That’s Right: Creationists Really Believe this!

From The Nation (about a year ago) (by Katha Pollitt)

Why does it matter that almost half the country rejects the overwhelming evidence of evolution, with or without the hand of God? After all, Americans are famously ignorant of many things—like where Iran is or when World War II took place—and we are still here. One reason is that rejecting evolution expresses more than an inability to think critically; it relies on a fundamentally paranoid worldview. Think what the world would have to be like for evolution to be false. Almost every scientist on earth would have to be engaged in a fraud so complex and extensive it involved every field from archaeology, paleontology, geology and genetics to biology, chemistry and physics. And yet this massive concatenation of lies and delusion is so full of obvious holes that a pastor with a Bible-college degree or a homeschooling parent with no degree at all can see right through it. A flute discovered in southern Germany is 43,000 years old? Not bloody likely. It’s probably some old bone left over from an ancient barbecue. To celebrate its fifth anniversary, the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, has installed a holographic exhibit of Lucy, the famous proto-human fossil, showing how she was really just a few-thousand-year-old ape after all.

and in an internet “broadside”:

Cranks and woos…

Female Genital Mutilation: what is wrong with these people?

I saw the following photo on Facebook (NSF, graphic). It made me want to vomit.

This is a major problem in parts of Africa, and yes, in parts of the Middle East, according to the World Health Organization.

No, not all Muslim cultures practice this, but many do:

In early 2003, WADI, a German-Austrian NGO focusing on women’s issues,[18] started to work with mobile teams to take medical aid and social support to women in peripheral Kurdish areas such as in the Garmian region of Iraqi Kurdistan. These all-female teams consisting of a physician, a nurse, and a social worker built trust and opened doors in local communities otherwise sealed against outsiders. After more than a year of working in the area, women began to speak about FGM. Kurds in the area practice Sunna circumcision. Midwives often perform the operation with unsterilized instruments or even broken glass and without anesthesia on girls four to twelve years old. The extent of mutilation depends on the experience of the midwife and the luck of the girl. The wound is then treated with ash or mud with the girls then forced to sit in a bucket of iced water. Many Kurdish girls die, and others suffer chronic pain, infection, and infertility. Many say they suffer symptoms consistent with posttraumatic stress disorder syndrome.[19]

Subsequent research found that 907 out of 1,544 women questioned had undergone genital circumcision, a cutting rate of nearly 60 percent.[20] Follow-up research in the Irbil and Kirkuk governorates suggests rates of FGM consistent with those in Garmian. Nearly every woman questioned declared FGM to be a “normal” practice. Most women referred to the practice as both a tradition and a religious obligation. When asked why they subject their daughters to the operation, many women respond “it has always been like that.” Because the clitoris is considered to be “dirty” (haram, the connotation is forbidden by religion), women fear that they cannot find husbands for their daughters if they have not been mutilated; many believe men prefer sex with a mutilated wife. Others stress the religious necessity of FGM even though Islamic law is unclear with regard to FGM. While Western scholars may dismiss the religious roots of the practice, what counts is that many Islamic clerics in northern Iraq advise women to practice FGM. Should a woman consider abandoning the practice, she must be aware that she could appear as disreputable in the public eye.[21] Men usually avoid offering a clear statement about whether FGM is a good practice; rather, they refer to FGM as a female practice in which men should not interfere. None of the men said he had ever discussed the question with his wife.[22]

The reaction of locals to the findings has been instructive. When confronted with the study results, only a few women’s activists in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya expressed surprise although most said they did not realize just how high a proportion of women was affected.[23] While a local researcher and women’s rights activist Ronak Faraj had published a study on female circumcision in Sulaimaniya in 2004,[24] the fact that an international NGO had become aware of the problem bolstered public attention. While many Kurdish authorities were at first reluctant to address the issue for fear that the Kurdish region might appear backward, they now acknowledge the problem and are working to confront it with both an awareness campaign and with legislation.[25] But some members of influential Islamic and Arabic organizations in the diaspora scandalized the findings, accusing WADI of trying to insult Islam and spread anti-Islamic propaganda. Tarafa Baghajati and Omar al-Rawi, both members of the Initiative of Muslim Austrians, called the data part of an “Islamophobic campaign” and declared no FGM exists in Iraq.[26] That Islamic and Arabic organizations in Austria, for example, make such arguments is indicative of the problem affecting FGM data: these groups believe that if there are no such anti-FGM campaigns or studies, then they can bypass an embarrassing problem.

[...]

Islamic scholars disagree on FGM: some say no obligatory rules exist while others refer to the mention of female circumcision in the Hadith. According to Sami A. Aldeeb Abu Sahlieh, a Palestinian-Swiss specialist in Islamic law:

The most often mentioned narration reports a debate between Muhammed and Um Habibah (or Um ‘Atiyyah). This woman, known as an exciser of female slaves, was one of a group of women who had immigrated with Muhammed. Having seen her, Muhammad asked her if she kept practicing her profession. She answered affirmatively, adding: “unless it is forbidden, and you order me to stop doing it.” Muhammed replied: “Yes, it is allowed. Come closer so I can teach you: if you cut, do not overdo it, because it brings more radiance to the face, and it is more pleasant for the husband.”[38]

Abu Sahlieh further cited Muhammad as saying, “Circumcision is a sunna (tradition) for the men and makruma (honorable deed) for the women.”[39]

While some clerics say circumcision is not obligatory for women, others say it is. “Islam condones the sunna circumcision … What is forbidden in Islam is the pharaonic circumcision,”[40] one religious leader explained. Others, such as the late rector of Al-Azhar University, Sheikh Gad al-Haq, said that since the Prophet did not ban female circumcision, it was permissible and, at the very least, could not be banned.[41]

In short, some clerics condemn FGM as an archaic practice, some accept it, and still others believe it to be obligatory. It is the job of clerics to interpret religious literature; it is not the job of FGM researchers and activists. There is a certain tendency to confuse a liberal interpretation of Islam with the reality women face in many predominately Islamic regions. To counter FGM as a practice, it is necessary to accept that Islam is more than just a written text. It is not the book that cuts the clitoris, but its interpretations aid and abet the mutilation.

I see this as a human rights violation, period. Anyone who thinks that this is ok doesn’t belong in the United States.

Stomach Turning Delusion…

I’ll probably leave for my run in about half an hour; the day looks good for a run. But I am still recovering from two tough (but fun) weekends so the run will be moderate (perhaps 5-6 miles).

As far as amount to run: remember that training to run well is different than training for health. The trick for me is to train enough to reach my current potential but not so much that I end up injured.

After this marathon is over, I’ll probably run a bit less and walk and swim more: running: probably 8, 6, weekend race OR 10-14 miles,
walking: 4 and a 10-14, swim: twice a week, weights: 3 times a week (like now).

Posts
Rachel Maddow has a nice piece on conspiracy theories. I know that there will ALWAYS be cranks and woos; the problem is that some of these theories are finding an ear in the US Congress. She also has a few good books to recommend (about 9-11); I might get the Popular Mechanics one.

And yes, this is apolitical; there are liberal conspiracy cranks too.

Martial Arts and woo
I’ve chuckled over this:

And when this master fought an outside fighter it didn’t go so well for him:

But the question is: HOW did such delusions take root? I was puzzled; my experience with martial arts involved boxing, wrestling and judo. You practiced competition in practice; I knew full well what throws, holds, and punches felt like. But in some forms of martial arts: well you can’t practice real knife fighting or really poking someone eyes out. Sam Harris explains:

It’s a little hard to see how Yanagi’s delusion got up and running, but once everyone began falling all over themselves, it is easy to see how it was maintained. Imagine it from his point of view: if you thought you might be able to knock people down at a distance, and then your students complied and fell down on cue, year after year, you might begin to believe that you really had these powers. To a lesser extent, this is a problem in many martial arts: because to train most techniques without getting hurt, you have to allow little elements of fantasy to creep in. Does poking someone in the eye really end a fight? People who have done this in combat probably know, but millions of martial artists pretend to poke each other in the eyes throughout their training, without ever knowing what would happen if they tried it for real. You can’t train with real knives, because you’d get killed on the first day. So you train with plastic or rubber knives, and you begin to lose sight of just how far you’ve departed from realism. This happens to some degree no matter how tactically sound the instruction is.

Of course, in Yanagi’s case, it is harder to see how a new student would suddenly get knocked off his feet based by virtue of his own self-deception. But there’s so much social pressure to confirm the stated dogma. It’s not that people need to fake these things consciously. They can be led by a stepwise process to fake it without ever having to confront the fact that they’re faking. It is like faith healing or speaking in tongues. A person can be inducted into a performance by the performances of others.

So what about common, day-to-day delusions? Well, Mike Huckabee posted a note about a medical team saving the life and limbs of one of the wounded Boston Bombing victims:

The Boston police who faced bullets and explosions to track down the Boston Marathon bombing suspects are undeniably heroes. Especially Officer Dick Donohue Jr., who exchanged fire with the suspects while trying to aid another officer they’d shot and killed. But let’s also extend the honor of heroes to the EMTs and doctors who took truly heroic measures to save Officer Donohue’s life. In the firefight, he was struck by a bullet in the thigh that severed his femoral artery. By the time he reached the hospital, he had lost all the blood in his body. He was given CPR, transfusions and emergency surgery. During that time, his heart completely stopped. It took the surgeons 45 minutes to get his pulse restarted. But they not only saved his leg, they’re cautiously optimistic that he will make a full recovery and walk again. He will live to see his six-month-old son Richie grow up, and to tell him all about the time his dad was dead for 45 minutes. But the heroic surgical team at Mt. Auburn Hospital refused to let him go.

So far, so good. Nice post..I like it.

But then came the predictable reactions:

Never mind the problems with a deity that is focused on a tiny part of a multi-billion galaxy universe. Now you have “god guiding the hands of the surgeons”???? (how? with what mechanism?)

Seriously, why rely on medical teams and science? If “god can work through…x, y, z”, then why not trust their deity to work through, say, Honey Boo Boo to do the operation?

Note: I am NOT talking about people who use their religion to calm themselves and do a better job; I am talking about the notion of some puppet master pulling strings.

Seriously, I wish that individuals that believed this crap would be ineligible to receive treatment derived from skill and modern science. Ok, I don’t, but it is frustrating to live with a times. It is almost as if we are 3′rd world nation with better technology, thanks to….science.

Woos, Violence, Science, Chained CPI and other topics…

Workout notes
Weights only: rotator cuff/ hip hikes, Achilles/
pull ups: 5 sets of 10
abs: 3 sets of: sit backs, twists, crunches, vertical crunches
incline bench: 10 x 135, 5 x 155, 6 x 150, 8 x 145
dumbbell military: 3 sets of 12 x 50 (seated; 50 each arm)
pull downs: 3 sets of 10 x 160
curls: 3 sets of 10 x 57.5 (pulley)
dumbbell bench: 3 sets of 10 x 65
dumbbell row: 3 sets of 10 x 65 each arm.
back PT, side plank, etc.

Note: I always do these with very little rest between sets; I might do curls, incline, dumbbell military, and repeat.

Politics
Robert Reich explains the “chained CPI” concept with respect to social security:

The Obama administration counter to this is that increasing health care costs will be mitigated by some Obamacare provisions.

Science
This is an hour long video via the BBC. But it discusses Richard Dawkins and his ideas; I found it to be informative and entertaining.

Social Science
On the surface, this Psychology Today article by Goal Auzeen Saedi appears to be another “conservative suck” nonsense article. But it makes some interesting non-partisan points:

Further, studies have indicated an automatic association between aggression, America, and the news. A study conducted by researchers at Cornell and The Hebrew University (Ferguson & Hassin, 2007) indicated, “American news watchers who were subtly or nonconsciously primed with American cues exhibited greater accessibility of aggression and war constructs in memory, judged an ambiguously aggressive person in a more aggressive and negative manner, and acted in a relatively more aggressive manner toward an experimenter following a mild provocation, compared with news watchers who were not primed” (p. 1642). American “cues” refers to factors such as images of the American flag or words such as “patriot.” Interestingly, this study showed this effect to be independent of political affiliation, but suggested a disturbing notion that America is implicitly associated with aggression for news watchers.
Taken together, what do these studies suggest? Excessive exposure to news coverage could be toxic as is avoidance of open-minded attitudes and ideals. Perhaps turn off the television and pick up a book? Ideally one that exposes you to differing worldviews.

In my opinion, liberals and Democrats are just as prone to be set off by a simplistic, shallow news presentation as are conservatives and Republicans. The take away here: read something more in depth so you have some context to what is going on.

Social
I found this amusing:

This also touched some emotions.

Commentary and navel staring I am 53 years old. I don’t like it that my body’s physical abilities have degraded; e. g. 5K has gone from 19 to 25 minutes; bench press went from 5 x 225 to 5 x 185. But I really don’t miss the old “dating game” and all of the lying that one had to do. Were I single now and I had the above discussion, I wouldn’t hesitate to say that astrology was nonsense, no matter how “hot” the female was. Sure, such an attitude will alienate you; after all, everyone thinks of themselves as being “smart” and “informed”; I can’t count how many times I’ve read social media comments in which people (especially women) referred to themselves as being “smart” even though many of these people have had very little in the way of difficult intellectual accomplishment.

Well, at my age, I no longer care about alienating people socially.

Speaking of social alienation, a fat woman decided to do a sort-of social experiment:

I was traveling with students in Barcelona in the summer of 2011, walking through La Rambla, when I noticed two guys making fun of me. I could see them in the reflection of a mirrored building, making gestures with their hands to suggest how much bigger I was than the thin girl standing next to me, her small waist accentuated by her crop top and cut-off shorts. They painted her figure in the air like an hourglass. Then they painted my shape like the convex curves of a ball. The guys were saying something, too, but there was only one word I could make out: Gorda. Fat woman.

I’ve been hearing comments like this for much all my life. Maybe someone else would have yelled at them, or shrunk inside. But I don’t get upset when this happens.

I pulled out my camera, and set up a shoot.

For about a year, I’d been taking pictures of strangers’ reactions to me in public for a series I called “Wait Watchers.” I was interested in capturing something I already knew firsthand: If the large women in historical art pieces were walking around today, they would be scorned and ridiculed.

So I found a crowded crosswalk farther down La Rambla, used my rangefinder camera to set the exposure and focus of where I would stand, and handed the camera to my assistant. I bought a cup of gelato and began eating it. I’ve learned I get more successful reactions if I am “doing” something.

In my peripheral vision, I saw a teen girl waiting for the signal to cross the street. As I stood there, eating my ice cream, I heard a repetitive “SLAP, SLAP, SLAP” of a hand on skin. I signaled to my assistant to shoot. It was only when I returned home to Memphis and got the film developed that I realized the sound was the girl hitting her belly as she watched me eat. She did this over and over. I have five frames of her with various facial expressions. I called the resulting image “Gelato.”

I’ll let you surf to the article to see the photos. In one photo, the police are clearly making fun of her. But in other cases, it really wasn’t that clear to me. If you take 100′s of photos, you’ll see many different facial expressions, some which may well be unrelated.

As far as the woman herself: yeah, she is reasonably fat and grossly out of shape. But if she lived here in Peoria, she would NOT stand out at all; she’d mostly blend right in, especially at a Golden Corral or a Chinese Buffet. In fact, some of the slower pace groups in our “beginning runners/walkers” programs are populated by people who look like her; hey you have to start somewhere!

So, I am a bit puzzled about her getting much ridicule; after all, I did get some but at my fattest, I was way fatter than she is now.

Social: our reaction to the Boston Bombing:
Yes, I know it is an Alternet article (linking to Salon and Alternet! wow…my standards have really dropped! )

But this author raises the question:

he Boston Marathon bombing and shootouts with the suspects frightened millions of Americans and turned into one of the biggest media events of the 21st century. But beyond lingering questions of whether the government went too far by shutting down an entire city and whether that might encourage future terrorism, a deeper and darker question remains: why is America’s obsession with evil so selective?

There are all kinds of violent events in America that go unheeded. The British-based Guardian newspaper reported that on the same day as the bombing, 11 people were killed by guns across the U.S. That sad list included a pregnant woman in Dallas allegedly shot by her boyfriend; a 13-year-old who took his own life after being bullied at school; and an off-duty New York City policewoman who killed her husband, her year-old baby, and then committed suicide with her police-issued handgun.

The lists of most violent American trends reveal the mundane shades of evil. There are the most violent cities. There are the murder capitals. There’s domestic violence primarily against women. There are the most dangerous jobs, where injury is common and death far more widespread than from bomb-wielding terrorists—such as at the Texas fertilizer plant that blew up last week and killed at least 14 people and where 270 tons of ammonium nitrate was illegally stored in violation of state and federal law.[...]

I see a few things at work here. First of all, humans tend to overreact to the high profile events and ignore the more mundane; e. g. you are far more likely to be hurt or killed in a car accident than you are by a terrorist bomb.

Secondly: society tends to see underserved sectors (ghettos, isolated rural areas) as places isolated from us. Much of the violence there are people who live in such areas doing some self-enforcing of local codes (reference: Steve Pinker’s book Better Angels). So if poor blacks and poor rural whites shoot each other…well…that isn’t our world so just keep it there, ok? On the other hand: the Boston Marathon is something the media consuming public can relate to; we all know a runner and have watched parades or sporting events. Killing and maiming is out of place here; we rely on police and law enforcement to keep order…and not vigilantism. This is OUR world and such acts are out of place here since we aren’t at war.

Note: This is NOT voicing approval of such attitudes but an attempt to “call it as I see it”.

Religious Moderates and Liberals Give these People Cover

ABC news has the following report:

A Philadelphia couple — serving 10 years’ probation for the 2009 death of their toddler after they turned to prayer instead of a doctor — has violated their probation now that another of their children has died.

Herbert and Catherine Schaible belong to a fundamentalist Christian church that believes in faith-healing.

Philadelphia Judge Benjamin Lerner said at a hearing they violated the most important condition of their probation: to seek medical care for their remaining children.

Authorities have yet to file criminal charges in the death of the 8-month-old boy last week, after he suffered with diarrhea and breathing problems for days. But charges could be filed once authorities pinpoint how the baby died.

The couple is on probation after a jury convicted them of involuntary manslaughter in 2010 in the death of their 2-year-old son, Kent, from pneumonia.

This is the second time they have done this.

“Ridiculous”, you say? You take your kids to the doctor, huh?

Ok. But if you are a believer and you accept “miracles”, then why would you find the above outrageous?
You believe that winged horses carried “The Profet” to heaven, or that a Jew was resurrected from the dead, or that snakes talked or that donkeys talked, or that your deity deliberately slaughtered non-combatants and “made the sun stand still in the sky”.

If you accept miracles:
1. Which ones?
2. How many?
3. What criteria? Why is YOUR criteria right and the criteria of others wrong?
4. Why no miracles here and now? If your deity can raise people from the dead, surely it can cure a common disease, right?
5. If you say that miracles have ceased: why did they cease and how do you know that they did?
6. If your answer is “I just know; it is faith”, then why not these parents have “known” as well?

I’ve Changed My Mind about some stuff, etc.

Creationism and how I’ve changed my mind
In general, I think that science a religion (religion that makes specific claims of miracles) are incompatible. But sometimes accommodationists write good stuff, and here is an excellent post by Karl Giberson on why creationism is so difficult to root out:

The great power of the anti-evolutionary message embraced by so many Americans comes from the following, all of which are on display in the conversation:
1. Appealing to America’s democratic impulse: At a time when we constantly hear that lawmakers should heed the voice of the “90 percent of Americans who want more gun control,” on what basis do lawmakers ignore the “vast majority of Americans who reject evolution?” Does this constituency have no right to be heard? Must their children be forced to learn ideas in the public schools at odds with their family’s values and rejected by most of the voters?

2. Demanding fairness and tolerance: Isn’t America all about being fair? And what could be fairer than giving voice to other viewpoints with widespread support? At a time when most Americans are demanding gay marriage in the name of fairness, why are we being so unfair to the creationists, excluding their ideas about origins?

3.Promoting freedom for our students: Must education be coercive on the topic of origins? Why can’t teachers present “both sides” and let our “bright high school students” make up their own minds? Will this not encourage critical thinking in our science classes? What is this need to restrict science teaching to just one viewpoint when there are others in play?

4. Appealing to authority: A popular anti-evolutionary website contains the signatures of hundreds of credentialed academics who “Dissent from Darwin.” This is a lot of intellectual firepower. Surely such a large crowd of anti-evolutionary scholars can’t all be wrong.

5. Deflecting criticism: Much has been made of the failure of the creationists to publish in scientific journals. But their ideas are blocked from those journals by editorial and peer referees whose allegiance is to the scientific status quo. New paradigms, like Intelligent Design, are rejected out of hand.

6.Currying sympathy: Anti-evolutionists in secular universities or other scientific institutions are forced to hide their views from their colleagues. I was once in a gathering that including several such individuals and they insisted that nobody take any pictures, lest they be identified. If they “come out” they run the risk of losing their jobs, run off by intolerant peers who object to their ideas without considering them. Ben Stein exposed this abuse of Intelligent Design scholars in the documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

This rhetorical strategy contains great synergistic power; polls show that Americans are not coming around to accept evolution, even as its scientific credibility has grown to point of certainty. The conservative Christians in the video above have heard and embraced all of these arguments. In their view, they have a strong case and every right to press it.

I know, I know: part of the problem might lie with the accommodationists themselves: after all, if you believe that science can accomodate one miracle, why not others? Via Natalie Angier:

Scientists think this is terrible—the public’s bizarre underappreciation of one of science’s great and unshakable discoveries, how we and all we see came to be—and they’re right. Yet I can’t help feeling tetchy about the limits most of them put on their complaints. You see, they want to augment this particular figure—the number of people who believe in evolution—without bothering to confront a few other salient statistics that pollsters have revealed about America’s religious cosmogony. Few scientists, for example, worry about the 77 percent of Americans who insist that Jesus was born to a virgin, an act of parthenogenesis that defies everything we know about mammalian genetics and reproduction. Nor do the researchers wring their hands over the 80 percent who believe in the resurrection of Jesus, the laws of thermodynamics be damned.

Hey, if you make accommodation for one miracle, why not others? In my opinion, religious liberals are part of the problem.

But here is where I changed my mind
Yes, creationism and intelligent design are dumb ideas that belong on the scrap heap. But so are many other ideas: homeopathy, anti-gmo hysteria, anti-vaccinnation hysteria, birtherism, 9-11 “trutherism”, “the moon landings were faked”, “ghosts haunt places”, “the rest of the country likes idea X if only the public were “educated”", not knowing the difference between a science Nobel Prize and a Nobel Peace Prize, etc.

The longer I live the more I have the opinion that MOST (possibly all) of us have wacky ideas of some sort, myself included. The internet gives us more connectivity for people to express such ideas. Hence, person X who has started a successful business (hard to do) might well believe that the President of the United States isn’t a US citizen and everyone else is lying. Person Y who has done fine charity work might seriously believe that the universe really is 6000 years old. Person Z who also has had some success in life might get vapors if they find that their crops have been genetically modified.

So while I believe that some people really are smarter than others, I also believe that, statistically speaking, the set of people who hold wacko belief X might not be dumber than the population as a whole. They might get some things right that others get wrong.

Personally, I don’t know what my wacky ideas are, and I hope that I someday identify them and lose them.
Yes, I am aware that I have a mild fetish for a certain part of a female’s anatomy but that isn’t a belief; that is just how I am “wired”; I can understand that I am a bit abnormal in that regard. Other hetero males either don’t have it, or have the good sense to keep their mouth shut.

Irrelevant point one:
I noticed that my blog had its hit counts go up from the summer to the late fall of 2008, and again in 2012. Why? Two big events: the Olympics and the Presidential elections. I also had a smaller bump in the fall of 2010 (midterm election time). This makes sense because I often blog about these topics.

Irrelevant point two Often math problems are “easy” until you look at them closely. Seriously. I had smugly thought that during the second half of my sabbatical project I’d look at extending the more modern polynomials to lines embedded in real 3 space. That is harder than I thought; my first obstacle is rather embarrassing: after getting my Ph.D. in topology in 1991, I STILL don’t understand the topology of multiple lines in 3 space…or even multiple lines in the plane…or even in an 2 dimensional band of finite width that extends from minus infinity to positive infinity. Dang.

One issue: given two parallel lines in the plane, is it more appropriate to consider them as disjoint objects, or should I see them having a point at infinity in common; sort of an analogue to:

The above would represent FIVE parallel lines; one for each circle.

I’d have to account for this with a new calculus of some sort. Oh well…if it were easy, someone else would have done it by now.

And…well, IF I can make this work, I’ll have something worthwhile.

Science and Physics
Does this multi-verse talk confuse you? Well, it might be because “many universes” can mean “many things”. Here are three of the most common uses of “multi-verse”: separate universes altogether (bubbles), different dimensions of the same high dimensional space (think parallel planes in 3-space): this is a proposed mathematical model, and a different model to explain quantum mechanics (one universe where this particle decays at time t and another in which it doesn’t.

Watch the video: it is informative and fun:

Randi’s Pigasus Awards

Hat tip: Jerry Coyne.

Misconceptions

Superstition This has an interesting part on how living things (with brains) really operate on a “correlation equals causation” program: Skinner’s pigeon experiment:

Multitasking
You hear this a lot. But in reality, you really can’t; if you split your attention you will do a poorer job at everything. That might not be a problem if you are blogging with a game on, but if you are in a classroom, if you attempt to “multitask”, you will miss a LOT and possibly distract others around you. Now there is evidence to bolster my claim.

Pakistan
A Pakistani argues that Pakistan has more of a “reality” problem than an “image” problem.

The South (in the US)
They can’t wrap their heads around the fact that they were in the wrong during the Civil War.

Seen on facebook

Not true for me but that is because my workout sessions are competitions of sorts, and I regularly test myself. Hence I can see the bench press getting weaker (4 x 225 is now 4 x 180), pull ups getting more difficult (sets of 10 instead of 15), and the 5K taking longer to complete (just under 20 to just under 25).

But, on the other hand, I am still doing those activities and the degradation of my performance is really a “numbers” thing. Ok, it is an appearance thing too; the muscles just aren’t as tight as they once were. And, I don’t notice much of a difference during my “day to day” activities; only in the gym, at the race, and in the pool (which I need to return to).

Social and Economic Comments

Social
If your goal is to comfort, it is probably a good idea to keep your mouth closed, instead of saying stuff that makes things worse:

Friendly Atheist makes the point:

I don’t know if I’m more disturbed by the comment or the fact that 41 people “liked” it… (Thank you to John Meredith for his sane response.)
[...] I know there are Christians out there who are responding to the shootings in a truly helpful way. No one doubts that. But let’s put to rest this notion that being a Christian makes you a better, kinder, more decent human being. It doesn’t and it never has.

My guess: the people who said this probably had good intentions; they are merely clueless. And you know what the Road To Hell is paved with…

Re: gun control. Note: “gun control” should be “better regulation”. That doesn’t mean “take away people’s guns”. So what should our political leaders do? Of course I agree that they should push for policies that are backed up by data…and not merely rely on intuition.

But one thing that shouldn’t happen: they should not be held hostage by the NRA or other such groups. Now it is clear that Democrats are more hospitable to gun regulations than Republicans, and Paul Krugman says that Democrats ought to just blow off the gun lobby:

So Nate Cohn argues that this same logic applies to gun control: the voters who care passionately about their semi-automatic weapons are rural whites who ain’t gonna vote Democratic in any case — and the new Democratic coalition doesn’t need them. David Atkins takes it further, saying the awful truth: the pro-gun fanatics are basically the kind of people who think that Obama is a Kenyan socialist atheistic Islamist, and the urban hordes are coming for their property any day now. People, in other words, who already vote 100 percent Republican — and lose elections.

As Cohn says, it’s not clear whether Democrats realize how things have changed. But maybe yesterday’s horror will provoke some fresh thought, and they’ll realize that this does not have to go on.

One HUGE caveat: beware of using the term “Democrats” too loosely. Remember the 2010 mid term election, in which the Republicans picked up 63 House seats? A minimum of 34 of those seats came from Congressional districts that Senator McCain won in 2008, and a few more came from districts in which turned blue in the 2008 election. I haven’t checked the elections of the districts that were still undecided at the time I made that 2010 post.

Economy
Where does the ONE TRILLION dollar deficit come from? Mostly: expected effects of the sluggish economy.