Skulls in the Stars

So I just got a new laptop from the university last week, and have started the process of moving all my files and software onto it.  My old laptop, which still works just fine, I left at my girlfriend’s place for the time being.

Yesterday I went over to her place for the night.  When I got there, I noticed with some chagrin that I had forgotten to bring the power cord for the new laptop.  This really bugs me, because I have a hard time working when I’m on ‘borrowed time’, so to speak.

“But wait!” I thought to myself, “Maybe the power cord for my old laptop will work with the new one!”

So I went over to the cabinet, moved aside the perfectly functional old laptop to get at its power cord, and found that it wasn’t compatible.  So I put the perfectly functional old laptop back in place, went to the couch and sulked that I wouldn’t be able to work very long on the computer that evening.

It took me a half-hour to realize that I had missed a pretty obvious solution.

*points at self* Ph.D. in physics, ladies and gentlemen!  *bows*

I went to work out a little while ago and turned on Headline News to catch up.  Violence has unfortunately flared in Lebanon again, and a CNN news crew is caught in the middle.

CNN likes to update the caption of their ‘breaking news’ frame with background information.  By the time I had tuned in, the caption read:

BREAKING NEWS:  Political instability has existed in Lebanon for months

I guess it depends on your definition of ‘breaking’…

Wandering through StumbleUpon.com’s science links often looks more like a drunken stagger through the realm of crackpot science. The previous one I found, using Coulomb’s law to get free energy, I passed along to Tyler to deal with as it deserved. The latest contender, which is getting a lot of recent attention, is a so-called ‘whipmag’ device, which uses neodymium magnets to supposedly accelerate a disk to a high rate of rpm with no external energy input. The video below the fold…

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Via Pharyngula, I see that Scientific American has posted a number of reviews of the creationist propaganda film Expelled, and as one would suspect, none of them are good. One statement by John Rennie on the matter caught my eye, though, and seemed worth mentioning in a post:

Rather, it seems a safe bet that the producers hope a whipping from us would be useful for publicity: further proof that any mention of ID outrages the close-minded establishment. (Picture Ben Stein as Jack Nicholson, shouting, “You can’t handle the truth!”) Knowing this, we could simply ignore the movie—which might also suit their purposes, come to think of it.

Emphasis mine. I found these observations particularly wise, and pertinent to an issue that constantly plagues the comments of various science blogs: when dealing with creationists and cranks, should scientists ignore them, engage them, or simply insult them? Which strategy avoids playing into the hands of the propagandists?

The quote above suggests that there is no straightforward strategy, and that the best answer one can typically give is: “It depends.”

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CNN’s current headline, as I write this: “President Bush takes part in commemorative tree planting.”  This is listed as a “Live, developing story.”

So I’m standing in line at the security checkpoint at the airport, and not even a long line at that (10 minutes?). Suddenly a gruff older man starts complaining to his wife next to me. He says, “If they had just taken that shoe-guy off the plane and shot him, we wouldn’t have to go through all this.” His wife asks, “What?” “The shoe bomber,” he clarifies. “If they’d just taken that shoe bomber right off the plane and executed him, we wouldn’t have to put up with all this security.”

It’s amazing how many wrong statements and assumptions are contained in this one little “argument”. Suffice to say that it’s hard to imagine that people who are willing to kill themselves and destroy an airplane they’re flying in, feet first, would be deterred by the threat of execution.

If you want to understand the simple-minded political discourse in the U.S., you don’t necessarily have to look much farther than the views of some of its citizens.  And this guy was complaining about a ten-minute wait!

I get so many `phishing’ emails that I used to not bother even looking at them, but some of them are such comedy gold that I’m starting to enjoy the bizarre tales that they tell (like, for instance, the one that begged me to help out some poor Christian lepers).  The most recent one (which arrived in a batch of four identical messages) is so ridiculously generic that I had to post it.  Phisher after the fold:

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A few recent articles got me thinking about the prevalence of crackpot science and medical quackery in modern society, and I thought I’d just write a post with some general thoughts and observations on the subject.

The articles that got me thinking again: McCain jumps into autism controversy, rejects science and evidence, via The Carpetbagger Report, the ‘return’ of the Lizard Man in Lee County, South Carolina, and Bad Statistical Reasoning about Weather and Climate, via Good Math/Bad Math.

Let me summarize each of these reports briefly after the fold, and then speculate what they (and other unscientific arguments) have in common.

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CNN has a video reporting that Lee County, SC may be suffering the return of its not-particularly-famous Lizard Man. First sighted in June 1988, a local teen was changing a tire on his car near Scape Ore Swamp when he was evidently attacked by a bipedal green lizard! Via Weird U.S.,

“I looked back and saw something running across the field towards me. It was about 25 yards away and I saw red eyes glowing. I ran into the car and as I locked it, the thing grabbed the door handle. I could see him from the neck down – the three big fingers, long black nails and green rough skin. It was strong and angry. I looked in my mirror and saw a blur of green running. I could see his toes and then he jumped on the roof of my car. I thought I heard a grunt and then I could see his fingers through the front windshield, where they curled around on the roof. I sped up and swerved to shake the creature off.”

The car roof was severely scratched up, and the rear-view mirror damaged, but otherwise no physical evidence was present. A number of other people reported seeing the lizard man, but by August ‘88 the sightings had died off. Well, he’s back!

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The Bad Idea Blog recently contained a report about embarrassing arguments creationists in Florida are using against evolution:

“My objection to their proposal is that, at its core, the suggested science standard relative to evolution is a set of beliefs unproven. They believe that millions of years ago there was nothing and then suddenly there was something. They have no proof. It’s not replicable. It’s clearly a belief,” Kemple said. “You can give it a name and call it evolution, but it is nonetheless a set of beliefs.”

That quote comes from Terry Kemple, president of the Tampa Bay Christian public policy group Community Issues Council. ‘Bad’ already did a good concise job of pointing out how ignorant Terry is of evolution, but another part of this statement demonstrates a fundamental ignorance about science and I thought I’d rant about it a bit: “It’s not replicable. It’s clearly a belief.”

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