Imagine two people standing about 500 feet from a car that is against wall around a bend. One is holding binoculars, the other a piece of paper. One looks through his binoculars at the car and says, "Someone was driving that car too fast, skidded out, and slammed into the wall."

The other person says, "I don't believe that, the police report says that it was placed there by God."

"I know that the report says that, but I can pretty clearly see skid marks on the road, the car is smashed, the windows shattered, and there is broken glass on the road."

"I don't necessarily agree. I see what you mean about the marks, but they don't look that clear to me. I am also not sure that the stuff on the road is glass. To me it looks like it could be water. Besides, I believe Officer Joe, he is a good man."

"I know that Officer Joe is honest, but I think he is mistaken. Through my binoculars it looks pretty clear that the car was driven into the wall. It looks like a man drove it there, the skid marks are clear, that is definitely say that the stuff on the road is broken glass and not water. I also think I see the man's head leaning against the steering column. It looks to me like an accident."

"That is fine. It is just your opinion though. I believe the report that God put it there. You know, binoculars often produce optical distortions, there is no such thing as a perfectly accurate lens. In addition, you aren't entirely sure about the man's head, it may not be that there is a man in the car, you said that you aren't sure. If there is not a man in the car, then how could it have gotten there? The police report says it was placed there by God, and if no one was driving it..."

"Ok, ok, I know about distortions and all, but I use these binoculars all the time and I know what is and is not a distortion. Besides, to say that the car was put there by God just sounds a little..."

"A little what?"

"I mean, come on. The car was driven into the wall. This is a stupid argument. I can see that..."

"Can you see the driver?"

"Well I can sort of make out..."

"No, you can't say for sure. But you are calling me stupid. Why can't you admit that you have your opinion and that I have mine?"

------------------------------

If you are a scientist, this is what the creationist argument looks like. The scientist isn't smarter or better than the other person, he just has a set of mathematical and instrumental tools, the binoculars, that he is skilled at using with knowledge of their limitations.

With the techniques of modern biology, the evolution argument is about that obvious. The scientist sees an incredible amount of evidence that people descended from primates. Just like in the metaphor, the creationist seems to be lacking binoculars. The only difference is that in reality the toolset is differential equations, statistics, technology, chemistry, and complex instrumentation. Unfortunately, this i... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

Evolution in Education

Someone predicts that Microsoft will invent MemeStreams in 2008 and then it will be replaced by Google/Amazon in 2010.

So, who wants to alter this future by helping us write code? I'm serious.

[ Very interesting.... -k]

EPIC 2014

Research under way at ORNL could lead to entirely new, highly energy-efficient ways of lighting buildings using the power of sunlight. In addition to providing light, the technology would convert sunlight to electricity much more efficiently than conventional solar technologies. In commercial buildings, lighting consumes more electric energy than any other building end-use. It accounts for more than a third of all electricity consumed for commercial use in the United States.

--This is kinda cool stuff, it uses fiber optics to distribute light from a collector on top of a building to offices below. There is also a video explaining it here: http://www.ornl.gov/sci/hybridlighting/video/hlvideo1.avi

[ Very cool. -k]

Hybrid Lighting

] The most common charge levied against critics of the
] Patriot Act -- one that Alberto Gonzales, the new face of
] Justice, is likely to repeat in his days ahead -- is that
] they're "misinformed." Well, as a former U.S. attorney
] appointed by President Reagan, a former CIA lawyer and
] analyst, and a former Congressman who sat on the
] Judiciary Committee, I can go mano a mano with any
] law-enforcement or intelligence official on the facts.
] And the facts say that the Patriot Act needs to be
] reviewed and refined by Congress.

The most reasonable position on the Patriot act that I have ever read.

[ This is one of Bob Barr's strongest positions, and I tend to agree with him, as unexpected as I found that. He's written on the topic before and spoken about it at GA Tech, and I think he's generally got a clear view of what needs to happen on this one. -k]

www.bobbarr.org: Patriot Act fixes

] In a nutshell, Roach's argument is that America's
] record trade deficit means the dollar will keep falling.
] To keep foreigners buying T-bills and prevent a resulting
] rise in inflation, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan
] Greenspan will be forced to raise interest rates further
] and faster than he wants.
]
] The result: U.S. consumers, who are in debt up to
] their eyeballs, will get pounded.
]
] Less a case of ``Armageddon,'' maybe, than of a
] ``Perfect Storm.''

[ I've been reading more and more of this kind of story. It's scary. Having completely zeroed my credit cards, I'm presently working to pay off all my variable interest rate loans, because the rate hikes have already started. If you haven't consolidated those student loans onto something fixed, I don't think I'd wait... -k]

BostonHerald.com - Business: Economic `Armageddon' predicted

] "I really have seen it dwindle in the last year, and that
] to me is curious," Brenda Melton, a counselor at the
] Navarro Academy in San Antonio, said. "I think part of it
] is that the war is a major topic and they see people
] getting killed over there and not everyone is in
] agreement with it."

[ Really? It's curious? Makes perfect sense to me. We're in the middle of a war which has, maybe, 50% support among the populace, and from which we have daily casualty reports and imagery. Despite the best efforts of the Bush administration to portray this as a morally imperative war, people are skeptical, and I don't think it's surprising at all that fewer folks are thinking about a nice long stint in americas armed forces.

Though maybe i'm wrong... what are the numbers for regular enlistment like? Have they gone up or down? We're not in the greatest economy at the moment... doesn't that tend to drive up enlistments? I would think, if those are down as well, at a time like this, that doesn't bode well for current levels of actual support for the current war plan (or lack thereof), the election notwithstanding. Plenty of people have supported this war. I wonder how many put their bodies where their mouth is. -k]

Military Academy Admission Down

Mike the Usurper wrote:
] Well as someone who knows their guns (for no real reason), the
] SKS is the chinese designation for the AK-47. It's cheap,
] it's reliable, and no hunter I've EVER heard of uses the damn
] thing. It's noisy (yep, that works great with deer who bolt
] at a the sound of a snail farting 400 yards away) not very
] accurate at range. What it is good as is throwing up a ton of
] lead. Traditionally, they have something like a 20-30 round
] banana clip, and can unload the whole thing in a few seconds,
] although it's semi-automatic, not full auto. It's designed to
] kill people, not deer.

[ Thanks mike! That's kind of what i surmised from the accounts i read, but I do like to have facts before I spring to judgement. ...]

] Next question?

[ Well, I guess one question is, did the paper fuck up when they said it's a common hunting weapon, or do people in some places actually use it for that purpose. Or is it a common "hunting" weapon in the sense that people who want one say, "Yeah, i need it for hunting." despite it's being completely unsuited for that?

When I was a kid, our mailman, Pete, used to regale us with descriptions of his many guns, and his hatred of all anti-gun laws and (despite how closely this mirrors the stereotype, i swear it's true) paranoid ravings about how the post office had someone following him and that he wasn't going to take that kind of shit forever, wink-wink. I'm pretty sure, recalling some of the pictures he'd show, that he had a number of assault rifles and the like, for "hunting." He was nuts. Always had a milkbone for my dog, Kaiser Wilhelm, however, and I'm pretty sure he never *actually* stormed the post office with his arsenal or capped other hunters in a territoriality contest. -k]

RE: ABC News: 5 Killed, 3 Hurt in Wis. Hunting Dispute

] The hero is no Tom Hanks and the movie has yet to be
] made. But like the 1998 hit film "You've Got Mail," a new
] Japanese bestseller is an old-style romance for the
] Internet age -- though with a distinctly Japanese twist.
]
] Ostensibly a true story, "Densha Otoko" -- literally,
] "Train Man" -- began as a series of postings on Japan's
] most popular Internet bulletin board after the
] protagonist, a young Japanese man, rescued a woman from a
] pushy drunk on the train.

[ Kind of interesting. Pushing the boundaries of traditional publication and format is a practice i find fascinating, ever since reading things like Microserfs and Exegesis, among others. Wether the story itself is good, of course, is a critical question, but the origin intrigues me. -k]

Yahoo! News - Japan Internet Love-Story Bestseller with a Twist

You're probably getting a ton of email right now. You may not even see this in the fray. I'm posting it to my weblog (below) because it is as much an open commentary as it is a comment for you.

You did the right thing.

There are a lot of people in this country right now who are scared and angry, because of 9/11. Their fear and their anger makes them weak. They don't want to see things like this because they can't take criticism. They aren't strong enough. They want to be right, and they want the enemy to be wrong, and they want to destroy the enemy and gloss over the details. It feels good to be right.

But wars are won in the mind long before they are won in on the battlefield, and if we become the kind of society that won't acknowledge its humanity, who won't think critically... who either shovels overzealousness under the rug or worse, encourages it, then we will become what the radicals who oppose us believe that we are. Thats when they win.

We have to show the Arab word that we are an honest, fair society that mostly wants their region to be peaceful, free, and successful. We can't convince them of this by saying it. In fact, many of us aren't convinced of this even though we say it all the time. We have to convince them of this by showing it... by actually being what we claim to be. That means showing that we are strong enough to take criticism. That means we acknowledge that open, honest dialog helps us make smarter decisions rather then "weakening our resolve."

We have to be willing to acknowledge things like this and investigate them fairly and deliberatively, and handle them appropriately depending on the facts. We have to be willing to seek out our flaws and deal with them, rather then denying them while they fester. We have to be confident enough in the honesty of our intentions that we know it will shine through enemy propaganda. And ultimately we have to make sure that the people watching us do this understand it, and understand the difference between this and the alternative. Otherwise, we've already lost.

Thank you for risking your life to bring us information from these places.

[ I second that. Well said, Decius. -k]

My open letter to Kevin Sites

Decius wrote:
] The left didn't vote for Kerry. They voted against Bush. They
] need to actually produce a candidate they want to vote for.

[ Without question. ...]

] They need to forget the issues and focus on the man.

[... in this, however, i disagree. The left certainly needs to stop discussing the issues in terms of policies and logical analysis, but to put forth a candidate who is all style and no substance will be every bit as ineffectual as the inverse situation we find ourselves in now.

What the left needs is a coherent vision. A framework in which to couch it's rhetoric so that people see a group with a solid, consistent message. And I don't mean an agenda, or a plan, or a series of talking points. There's been much bandying about for the past weeks about the left needing to be more about religion or less about gays or that they need to move to the center in some abstract way. I think that's all bullshit. The democratic platform has a great deal to offer most people in this country. But it's mired in the outmoded viewpoint that reasoning with people and presenting policy papers will sway people. It doesn't. Instead, the focus should be on anchoring that platform with a core philosophy and training ourselves to discuss matters in those terms.

I like Lakoff, but i don't think he has the monopoly on good ideas in this regard... i'm not at all sure what the best option is, but i think that's where the discussion needs to move.

Once the vision is established, finding a good candidate is a little easier, because they will have something to articulate that is already familiar to people and which presents the values of the left instead of a series of policy positions. -k]

RE: Pandering To HypocrisyPandering To HypocrisyPandering to Hypocrisy