No Heaven or Hell

The sign that's been posted at the Washington State Capitol and Springfeild IL City Hall so far...



Of course, somebody stole it from the Washington State Capitol

Science and Faith Flow Chart

This greatly amuses me. Please click to enlarge.

The Ultimate Sudoku Marathon

At work today, I figured out how many years it would take to complete every single possible 9x9 soduko puzzle if you did one every 10 minutes (which is optamistic for most people) non-stop; and the answer is:

126,919,782,192,181,760 years (About 127 Quadrillion Years) To put that in perspective, that's roughly 9.7 million times the age of the universe.

And this is only taking into account the 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 (6.6 Septillion) possible solved puzzles, this does not figure in the seemingly infinite number you could arrive at if you figure in the combinations of different puzzles created by alternating blank spaces.

Imagine if I figured out 12x12 puzzles. Maybe I'll save that useless fact for next time.

I'm a such a nerd

10 nerd points to anyone who gets the gag here.

Dawkins (Hearts) Jesus

This was too amusing to pass up posting. This is Richard Dawkins, scientist, friend of athiests the world 'round, author of "The God Delusion" and my all time favorite book "The Selfish Gene".

Sicko, It'll Make You Want to Barf on People

I unfortunately didn't have a chance to see this in the theaters, but I just saw it on dvd. Go rent this right now. It'll piss you off, but it a good way. Perhaps the best point he makes in the movie is not about the American health care system, but how afraid we are to rock the boat when we're being exploited and stepped on.

Al Gore, Nobel Prize Winner

Ok, now will you listen to him?

Clinton Assails Bush's 'War on Science'

By DEVLIN BARRETT Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton cited frustrated scientists and a comedian Thursday as she assailed President Bush's record on scientific study and pledged to rescind his restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
The presidential candidate also said she would bar political appointees from altering or removing scientific conclusions from government research without a legitimate reason for doing so.
"The Bush administration has declared war on science," the New York senator said. "When I am president, scientific integrity will not be the exception it will be the rule."
Her address to the Carnegie Institution for Science was a preview of what she said would be more detailed proposals in coming weeks on energy and environmental issues.
Clinton focused mostly on policy proposals, but she also drew laughs for paraphrasing the faux right-wing fury of Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert, saying "this administration doesn't make decisions on facts, it makes facts based on decisions."
The speech was timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the launch of the Sputnik satellite by the Soviet Union. The launch, which caught U.S. scientists by surprise, helped start the U.S.-Soviet space race and led to the creation of National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The candidate said as a little girl she was fascinated by Sputnik, but that today's scientific challenges often come from political ideology instead of foreign powers.
"For six and half years under President Bush, it has been open season on open inquiry," Clinton said. "By ignoring or manipulating science, the Bush administration is putting our future at risk and letting our economic competitors get an edge in the global economy."
She said Bush's limits on federal funds for embryonic stem cell research amounts to a "ban on hope."
Republican National Committee spokesman Danny Diaz countered that Clinton "manipulates basic mathematics in her attempts to explain how she will pay for hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending."
On the campaign trail, Clinton has repeatedly slammed what she calls Bush's "war on science" and accused the administration of allowing conservative political ideology to interfere with research and scientific evidence. She cites administration officials who have questioned the scientific evidence of global warming and who have suggested a link existed between abortion and breast cancer.
As president, Clinton said she would:
- Expand human and robotic space exploration and speed development of vehicles to would replace the space shuttle.
- Launch a space-based climate change initiative to combat global warming.
- Create a $50-billion strategic energy fund to research ways to boost energy efficiency and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

Perry DeAngelis 1963 - 2007

Perry DeAngelis of the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe has died. He's missed the last few shows due to being ill but still called in each week to give the weeks' skeptical quote. Apparently no one else on the show had fears of Perry being gravely ill, but I guess surprises happen. I didn't even realize it until I checked the site today for this weeks episode.

Here is the official statement from Steven Novella, Host of the SGU and president of the New England Skeptical Society (NESS):

"The Skeptics Guide is very sad to announce the passing of one of our rogues, Perry DeAngelis. Perry was the inspiration for the formation of the NESS and so we owe our existence to his vision. His distinctive wit and humor and his larger than life persona, which he lent to everything he did in life, helped forge the Skeptics Guide into what it is. He will be sorely missed.

Goodbye, dear friend. "

Perry was sort of the goofball of the show, and sometimes taking on the role of the straight man asking devil's advocate type questions. I always looked forward to his skeptical quote of the week, which he would end with the phrase "...of some note". My favorite example was when he gave a Thomas Jefferson quote and said, "This quote of was from Thomas Jefferson, a United States politician...of some note" The show won't be the same without him.

Here's a link to the condolences thread on the official SGU website.

Earth-Like, Not Earth.

Scientists have found a planet approximatly 1.5x the size of earth. Temperatures estimated to range from 0-40c. Planet is thought to be either rocky, or covered in oceans.

Links: @ Bad Astronomy, @ Skepchick

ID Vid Again

I liked the "Collapse of Intelligent Design" Lecture by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University so much, I decided to snag the actual video from youtube and post it here for download. Internet streaming videos have a tendency to be non-permanent; So for those interested in the subject I thought it would be nice to have a permanent copy for yourself.

Click Here to Download

You'll need the FLV (Flash Video) player to watch it.

Lecture on ID pitfalls.

Rule of Thumb About Science (From Abstract Nonsense)

This is a repost from Abstract Nonsense

A good rule of thumb about any scientific issue is that you’re not allowed to disagree with mainstream scientific opinion, unless you’ve studied the field in sufficient depth to have a serious, intelligent conversation with an expert. In case there are several competing views instead of one mainstream, you’re not allowed to strongly swing one way or another.

Of course, “not allowed” means “not allowed if you want to be rational.” You’re not allowed to believe in fringe scientific theories, however attractive they might be to your political ideology, just like you’re not allowed to believe in fairies or 9/11 conspiracy theories.

In particular:

1. No matter what your views on fat acceptance or body image are, you must accept that obesity is a major medical problem.

2. No matter what your views on smoking laws are, you must accept that first- and second-hand smoking both cause lung cancer.

3. No matter what your views on race and class are, you must accept that IQ is heritable and measures intelligence fairly decently. At the same time, you must accept that the authors of The Bell Curve have no idea what they’re talking about.

4. No matter what your views on gender roles are, you must accept that there’s a genetic or hormonal component, as well as a huge environmental one.

5. No matter what your views on physics are, you must accept that string theory is a sound scientific theory.

6. No matter what your views on the Kyoto Protocol are, you must accept that global warming is real and anthropogenic and will cause widespread ecological disruption if left unabated.

7. No matter what your views on environmental regulations are, you must accept that DDT is harmful to the environment and encourages resistance to spraying among mosquitos.

Many of the above propositions are the subject of some controversy, but there’s a clear dominant view. I don’t fault Peter Woit for concluding that string theory is unscientific; he’s an expert who knows enough about the theory to make an informed judgment. But to be rational, I shouldn’t side with him just by reading his book, unless I’m prepared to read heaps of mainstream material on string theory.

Scientific Rationalism & Man With Mustache

The first thing I want to mention today is the most brilliant podcast out there right now, it's called Point of Inquiry. It's a science-centric show focusing on, as the host of the show puts it, "Asking the biggest questions of the day through the lens of the Scientific viewpoint". Other than issues directly relating to Science, it also desls with social and political issues, again from scientists' and rational thinkers' points of view. There is a guest each week, what initially brought my attention to the show was the recent interview with Richard Dawkins. So check it out, it's Point of Inquiry, subscribe to it with itunes or download the mp3s directly off of the site.


The other thing I wanted to mention was Entertainment Weekly. A few weeks ago they had a picture of the now familiar character Borat (played by sacha cohen) on the cover with the words "Has this man made the funniest movie ever?". Inside the pages were glowing reviews of movie, interviews with Cohen and so-on. They were kissing Borat's ass basically. Then, this week a rather large article appears in the magazine days before the movie is set to release, slamming the movie and telling everyone that it's going to flop because the studio over estimated the internet-buzz of the movie exactly the way they did with Snakes on a Plane. I'm not quoting exactly here, but it also said something to the effect of "When is hollywood going to admit to itself that internet marketing just doesn't work?". Now, lets review the reviews. Snakes on Plane: 69% on the tomatometer, while still considered "Fresh" 30% of those reviewing it still gave it a negative review with average overall rating being 6.2/10. Borat: 96% on the tomatometer with and average rating of 8.3/10. As many of you might know by now, Borat completely blew out all studio and media expectations and opened with 26m (it was expected to open in the 10-15m range and place 3 or 4th). The reason for the low expected take was that Borat was only opening in about 800 theaters this week, that's about 1/2 to 1/3 of what the other major releases that didn't fair nearly as well opened in. So EW, backpedaling and not wanting to look like asses they way they did when SoaP "Flopped" after they too had gotten caught up in the hype (I put 'flopped' in qoutations because it's a relative term, the movie still made a tidey profit), recanted their praise of the movie at the last second because they found out about the initial low theater count.

Did EW not look at or even care about the reviews of the 2 movies (SoaP and Borat) before shooting their mouth off? Does that not matter any more? Sure, plenty of great films go unnoticed by mainstream audiences all the time, but the usually have one thing in common: They were not made for mainstream audiences. So, did EW think that nobody was going to go see a movie that was obviously targeting the mainstream and had the best reviews of the year(96% has been the best tomatometer score for any film this year)? I don't know what it is about moive-market anaylsts and their gloom-and-doom predictions, but they don't seem to be based on anything like common-sense. Did I think SoaP was going to do a little better than it did? Yes, but not by much, because I saw the reviews ahead of time and they were luke-warm at best. Did I expect Borat to do better than SoaP...honestly, untill EW's article I wasn't really compairing the two, but I expect it to do well considering the reviews.

My two biggest heroes in the world (Richard Dawkins & Stephen Cobert), togeather at the same table for a "debate"