Monthly Archives: October 2008
Artificially evolved creatures walking …
| October 13, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
What think you of the “bizarre” strategies for walking used by artificially evolved organisms? (Posted by Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, October 2, 2008)? This is a project of Darwin@home, which tries to simulate evolution in unused computing space. Oddly enough, the narrator says at one point, “It seems complex beyond the reach of human… more
Poe’s law: Students cannot form logical position about television’s impact?
| October 13, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Eyes Rolling, Poe's Law |
From what I can determine, this is a true story: A Mindful Hack reader writes, The state of Maine gave a test to about 15,000 eighth-graders to assess their writing skills, including their ability to form a logical position. When the state refused to release the results, a newspaper filed a Freedom of Information Act… more
Are you a red diaper baby? A redneck?
| October 12, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Surprisingly, whether you are left or right may not matter as much as you might think, according to an interesting new political litmus test. Whether you are authoritarian vs. libertarian may predict your politics just as effectively. Hat tip to Franklin Carter , Editor and Researcher, at the Freedom of Expression Committee of the Book… more
Forget About Global Warming Again?
| October 11, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Global Warming, Off Topic, Science |
Yeah, me too. Amazing how fast a red herring gets pushed off the front page when there’s a real problem to talk about. But just to keep you updated a little I offer these: Boise gets earliest snow on record Valley shivers as winter weather makes a premature appearance and related to the global cooling… more
Bill Maher’s “Religulous” documentary a flop?
| October 11, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Atheism, Culture, Intelligent Design, Media, Religion |
Bill Maher’s “Religulous” documentary mocking religion in the United States opening weekend box office revenues were 10% higher than “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”. Our atheist Darwinian friends proclaimed that Expelled was a flop. By that standard so is Religulous. Correction: That should read our atheist and theistic Darwinian friends… the common denominator is being in… more
Darwinism and popular culture: Fish story evolves in pop science media
| October 10, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
British physicist David Tyler looks at a recent find in cichlid fish which has been vastly overhyped as evidence for new species. He means hype like this Nature News story (1 October 2008), which proclaims “What you see is how you evolve: Differences in vision could give rise to new species.” Here’s the abstract of… more
Old Darwinists may generously offer to father children with young women
| October 10, 2008 | Posted by idnet.com.au under Intelligent Design |
  In a new spin to the “Random Mutations and Natural Selection produces all the wonderful things we see around us” belief system, mature aged geneticist (of “I’ve spent a long time working on snails, although I have now moved into slugs” fame) Steve Jones of England seems to harp back to the days when old… more
Artificial intelligence: Getting computers to pretend to converse is an “extremely hard computational problem”
| October 9, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
A computer engineer of some importance has written to say that he thinks me a bit off the mark here, where I deny that computers actually think. He writes, modern computers are often programmed to be adaptive, in that rules are given for learning (e.g, generalizing or updating “beliefs”) based on experience. So in fact… more
Darwinism and high culture: “Exactly why we do things this way is never a question that is asked”
| October 8, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Commenting on the fact that scientists are typically poorly trained in philosophy of science, one friend remarks, As a Ph.D. student in biology I was actively discouraged from taking courses in philosophy — or, for that matter, any courses outside my department, including evolution. My adviser’s attitude was that I should focus exclusively on my… more
Score one for Scientific Creationism ?!
| October 7, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design |
In another venue where I participate this article published at arXiv, Evidence for Correlations Between Nuclear Decay Rates and Earth-Sun Distance, and previous articles from the same source published in recent months, is undergoing a lively discussion. In a nutshell, a couple of earth based research programs measuring the half lives of radioisotopes have a… more
Sir Roger Penrose: Scientific Heretic
| October 7, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Science |
A great article on the Big Bang and the Large Hadron Collider. The big bounce vs. the big bang Joseph Brean, National Post Published: Friday, October 03, 2008 WATERLOO, Ont.. — Among the crushing throng of physics enthusiasts who gathered this week for a lecture by Sir Roger Penrose, who is to the University of… more
Darwinism and popular culture: Darwinism and politics a really bad mix?
| October 7, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Everybody’s talking politics now. It’s enough to make me replace my “ant motel” traps with “politician motel” traps. Oh, wait. The National Enquirer beat me to it. Yesterday, I voted in the advance poll (Canadian General Election October 14), so I can mostly just plug my ears in peace. But passing by in the news… more
Burning Down The House: Newly released video
| October 6, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Culture, Education, Off Topic |
I posted this a week or so ago but Universal and Warner shut it down for copyright infringement of the background music. It’s about the sub-prime mortgage meltdown and those involved. View the original with the great sound track by clicking here. more
Chunkdz at the Panda’s Thumb
| October 6, 2008 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
This just in from a colleague: I encourage you to take a look at the Panda’s Thumb and follow the entire thread devoted to the optimality of the genetic code. It is simply priceless. Someone styling himself Chunkdz dominates the discussion and by virtue of a very considerable gift for profane abuse, succeeds in doing… more
Artificial intelligence: Conversing with computers? … or with their programmers?
| October 6, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
One reason the artificial intelligence fantasy (“Soon computers will think and feel just like people!”) has enjoyed such a long shelf life is a fundamental misunderstanding: The computer is thinking. Actually, the computer is not thinking. A programmer has developed a series of responses to our inputs. To the extent that the programmer can guess… more
Acids, Bases, Lyes, and Lies
| October 5, 2008 | Posted by GilDodgen under Biology, Darwinism |
Little did I realize that in a few years I would encounter an idea — Darwin’s idea — bearing an unmistakable likeness to universal acid: it eats through just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view, with most of the old landmarks still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways. Daniel… more
Darwinism and politics – a really bad mix?
| October 5, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
In a column explaining why Teddy Roosevelt had his flaws as a US Prez (“Choosing the right role model, October 5, 2008″), George Will offers some interesting information: Having read Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” at age 14, and having strenuously transformed himself from an asthmatic child into a robust adult, he advocated “warrior republicanism”… more
Darwinism and popular culture: Only trolls would carry out Gallagher’s orders, but for some reason he wants them carried out by gentlemen.
| October 4, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism, Intelligent Design |
What Makes Science ‘Science’? Trainee teachers don’t have a clue, and most scientists probably don’t either. That’s bad news. So says James Williams, kvetching in The Scientist, 22(10) October 2008, Page 29: As a science educator, I train science graduates to become science teachers. Over the past two years I’ve surveyed their understanding of key… more
“The Great Debate” — Ft. Worth — Nov 7th & 8th
| October 4, 2008 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
David Berlinski & Brad Monton vs. Denis Alexander & Larry Krauss on the topic of ID. For details go here: www.st-andrew.com/content/7794_GreatDebate_Email.pdf more
Fun With Google Trends – ID vs. Darwinism vs. Creationism
| October 2, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Just For Fun |
Blue: Intelligent Design; Red: Darwinian Evolution; Orange: Scientific Creationism; Green: Theological Evolution Any questions? Source: Google Trends Update: Due to whiny protesters who say Darwinian evolution isn’t fair, I shortened it to evolution. And just to be fair I shortened intelligent design to design. more