Once again: pretty pictures

These two are from pages 16 and 23.





And this one was never used!



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The latest from Richard Dawkins

You might have read his The God Delusion, or seen the associated series The Root of All Evil?, but now he's got a series that is looking at the wider attacks on rationality from all kinds of pseudo-scientific thinking, named The Enemies of Reason. The first part of the first episode is shown below, and links (just links, not embedded videos) to the rest of the episode one parts are below the fold.



Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

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Be SCARED, damn you!

The theme of the recent TAM meeting was "Skepticism and the media." Yesterday, we got a great example of the media in action, and exactly the sort of thing we need to take a rational approach to. Now, I'm not downplaying the concept of the article, just how it was presented. With the capitals as they were, allow me to point you to the article that is:

In the MIND of a child MOLESTER

YES! A child MOLESTER! Right now, your very child could be being MOLESTERed, as they sleep in their bed! Panic! PANIC! Children being MOLESTERed! In the MIND! In! The! MIND!!! By a MOLESTER!!!!!

Don't think!! Just act!!! Without thinking!!!!

Oh, and but our paper to find out about it (the MOLESTER's MIND!), and also read all our ads and buy all that crap, because just HAVE AN EMOTIONAL REACTION!!!!!!!

Finding out how pedophiles think, and presenting that, is very valid research. But when the paper is merely presenting it in a sensationalist format, the immediately obvious question is: do they care about the topic, or only want people to get a copy and then buy the ads?

The answer happens to be the latter, if they are honest, as the primary aim. And that is why the media can't be trusted, largely, to present any story properly. Be afraid. Not only of pedophiles, but of people who think they can make a buck by shoving them in your face.

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Before your very eyes...

One of the TAM speakers created a wee java applet that puts yet another boot to the creationist camp, in particular the tent that goes under the name of "irreducible complexity".

Check out the Irreducible Complexity Evolver. A ball drops from column four, worth some points, and the aim is to get the ball out column five. The program (which is a set of co-ordinates and letters that do things) is fit if the total points minus the number of letters is more than zero.

After a dozen programs are tested, they create offspring that are mutated in some way (letters are removed, inserted or changed, or two programs combined code), and the cycle begins. (Evolution, anyone?) This continues through generations, until eventually the programs balance against the ball points (which change as programs get better), the programs can't adapt to the changing ball points, or... a program is created such that it is fit, but if one letter is removed the score it gets falls to zero. Aka, the program is irreducibly complex...

Intelligent Design theorists claim that evolution can't create irreducibly complex systems. Wanna bet?

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Metaphor involving shaking, sticks and skeptics...

James Randi, Michael Shermer, Eugenie Scott, Richard Wiseman, Scott Dikkers, Phil Plait, Christopher Hitchens, Rebecca Watson, Bob Carroll...

What do all these people have in common? One, they're great people! Two, they were all at The Amazing Meeting 5. Three, you can see them for yourselves!

I finished going through the DVDs recent, with around 20 hours of watching goodness, so pick up your own set.

PS. Although, with the dollar TANKING, maybe not immediately...

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Hey, I have a politcal leaning!

Thanks to Foo's comment yesterday, I now know about politcalcompass.org, in which I can check out my political stance.

Now, I'm not entirely positive about the results, as I wasn't entirely positive what the statement was saying. Also, most of my answers were "agree" or "disagree" instead of "strongly agree"/"strongly disagree". But all that said, what am I? About 30% left, about 60% social libertarian. (Here's a nice graph that plots me.)

Political Compass also has the NZ Parties as they were in 2005. So, from that, I can see that the closest party to me are... The Greens! Now that, I wouldn't have picked... although they do have some things I agree with... I wonder if they want some of my mone...hey, wait, they thing GE is bad! Fools! So much for that correlation.

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News roundup

A number of articles have been in the papers over the past few days, and while they could be their own entries, I've decided to dump them into one (and thus don't need to say as much).

Christian Politics
I'm not in any way political (which is why I like working for Statistics NZ, easy to be politically neutral when you're politically ignorant). But when people start saying we need a political party based on Christian values, I can't help but be very worried. I would suggest those people read the damn bible, because then they'll find out what those values really are. (My favourite is Luke 19:27.)

Grr, give me more money!
Interesting study that shows that angry men are respected more than sad men, which are respected about as much as sad women, all of whom are far more respected than angry women. That's right, angry women are right down the bottom of the respect list. Perhaps it's because of their puny, puny muscles... or that we live in a male patriarchal society that favours man brawn power... nah, it's their tiny, tiny muscles...

Those crafty deer, keeping an eye out for bibles...
You can get camouflaged bibles... but why? Who really thinks that animals will be scared away when they hear the good news? (Although given that animals don't tend to fair well, they'd be well to fair.) One comment I like: "Because we believe that God created all this," we think it'll be a great idea to go out and shot it up!

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