Cross that solution off the list of alternative energy sources

One source of fuel hydrocarbons in the 19th century was the whaling industry. I guess that won’t work in the 21st century.

According to industry website SaveTheWhales.org, a sperm whale could produce 2000 gallons, or 47.6 barrels, of oil. Thus a touch of long division tells us that we will need to slaughter approximately 630 million sperm whales each year in order to completely replace our petroleum production. Since there are only an estimated one million sperm whales currently living on Earth, wiping out the entire species would power the global economy for about half a day.

Too bad. I wonder how much oil we could squeeze out of puppy dogs and bunny rabbits?

Freethinkers are a happy and generous people

Last night, I attended talks by Katha Pollitt and Julia Sweeney here at the Freedom from Religion Convention, and I learned that the godless are a happy, humorous, good-natured group — even if I weren’t philosophically inclined this way myself, I’d want to be a member of this community.

Then this morning, I checked in on my DonorsChoose challenge and discover that you’re all generous and charitable, and that you care about kids and education. I’m having a grinch moment right here…my heart is growing a few sizes larger, and I’m pretty sure it’s not a symptom of congestive heart failure. We met my initial challenge to raise $10,000, and then some.

So then, because this particular atheist is a cruel taskmaster, I simply bumped up the challenge amount to $20,000, and added a bunch of new grant requests, including some that asked for tools to do developmental biology in the lab, and some on fossils. So if you haven’t yet kicked in, you’ve still got an opportunity.

If that isn’t enough for you, or if you’d rather not have your donations going to a group labeled “freethinkers”, check out the Scienceblogs leaderboard — there are lots of unfunded proposals in those other guys spaces. I told them they should have tapped into the charitable goodness of the godless if they really wanted to draw in donations.

Oh, and many thanks to Phil for drawing in the astronomy crowd. Even people who stare into the cold, unfeeling void for fun are glad to help a good cause.

And thanks to all of you!

Lua’s thoughts on the Soul Made Flesh reading

While I was reading the assigned chapters of the book Soul Made Flesh (Zimmer, 2004) for class this past week, I came upon the story of the physician Thomas Sydenham. He was particularly good at making careful bedside observations while he was treating patients. In fact, he made the observation that diseases acted the same in everyone, and they were not unique to an individual. He made careful notes on disease symptoms, and even suggested that perhaps diseases should be treated as if they are individual species.

Sydenham’s work turned out to be controversial, because when prescribing a treatment, sometimes he would not use the traditional one, but instead would experiment with different treatments. Other physicians wanted to get his license revoked because his experimentation outraged them, even though Sydenham documented which treatments seemed to work better. We discussed this a bit in class, but I want to know why his new treatments were so controversial. If he devised his treatments in a manner that seemed logical, and he had experimental evidence to back it up, why was there such resistance? Is it perhaps that people could not accept that traditional treatments really did not work, and that they may now be responsible for the deaths of many people that could have been saved? Or is it simply a matter of people not being able to accept that things change?

“a day that will live in inframey”

I unashamedly stole that title from Warren—it was just too good to pass up.

If I was an opponent of framing before, I’m afraid my views have now hardened far more: one Framer thinks Al Gore, winner of the Nobel, is a flop. What does a person have to do to convince the framing crowd that they’re communicating science? That they’re opening up the public discussion? That they’re making people think? We already know that writing a best-selling book doesn’t do it, and now we learn that winning the acknowledgment of the world community with a Nobel prize isn’t significant, either. “Framing” seems to alienate atheists and evolutionary biologists, and now it’s dissing the environmentalist movement.

I mean, come on. The guy just won a Nobel Peace Prize, and your response — from the perspective of someone who claims to be an expert in communication — is that Gore just might be hindering the discussion that the global community just lauded him for advancing.

“Framing” has gone beyond annoying to insane. I wash my hands of it.

Travelin’ again

As you read this, the Trophy Wife™ and I are zooming down I94, on our way to a pleasant weekend together in Madison for the Freedom from Religion Convention. Our hotel does have wi-fi, so have no fear — I won’t be out of touch. And perhaps I’ll have tales of Julia Sweeney and Christopher Hitchens to share with you all.

If you’re in Madison, too, don’t forget: Saturday, 12-2, at Brocach is the IIDB/Pharynguloid meetup.

Congratulations, Al

Al Gore and the IPCC have won the 2007 Nobel Peace prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”.

Now run for president, Al — we need someone with the respect of the international community to repair all that our current chief nitwit has broken.

Freethinkers for education

Now you must donate to my DonorsChoose challenge. For the honor of the godless.

One of those pathetic appeasers has made this an issue of the charity of atheists, has accused us of being “cheap bastards”, and claims that his weak-kneed, wobbly camp of wooly-headed apologists for delusion are more generous than we are, and more interested in promoting science education. We know he’s wrong, of course, but hey, when they let theologians use them for a doormat, it’s understandable that they might be burdened with lots of foolish ideas.

I gave them a 10 day head start. Now this means we have to fire up and give him a good kick in the ass as we pass him by.

Let’s donate now. Every penny sent to these teachers is now a symbol of the moral superiority of freethinkers.

By the way, you can also win prizes, like an iPod and Seed subscriptions for your donations. But we don’t care. We’re going to donate simply because we’re good people.