Polls of the American public are so depressing

Especially when they poll them on science knowledge. An AP poll on science doesn’t surprise me at all.

AP-GfK-March-2014-Poll_SCIENCE

At least it’s good to know that finally, after 50+ years of hard lobbying and information campaigns, it has finally sunk in that smoking causes cancer. What isn’t so good are the numbers on evolution and climate change. Only 31% are confident that humans evolved, while 42% are not confident. Why? Goddamn religion.

Confidence in evolution, the Big Bang, the age of the Earth and climate change decline sharply as faith in a supreme being rises, according to the poll. Likewise, those who regularly attend religious services or are evangelical Christians express much greater doubts about scientific concepts they may see as contradictory to their faith.

Here’s the problem, though: religious apologists. When even scientists, religious scientists in particular, are making excuses for a hoary old book of myths and poetry, how can we possibly advance understanding?

But evolution, the age of the Earth and the Big Bang are all compatible with God, except to Bible literalists, said Francisco Ayala, a former priest and professor of biology, philosophy and logic at the University of California, Irvine. And Darrel Falk, a biology professor at Point Loma Nazarene University and an evangelical Christian, agreed, adding: "The story of the cosmos and the Big Bang of creation is not inconsistent with the message of Genesis 1, and there is much profound biblical scholarship to demonstrate this."

OK, Ayala, define “god”. Go ahead, I keep waiting for a concrete, clear answer, but these apologists won’t give one, or they’ll mumble platitudes (the Ground State of All Being, they’ll say, which means fuck-all).

And hey, Darrel Falk, where in the scientific theory of cosmic origins is there a near-instantaneous creation of a garden on Earth (which didn’t even exist at the time of the Big Bang), a tree of magic fruit, and a talking snake? Sure, it’s compatible, as long as you ignore what the book actually says and pretend it’s all a big metaphor. Of course, you’re missing the One True Over-Riding Metaphor, which is “Humans are gullible saps who’ll believe anything.”

Patterson and Kehoe, and the great lead debate

You know what is really impressing me about Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos? That he doesn’t hesitate to draw connections between science and how we live our lives — there is an implicit understanding that science has become fundamental to how we see the universe. Last night’s episode was no exception. What started as an explanation for how we know the age of the earth (4.55 billion years), as established by the rigorous measurement of the ratio of lead to uranium in meteorites by Claire Patterson, became an exploration of health and the misuse of science, as personified by Robert Kehoe.

Patterson was an expert in analyzing trace elements; Kehoe was a doctor who was in the pocket of the petroleum industry. Patterson saw rising levels of lead in the environment as a consequence of its use as a fuel additive; Kehoe was getting paid to sow doubt. Patterson focused on the effects of environmental lead on human health; Kehoe was more concerned with the profit margins of industry. The campaigns for lead additives in fuel resemble the abuses of science used to promote cigarette smoking and to fight actions to curb greenhouse gases. I dug up a review from the 1990s by Jerome Nriagu, and it also reminded me of something else: the damned limited perspective of proper science by the non-scientists in the skeptics movement.

Here’s the first part of the abstract.

In 1925, Robert A. Kehoe enunciated a paradigm predicated upon categorical distinction between expectations and conjecture (“show me the data” mentality) from hard scientific facts on exposure outcomes. It led to a precedent-setting system of voluntary self-regulation by lead industry as a model for environmental control and implicitly signaled the level of industrial responsibility for lead pollution.

“Show me the data”? What could be wrong with that? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?

What that attitude fails to do, though, is to recognize degrees of uncertainty — that we don’t have absolute knowledge, but that all of our information comes with two measures: here’s what we’re pretty sure is true, and here’s a measure of variability or uncertainty to give you an idea of the bounds of our confidence. So Patterson measured the age of the earth at 4.55 billion, ±70 million years (that bound is now down to around 20 million years). The uninformed or the devious can choose to emphasize that uncertainty of 70! Million! Years!, which is a very long time, while the scientists are looking at the 4.55 billion part.

That is the Kehoe Paradigm: emphasize the noise in the data. Talk about nothing but the variability. Make it sound like the scientists are baffled by their own data, simply because they are aware of the limitations of their knowledge.

Cosmos was relatively gentle with Kehoe; he was clearly the villain of the story, but it didn’t make a big deal of the fact that he was a paid hack of the oil industry who was hiding the evidence in the name of profit. Well, not as big a deal as they could have, anyway — Kehoe was enabling world-wide environmental poisoning.

Here’s the rest of that abstract.

It combined a cascading uncertainty rule (there is always uncertainty to be found in a world of imperfect information) with a highly skewed cost-benefit concept (immediate benefits of tetraethyl lead additives must be weighed against possible future health hazards). Many studies were funded by the lead industry to develop a theoretical framework for the paradigm which served as a strong defensive strategy against lead critics. It resulted in an unfettered growth in automotive lead pollution to over 270,000 tons per year in the United States and 350,000 tons per year worldwide during the early 1970s. Clair Patterson is credited with being the first person to mount an effective challenge against the Kehoe paradigm, and with his success came an upsurge of activity and attention to the risks of environmental lead pollution on public health.

That should sound familiar: multiply uncertainty, and balance it with a biased cost-benefit analysis. How libertarian!

Maybe not all of you remember the 1960s-1970s, but I do: I remember the ads everywhere touting one brand of gasoline that put a “tiger in your tank!” I didn’t know at the time that the tiger was tetraethyl lead, and that a rather nasty environmental toxin, in addition to the carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, was pouring out of everyone’s exhaust pipes.

The heart of the Kehoe Paradigm was to first piously state that if it could be conclusively shown that tetraethyl lead was a public health danger, then of course the lead industry would stop, as the only rational and morally acceptable response. But then he would go on to argue that it wasn’t conclusive at all, yet — so the default response should be to allow industry to continue to profit until the consequences to public health were undeniable. And this neglect of responsibility was all neatly wrapped up in the claim that it was the “scientific” way of thinking — that somehow, science only deals with absolute truths and that you can’t draw scientific conclusions until every detail is knitted up with complete certainty.

The signals that this was all wrong should have been recognized early. Science is about a gradual convergence on a truth, and we make provisional statements about reality that are always subject to revision. If the preponderance of evidence leans one way (and that breathing tetraethyl lead was bad for humans was rather obvious), the onus is on dissenters to provide strong counter-evidence…not to natter on about what the scientists don’t know for sure. Need I point out that this is also familiar creationist strategy, that rather than actually providing a coherent theory and supporting body of evidence, they’d rather go on and on about our areas of uncertainty?

But also there was another obvious problem. Kehoe was bought and paid for.

Robert Kehoe and the lead industry were very closely entwined in more ways than just the theory and practice of occupational health protection — the lead industry built and equipped a laboratory for him, paid his salary (minus the $1.00 per year he received from the University of Cincinnati), and financed most of his research. The return for the symbiosis included an unprecedented control on research and knowledge about occupational and environmental lead hazards and the stifling of environmental pollution control programs in the United States for many decades.

I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that this villain lived in prosperity and prestige to the ripe old age of 99, dying in 1992, after a lifetime spent making sure that Big Oil could freely poison all the children in the country.

Another approach of the Kehoe Paradigm was to emphasize “thresholds”. A little bit of poison is OK; it’s only when it reaches some particular threshold that it becomes bad for you, and as long as the industry doesn’t cross that line, it is doing you no harm. In the case of lead, Kehoe argued that the threshold was 100 µg/m3 — which is a hell of a lot of lead. It’s also not true that there is a “threshold”. I recall getting harangued by my old genetics professor, George Streisinger, who had been testifying for the Downwinders (people who had been exposed to fallout from nuclear tests), that there is no such thing as a threshold for radiation exposure — it’s a continuous sliding scale of increasing probability of damage with increasing dosage. But if you draw an arbitrary line, sanctify it with the label of science, and say anything below the line can’t hurt you…well, Science says it’s safe, so it’s fine. Unfortunately, the evidence doesn’t say any such thing.

Patterson really was a hero, and I was happy to see Cosmos give the man credit. He used evidence to fight against Kehoe; for instance, he did measurements (as shown on the program) to show that pre-industrial levels of lead were 0.0005 µg/m3, in contrast to the modern American levels of approximately 1µg/m3 — we were breathing in 2000 times as much lead now. To argue that the lead industry was not making a massive contribution of poison to the environment was raw nonsense.

He also found fault with the whole “threshold” idea. The clinical responses to acute lead poisoning were just an extreme on a continuum — he speculated that “below the then accepted threshold concentration there were some effects which clinically might be difficult or impossible to detect or ascribe to their real cause.”

But he also emphasized the problem of bias. “You can use the data to justify your purposes. If your purpose is to sell lead alkyls, then you look at these data one way. If your purpose is to guard public health, you will look at this data in another way, and you will reach different conclusions.” Ataxia, coma, convulsions, and death are easy to diagnose, so using those as markers for a threshold may be convenient, but it ignores the subtle neurological effects, which might be important, too. Perhaps it isn’t surprising that crime levels have been in decline since lead emissions were limited (this is another case of a purely correlational measure, but let’s not ignore it — we’ve removed a neurological poison from the atmosphere, and simultaneously see a shift in human behavior? Reasonable mechanism, measurable response, worth pursuing more).

Patterson testified before congress, as shown on Cosmos, and really chewed out industry and Kehoe for their misappropriation of science.

It is clear, from the history of development of the lead pollution problem in the United States that responsible and regulatory persons and organizations concerned in this matter have failed to distinguish between scientific activity and the utilization of observations for material purpose. [such utilization] is not science…it is the defense and promotion of industrial activity. This utilization is not done objectively. It is done subjectively. … It is not just a mistake for public health agencies to cooperate and collaborate with industries in investigating and deciding whether public health is endangered—it is a direct abrogation and violation of the duties and responsibilities of those public health organizations. In the past, these bodies have acted as though their own activities and those of lead industries in health matters were science, and they could be considered objectively in that sense.

Patterson eventually won on this one specific issue, and we’re no longer burning tons and tons of lead. I wish I could say he’d won on the broader principle, though, because he didn’t — the Kehoe Paradigm is still the standard pseudoscientific approach used by industry to justify great evils. For instance, CEI is arguing that we shouldn’t expand regulation of industrial chemicals just because of a little ol’ spill in West Virgina with a slew of half-truths…including the claim that MCHM has “low toxicity”. It’s the threshold argument again.

We’re still trying to unravel the tangle he made of science policy, though. Kehoe’s Paradigm lives on at various right-wing think tanks, for instance, the Heartland Institute, where the headline that greeted me when I just visited was Climate Change Reconsidered, which concludes that the human effect is likely to be small relative to natural variability, and whatever small warming is likely to occur will produce benefits as well as costs. Change climate change to environmental lead, and it could be straight from Kehoe, and is just as honest.

At least Cosmos is making an effort to show that good science matters, and matters everywhere in your life.

Nriagu JO (1998) Clair Patterson and Robert Kehoe’s paradigm of “show me the data” on environmental lead poisoning. Environ Res. 78(2):71-8.

Salon sucks so bad

I give up. I’ve deleted my bookmarks to Salon. The final straw: two articles published today that are appalling in their inanity.

First up is Charles Darwin’s Tragic Error: Hitler, Evolution, Racism, and the Holocaust. Just the title tells you it’s a dishonest pile of crap. Most of it has nothing at all to do with Darwin (so why are they blaming him?), but here’s the key graf:

Modern racism had several different intellectual sources, and only with difficulty could one say which of these was most important. I will focus here on the “scientific” strand of racism, which drew its inspiration from Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection. Several factors dictate this emphasis on Darwinian racism. First, Darwinist racism explicitly motivated Hitler and many other leading perpetrators of the Holocaust. Second, Darwin inspired the researchers, most notably in biology and anthropology, who gave racism its aura of scientific certainty. Third, Darwinian thought may well have been more popular in Germany than anywhere else during these years, in part because Germany was the world’s leading center of biological research before World War I and the Germans were exceptionally literate. Finally, Darwinist racism was the brand of racism most easily understood by the widest number of people, in part because Darwin’s theory was astonishingly simple and easy to explain.

Right. “Several different intellectual sources,” but notice the absence of any mention of the Catholic or Lutheran churches, which were far more powerful sources for promoting anti-semitism. All the author has is the claim that Hitler’s racism was “inspired” by Darwin.

No, it wasn’t. Hitler did not make scientific arguments; he did not cite or credit Darwin; he did think God was peachy-keen and justified his actions on behalf of the right German people. His actual sources did not much care for Darwin.

RationalWiki has a good discussion of the subject. In particular, it discusses Houston Stewart Chamberlain — you cannot seriously discuss Hitler’s race arguments without referencing Chamberlain, and it’s a sure sign of a hack when Darwin is given more blame than Chamberlain.

Houston Stewart Chamberlain was an influence on Hitler’s antisemitism. In Chamberlain’s book, “Foundations of the Nineteenth Century” he wrote of “A manifestly unsound system like that of Darwin …” (Author’s Introduction, page lxxxviii), “… Darwinian castles in the air …” (First Part, Division II, Fourth Chapter, “Scientific Confusion” volume 1, footnote beginning on page 264), “… no tenable position can be derived even from the most consistent, and, therefore, most shallow Darwinism.” (Second Part, Ninth Chapter, “Historical Criterion” volume 2, pages 215-216)

The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, an infamous anti-Semitic fraud of some influence, includes Darwin among the Jewish conspiracies:

“Protocol 2: … 3. Do not suppose for a moment that these statements are empty words: think carefully of the successes we arranged for Darwinism, Marxism, Nietzsche-ism. To us Jews, at any rate, it should be plain to see what a disintegrating importance these directives have had upon the minds of the GOYIM.”

The Salon article is the kind of ahistorical hackery I’d expect from the Discovery Institute.

The second article reflects Salon’s recent dumbassed pandering of religion: Science Doesn’t Disprove God: Where Richard Dawkins and New Atheists Go Wrong. It’s embarrassingly bad. The authors argument is that science cannot build an AI, therefore God had to have created consciousness.

No, seriously. That’s his argument.

The question about consciousness is key to everything we are discussing. Modern cognitive science relies on the principles of evolution and posits that consciousness is something that can be produced artificially. Life-forms become more and more advanced through evolution, and eventually consciousness is the outcome. Thus, many cognitive science practitioners believe that machines can develop a consciousness as well, although this has never happened. Consciousness has never been produced in the lab, not even close.

That is not the basis of the anti-dualist argument. We expect that an AI could be constructed, but the reasons that we think the mind is a natural product of the activity of the brain rest on knowledge of how the brain works, how damage and chemical modification affect consciousness, and the mapping of activity in the brain to thought.

I don’t know of any biologist or atheist who is waiting to see a conscious machine before concluding that the mind is a product of the brain; there is simply no expectation that that is a necessary prerequisite. But this wanker is throwing out all of neuroscience because this one experiment can’t be done with current technology. OK, and the stars are only 500,000 miles from the Earth, and you can believe that right now because we haven’t built a starship to fly to Alpha Centauri.

He then makes the usual arguments from ignorance: gosh wow, but you can’t possibly create Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Picasso’s Guernica, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, or the palaces on Venice’s Grand Canal with brains made of meat, because they’re just too beautiful, therefore…

Therefore… (can you possibly guess what?)

Therefore…GOD. (You couldn’t possibly have seen that coming, could you?)

An alternative explanation is that God gave us the mental abilities and that extra something we use in making decisions and in creating great works of art, sublime music, magnificent architecture, beautiful literature, and science and mathematics. Our incredible brains can do all these things because they contain some ingredients that science has not yet found or explained and whose origin remains one of the deepest mysteries in all of science.

Fuck me. I can’t read this bullshit anymore. The Salon editors are just letting drivel through now.

Scientists can’t build a conscious robot yet, but God-diddlers can imagine superpowerful beings that are magically inserting thoughts into our heads, therefore theology wins.

That doesn’t fit my definition of ‘decent’

A few years ago, a Canadian teenager, Amanda Todd, killed herself after being harassed and extorted online. A man used flattery to get her to flash her breasts…and then used the photo he took to demand more, backed up by incessant threats online, revealing the photo to Todd’s friends, and promising to make her life hell forever. In at least one bit of justice, though, the Dutch police have now tracked down and charged the 35 year old man who preyed on teenagers worldwide through the internet. Do watch the video; the anger rush you’ll feel when you hear the jerk’s lawyer say that his client is “a decent man and a nice man” will make it worth it.

I pointed out back then that some members of the atheist community have a vile lack of empathy. I will mention it again. Miri rages against the online idiots who insist that internet activity can’t really do psychological harm — they diagnose freely over the internet, and claim that you can’t possibly develop stress disorders from the bullying tactics of the usual slymey suspects — Miri tears that argument up with basic scientific facts from the field of psychology (remember the days when skeptics at least paid lip service to science?)

I’m just going to point to Amanda Todd. Her death wasn’t virtual.

I’m also baffled by the reasoning: if it’s not ‘real’, if the only activities that can have a direct effect on someone’s sense of well-being are face-to-face, a punch in the nose, a bomb going off…then what the hell are you doing harassing people on the internet in the first place? Smart people who find themselves doing things over and over that they sincerely believe don’t work will stop doing them. I am compelled to believe that either they’re very stupid, or they are lying when they claim that their activities can’t possibly have an effect. Or both.

More perks of the tenure track

Now Todd Starnes has republished his hit piece on Town Hall — he seems to be dumping it on lower and lower levels of the self-devouring far right internet. Although, I do have to say that the comments are becoming even more entertaining.

Yes, there are conservative students at Morris. And Myers thinks he should be entitled to hunt them down and kill them. Talk about a sanctimonious jerk.

I want to hunt conservative students? Do I need to get a license, is there a specific season, and is there a bag limit?

Alas, once again, we have a rabid commenter who didn’t bother to read my article. Why should he, when Todd Starnes has told him what’s in it?

He’s a pompous fool, a bully, a merciless self-promoter, and a lousy excuse for a human being. He’s also a state employee who should be terminated immediately and barred from further public. . .um. . .service. Indeed, he should’ve been fired six years ago, when, in another act of scientific inquiry, he desecrated the Eucharist. But as an associate professor, he’s tenured, and absolutely no one would touch him if he strolled into the North Star offices, shot the editor between the eyes, and posted the video on YouTube.

I CAN DO THAT? When I get home, I’m going to have to check my employment contract — I don’t remember seeing that in there. Maybe it’s in the fine print.

Never let it be said that the fever swamp of the right wing has any connection with reality at all.

I drink your tears!

The tasty sweet tears of rage and frustration. Oh, I am so enjoying the current flood of email into my in-box. It’s not fair to keep it to myself, so I thought I’d share a sample.

Young Republicans

Sad little man, calling kids names . . . There is so much more hate and intolerance on the left it simply isn’t funny.

Look below.

Educator???

Professor Myers,

Have you forgotten that it’s your job to help students learn how to think, and not to bias them to think only like you? Also your demonization of those who don’t share your political views, as shown by the words you choose to describe them (“assholes”), reflects poorly on your education. Scientists never justify their work via fallacious Argumentum ad hominem, which is usually based on emotion, not on facts.

The only reason someone wants to destroy or suppress written information that doesn’t echo their views is that they don’t have any facts to refute it. If you strongly believe in your political views, why don’t you participate in moderated debates and let the students decide for themselves?

You haven’t read the North Star, have you? I’m not the only one shocked at the overt racism in it.

Scientists also do not deny facts clearly in evidence. The students behind the racist rag are young assholes. Are we seriously supposed to debate whether black people are discriminated against? Really?

yes to ends justifies the means

Those on the left these days clearly believe the “ends justifies the means” for liberals everywhere think nothing of physically attacking and physically destroying anyone and any idea they “think” is wrong. Free speech was once an ideal of those on the left – no longer.

It is. But you do understand that free speech has limits, right? Or why are you upset with me exercising my free speech…which is all I’ve done?

Tolerance and diversity.

You sir are a hypocrite. You call conservatives assholes. And conservative youngsters assholes in training. You also compared the north star paper to KKK And yet you have the hypocrisy to say ” treat their scattered papers as hate-filled trash and dispose of it appropriately. ” you are an asshole, communist who preaches hate. You liberals assholes preach tolerance and diversity, and yet you have none for anyone who disagrees with your opinion. You might not be criminally liable for the theft of the North Star papers but you sure as hell are personally responsible. You are not only a pathetic pitiful excuse for a human being but also a scum sucking, hate preaching hypocrite. How many young men and women have you brainwashed by preaching hate and intolerance? Haters like you should not be allowed anywhere near a classroom. People like you have destroyed this country. After listening to you insult people with differing opinions and attacking freedom of speech it’s obvious you would be much happier in a country like North Korea. I can only pray that the university of Minnesota Morris shits cans you out of your cushy little job in academia. And then you would actually have to work for a living. Until such a blessing to humanity occurs you need to shut your fucking mouth until you learn tolerance for other people.

Shut up until you learn to tolerate speech you disagree with! I think we’re done here.

You are a BITCH!

hey you little man…grow up! what a sad excuse for a human you are…you and OBAMA are both pieces of shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Did I just get compared to the president of the United States?

I looked up your picture – that’s what an intolerant bigot looks like

Typical of your ideology – free speech only for those who comply with the bigots.

Wait…the conservatives you’re defending are white racists, and I’m the bigot? OK.

Tolerance

Just read a story about how you view conservatives as ‘ass-holes’ and that you think that people should not read the campus conservative newspaper at your school.

Nice job being tolerance of people with opposing points of view from your own. Good example to set as an educator.

I guess you are just another one of those liberals who is for free speech as long as it agrees with your views.
And if teaching does not work out for you maybe you might try a different line of work – IRS or BLM agent might be perfect choices for you.

Conservative viewpoints: fine. I might disagree with them, but I agree that they should be allowed to be expressed. Why are you so freely associating “conservative” and “racist”?

Liberals and their hypocrisy

Mr. Meyers:

I saw your comments online regarding conservatives, republicans and Fox News, etc….

You do have a right to say what you think, but to call conservatives “uneducated”, when you must resort to profanities when describing them, shows who lacks an educated mind.

I find it alarming how liberals like yourself feel they have the right to say and do whatever is necessary to advance their views, but won’t tolerate someone that disagrees with them.

Again, another person who hasn’t read the North Star. I’d really be interested to hear from somebody who had, who still wants to claim it as a voice for conservatives.

U

U are on the wrong side of history and life. U must Undo the terrible wrong committed when you were born. U must for the sake of justice abort yourself immediately for Barack’s glory. Be a hero, do not delay.

That doesn’t even make sense.

Piece of shit

That’s all he had. A subject line, and then he was too intellectually exhausted to continue.

Asshole

You call conservatives assholes but you are the one filled with hate.

I didn’t use Trayvon Martin’s dead face as a prop in a crusade against racial diversity.

Being an Alumni of the U of M…

I am 100% offended by your actions against the Morris North Star paper!!!

I read about it initially from this link:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/04/15/did-professor-advocate-censorship-conservative-student-newspaper/

Your criticism of the paper apparently is that it was mocking minority students…Well, you sir went way beyond mocking!!!

Some day I wish folks like you would look in the mirror…I can dream, right?

I won’t return your hate speech with more hate speech (so I won’t call you names), but with a prayer that you can find it in yourself to rise se to a level equal to your education.

I went beyond mocking? The response to that paper has been universal: it is deplorable.

Twerp

So, you think you’re pretty smart!? From the things I’ve read, it sounds like you’re well on your way to setting your pompous liberal ass out for a good kicking. Do a favor for the rest of us in the real sciences – keep your frickin’, misguided political opinions to yourself!

Will you do the same?

ASS HOLE DEMOCRATS

HEY YOU PIECE OF SHIT….CALLING REPUBLICANS NAMES ..NOT VERY NICE…YOU ASSHOLE….CANT WAIT FOR THE REPUBLICANS TO TAKE CONTROL OF THIS COUNTRY AGAIN…OBUMMER HAS REALLY FUCKED IT UP…AND YOU ..YOU PIECE OF SHIT…THEY SHOULD FIRE YOUR ASS…17 TRILLION IN DEBT….NO ONE IN THE WORLD IS AFRAID OF THE U.S. ANYMORE..OBUMMER KEEPS SAYING YOU CROSS THE RED LINE..AND BOY ITS GOING TO BE TROUBLE..EVER COUNTRY OUT THERE JUST LAUGHS AT THE U.S….CANT WAIT TO GET THE REPUBLICANS BACK IN CONTROL …I GUARANTEE YOU PUTIN WOULD NOT BE DOING WHAT HE IS DOING IF WE HAD A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT WHO IS NOT AFRAID OF HIS OWN FUCKIN SHADOW…..IN THE MEAN TIME ASSHOLE BACK OFF THE YOUNG REPUBLICANS…BECAUSE YOU TIME WILL COME..HAHA…

There’s always one who loves his capslock key.

Why don’t you move to a country that suits your totalitarian ideological worldview?

It’s shameful that you and your pathetic so-called ‘university’ share more in common with Herbert Marcuse and Gramsci than with the intellectual tradition of western liberalism. It’s shameful that your opinion of democracy and liberty is virtually indistinguishable from the perfidious view of Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan. What you have in common with the aforementioned is an illiberal, intolerant, and tyrannical ideology advanced, in Machiavellian and Orwellian fashion, under the label of democracy and liberalism. Once liberalism has served its purpose, facilitating “the long march,” the left’s true ideological bent towards totalitarianism is revealed. And you are quite the exemplar, perched in one of the institutions Gramsci targeted, a western university, preaching a jihad against free speech and intellectual freedom, the very vehicles that delivered you and your ilk to a position of influence in society.

But just think that there are countries fully committed to your worldview. You could move to Cuba, Red China, Venezuela, North Korea, Russia, and Belarus, to name a few. You could trash all manner of authentic, classical western liberal literature and, instead of being taunted, you could be praised and revered by your fellow travelers on the “shining path.” Imagine yourself in the middle of a frenzied crowd of kindred “souls” (yes, we know your religion is atheism) in some Middle East anti-western Shangri-La burning an American flag and a cheap Chinese reproduction of the U.S. Constitution. A true left-wing oasis. No dissent. Lot’s of stupid and pliant drones ready to receive your illiberal instruction and light up the night sky with huge bonfires of western literature. Come to think of it, it’s a lot like the University of Minnesota-Morris.

There’s also always the pretentious one, who drags out obscure figures from history and calls atheism a religion and while complaining about defending free speech, wants me to move to North Korea.

A different view point

Has any conservative ever provided a view point that was contrary to yours yet remained valid in your eyes? If yes, how far off was it? If no, what made yours the most valid? Must students always agree with your viewpoint or do you encourage them to do the research, and reach their own conclusion?

Libel and dead black boys are not points to be argued.

I’m sure there’ll be more. It’s not very interesting, though: they clearly haven’t read either what I wrote, or what the North Star wrote, and are just parroting the twists Fox News made…which actually justifies my comments about Fox News.

As promised, Fox News is whining about me

I told you some guy called me for an interview about the horrible crime committed on the UMM campus: the presumed ‘theft’ of some free newspapers from a conservative organization. They say I now advocate censorship of conservative student newspaper, which is a fine twist on the affair.

Their description of the newspaper was particularly enlightening about Fox dishonesty.

That particular edition included a satire on affirmative action. The professor said the paper was mocking minority students.

Not quite accurate. I pointed out that their mockery crossed a rather nasty line; it had gone beyond mere ‘satire’ into the realm of advocating racism. It included direct accusations that faculty and administrators were racist because they endorsed affirmative action and were committed to correcting historical injustices. And this was the final straw for me, that it included:

…a crime scene photo of Trayvon Martin’s dead face, with the caption Trayvon Martin, victim of racism and fascism, and what does [administrator] have to say about it? Nothing. Not a single thing.

And with that, they have crossed a line. Free speech is one thing, making light of murder and claiming that our chancellor of student affairs excuses it is another. Using dead black boys to “satirize” equality is contemptible. I would advocate the disposal of their flyers if the Ku Klux Klan started papering our campus, and likewise, the North Star has worn out its welcome and must go. Treat their scattered papers as hate-filled trash and dispose of it appropriately.

If Todd Starnes thinks old-fashioned race-baiting, libel against faculty and staff, flaunting the face of murdered black people to intimidate and horrify students, and lying about crimes is merely an implicit part of the conservative agenda, then yes, I advocate kicking such behavior off campus altogether. But then, I guess that’s what conservativism has become nowadays.

We had an incident a while back in which racist signs were posted in one of the dorms; there was no question but that they were disposed of and an effort made to discover who was responsible. The North Star newspaper is simply the fancier version of those crudities, and should be removed from campus in the same way; and we already, in this case, know who was responsible.

Two other points: I can find old copies of the North Star in the science building hallways, still — copies from several months ago. The University Register, which is the official campus paper, gets routinely cleaned up each week — I don’t think I’d be able to find a copy of last week’s paper anywhere. I question whether this ‘theft’ even occurred, and wonder whether this is just a publicity stunt for self-martyred Breitbart wanna-bes; I also wonder whether their threats are inhibiting people from doing standard clean up around campus.

Finally, just a hint to the North Star: if you have to slap a great big warning on every issue and just about every page that your newspaper may contain satire, you aren’t doing satire right.

That’s a terrible chart

I wish I’d had this a few weeks ago, when I was telling students how not to present their data. This is a chart illustrating the effects of stand-your-ground-laws on murder in Florida.

badfloridagundeaths

I glanced at that and thought, “Whoa, surprise: the stand-your-ground-laws had a pretty dramatic effect in reducing murder. I did not expect that at all.”

And then I was a bit disappointed: “But they really should have set the Y axis at zero. It’s a bit misleading and magnifies the apparent effect, otherwise.”

And then I did a double-take: “They inverted the freaking Y axis!”

That’s right. It doesn’t show a decline, it shows a dramatic spike in murder after the law was passed. The text in the article actually says that clearly, but the chart was actively selling the opposite message. They’ve since added a corrected chart that actually makes the point clearly, instead of obscuring it.

betterfloridagundeaths

I took away two points. It’s really easy to lie with graphics, and shouldn’t any evidence-based legal system recognize the consequences of passing a bad law and correct itself?

More from a data visualization expert.

Cataclysms on the way!

What are you doing this summer? You might want to change your vacation plans. There is going to be a lunar eclipse tomorrow night, and according to Pastor Hagee, that means disaster. I don’t know what he’s talking about; he’s a minister, he gets loads of tax breaks, so 15 April is no big deal to him.

"I believe that the heavens are God’s billboard, that he has been sending signals to planet Earth," he explained. "God is literally screaming at the world, ‘I’m coming soon.’"

So what’s going to happen?

Hagee predicted that the four eclipses were signaling a "world-shaking event that will happen between April 2014 and October 2015."

A world-shaking event, some time in a span of a year and a half? That’s pretty vague. Could you at least say something like an event that starts with the letter ‘m’, or maybe ‘j’ or ‘t’, on a planet with a name that definitely begins with an ‘e’. Come on, try a little harder.

But this surprises me:

"God sends planet Earth a signal that something big is about to happen! He’s controlling the Sun and the moon right now to send our generation a signal, but the question is, are we getting it?"

He’s controlling the Sun and moon? But these are phenomena that are reliable and mathematically predictable, a pattern determined by the movements of the bodies involved. It’s like announcing that twice today, God will make both the little hand and the big hand on your clock point straight up — it’s a non-power. We don’t need prayer for it to happen, and praying won’t stop it from happening, and it won’t mean anything other than that it is noon and midnight.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and predict that sometime today, god will make me hungry, and then god will make me find something to eat, and later tonight god will make me sleepy.

Uh-oh, how will I be able to remain an atheist with proof like that?

So go crawl into a dark Faraday cage and wait for civilization to collapse

Salon sometimes, and with increasing frequency lately, publishes some genuinely pernicious crap. I notice they’ve been experimenting with click-baity titles and more lists (I am growing to hate lists on the internet), there is more and more gullible religious pandering, and some days I think they’re experience huffpo envy — ‘if only we were a little more schlocky and gossipy and threw in some more T&A, we’d get more traffic!’ And now they’ve published some hysterical nonsense about cell phones causing cancer. Apparently there are no editors on the staff with even the slightest bit of scientific training who’d recognize that this claim is oft-debunked nonsense.

They even gave it the title “Your cell phone is killing you”, although they did exercise some restraint in leaving off the expected six exclamation points afterwards. The content consists of selective mention (not citation — the author doesn’t bother to give us enough information to track down the work) of only papers that show any purported effect of electromagnetic radiation at all, and hysterically concludes that we’re all in the middle of a great experiment that will end with the bees all dead and all of us having gigantic tumors on one side of our heads, Alzheimer’s disease, and with our sperm all limp and zombiefied, which is a good thing, because otherwise those sperm would spawn hideous mutant offspring.

Ho hum. In the 19th century, people were concerned about electricity leaking out of outlets if they weren’t turned off (in houses that had open gas flames!). We’ve had the terrors of high tension wires zapping everyone passing under them with madness and death inducing magnetic fluxes. Now it’s cell phones. They’re next to your head! They’re transmitting!

And you know what they’re transmitting? Radiation.

Most notably, the entire power grid is an EMF-generation network that reaches almost every individual in America and 75% of the global population. Today, early in the 21st century, we find ourselves fully immersed in a soup of electromagnetic radiation on a nearly continuous basis.

Yes, we are. It’s true. Of course, it’s not just the 21st century: when early humans stepped out of their caves to throw sticks at antelope 100,000 years ago, they were fully immersed in a soup of electromagnetic radiation on a nearly continuous basis. The earth has a magnetic field of several hundred milliGauss, and visible light has a frequency of about 500 trillion Hz; yet you don’t sense any effect of that magnetic field, and sunlight at that frequency merely warms your skin (higher frequency light, around 1000 trillion Hz, does damage cells severely — it’s the UV that gives you sunburn).

Yet even if you live directly under a high tension line, that source is only providing about 1-2 milliGauss, and cell phones are radiating at at about one billion Hz, an insignificant fraction of the energy from the soup bath in electromagnetic reaction you get from just walking around outside, even when slathered in high SPF sunscreen.

However, while science has not yet answered all of our questions, it has determined one fact very clearly—all electromagnetic radiation impacts living beings.

This is certainly true! Here’s James May cooking a hot dog and melting a steel plate by using a mirror to focus sunlight.

The inescapable conclusion of this experiment: we must ban flashlights. Otherwise, they might fall into the hands of small children who would then use them to disintegrate their playmates.

This is representative of what the author of this silly piece, Martin Blank, does throughout his article. He looks selectively at the literature, reports only on the cases that support his conclusions, and then makes sweeping assertions of disaster awaiting us all.

As I will discuss, science demonstrates a wide range of bioeffects linked to EMF exposure. For instance, numerous studies have found that EMF damages and causes mutations in DNA—the genetic material that defines us as individuals and collectively as a species. Mutations in DNA are believed to be the initiating steps in the development of cancers, and it is the association of cancers with exposure to EMF that has led to calls for revising safety standards. This type of DNA damage is seen at levels of EMF exposure equivalent to those resulting from typical cell phone use.

This is not true. The National Cancer Institute summarizes the effects of cell phones:

Studies thus far have not shown a consistent link between cell phone use and cancers of the brain, nerves, or other tissues of the head or neck. More research is needed because cell phone technology and how people use cell phones have been changing rapidly.

That last sentence, the one that begins “More research is needed”? That’s what we call a CYA statement: a bureaucratic cover-your-ass bit of boilerplate to make sure that some remote happenstance doesn’t cause them regret — it’s also a standard appeal for “give us more money” from a funding agency. But read the rest: they describe many of the experiments and the evidence, and also summarizes the common flaws that lead some studies to contradict the sense and science of electromagnetic fields. The conclusion from all of the major organizations is that any effect of cell phones is so marginal that no significant consequence of cell phone use on your physiology is detectable. Compare that to Blank’s claim.

Or you can get Steve Novella’s opinion, or Orac’s. It’s not impossible that the teeny-tiny emissions of your cell phone might lightly tickle some cells in some subtle, unpredictable way, but the totality of the current evidence says no, it doesn’t seem to have any significant effect.

If you’re still worried, here are instructions on how to build a Faraday cage (short summary: lots of aluminum foil). Climb in, and turn the lights off. And no flashlights! You could incinerate someone with one of those!