So I’ve been browsing the comments sections of our blog, O tiny readership, and I’ve noticed something. There are alot of Russian posts. For some reason, this blog seems to attract a disproportionate amount of Russian, especially Russian spam.
So here’s to you, Russia! Purveyor of spam, Putin, and humiliating hockey defeats! Thanks for increasing the traffic of our tiny project!
William
The hour of judgment is upon us. As I stated earlier in this article, it is important that those who support science and its products must not only study it, but they must help the general public understand it as well, or else the public will not generate the political will needed to help fight powerful problems because it lacks understanding. Well, the problem has arrived. It has arrived in the form of climate change, and because of public misinformation and the lack of education, our response has been absolutely pathetic.
So what now? It seems as though science and facts are being overridden by a wave of bullshit spouted from conspiracy theorists and denialists. Public policy is no longer made on the basis of reason, but on the basis of “I-can-shout-louder-than-you”. Nowhere is this clearer that climate change, where every attempt to produce rational, evidence-based debate is replaced with claims of conspiracy and bias. The suppression of reasoned discussion is not only idiotic; it is dangerous. To deny the public critical information on such an important issue is not only unfair to the public, but threatens everyone by creating an illusion in which everything is dandy, when it obviously isn’t. It is very clear that the denialists have to be shut down, but how? Many people in the scientific community have openly stated that scientists should not debate with denialists, because the very act of staging a debate gives them an undeserved semblance of credibility.
I vehemently disagree. Those who advocate silence and quiet work have completely misunderstood the fundamental nature of the enemy. They do not care about credibility. They do not care about truth, facts, or intellectual honesty. All these people care about is spreading their agenda. In other words, they are mirror copies of creationists. It is because of their similarity to creationists that I advocate the engagement with climate deniers.
Although engaging the deniers will give them a semblance of credibility, it also puts the kibosh on their agenda in three ways. First, a public debate is a great way to teach people about the facts and science of climate change. In a debate, facts are exchanged and explained, and the judgment of who “wins” the debate is usually decided on the quality of the explanation of said facts. Second, a movement of active engagement would immediately silence all claims of “bias” and “censorship” in the scientific community. They would no longer have the option of falling back to these claims whenever it becomes clear that things are not going there way.
Finally, a series of open debates will show the general public that the deniers are fundamentally wrong and rely on outdated assumptions, fallacies, and lies. Again, I will draw a parallel with creationism. After their defeat at the very public Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, the intelligent design advocates were forced to withdraw from the mainstream and abandoned efforts to get intelligent design taught in school. Although part of this was because of the legal ruling, their public humiliation meant that they did not have the face to go out and continue advocating their agenda. Given the fact that climate change has a body of evidence similar to evolution in terms of quality and size, a victory like Kitzmiller v. Dover is very likely. Once the denial movement is dealt several public blows in a fair and open arena, they will be exposed for the frauds they really are, which, hopefully, will drive it to the same fate as the intelligent design movement.
Bad news for climate change activists: you are now on the same side as Osama Bin Laden.
While this has absolutely nothing to do with the science of climate change at all, it will probably have a moderate-major effect on the political will to deal with it.
So, how long do you think will it take the right right to begin using reductio ad Bin Ladenum on climate science? My bet’s the next time the issue comes up, some rightie will use it within days.
William
As I’m sure you all have heard by now, Google is leaving China for a multitude of reasons, including Chinese cyberattacks and Chinese censorship of searches. However, to the great amusement of Chinese bloggers, Google has given a final “Fuck You” to the Chinese government in the form of its recommended search terms. Below are some pictures of the results:
If you type in the first half of the word “China”, in Chinese, you get a recommended list of search terms. But since yesterday, the first of these search terms has changed from “China”, to what you currently see. To those of you who can’t read Chinese, the first recommended search term is now “Destruction of the Chinese Communist Party”.
The fun doesn’t stop there:
This one has been removed by now, but yesterday, if you typed in the letter “f” into Google search, the first recommended search term is “free Tibet”. The free Tibet movement has been a pain to the Chinese government for many years, and so it’s no surprise that Google has chosen to do this.
And finally, there’s this:
Look at the second result. I’m sure I don’t need to explain this one. Immature and rascist? A little, yeah. Funny? Definitely.
William
Understanding the Times
Indoctrination
Bias
Misquoting
Straw Men
Hypocrisy
Our school is currently using this book for lack of a better one. It was either this or Chuck Colson, who bored me to tears. Even though it’s the Bible curriculum for a Christian school, it has an unbelievable amount of bias. First off, it presents the fundamentalist Christian worldview as the only rational one, and essentially likens anyone else to heinous criminals. Supporters of gay marriage are made out to commit beastiality, incest, pedophilia, and so on. Anyone who doesn’t think abortion should be illegal in all cases is instantly a murderer. Theistic evolutionists are instantly copouts to atheism. Media is lying to us about stem cells. And so on, and so forth.
The misquoting comes from its citations. One of my larger complaints about Chuck Colson was that he did not cite his sources. If you can’t tell, I use Wikipedia a lot and support their stance of verifiability over truth. However, this book cites incorrectly and cites poor sources. There are several hundred pages in the book, but leafing through the first dozen pages or so, I found a citation to Jonathan Wells’ “Icons of Evolution,” which actually makes up a large part of the “biology” section. To give you an idea of the quality of this source, a single google search of “Icons of Evolution rebuttal” turned up a web site whose sole purpose was linking to multiple pages, each carrying a point-by-point dissection of the paper, revealing that Wells didn’t actually know what he was talking about. I found another error, where they seemed to have incorrectly attributed the author of a source, but I didn’t look into that too deeply. The worst part about it is that since they actually provide sources, though they may be incorrect, I can’t take the hilarious route and bring a sign with “citation needed” printed in giant font.
As for the hypocrisy, this book also carries a section on identifying logical fallacies. A number of their examples were vague and incorrect, but that’s tangential to the point I’m making. The main problem is that the authors of this book resort to numerous logical fallacies, mainly the straw man. I have noticed that they have rarely, if ever, provided a fair analysis of more than one side of an argument. Of course, this is to be expected, as this book is, after all, intended for a Christian audience.
Now, if you skim my writing, you’ll find plenty of bias and fallacies in various places, since I am a sub-par writer who can apparently imitate the style of a professional pundit, as well as the fact that I am simply too lazy to go back through my articles to hone my arguments to perfection. The biggest difference here is that while the book and I both commit fallacies, I acknowledge mine, while the book preaches against fallacies as they are commiting them. This is hypocrisy, and Jesus does not like hypocrisy.
This book is not without its uses, however. In an extensive course with willing students, this book could be easily paired with an opposite source, say, anything by Dawkins, to fuel debates. However, in my class, about a quarter of the students either pay no attention or sleep through class, and some of them lack basic knowledge of the subjects involved - one did not know that the Koran came centuries after the New Testament. Additionally, the class follows the curriculum of the book, so that any time that could go toward debate is instead allocated toward showing lectures delivered from the book’s accompanying DVD. Combine these with the fact that I attend a Christian school, so that the proverbial choir being targeted by the preaching (both figurative and literal) consists of about three-quarters of the class, and the result is that this book is nothing more than a pile of indoctrination with no place for a dissenting opinion.
Yes, I know that makes no sense whatsoever.
I went online and looked into Climategate (not really, it was just something that popped up on Youtube). It turns out that of about 13 years of emails, there are exactly two passages that the media honed in on:
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series to the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
and
“We can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
So either these are the most noticeable frauds, or these are the only frauds and this entire story is a giant load of bovine feces. As it turns out, both “evidences” can easily be explained as the aforementioned bovine feces.
For the first one, it turns out that the “Nature trick” doesn’t refer to fraud, but to a technique, as in “Substitution is a great trick for solving systems of equations.”
Also, the decline mentioned is actually the apparent decline in temperatures shown by tree rings. The issue that the quote is from is whether or not tree rings should be used as a guide for constructing temperature models from before the industrial evolution, as they are known to vary with temperature but are also unreliable.
The only potential problem here is the word “hide,” which might indicate fudging, but regardless of what it reflects, it will have no effect on the veracity of global warming itself.
The second quote is only talking about the past one or two years, and it is common knowledge among scientists that the Earth has cooled slightly over the past few years due to the influence of an eleven-year cycle, at the nadir of which the Earth’s temperature drops from the factors responsible for El Nino/La Nina. In fact, the given quote actually appears in multiple emails, from different climatologists, who disagree with this claim, made by another climatologist, Tremberth.
In fact, Tremberth wasn’t expressing this privately; he even wrote a paper - and was kind enough to provide a link to it - expressing these same doubts. Additionally, this is his personal opinion, not that of the scientific community.
And let’s face it, this entire story violates common sense. Remember the 9/11 “conspiracy”? The fact was then that for the President, Congress, the military, the firefighters, the state of New York, the police, the construction crew, the salvages, the bloggers, the political hopefuls and all the families to be coerced or convinced into such a conspiracy would be completely ludicrous.
Likewise, which of these three scenarios seems the least likely?
The right-wing news stations are perpetuating a story without fact-checking, as they have been known to do?
The hackers faked a few thousand emails?
The entire scientific community, in unison, faked millions of data points across twenty years, keeping them consistent with each other and cross-referencing them so that they tell a story completely contrary to reality?
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
For an internet blogger, or a layman to spread this story without looking too far into it is understandable thanks to the daily grind, but for a news station? Especially Fox News, one of the largest in America? I wouldn’t say it’s preposterous, but at the very least, it demonstrates horrible reporting, inconsistency, reckless disregard, and pure incompetence. At worst, it is lying, propoganda, and fraud.
Dangit Fox.
-T
If you’ve been on the internet anytime within the past 5 years or so, you probably know that Japan has a reputation for cranking out weird stuff, like human tetris or various pranks involving rockets, massage chairs, and a ski resort (I’ll let you mull that over for a while).
It turns out that they’re not the only ones capable of creating weird. Yes, I just used an adjective as a noun. That is how well it describes what I am about to present.
So there’s this show called “Banzai,” which you may have seen in DVD game format (I did) at a local Half-Price Books or Wal-Mart or anywhere else that sells DVD games. It looks immensely Japanese, complete with people in kimonos speaking broken English, shouting “BANZAI” every ten seconds, and plentiful use of sushi, chopsticks, and an octopus.
Did I mention it’s actually British?
Turns out that Britain tried to imitate a Japanese game show, and did it too well. Their events are just as off-the-wall as the stuff Japan comes up with, including escalator racing, wheelchair chicken, squirrel fishing, and russian roulette involving umbrellas. Yes, you read all of those correctly. Here’s their Youtube channel, for those with a flair for the random.
Oh, and one thing they were noted for on Wikipedia?
Apparently, they tried to film the late Queen’s funeral procession for their show… while targeting it with a speed gun. These are some seriously random, random people.
Alright, more advertising for a random site.
This time, it’s BioInteractive, which is run by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which I’m sure is mentioned somewhere else on this site, even if only in one of the random sidebar links.
It’s not all interactive, since there’s pages full of videos and animations about a variety of topics, but there is a ridiculous amount of online activities, not to mention some offline activities to be printed out and followed, plus a store, with DVDs that some of these activities are supplementary material for.
I haven’t been able to look at all of it due to a browser crash the second it ran into shockwave, but I expect to have some fun with the interactive fruit fly lab.
-T
Again, more old news, that was posted almost a week ago, and that Yahoo got to first.
First off, some organization made a study about what laptops fail most often. The given chart shows hardware malfunctions only. Moral of the story, don’t buy an HP. Buy a Toshiba.
Second, Dell is apparently a pack of jerks, as evidenced in an article about false advertising.
What Dell’s been doing is putting out ads that say something along the lines of “no interest,” then slamming its customers with its almighty finance branch.
Good thing all my computers are secondhand.
We were bored during collaboration in school today, so watch decided to do some black magic! We turned water into ice without freezing it.
I hope we don’t get burned at the stake.
William
