Introduction
* Intro to the Evolution Controversy
* History of the Debate Between Science and Religion - Index
* The History of Creationism
* Science and Divine Intervention/Action
* A Classification of Theories of Divine Action
* Darwin's Discovery: Design without Designer
* Evolutionary Biology and Theology
* Evolutionary Biology and Theology - Index
* Other Resources on the Creation/Evolution Controversy
Sunday, April 11, 2004
Introduction
Dissecting the Disclaimer
Dissecting the Disclaimer: "'Biological evolution is the best scientific explanation we have for the enormous range of observations about the living world.'"
Wells' "Correction"
Wells' "Correction": "About 18 months ago, I read Jonathan Wells' book 'Icons of Evolution' and discovered that Wells had claimed that a 1996 LIFE magazine article on human embryos was written by 'Brown University Biologist Kenneth Miller.' Well, it wasn't. Turns out that LIFE has a staff writer who is also named 'Kenneth Miller.' I've got a very common first and last name, and this kind of thing happens all the time."
A Law by Any other Name?
A Law by Any other Name?: "As you scroll down the page you will first see a link to the Law itself. Then you will see a link for the Bill as presented to the President, then links to help implement the bill, then remarks by the First Lady, and only then a link to the 'Conference Committee Report.' After Santorum's language was deleted from the bill, he was able to insert a watered-down version of his language in the explanatory report of the conference committee. Here is where the language about evolution is located, right on page 703. However, a committee report, even when it is accepted by the Congress, is not a bill. It was not sent to the President's desk for signature, and it is not part of Public Law 107-110. Case closed. Committee reports simply do not have the force of law. The new Education Act simply does not require the teaching of 'Intelligent Design.'
The fact that the anti-evolutionists misrepresented both the content of the Education Bill and the language in the new Education Act is at once distressing and instructive. It is indeed sad to see how people who claim only to be interested in the truth are willing to mislead the public, but it also sets a standard of inaccuracy by which the people of Ohio may judge the reliability of their scientific claims as well. "
Kenneth R. Miller - Home Page
Kenneth R. Miller - Home PageMy research involves problems of structure and function in biological membranes. Principal research tools are a variety of techniques associated with electron microscopy.
The Flagellum Unspun
The Flagellum UnspunThe hallmark of the intelligent design movement, however, is that it purports to rise above the level of personal skepticism. It claims to have found a reason why evolution could not have produced a structure like the bacterial flagellum, a reason based on sound, solid scientific evidence.
Why does the intelligent design movement regard the flagellum as unevolvable? Because it is said to possesses a quality known as "irreducible complexity." Irreducibly complex structures, we are told, could not have been produced by evolution, or, for that matter, by any natural process. They do exist, however, and therefore they must have been produced by something. That something could only be an outside intelligent agency operating beyond the laws of nature – an intelligent designer. That, simply stated, is the core of the new argument from design, and the intellectual basis of the intelligent design movement.
The great irony of the flagellum's increasing acceptance as an icon of anti-evolution is that fact that research had demolished its status as an example of irreducible complexity almost at the very moment it was first proclaimed. The purpose of this article is to explore the arguments by which the flagellum's notoriety has been achieved, and to review the research developments that have now undermined they very foundations of those arguments.
The Panda's Thumb: That a priori muddle
The Panda's Thumb: That a priori muddle: "The Panda's Thumb is dedicated to explaining the theory of evolution, critiquing the claims of the anti-evolution movement, and defending the integrity of science and science education in America and around the world.
"
Motorcycle Lights
Motorcycle LightsSylvania H4 ST, $50/pr. These bulbs are available from any auto parts store as 9003 ST for cages, and as H4 ST which are heavy duty for motorcycles. You'll likely have to special order the H4 STs. I use these, I think they're fantastic. They are a huge improvement over the stock bulbs, which I consider marginal at best. Don Huntley and I both run these bulbs, and both of us lost a left side low beam at about 14,000 miles. It seems ST1300s are particularly hard on their left side headlight bulbs.
BikePoint Australia : Bike Test Page
BikePoint Australia : Bike Test Page Suzuki's new V-Strom and the fuel-injected version of Yamaha's venerable TDM900. Both bikes had been sampled by Motorcycle News at their respective launches, but they hadn't been given a thorough workout. The time was right.
Slashdot | A Movie From Before Movies Were Invented
Slashdot | A Movie From Before Movies Were Invented: "cookie etiquette (Score:1, Offtopic)
by fermion (181285) <[lowt] [at] [bigfoot.com]> on Sunday April 11, @10:51AM (#8830223)
(Last Journal: Saturday October 04, @11:52PM)
Can anyone tell me why designers set up sites to store cookies prior to delivering any data? To me this is so ignorant. I mean how many times have you been surfing for information or a product, click a link, and have a cookie request pop up. You don't know the site from Adam, you don't know if it is going to have anything useful. You have no way to decide, as no content has been delivered. You don't want to have to go and delete the cookie or change the settings. I mean after all you just want to look for a second. They don't ask you for an ID when you browse at the mall. Some shady car dealers do this, but when they do i tell them to fuck off and go somewhere else.
So, being a prudent surfer, you deny the cookie. I mean how useful can a site be if they won't even allow a page to render before setting a cookie. This is one of the first rules of usability. Before asking the user to do anything, the site must clearly establish a benefit. I mean if I accepted every cookie of every site that wanted to set it before rendering I would have hundreds of useless site cookies. Much of the time I look at the page, decide it is useless, and go on my way.
So to those of you who are currently in the middle of this modern client/server design, why do require a token even before the user has a chance to establish the identify of the website."
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Friday, April 09, 2004
Thursday, April 08, 2004
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Friday, April 02, 2004
Thursday, April 01, 2004
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Vendors under pressure to drop AMD notebook plans
Vendors under pressure to drop AMD notebook plans: "A STORY ON Digitimes today suggests that large Taiwanese vendors Acer, Asustek and Benq are resisting pressure by Intel to stop them making notebooks using AMD chips.
The article doesn't say what kind of pressure Intel is putting on the Asian giants, but one thing is for sure, AMD has an Achilles' Heel in its underfunded notebook division.
At the introduction of the Athlon 64 at the Computex show in Taiwan last September, AMD was unable to show anything other than token notebook machines. It's currently putting its limited marketing funds into selling desktop and server chips, and faces big hurdles in making a breakthrough on the notebook front."
Vole ticked off for not fixing critical flaw
Vole ticked off for not fixing critical flaw: "SECURITY COMPANY eEye has attacked Microsoft for not fixing two critical security flaws it was warned about 200 days ago.
The flaws appear in all versions of Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. They affect core services in the operating system and can be remotely exploited."
University sues Peoplesoft
University sues Peoplesoft: "PEOPLESOFT has been sued for alleged fraud by Ohio State for its role in a software project at Cleveland State University.
The state wants more than $130 million because Peoplesoft 'misrepresented the capabilities of its software and failed to provide promised features'.
Peoplesoft was chosen by the state for the revamp of the universities its student administration systems in 1996.
But the University was less than impressed with Peoplesoft as some of the features pushed by sales people turned out to be 'little more than vapourware' and that the programs had trouble administering student financial aid, keeping student records in synch and running properly on the IBM DB/2 database.
The state has also sued Peoplesoft's supplier Kaludis Consulting Group, a Washington-based consulting firm, for failing to fulfil its contractual duties. ?"
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Encryption and Security Tutorial
Encryption and Security Tutorial: "This page contains my godzilla crypto tutorial, totalling 704 slides in 8 parts, of which the first 7 are the tutorial itself and the 8th is extra material which covers crypto politics. Part 8 isn't officially part of the technical tutorial itself (much of it is now also rather dated, the material is extensively covered elsewhere so I haven't spent much time updating it)."
Peter Gutmann's Home Page
Peter Gutmann's Home Page: "Professional Paranoid
Department of Computer Science
University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019
Auckland, New Zealand"
"Building a fully featured, smart robot with sight, hearing, radar and many other nice features, when you only have $50."Copyright (C) 2002 by Michal Zalewski
...and other contributors...
Some photos of the robot are here:
http://lcamtuf.misantrop.net/bocio/
Last revision: 8/28/2002
1) Introduction - why and how?
==============================
I decided to build a robot. This is something I wanted to do for a longer
while, so the decision just happened, don't expect me to give you any good
explanation =) Since you are here, chances are, you are or were thinking
about it at some point.
[strike out]
[strike out]: "This is not an exciting story: I happened to be browsing aimlessly through case studies and other publications released by Microsoft as a part of their 'Get the facts' initiative. At one point, I stumbled upon a Word file I wanted to read - and as soon as I ran it through wvWare, I noticed there is a good deal of amusing change tracking information still recorded within the document. Naturally, publishing documents with 'collaboration' data is not unheard of in the corporate world, but the fact Microsoft had became a victim of their own technology, and had failed to run their own tools against these publications makes it more entertaining. On a more serious note, it serves as a good warning it is really difficult to manage this, and that inline filtering tools on SMTP gateways and in web publishing systems may be necessary in some corporate environments.
A pointless idea came to my mind that instant: why not run a gentle web spider against all Microsoft sites in English, specifically looking for other instances of tracking data not removed from documents? I coded a bunch of scripts and let them run through the night, fetching approximately 10,000 unique documents; over 10% was identified as containing change tracking records. I decided to collect only those with deleted text still present, yielding a crop of over 5% of all documents. Quite impressive. Below, you will find a brief (and rest assured, incomplete) list of the most entertaining samples I've run into, along with some speculation (and only speculation) as to the reasons we see them."
Music sharing doesn't kill CD sales, study says | CNET News.com
Music sharing doesn't kill CD sales, study says | CNET News.com: "A study of file-sharing's effects on music sales says online music trading appears to have had little part in the recent slide in CD sales.
For the study, released Monday, researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina tracked music downloads over 17 weeks in 2002, matching data on file transfers with actual market performance of the songs and albums being downloaded. Even high levels of file-swapping seemed to translate into an effect on album sales that was 'statistically indistinguishable from zero,' they wrote."
Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource
Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource: "The Recording Industry has spent a prodigious amount of effort on manipulating statistics in order to shroud the industry in the shadow of doom and gloom. In recent years, the push has been to villainize P2P users, often to such an extent that the serious career criminals are ignored when the discussion of piracy is brought up. To make matters worse, the industry has been caught playing fast and loose with consumption data, all the while ignoring the opportunity that's been in front of their face. Sadly, the trend continues. The Australian market has had its best year ever, but they're trying to cover it up to rhetorical ends."
Saturday, March 27, 2004
Janklow sentenced to 100 days in jail for killing motorcyclist Randy Scott
Janklow sentenced to 100 days in jail for killing motorcyclist Randy Scott: "William Janklow was sentenced to 100 days in jail.
The statute under which 64-year-old Janklow was convicted for second-degree manslaughter sets no mimimum sentence. The range of possible sentences that Judge Rodney Steele could have imposed on Janklow ranged from nothing to 11 years behind bars and/or a an $11,400 fine. Options included probation, loss of drioving priviledges, restitution and community service. The average sentence is around seven years. The judge had a detailed presentencing report to help determine the sentence. He also heard from Scott's family and Janklow supporters.
Scott's family has also filed suit for unspecified damages.
Motorcyclists who feel that the sentence was excessively lenient may attempt to boycott South Dakota's largest tourist event, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally."
Friday, March 26, 2004
Slashdot | What Would The World Be Like Without Microsoft?
Slashdot | What Would The World Be Like Without Microsoft?: "Seriously, you'd be hard pressed to find a more unscrupulous group than building developers. Because of the incorporation techniques that they use, getting sued is essentially no problem. They hide behind the corporate veil and just declare bankruptcy for the shell corporation that built that 30 story condo building that now leaks like a sieve. That's if the company hasn't been wound down by the time the problem crops up."
The Spread of the Witty Worm - CAIDA : ANALYSIS : security : witty
The Spread of the Witty Worm - CAIDA : ANALYSIS : security : witty: "Network Telescope
The UCSD Network Telescope consists of a large piece of globally announced IPv4 address space. The telescope contains almost no legitimate hosts, so inbound traffic to nonexistent machines is always anomalous in some way. Because the network telescope contains approximately 1/256th of all IPv4 addresses, we receive roughly one out of every 256 packets sent by an Internet worm with an unbiased random number generator. Because we are uniquely situated to receive traffic from every worm-infected host, we provide a global view of the spread of Internet worms."
Prothon
Prothon: "Python is a interpreted language with object-oriented features that is practical, powerful, and fun to program at the same time. Over time capabilities have been added to the core Python language, while compatibility with earlier versions has been maintained, and Python has became loaded with features, some quite complex. The metaclass is an example of a recent feature addition. Even Python experts admit that metaclasses are brain-achingly complex.
Prothon is a fresh new language that gets rid of classes altogether in the same way that Self does and regains the original practical and fun sensibility of Python. This major improvement plus many minor ones make for a clean new revolutionary break in language development. Prothon is quite simple and yet offers the power of Python and Self.
Prothon is also an industrial-strength alternative to Python and Self. Prothon uses native threads and a 64-bit architecture to maximize performance in applications such as multiple-cpu hosting."
US politicians complaining about EU decision collected $25,000 from Microsoft
US politicians complaining about EU decision collected $25,000 from Microsoft: "A SEARCH ON the US opensecrets.org web site has revealed that half of the 10 politicians complaining about the EU ruling on Microsoft earlier this week have received substantial contributions from the Vole."
US politicos tell European Union to get off Microsoft's back
US politicos tell European Union to get off Microsoft's back: "TEN MEMBERS of the US House of Representatives wrote a letter to the European Union's antitrust commissar yesterday more or less telling him and the EU to lay off all-American company Microsoft."
SciScoop || SciScoop - Exploring Tomorrow
SciScoop || SciScoop - Exploring Tomorrow: "That we will eventually use our burgeoning knowledge of genetics to create a new generation of super-intelligent humans is most likely a foregone conclusion. But researchers at Duke University may have already found a much simpler method to create superbabies. According to their news release, providing supplements of the important nutrient choline to animals in utero 'super-charged' their brains, making their neurons larger and faster at firing electrical 'signals' that release memory-forming chemicals. Choline is a naturally occurring nutrient found in egg yolks, milk, nuts, fish, liver and other meats as well as in human breast milk. It is the essential building block for the memory-forming brain chemical acetylcholine and it plays a vital role in the formation of cell membranes throughout the body. The implications of this study for humans are profound because the collective data on choline suggests that simply augmenting the diets of pregnant women with this one nutrient could affect their children's lifelong learning and memory. In theory, choline could boost cognitive function, diminish age-related memory decline, and reduce the brain's vulnerability toxic insults."
Headlines@Hopkins: Johns Hopkins University News Releases
Headlines@Hopkins: Johns Hopkins University News Releases: "Student Builds Micro Biosensor Chip to
Move DNA Molecules
Device Could Help Diagnose Illnesses and Detect Biohazards
A Johns Hopkins undergraduate has constructed a new type of microchip that can move and isolate DNA and protein molecules. He believes that by linking the chip with analysis equipment, a user could identify medical ailments, monitor a patient's health or detect viruses and other biohazards before they spread."
Thursday, March 25, 2004
War criminal to probe mass murder Ex-Senator Bob Kerrey appointed to 9/11 panel
War criminal to probe mass murder Ex-Senator Bob Kerrey appointed to 9/11 panel: Last month, Cleland denounced the agreement reached between the White House and the commission’s leadership to severely limit access to documents that are key to determining what the administration knew about the threat of terrorist attacks before September 11.
The deal, accepted by the panel’s chairman, former New Jersey Republican Governor Thomas Keane, and Democratic Vice-Chairman Lee Hamilton, a former congressman from Indiana, governs access to Presidential Daily Briefs. These are daily summaries of US intelligence reports provided to the president.
According to press reports, one of these briefs, issued on August 6, 2001—a month before some 3,000 people were killed at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon—warned the White House of plans by Al Qaeda to mount terrorist attacks using hijacked airplanes.
Rather than issuing subpoenas demanding the full panel’s unrestricted access to these crucial documents, the leadership of the panel agreed to a rigged procedure in which only one commissioner and one staff member will be allowed to review selected portions of the briefs and write summaries of them, with the White House then vetting the final material, removing whatever it sees fit.
“If this decision stands, I, as a member of the commission, cannot look any American in the eye, especially family members of victims, and say the commission had full access,” Cleland said following the announcement of the deal. “This investigation is now compromised.... This is ‘The Gong Show;’ this isn’t protection of national security.”
Behind the Headlines
Behind the Headlines: "For this, Kerrey received a Bronze Medal: 'I never bragged about it,' he avers, and I suppose for that we ought to be grateful. The ex-Senator from Nebraska has changed his story several times, but Klann has been consistent: he and the rest of 'Kerrey's Raiders' committed a war crime in in Thanh Phong, and this would appear to be legally as well as morally correct. The rules of warfare acknowledged by the US absolutely forbid the killing of unarmed noncombatants, especially prisoners. The irony here is that, for alleged crimes such as these, Radovan Karadizc and other Serbian 'war criminals' (including Slobodan Milosevic, the ex-leader of Yugoslavia) have been indicted by the self-sanctified 'International Criminal Tribunal' for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, and arrest warrants have been issued. But who will go up to the New School and slap the handcuffs on Kerrey?"
Skeptical News
Skeptical News: "In principle, there is nothing whatsoever wrong in the agenda of science studies: modern science is not a sacred form of knowledge that cannot be examined skeptically. Science and scientists must welcome a skeptical look at their enterprise from social critics. The problem with science studies comes in their refusal to grant that modern science has evolved certain distinctive methods (e.g., controlled experiments and double-blind studies) and distinctive social practices (e.g., peer review, reward structures that favor honesty and innovation) which promote a higher degree of self-correction of evidence, and ensure that methodological assumptions that scientists make themselves have independent scientific support. Science studies start with the un-objectionable truism that modern science is as much a social process as any other local knowledge. But using radically relativist interpretations of Thomas Kuhn's work of science as a paradigm-bound activity, science studies scholars invariably end up taking a relativist position. They argue, in essence, that what constitutes relevant evidence for a community of scientists will vary with their material/social and professional interests, their social values including gender ideologies, religious faith, and with their culturally grounded standards of rationality and success. Thus, scientists with different social backgrounds, from different cultures and from different historical periods, literally live in different worlds: the sciences of modern western societies are not any more 'true' or 'rational' than the sciences of other cultures. If modern science claims to be universal, that is because Western culture has tried to impose itself on the rest of the world through imperialism.
This, in a nut-shell, is the state of scholarship in science studies. It carries a reasonable idea too far. Its skepticism regarding science is so radical that it does not allow any distinctions between science and superstition. No wonder it excites great passion among supporters and detractors. While science studies practitioners see themselves as brave iconoclasts, those of us who have criticized the field see it as promoting an 'anything goes' kind of relativism which helps no one.
This, then, is the contentious history behind the conference that I was invited to. This conference was a kind of stock-taking of the influence of science studies on the larger society. In keeping with its tradition of extreme charity toward all sciences, this gathering came up with a generous and inclusive definition of who belongs to science studies. Sheila Jasanoff, doyenne of science studies, formerly from Cornell and now at Harvard, told the gathering that whoever sees the world through the conceptual framework of science studies, is a part of the science studies community, and has a claim on the discipline. All those, in other words, who see the content of science as a 'co-construct' of the dominant interests and values of their respective cultures, are part of this movement of science studies, regardless of whether they are located in the academy or in the world and the polity outside.
But when I pointed out to the gathering that by this definition, the growing movements of religious fundamentalisms in all major faiths also deserve to be admitted to the guild of science studies, the suggestion was not well received. After all, I argued, the contemporary religious political movements use social constructivist arguments when they put aside whatever scientific theory conflicts with their religious faith, as a social construct of godless, Western secular-humanist atheists who have been ruling world since the Enlightenment. Moreover, I argued, if all sciences alike are social constructs, then why shouldn't the 'sacred sciences' propagated by religious fundamentalist movements be admitted as bona fide 'local knowledges' or 'standpoint epistemologies' of the community of believers?
I was not being facetious, nor was I stoking the 'science wars' when I suggested that there was a dangerous convergence - unintended, surely, but not entirely coincidental - between the social constructivist views of science routinely taught in science studies, women's studies, postcolonial studies and allied disciplines, and the views of those who defend creation science, Islamic sciences, or, as in the case of India, Vedic sciences. The point I was making was not that the foot-soldiers of religious fundamentalist movements are sitting and poring over the works of David Bloor, Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway or even of that great simplifier, Sandra Harding. They are not - although the more sophisticated among them do cite the classic works of (a hugely misinterpreted) Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and those of local post-colonial and feminist scholars who have popularized the social constructivist critiques of objective knowledge and reason at home. I wanted to show how the promotion of an anti-secularist, anti-Enlightenment view of the world by well-meaning and largely left-wing scholars in world-renowned centers of learning has ended up affirming a view of the world which constitutes the common sense of the rather malign, authoritarian and largely right-wing fundamentalist movements. I wanted to show that that having invested so deeply in anti-modernist and anti-rationalist philosophies, the academic left has no intellectual resources left with which to engage the religious right."
Empire Notes
Empire Notes: "At the same time, the United States is cementing its rule over Iraq through a little-noticed provision in the interim constitution (thanks to blogger Nathan Newman for mentioning this first). Clause A of Article 26 says
Except as otherwise provided in this Law, the laws in force in Iraq on 30 June 2004 shall remain in effect unless and until rescinded or amended by the Iraqi Transitional Government in accordance with this Law.
The Iraqi Transitional Government will not come into being before December 2004 and could be as late as the end of January 2005 (it requires elections for the National Legislative Assembly). These laws include the blatantly illegal Order 39, which allows for privatization of a host of Iraqi companies (it excludes natural resources). Naomi Klein's got a new column about it.
You can't really debate any longer whether a continuing military occupation coupled with a closely held puppet government were the primary goals of the war on Iraq. Personally, I've always maintained that privatization of Iraq's oil is secondary to the political control over the oil that comes from integrating Iraq very tightly into the U.S. military-imperial network. But anyway, it's all in the papers. No need to refer to the historical record, make inferences, draw conclusions -- just open the newspaper."
: "Or consider the case of Tony Oppegard and Jack Spadaro, members of a team of federal geodesic engineers selected to investigate the collapse of barriers that held back a coal slurry pond in Kentucky containing toxic wastes from mountaintop strip-mining. The 300-million-gallon spill was the largest in American history and, according to the EPA, the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of the Eastern United States. Black lava-like toxic sludge containing sixty poisonous chemicals choked and sterilized up to 100 miles of rivers and creeks and poisoned the drinking water in seventeen communities. Unlike in other slurry disasters, no one died, but hundreds of residents were sickened by contact with contaminated water.
The investigation had broad implications for the viability of mountaintop mining, which involves literally lopping off mountaintops to get access to the underlying coal. It is a process beloved by coal barons because it practically dispenses with the need for human labor and thus increases industry profits. Spadaro, the nation's leading expert on slurry spills, recalls, 'We were geotechnical engineers determined to find the truth. We simply wanted to get to the heart of the matter "
: "The Bush Administration's first instinct when it comes to science has been to suppress, discredit or alter facts it doesn't like. Probably the best-known case is global warming. Over the past two years the Administration has done this to a dozen major government studies on global warming, as well as to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its own efforts to stall action to control industrial emissions. The list also includes major long-term studies by the federal government's National Research Council and National Academy of Sciences, and by scientific teams at the EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA, and a 2002 collaborative report by scientists at all three of those agencies."
Florida...Again?
Florida...Again?: "He made a decision right there and then to do something about it. Already a political rep for a local baggage handlers union, he decided that Step One was to run for President of the Southern Florida AFL-CIO. Four years later, now 48 and having already achieved that first goal--twice, to be exact--he's embarked on Step Two: to do everything in his power and that of his 150,000 members to defeat George W. Bush--and by a whole lot more than a contested 537 votes.
As staffers bustle around outside his office, rushing to get out the federation's first round of targeted political mailers (six months earlier than usual), Frost brims with confidence. President Bush has had a pleasingly lousy month, battered in the polls by missing WMDs, missing National Guard records and missing jobs. 'I'm more optimistic as each day goes by,' Frost says, slapping his desk. 'I've never felt so much enthusiasm coming from the unions.' And not just from the unions. Liberal and progressive activists, civil rights groups and community organizers are eagerly girding for yet another Battle Royal in Florida this November. 'This is going to be a fierce, fierce fight,' says former Democratic state chair Bob Poe, 'just like it was in 2000.'
Florida remains, by all accounts, the most evenly divided state in a deeply polarized America. 'Florida is 40/40--40 percent Democratic, 40 percent Republican, with that 20 percent swing vote in the middle, and most of that in the middle of the state just full of registered Independents and ticket-splitters,' says Congressman Alcee Hastings, who describes his home state as the New Peoria. 'We now so closely mirror America that national marketers use our central corridor for consumer testing. In November it's going to come down again to every single vote.'"
: "The Junk Science of George W. Bush
By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., The Nation
February 26, 2004
As Jesuit schoolboys studying world history we learned that Copernicus and Galileo self-censored for many decades their proofs that the earth revolved around the sun and that a less restrained heliocentrist, Giordano Bruno, was burned alive in 1600 for the crime of sound science. With the encouragement of our professor, Father Joyce, we marveled at the capacity of human leaders to corrupt noble institutions. Lust for power had caused the Catholic hierarchy to subvert the church's most central purpose "
FearBush.com -> Bush Administration Distorts Science. . .
FearBush.com -> Bush Administration Distorts Science. . .: "For example, the panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on lead poisoning was recently planning to strengthen the lead poisoning regulations, in response to science showing that smaller amounts than previously understood could cause brain damage in children, Knobloch said.
Before the panel could act, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson rejected the recommendation and replaced two members of the panel with individuals tied to the lead industry, Knobloch said. "
Marburger said he wasn't familiar with the details of the panel changes, "but I'm pretty sure there were other reasons for making changes on the panel," he said. "I think there are reasonable explanations for nearly all the things in the report, and rather than look for what those explanations might be, I think the (researchers were) somewhat biased in favor of a sweeping opinion of what this administration is all about, and I just don't think that's justified."
The researchers also took issue with a White House Office of Management and Budget bulletin regarding peer review, a process fundamental to science by which researchers check each other's work for accuracy and balance before it's published. The bulletin (PDF), drafted in August 2003, would allow the government to hand-pick scientists to second-guess scientific research, opponents say.
GreekSpot.org - Bush's Dark Age: The End of Science
GreekSpot.org - Bush's Dark Age: The End of Science: "Part II, begins with a quote: 'The real issue here is that we are
allowing scientific advisory committees to be contaminated by people
who have clear bias, clear financial conflicts that will not allow
them to make unbiased scientific decisions.' This was written by Dr.
Bruce Lanphear, Director of the Children's Environmental Health
Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. The highly
qualified Lanphear's nomination to an advisory committee had been
scuttled by the Bush administration. His replacement was an
unqualified industrial 'scientist' who was not concerned about the
dangers to children of high levels of lead and mercury."
The Republic :: It's how the dark ages got their start
The Republic :: It's how the dark ages got their start: "A Massachusetts Institute of Technology-based organization representing over 100,000 American scientists and citizens last week issued a grave report charging that the Bush administration is routinely corrupting scientific information to achieve partisan political aims.
The Union of Concerned Scientists (USC), formed in 1969 at MIT to combat the misuse of scientific information by policy makers at all levels of government, wrote that 'the administration is distorting and censoring scientific findings that contradict its policies [and] manipulating the underlying science to align results with predetermined political decisions.'
The accusation is not made lightly, nor is it fired off from the fringes. On the contrary, the list of signatories to the statement include 20 Nobel Laureates and 19 National Medal of Science winners, including a former chief scientist at IBM, the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Columbia University, a former Science Advisor to the President, and a former president of the California Institute of Technology.
The organization received numerous reports from scientists working at federal government institutions alleging that 'the Bush administration has suppressed or distorted the scientific analyses of federal agencies to bring these results in line with administration policy.' The USC investigated the charges by reviewing the public record, obtaining government documents, and interviewing the parties involved, including many current and former government officials.
The resulting 46-page report entitled Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: An investigation into the Bush Administration's Misuse of Science, makes for bedtime reading more frightening than anything Stephen King has ever dreamt up. The four main findings are these: 'There is a well-established pattern of suppression and distortion of scientific findings by high-ranking Bush' officials in the critical fields of air pollutants, heat-trapping emissions, reproductive health, drug-resistant bacteria, endangered species, forest health, and military intelligence.
There is 'a wide ranging effort to manipulate the government's scientific advisory system' including the appointing of under-qualified people to important advisory posts, and even putting non-scientists in senior positions in the president's scientific advisory staff, and 'dismissing highly qualified scientific advisors.'
Furthermore, 'There is evidence that the administration often imposes restrictions on what government scientists can say or write about 'sensitive' topics,' which is typically any topic that might 'provoke opposition from the administration's political and ideological supporters.'
And, finally, 'there is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression, and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration is unprecedented.'
On the topic of global warming, the report is particularly damning of the Bush administration. 'Since taking office,' the report says, 'the Bush administration has consistently sought to undermine the public's understanding of the view held by the vast majority of climate scientists that human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat trapping gasses are making a discernible contribution to global warming.'"
Restoring the Integrity of Science
Restoring the Integrity of Science
"The United States has an impressive history of investing in the capabilities and respecting the independence of scientists. This legacy has brought us sustained economic progress, science-based public health policy, and unequaled scientific leadership within the global community. However, actions by the Bush administration threaten to undermine this legacy, and as a result, policy decisions are being made that have serious consequences for our health, safety, and environment."
Across a broad range of issues—from childhood lead poisoning and mercury emissions to climate change, reproductive health, and nuclear weapons—the administration is distorting and censoring scientific findings that contradict its policies; manipulating the underlying science to align results with predetermined political decisions; and undermining the independence of science advisory panels by subjecting panel nominees to political litmus tests that have little or no bearing on their expertise; nominating non-experts or underqualified individuals from outside the scientific mainstream or with industry ties; as well as disbanding science advisory committees altogether.
SciScoop || SciScoop - Exploring Tomorrow
SciScoop || SciScoop - Exploring Tomorrow: "The origin of AIDS is a deep scientific mystery. Millions of slaves were removed from Africa for hundreds of years until the mid-19th Century and not one of them exhibited a single case of AIDS. Then, in the mid-20th Century, something happened and multiple strains of AIDS showed up in humanity all at once."
ScienceDaily News Release: There Be Dragons: New Deep-sea Predator Species Discovered
ScienceDaily News Release: There Be Dragons: New Deep-sea Predator Species Discovered: "FT. PIERCE, Fla. -- Dr. Tracey Sutton, a fish ecologist at the HARBOR BRANCH Oceanographic Institution in Ft. Pierce, Fla., has discovered a new species in a bizarre and elusive family of deep-sea predatory fish known collectively as dragonfish. The find, reported in the current issue of the journal Copeia, is the first new dragonfish species discovered in more than a decade."
ScienceDaily News Release: Another Twist In The Field Of Superconductivity
ScienceDaily News Release: Another Twist In The Field Of Superconductivity: "MONTREAL, CANADA -- Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered an interesting type of electronic behavior in a recently discovered class of superconductors known as cobalt oxides, or cobaltates. These materials operate quite differently from other oxide superconductors, namely the copper oxides (or cuprates), which are commonly referred to as high-temperature superconductors."
ScienceDaily News Release: Chemists Report The Most Sophisticated Artificial Nanomachine Yet
ScienceDaily News Release: Chemists Report The Most Sophisticated Artificial Nanomachine Yet: UCLA supramolecular chemists report in the journal Science an artificial molecular machine that functions like a nanoelevator.
"'Such nanoscale robotic devices could find use in slow-release drug delivery systems and in the control of chemical reactions within nanofluidic systems conducted in laboratories on a chip,' said Jovica Badjic, the lead author of the March 19 Science article and postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Fraser Stoddart, holder of the Fred Kavli Chair in nanosystems sciences and director of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA."
ScienceDaily News Release: 'Fab Five' Make Rare Appearance In Night Sky
ScienceDaily News Release: 'Fab Five' Make Rare Appearance In Night Sky: "Like a busy urban family, planets rarely get together all at once. Later this month, however, the five so-called naked-eye planets - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - will reunite in the night sky, giving spectators a unique chance to see Earth's closest companions in one easy sitting."
ScienceDaily News Release: Standing Body Of Water Left Its Mark In Mars Rocks
ScienceDaily News Release: Standing Body Of Water Left Its Mark In Mars Rocks: "NASA's Opportunity rover has demonstrated some rocks on Mars probably formed as deposits at the bottom of a body of gently flowing saltwater."
ScienceDaily News Release: First Protein Difference Between Humans And Primates That Correlates To Anatomical Changes In Early Hominid Fossil Record
ScienceDaily News Release: First Protein Difference Between Humans And Primates That Correlates To Anatomical Changes In Early Hominid Fossil Record: "In an effort to find the remaining genes that govern myosin--the major contractile protein that makes up muscle tissue--researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have made a discovery that may be central to answering key questions about human evolution."
Chip Company Game Project
Chip Company Game Project: "We develop a game where the player manages a chip company.
He/she will be responsible for general management, research & development, finance, sales, marketing and more.
The programming language will be Java. That offers the possibility to provide the game online.
It will have difficulty levels and different weighting of control to satisfy players with different interests."
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• Key Players in the Plame Affair