Taking the fight to the enemy

A good idea over on Science Based Medicine: try to get NCCAM defunded.

As you may or may not know, Change.gov is being used by Obama’s team to solicit policy ideas. Americans submit ideas, along with supporting rationale, and people “vote up” or vote down” the proposals. “Up” votes increase the score of the proposals, and “down” votes decrease the score.

This is one of PZ Meyers’ good projects.

It’s a huge boondoggle, a fat earmark for low-quality pseudoscience, and it’s money that would be better spent on real science and medicine. Sign up at change.gov and vote it up!

Here’s where you can vote it up. Don’t let Deepak Chopra and his minions outvote science! There’s always the nonzero chance that someone at the risibly-named “Office of the President Elect” will actually listen.

More background on the NCCAM here and here.

A funny aside: The “prove you’re a human” text I had to enter at Obama’s site was “riding tied”. Kinda kinky over there, I guess.

Anyway, please note that it’ll make you create an account when you try to vote, but you’ll have to go back and vote again after creating your account. Also, as pointed out in the comments, writing letters is also a good idea.

Top 10 Incredible Early Firsts in Photography

Ever wondered who took the first photograph, and when?

Hey, if they can print paper

why can’t we?

InstaPundit says

Why wait until the government gets around to issuing them in 2011, when they’ll buy a single measly gallon of gas? They’re also amusing at parties.

I’m back to not being able to discern between an Obama Salute and an Obama Parody. I know to which use I’d put it.

Why do professors deplore enterprise?

TigerHawk has some ideas.

Before I read the article I was going to say it’s because they know they’re being paid without the expectation of actual productivity. It’s an unnatural, infantilized state.

The name “Michael” is all they have in common

The smart, talented, honest one may have to sue the idiotic, dishonest hack. Here’s an update.

The Natural Order of Things

I commend to you an excellent article in The Spectator showing how Charles Darwin was influenced and inspired by – wait for it – economists. It’s worth reading the whole thing to see how evolution is far from being a merely biological process. The bottom line:

The dark side of bottom-up Darwinism is that cumulative complexity can come about only through selective death or selective celibacy. Wonderful life may result, but it is born red in tooth and claw. The social Darwinists of the 19th century and the eugenicists of the 20th were of the view that the strong should therefore be encouraged to succeed, the better to keep natural selection going. But this is to misread human society. The human body may have come about through three billion years of natural selection among genes, but civilisation and prosperity came from 50,000 years of much more rapid natural selection among ideas. It is easily possible to blunt genetic selection in the name of kindness, while allowing cultural selection to continue: the death of an idea need not be cruel.

There is, however, one more disturbing and topical parallel between biological and cultural evolution. Just as natural selection’s constructive capacity did not prevent mass extinctions, one of which, 251 million years ago, eradicated over 96 per cent of marine species, so the market’s ability to build order cannot prevent crashes. Even sophisticated, entropy-defying complex systems are subject to the weather-like vagaries of mathematical chaos — and there Darwin cannot help.

Presidential Wisdom

As reported by Robert Ferrigno.

Vice President–elect Joe Biden noisily cleared his throat from just inside the door.

“Joltin’ Joe! What are you doing here, boy?” said W. “You’re supposed to be getting prepped from the Dickster.”

“Cheney has been putting me off all week,” said Biden. “Today he had to cancel because” — he made air quotes with his fingers — “he had to have the oil changed in his pacemaker.”

W. laughed and so did Obama.

“I don’t think it’s funny,” Biden complained.

“Of course you don’t,” said W., “That’s why you’re second banana. Now scoot.”

Biden looked at Obama. “I thought I was going to be allowed to sit in — ”

“Sorry Joe-Joe, this sit-down is for POTUSes only,” said W. “Or is it POTI?”

“Go on, Joe,” soothed Obama. “I’ll e-mail you later.”

W. waited for Biden to leave. The veep-in-training tried to slam the door, but it had weighted gimbals so that it closed gently. Clinton had the gimbals installed during his first term when Hillary had cracked the door-frame twice in one week.

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.