And now for some Candy

Because who doesn’t like Candy?

Capitulation in Germany

Lest you think that Great Britain is the only country committing cultural suicide.

Playing by the Rules

Harriet Hall has an excellent article on not leveling the playing field, but agreeing what game we’re playing. It’s worth reading the whole thing. Here, for your edification, are the rules:

If you want to play the science game, here’s what you do:

1. Submit your hypothesis to proper testing. Testimonials, intuitions, personal experience, and “other ways of knowing” don’t count.
2. See if you can falsify the hypothesis.
3. Try to rule out alternative explanations and confounding factors.
4. Report your findings in journal articles submitted to peer review.
5. Allow the scientific community to critique the published evidence and engage in dialog and debate.
6. Withhold judgment until your results can be replicated elsewhere.
7. Respect the consensus of the majority of the scientific community as to whether your hypothesis is probably true or false (always allowing for revision based on further evidence).
8. Be willing to follow the evidence and admit you are wrong if that’s what the evidence says.

If you want to play the science game, here are some of the things you don’t do:

1. Accuse the entire scientific community of being wrong (unless you have compelling evidence, in which case you should argue for it in the scientific journals and at professional meetings, not in the media).
2. Design poor-quality experiments that are almost guaranteed to show your hypothesis is true, whether it really is or not. Use science to show THAT your treatment works, not to ask IF it works.
3. Keep using arguments that have already been thoroughly discredited. (The intelligent design folks are still claiming the eye could not have evolved because it is irreducibly complex; homeopaths are still claiming homeopathy cured more patients than conventional medicine in the 19th century epidemics).
4. Write books for the general public to promote your thesis – as if public opinion could influence science!
5. Form an activist organization to promote your beliefs.
6. Step outside the scientific paradigm and appeal to intuition and belief.
7. Mention the persecution of Galileo and compare yourself to him.
8. Invent a conspiracy theory (Big Pharma is suppressing the truth!).
9. Claim to be a lone genius who knows more than all the other scientists put together.
10. Offer a treatment to the public after only the most preliminary studies.
11. Set up a website to sell products that are not backed by good evidence.
12. Refuse to admit it when your hypothesis is proven wrong

Education and Challenges in Afghanistan

Speaking of that Islamic business of throwing acid in the faces of schoolgirls, Michael Yon has an interesting post up about Afghanistan.

He links to an encouraging story about one girl who was disfigured by one of those throwbacks and who is going to school anyway.

“My parents told me to keep coming to school even if I am killed,” said Shamsia, 17, in a moment after class. Shamsia’s mother, like nearly all of the adult women in the area, is unable to read or write. “The people who did this to me don’t want women to be educated. They want us to be stupid things.”

More Islamic Pedophelia

The lamest spin on perversion I’ve ever heard: If you think 10 year old girls can’t marry you are “being unfair” to them.

Oh, yes. Islam is renowned for it’s “fairness” to women.

“A firehose of nonsense”

If that ain’t the best-ever description of Deepak Chopra.

Studies show, do they? Is there really a believable study that shows that Qi-freaking-Gong, of all things, is good for chronic pain? Ancient hokum about “energy fields” and “life force” does the trick, does it? My idea of a good trial of Qi Gong would involve one group of patients getting the full hand-waving treatment according to the best practitioners of the art. The other cohort gets random hand motions from a system I will gladly invent on request, and which I will have to be forcibly restrained from naming Don Ki Kong. It’ll be full of talk about holistic energies and connections to the universal flow, don’t you doubt it, and I’ll round up some impressive-looking worthies to administer the laying on of hands. Their passes and taps will be carefully screened by the Qi Gongers beforehand to make sure that none of them, according to their system, have any chance of actually having any effects on the Qi (assuming that any of them can agree). We call that a controlled trial to investigate placebo effects.

Update:

Another great Chopra smackdown at SBM.

May he unrest in peace

Patrick McGoohan has left the village.

When asked once why he created The Prisoner he gave the best-ever interview response (best imagined in his inimitable voice):

“To cause unrest.”

Update:

Speaking of getting off the island, Mr. Roarke has taken “de plane“.

Watts Up With That?

I just learned of this good anti-alarmist web site. It’s embroiled now in a competition for best science web site. I was quite disappointed to learn that P.Z. Meyers wrote

“I want my commenters to be uncivil. There is no virtue in politeness when confronted with ignorance, dishonesty, and delusion.”

P.Z. has been so right in his battles with creationists that I’m frankly aghast at this. In the case of evolution, he’s defending a theory which explains 100% of what we observe in nature, and which has absolutely no competing theories. How he can turn on his ad-hominem attacks against people skeptical of anthropogenic climate change, which is a long way from settled science, is befuddling.

Look at Watts’ site yourself and see if he seems like a “whining wackaloon”.

Here’s an example of his detective work.

I’m willing to believe that we are changing the climate in significant ways as soon as I see compelling scientific evidence from scientists independent of, say, an utterly corrupt, purely political, left-wing entity.

Until then, as in all things, skepticism is a virtue. So is civility.

Cartoons OTD

Gran Torino

If, as rumored, this is Clint’s last movie as an actor he’s going out on a very high note. And the script deserves a nomination – we’ll see if the Academy Writer’s Branch embarrasses itself by overlooking it.

It’s old fashioned in some very nice ways, especially in being the portrait of a good man. But it’s refreshingly new in other ways, and brave in how it forces you to re-evaluate this “racist old coot” by the end of the film. Me? I loved his character from the start. Clint had me at the first growl.

I also agree with everything Roger Clegg says here.

Salty language, some violence. Not for kids. With those caveats, just go see it.

Update:

A couple of other screenwriters like it, too.

As if “Czar” weren’t already a clue

Here’s your dog bites man story of the day: Obama’s global warming czar is a socialist. Like you expected what from a Marxist president?

Of Course It’s Different

Mark Hemmingway writes:

Here’s a handy map Prop 8 opponents have put together showing you where donors to prop 8 live. You have to love the “Jump to San Francisco, Salt Lake City , or Orange County” feature. If someone put together a map showing where all the gay people in the neighborhood live that would properly be called an implicit threat, but this is altogether different, right?

Gee, the people who registered that domain used criminal-friendly Domain by Proxy to register on November 7th so we can’t know who they are. Isn’t that curious? I wonder if they even ever walked through the doors here. Note the glowing review.

A Little Geek Humor

Monday morning Bars and Tones.

And, as long as we’re having a little film festival…

Update:

Oh, this is just sad. Turns out that the above short, which won best Short at Cannes, was plagiarized from a Spanish film, “Una Limosna, Por Favor”. Well, the director tries to make the case that it’s “inspired” by it.

Even if you don’t speak Spanish, just fast forward about 2:10 into this report.

Well, ain’t that a Monday.

On the bright side, for every Mexican who pirates an idea there’s another ready to poke fun at him:

Ozymandias Gore

Now, this is classic. Really.

Up

Hey, look! It’s Pete!

Child Abuse

Where is UNICEF?

(It’s a rhetorical question. The whole UN is clearly on the side of the terrorists.)

So here’s your pop quiz. Which Army builds schools, and which does this?

“Hamas is a mental illness…”

“…masquerading as a nationalist movement.”

When I was at Gitmo a couple of years back, one of the most philosophically interesting moments came during a conversation with the camp’s mental health doctors on how you tell when a suicide bomber is feeling depressed.

How Time Flies

Fiction to Fact in only 52 years.

The current economic strategy is right out of “Atlas Shrugged”: The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That’s the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies — while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to “calm the markets,” another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as “Atlas” grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate “windfalls.”

Crazy is Good

I’ve often thought there are advantages to being perceived as crazy.

Israel may have reached a deterrent moment in its war in Gaza against Iranian-backed Hamas. I spoke with a senior Arab diplomat last night. He told me that the Arab street is afraid that “the Jews have gone crazy.”

The Award for Least Convincing Medical Rescue

…goes to Hamas!

I, frankly, know enough with just a CPR/First Aid certification to know it’s bogus but, to make sure Buttle’s World continues to bring you the most accurate information possible, I double-checked with an actual ER doctor.

Here’s what was drilled into my head for 3 years of Emergency Medicine training:

1. Airway
2. Breathing
3. Circulation

The first two have not, apparently, been addressed, and those “compressions” wouldn’t circulate blood in anyone bigger than a preemie.

And that’s the least concerned “doctor” I’ve ever seen. I don’t think he even looked at his patient once.

Update:

Of course the network which aired this lame joke would quickly issue a retraction and correction, red-faced that they were so easily misled. Unless, perhaps, the network is the one which lied on purpose about Saddam Hussein so they wouldn’t get kicked out if Iraq.

Another Update:

Stunningly, CNN says that’s their story and they’re sticking to it. Charles isn’t buying it. Ed Morrissey is chortling. Confederate Yankee finds CNN’s conflict of interest. Me? At the risk of sounding like a broken record it’s obvious that CNN thinks we are as stupid as a box of rocks.

Yet More Updating:

More inconsistencies spotted at Riehl World View. And new connections are being made at LGF all the time.

Your Tax Dollars: Funding Terrorists

When do we get to wake up and call the UN what it is: A supporter of terrorism.

Once upon a time, terrorists had to hide from the forces of the free world and filch their living on the sly. That’s changing, thanks to long-running efforts by the United Nations, bankrolled most prominently by the U.S.

In the current violence of Gaza, we are seeing the fruition of one of the most bizarre creations of modern diplomacy: a UN-supported welfare enclave for terrorists.

Behind this lies a straightforward equation. Gaza, with its 1.5 million people, runs almost entirely on international handouts. The UN ranks it among the top per-capita aid recipients on the planet.

And what does all that money get used for? Gee, that’s a toughie.

Hamas In Their Own Voices

Unfortunately they do seem to be winning, with the help of useful idiots in the West. The great irony is that, after they conquer the world, there will be nobody around who can make the microphones and cameras and satellite TVs for these Islamic morons to use.

Father of the Year

Ward Cleaver’s got nothing on a good Islamist.

Why Johnny Can’t Spell

First Sign of Obama Consistency

He’s been walking on water all over the map, but now it seems that He has one consistency: the ability to associate with nutjob preachers.

“Syria,” he told his viewers back home by video, is “a moderate country, and the official government rule and position is to not allow extremism of any kind.” This is a highly original way to describe a regime that is joined at the hip with the Iranian theocracy, that is the patron of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and that is the official and unabashed host of the fugitive Hamas leadership whose military wing directs massacre operations from Damascus itself. (One might also add that the Syrian Baath Party’s veteran defense minister,* Mustafa Tlas, published a book under his own name that accused Jews of using the blood of non-Jewish children for the making of those ever-menacing Passover matzos. I suppose it depends how you define extremism.)

World’s Smallest Violin

I’ll shed no tears.

VDH Fires Up His Calculator

And the answer he gets about Gaza isn’t pretty, but it’s something.

Was there anything new in this latest round of endless six-decade fighting? Sort of. Hamas was isolated and learned that Arab authoritarians worried more about Iranian influence than Arab solidarity. Suicide bombing did not resurface in successful fashion, perhaps due to both exhaustion and the barrier, and its replacement strategy of rocketeering earned a terrible response that proved unsustainable for Hamas. Tanking oil prices are hurting Iran geopolitically, as its impoverished citizens wonder why they are doing without at home in order to provide scarce cash to go up in smoke in Lebanon and Gaza.

Again, what is Israel’s ultimate goal? To decouple Hamas and Gaza from Arab solidarity, to strengthen in comparison the PA, to discredit somewhat the value of being an Iranian proxy, to reestablish credibility in the IDF and to curb (though unfortunately not end entirely) rocket barrages into Israel, and to establish a future paradigm of overwhelming response to Hamas provocations.

What next? I think just as suicide bombing gave way to rockets, so too rockets will be followed by back-to-the-drawing board reappraisals. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian surrogates will have to try something newer and deadlier, maybe guided missiles or unconventional weapons. They will continue as they wait for Iran to get the bomb and give its terrorist appendages the sort of cover that Pakistan provides anti-Indian terrorists who are based on its soil.

Depressing, but that’s the world we live in — and the world that awaits President Obama.

Credit where Credit is Due

I must say that this is a pleasant surprise.

Gingrich and Muhamut said the Bidens didn’t ask for special treatment. They simply mulled over their movie options and left.

So, while I still think he’s an incompetent blowhard with only a passing familiarity with the truth, I have to hand it to him: He showed more class than certain other senators who would, no doubt, have played the “Do you know who I am?” card.

Astounding Stupidity

Want to look moronic beyond redemption? Just dress, and talk, like this idiot from the “Middle East Peace Forum” in Ohio.

Or dress, talk and act like any of these violent dimwits.

Ken Miller Smacks Down the DI

Miller did some guest blogging at Discover Magazine. You can read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

The only relevant question at this point is why the Discovery Institute keeps highlighting its own failings in this way. Why are Casey and his employers now – three years after the Dover trial – trying to rehabilitate the tattered credibility of both Michael Behe and Pandas? What mischief are they planning now? The only conclusion I can draw is that they must be maneuvering for the next round of state board hearings or legislative sessions – and I’m concerned. These folks are a whole lot better at politics and public relations than they are at science, and that means that everyone who cares about science education should be on guard.