What Is Your Animal Personality?
brought to you by Quizilla and Orac
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Anne a Horse?
Hmmm,.. somebody is wondering who I am? and like the testimonials they won't give their name.....
What Is Your Animal Personality?
brought to you by Quizilla and Orac
What Is Your Animal Personality?
brought to you by Quizilla and Orac
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
"Intelligent Design" Is Not Science
Excellent article in today's latimes.com: "Intelligent Design" Is Not Science.
It's religion!
By Henry Weinstein, Times Staff Writer
A federal judge, saying "intelligent design" is "an interesting theological argument, but … not science," ruled Tuesday that a school board violated the Constitution by compelling biology teachers to present the concept as an alternative to evolution.
The ruling came after U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III heard 21 days of testimony in a closely watched trial that pitted a group of parents against the school board in the town of Dover, Pa.
In October 2004, the board had required school officials to read a statement to ninth-graders declaring that Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution were "a theory … not a fact," and that "gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence."
"Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view," the statement said.
Jones, a church-going conservative who was appointed to the federal bench by President Bush in 2002, said the statement was clearly designed to insert religious teachings into the classroom. He used much of his 139-page ruling to dissect arguments made for intelligent design.
Legal experts described the ruling as a sharp defeat for the intelligent design movement — one likely to have considerable influence with other judges, although it is only legally binding in one area of Pennsylvania.
The "overwhelming evidence" has established that intelligent design "is a religious view, a mere relabeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory," Jones wrote.
Public remarks by school board members, he said, made clear that they adopted the statement to advance specific religious views.
Testimony at the trial included remarks from a board meeting, where one of the backers of the intelligent design statement "said words to the effect of '2,000 years ago someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?' " the judge noted.
Supporters of intelligent design argue that biological systems are so complex that they could not have arisen by a series of random changes. The complexity of life implies an intelligent designer, they say. Most of the movement's spokesmen take care not to publicly say whether the designer they have in mind is equivalent to the God in the Bible. On that basis, they argue that their concept is scientific, not religious.
But Jones said the concept was inescapably religious.
"Although proponents of the [intelligent design movement] occasionally suggest that the designer could be a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist, no serious alternative to God as the designer has been proposed by members" of the movement, including expert witnesses who testified, Jones wrote.
Remarks by board members that they had secular purposes in mind — to improve science teaching and to foster an open debate — were a "sham" and a "pretext for the board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom," he wrote.
Anticipating attacks, Jones said his ruling was not the "product of an activist judge."
He said school board officials had lied in their testimony and excoriated them for not bothering to understand what intelligent design was about before making their decision. He rebuked what he called the "breathtaking inanity of the board's decision."
"This case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case" on intelligent design, he wrote.
The school district will not appeal the ruling, said Patricia Dapp, who was elected to the Dover board this year. The supporters of intelligent design have been voted out of office, and eight members of the board now oppose the concept, she said.
The Dover trial, in which Jones heard testimony from leading advocates of intelligent design as well as experts on evolutionary theory, was one of several battlegrounds for intelligent design in the last year.
In January, a U.S. district judge in Georgia ruled that the school system in Cobb County, near Atlanta, had violated the Constitution by requiring stickers to be placed on biology textbooks casting doubt on the theory of evolution.
This month, a federal appeals court in Atlanta considered arguments in the case, with at least one judge expressing doubts about the lower court ruling.
In Kansas, the state Board of Education has changed the definition of science to permit supernatural explanations.
That reliance on the supernatural was key to Jones' rejection of the Dover school board's position.
Intelligent design arguments "may be true, a proposition on which this court takes no position," he wrote, but it "is not science."
"The centuries-old ground rules of science" make clear that a scientific theory must rely solely on natural explanations that can be tested, he wrote.
That portion of the decision won praise from Kenneth R. Miller, a biology professor at Brown University in Providence, R.I. He was the lead expert witness for the parents in the case and is the author of biology textbooks used in college and high school classrooms.
Miller testified that it was crucial that scientific propositions be able to be tested.
To illustrate his point, Miller, an avid fan of the Boston Red Sox, testified that when his team beat the New York Yankees in the 2004 baseball playoffs, a fan might have believed "God was tired of [Yankee owner] George Steinbrenner and wanted to see the Red Sox win."
"In my part of the country, you'd be surprised how many people think that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for what happened last year. And you know what? It might be true. But it certainly is not science … and it's certainly not something we can test," Miller said.
Supporters of intelligent design denounced Jones' ruling along the lines the judge had predicted.
"The Dover decision is an attempt by an activist federal judge to stop the spread of a scientific idea … and it won't work," said John West, associate director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. The institute, based in Seattle, is a major backer of the intelligent design movement.
"Anyone who thinks a court ruling is going to kill off interest in intelligent design is living in another world," West said.
Richard Thompson of the Thomas More Law Center, the lead lawyer for the school board members, called the ruling an "ad hominem attack on scientists who happen to believe in God."
"The founders of this country would be astonished at the thought that this simple curriculum change [was] in violation of the Constitution that they drafted," he said.
But Lee Strang, a constitutional law professor at Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, Mich., which advocates a greater role for religion in public life, said that given Supreme Court precedents and the evidence that Dover school board members had religious goals in mind, Jones' ruling was inevitable.
The Supreme Court in 1987 barred the teaching in public schools of what backers called creation science. The concept of intelligent design emerged after that ruling, Jones noted in his ruling.
Douglas Laycock of the University of Texas School of Law said the ruling would probably have considerable influence because it came after a trial in which "both sides brought in their top guns" to testify.
The judge's detailed ruling "will be quite persuasive to other judges and lawyers thinking about provoking a similar case elsewhere," he said.
Marci Hamilton, a professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York, who is an expert on religious freedom issues, agreed that the ruling could have broad ramifications.
"These are tough times to rule against a religious group," Hamilton said. "This decision sends a message to judges that it is not anti-religious to find things like intelligent design unconstitutional."
Eric Rothschild, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, called the ruling "a real vindication of the courage [the parents] showed and the position they took."
The testimony, he said, had demonstrated that "the emperor had no clothes. The judge concluded that intelligent design had no scientific merit" and could not "uncouple itself from religion."
Source: Reuters
It's religion!
By Henry Weinstein, Times Staff Writer
A federal judge, saying "intelligent design" is "an interesting theological argument, but … not science," ruled Tuesday that a school board violated the Constitution by compelling biology teachers to present the concept as an alternative to evolution.
The ruling came after U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III heard 21 days of testimony in a closely watched trial that pitted a group of parents against the school board in the town of Dover, Pa.
In October 2004, the board had required school officials to read a statement to ninth-graders declaring that Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution were "a theory … not a fact," and that "gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence."
"Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view," the statement said.
Jones, a church-going conservative who was appointed to the federal bench by President Bush in 2002, said the statement was clearly designed to insert religious teachings into the classroom. He used much of his 139-page ruling to dissect arguments made for intelligent design.
Legal experts described the ruling as a sharp defeat for the intelligent design movement — one likely to have considerable influence with other judges, although it is only legally binding in one area of Pennsylvania.
The "overwhelming evidence" has established that intelligent design "is a religious view, a mere relabeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory," Jones wrote.
Public remarks by school board members, he said, made clear that they adopted the statement to advance specific religious views.
Testimony at the trial included remarks from a board meeting, where one of the backers of the intelligent design statement "said words to the effect of '2,000 years ago someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?' " the judge noted.
Supporters of intelligent design argue that biological systems are so complex that they could not have arisen by a series of random changes. The complexity of life implies an intelligent designer, they say. Most of the movement's spokesmen take care not to publicly say whether the designer they have in mind is equivalent to the God in the Bible. On that basis, they argue that their concept is scientific, not religious.
But Jones said the concept was inescapably religious.
"Although proponents of the [intelligent design movement] occasionally suggest that the designer could be a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist, no serious alternative to God as the designer has been proposed by members" of the movement, including expert witnesses who testified, Jones wrote.
Remarks by board members that they had secular purposes in mind — to improve science teaching and to foster an open debate — were a "sham" and a "pretext for the board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom," he wrote.
Anticipating attacks, Jones said his ruling was not the "product of an activist judge."
He said school board officials had lied in their testimony and excoriated them for not bothering to understand what intelligent design was about before making their decision. He rebuked what he called the "breathtaking inanity of the board's decision."
"This case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case" on intelligent design, he wrote.
The school district will not appeal the ruling, said Patricia Dapp, who was elected to the Dover board this year. The supporters of intelligent design have been voted out of office, and eight members of the board now oppose the concept, she said.
The Dover trial, in which Jones heard testimony from leading advocates of intelligent design as well as experts on evolutionary theory, was one of several battlegrounds for intelligent design in the last year.
In January, a U.S. district judge in Georgia ruled that the school system in Cobb County, near Atlanta, had violated the Constitution by requiring stickers to be placed on biology textbooks casting doubt on the theory of evolution.
This month, a federal appeals court in Atlanta considered arguments in the case, with at least one judge expressing doubts about the lower court ruling.
In Kansas, the state Board of Education has changed the definition of science to permit supernatural explanations.
That reliance on the supernatural was key to Jones' rejection of the Dover school board's position.
Intelligent design arguments "may be true, a proposition on which this court takes no position," he wrote, but it "is not science."
"The centuries-old ground rules of science" make clear that a scientific theory must rely solely on natural explanations that can be tested, he wrote.
That portion of the decision won praise from Kenneth R. Miller, a biology professor at Brown University in Providence, R.I. He was the lead expert witness for the parents in the case and is the author of biology textbooks used in college and high school classrooms.
Miller testified that it was crucial that scientific propositions be able to be tested.
To illustrate his point, Miller, an avid fan of the Boston Red Sox, testified that when his team beat the New York Yankees in the 2004 baseball playoffs, a fan might have believed "God was tired of [Yankee owner] George Steinbrenner and wanted to see the Red Sox win."
"In my part of the country, you'd be surprised how many people think that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for what happened last year. And you know what? It might be true. But it certainly is not science … and it's certainly not something we can test," Miller said.
Supporters of intelligent design denounced Jones' ruling along the lines the judge had predicted.
"The Dover decision is an attempt by an activist federal judge to stop the spread of a scientific idea … and it won't work," said John West, associate director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. The institute, based in Seattle, is a major backer of the intelligent design movement.
"Anyone who thinks a court ruling is going to kill off interest in intelligent design is living in another world," West said.
Richard Thompson of the Thomas More Law Center, the lead lawyer for the school board members, called the ruling an "ad hominem attack on scientists who happen to believe in God."
"The founders of this country would be astonished at the thought that this simple curriculum change [was] in violation of the Constitution that they drafted," he said.
But Lee Strang, a constitutional law professor at Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, Mich., which advocates a greater role for religion in public life, said that given Supreme Court precedents and the evidence that Dover school board members had religious goals in mind, Jones' ruling was inevitable.
The Supreme Court in 1987 barred the teaching in public schools of what backers called creation science. The concept of intelligent design emerged after that ruling, Jones noted in his ruling.
Douglas Laycock of the University of Texas School of Law said the ruling would probably have considerable influence because it came after a trial in which "both sides brought in their top guns" to testify.
The judge's detailed ruling "will be quite persuasive to other judges and lawyers thinking about provoking a similar case elsewhere," he said.
Marci Hamilton, a professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York, who is an expert on religious freedom issues, agreed that the ruling could have broad ramifications.
"These are tough times to rule against a religious group," Hamilton said. "This decision sends a message to judges that it is not anti-religious to find things like intelligent design unconstitutional."
Eric Rothschild, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, called the ruling "a real vindication of the courage [the parents] showed and the position they took."
The testimony, he said, had demonstrated that "the emperor had no clothes. The judge concluded that intelligent design had no scientific merit" and could not "uncouple itself from religion."
Source: Reuters
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Always be skeptical
Have you ever visited the Scientific Assessment?
I did today and this post directed me to Skepsisfere, where I found some interesting links and tips how to
The article gives you some quick tips to identify wrong knowledge and false theories.
I did today and this post directed me to Skepsisfere, where I found some interesting links and tips how to
recognize when someone is making a serious critique to theories and when the person simply is a quack.As a layman it is hard to understand a scientific theory.
The article gives you some quick tips to identify wrong knowledge and false theories.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Susan Clancy on recovered memories, alien abductions, and how to believe weird things
Over at Reason I found this informal and fascinating interview by Kerry Howley.
It's about recovered memories and the increasing claims of alien abduction.
I also recommend visiting How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens and read the first chapter (PDF).
It's about recovered memories and the increasing claims of alien abduction.
Claims of alien abduction have become increasingly common over the past thirty years, Clancy reports, as has a general belief in the existence of extraterrestrial life. Recruiting people who truly believed they were abducted by extraterrestrials, she found a way to study memory creation without directly engaging the bitter debate over recovered memories of abuse. And listening to their grotesque and often sexually explicit accounts, she could be reasonably sure that the memories she was studying were not vivid recollections of traumatic abuse, but imaginative reconstructions of the latest Spielberg flick.Susan Clancy makes a serious attempt to understand how people come to believe in something that is obviously false and she found that recovered memories is only imagination.
Reason: You are convinced that most people who believe they have been abducted by aliens are normal people, and that every one of them with vivid memories got them in therapy. How does that happen, exactly?Normal people truly believe they've been abducted by aliens because they've experienced intense and emotional memories. But it's all in their imagination.
Clancy: I do think these people are fundamentally normal. The belief in alien abduction is much less weird when you consider the process by which the belief is acquired. It doesn't happen overnight. Nobody wakes up and says, "Holy shit, I was abducted last night, they took me, there were rotating vibrating devices and then they extracted my sperm." People say, "I have these weird experiences. I wonder what it could be?" They look for explanations and at some point they'll say, well, maybe I was abducted. I know it sounds weird but it's just like what Whitley Strieber wrote about, or it's just like what happened to Betty and Barney Hill. There are a lot of people out there who believe aliens are real and a lot of people who believe aliens have been on earth—look at the Roper polls and the Time/CNN polls—and it's not that weird that some people would say, maybe I've been abducted.
I also recommend visiting How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens and read the first chapter (PDF).
Sunday, November 20, 2005
The kids decided not to teach Intelligent Design in U.S. Schools
I found this unintelligent piece over at fantasy world – the author George Konig predicts science will remove from the schools within ten years. He does not mention any names of the scientists who have given up and any reasonable person would consider his claim to be nonsense.
I propose his article to be something like this (short version):
The kids decided not to teach Intelligent Design in U.S. Schools
There are several excellent articles on Evolution and Intelligent Design to mention like evidence for evolution and Survival Of The Flimsiest.
Most creationists’ and believers of ID have already given up on the hypothesis of Intelligent Design because of lack of proof. Researchers did not know what to look for, and because the hypothesis was not testable, they made no research published ever.
They finally had to accept evolution as a fact because of scientific findings in the last twenty years and because of evidence for historical evolution like genetic, fossils, anatomical etc.
Due to the unwillingness of religious people in the education field to accept Evolution - for their own personal reasons - the debate have and will continue until the court in Pennsylvania put and end to all the nonsense.
In fact, many people of faith accept evolution as the scientific explanation for biodiversity.
End of article!
Proponents say Intelligent Design provides scientific answers for gaps and inconsistencies in the theory of evolution. They think an unnamed "designer" or "Goddidit" fills in the "gaps" and "problems" in Darwin’s Theory of evolution.
However, problem with science has always been that a new discovery will lead to thousands of new questions.
With Intelligent Design, we do not need to find out and we could stop learning.
On the other hand, we could accept that "Science is hard."
The scientific community will not accept teaching pseudoscience in schools, and they will fight back unintelligent arguments like Goddidit with reasonable arguments, I think.
I propose his article to be something like this (short version):
The kids decided not to teach Intelligent Design in U.S. Schools
There are several excellent articles on Evolution and Intelligent Design to mention like evidence for evolution and Survival Of The Flimsiest.
Most creationists’ and believers of ID have already given up on the hypothesis of Intelligent Design because of lack of proof. Researchers did not know what to look for, and because the hypothesis was not testable, they made no research published ever.
They finally had to accept evolution as a fact because of scientific findings in the last twenty years and because of evidence for historical evolution like genetic, fossils, anatomical etc.
Due to the unwillingness of religious people in the education field to accept Evolution - for their own personal reasons - the debate have and will continue until the court in Pennsylvania put and end to all the nonsense.
In fact, many people of faith accept evolution as the scientific explanation for biodiversity.
End of article!
Proponents say Intelligent Design provides scientific answers for gaps and inconsistencies in the theory of evolution. They think an unnamed "designer" or "Goddidit" fills in the "gaps" and "problems" in Darwin’s Theory of evolution.
However, problem with science has always been that a new discovery will lead to thousands of new questions.
With Intelligent Design, we do not need to find out and we could stop learning.
On the other hand, we could accept that "Science is hard."
The scientific community will not accept teaching pseudoscience in schools, and they will fight back unintelligent arguments like Goddidit with reasonable arguments, I think.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
Side effects caused by Chinese medicine
Chinese medicine are promoted as natural and safe, but some may contain harmful substances not declared on the label like sibutramine and methylphenidate.
There is a great article over at BBC about the potential side effects of using Chinese medicine:
There is a great article over at BBC about the potential side effects of using Chinese medicine:
It is estimated that 6,000 stores across the country offer treatment for conditions ranging from eczema to the menopause.Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4429414.stm
But the industry, although growing in popularity, is largely unregulated.
At the Herb Garden store in Leigh on Sea, Essex, an undercover reporter from the Five Live Report was two weeks ago sold a herbal slimming pill and told it contained rhubarb and honeysuckle.
Tests showed it contained fenfluarmine - an illegal pharmaceutical considered to be so dangerous that it is banned in most countries worldwide, including the UK.
The owner of the store, Anna Yang, was prosecuted earlier this year for illegally selling the same drug.
She was fined £30,000 with another £20,000 in court costs.
The maximum sentence for selling an illegal medicine is two years imprisonment.
Prescription-only
The BBC reporter was also sold two other prescription-only drugs - Danthron - a specialist laxative which has cancer causing properties and is only recommended for use with terminally ill patients, and Sibutramine - prescribed in cases of extreme obesity.
Ms Yang said that she was concerned about the BBC's allegations.
She said she was reliant on assurances from suppliers as to the contents of the products and had been in touch with the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.
She added that the products had now been withdrawn from sale.
Danny Lee-Frost, head of enforcement at the MHRA, said: "There are huge amounts of money to be made in this area.
"The main motivation is money."
He said unscrupulous traders were putting patient's lives at risk.
The BBC has learned that several practitioners are currently facing prosecution, and another 63 stores are being investigated.
David Woods visited Ms Yang in 2000 for acupuncture on his painful knees.
He said: "She said I should lose a bit of weight and it would help my knees.
"She said she had these new pills, really good pills and would I like some? So I said yes.
"It ended up to be the equivalent of a class A drug."
Heart problems
Since taking fenfluarmine David Woods has had a permanently damaged heart.
"My heart used to slow down and speed up. I honestly thought I was dying. I have nothing to thank her for. Nothing."
Dr Karl Metcalfe, a consultant physician at Southend hospital said he has treated nine of Anna Yang's former patients but fears there may be more as some people may not have reported symptoms to their GPs.
"For a medically qualified person to be issuing these drugs would be reprehensible.
"For a non medically qualified person to be doing it is well very alarming and quite clearly criminal."
Kidneys removed
In a separate case, Sandi Stay, of Hove, had to have both her kidneys removed after taking Aristochlia, a cancer causing herb which is banned across the UK.
Mrs Stay said she went to a Chinese medicine store and was given the herb to treat her psoriasis.
In her case the store which she claims sold her the drug was found not guilty because the jury accepted the store had taken measures to ensure its medicines did not contain Aristochlia.
Dr Mark Thursz, a consultant physician at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington said he had seen a huge rise in the number of patients being referred to him with liver failure or hepatitis after taking Chinese herbal medicine.
He said: "Many people believe herbal remedies are safe, but they should be seen in the light as conventional remedies in that they can adverse reactions.
"When you get a box of pills you get a long list of potential side effects.
"You don't get that with herbal remedies because practitioners try to make you believe they are safe."
Under current regulations Chinese medics are treated as shop keepers rather than traders, so in the same way a butcher prosecuted for selling bad meat would be allowed to continue trading so are they.
Dr Jidong Wu, of the Association of Traditional Chinese medicine is calling for tighter regulation.
He said "dodgy and fake" practitioners were damaging the image of Chinese medicine.
Monday, November 14, 2005
What kind of humanist are you?
I discovered this test over at Be Reasonable and here are the results:
You are an atheist, a rationalist, a believer in the triumph of science and of reason over libido. You can’t stand mumbo jumbo, ritual, spiritual nonsense of any kind, and you refuse to allow for these longings in others.
Astrologers, Scientologists and new–age crystal ball creeps are no different in your view from priests, rabbis and imams. They’re all just weak–minded pilgrims on the road to easy answers. Nature as revealed by science is awesome enough for you, but it’s a nature that needs curbing and taming by us on our evolutionary journey to perfection.
Your heros are Einstein, Darwin, Marx and — these days — Gould, Blakemore, Watson, Crick and Rosalind Franklin. Could you be hiding a little behind those absolutist views, worried that, if you let in a few doubts and contradictory ideas, the whole edifice might crumble? Loosen up a bit and try to enjoy the amazing variety of human belief systems. Don’t worry — it’s unlikely you’ll end up chanting your days away in some distant mountain cult.
What kind of humanist are you? Click here to find out.
Hardhat
You are an atheist, a rationalist, a believer in the triumph of science and of reason over libido. You can’t stand mumbo jumbo, ritual, spiritual nonsense of any kind, and you refuse to allow for these longings in others.
Astrologers, Scientologists and new–age crystal ball creeps are no different in your view from priests, rabbis and imams. They’re all just weak–minded pilgrims on the road to easy answers. Nature as revealed by science is awesome enough for you, but it’s a nature that needs curbing and taming by us on our evolutionary journey to perfection.
Your heros are Einstein, Darwin, Marx and — these days — Gould, Blakemore, Watson, Crick and Rosalind Franklin. Could you be hiding a little behind those absolutist views, worried that, if you let in a few doubts and contradictory ideas, the whole edifice might crumble? Loosen up a bit and try to enjoy the amazing variety of human belief systems. Don’t worry — it’s unlikely you’ll end up chanting your days away in some distant mountain cult.
What kind of humanist are you? Click here to find out.
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