An encyclopedia of life?

I wish I could be more enthusiastic about the Encyclopedia of Life project. It’s to be an online encyclopedia with a substantive page dedicated each species on the planet, and it’s endorsed by E.O. Wilson, with sponsorship from some of the most prestigious museums around. It’s a fantastic idea that would be incredibly useful.

But then …

The demonstration pages are beautiful, maybe too beautiful. There’s the promise of a colossal amount of information in each one, although at this point all they’ve got are very pretty but nonfunctional images of what the page will look like — but you can see that the content is not trivial and the organization is detailed. I browsed the FAQ to see how they’re going to do it, and it’s awfully vague. “Mashups” of existing databases? Recruiting sources from existing online collections? They were inspired by Wikipedia? (No, please no…if it’s wikified it will be useless as a source of technical information.) I look at the money they’ve got — $12 million — and the number of species they aim to catalog — 1.8 million — and it just doesn’t add up to me. Aren’t they going to burn through that much money in just paying for the emergency room visits for the brawling systematists fighting over the ontological issues?

I don’t mean to sound so negative, since I think it’s an eminently laudable goal, but I get very, very suspicious when I see all the initial efforts loaded towards building a pretty front end while the complicated core of the project is kept out of focus. I’d be more impressed with something like NCBI Entrez, which, while not as attractive as the EOL mockups, at least starts with the complicated business of integrating multiple databases. I want to see unlovely functionality first, before they try to entice me with a pretty face.

(via John Logsdon)

Roy Zimmerman keeps writing those songs

As a fan of Roy Zimmerman — I’ve mentioned his Creation Science 101 before, among other lovely songs about the modern world — I have two revelations for you. If you’re a guitar player, he has released a short clip that is a tutorial on how to play Creation Science 101. There are fingerings and keys and chords and things that lost me. If you aren’t a guitar player (like me!) you can still enjoy the wisecracks.

Secondly, he has a new YouTube video titled “Ted Haggard is Completely Heterosexual”. Watch out, it’s a little bit risque — he rhymes “schism” with … well, it’s obvious from the subject matter, isn’t it?

Comfort/Cameron performed as you might have predicted

The Rational Response Squad has released an amateur video of their debate with Cameron and Comfort.

I didn’t care for the argument that the universe might be infinite, but otherwise, not bad. Not great, either, but then they were just presenting the sensible position. Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron were terrible. They quickly abandoned the pretense of providing scientific evidence, and instead reached for the bible and simply asserted its truth.

I just have to expand on something in the face of a lot of criticism of the Rational Response Squad in the comments. I agree that they weren’t as polished as we might have wanted, some of their arguments weren’t very sharp, and there were missed opportunities…but the important thing is that they stepped up to the challenge and confronted those creationist kooks. Maybe deGrasse Tyson would have done a much better job, but so what? He’s one guy.

We aren’t going to win this conflict when a few of our very best speakers give an eloquent speech. We are going to win when every average Jane and Joe in the country realizes that they are smarter and better informed than clowns like Comfort and Cameron, and when half the audience at these kinds of events rises out of their seat to confidently argue with them…and the other half are sitting there laughing at the creationists.

So sure, we can and should quibble with their presentation—that’s how it will get better—but keep in mind the last time you got up to confront a creationist in public.

There are no marching morons

I was sent a link to this editorial by the science-fiction writer, Ben Bova. I like part of the sentiment, where he’s arguing that it’s worth the effort to try and change the world, but a substantial part of it bugs me.

The most prescient — and chilling — of all the science fiction stories ever written, though, is “The Marching Morons,” by Cyril M. Kornbluth, first published in 1951. It should be required reading in every school on Earth.

The point that Kornbluth makes is simple, and scary: dumbbells have more children than geniuses. In “The Marching Morons” he carries that idea to its extreme, but logical, conclusion.

Kornbluth tells of a future world that is overrun with dummies: men and women who don’t know anything beyond their own shallow personal interests. They don’t know how their society works, or who is running it. All they care about is their personal — and immediate — gratification.

I detest “The Marching Morons.”

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