortions by abortionists including: 145 pregnant women, 360 abortion clients, 71 other women, 110 born children, 164 wanted preborn children and 30 men.

I like that. They’ve only murdered 7! They must not be so bad after all.

I’m baffled by the other numbers, though, and no source is given. So pro-choice activists have acted like Paul Hill, walked up to 520 people, and gunned them down in cold blood? What are the circumstances behind these claims?

But anyway, don’t bother with Gingi Edmonds — she’s demented and hysterical. In particular, do not send her threats of harm! That is never appropriate under any circumstances.

There is something productive that you can do, though. Every year on Good Friday, the MisogynyNow! crowd, thousands of rabid anti-choice fanatics, converge on family planning clinics and do their usual sign waving, shouting dance of hate against women using the facilities. It’s not as if you people have church services you need to attend, so sign up for a counter-demonstration at the Highland Park Planned Parenthood and show your support with peaceful social action. There may be similar activities in your neighborhood — look them up. There may be a thousand Gingi Edmonds howling and weeping there, but all you have to do is stand up against them in defense of reason and women’s autonomy.

(via Sunny Skeptic)

Kooks amuck

What happened last night? Did someone spike the entire North American water supply with hallucinogens? Because for some reason all the kooks went nuts in a short span of time. Many of you probably noticed that David Mabus/Markuze, the Canadian lunatic with the obsession with Nostradamus and James Randi and seeing atheists burn in hell, went on a spamming spree all over here (a spree which seems to have been mostly cleaned up now). He was also emailing me his angry rants, so that was another mess to clean up.

There was other silly email, but I’ve thrown most of it out, too. You might be amused at the Return of the Kwok, though. He’s been mailing me regularly, and also cc’ing his cockeyed screeds to random other people, like senior faculty in my discipline. This one also went out to Abbie, for no rational reason that I can determine.

[Read more…]

The Pastor Ray Mummert award goes to…

…Houston Friend, a student at ASU who got a bad grade on a paper and wrote in to blame the whole culture for it.

Last week, I got back a graded essay, which happened to be worth a significant portion of my grade. I got a C and was immediately upset because I had been somewhat proud of my work when I was writing it.

I soon perused the plethora of red marks throughout the paper and began to notice generally why I did poorly.

The principle reason I got a C was because I didn’t have enough “evidence,” as this particular paper required a certain amount of references to sources read throughout the semester.

The “plethora of red marks” is an indication that there might be a lot of problems with that paper, and it’s certainly true that we professors have expectations of a certain level of scholarship, that is, familiarity with multiple sources, in undergraduate work. It’s good that Mr Friend recognizes these shortcomings in his work. Or does he?

Mr Friend identifies a bigger problem. It’s not his fault, it’s the academic world, which demands…

The academic world our generation has grown up in gives an enormous amount of credit to empirical, tangible and scientific evidence.

Oh, really? That sounds reasonable to me. What does Mr Friend want?

I think we have been accustomed to perceive intelligence as a product of one’s ability to present concrete evidence, especially scientifically. Not to say this is completely wrong or ineffective, but I think we must consider the possibility of metaphysical realities. And maybe, just maybe, we live in world that can’t always be explained rationally.

I see. He wants to write an irrational paper that lacks empirical evidence and is built on intangible claims, and he wants to get an A for it.

Where does he think he is studying? Liberty University?

John Kwok sends email

The Kwok has been mailing all over the place. He has complained to facebook, and to the Panda’s Thumb. He has written to CFI-Michigan in advance of my visit here, telling them to throw a pie in my face. I have heard from quite a few friends in the scientific community that Kwok has written to them, as well, telling them what an awful jerk I am and how they should not ever associate with me. He has now cc’ed to me a message he sent to several of my colleagues at UMM, with an incredibly ironic title.

[Read more…]

I got it first!

I’m not the only one who gets crazy email: Pam Spaulding got an excellent example of grade A wackaloonery, and at first I was a little jealous, until I looked more closely. It’s the same mail I got back in February! I’m still the champ!

It looks like somebody taught the poor fellow about paragraphs in the past month, which helps. It’s not in Comic Sans, either — I may have to give Pam a few suggestions.

The revenge of Kwok

The John Kwok saga is getting very serious. He threatened to decimate my facebook friends, and has now gloated that the number of mutual friends of Kwok and Myers has now diminished by…3 (out of my current total of 4,793, which is actually a net gain of about 350 since yesterday).

You can imagine my shock and dismay. No, you don’t have to imagine — I had the computer record my reaction on hearing the news.

[Read more…]