A wild jewelry idea

Did you know that Rick Santorum thinks atheism leads to beheading people?

“They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is a government that gives you rights. What’s left are no unalienable rights. What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do, and when you’ll do it. What’s left, in France, became the guillotine. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re a long way from that. But if we do, and follow the path of President Obama and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.”

Which led me to a crazy thought…maybe the atheist symbol should be a little guillotine. I understand there’s a peculiar trend in religions to use an execution device as a fashion statement, so it would fit right in.

It would also be of some practical utility to cigar smokers.

And what overt hostility to faith does Obama have? Did you see his prayer breakfast remarks? He’s so fucking pious I don’t want to vote for him.

How a Christian brain works

Pat Robertson and his cohost are trying very hard to understand us evil atheists, so they do a little projection and a little Christian logic. They deduce that we…well, you’ll have to watch it to believe it.

Here’s how it goes:

  1. Atheists hate all gods. Actually, they hate everything.

  2. Wiccans worship trees as gods.

  3. Therefore, atheists should all want to cut down trees.

Yes, it’s 8am here. I waited a few hours to drop that on you. A headache is as good as a cup of coffee for waking you up, isn’t it?

Soft, squishy, mushy fodder

I took one look, and facepalmed. I’m not even going to try to plow through this mess, but in case you were bored and looking for a chew toy, take a look at this guy.

Who am I? Around 2007 upon arising from higher states I started awakening this strange innate ability for argumentation logic that I have which surpasses even Aristotle and William of Ockham. I started unintentionally getting involved in lots of arguments and debates. This happened when I entered into higher states and started seeing all arguments in systematic patterns.

…

I don’t really know what’s going to happen next in course of the future…but now I can finally share and preserve my thoughts online with this blog.

With the highest innate ability for argumentation logic (probably the highest that ever existed), high intelligence, high intuition, and high originality I wonder how much of my knowledge I should share with the world…and how much I should keep secret…

I don’t think there’s much point in addressing that level of arrogance and obliviousness, and if you venture there, give up any expectation of convincing him of anything.

For example, have fun with The threat that atheists pose to science.

Throughout history atheism and atheists have always been detrimental to scientific progress and advancement. It’s time that someone speaks out against what atheists are doing.

Atheists and atheism have been given a free pass for far too long. Everything atheists touch and take over immediately becomes ruined and destroyed. Atheists are just like uncivilized animals, it’s up to Theists to civilize these uncivilized savages.

Since atheists don’t seem to understand what science even is it’s up to Theists to teach them.

The worse thing that ever happened to society was atheists taking over science. Theists have to make science become scientific again now that atheist animals are trying to ruin science and turn it into a pseudo-scientific joke.

Yeah, this is the same guy who also claims that Nazis are a “left-wing liberal movement”.

Can prayer get any more useless?

Yes, yes it can. Instead of invoking magic to achieve material ends, it can invoke magic to inspire more magical thinking. Here’s a charming technique called “theophostic prayer”.

The TPM Basic Training Seminar Manual defines TPM as, " Intentional and focused prayer with the desired outcome of an authentic encounter with the presence of Christ, resulting in mind renewal and subsequent transformed life."

Theo (GOD) Phostic (light) is a ministry of prayer that is Christ centered and God reliant for its direction and outcome. Simply stated, it is encouraging a person to discover and expose what he/she believes is falsehood; and then encouraging him/her to have an encounter with Jesus Christ through prayer, thus allowing the Lord to reveal His truth to the wounded person’s heart and mind. It is not about advice giving, diagnosing problems, or sharing opinions or insight. It is about allowing a person to have a personal encounter with the Lord Jesus in the midst of the person’s emotional pain.

So it does nothing at all then?

Oh, wait. It does something for someone. There’s this little line of icons on the page.

Somebody profits — you’ll shell out $300 buckeroos to learn how to imagine Jesus harder.

Isn’t there something about Jesus and moneychangers in the temple in that Bible thingie? Maybe it’s only in the atheist bible that Christians don’t read.

Say what, Ron Paul?

No one seriously wants this loon in the White House, do they? I’m having trouble parsing this:

On the eve of Saturday’s Nevada caucus, Ron Paul sits down with Piers Morgan for a revealing interview, during which the Republican from Texas shares his views on rape and abortion: "If it’s an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room, I would give them a shot of estrogen."

The estrogen, I understand: it’ll prevent any potential pregnancy. But what is an “honest” rape? What is a “dishonest” rape, and what would he do with a woman who was dishonestly raped? He seems to be making weebly distinctions with no meaning at all.

Islamic science has come to this pitiful end

The words of the Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu ‘aleihi was-sallam) have been tested scientifically, and found hilarious. In work carried out under the direction of Dr. Jamaal Haamid, students at Qassim University examined a saying by the prophet, and have published it in a freely available pdf, The Hadeeth on the Fly, which you can download if you desire. Or you could just read this post, which summarizes entirely the complete content of the short paper, which is pretty much unpublishable and unbelievable anyway.

Here are the holy words.


(Notice that I include the original Arabic so there can be no confusion!)

If a housefly falls in the drink of anyone of you, he should dip it (in the drink), for the one of its wings has a disease and the other has the cure of the disease.

I do find that rather disturbing: so in Arabia, if a fly touches your water, you’re supposed to catch it, dunk it in deeper and slosh it around, to prevent disease? Arabian flies buzz around with pathogens segregated to just one wing, while the other one is healthy? How do they do that?

OK, setting aside the sanitary habits of Arabians and the mechanism by which this holy aphorism could be true, our intrepid students do carry out the obvious experiment: they drop a fly in a flask of sterile water, and then they pluck out the fly and immerse it completely in a second flask of sterile water. But then it all goes horribly wrong.

Here is the result of experiment #1.


Plate 2- Cultured water sample taken from a flask containing sterilized water and where a fly fell (without submersion). Growth of pathogenic (disease causing) bacterial colonies of the E. coli type were identified after taking samples from the water in the flask for culture.
Plate 1- Cultured water sample from the same flask following the complete dipping of the fly. An entire disappearance of the bacterial growth seen in Petri-dish 2 is clear. The new bacteria growing in plate 1 was identified as Actinomyces, the one from which useful antibiotics can be extracted. This explains the complete inhibition of growth in plate 2

Plate 2 on the right is the one from water merely touched by a fly. There is no explanation for how the plate was produced, or how the bacteria were identified; the strange brown sludge suggests poor technique, though, and I’ve cultured E. coli myself — and that hideous thick fecal-colored glop looks nothing like E. coli.

Plate 1 on the left, made from water in which the fly was fully immersed, looks nasty too. It’s a poor photograph, but that looks like a thick lawn of colonies everywhere. How do they know it’s Actinomyces? I have no idea, they don’t say. It’s also a mistake to simply declare it beneficial — Actinomyces are opportunistic pathogens.

Experiment #2 was a different fly, two flasks of water, same result.

Experiment #3 was a third fly, two flasks of water, same result.

Having done the experiment to death, our brave students retired at the third repetition, wrote it up with no methods, no discussion, no literature cited (except for their holy book, of course), and no reliable, believable data. They also didn’t do the other obvious experiment, of snipping off the wings and examining the bacterial flora living on the left vs. right, but then, maybe they’re leaving that for the advanced students.

Any 10 year olds looking for a quick and easy science fair project, there it is. I’m sure you can replicate this experiment trivially — but please, talk to a real microbiologist first and learn how to streak a plate. You might also learn something about a control plate, which our U of Qassim students didn’t bother to do.

Of course, this work wasn’t carried out by 10 year olds. It was done by university students in a “Med 497” (a medical course?) in a department of medical microbiology. I strongly urge anyone visiting Saudi Arabia to avoid getting sick. They might try to treat you by swishing a fly around in your coffee.

(Also on Sb)

Rep. Larry Pittman of North Carolina: Christian, seminarian, and ordained minister

That mini-biography in the title is to help put this story in perspective; it’s also completely unsurprising. Pittman wears his Christianity prominently and proudly, and it seems to be the only qualification he thought important in his run for office. And now he’s using his blessed Christian morality to define his work in the legislature. He was very irate at the easy life of a death row inmate, so Pittman wrote a letter to the General Assembly with some suggestions. He thinks:

Doesn’t it warm the heart to know that the barbaric medieval mentality is still making the laws in America?

He does have some second thoughts about his list. He now regrets broadcasting it, and wishes he’d only sent it to a sympathetic fellow Republican. It’s the standard Christian sentiment: it’s not the sin of violent, uncharitable thoughts that is wrong, it’s being caught expressing them.

What is it with all the donuts?

First it was Stuart Pivar, deriving everything by twisting plastic toroids around; then it was Fleury, master of the swirling vortices, and then Andrulis, gyring and gimbling in the wabe. And now…The Thrive Movement. It’s completely bonkers. It’s got these high aspirations, striving to create a thriving world living in peace and harmony with nature and all that, and as far as goals go, it’s rather sweet. But then you watch the promotional video…

Ancient astronauts! Crop circles! Mysterious symbols! UFOs! David Icke and Deepak Chopra, mating! (Oh, OK, I made the last bit up…but they are both in the movie). Perpetual motion machines! Global conspiracies to bury the secret of free energy! People waving their hands over glowing CGI donuts!

Here’s their “science” proposal:

Let’s look to see how to use the lenses of the torus and the Global Domination Agenda (GDA) to optimize our solutions strategies.

In my view the GDA is focused on destroying individual wholeness and centralizing power over others. Surviving and thriving as individuals and as a species depends, I believe, on learning rapidly how to do just the opposite.

Through recognizing the wholeness of the toroidal energy form and the infinite abundance of the energy plenum we inhabit, we can have clean, inexpensive energy for everyone through “New Energy” technology. No war, no pollution, no combustion.

Further on, they announce that “Evidence continues to mount that we are all holons in a boundless holarchy, free nodes in a fully-interconnected, holographic and fractal universe of infinite energy.” None of this evidence is provided, of course. That would violate the first rule of kookery.

Let me tell you, though, I’m beginning to look on bakeries with great suspicion.

Hey, Tennessee, why are you electing these ignoramuses?

Seriously, I don’t understand how people can be this stupid and uninformed and acquire high office in a democracy. When you look around your communities, shouldn’t you be promoting the smart, successful, well-educated people to represent you in your capitol, instead of picking the village idiot? Tennessee has at least a couple of dangerously flaming fruitcakes in office; and it’s not just that state (<cough> Michele Bachmann…). Here’s representative John Ragan explaining how homosexuality doesn’t really exist.

A person is a heterosexual because of the presence of genitalia of one sex or the other. No one except a very few with an exceedingly rare congenital deformity have both kinds of genitalia.

Get it, all you gay readers? You can’t be a homosexual unless you are born with a penis and a vagina.

And then there’s Senator Stacey Campfield. He has his own, private, special version of epidemiology, virology, and medicine that the damned doctors are unaware of.

Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community. It was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall.

My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex.

His recall and understanding are deeply flawed. Everything is wrong in his statements.

Did you know you can be as stupid as Ragan and Campfield and still hold office in this country? We don’t have friendly burly men in white coats who gently lift them out of their chairs in their legislatures and take them off to a wonderful little school in pleasant surroundings for intensive remedial education in the sciences, after which they are returned to promote their peculiar politics, but with accurate information, at least, in their heads.

The comparison to jabberwocky is inevitable

Lots of people have been sending me this paper by Erik Andrulis, and most of you have done so with eyebrows raised, pointing out that it’s bizarre and unbelievable; some of you wrote asking whether it was believable, at which point my eyebrows went up. Come on people: when you see one grand cosmic explanation that is summarized with cartoons, which the author claims explains everything from the behavior of subatomic particles to the formation of the moon, shouldn’t you immediately sense crankery?

It’s also getting cited all over the place, from World of Warcraft fan sites to the Discovery Institute (those two have roughly equal credibility in matters of science), so I had to skim through it. I read it with rising concern: Erik Andrulis is a young assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University, and he’s published entirely sensible papers on RNA processing. This paper is so weird and out there that it is either an attempt to Sokal the field of origins of life research, or the man is seriously mentally ill. Either way, this is not going to help his career in the slightest.

The paper is titled Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life, and just the sweeping grandiosity of that title should set off alarm bells. Here is the abstract:

Life is an inordinately complex unsolved puzzle. Despite significant theoretical progress, experimental anomalies, paradoxes, and enigmas have revealed paradigmatic limitations. Thus, the advancement of scientific understanding requires new models that resolve fundamental problems. Here, I present a theoretical framework that economically fits evidence accumulated from examinations of life. This theory is based upon a straightforward and non-mathematical core model and proposes unique yet empirically consistent explanations for major phenomena including, but not limited to, quantum gravity, phase transitions of water, why living systems are predominantly CHNOPS (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur), homochirality of sugars and amino acids, homeoviscous adaptation, triplet code, and DNA mutations. The theoretical framework unifies the macrocosmic and microcosmic realms, validates predicted laws of nature, and solves the puzzle of the origin and evolution of cellular life in the universe.

Having skimmed through all 105 pages of this thing, I can tell you with confidence that it answers none of those questions. Just the fact that it is entirely non-mathematical and non-empirical (there aren’t any observations or experiments described at all), and that the entirety of the theory is built around diagrams sketched out by the author, should also tell you that this is not a useful or predictive theory.

It does not have an auspicious beginning. In addition to being constructed around cartoons and being a non-mathematical Theory of Everything, it has to introduce an elaborate collection of neologisms that make the whole paper painful to read.

In the theory proposed herein, I use the heterodox yet simple gyre—a spiral, vortex, whorl, or similar circular pattern—as a core model for understanding life. Because many elements of the gyre model (gyromodel) are alien, I introduce neologisms and important terms in bold italics to identify them; a theoretical lexicon is presented in Table 1. The central idea of this theory is that all physical reality, stretching from the so-called inanimate into the animate realm and from micro- to meso- to macrocosmic scales, can be interpreted and modeled as manifestations of a single geometric entity, the gyre. This entity is attractive because it has life-like characteristics, undergoes morphogenesis, and is responsive to environmental conditions. The gyromodel depicts the spatiotemporal behavior and properties of elementary particles, celestial bodies, atoms, chemicals, molecules, and systems as quantized packets of information, energy, and/or matter that oscillate between excited and ground states around a singularity. The singularity, in turn, modulates these states by alternating attractive and repulsive forces. The singularity itself is modeled as a gyre, thus evincing a thermodynamic, fractal, and nested organization of the gyromodel. In fitting the scientific evidence from quantum gravity to cell division, this theory arrives at an understanding of life that questions traditional beliefs and definitions.

Here’s a partial copy of his lexicon. It goes on quite a bit longer than what I’ve copied here.

Table 1. Gyromodel Lexicon

Alternagyre A gyrosystem whose gyrapex is not triquantal
Dextragyre A right-handed gyre or gyromodel
Focagyre A gyre that is the focal point of analysis or discussion
Gyradaptor The gyre singularity—a quantum—that exerts all forces on the gyrosystem
Gyrapex The relativistically high potential, excited, unstable, learning state of a particle
Gyraxiom A fact, condition, principle, or rule that constrains and defines the theoretical framework

Gyre The spacetime shape or path of a particle or group of particles; a quantum
Gyrequation Shorthand notation for analysis, discussion, and understanding gyromodels
Gyrobase The relativistically low potential, ground, stable, memory state of a particle
Gyrognosis The thermodynamically demanding process of learning and integrating IEM
Gyrolink The mIEM particle that links two gyromodules in a gyronexus
Gyromnemesis The thermodynamically conserving process of remembering and recovering IEM
Gyromodel The core model undergirding the theoretical framework
Gyromodule A dIEM particle in a gyronexus
Gyronexus A polymer of dIEM particles linked by mIEM particles
Gyrostate The potential and/or kinetic state that a particle occupies in its gyratory path
Gyrosystem A gyromodel with specific IEM composition, organization, and purpose
IEM Information, energy, and/or matter

I can’t help myself. You knew this was coming.

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Now I know that you are in lexical shock right now, but I’m about to make it worse. Witness the use of these terms in figure 1 of the paper, which will also reveal the kinds of diagrams he’s using.

“The levorafocagyre, in turn, is antichiral to the dextrasupragyre” is a nice sentence that about sums up the experience of reading this thing. Don’t believe me? Here are more excerpts that illustrate the grand, cosmic, and entirely uninformative nature of gyroexplanatory gyrobabble. Andrulis purports to explain everything from learning and memory (learning and memory by gyres, not the poor people trying to understand his paper):

The ultimate state of gyromnemesis is the stably adapted particle or gyronexus in the gyrobase. A particle thus adapts through learning and memory by completing one full cycle—a revolution— around the singularity. Taken together, gyrognosis defines IEM integration and assessment whereas gyromnemesis defines IEM storage and recovery. Finally, although a diquantal IEM (X”) undergoes gyrognosis as the gyrobase of a primary majorgyre, it undergoes gyromnemesis as the gyrapex of an alternagyre. Thus, gyre learning and memory are relative to the gyradaptive singularity.

To the formation of Earth’s moon:

Lunar Formation. The favored hypothesis for the formation of Earth’s Moon is from planetesimal impact on a proto-Earth proceeded by matter ejection, accretion, and gravitational capture [189,190]. However, the question of lunar origin has not been settled since there are competing, albeit antiquated hypotheses [191,192]. I also discovered the stunning admission that, “…shamefacedly, [astronomers] have little idea as to where [the Moon] came from. This is particularly embarrassing… [193].” The oxygyre models the Moon as a macroxyon that has a macroelectron within itself; this simple gyrosystem accounts for the known chemical composition of the Moon surface, oxides [194]. Regarding lunar origin, the macroxyon that is the Moon emerges from the macroelectron that is the Earth, concomitant with the emergence of Earth’s macroxyon [195,196].

Several additional points can be derived from this gyrosystem. First, the oxygyre explains water on and in the Moon [197-199]. Second, the gyrating effects of the macroxygyre model the rotation of the Moon on its axis. Third, the path of a less exergic macroxyon (Moon) around more exergic one (Earth) follows an ohiogyre path, or lunar orbit. Fourth, this oxygyre provides insight into how tidal cycling is linked to lunar orbit and axial rotation [200] since the Earth’s oceans (macroxymatrix) and Moon itself (a macroxyon) exert complementary attractorepulsive forces. Fifth, this theoretical union also helps clarify short-term chronobiological ([201]; see 3.8) and long-term geophysical [202] relationships. Sixth, the craters that cover planetary, lunar, and satellite surfaces [203-205]—most if not all of which are near-perfect circles—bear the signature of the macroelectron singularity and its strong thermodynamic force on the oxygyre [206].

You know what? That doesn’t explain anything!

While the strange terminology and nonsensical claims could be clues that this is an elaborate Poe of some sort, the story I’ve heard from some other sources is that Andrulis is not getting tenure and will be leaving Case next year, and that he seems to have a history of tuning in and out — so what this most likely is is a developing personal tragedy. I hope he gets the care he clearly needs; his other work suggests that this is an intelligent mind that is currently going off the rails.

Setting Andrulis aside, though, there are other problems here. How did this paper get published? It’s terrible: unreadable, incoherent, bizarre, and completely lacking in evidence or mathematical support. This is from the very first issue of a new journal, Life, which also contains a perfectly reasonable general summary of origins of life research by Stuart Kauffman alongside Andrulis’s ghastly dreck. There seems to be a complete lack of editorial discrimination at the journal; this is not the way to build a reputation. Or rather, it is, but not a desirable one.

And then there is Science Daily, which seems to be the source where most of my correspondents found this paper. Science Daily is an incredibly annoying source: all they do is republish, without any kind of intelligent assessment, press releases. They suck. What good is mindless regurgitation?

And finally, there’s Case Western Reserve University, which must bear a share of the blame. Where did the press release come from? Why, from the Media Relations office at CWRU. Somebody wrote the press release that begins like this:

The earth is alive, asserts a revolutionary scientific theory of life emerging from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. The trans-disciplinary theory demonstrates that purportedly inanimate, non-living objects—for example, planets, water, proteins, and DNA—are animate, that is, alive. With its broad explanatory power, applicable to all areas of science and medicine, this novel paradigm aims to catalyze a veritable renaissance.

It’s madness stamped with the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine seal of approval. If Andrulis did Sokal the journal, he also Sokal’ed the institution that employs him. Who wrote that bullshit? Do they have anyone competent review their press releases before they mail them out to the whole wide world? Was there anyone thinking in all the steps from crank professor to PR department to journal editor to reviewers? There were so many points where this crackpottery should have been detected and rejected, and it didn’t happen.

(Also on Sb)

Science Daily has informed me that they have removed the press release from their site, and that it should never have made it through in the first place.

Also, apparently Case Western has removed the press release from their listings.