It may well be true that I don’t manage my time as effectively as I should, but I am struggling to keep up with everything I should be doing, as well as things I would like to be reporting here on the site.
A couple of new points to report very briefly -
- I have not heard back from Sarah Milov from the Harvard Crimson.
- I have heard back from Prof. Ron Numbers from the University of Wisconsin about his comments in the NY Times. His response was to point out that the ID movement’s stated goal is to overthrow methodological naturalism. I think this is a fair comment, and reflects a failure on the part of some ID proponents to use appropriate precision in their public statements.
- I have made some comments of William Dembski’s blog in response to someone who argued that the logic behind ID should lead to the conclusion that the specified complexity in living organism was produced by an embodied intelligent agent. My comment is #7 here.
BTW, 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit when I got up this morning. You do the math. That’s cold man, and without wind chill!
Harvard Crimson, November 13
This is another article I found through William Dembski’s blog. It’s about the lack of support for Intelligent Design at Harvard Divinity School. It quotes, for example, Diane L. Moore, director of the program in religion and secondary education at HDS, as saying:
“The proponents of intelligent design want to promote it as a theory, but it doesn’t follow the basic claims of science.” “It’s not something you can prove.”
But this does’t seem reasonable to me. No idea has to be provable in order to be a valid scientific view. It simply has to make testable predictions that can allow the theory to be either corroborated or disproved. Requiring that ID be provable is setting a higher standard for it than any other scientific hypothesis is subjected to.
I’ve written to Sarah Milov, the author of the article, asking for clarification of what Moore meant, but so far have had no response.
In NZ, apart from the glorious Pohutukawa, the Christmas season is mostly visible in the orgy of retail madness that seems to overtake the nation. I just got back from the Woodfield Mall tonight and I can report that the US also suffers from the same excess.
However there are some interesting differences between the two countries. In the US, people seem much more enthusiastic about decorating their own homes to mark the season, which I think is pretty cool. I guess Christmas trees are still reasonably popular in NZ, but outdoor decorative lights are much more prominent here, perhaps because they make a nice contrast to the pretty bare natural landscape this time of year. I was out in the neighbourhood this morning and I saw I think three different people out with their step-ladders putting up lights around their houses.
The reason I happened to be outside was that I was trying to get back on the road after my running injury earlier in the week. Everything went fine for the first two and a half miles, but at that point my knee problem reappeared. I pulled up and walked the rest of the way. I’m not sure what was more painful – the frustration of not being able to run properly or having to walk three and a half miles in subzero temperatures wearing only two thin layers. The cold isn’t a problem as long as I’m running, but it gets pretty chilly once you stop.
Speaking of cold, it started snowing while I was out tonight, making the drive home a little challenging. There is a weather advisory in force tonight with a prediction of 3-5 inches overnight. So I might get to do some shovelling in the morning. Joy!
NY Times, December 2
Prof. Ron Numbers from the University of Wisconsin is quoted here as saying that “at heart, the proponents of intelligent design “want to change the definition of science” to include God, an issue he predicted would end up in the Supreme Court.”
This is just bogus, and I’ve email Prof. Numbers to ask him to explain his perspective.
ID claims that design can be detected, not that the designer can be identified. There is a world of difference between the two. ID says nothing that excludes the possiblity that life on earth was designed by an entity from another planet. Sure this sounds far-fetched, but the point is that ID in no way rules this out. So whatever you think about ID (and I’m not sure yet what I think about it as a scientific proposition), it can’t be correct to claim that ID tries to include God in science.
This is pretty interesting. Pakiri is one of my favorite places in NZ.
NZ Herald, 3 December
“The multimillion beachfront property at the centre of a struggle between David Tua and his former managers is to become Auckland’s newest regional park.
The boxer, who had a shot at the world title in 2000, yesterday congratulated the Auckland Regional Council for closing a $10.25 million deal to buy the 51ha of prime Pakiri land.
,,,
The land borders a 1km-long stretch of white sandy beach with rolling surf and a backdrop of pohutukawa groves and sand-dunes. It includes a pa site and wetland. “
Hopefully it won’t lead to too many more people showing up and spoiling the place.
Here are a few photos I’ve taken there in the last couple of years -
Continue reading →
American Scientist, November-December 2004
This is a really interesting article that I found via William Dembski’s Uncommon Descent blog. It concerns some important properties of the genetic code. Here’s the deal (as far I understand it with my limited knowledge of biology) –
Continue reading →
Slate, November 23
This is a pretty interesting article about a book by physicist Lawrence Krauss called Hiding in the Mirror. In the book, Krauss apparently slams String Theory, currently one of the major themes in the efforts of the physics community to develop a “theory of everything”.
The reason he is so scathing is that it involves positing that “subatomic particles are actually tiny vibrating strings of energy, each 100 billion billion times smaller than the protons at the nucleus of an atom”. Further, “there also must be more physical dimensions to reality than the three of space and one of time that we can perceive. The most popular string models require 10 or 11 dimensions. What we perceive as solid matter is mathematically explainable as the three-dimensional manifestation of “strings” of elementary particles vibrating and dancing through multiple dimensions of reality, like shadows on a wall. In theory, these extra dimensions surround us and contain myriad parallel universes.”
The issue is that noone has proposed anyway to test this hypothesis. Again, to quote from the article – “no one has been able to devise a feasible experiment for which string theory predicts measurable results any different from what the current wisdom already says would happen. Scientific Method 101 says that if you can’t run a test that might disprove your theory, you can’t claim it as fact.” Further – “That’s not a Theory of Everything, it’s a Theory of Anything, sold with whizzy PBS special effects.” Nobel Prize-winner Robert Laughlin is quoted as saying “String theory is textbook post-modernism fueled by irresponsible expenditures of money.”
In view of the way “respectable” scientists criticize Intelligent Design, this is all pretty interesting.
Microwaves Govern Us – SMH December 1
Under the above headline, the Sydney Morning Herald today made its own bid for the title of least scientifically literate news outlet in Australasia with a claim that “electromagnetic “smog” from mobile phone networks and whitegoods could affect mood and behaviour.
The “evidence” is a University of Melbourne study that found that “in most years there was a small but significant increase in the suicide rate among women on the day of a solar flare and up to two days later”.
Correlation, people! Correlation.
…nursing a running injury. 
I went running on Tuesday morning and only made 5 miles before breaking down with a sore right knee and having to walk home. Frustrating because that knee has rarely given me any trouble in the past. After pulling up with sore calfs on Saturday on a route I’ve done many times before without problems, I’m wondering if the cold weather may be making me more susceptible to injury. It was a little cool – about 34F with snow flurries part of the way. But the temperature itself didn’t bother me, until I ended up having to walk home in it.
Anyway, I’m sucking down the acetominophen twice a day and hoping that I’ll be able to get back on the road again soon. Given my current calorie intake, the sooner the better.
…watching rugby!
My brother-in-law Jeremy demonstrated again this week what an all-round good guy he is by alerting me to the existence of the Rugby Channel on MediaZone.com, which allows major rugby matches to be downloaded and played using Microsoft Media Player.
It’s pay per match – $5 for an All Blacks-Lions test and $8 for a All Black Grand Slam test. Bargain! The video resolution isn’t great (384×288) but it’s a whole lot better than just listening to audio on ZB. I watched the AB’s cane the Lions in the Second Test last Sunday night, and I’m downloading the Welsh test even as I type.
I’m so grateful I might just have to put a picture of Jeremy on the site! Now if I could just find one that doesn’t have his hands over his face…
