Daily Blend: 03/26/13

Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R-ND)

Applying for an internship/apprenticeship/something at a ranch tomorrow! Wish me luck. (Or a broken leg. However it goes these days.)

North Dakota Gov. Dalrymple (R) ^[pictured] signs law banning abortion at six weeks, presumably planning emergency fund for inevitable court loss. Wonder if he’ll also enact the even worse “personhood” law.
(via @BreakingNews)

Berlin-based company confirms their “atheist”-branded packages take significantly longer to reach their destinations, when they don’t go missing altogether. Looks like the US Postal Service has some explaining to do.

Oh, look, it’s another boilerplate, evidence-free diatribe about how “[m]ilitant atheism has become a religion”. (Hemant Mehta tears it apart, as does PZ Myers.)
(via @religionnews)

Vox Day: Egalitarians are “inferior beings” (because some of them sometimes make crude jokes on the Internet).

And finally, here’s the trippiest damn water spiral you’ll’ve ever did seen (more info here):

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Blend: Monday, November 05, 2012

Karen Castor Dentel

New blog policy! For the sake of convenience, I henceforth reserve the right to fix any broken links in reader comments (leaving an admin’s note whenever I do so, of course). That is all.

It still bewilders me how some cultures perceive teenaged girls showing the slightest interest in boys as a greater “dishonor” than burning them to death with acid.
(via Friendly Atheist)

Stunningly hideous Republican attack ad compares Florida elementary schoolteacher and Democratic House candidate ^[pictured] to Jerry Sandusky for supporting teachers’ unions.

Shorter buzz-killing scientists: Not only is light-speed space travel impossible, it would also irradiate us to death in minutes. (Stupid hydrogen.)
(via The Daily Grail)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

New Einstein letter: God is “product of human weaknesses”

Albert Einstein

Evangelicals just love to claim Albert Einstein as a fellow God-believer in their quest to trot out quotes of his (some real, most fabricated) to try and prove atheists wrong. But while Einstein was no atheist (saying it angered him to be quoted in support of godlessness), he was even less of a religionist, and a newly revealed letter of his that’s about to go on sale on eBay – for $3 million, in case you’re interested – further cements the point:

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text.

Of course, it’s important to remember that Einstein was referring to mainstream religion, which he usually labeled “childish” as a caricature of God. But he was nonetheless a “devoutly religious man” in his own sense:

That's not, however, because Einstein rejected the notion of God, but because he took the idea of God very seriously, elevating it above a religious conception to a mathematical one. To Einstein, the elegance of the phsyics guiding the universe were God's handiwork, the mark not of a humanlike being that maintains control over the world, but of a divine beauty in nature's laws. As Walter Issacson wrote in his biography, following a religious phase in childhood, Einstein retained "a profound reverence for the harmony and beauty of what he called the mind of God as it was expressed in the creation of the universe and its laws."

In other words, for Einstein, “God” was the indescribable sense of naturalistic harmony inherent to the known Universe and manmade religion was nothing more than a childish fairy tale.

Keep that in mind the next time some God-botting goober like Ray Comfort brings him up in a swipe at atheists.

(via Pharyngula)

Daily Blend: Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Daniel Tosh

Phew! How’s that for a day of blogging? Now, if only the Internet would send me this many interesting stories every day … (On second thought, please don’t, Internet. I’d surely die.)

Survey: 5-10% of Canadians are LGBT. (You can count on the 18-34 age group being the most accurate, given the increasingly accepting climate they grew up in.)
(via Joe. My. God.)

“Comedian” Daniel Tosh ^[pictured] goes from terminally unfunny to straight-up asshole. (He has since apologized on Twitter.)

The Oatmeal’s final message to Charles Carreon.
(via @radleybalko)

Obama administration lays out rules for proper accommodations for temporary agricultural workers. Conservatives wingnuts: “Nanny State”!!!

Vox Day: Richard Dawkins criticized fellow evolutionary scientist over notoriously poor research, ergo, he’s a “deeply unpleasant individual”, and academic disagreement on a single detail means the entire Theory shouldn’t be taught in schools.

This totally unbiased, super-credible, WorldNetDaily-promoted Daily Caller report claims that 83% of U.S. doctors might quit over ObamaCare.
(via Joe. My. God.)

I spy with my little eye a new xkcd Q&A project! Go check it out. (It includes nuclear baseball.)

“I was raised to believe in god and now someone says they don’t believe in god so I don’t like it.”

And finally, PZ Myers posts his own (first-ever) vlog about the FtB/Thunderf00t kerfuffle:

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Canada • homosexuality • Forum Research • National Post • Daniel Tosh • rape jokes • rape • The Oatmeal • Matthew Inman • Charles Carreon • FunnyJunk • Obama administration • Barack Obama • Human Events • U.S. Department of Labor • Diane Katz • Heritage Foundation • conservatives • wingnuts • Theodore Beale • Vox Day • Richard Dawkins • E.O. Wilson • Theory of Evolution • group selection • ObamaCare • Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act • WorldNetDaily • WND • The Daily Caller • Doctor Patient Medical Association • DPMA • what if? • xkcd • baseball • speed of light • relativity • Omaha, NE • Omaha Coalition of Reason • atheist billboards • Emlyn Forsuh • PZ Myers • Thunderf00t • misogyny • Freethought Blogs • freethought

God ain’t got nothin’ to do with this Higgs

Here’s another reason why this morning (er, noon – whatever) is so awesome:

Scientists using the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva have announced the discovery of a new subatomic particle to very high confidence that is consistent with what we expect the Higgs particle to look like.

[…]

Two different detectors at the LHC both independently found a strong signal between 125 and 126 GeV at about the 5 sigma level – that means they can claim a 99.9999% confidence this signal is real! This means they found a previously undiscovered particle which, as it happens, is within the range of mass the Standard Model predicts for the Higgs particle!

Can dudes squee? You know what, I don’t care. Squeeee!

Honestly, I’ve got nothing to say about this other than that it’s unfathomably awesome (and that the “God particle” label elicits a certain amount of ironic schadenfreude in me for some reason), so just go read Phil Plait’s above-linked article and bask in the glory of that unstoppable scientific progress.

Oh, and be on the lookout for this^[NSFW]. Can’t be too careful.

Why, yes, of course I had to go there.

Tags: Large Hadron Collider • LHC • Higgs Boson • particle physics • CERN • European Organization for Nuclear Research

‘The Daily Show’ reveals what science is really up to

Last night’s Daily Show featured an awesome segment exposing the sort of narrow-minded (non-)thinking that fuels the anti-science sentiment that’s so prevalent amongst the Right (and also present, albeit much less overwhelmingly, in the Left). It’s all arrogance of ignorance, the bold certainty often held by anti-reality gomers that gut feelings and “common sense” should be trusted rather than the actual discipline of knowledge. They even brought in a Republican strategist who throws all this into sharp relief without even realizing how gob-smackingly retarded she sounds. The full segment, below:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Non-US readers: Go here to learn how to enable Comedy Central videos

My transcript: (click the [+/-] to expand/collapse →)

[−]

[my emphasis]

JON STEWART: Global warming real. You win this round, science. But what do you really want? What’s your endgame? Aasif Mandvi has more.

[BEGIN REPORT]

AASIF MANDVI [v.o.]: Science claims it’s working to cure disease, save the planet, and solve our greatest mysteries. But what’s it really up to? From global warming …

HERMAN CAIN [footage]: I don’t believe global warming is real.

MANDVI [v.o.]: … to evolution …

RICK SANTORUM [footage]: Absolutely not, I don’t believe in that.

MANDVI [v.o.]: … to the HPV vaccine.

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN [footage]: Her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine.

MANDVI [v.o.]: It seems science is up to something.

GOV. RICK PERRY [footage]: There are^[sic] a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling in to their projects.

MANDVI [v.o.]: Could these Republican candidates be right? Tonight, we answer the question: Science – What’s It Up To?

To get the cold, hard facts on science, I sat down with Republican strategist Noelle Nikpour.

NOELLE NIKPOUR: Scientists are scamming the American people right and left for their own financial gain.

MANDVI: Now, do you have any – I don’t wanna say “evidence” – not “data” –

NIKPOUR: I think every American, if they really thought about it, would have a gut feeling that some of these numbers that the scientists are putting out are not right.

MANDVI: I knew it. I knew it! I – I mean, I didn’t know it … but I knew it!

MANDVI [v.o.]: One of the most notorious swindlers is Columbia biology professor, Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Martin Chalfie. I caught up with him in his luxurious palace of science.

[interview in small laboratory/office]

MANDVI: I’ll play along, here. What are you “studying”?

DR. MARTIN CHALFIE: I use the nematodes [???] to study nerve cell development.

MANDVI: So. The oldest grift in the book, right? The old nematode switcheroo.

DR. CHALFIE: That’s a funny grift. […] How come no other occupation has so many people questioning what they do all the time and demands that you confirm the experiments?

MANDVI [v.o.]: But even that’s a neat little trap.

NIKPOUR: Scientists are the only people qualified to comment on scientific theories. This is what raises doubt with not only Republicans, but Americans.

MANDVI: It’s like, why are surgeons the only ones allowed to perform surgeries, and other surgeons are the only ones who get to say whether or not this surgery is necessary or not? Right?

NIKPOUR: Absolutely.

MANDVI: Doesn’t make any sense.

NIKPOUR: It never makes any sense.

MANDVI: And the only other people that can check to make sure that they’re not manipulating –

NIKPOUR: Are other scientists.

MANDVI: They’re very smart, these scientists.

NIKPOUR: That’s what I’m saying!

MANDVI [v.o.]: It’s all too obvious once you know the scam.

DR. CHALFIE: It’s not really a scam. All that we do in science is subjected to a process called peer review.

MANDVI: But who are your peers?

DR. CHALFIE: The peers are other scientists.

MANDVI: Bingo. It’s like you went on trial for rape, and the jury is full of rapists. I mean, how are you different from a rapist?

DR. CHALFIE: Definitely not a rapist.

MANDVI: That’s what a rapist would say. Tell me how you are not a rapist.

DR. CHALFIE: [looking to the side] Am I really supposed to answer this?!

MANDVI [v.o.]: The worst part is, the rapists are coming for your children.

DR. CHALFIE: Thousands of elementary school students, high school students, do science fair projects, and they do a spectacular job.

MANDVI: You’re a sick f[bleep]ck. You’re not gonna get away with this.

MANDVI [v.o.]: With our most vulnerable at stake, I went undercover to a national science fair to try and save them from science.

VALERIE DING: I investigated LED materials using quantum physics.

MANDVI: Jesus, what have they done to you?

MANDVI [v.o.]: I needed to open their eyes.

NATHAN HAN: I did a computer simulation of dark matter effects on galaxy rotation.

MANDVI: I know. You’re just a bright-eyed kid, stepping off the school bus, just wanted to know how the universe works, right?

HAN: Yeah.

MANDVI: [to Justin Barber] Who told you that this data is true?

JUSTIN BARBER: My brain got me these results and this conclusion.

MANDVI: Stop listening to your brain. Start listening to your heart.

MANDVI: [to Valerie Ding] Years from now, a video of this pops up on the Internet, and you’re gonna break your parents’ hearts.

DING: My parents support me. They think science is good.

MANDVI: [to Nathan Han] Pretty soon, you’re hooked on that grant money, looking for the next big score. That’s how it works. Is that what you want?

HAN: Yeah.

MANDVI: Sorry, what?

HAN: Yeah, this is – taught me a lot.

MANDVI [v.o.]: What I witnessed was heartbreaking. And sadly, whether science is peddling quantum physics or evolution, the corruption of our children happens every day right under our noses.

NIKPOUR: It’s very confusing for a child to be only taught evolution, to go home to a household where their parents say, “Well, wait a minute, you know, God created the Earth.”

MANDVI: What is the point of teaching children facts if it’s just gonna confuse them?

NIKPOUR: It confuses the children when they go home! […] We, as Americans, we are paying tax dollars for our children to be educated. We need to offer them every theory that’s out there. […] It’s all about choice. It’s all about freedom.

MANDVI: I mean, it should be up to the American people to decide what’s true.

NIKPOUR: Absolutely! Doesn’t it make common sense?

MANDVI [v.o.]: Tragically, the future offers little hope.

MANDVI: [to little boy] You wanna be a scientist?

LITTLE BOY: Yeah.

MANDVI: This country is in big trouble, and it’s all because of people like you!

LITTLE BOY: Sorry.

MANDVI [v.o.]: “Sorry” is not good enough.

[END REPORT]

STEWART: Aasif Mandvi. We’ll be right back.

Science denialists: It’s all about truthiness. If it feels true, then Gawd-dangit, don’t you let no scientificians ever tell you diff’rent!

How can it be that troglodytes like these still exist in such an age of scientific accomplishment and enlightenment?

Tags: The Daily Show • Jon Stewart • Aasif Mandvi • Noelle Nikpour • Martin Chalfie • Valerie Ding • Nathan Han • Justin Barber • anti-science • Republicans

Fail Quote: Ray Comfort out-stupids himself – water cycle edition [updated]

I originally intended to include this as a link in tomorrow’s Daily Blend, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized this deserved a post all of its own. So, without further ado, I give you the single stupidest bit of absolute scientific illiteracy ever to come from everyone’s favorite God-bothering buffoon, Ray Comfort [original italics indicate reader comment]:

"Actually, atheists tend to assume that gravity and heat created the water cycle, but put that aside. If God was providing, free of charge, enough water for San Antonio, there would be no price comparison between the cost of distilling the water from the ocean and the cost of extracting it from an aquifer." Steven J.

I appreciate why you would rather we put aside your belief that gravity and heat have the ability to create. Rather than put it aside, I would like to talk about what atheists believe, and consider it closely.

Atheists believe that gravity thinks intelligently, makes plans, and then creates the concept it has in mind. In this case, gravity created the water cycle. Perhaps you object to my saying that gravity must be intelligent to come up with the concept of the water cycle and then actually create it. Perhaps you think that gravity is mindless, and created it without thinking. I don't think so. I am in awe of the water cycle and couldn't imagine the most intelligent of human beings coming up with it.

But according to atheists, gravity didn't create alone. Its partner was heat. The two of them came up with the concept of water, vapor, clouds, rain, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, snow, evaporation, air, condensation, and then created them and caused them to work throughout the earth in perfect harmony. Atheism brings new meaning to the word "absurd."

 

I … honestly don’t even know what to say about this. What should I point out first? The transparent dishonesty? The baffling ignorance? The amusingly unmerited condescension? The ironic gem that is that last line? Or the overall foolishness in attempting to lecture someone far more knowledgeable than himself about something that Comfort obviously hasn’t got the slightest clue?

I don’t even know.

Marriage equality is like redefining gravity!

Here’s an astoundingly idiotic video from CitizenLink, an affiliate of Focus on the Family, where they present a bizarre metaphor against those who argue for marriage equality: by claiming that those who say that people should have the right to marry whoever they want, regardless of gender, is the same as “redefining gravity”. You know it’s gonna be bad just by the horrible Photoshop job done on that poor, undeserving plane.

This is one of those things that were just made to have people play “count the fallacies” with it. Unfortunately, the mentally challenged claims come so quickly and numerously that debunking them all would be an exercise in futility and obsessiveness that surpasses anything even my affliction of SIWOTI Syndrome can account for. But suffice it to say that it comes as no surprise that the same kooks who think that heterosexual marriage is a God-ordained absolute, despite all the logical, societal and historical evidence pointing to the contrary, would also think that this sort of mind-numbing stupidity comprises any sort of a decisive argument.

Predictably, in trying to use their garbled version of science to prove their bigoted and socially retarded point, all they have achieved is demonstrating their own monumental incompetence once more.

(via Blag Hag)

Recreating nuclear fission in a high school classroom

The AP Chemistry students at Cleveland’s Horizon Science Academy have thought of another ingenious way of demonstrating what happens when good uranium goes bad.

(via Pharyngula)

Daily Blend: Saturday, November 13, 2010

Alvin Greene [source]

• Torture at Abu Ghraib = sickening. Torture at Guantanamo Bay = patriotic. My decoder ring is no match for this.

• Alvin Greene [pictured] for President? Seriously, someone show him to a TV set or something.

• Ray Comfort seems a bit peeved at whoever PZ Meyers is. PZ responds.

• And my hope for humanity just keeps waning.

• Yep, some scientists apparently thought it was time to huddle down and study how cats drink water without getting their chins wet.

• Cracked sez women are just as shallow and vain as men. … Well, some women. … In generally different ways. … Don’t hit me.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• A Jim Crow museum?
  (via The Agitator)

• Insta-nerdgasm: Detailed blueprints for the Millennium Falcon. Han Solo lied – those hidden smuggler compartments ARE in there!
  (via The Daily Grail)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Conservapedia: Theory of Relativity is a liberal plot to turn people away from the Bible

Andy Schlafly [source: Examiner.com]

Damn, another one of the Global Godless Liberal Covenant’s secret plots has been discovered and revealed by Rightists! (Seriously, who keeps leaving our secret manifestos out for conservatives and the religious Right to stumble upon?) This time, it’s Andy Schlafly from Conservapedia who has discovered that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is a liberal scheme to destroy our God-given morality and lead good believers away from the Bible and pursue hedonistic lives filled with heathen debauchery. Here’s what’s said at the top of Conservapedia’s page on (totally scientific and true) “Counterexamples to Relativity”:

The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.^[1] Here is a list of 28 counterexamples: any one of them shows that the theory is incorrect.

And how, exactly, are those pesky libruls lead these poor people astray? Refer to the page’s first footnote, by Schlafly:

See, e.g., historian Paul Johnson's book about the 20th century, and the article written by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe as allegedly assisted by Barack Obama. Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible, a book that outsells New York Times bestsellers by a hundred-fold.

Not only does Schlafly and the moronic editors at Conservapedia conflate Einstein’s Theory of Relativity with moral relativity (because physics and moral philosophy are totally the same thing, really …), they also apparently haven’t figured such logical fallacies as A) the fact that scientifically educated individuals don’t usually read the Bible doesn’t mean that liberals push the Theory of Relativity to further secularize society; and B) boasting about the Bible’s sales is as relevant and convincing as any other ad populum argument. (Ie.: Zero.)

“The Trustworthy Encyclopedia”, indeed.

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

Tags: Conservapedia • Andy Schlafly • Theory of Relativity • moral relativity • liberals • Bible

Ray Comfort gets it half-right on Creation and matter/energy

Hubble composite image of possible ring of dark matter [source: The Internet Encyclopedia of Science]

It’s one of those times when our favorite Creationist isn’t stupendously wrong, but still manages to take a truth and bury it under a coating of rubbish:

After God had created the heavens and the earth, the Bible says, "Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished" (Genesis 2:1).

The original Hebrew uses the past definite tense for the verb "finished," indicating an action completed in the past, never again to occur. The creation was "finished"—once and for all. That is exactly what the First Law of Thermodynamics says.

This law (often referred to as the Law of the Conservation of Energy and/or Mass) states that neither matter nor energy can be either created or destroyed. It was because of this Law that Sir Fred Hoyle's "Steady-State" (or "Continuous Creation") Theory was discarded.

Hoyle stated that at points in the universe called "irtrons," matter (or energy) was constantly being created. But, the First Law states just the opposite. Indeed, there is no "creation" ongoing today.

It is "finished" exactly as the Bible states.

The part that Comfort is correct about is that it’s true that there is no matter or energy that is either appearing from or vanishing into nothingness. (At least, as best as I can recall; my knowledge of physics is pathetic at best.) The bit that he is mistaken about, however, is that this doesn’t mean that the universe is in any way “finished”, in the sense that it was always exactly as it is now and always will be. Matter and energy may not pop into existence out of nowhere, but it can disassemble and reassemble to form one thing or another, from a plant to a rock to a skyscraper to a star. Also, how much matter is present is measured in mass, not volume; basically, density over size. You could compress an entire planet into an area the size of a baseball. Sure, it wouldn’t have the same volume anymore, but it would be just as massive, or would have just as much matter in it, as a solid celestial body tens of thousands of miles across.

The thing about matter is that it is (in theory) infinitely compressible, if only enough amounts of pressure and energy are applied. Just look at black holes, those strange, poorly understood and yet fascinating oddities of the cosmos. They are able to “eat up” any number of stars, asteroids, planets, and basically anything at all that falls within their event horizon (ie. the limit beyond which their gravity is so immense that nothing can escape, even light itself). And yet, their volume is generally only a few kilometers in radius. (And that’s not mentioning the singularity, the absolute center of a black hole, which is simply impossible to calculate how voluminous it may be, at least for now.)

The point is that just because the universe doesn’t gain or lose any amounts of matter or energy (that we currently know of), that doesn’t mean that it cannot expand or shrink. In fact, we are really quite confident that it is, in fact, expanding, continuously and at very great speeds – at increasing speeds, even. Which, logically, means that it used to be a whole lot smaller. So small, in fact, that if you go back some 13.75 billion years, it would be infinitely tiny, smaller than the head of a pin. Then, that little event known as the Big Bang came along.

So, no, Ray. The fact that no matter is being directly created or vanished out of existence is no indication that the Universe has always been the same, or always will be, and that it is in any way “finished”. The universe itself is as dynamic and ever-changing as is anything else in it. Bringing up basic physics doesn’t support your Creation myth, it utterly defeats it.

Tags: Universe • Ray Comfort • matter • black holes