Science/Technology blog

We went round and round on this well over a year ago. Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, wrote a shallow and ignorant argument that sort of shilly-shallied over a pro-creationist argument; I pointed out how stupid his reasoning was. The response was insane; criticize Adams, and his horde of Dilbert fans will descend on you like a cloud of pea-brained locusts. Adams took a stab at at the subject again, proposing that at least we ought to teach it as an alternative to evolution, an old and tiresome argument that I thoroughly despise. Basically, Adams just outed himself as a feeble hack making tepid arguments that only a creationist could believe.

Oh, and the most common lame defense: Scott Adams shouldn’t ever be taken seriously, because he’s always just joking to get a rise out of people. That would be acceptable, if ever he’d said anything intelligent on the subject, if his whole argument wasn’t based on common creationist canards, and if his fanbase weren’t taking his every word so damned seriously, as if he’d given them some deep insight.

That’s the history. I hadn’t read the Dilbert blog in ages, so I don’t know if Adams has since continued his wishy-washy creationism. Now I see on OmniBrain that yes, Scott Adams has written another post on intelligent design, and yes, if anything, Scott Adams has become even more stupid in the intervening months Here’s his key argument for assigning intelligence to the universe.

I take the practical approach — that something is intelligent if it unambiguously performs tasks that require intelligence. Writing Moby Dick required intelligence. The Big Bang wrote Moby Dick. Therefore, the Big Bang is intelligent, and you and I are created by that same intelligence. Therefore, we are created by an intelligent entity.

It’s a wee bit circular, don’t you think? He’s defining intelligence by assuming that the only process that can create intelligence is driven by intelligence; I’d simply rebut him by challenging his assumption, and say that the process that created the being who wrote Moby Dick did not require intelligent guidance (as we already know—the processes that drive evolution do not require active intervention by any intelligent agent), therefore there is no reason to call a prior process like the Big Bang “intelligent”. He’s also managed to put together an argument for an intelligent designer that requires us to conclude that everything in the universe is intelligent: phosphorylation is intelligent, sperm are intelligent, carrots intelligent, bacteria are intelligent, interstellar dust is intelligent. I suspect that there’s a self-serving motive involved—he had to really reach to come up with a definition that would allow him to claim that Scott Adams is intelligent.

It’s nice to see that one constant on the internet is that Scott Adams is still a babbling idiot. If any of his defenders want to claim that “hey, he’s just being funny!” that’s fine, as long as you’re willing to admit that his chosen style of humor is to pretend to be a colossal boob…and that he’s suckered many of his readers into thinking that his intentionally absurd ideas are brilliant.

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Ha! We broke the ice and now others are following our example. The Best of Technology Writing 2007 is being planned (hat-tip: Pimm).

I think this is great! Biotech articles are welcome as well, so send in your faves for consideration. Of course, they are a little timid - non-blog articles can also be included, and they intend to work on it for something like nine months! I guess they are not nuts like me….

What is next? Medical Blogging Anthology? Who is going to spearhead that project?

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An interesting comment about open access has been left over at Bora’s place. The commenter is clearly not in favor of open access, and provides a number of reasons for her opposition. I’m going to break the comment into a couple of parts, and address all of the objections separately.

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Various and sundry items that don’t quite rate a post of their own.

I was astonished to learn on Pardon the Interruption that today is Gene Hackman’s birthday. Not so much that it’s his birthday, as that it’s his 77th birthday. He doesn’t seem like he should be that old.

Then again, he’s looked about sixty for the last twenty years, so I guess that’s about right…

Elsewhere, the Little Professor dabbles in Live-Action Role-Playing. I need to get me one of those grimoires….

And, via Eurekalert a book I’m sure we’ll hear more about:

In God: The Failed Hypothesis, physicist Victor Stenger argues that science has advanced sufficiently to make a definitive statement on the existence or nonexistence of the traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. He invites readers to put their minds–and the scientific method–to work to test this claim.

After evaluating all the scientific evidence–the studies done by reputable institutions on the power of prayer; the writings of philosophers who have puzzled over the problem of God and of good and evil; the efforts of biblical scholars to prove the accuracy of holy scriptures; and the work of biologists, geologists, and astronomers looking for clues to a creator on Earth and in the cosmos–Stenger concludes that beyond a reasonable doubt the universe and life appear exactly as we might expect if there were no God. He convincingly shows that not only is there no evidence for the existence of God, but scientific observations actually point to his nonexistence.

Oh, good. I’m sure that will settle the question once and for all…

Finally, James Nicoll notes that David Eddings lost his office to a fire when he attempted to determine whether a fluid leaking from his car was gasoline by touching it with a burning piece of paper. It’s sort of funny, but mostly kind of sad…

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Like bacteria, various farm animals have been cloned to produce a variety of protein drugs that benefit humans. These protein drugs can counteract medical conditions such as anemia and diabetes and even some cancers. However, these cloned animals are expensive, large, and most take years before they can produce these desired protein drugs in sufficient commercially-viable quantities.

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Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, the quickest draw of the Internets, the master of witty blog titles, and the scourge of mysoginists worldwide (like my regulars could avoid my almost-daily links to Pandagon and don’t know who she is…), has just become the Blogmaster of the John Edwards campaign blog. Some of the bestest, snarkiest bloggers are joining Pandagon at the same time. And Amanda is moving to Chapel Hill so we finally get to meet! Waaaaay tooooo cooool!

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Speaking of chess, we really ought to take a moment to acknowledge the fact that the first major grandmaster chess tournament of the year has now ended. I refer of course to the annual event at Wijk aan Zee, in the Netherlands. This year’s event ended in a three-way tie between Veselin Topalov, Teimour Radjabov and Levon Aronian.

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Over at Pure Pedantry, Jake Young reports on a major study into the reasons for the dearth of women among competitive chessplayers. His conclusion:

I am going to make an analogy to make this data make more sense. We clearly have good athletes. We play other sports well. We train athletes just as well. Why do other countries do so much better?

You end up playing something else like football or basketball. The difference in performance is related to a difference in participation.

This data strongly argues that the difference in performance of women in chess is also a problem of participation. The problem is not that women can’t play chess well. The problem is that enough women who play chess well are not choosing to play chess. There may be several reasons socially why they choose not to do so or are discouraged from doing so — I will let you speculate about that at your leisure. However, this data strongly supports the participation rate hypothesis.

Speaking as someone who spends a lot of time hanging around chess tournaments, I can say with some confidence that this explanation is correct.

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The reports from today’s hearing, “Political Interference with the Work of Government Climate Change Scientists,” are coming in. Hosted by Representative Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing will be the first of many such investigative hearings. Part of the story is that documents demanded from the Council on Environmental Quality were not delivered on time, and then failed to meet the criteria of documents that were requested. So, in short, the Administration got off on the wrong foot …

We’re still digesting everything that happened today, but here’s what we’re chewing on:

Primary Material:

Hearing home page. This is the mother load on today’s hearing. Waxman’s statement, notice and witness list, testimony, and more. From the Committee’s letter to CEQ Chairman James Connaughton:

We are writing to express our concern over your failure to provide the Committee with the documents we have requested in our inquiry into whether senior Administration officials edited scientific reports and took other actions to minimize the significance of global warming.

Over the past six months, we have had numerous communications with CEQ about this document request. [...]

In a letter sent yesterday evening, however, you indicated that you would produce nine of (39) documents to the Committee. [...]

The Committee must be able to take custody of the documents in order to make a thorough and complete review. During this review process, we will give due consideration to the concerns you have raised. But unless the President is prepared to assert a constitutional claim of executive privilege, the documents sought by the Committee should be provided without further delay.

Yowza.

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The Little Professor has A Compendium of Professorial Magic that looks useful—I’m going to have to master these.

The list, though, is of low level spells. I think I really need an “Enchant Knowledge” area-effect spell that infuses all of the targets with mastery of the subject matter. It’s probably a ninth-level spell, I’m afraid, and I’m going to have to get more experience before I can handle it. (Knocking over creationists is probably analogous to fending off a kobold raid—tedious hack-and-slash that garners darned little experience, and they don’t even have any loot worth harvesting.)

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