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Monday, Jul 31, 2006
 
Tar baby
Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney got into trouble:
The best thing politically would be to stay as far away from that tar baby as I can," he told a crowd of about 100 supporters in Ames, Iowa.

Black leaders were outraged at his use of the term, which dates to the 19th century Uncle Remus stories, referring to a doll made of tar that traps Br'er Rabbit. It has come to be known as a way of describing a sticky mess, and has been used as a derogatory term for a black person.

I didn't know that the term offended anyone. I have never heard it used in an offensive way.
 
Public versus private schools
A Mass. paper reports:
A new report from the U.S. Department of Education casts doubts on the long-held belief that private schools provide a better education than public schools.

The report compares 2003 national standardized test scores in reading and mathematics from more than 6,900 public schools and 550 private schools nationwide.

Private-school students outperform their public-school peers when officials compare their raw mean scores, but they found that if they compare students with similar racial and economic backgrounds attending schools in similar settings, their test results are equal and sometimes even a little worse than public schools.

I cannot find the study online, and I don't know what they mean by "similar settings", so I don't know whether this is meaningful. But assuming that the study has some validity, it is more evidence that increasing school spending may not improve test scores. After all, parents who send their kids to private schools are spending a lot of money on them, and they may not be getting any better test scores.
 
Vaccines getting complicated
AP news:
ATLANTA (AP) - The growing list of childhood vaccinations reads like an alphabet soup: Hib, HepA, HepB, IPV, PCV, MCV4, DTaP, Tdap, varicella and influenza.

Parents dragging their kids to the doctor's office for those required school shots can expect to hear about more vaccines and, if they're uninsured, new expenses.

Twenty years ago, it cost $75 to $100 to immunize a child with the four available vaccines. Today, 12 are generally recommended for kids and adolescents, at a private-sector cost of about $1,250.

And the government is expected to recommend a 13th vaccine for girls - a shot that protects against cervical cancer. It costs about $360 for the three-dose series, potentially raising the per-child vaccination bill to more than $1,600.

These vaccines are recommended without any cost-benefit analysis.
 
Humans evolving, but not in the genes
NY Times reports:
New research from around the world has begun to reveal a picture of humans today that is so different from what it was in the past that scientists say they are startled. Over the past 100 years, says one researcher, Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago, humans in the industrialized world have undergone “a form of evolution that is unique not only to humankind, but unique among the 7,000 or so generations of humans who have ever inhabited the earth.”

The difference does not involve changes in genes, as far as is known, but changes in the human form. It shows up in several ways, from those that are well known and almost taken for granted, like greater heights and longer lives, to ones that are emerging only from comparisons of health records.

I always thought that evolution involved changes in the genes.
 
John Dean, no conscience
I just watched John Dean plug his book, Conservatives Without Conscience for an hour. Here were his main points:
  • Dean is still mad at conservatives who favorably reviewed the book "Silent Coup" about the Watergate break-in. (The book includes many facts that the Woodward-Bernstein account omits, and portrays Dean as a criminal.)
  • Dean cites some psychobabble about how he thinks that Cheney, DeLay, and other Republicans would score high on psychological tests for authoritarianism. Leftists do not score so highly.
  • Bill Frist once did medical research on cats, and he used unclaimed stray cats when he couldn't find cats elsewhere. Dean says that he could have been prosecuted as a serial cat killer.
I think that John Dean was really the worst of the Watergate criminals, but that story is told elsewhere. The psychobabble was really strange. Dean acted as if the authoritarism measurements reported something scientific.

Here is a typical test. Dean implied that he has a similar one in the book. Dean's test asks how strongly you believe in equality; if not, then you are an authoritarian.

This is just pseudoscientific namecalling. It would be just as easy to devise a test where all the left-wingers score highly, and label the high-scores as commies or authoritarians.

Dean says that the Republicans are authoritarian because they started a war. But so did Clinton, and just about all of Dean's complaints make Clinton look even more authoritarian.


Sunday, Jul 30, 2006
 
Kansas evolution election
An evolutionist blog writes:
Evolution continues to be a burning issue as the August 1, 2006, primary election in Kansas approaches. In November 2005, the state board of education voted 6-4 to adopt a set of state science standards in which the scientific standing of evolution is systematically impugned. The standards were denounced by a host of critics, including the National Science Teachers Association, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute for Biological Sciences, the committee that wrote the original standards, and the Kansas Association of Teachers of Science.

Now three of the six antievolution members of the board are facing challengers in the primary election, while a fourth is not seeking re-election. Thus the primary election (as well as the general election in November) affords a chance for supporters of evolution education to change the balance of power on the board, just as they did in 2000.

I looked at some of those denunciations. A Sci. American blog writes:
Somewhere right now in Kansas, there is a little child who may grow up to be a brilliant scientist. She may make fantastic contributions to science, and future generations may remember her as one of the brightest intellectual lights of her time. But if so, it will be despite the public education that she received in Kansas, because today six dimwits on the state's Board of Education voted to lower the standards for how science is taught.
AAAS says:
AAAS is deeply concerned about the changes that have been made in the Kansas Science Education Standards in order to discredit the theory of evolution. The most troubling aspect of these changes is the redefinition of science. The "Nature of Science" section in the most recently proposed version of the standards says that science is a process that produces "explanations of natural phenomena." This implies that science is just one of many explanations of natural phenomena ...
The National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association complain:
the new Kansas standards are improved, but as currently written, they overemphasize controversy in the theory of evolution and distort the definition of science.
AIBS Position Statements:
Members of the mainstream scientific research community maintain that there is no controversy about evolution, a unifying principle of biology.
The group of 38 Nobel laureates wrote:
Logically derived from confirmable evidence, evolution is understood to be the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection.
If there is really no controversy, then what are they so excited about?

The Kansas standards are much more sensible and scientific that these evolutionist critics. Of course science is a process that produces explanations for natural phenomena. Whether the history of life on Earth is entirely unguided, unplanned, and random is not something that science can answer.

There might be no consensus in the next 1000 years.

Those Kansas standards do not mention creationism or intelligent design. The issue is whether the establishment evolutionists will allow any deviation from the leftist-atheist party line. They are trying to use copyrights and public pressure to use a goofy definition of science. They don't want anyone to learn what it means for a theory to be falsifiable. I hope the Kansas voters vote to keep the science in their curriculum standards.


Thursday, Jul 27, 2006
 
Wikipedia evolutionist zealots
Wikipedia has a bunch of evolutionist articles that are really just long tedious inaccurate evolutionist rants. I complained about one that starts off misstating a Discovery Institute position, and got this response:
"it suggests that DI is not sincere in its positions" They aren't sincere at all; that's the point. They've been demonstrably talking out both sides of their mouths since they started their campaign. And that they are isn't just the opinion of their critics, but is supported by their own statements. Anyone who's read the wedge document objectively knows this. That we haven't just come out and say as much in the article is because we do not want to spoon-feed the readers. But we could, very easily as there's no shortage of sources to support such content. FeloniousMonk 16:23, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia articles can be edited by anyone, but the articles related to evolutionism are monitored day and night by evolutionist zealots. If you make a correction or a change towards more objective or balanced text, someone will change it back within minutes.

The above FeloniousMonk argument is absurd. There are Wikipedia entries already on the Discovery Institute and the Wedge Document. If some DI position has shifted, then perhaps that could be documented somewhere.

You would not expect an encyclopedia to say, "Hillary Clinton supports the Iraq War for tactical political reasons, fearing that the war will be popular with voters". It might be true, but she would deny it. An encyclopedia should stick to the facts. FeloniousMonk might respond with something like, "Anyone who reads H. Clinton objectively knows that she is not sincere".

It is funny that evolutionists, who are supposedly so pro-science, frequently claim to have mind-reading capabilities. They claim to know what other people are thinking, and why they think what they do. It doesn't matter how much objective evidence you give them, they will cling to their prejudices no matter what.

Others said this on Wikipedia:

And your suggestion that "this page is maintained by evolutionists who want to attack creationists" is also quite odd, as this page is frequented by people of any creed. (Also note that 'evolutionists' is not a word, and it effectively shows your bias.) ...

Here at Wikipedia the 'consensus' (as we might call it) is to refer to "supporters of evolution" (not "evolutionists"). Supporters of Creationism on the other hand may be called "Creationists". ...

"Evolutionist" is used as an epithet by opponents of evolution. Hence the problem. AFAIK, "creationist" is not considered an epithet. Am I mistaken?

This is hilarious. The word "evolutionist" is listed in the Merriam-Webster and Oxford English dictionaries. There is even a Wikipedia entry, altho it also says:
The term is rarely used in the scientific community, as evolution is overwhelmingly accepted there.
I really doubt that "evolutionist" is used as an epithet any more than "creationist". I know that evolutionists have derisively called me a creationist many times, even tho I am not.

Usage of the word "evolutionist" by evolutionists is commonplace. Eg, here is a 2005 NY Times essay:

One beauty of Darwinism is the intellectual freedom it allows. As the arch-evolutionist Richard Dawkins has observed, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." But Darwinism permits you to be an intellectually fulfilled theist, too.
Another evolutionist, Daniel C. Dennett, was quoted by the NY Times earlier this year as saying:
[Stephen Jay Gould] was the evolutionist laureate of the U.S., and everybody got their Darwin from Steve. The trouble was he gave a rather biased view of evolution. He called me a Darwinian fundamentalist.
There is no better word from an evolution proponent, and common usage is overwhelmingly neutral. It shows the bias of the Wikipedia editors that they shy away from the word evolutionist, and yet they call ID proponents creationists.
 
Iraq War a success for Republicans
Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson says:
The problem for Pelosi is that, despite all the claims of Republican wrong-headedness, there is not enough evidence to suggest firmly any Democratic advantage on the war, and centrist and liberal Democrats disagree on how much to make the war an issue. While 59 percent of Americans told an Associated Press poll this month that they disapproved of President Bush's handling of Iraq, 64 percent disapproved of the Democrats' handling of it. While 62 percent of Americans told a Washington Post/ABC News poll last month that they disapproved of Bush's handling of the war, an even higher percentage of respondents, 71 percent, said the Democrats do not offer clear alternatives.
It is hard to find anyone in the MSM who defends the Iraq War, but it really has been a big success. The Democrats, even with the benefit of hindsight, cannot explain how they would have handled it any better. Yes, there are people like John Kerry who claims that his presidency would have solved all the Mideast problems, but he cannot say how.

Wednesday, Jul 26, 2006
 
Presidential signing statements
A reader sends this NRO critique of the ABA report on presidential signing statements.
 
Emergency guns
Congress news:
WASHINGTON -- The House voted Tuesday to prevent law enforcement officers from confiscating legally owned guns during a national disaster or emergency.

Republican Rep. Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana lawmaker who sponsored the bill, said firearms seizures after Hurricane Katrina left residents unable to defend themselves.

One of the main reasons for citizens to have guns is for self-defense in an emergency.

Tuesday, Jul 25, 2006
 
Idiot Bush-haters
Australia news:
NOBEL peace laureate Betty Williams displayed a flash of her feisty Irish spirit yesterday, lashing out at US President George W.Bush during a speech to hundreds of schoolchildren. ...

"I have a very hard time with this word 'non-violence', because I don't believe that I am non-violent," said Ms Williams, 64.

"Right now, I would love to kill George Bush." Her young audience at the Brisbane City Hall clapped and cheered.

She shared the 1976 prize for some sort of Irish political activities.

Monday, Jul 24, 2006
 
Liberal bias from NPR and LA Times
I just listened to NPR's Terry Gross interview the authors of One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century.

The interview was just silly left-wing propaganda on the part of NPR and the authors from beginning to end.

They kept hinting at various dark right-wing conspiracies, but they had a hard time giving any specific way in which Republicans are governing differently from Democrats. They said that some Republican campaigners have discovered that they can win an election with 51% of the vote, so they can concentrate on Republicans and a few others. They said that the Bush administration has approved more oil and gas drilling permits than the Clinton administration, but I don't know why such policy differences would be surprising to anyone.

The authors told a silly story about Grover Norquist convincing Phyllis Schlafly to oppose CAFE fuel emission quotas because of some argument about "forced family planning". The story is false. She did oppose the CAFE laws, but her reason was that they favored SUVs and small cars over stationwagons.

The authors ended by denying that the LA Times and NY Times have a liberal bias.


Sunday, Jul 23, 2006
 
Court stripping
Baltimore Sun reports:
When House Republicans tried last week to block federal courts from hearing challenges to the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, U.S. Rep. Todd Akin didn't sugarcoat the latest effort to limit the judiciary: We do this, the Missouri Republican said, "because we don't trust them."

In the simmering feud between Congress and the courts, such "jurisdiction stripping" measures have emerged as a weapon of choice for Republicans.

For the most part, the proposals - including the move to allow only state courts to hear Pledge of Allegiance challenges - stand little chance of becoming law, legal scholars and analysts say. But they lay bare ugly tensions between the legislative and judicial branches and could prove to be a potent issue in this year's midterm elections.

Angry about court rulings on issues ranging from private property seizures to same-sex marriage, lawmakers over the past two years have introduced at least a dozen measures aimed at stripping the federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, of the authority to rule on any cases involving issues such as public displays of the Ten Commandments, prayer at government meetings or state laws restricting pornography.

Maybe these proposals are unlikely to become law, but they are a whole lot more likely than trying to amend the US Constitution.

The proposed federal marriage amendment against same-sex marriage is ill-considered and unwise. It won't do what the proponents say that it will do. It is impractical. It fails to address the heart of the problems with marriage law. It would make much more sense to pass a statute forbidding federal court jurisdiction over the Defense of Marriage Act.

 
The leakers are lawyers
Former NY Times editor Howell Raines says:
Almost all leakers are lawyers. That's the bottom line.
What does that mean? That lawyers are criminals? That it is okay to conspire on a criminal act if a lawyer is in on the deal?
 
Law prof for judicial activism
Law prof Eric Muller is writing a book to defend judicial activism. He says:
The methodology is this. First, ask whether the Court is deferring to the other government actor whose action it's reviewing--Congress, or the President, or some state body. Second, ask what reasons can be put forth for or against deference. These reasons would be things like a greater or lesser ability to get the right answer to a particular relevant question (e.g., does this activity in the aggregate substantially affect interstate commerce), or a reason to doubt that the government actor will decide the question objectively or in good faith, or a history of behavior that demonstrates trustworthiness or untrustworthiness.

These are questions that are pretty easy to answer, and they can be answered with a reasonable degree of objectivity. Then, to decide whether the decision is legitimate or not, you just ask whether there are reasons that support the deferential or nondeferential stance the Court has taken. The upshot of this is that most decisions are legitimate.

This methodology leads him to justify court decisions in favor of late-term abortions, forced school busing, sodomy, and Japanese-American internment. Yes, he is referring to the WWII relocation of Japanese away from the Pacific coast. He has some sort of weird fascination with the legal issues.

The gist of his argument is that judicial activism is okay as long as the court gives a justification as to why it is wiser than anyone else. On subjects like sodomy, he thinks that it is self-evident that the court knows best (when it rules in favor of sodomy).

What is missing from Muller's argument is any acknowledgement that the courts are supposed to be constrained the constitutions, statutes, and cases before him. He is just a leftist who wants to advance his ideology any way he can; his claims of objectivity are absurd.

 
World War III
The NY Daily News says:
World War III has begun.

The war on terror, or the war of terror, has tentacles that reach much of the globe. It is a world war.

Terror is just the means. It is a Mohammedan jihad against the civilized world. The USA, UK, and Israel on on the front lines.

The Iraq and Afghan wars will ultimately be judged on how well they fought organization-sponsored terrorism. So far, these wars have been very successful.

 
Lithwick worked for Mack's divorce
Dahlia Lithwick was Darren Mack's divorce lawyer. Mack is the one who killed his ex-wife and the Reno judge. Lithwick is a kooky leftist legal columnist for Slate magazine. This explains a lot.
 
Cloning Neanderthals
In case you have confidence in academic ethicists making sensible judgments about cloning, here is what they say about cloning Neanderthal men:
If Dr. Paabo and 454 Life Sciences should succeed in reconstructing the entire Neanderthal genome, it might in theory be possible to bring the species back from extinction by inserting the Neanderthal genome into a human egg and having volunteers bear Neanderthal infants. This might be the best possible way of finding out what each Neanderthal gene does, but there would be daunting ethical problems in bringing a Neanderthal child into the world again.

Dr. Paabo said that he could not even imagine how such a project could be accomplished and that in any case ethical concerns “would totally preclude such an experiment.”

Dr. Lahn described the idea as “certainly possible but futuristic.”

The most serious technical problem would be creating functional chromosomes from Neanderthal DNA. But ethical questions may be less surmountable. “My first consideration would be for a child born alone in the world with no relatives,” said Ronald M. Green, an ethicist at Dartmouth College. The risk would be greater if, following the plot line of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” a mate were created as a companion for the lonely Neanderthal. “This was a species we competed with,” Dr. Green said. “We would not want to recreate a situation of two competing advanced hominid species.”

But Dr. Green said there could be arguments in the future for resurrecting the Neanderthals. “If we learn this is a species that was wrongly pushed off the stage of history, there is something of a moral argument for bringing it back,” he said. “But the status quo is not without merit. Curiosity alone could not justify what could be a disaster for both species.”

Beware of moral arguments from leftist-atheist-evolutionists. Green thinks that the morals of cloning Neanderthal men depends on whether they wrongfully went extinct 50 kyrs ago.

Thursday, Jul 20, 2006
 
Law prof for judicial activism
Law prof Eric Muller is writing a book to defend judicial activism. He says:
The methodology is this. First, ask whether the Court is deferring to the other government actor whose action it's reviewing--Congress, or the President, or some state body. Second, ask what reasons can be put forth for or against deference. These reasons would be things like a greater or lesser ability to get the right answer to a particular relevant question (e.g., does this activity in the aggregate substantially affect interstate commerce), or a reason to doubt that the government actor will decide the question objectively or in good faith, or a history of behavior that demonstrates trustworthiness or untrustworthiness.

These are questions that are pretty easy to answer, and they can be answered with a reasonable degree of objectivity. Then, to decide whether the decision is legitimate or not, you just ask whether there are reasons that support the deferential or nondeferential stance the Court has taken. The upshot of this is that most decisions are legitimate.

This methodology leads him to justify court decisions in favor of late-term abortions, forced school busing, sodomy, and Japanese-American internment. Yes, he is referring to the WWII relocation of Japanese away from the Pacific coast. He has some sort of weird fascination with the legal issues.

The gist of his argument is that judicial activism is okay as long as the court gives a justification as to why it is wiser than anyone else. On subjects like sodomy, he thinks that it is self-evident that the court knows best (when it rules in favor of sodomy).

What is missing from Muller's argument is any acknowledgement that the courts are supposed to be constrained the constitutions, statutes, and cases before him. He is just a leftist who wants to advance his ideology any way he can; his claims of objectivity are absurd.

 
Nat. Academy evolutionists attack Kansas
I just stumbled across this Sept. 2005 NAS critique of the Kansas science standards. The National Acad. of Sciences is a high-status science organization, and its opinion should be taken seriously.

First it complains about some copyright issues. The Kansas Board quoted some scientific sources even tho some of those sources have some political disagreement with what Kansas is doing. The NAS suggests that this is a copyright violation, even tho the very same critique quotes the Kansas Board in an adversarial manner.

Next, it attacks Kansas for failing to say that, "All scientific theories are subject to criticism by the scientific community." A couple of paragraphs later, it quotes the Kansas Board as saying:

All scientific theories should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered ...
This time it complains that it was "taken directly from the Santorum Amendment."

It continues with more idiotic complaints. Where the Kansas Board says that something is not known, the NAS is upset that some poor Kansas student might get the impression that there can be no natural explanation for what is observed.

I think that the Kansas Board is doing the right thing to tell students that some things are not known. Real scientists have no problem admitting that some things are not known. The NAS evolutionists are an embarrassment to Science.

That NAS also said:

The fact that the fossil record is incomplete, especially for single-celled and soft-bodied organisms, does not mean that it is inconsistent with what is predicted by evolutionary theory. Indeed, the fossil record is becoming more complete almost daily. Also, not all of modern evolutionary theory suggests that there is a “gradual, unbroken sequence.” For example, S.J. Gould’s ideas about punctuated equilibrium are also inconsistent with Darwin’s original notions. However, Gould embraced evolution.
Translation: S.J. Gould was leftist-atheist-evolutionist, so it would be okay to teach his goofy and unscientific ideas.

Tuesday, Jul 18, 2006
 
More on hearsay rules
Jonathan writes:
"Sure, people often sound excited and breathless on 911 tapes. But so what?"

So, you can't be serious in claiming that a 911 call is "nothing like" an excited utterance. In both cases, aspects such as breathlessness and excitement often abound.

Do you want a rule that says if people sound excited and breathless when giving a statement, then they don't have to be cross-examined?

I'm comfortable with a rule that, if the circumstances of the interrogation objectively indicate that its primary purpose is to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency, then they don't have to be cross-examined about it. The crucial testimony would be that of the contacted officers. If they testified that, in their opinion, experience, etc., the primary purpose was to notify them of an ongoing emergency, that's what it was, then no need for cross-examination. If, OTOH, the police testified that after responding to the scene, it appeared that the putative victim was faking it, then the person could be cross-examined, in which case they may not only lose their case against the alleged attacker, they could also face criminal charges for abusing the 911 service (like the woman who recently used 911 to attempt to identify a police officer she thought was cute and wanted to date). As word gets out that people get punished for abusing 911, less people will abuse 911 for the kind of fake complaints you mention (sans prevalence stats). And with the decline in fake complaints, the complaints coming in will be true ones, and also excited utterances. There is no "either or" here, the (true) 911 complaints are both "excited utterances" and "complaints" and I find them more like the former than the latter. A "police complaint" generally conjures up images of paperwork, formality, etc. although as you point out, a 911 call is a type of complaint. Why do you believe it is more like a ("formal") police complaint than like an excited utterance? Where is your explanation, other than no-stats assertions that false complaints exist? I can agree with you that false complaints exist, but some would say you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater, or claiming that some indeterminate quantity of bad apples spoils the entire bunch. The court must have felt that 911 calls are more like excited utterances than formal complaints.

"I realize that there is a hearsay exception for excited utterances. That is so that someone can testify that he heard someone shriek in pain while being mugged, [...] "

For example, a 911 operator can testify as to the excited utterance of a caller.who was being mugged by her boyfriend or some other assailant.

I'm trying to come up with a better articulation for a rule, but so far no luck. Seems there can be a problem with a case where someone makes a fake complaint, as you suggest, or even a case where a frame-up occurs, i.e. a perpetrator dresses up to look like a woman's boyfriend, then she calls 911 to complain about the attacking "boyfriend", sure, the defendant boyfriend would want to cross-examine her as to the basis for the identification: "So you say I was wearing my red pants that day?" -- perhaps he could establish via other witnesses that he was in fact clad in blue dungarees all day, he was painting the church that day and his minister testified that he was in there all day in his blue dungarees. My question is, are there really so many such frame-ups or fake complaints going on in society, or is it not more likely that witness intimidation goes on? In my own experience, I've definitely seen some witness intimidation going on in domestic violence situations. You claim that it's overblown, but again, where are your numbers to back it up? I've seen evidence of the intimidation firsthand, but am aware of no frame-up caes (though I'll assume they exist), and you have no numbers for either, so where do you get off writing that witness intimidation is not a problem, but fake complaints and frame-ups are? Both are problems for the system, but I don't buy the assertion that the fake complaints and frame-ups are more endemic problems than witness intimidation.

To me, this issue is real simple. I don't think that anyone should goto jail because of some police officer's opinion about whether some witness is faking. The witness should have to give the testimony before a jury, and be cross-examined, and the jury should decide for itself.

No, I don't have any data on witness intimidation, but it seems unlikely that witnesses are any more intimidated in domestic violence cases than any other cases. There are lots of crimes where witnesses are too intimidated to call 911 at all. If the witness is willing to identify herself to a 911 operator and make a formal complaint against another person, then obviously she is not too intimidated.

I have seen a case where a woman falsely claimed that she was intimidated because she didn't want to be cross-examined for other reasons. I have also seen a case where the prosecutor claimed that a woman was intimidated, even tho she adamantly maintained that she was not. I don't know whether any domestic violence victims are too intimidated to testify but not too intimidated to call 911 and make a statement. I certainly don't think that the possibility justifies reducing our constitutional rights to confront witness against us.


Friday, Jul 14, 2006
 
Derbyshire on Gilder
John Derbyshire trashes George Gilder about creationism. But Gilder's article doesn't even mention creationism.

Derbyshire points out that no creationists have won Nobel prizes for their work. Okay, that's right, but I don't think that any evolutionists have either.

 
The Source of Europe's Mild Climate
Columbia U. prof Richard Seager writes:
The notion that the Gulf Stream is responsible for keeping Europe anomalously warm turns out to be a myth

Our conclusion was that the large difference in winter temperature between western Europe and eastern North America was caused about equally by the contrast between the maritime climate on one side and the continental climate on the other, and by the large-scale waviness set up by air flow over the Rocky Mountains.

If he right, then some of the Global Warming theorists are talking nonsense.
 
Joe Wilson sues
Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame have sued some White House officials. The lawsuit is absurd. Wilson published lies about why we went to war against Iraq, and claimed to have inside knowledge based on Cheney sending him to Africa to investigate a plot to buy uranium. In fact, Cheney had nothing to do with Wilson, and it was Wilson's wife that recommended that the CIA send him to Africa. It was the duty of White House officials to refute Wilson's lies to the press. They cannot be sued for doing their lawful duty.

Monday, Jul 10, 2006
 
911 tapes
Jonathan writes:
Not sure I agree with you on this one. Have you ever heard any 911 calls broadcast on the news? Some of those folks sound a bit excited. How can you claim the calls are "not at all" like an excited utterance -- seems some of them are classic cases of same..

And, depending on the facts, I imagine that asking a breathless person for their middle initial, something they easily know and can produce immediately, might just help them calm down a little so that they can better answer further questions from the 911 operator. Maybe it helps their nervousness about having to deal with authorities. Just a surmise.

Sure, people often sound excited and breathless on 911 tapes. But so what?

Do you want a rule that says if people sound excited and breathless when giving a statement, then they don't have to be cross-examined?

I realize that there is a hearsay exception for excited utterances. That is so that someone can testify that he heard someone shriek in pain while being mugged, or something like that. But it is far too easy for someone to incriminate someone by calling 911 and making an accusation. There is a reason that we have a constitutional right to confront our accusers.

 
Empty space has dark energy
The respected physicist Lawrence Krauss writes:
There appears to be energy of empty space that isn't zero! This flies in the face of all conventional wisdom in theoretical particle physics. It is the most profound shift in thinking, perhaps the most profound puzzle, in the latter half of the 20th century. ...

I wrote a piece where I argued that is a disservice to evolutionary theory to call string theory a theory, for example. Because it's clearly not a theory in the same sense that evolutionary theory is, or that quantum electrodynamics is, because those are robust theories that make rigorous predictions that can be falsified. And string theory is just a formalism now that one day might be a theory. And when I'm lecturing, talking about science, people say to me, evolution is just a theory, I say, in science theory means a different thing, and they say, what do you mean? Look at string theory, how can you falsify that? It's no worse than intelligent design.

This is not intelligent design; it's the opposite of intelligent design. It's a kind of cosmic natural selection. The qualities we have exist because we can survive in this environment. That's natural selection, right? ...

I do think there are huge differences between string theory and intelligent design. People who are doing string theory are earnest scientists who are trying to come up with ideas that are viable. People who are doing intelligent design aren't doing any of that. But the question is, is it falsifiable? And do we do a disservice to real theories by calling hypotheses or formalisms theories? Is a multiverse — in one form or another — science?

In my sarcastic moments I've argued that the reason that some string theorists have latched onto the landscape idea so much is that since string theory doesn't make any predictions, it's good to have a universe where you can't make any predictions.

It is funny how he endorses some really speculative and untestable theories, any yet he carefully tries to avoid offending the evolutionists.

Sunday, Jul 09, 2006
 
Coulter on evolution
An anonymous reader asks if I care to comment on this complete demolition of Ann Coulters anti-evolutionary screed.

I haven't had a chance to read any of Coulter's new book yet. Much of it is on evolution, and she is not an expert on that subject, so I wouldn't be surprised if it has some shortcomings.

This attack on Coulter consists largely of objecting to her quote mining of evolutionists, and saying that she is not up-to-date on criticisms of Behe.

Quoting Colin Patterson seems like fair game to me. He was a respected evolutionist (I think that he is dead now), he meant what he said, and his quotes are defended by other evolutionists.

I do not think that Behe's work disproves evolution. At best, it challenges evolutionists to provide plausible mechanisms for how certain biological mechanisms have evolved. Apparently there is some controversy over whether anyone has done for the human eye. I don't know what Coulter's main point here is, but I suspect that it is more political and cultural than scientific.

George writes:

The above-linked evolutionist page shows that Patterson has been misquoted. It even has a letter from Patterson complaining about it.
No, it doesn't. The letter from Patterson confirms the quotes. It also says that of two interpretations presented in another letter, one was more accurate than the other. But that other letter is not shown, so it is not clear that