Campus Freethought Alliance

Someone just e-mailed to let me know that the Flamingo screwed up and failed to record audio for all of Saturday’s sessions of TAM 6 (The Amaz!ng Meeting). Oh noes! If you were there and managed to get anything — even if it is audio on a video — please contact rich@randi.org. Thanks!

I swear I was going to have a post today all full of delicious skeptical content, but this morning my MacBook’s hard drive apparently went kaput, making an awful clicking death rattle. I’m distraught and unable to focus on anything other than getting this fixed, because as many of you know, that laptop is the heart of Skepchick. Without it, I’ll be forced to go back to my pre-Skepchick days of just being quietly skeptical in my head while actually performing physical activities outside in the real world. Perish the thought!

So, this post will be dedicated to one final push for all you nonbelievers to register for Atheist Days, a three-day festival taking place in Strasburg, Virginia, August 15-17. The organizers really need people to sign up in the next few days, so get to it people! I’m ordering my ticket today, and I can’t wait to spend a weekend hanging out on a beach with a bunch of heathens listening to good music. Woo hoo!

One of the clichés of academia which even non-academics know is "publish or perish." In its most common understanding, it implies that those who publish more are perceived as productive scholars, worthy of recruitment and promotion.

But there are other reasons for publishing. One is to establish priority for one's ideas. In academia, ideas are the currency that matter and those who have good ideas are seen as creative people. So people publish to ensure that they receive the appropriate credit.

Another reason for publishing is to put the ideas into public circulation so that others can use them and build on them to create even more knowledge. Knowledge thrives on the open exchange of information and the general principle in academia is that all knowledge should be open and freely available so that everyone can benefit from it.

This is not, of course, the case, in the profit-driven private sector where information is jealously guarded so that the maximum profit can be obtained. This is not unreasonable in many cases. After all, without being profitable, companies would go out of business and many of the innovations we take for granted would not occur. So the knowledge is either guarded jealously (say like the formula for Coca Cola) or is patented so that other users have to pay for the privilege of using it.

But the open-information world of academia can collide with the closed, profit-making corporate world. Nowhere is this most apparent than in the drug industry. Much of the funding for medical and drug research comes from the government via agencies like the National Institutes of Health, and channeled through university and hospital researchers. These people then publish their results. But that knowledge is then often built on by private drug companies that manufacture drugs that are patented and sold for huge profits. These companies often use their immense legal resources to extend the effective lifetime of their patents so that they can profit even more.

Another example of a collision between the public good and private profit was the project to completely map the human genome. This government-funded project was designed to be open, with the results published and put into the public domain. Both heads of the Human Genome Project, first James Watson and then Francis Collins, strongly favored the open release of whatever was discovered, because of the immense potential benefits to the public. They created a giant public database into which researchers could insert their results, enabling others to use them. (To see what is involved in patenting genomic information, see here.)

But then Craig Venter, head of the private biotechnology company Celera Genomics, decided that his company would try to map the genome and make it proprietary information, and create a fee-based database,. This was fiercely resisted by the scientific community who accelerated their efforts to map the genome first and make the information open to all. The race was on and the scientific community succeeded in its goal of making the information public. Information on how to access the public database can be found here.

Many non-academics, like the journalist writing about faculty cars, simply do not understand this powerful desire amongst academics for open-access to information. I recall the discussion I had with my students regarding the film Jurassic Park. I hated the film for many reasons and said how bizarre it was that the discoverer of the process by which dinosaurs had been recreated from their DNA, a spectacular scientific achievement, had kept his knowledge secret in order to create a dinosaur theme park and make money. I said that this was highly implausible. A real scientist would have published his results to establish his claim as the original discoverer and made the information public so that others could build on it. But some of my students disagreed. They thought that it was perfectly appropriate that the first thought of the scientist was how to make a lot of money off his discovery rather than spread knowledge.

It is true that nowadays scientists and universities are increasingly seeking to file patents and create spin-off companies to financially benefit from their discoveries. Michael Moore talks about how things have changed and how the drive to make money is harming the collective good;

Thinking about that era, back in the first half of the 20th century, where you had for instance the man who invented the kidney-dialysis machine. He didn't want the patent for it, he felt it belonged to everybody. Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine, again, he wouldn't patent it. The famous quote for him is, "Would you patent the sun? It belongs to everyone." He wasn't doing this to become a millionaire. He was doing it because it was the right thing to do. During that era, that's the way people thought.

It may be that I am living in the past and that those students who thought I was crazy about not making money as the prime motivator for scientists and other academics have a better finger on the pulse than I. Perhaps new knowledge is now not seen so clearly as a public good, belonging to the world, to be used for the benefit of all. If so, it is a pity.

POST SCRIPT: Nelson Mandela, terrorist

Did you know that all this time, the US government considered Nelson Mandela to be a terrorist?

On July 7, 1947, an American mythology was born. What has become known as “The Roswell UFO Incident” was first reported on this date 61 years ago today. It is a date that lives in infamy for the extra-terrestrial acceptance crowd, and it is a day of solemn reminding for those that have spent years or decades trying to untangle the knots of this larger-than-life phenomena.

Roswell is a pseudoscientific beacon for both true-believers and rational skeptics. For those of us in the USA, there is perhaps no greater prevailing or culturally penetrating pseudoscience. The true-believers embrace Roswell and hold it high as a symbol of their NEED to believe, combined with their distrust of government, especially the military. To them, it is the shining example that validates their investiture in mysticism and the paranormal. To many of the true-believers, Roswell is embraced as a person would embrace a religion.

As skeptics, we also hold Roswell aloft as an example to the world of just how pseudoscience and magical thinking can launch and thoroughly sustain an unrelenting attack on our science and culture. Roswell combines many of the pseudosciences that skeptics regularly need to refute and counter-attack: unidentified flying objects, visitations by extra-terrestrials, government and military conspiracy theories, misconceptions and misidentification of technologies, frauds and charlatans (such as the creators of the fake “Alien Autopsy” film), and the mystical components of the Roswell mythology, such as prophecies.

The Skeptics’ Guide audience is probably no stranger to the real facts of The Roswell UFO Incident (a classified military balloon crashed in the desert). However, if you are looking for more of a definitive de-bunking of everything Roswell, I suggest that people read any of Philip Klass’ books on the subject, or if you just want one book to read, try “The UFO Invasion: The Roswell Incident, Alien Abductions, and Government Coverups”, by Kendrik Frazier, Barry Carr, and Joe Nickell.

Although I could not find any decent polling data on people’s belief in The Roswell UFO Incident specifically, I was able to find this survey: 62% of people believe we are being visited by aliens from outside this solar system. The Roswell mythology has endured nicely in the last half of the 20th century, and there is no sign of a let up as we continue into the 21st century. The Roswell virus has no cure, and too many people do not possess the antibodies (i.e. critical thinking skills) to remedy themselves.

As a side note, for those who enjoy parody, check out Futurama and their Emmy-Award winning episode “Roswell That Ends Well.” The brainchild of Matt Groening (a good skeptic in his own right), Futurama does a delightful job of poking fun at the ridiculousness of all of the nonsense that is The Roswell UFO Incident.

Some time ago the Cleveland Plain Dealer had an article in the business pages that began by noting that when you visit the faculty parking lot of any college campus, you will find very few expensive cars such as Mercedes Benzes, Cadillacs, Porsches, Hummers, and BMWs. The writer made the inference that college professors, while perhaps very smart people in their fields of expertise, were not very smart when it came to managing their money.

The reporter was correct that college campus parking lots are not the places to find fancy cars. But her inference that this is because they are not good with money is wrong. Academics may or may not be smart about money but the cars they drive are not a good clue as to this ability. I have worked my whole life in such settings and I don't know a single academic who drives such expensive cars, even though many can afford them. When they do splurge on a car, college faculty tend to go for the low-end models of upscale car lines like Lexus or Volvo or Acura or Saab. I myself am now on my third successive Honda Accord, now four years old, which followed a Fiat, a Toyota Corolla, and a Subaru, all low-end cars. Our other family car is a 13-year old Civic.

Once my daughter asked me what car I would drive if I could have any car at all, and I told her that it was the car that I already had, the Accord. I had reached the peak of my automobile ambitions with a car that was reliable, reasonably priced, economical to run, comfortable, nice-looking, and easy to drive. Why would I want more? I don't think I am unusual in the kind of car I own or my attitude towards them. I think most academics are more likely to brag about how long they have owned their car or about how fuel-efficient it is, rather than its luxuriousness.

The Plain Dealer reporter had completely misunderstood the motivations of academics. Most academics do not go into the field to make a lot of money. They go into it because they love the subject they study and want to spend their lives doing it. This does not mean that they are ascetics. They have no objections to making money but that desire is not usually strong enough for them to forego other important things. They know that academia provides a comfortable life with good working conditions and that they can provide adequately for their families.

For example, writing a scholarly book takes years of time and effort and at the end you are lucky if you sell a few thousand copies, mostly to university libraries. You are never going to become rich writing scholarly books. So why do academics do it? They do it to advance knowledge in their field and to secure their reputation among the few dozens or at most a hundred or so people working in closely related areas, and to leave something of value behind for posterity.

For a physicist, to have a discovery associated with him or her or an equation or a principle named for them would bring little material benefit but be more precious to them than a fancy car ever would. If an academic were offered a deal whereby they would live in near poverty all their lives in exchange for making the kind of ground-breaking discovery that (say) a Charles Darwin or an Albert Einstein made, I suspect that must of them would unhesitatingly accept it. I know I would. In the world that academics inhabit, good ideas are a rare and precious commodity and the person who discovers one has found something far more valuable than discovering oil on her property.

This does not mean that academics are not ambitious or competitive. Many of them are fiercely so but the reward they seek is the respect they get from their colleagues when they make a major contribution to their field, and the fame that sometimes comes with it. This fame is not like that of a film star or politician. Except for a few like Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein, even famous academics are not immediately recognizable to the general public and their fame is limited to a small circle of peers but that does not matter to most of them. To be the keynote speaker at important conferences, to have one's work be cited approvingly by one's peers, and even to have it form the framework for further work, these are the heady heights which academics seek. Driving an expensive car is nothing compared to the pleasures that such things bring.

It may be that in the corporate world, the only way that people can advertise to others that they have become a 'success' is via tangible symbols like cars, fancy houses, Rolex watches, designer clothes, and so on. But the currency by which success is measured in academia is your reputation for being an excellent scholar. If you have that, then you don't need the other things. In fact, if you flaunt those other things, your colleagues may suspect that you are trying to compensate for your lack of meaningful intellectual achievement. Either way, the academic culture works against ostentatious displays of wealth.

POST SCRIPT: Only in America

For those who did not get a large enough dose of patriotic fervor over the weekend, here's Bruce McCulloch of the sketch comedy troupe Kids in the Hall.

The hallmark of a scientific theory is that it makes predictions that can be verified or refuted. A theory which does not make such predictions is not of much use to science. The hallmark of a good scientific theory is that it makes predictions that turn out to be true. By this criterion Einstein’s theories of relativity (specific and general) are good - very good.

The general theory of relativity has recently had yet another prediction validated. The general theory of relativity deals primarily with gravity, showing the equivalence of gravity and acceleration and treating gravity as a curvature of space-time. According to general relativity, for example, when a comet swings around the sun it is actually traveling in a straight line but through space curved by the mass of the sun.

The general theory, published by Einstein in 1915, was not just a set of ideas but a complex set of mathematical equations. The validation of general relativity rested not in simple observations but rather in careful measurements showing that Einstein equations were accurate - more accurate than competing theories.

The first test of general relativity came in 1919 when a solar eclipse offered the opportunity to observe the degree to which the mass of the sun would bend light from stars behind the sun. According to Newton’s classical theory of mechanics light would be bent by gravity - the photons would be attracted by the gravitational force of a large mass and would bend in their path. The general theory of relativity also predicts that light would bend, but because it is traveling through curved space. So both theories predict the bending of starlight by the sun visible during a solar eclipse - the difference was in the amount of bending. Newtons equations give about 0.8 second of arc as the predicted degree of bending, while Einstein’s equations gave 1.75 seconds of arc.

In 1919 British astronomer Arthur Eddington made an expedition to photograph the solar eclipse for the purpose of measure the deflection of starlight to test Einstein’s general theory. His results confirmed Einstein - getting about 1.61 seconds of arc as the measured degree of bending. Ironically, later review of Eddington’s results indicate that his measurements were probably not precise enough to make this determination and he was likely being favorably biased toward Einstein. But of course later measurements have validated Einsteins equations for the bending of light.

The general theory of relativity has recently been tested again - this time also involving an eclipse and the test of the theory also resting not in the presence or absence of a phenomenon but in the precise measurements of the amount of an effect. Astronomers have discovered a system including two massive pulsars in orbit around each other. In addition, the plane of their orbit almost exactly lines up with the view from earth. This means that as one pulsar passes behind the other it will be eclipsed. This is a rare configuration and provides the first opportunity to test the accuracy of Einstein’s equations regarding a specific consequence of this massive system.

According to general relativity the effect of the large mass of one pulsar should cause the spin-axis of the other to precess (like the circular rotation of the axis of a spinning top). Astronomers already know that such precession occurs, but they have not been able to measure it precisely enough to test th predictive power of Einstein’s equations.

Well, now they have and Einstein’s equations precisely match the observed precession of these pulsars. You win again, Dr. Einstein.

In response, study author Rene Breton is quoted as saying:

“It’s not quite right to say that we have now ‘proven’ General Relativity. However, so far, Einstein’s theory has passed all the tests that have been conducted, including ours.”

Einstein’s theory of general relativity has proven to have powerful and precise predictive power. This is good and bad, depending on your perspective. At this point I think it is safe to say that Albert was likely onto something. His special and general theories of relativity bear some meaningful relationship to how the universe actual works and his equations are mathematically valid. It’s possible that these theories will never be overturned.

However, it is often the case in science that a theory is not overturned but yet a deeper theory is discovered, making the original theory still true but now limited in its scope. This is what Einstein did to Newton. Newtons laws of mechanics are still true, as far as they go, but they are now understood to be a limited case of the deeper understanding provided by Einstein.

The question is, will a cosmologist one day do to Einstein what Einstein did to Newton - discover a deeper description of the universe that relegates relativity theory to a limited scope? Physicists had some clue that there were problems with Newton’s theory because there were anomalies that could not be explained within Newton’s classical world. For example, the precession of the perihelion of Mercury could not be make to fit with Newton’s equations. General relativity, however, matched the measurements of Mercury’s orbit precisely.

The point is that unexplained anomalies - observations that did not fit predictions - led to better theories with more accurate predictions. So while it is nice to confirm Einstein’s theories, cosmologists are still hunting for a true anomaly that does not accord with Einstein. Such anomalies would be the needed clue to a still deeper theory of the universe. That would be exciting and interesting, but it remains to be seen if such anomalies are there to be found, or if the good Dr. Einstein is the final word.

Reading the blogs at the Discovery Institute is always an educational experience.  I’ve made it a point to regularly visit their “Evolution News & Views” blog.  Evolution News & Views features a group of authors who support the notion of Intelligent Design (ID).  It features op-eds and coverage of the latest happenings in the worlds of ID and evolution.  Among its authors is Dr. Michael Egnor, who has been discussed on the Skeptics’ Guide mainly regarding his ongoing debate with Dr. Novella regarding dualism/materialism.

I consider it an educational experience because I am, as most of you can probably guess, not a proponent of the notion of ID.  But I visit the blog to try to understand the “other side” of the debate.  I go to read up on what their current best arguments are for ID, to study their tactics, and to occasionally play “Name That Logical Fallacy”.

This week, a post on the blog by Jonathan Wells endeavors to define Intelligent Design.  It is a post adapted from his book, “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design“.

He defines Intelligent Design as the following:

Intelligent design maintains that it is possible to infer from empirical evidence that some features of the natural world are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than unguided natural processes. Since ID relies on evidence rather than on scripture or religious doctrines, it is not creationism or a form of religion.

I’ll be honest, when it comes to Intelligent Design, what I see is just a repackaged version of Creationism that attempts to keep the mention of religion or God out of the equation.   So what is this “empirical evidence” that Wells describes?  What empirical evidence suggests that Intelligent Design is a more viable notion than the theory of evolution?

When I do a quick search for the best lines of evidence for ID, all I come up with are counter-arguments to the theory of evolution such as irreducible complexity.  It occurs to me that ID proponents are committing the logical fallacy of the false dichotomy here.  If evolution is disproved, the only possible alternative is Intelligent Design.

Perhaps I’m not looking in the right places for the evidence for ID.  Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Wells continues:

ID does not deny the reality of variation and natural selection; it just denies that those phenomena can accomplish all that Darwinists claim they can accomplish.

“Darwinists” is what ID proponents call people who accept the theory of evolution,  It’s basically a propaganda tactic that attempts to paint evolution theory proponents as dogmatic and inflexible in their “beliefs”.

Alright, so according to ID proponents, I’m a Darwinist.  I’m also a Newtonist, an Einsteinist, a Keplerist, and the list goes on.

Finally, Wells writes:

ID does not maintain that all species were created in their present form; indeed, some ID advocates have no quarrel with the idea that all living things are descended from a common ancestor. ID challenges only the sufficiency of unguided natural processes and the Darwinian claim that design in living things is an illusion rather than a reality.

Again,  the same false dichotomy rears its ugly head.  ID challenges evolution, if evolution is proven wrong, ID wins.  But it seems that not everything is designed as intelligently as ID proponents would argue.  Take the eye for example.  I’ll refer you to a couple of excellent posts on Steve’s NeuroLogica Blog regarding the seemingly haphazard way that the eye is “designed”.  Here, and here.

ID proponents have argued that ID is a scientific theory.  To me, ID is simply Creationism wearing a shitty halloween costume.  In order for it to be a viable scientific theory, it has to at least be testable and falsifiable.  How can we test and falsify an all-powerful designer?

Thomas Friedman Calls For Green Revolution

Hindsight is 20/20. Foresight; Well, it depends on your perspective. Take the war in Iraq, for example. 30% of us had the foresight to see the travesty coming; Yet we invaded, and arrogantly pronounced our "mission accomplished". Just look at how things turned out.

Now everyone is concerned about something which, to my admittedly biased eyes, is obvious. In the very near future, we are going to need to shift away from fossil fuels and start utilizing renewable energy sources. This is not a new line of thinking. Unfortunately, we are slow to adapt. Why only now do we strive to create a sustainable economy? Why only now are we, as a whole, asking ourselves the questions that the few asked earlier and were mocked for? Why have we allowed our culture to deteriorate to the point that we are unable adapt without usurping our status quo?

Thomas Friedman is asking the same question that I am, but from a different perspective. He is thinking in economic terms. He is thinking of solving our problems the same way we have for the last hundred years. The problem with his line of thinking is that it is constrained by his disillusion with the free market system we have in place. He wants the system to work for us, and he believes that the system is in place for us. He is wrong, because he fails to include in his calculations things like greed, fear, corruption, and bigotry. He wants something to happen within a system designed to trample over new ideas, allowing only the most connected and expedient to survive. He wants a revolution of thinking, but he's talking to the wrong crowd.

Still, he has a hell of a good point.

Michael

(For this holiday, I am reposting an amalgam of two posts from two years ago.)

Today, being independence day in the US, will see a huge outpouring of patriotic fervor, with parades and bands and flag waving. I thought it might be appropriate to read one of Mark Twain's lesser known works. I came across it during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I was surprised by the fact that I had never even heard of it before, even though I have read quite a lot of Twain's work and about Twain himself.

Sometimes great writers reveal truths that are hidden. At other times they reveal truths that are squarely in front of our eyes but which we do not see because we have not asked the right question. Mark Twain's story The War Prayer fits into the latter category, where he explores the dark underside of the seemingly innocuous act of praying for something.

The idea of the intercessory prayer, where one asks for a favor or blessing for oneself or for a designated group of people, is such a familiar staple of religious life that its wholesomeness is unquestioned. But Twain points out what should have been obvious if we had only thought it through.

The War Prayer Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.

It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came – next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their faces alight with material dreams – visions of a stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! – then home from the war, bronzed heros, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation – "God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!"

Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory.

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there, waiting.

With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal," Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside – which the startled minister did – and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said

"I come from the Throne – bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd and grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import – that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of – except he pause and think.

"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two – one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of His Who hearth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this – keep it in mind. If you beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

"You have heard your servant's prayer – the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it – that part which the pastor, and also you in your hearts, fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory – must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it – for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause)

"Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits."

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

Twain accurately points out that intercessory prayers that ask for seemingly unimpeachable favors always carry with them a dark underside. Prayers that ask for victory in war always carry with them the wish that god will destroy the other side. The losing side in a war must necessarily suffer massive death and destruction but prayers never explicitly ask god to do this. That would be seen as too crass. But Twain says that whether we put those sentiments into words or not, that appeal is always present.

Twain carries this argument even further and says that even appeals for seemingly benign help for one person (such as rain for his crops) may prove to be a curse for someone else.

Any prayer that seeks special benefits for any one group is also a request to deny that same benefit to those who do not belong to that group. When people pray asking god's help to help find a cure for cancer, aren't they implicitly also asking him/her to not assist in finding a cure for AIDS or Alzheimers or any other of the countless diseases that afflict living things?

And what about the phrase "God bless America" that is now such a staple of political life that politicians routinely end their speeches with it? Fourth of July speeches are full of such appeals. What exactly is being asked for here? That god look out for the interests of Americans and withhold similar blessings from the people of other countries? What would justify such a request? Do people really believe that God prefers Americans to other people? Is God like an immigration officer who checks out the nationality of people before responding to prayers?

All intercessory prayers are premised on an authoritarian/subservient model, with god as a kind of despot who has limited rewards at his/her disposal, and whose favors have to be curried by making special appeals, the more groveling the better, in the manner of kindergarteners with their teacher. Since most religious people also believe in a god who omnipotent and has the capacity to answer any intercessory prayer, and even knows the prayers before they are prayed, it does not even make sense to ask for limited rewards benefiting a restricted subset of people. But this obvious contradiction is not perceived because of the blindness that religion cultivates in its followers. It requires an astute observer like Twain to point it out.

Perhaps the only intercessory prayer that can be justified is the one I saw on a bumper sticker that said "God bless the whole world. No exceptions."

It is noteworthy that Mark Twain knew that he was asking for trouble with this story, writing it as he did during a major war, when strong and unthinking appeals to patriotism are used to brush aside any opposition, just as was done in during the preparations for the attack on Iraq.

Twain wrote The War Prayer during the Spanish-American War. It was submitted for publication, but on March 22, 1905, Harper's Bazaar rejected it as "not quite suited to a woman's magazine." Eight days later, Twain wrote to his friend Dan Beard, to whom he had read the story, "I don't think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth." Because he had an exclusive contract with Harper & Brothers, Mark Twain could not publish "The War Prayer" elsewhere and it remained unpublished until 1923.

Mark Twain seems to have had a healthy skepticism towards religion that was not shared by his family and those who were charged with executing his estate.

In later years, Twain's family suppressed some of his work which was especially irreverent toward conventional religion, notably Letters from the Earth, which was not published until 1962. The anti-religious The Mysterious Stranger was published in 1916, although there is some scholarly debate as to whether Twain actually wrote the most familiar version of this story.

Given that Mark Twain had achieved iconic status in his own lifetime and was so well-known and liked, his own apprehensions about whether this story could be published is indicative of how powerful a hold this combination of religion and patriotism has on people. Challenge those twin pillars of dogma and you become an outcast fast.

Happy 4th of July everyone.

A bit of interesting news came out of A Rice University recently with the announcement that a research team had created a Brobdingnagian atom that’s about a millimeter in size.

Not only is the atom huge but its size caused the atom to ironically resemble the somewhat antiquated image of an atom envisaged by Danish physicist Neils Bohr in 1913 in which electrons were imagined as orbiting the atomic nucleus like a little planetary system.

Using lasers and electric fields, the research team at Rice ballooned potassium atoms until one electron was orbiting at such a distance that it bridged the gap between the microscale and the macroscale.

Lead researcher Barry Dunning and Helen Worden Professor of Physics and Astronomy stated that:

“In a sufficiently large system, the quantum effects at the atomic scale can transition into the classical mechanics found in Bohr’s model, Using highly excited Rydberg atoms and a series of pulsed electric fields, we were able to manipulate the electron motion and create circular, planet-like states.”

I remember the day I learned that the planetary image of atoms was incorrect. It was a pretty bizarre feeling but it also was my first foray into the wonderful world of quantum weirdness.

Even if the planetary atomic model isn’t strictly accurate looking through our modern perspective of atomic orbitals, it was the first successful theoretical model of the atom. Scientists of that time were puzzled that when elements like hydrogen emit light, it wasn’t a nice rainbow of colors but discrete lines of color or wavelengths. Why did atoms emit these spectral lines? Bohr’s main radical idea was that electrons could only be in specific clearly defined orbits around a nucleus. All other orbits between these allowed orbits were verboten. Bohr’s second breakthrough idea was that electrons leaped from one orbit to another, releasing or absorbing energy as they did so. This neatly explained how the spectral lines were produced.

BEAUTIFUL SPECTRUM OF THE SUN

The little bit of quantum weirdness in this process that always intrigued me was the idea that electrons apparently went from one orbit to another without really existing in between. This of course leads into one of my pet peeve expressions…A “Quantum Leap“. Casually, this means a huge increase….like “a quantum leap in technological sophistication.”

In physics it means a very small jump from one electron energy level to another. I love expressions derived from science that completely reverse the original meaning.

Anywho……………

The domino effect of understanding that resulted from Bohr’s insight helped open new eyes onto the universe and created tools with awesome utility. Astronomical spectroscopy tells us the chemical composition and the physical properties of objects in the sky and also what their velocities are. Lasers can also be traced back to Bohr since they operate by exciting electrons into high orbits which then release their coherent light when they drop down to lower orbits.

Bohr’s atomic insights gave scientists a much deeper understanding of the physical and chemical properties of atoms and paved the way for the even deeper understanding that scientists have today. I wonder what further secrets are waiting to be revealed to future generations of scientists.

Hopefully my treatment of this topic here sparked your interest by more that just a quantum leap

p.s. My historical condolences to poor Austrian physicist Arthur Erich Haas who apparently anticipated Bohr’s breakthrough idea of quantized electron energy levels by three years only to have his ideas laughed at.

p.p.s. Happy birthday to my dizygotic twin Joe

This is an issue that keeps coming up, and I am sure this is not the last time I will have to answer it. We are often asked whether or not we address political issues (in much the same way we are asked if we address issue of faith), and sometimes people don’t like our answer, which is “no.”

Below is adapted from a recent e-mail exchange I had with a listener who characterized our position as a “cop out.”

___

Science can inform political value judgments, but cannot make them. You can apply logic and critical thinking to political questions - basically to show whether or not they are internally consistent - but again, this will not objectively resolve any political value judgments.

We do this all the time on the show - analyzing factual premises and logic employed. But we stop short of voicing our personal value judgments.

Here is a classic example - the conflict between individual autonomy and egalitarianism. What is more important - for society to be fair or equal? Is it OK to restrict freedoms or confiscate property if the goal is a more egalitarian society? By what criteria will you make such judgments? You can use a utilitarian criterion and claim that is rational - but it is just another value judgment, in fact it is two - first you decide that the ends justify the means, then you decide what ends are valuable - to you.

What is more important - the quality of life of humans, or the quality of life of animals? Human economic prosperity or environmental health? These questions can be informed by science, but not objectively resolved. Whose rights prevail - those of a woman’s right to privacy or an unborn child’s right to life?

Again - this does not mean that people don’t make illogical arguments to support their values - they do. And when they do it is legitimate to attack their faulty logic. People will also base arguments of false or assumed premises, in which case we will fire away. But once you get down to a pure value judgment, that is where science stops and personal choice begins. It is critical not to confuse the two.

What I find most often happens is that many people are uncomfortable with the notion that others can disagree with them and have a position that is as valid as their own. They want to be objectively right, and so they frame all questions as if they can be objectively resolved by logic. It just is not the case.

It is important to understand what questions can be objectively resolved and how to resolve them (with logic and evidence). Likewise it is important to recognize what questions involve personal value judgments that cannot be objectively resolved. This will avoid unnecessary or fruitless arguments, or missing the point of an argument. It is fruitless to try to convince someone of your values with objective facts alone - for the same reason that you cannot argue against facts with feelings and desires.

I think if more politicians understood this, we would be better off. As skeptics if we fail to understand this then we will tend to enshrine our personal values as if they were objective scientific conclusions - a position which is antithetical to skepticism.

The last time we encountered Christian evangelist Ray Comfort he was, along with his trusty sidekick the Boy Wonder Kirk Cameron, arguing that the exquisite design of the banana was absolute proof of the existence of god. The banana, Comfort pointed out, was "the atheist's nightmare."

You said it, Ray! You convinced me. Now whenever I eat a banana, I cannot help but think of god carefully tinkering with its design so that it could be easily eaten by me.

But Comfort is not content to simply demolish evolution with such brilliant arguments. He also runs a Q/A on his website providing deep insights into other metaphysical questions, the kinds that have baffled philosophers and theologians for centuries.

He recently responded to a theodicy question posed by a reader identifying herself as Weemaryanne.

There've been several hundred gay marriages enacted in California in the past few days. Maybe a couple of thousand by now, I haven't checked the numbers. And in the non-gay-marrying Midwest, they're fighting floods, while in California it's fair and dry. How is The Golden State managing to escape the wrath of your imaginary friend, I wonder?

This is a fair question, something that I too had been wondering about. While the obvious sinfulness of the people of New Orleans was clearly the cause of the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina, why was god mad at the people of Iowa who, by all outward signs anyway, seem like people whose worst vice is growing obscene amounts of corn?

By snarkily referring to god as 'your imaginary friend' Weemaryanne (which I suspect is not her real name) was revealed as a godless hussy. This infidel clearly thought that she had caught Comfort in an embarrassing contradiction. She did not realize that his ministry is not called The Way of the Master for nothing. The Master shot back at her with that incisive logical reasoning that has put atheists on the run everywhere.

Maryanne. At present there are 840 wild-fires that are burning at once in California, destroying many homes. The fires were started by lightning strikes. Guess who’s in charge of the electrical department? These are from thunder storms that have no rain. Guess who gives the rain? You said "while in California it's fair and dry." We are having the worst drought in our recorded history. Last year 1,155 homes were destroyed. You live in an imaginary world. I suggest you get out more.

Ha, ha! That's telling her, Ray! Of course god hates gay-marriage-loving California, as well he should, and is busily smiting people there at this very moment. Weemaryanne has probably crawled back to her terrorist-loving, Islamofascist, feminazi witches coven after that elegantly delivered smackdown by The Master.

But while that explained that the sinful Californians were very much in god's crosshairs, Comfort unfortunately did not address the issue of why Iowans were being smitten (smote?) at all. That was, however, explained by another Christian by the name of Jason Werner, a god-loving man who apparently resides in my very own city of Cleveland. He investigated what was going on in that seemingly bucolic state and was shocked by the incontrovertible evidence of Iowa's appalling sinfulness.

I learned that Cedar Rapids was an absolute city of corruption. There are about 124,000 residents in the actual city. And in Iowa, gambling is legal, whereby there are 17 casinos. Embryonic stem-cell research is funded. Liberal governors have run the state into the ground for the past 20 years including a former conservative Republican many years ago. Human cloning is legal. Referendums by the citizens are often shot down. Spending for education is the most consistent increase of any issue. The University of Iowa is among the ten best colleges to party in the country. The University of Iowa is very homosexual-oriented. Grinnell is extremely homosexual-oriented. I found five blood alleys in Cedar Rapids. Homosexual organizations are very popular in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines. Prostitution and adult entertainment is actually worse than Cleveland, which has a population of nearly 400,000. There were nearly 100 bars in a radius of one mile although the nearby college is dry.

Wow! Am I glad that I don't live in that cesspool!

But I am getting a little nervous. While god is omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent, he does not seem to be omniaccurate. His punishments for sinfulness, like hurricanes, floods, tsunamis, wildfires, etc., seem a little indiscriminate, risking the lives of the innocent along with the guilty. He seems to get a little carried away when he gets angry and in a smitin' mood and lets fly in all directions, like the Incredible Hulk or the people one reads about in the papers who snap under pressure and let loose with automatic weapons in crowded places. I am worried that I might become collateral damage when god gets round to dealing with all the sinners on my street.

What sinning is going on down my street, you ask? Thanks to having my eyes opened by good Christians such as Comfort and Werner, I have realized that I am surrounded by depravity. First, a gay couple moved into my street about a dozen years ago. Presumably because we did not keep the neighborhood pure by driving them away with pitchforks, our street may have been perceived as gay-friendly and about two years ago a lesbian couple also moved in a few doors away.

They all pretend to be like normal people, cutting grass, weeding flowerbeds, sometimes sitting on their front step in warm weather, and waving and smiling to neighbors. But as the kind of sinners that god hates the most, even worse than murderers and child molesters and corporate executives who embezzle people of their life savings, they are putting the rest of us at risk just by living close to us. The gay couple are even brazen enough to fly a rainbow flag on their house, practically taunting god to deliver a thunderbolt!

I just hope that they haven't taken the ultimate evil step of going to California and getting married because if they did that, we know that all the godly heterosexual marriages on our street are going to be undermined and fall apart.

And who knows what acts of depravity are going on in the homes of even my supposedly heterosexual neighbors? Oh sure, they put on a normal face by walking their dogs, playing catch with their kids on the lawn, organizing block parties, and the like. But one can only imagine the depraved orgies that are being held inside their homes once the curtains are drawn in the evening.

I am thinking that in order to be safe from the inevitable coming wrath of god, I may need to buy about 500 acres in some remote area of Montana or someplace and live right in the middle of the property, far away from any potential sinning neighbors. I figure that that should provide enough of a distance cushion so that whatever blunt instrument god chooses to use next for smiting sinners, like an earthquake or an asteroid collision with the Earth, I will be able to escape the side effects.

What god really needs to do is develop some precision-guided smiting weapons with built-in lasers, GPS trackers, and stuff. That would be cool. Then I could stay in my present home, sit on the front step, and watch the homes of my sinning neighbors be neatly and precisely destroyed.

Tim the Enchanter shows what such a carefully targeted smiting might look like.

Maybe god could make this into an annual event, replacing Fourth of July fireworks.

Science fiction writers have it tough. Although it is fun to predict what the world will look like in the future, the track record of success of past works is not great. (A caveat on what follows: I cannot really call myself a science-fiction fan, having read only a scattered sample of this vast genre, so I am expressing views based on a very limited awareness. Those who have read most of this genre may well disagree with my conclusions.)

Whether the future that is envisaged is dark (as in the films Blade Runner or Colossus: The Forbin Project) or somewhat optimistic (as in 2001: A Space Odyssey or the book Rendezvous with Rama), much of the predictions seemed to be focused on architecture, modes of transport, and video communication.

There seemed to be a consensus that the most dramatic changes would lie in our cities, featuring either exotic skyscrapers and clean, open spaces between, or dark visions of crowded, decaying dystopias. Transport is also a big focus. Flying high-speed cars or people movers or other forms of personalized transport seem to be a given. Space travel was assumed to be commonplace. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, travel in space was seen as almost routine as plane travel is now, with comfortable and spacious reclining seats for passengers and flight attendants serving meals, which is kind of ironic now that air travel is becoming cramped and food is a thing of the past, except on international flights.

As for advances in communication, the focus was on ubiquitous two-way video with a few exotic features like holograms thrown in.

Those predictions have not held up well. What we see is that the cities of today are not that dramatically different from those of fifty years ago and transport has not changed much either. There have been improvements no doubt, but no real breakthroughs.

What most writers failed to predict was the advent of the microchip and the resulting miniaturization of computers and other devices that allowed for new technologies, and the arrival of the internet, which has resulted in the highly diversified communication mechanisms that we now have.

But I think it is a mistake in evaluating science fiction literature to focus on the gee-whiz details of possible technological advances. The better and more lasting science fiction is that which focuses more on how human beings meet the new challenges that confront them.

In the science fiction that interests me, the author tries to deal with how people's views and behaviors might change as a consequence of increased sophistication in science and technology. In particular, how human society might reorganize itself in the future. Arthur C. Clarke seems to envisage a future in which racist and sexist attitudes largely disappear, marriage is a limited-term contract, and people have abandoned religion and belief in god.

One interesting question is how people might react to the sudden realization that we are not the only intelligent life in the universe, that more advanced civilizations exist, and that we have got in contact with them. Most of us simply do not consider this possibility or give it much thought. Try to imagine how we might react to the sudden announcement of contact with aliens. Would it be greeted with fear? Despair? For me, personally, the prime reaction would be excitement and hope. What new knowledge would this alien civilization bring and how would that change our views of everything?

While the fearful might worry about the harmful intentions of the aliens, it seems unlikely to me that an alien power would want to destroy us since we are so weak and no threat to them.

In Childhood's End, the initial shock and fear at the sudden appearance of a fleet of alien spaceships hovering over all major cities is replaced with resignation and submission when humans realize that they are being overseen by a vastly more powerful and sophisticated alien civilization whose intentions, fortunately, seem benign. The overlords quickly put an end to war and with the elimination of all the waste that it entails, humans find that they can produce enough food for themselves, that crime and violence disappears, and work requirements become so minimal that people only do the jobs they like. While all this seems like a good thing, Clarke suggests that without the challenges that adversity brings, the human drive to produce new science or works of art can become atrophied and people could become bored and lose their drive.

Clarke sees a future in which the arrival of aliens who are obviously highly advanced in science and scientific thinking and technology results in an end to beliefs in god and religion, which then become seen as quaint superstitions on a par with the way we view astrology and witchcraft now. I think that this is plausible. Most people's concept of god is very parochial, highly dependent on the uniqueness of Earth and humans. Finding that other advanced and powerful civilizations exist that have never heard of Yahweh, Jesus, or Muhammad, would likely make traditional religions obsolete. Of course, those who yearn for a father figure to look after them (which is what god is, when you think about it) might transfer their worshipful attitude to the aliens.

POST SCRIPT: John Yoo, torture accommodator

If you were a constitutional scholar and had been deeply involved in analyses about what the limits of interrogation were, you would think it would not be difficult to answer the question "Could the president order a suspect buried alive?"

And yet John Yoo, now professor of law at Berkeley after serving as legal advisor in the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel, and author of the infamous torture memo, seems to find it very hard to do so.

People like Yoo are despicable, serving as enablers of the worst abuses of human rights and basic civilized behavior committed by this administration.

Yes, SGU Blog readers, it’s another very short post from yours truly. But hey, I have an excuse! I’m very pleased to introduce you to Skepchick’s new little sister site: Teen Skepchick. I’ve posted an introduction over there explaining everything, so go check it out!

Plus, if there are any SGU listeners in Philadelphia who would like to get together with me and other fun skeptics this Friday SATURDAY (July 5th) for lunch, beer, and a visit to the Mutter Museum, visit this thread on Skepchick and RSVP!

In addition to watching 2001: A Space Odyssey recently, I also indulged in a personal mini-Arthur C. Clarke festival, re-reading his novels Childhood's End and Rendezvous with Rama, and reading for the first time his short story The Sentinel that contains as its central idea a key plot element that reappeared in 2001.

One of the interesting things about Clarke's books is how for him, it is the science that is the most interesting element. That, and his vision of what future society will be like, are what moves his stories along. He tends to eschew traditional storytelling devices such as love, intrigue, violence, and all the other strong emotional factors. His stories focus less on fleshing out the characters and more on how normal human beings might react when they encounter an astounding new piece of information, such as making contact with intelligent life from elsewhere in space.

To the extent that one can discern an author's views from his books, Clarke sees a future in which racial prejudice has disappeared. His books contain a diversity of characters and it is taken for granted that these people take leadership roles in politics and science. In the case of gender, though, although women do play important roles, they do not seem to have reached full equality with men.

This was one feature in the film 2001 that did not ring true, where all the main characters were exclusively white men. That did not seem like Clarke's vision of the future and may have been more reflective of Kubrick's or the studio's attitudes of that time.

Marriage in the future is also seen by Clarke as a series of time-limited contracts and people can sign these contracts with more than one partner at a time.

In Childhood's End Clarke clearly sees war and conflict as infantile disorders, a human frailty that we are not be able to overcome on our own. It ends only with the arrival of superior aliens who, acting as overlords of the planet Earth, put a stop to it.

The aliens, although they allow the killing of animals for food, also put an end to wanton cruelty to animals. How that is done is interesting. Rather than the way we would do things, by issuing an edict or law against animal cruelty and punishing offenders, the aliens, for example, monitor a bullfight and whenever the bull is wounded, the alien spaceship hovering overhead uses its advanced technology to immediately inflict identical pain on all the spectators so that they experience the same sensation as the wounded animal. A few such demonstrations quickly put an end to the inhumane treatment of all animals.

In re-reading Childhood's End I realized (once again) how unreliable our memories are. Initially, the aliens do not reveal their appearance to humans, creating some speculation as to what they might look like. There is a very moving scene in which the aliens finally show themselves and that is the one vivid scene that stood out in my mind from the original reading over thirty years ago. I had remembered it as the climactic scene at the end of the novel. I was surprised to discover that it actually occurs about a third into the book. That scene was so vivid that it had erased everything that came after, even though the events that follow raise some interesting questions that I will discuss in the next post.

Just as I finished the book, I mentioned that I was reading it to a friend who had also read the book a long time ago and he too, without any prompting from me, immediately mentioned the same scene was as convinced as I that it came at the end. This may be a pure coincidence but also shows how unreliable our memories are and how our brains rearrange events to create new stories that conform to our own personal narrative preferences, using the most vivid memories as anchors.

Daniel Dennett in Consciousness Explained argues that our memories, and even the sense of who we are as individuals, are like drafts of screenplays that are constantly being rewritten, with the drafts are appearing and disappearing in our minds. Which one takes hold at any given time can change.

I was also interested on re-reading Childhood's End to see that Clarke describes in some detail a tsunami, where the first wave is followed by a deep retreat of the sea that draws curious onlookers onto to the newly revealed beaches, intrigued by this strange behavior, only to get destroyed by the massive second wave that suddenly hits. Given that Clarke lived in Sri Lanka for most of his life where exactly that scenario played out in 2004, it is a sad that more people had not read his book and thus been aware of the danger signs of a tsunami and fled away from the beaches as soon as they saw the sea withdraw.

POST SCRIPT: The danger of using the auto-correct utility

This is hilarious.

The American Film Institute recently ranked the top ten films in each of ten genres. All such 'best of' rankings are, of course, just for fun and meant to provoke vigorous debate about films that did not make the cut as well as the unworthy ones that did. They are not meant to be taken more seriously than that. I was puzzled, however, as to why comedies were not included as a separate genre, the closest category being the vaguer 'romantic comedies.' The omission of musicals as a genre was also puzzling. Maybe those lists will come out later.

I had only two major objections. I was shocked that Walt Disney's Jungle Book did not even make it into the list of best animations, even though to my mind it is easily the best of that genre, and one of my favorite films in any genre. That favorite of film critics Pulp Fiction of course made the list in the gangster category, although I hated the film, with its gratuitous violence and racially offensive language. I vowed never to see a Quentin Tarantino film again after that.

It turns out that I have seen a lot of the top 100 films (63), a sign of a happily wasted life. I recall one year when I was about 16 when I kept a log of the all the films I had seen that calendar year. I counted over one hundred, or on average one every three days, all in the movie theater. I was able to do this because the theater was walking distance from my home and the manager was a friend of my father and gave us a pass to see films free. Since my parents did not stop me from this indulgence as long as I was keeping up with my schoolwork, I saw almost every film that was shown. I have to admit that I saw a whole lot of lousy films. Time seems much more precious to me now and so I am much more choosy about what films I watch.

I have seen all ten of the top animations listed by the AFI. The other genres that I have seen most of were westerns (8), mystery (8), and courtroom dramas (7), while the least was fantasy (4).

I have seen all of the #1 ranked films except for The Searchers in the western category, which I plan to see soon, and City Lights in the romantic comedy category. I have always been a fan of good westerns, many of which had strong stories and characters and promoted values of honor and justice.

While one can quibble with the top rankings in each genre, the one film whose #1 will be unquestioned is 2001: A Space Odyssey in the science fiction category.

I recall seeing it in a wide-screen theater when it was first released in 1968 and it stunned me with its brilliance. My impression of it was so vivid that I did not want to see it again on the small screen using videotape or DVD. Instead I waited and waited for it to be re-released on the big screen, to capture again the awe of space that it inspired. There had been rumors of this being done in 2001 but that did not occur. I then thought that it might happen this year on its 40th anniversary but when that did not seem likely to happen, decided to give up and watch the DVD.

There is always danger in re-watching a film that one has fond memories of from the distant past, the fear that one will be disappointed. 2001 is not one of those films. Watching it again, even on a small screen, was a wonderfully rewarding experience. Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke combined to make one of the truly great films of all time, something that lifted science fiction films from cliché-ridden, quasi-horror, gimmicky films with cartoon-like aliens creatures into a true work of art.

What impressed me is how well the film stood up 40 years later. Not only did the science still remain credible, the special effects were also wonderful, which is amazing when you consider that Kubrick did not have the benefit of computer graphics, and all the visual effects had to be captured directly on film.

The film may not appeal to modern filmgoers, jaded by the action fantasies of films like Star Wars. In 2001, the plot is simple and there is no frantic action, no explosions, no shoot outs with laser guns, no light sabers, no love story, no sex, not even human conflict. 2001 played down these traditional film staples. In fact, all the actors seemed to be deliberately underplaying their roles, leaving the enigmatic computer HAL 9000 that runs the spaceship as the most interesting character. And yet, all these things that sound like negatives actually combine to make the film utterly engrossing.

Although 2001 grabbed the imagination of two young boys George Lucas and Steven Spielberg as to the tremendous possibilities of science fiction film making, their own films in this genre went off in different, and in my view, inferior directions.

2001 is a highly visual film, almost ballet-like with its minimal dialogue. The first half-hour is totally word-free, leading up to one of the most memorable visual transitions in the history of filmmaking. The last half-hour is also wordless. Kubrick does not rush scenes or have frequent jump cuts, exploiting the seemingly slow pacing and the ambient sounds of breathing to capture the silence and immensity of space. The attention to detail of how things work in space (how people can walk when weightless, how to simulate weak gravity on a spaceship, how to eat and drink, the difficulty of using toilets, etc.) gives the film a scientific credibility and timelessness that will ensure that it remains the top film for the next hundred years.

The film was not well received when it first came out. Its measured pacing bored some who were used to the action clichés of the older films in this genre and the famous enigmatic ending confused the general public as to what was going on. But science fiction fans had hours of fun debating what it all meant.

I also recently watched another science fiction film that I had never heard of previously, and that was Colossus: The Forbin Project which also deals with a computer that decides to take control, this time on Earth. The film was interesting mainly because of its probing, like 2001, of what might result if a computer becomes a truly intelligent, self-aware, self-learning device, and raises the notion of the nature of consciousness and whether computers will be able to create it. The excellent website Machines Like Us probes just these issues and its editor was the one who tipped me off to the existence of this film.

Watching Colossus so soon after the re-watching of 2001 was perhaps a mistake. Although the ideas the former film explored were intriguing, the quality of the filmmaking was nowhere close to that of the latter. The execution of the idea needed the genius of a Kubrick to really do it justice.

If you have never seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, you have missed a treat. It is a landmark in filmmaking.

POST SCRIPT: How to avoid discussing the election

I had to break a one hundred dollar bill at a store last night. I handed the note to the cashier, whom could not have been more than 17 years old. He proceeded to hold the bill up to the light, supposedly to look for the watermark and the reflective strip of filament that is embedded in the bill. As he was doing this, I knew immediately what was coming next, and sure enough, out came one of those pens (or “highlighter”, if you prefer) and he proceeded to mark the note with the pen. The pen dispenses an amber-colored ink. The idea is that if the ink turns from its yellow-tint in to black, it is an indicator that the bill might be counterfeit. So when he marked my bill, guess what happened to the yellow ink?

Before I answer what happened to me and my “hunj” (which is a very strange colloquialism for a one hundred dollar bill, apparently used primarily in the Connecticut backwoods), I want to delve into the science behind the pen and the notes that they divine as authentic or not. Lets start with The United States One Hundred Dollar Bill.

All U.S. paper currency is manufactured by Crane and Company of Dalton, Massachusetts. The “paper” is actually a unique fiber composed of 25 percent linen and 75 percent cotton. This material is referred to as “rag paper”. Red and blue synthetic fibers of various lengths are distributed evenly throughout the rag paper. Before World War One, these fibers were made of silk. There are numerous features of the bill designed to identify counterfeits from legitimate tender. The watermark is created during the paper-making process, and can be viewed from either side of the bill when held up to the light. The watermark is extremely difficult for counterfeiters to duplicate, even with the most sophisticated equipment. The notes also included micro-printing (small lettering that is hard to replicate); on the face of the note, “USA 100” is within the number in the lower left corner and “United States of America” appears as a line in the left lapel of Benjamin Franklin’s coat. Another innovative feature of the newest generation of American currency is the use of color-shifting ink. The ink is used in the numeral in the lower right-hand corner on the front of the bill. The “color-shifting” ink makes the numeral look green when viewed straight on, but black when viewed at an angle. Embedded in the paper, a plastic security strip runs vertically up one side of the note. Viewing the obverse (the front side) of the note, the plastic strip is on the left side. Upon close inspection of this security strip, you can see the words “USA 100″ repeated along the thread, visible on both sides of the bill. And later this year, a new security feature is being added to the next redesign: 650,000 microlenses to make the image of Ben Franklin move when the bill is turned. Turning the bill up and down will make Ben’s face move left and right. Turning the bill left and right will make Ben’s face move up and down.

Now lets take a look at the counterfiet detecting wonderpen. According to the folks over at SearchSecurity.com, here is what they’ve been saying since 2002:

“A counterfeit detector pen is a felt tip pen containing an iodine solution that can be used to help identify computer-generated counterfeit bills. According to U.S. Secret Service data, “funny money” generated by criminals using computers and ordinary printers accounted for only one-half of 1 percent of the counterfeit bills confiscated in 1995. By the year 2000, that figure had risen to 45 percent and is still going up. Detector pens, although not fool-proof, are an effective way to identify computer-generated counterfeit bills because the iodine solution in a detector pen reacts with starch, which is commonly found in the wood-based copy paper used by most printers. Detection pens are easy to use and require no training. A clerk at a cash register simply uses their counterfeit detector pen to put a small mark on the bill. If the bill is counterfeit and the paper is wood-based, the iodine in the pen solution will react with the starch and leave a dark brown or black mark. If the bill is authentic and the paper is fiber-based, there won’t be any starch and the pen will not leave a mark. Typically, a counterfeit detector pen costs about $5.00 and can be used to screen up to 3,000 bills. Counterfeit detector pens can be used for any thread-based paper currency.”

The website HowStuffWorks.com has this to add:

“The counterfeit detector pen is extremely simple. It contains an iodine solution that reacts with the starch in wood-based paper to create a black stain. When the solution is applied to the fiber-based paper used in real bills, no discoloration occurs. The pen does nothing but detect bills printed on normal copier paper instead of the fine papers used by the U.S. Treasury.”

So basically, if there is any starch within (or upon) a note, this iodine pen will detect it. Does it mean the currency is bogus? Not by a long shot - aye, there’s the rub! (Pun intended.) For instance, legitimate bills that pick up starch from external sources will cause the marking to turn to black. What happens if a bill that is left in a shirt or pants pocket goes through a rinse cycle that contains starch? Or even simpler, what happens if starch is sprayed onto the money? Although the instances where currency notes and external starch sources accidentally intercede are probably very rare, it is a sure fire means of falsifying the iodine pen. When James Randi looked into the iodine pen a while back, he had some choice comments. Among them:

“The U.S. Secret Service has the awesome responsibility, among other things, of protecting us from counterfeit currency. They tell us that there is more bogus money in circulation now, than at any previous period in history. This is something we should all be concerned about, right? I contacted a U.S. Secret Service inspector and asked his official opinion about this device. “Does it (the iodine pen) work as advertised?” I asked him. “It is not dependable,” he responded, after referring to a handy manual. “Not dependable, like, 100 percent not dependable?” I asked. “You might say that,” he said. You see, Federal officials never use “yes” or “no” to answer any question professionally. “

It is noteworthy that there is almost universal acceptance of the legitimacy of the iodine pen’s ability to sniff out (our mark out) fake bills. Besides what Randi has written, there is hardly any other criticism of the innate flawed concept of this pen. The pen is universally used, many of us have had first hand experience with it (as the bearer or checker of the note), and we have accepted its validity without a second thought. Despite the numerous means that the government has implemented to protect us from actual counterfeit notes, and the fact that the manufacturer of the notes is constantly making design improvements and new security features, we citizens seem to take greater comfort and trust in a smear of iodine. In a way, investing in the power of the pen to reveal counterfeiting is a kind of argument from authority, and for many people, that is a logical fallacy that they can not resist. The iodine pen issue is an excellent example of how easily and readily a culture or society will embrace the most simple ideas, uncritically. It is no wonder that Randi has made this a fixture as a part of his lectures.

Well, in the end, once my bill was marked with the iodine pen, it retained its amber tint to the satisfaction of the 17 year old cashier. Just to see if he was more on the ball than I gave him credit for, I said to him “You know, those pens don’t really work.” He replied “uh-huh” and kind of gave me a blank stare, and that was it. No questioning of my comment. No curiosity as to why I would make such a comment. No interest whatsoever. It is exactly the same reaction we, as a society, collectively have when the makers ofthe iodine pen tell us that their product works.

We recently received the following e-mail:

After listening to this podcast and to the 100 or so that I’ve listened to over the past two years I offer all of us a caveat ( ok, more of a reminder than a caveat ) regarding skepticism in general. We all must embrace variability within skeptics. Without individualism ( not all must be atheists or agnostics, not all must be liberal, not all must be of a certain age, etc etc etc ) we become a cult. I do not want to become a cult, blindly following dogma, even if that dogma is the scientific method. There are no absolutes; there may be absolutes as we presently know the world; Plato begat Gallileo begat Newton begat Einstein begat the next heroic world view - paradigm shifter ( I’ve never written a sentence with 4 begats before - woo hoo! ). We should constantly be open minded to all possibilities at all times as long as we are guided by evidence, and molded by replication. But we can’t be stifled by the evidence. Einstein changed the world by thinking outside of the box. Thus we should always be ready to engage in discussion all comers. All of us bring biases into our world view. As skeptics , our world view is guided by the scientific method - other’s bring wu or religion or Oprahism. But one never knows where an inspired idea may come from; even if an apple didn’t fall on Newton’s head, it IS a cool tale. And he was a religious zealot! There’s hope for all of us. Communication and empiricism is the key. As you say, concentrate on the evidence and the ideas, not the person who you are debating; we should also concentrate on the motive of those involved.

Hal

Hal has hit upon the ultimate irony of the skeptical movement - it is a movement of individualists, of people who don’t want to belong to anything that smacks of group-think. I have heard others refer to organizing skeptics as akin to herding cats.

We have had the challenge of providing information which is authoritative - but not based upon authority. We tell our listeners not to trust us or believe us without question. Sometimes listeners even revel in the opportunity to correct us or take a contrary opinion. I personally love this. There is nothing I like more than a good debate - or just discussing a topic with someone who completely disagrees with me (as long as they are not just being a mindless insulting jerk).

While I share Hal’s basic vision of what skepticism should be, I do not share his apparent concern that skepticism is significantly deviating from this. In my experience most skeptics are open minded, do not accept claims on authority, and the risk of skepticism developing into anything like a cult is insignificant.

Skepticism and Politics

For one thing - I find that skeptics range the political spectrum. On topics that are strongly informed by science, there is general agreement. However, on topics that primarily involve political value judgments there is great disparity among skeptics. Skeptics are general either liberal or libertarian - and I have personally met skeptics that run the full spectrum, from literally communist to full-on Libertarian with a capital “L”.

This is, in fact, the most common source of friction among skeptics, in my experience. Liberal-libertarian debates flare up on the boards, occasionally. There are some topics that tend to divide along these lines - like global warming, recycling, and organic farming.

As skeptics I think it is important to recognize when we are venturing beyond pure science to issues that involve our political values. What I see sometimes is skeptics portraying their political position as “the skeptical” position. Our goal at the SGU is to discuss the science of such issues but not express our personal political opinions (although I admit sometimes they are evident).

Skepticism and Religion

it is certainly true that most self-described “skeptics” are either atheists or agnostics (the figure I have heard is 70%, but I could not find a reference). It seems obvious that this reflects overall skeptical philosophy - it’s  like saying most skeptics are skeptical.

But I agree with Hal that we need to tolerate personal religious faith within the skeptical movement. As long as faith is kept personal, separate from science, and not based upon empirical claims - it can coexist with a skeptical philosophy. In fact another Hal - Hal Bidlack - the MC of TAM6, was very open about the fact that he is a deist. He is a solid skeptic, but for personal reasons holds out belief in a deity. Martin Gardner is similarly a deist.

Also, far from there being group-think on this topic, this is a hotly debated notion within the skeptical movement. There are those who think that skepticism equates to strong atheism - that the existence of god is just another empirical claim about reality and should be subject to the rules of science. Others believe that faith, by definition, lies outside the arena of science - it is not a statement about reality so much as an expression of personal belief that is not empirically based. (For a deeper discussion of this topic you can search the SGU forums. I bring it up here to point out that this is a raging debate among skeptics. )

Conclusion

I think the best way to sum up this topic is to say that skepticism is a method and not a set of beliefs. It is the continuous open-minded application of skeptical inquiry. It is, and should be, tolerant of diversity with respect to anything outside the realm of empirical scientific claims.

There is, however, a broader rationalist movement of which “scientific skepticism” is merely one part. This is another debate that is raging within skepticism: must it be synonymous with rationalism - the application of skeptical philosophy to faith, politics, ethics, and values?

I don’t have a definitive answer to this question. I can only say that I have chosen to confine my public battles to the cause of scientific skepticism. While I personally support and profess broader rationalism, and I am glad there are groups who do promote this approach - it is simply not where my talents and proclivities lie. I find it difficult to care what people believe - but care deeply how people think; is it logically valid and evidence-based?

But at the same time I am tolerant of the diversity of approaches that activist skeptics have taken - each true to their own selves, their nature and concerns. I do not see it as my purview to tell others how to promote science and reason. I only wish to do it in my own way.

SGU listener Jim recently wrote the following:

My company sent out a health benefits newsletter that really stuck in my throat. (I’d love to send the pamphlet to you, but I didn’t think that would be prudent since it is a national company…and I like my job.) Here’s what it says (note: BCBS is Blue Cross Blue Shield):

BCBS is pleased to offer discounts (up to 30%) on complementary and alternative medicine products and services such as:

. Fitness Centers
. Nutrition Counseling
. Spas
. Massage Therapy
. Holistic Practitioners
. Acupuncture
. Vitamins
. Pilates
. Yoga
. Health Magazines, and many others

Two things irritate me here. First, they mix legit items like Fitness and Nutritional counseling with such crap as Acupuncture. Ugh! The context gives legitimacy to the woo.

I work in the group benefits insurance industry, so I’ll try to shed a little light on this.

More often than not, insurance companies offer coverage “packages” to their clients. An example of this would be going to McDonald’s and only being able to choose from their combo meals with no order customization. You pick combo #2, you get the Big Mac, the medium fries and the medium Coke, period. No option to super-size, small-size, make it a Diet Coke, a Sprite, a salad, etc.

This is the same for most Group Benefits Insurance Packages. They are pre-written contracts that your company (or union) can choose from. There are exceptions to the rule, mostly with extremely large companies or unions such as the federal government, where they have their own people write the contract and present it to different insurance companies competing for their business.

The woo usually comes in at the underwriting phase.  When the contract is actually written.  Insurance companies are well aware of the value people put on their freedom of choice when it comes to medical treatment (or anything really).  Even though some people might not make the best decision for themselves, are not educated enough on a certain topic, or have a bias towards one type of treatment, insurance companies don’t really look at HOW the patient (client) is treated, just as long as they are happy and continue to pay their premiums.  An insurance contract will be more appealing to more people if it covers more avenues of treatment.

It’s funny because as I write this I keep thinking of the section called “General Exclusions and Limitations” of insurance contracts and how probably about 95% of them have a clause similar to this:

No reimbursement will be made for […]  a treatment, device or drug which is considered experimental and has not been fully evaluated and deemed safe and effective.

As I continue to reimburse chiropractors, naturopaths and acupuncturists.  Ahh, cognitive dissonance, my great friend.

So the bottom line is money.  People are willing to pay more for more choices.  The woo stuff that your company covers is not recognized or endorsed by them, nor is it recognized or endorsed by the insurance company selling you the contract.  Only your money is.

As an aside, I work for a Canadian insurance company.  My observations may not apply to companies in other countries.  Our health care system is very different than, say, America’s.  And so, perhaps medical insurance companies operate differently there.  Keep that in mind.

In his book The Language Instinct (1994) Steven Pinker pointed out two fundamental facts about human language that were used by linguist Noam Chomsky to develop his theory about how we learn language. The first is that each one of us is capable of producing brand new sentences never before uttered in the history of the universe. This means that:

[A] language cannot be a repertoire of responses; the brain must contain a recipe or program that can build an unlimited set of sentences out of a finite list of words. That program may be called a mental grammar (not to be confused with pedagogical or stylistic "grammars," which are just guides to the etiquette of written prose.)

The second fundamental fact is that children develop these complex grammars rapidly and without formal instruction and grow up to give consistent interpretations to novel sentence constructions that they have never before encountered. Therefore, [Chomsky] argued, children must be innately equipped with a plan common to the grammars of all languages, a Universal Grammar, that tells them how to distill the syntactic patters out of speech of their parents. (Pinker, p. 9)

Children have the ability to produce much greater language output than they receive as input but it is not done idiosyncratically. The language they produce follows the same generalized grammatical rules as others. This leads Chomsky to conclude that (quoted in Pinker, p. 10):

The language each person acquires is a rich and complex construction hopelessly underdetermined by the fragmentary evidence available [to the child]. Nevertheless individuals in a speech community have developed essentially the same language. This fact can be explained only on the assumption that these individuals employ highly restrictive principles that guide the construction of grammar.

The more we understand how human language works, the more we begin to realize how different human speech is from the communication systems of other animals.

Language is obviously as different from other animals' communication systems as the elephant's truck is different from other animals' nostrils. Nonhuman communication systems are based on one of three designs: a finite repertory of calls (one for warnings of predators, one for claims of territory, and so on), a continuous analog signal that registers the magnitude of some state (the livelier the dance of the bee, the richer the food source that it is telling its hivemates about), or a series of random variations on a theme (a birdsong repeated with a new twist each time: Charlie Parker with feathers). As we have seen, human language has a very different design. The discrete combinatorial system called "grammar" makes human language infinite (there is no limit to the number of complex words or sentence in a language), digital (this infinity is achieved by rearranging discrete elements in particular orders and combinations, not by varying some signal along a continuum like the mercury in a thermometer), and compositional (each of the finite combinations has a different meaning predictable from the meanings of its parts and the rules and principles arranging them). (Pinker, p. 342)

This difference between human and nonhuman communication is also reflected in the role that different parts of the brain plays in language as opposed to other forms of vocalization.

Even the seat of human language in the brain is special. The vocal calls of primates are controlled not by their cerebral cortex but by phylogenetically older neural structures in the brain stem and limbic systems, structures that are heavily involved in emotion. Human vocalizations other than language, like sobbing, laughing, moaning, and shouting in pain, are also controlled subcortically. Subcortical structures even control the swearing that follows the arrival of a hammer on a thumb, that emerges as an involuntary tic in Tourette's syndrome, and that can survive as Broca's aphasic's only speech. Genuine language . . . is seated in the cerebral cortex, primarily in the left perisylvian region. (Pinker, p. 342)

Rather than view the different forms of communication found in animals as a hierarchy, it is better to view them as adaptations that arose from the necessity to occupy certain evolutionary niches. Chimpanzees did not develop the language ability because they did not need to. Their lifestyles did not require the ability. Humans, on the other hand, even in the hunter-gatherer stage, would have benefited enormously from being able to share kind of detailed information about plants and animals and the like, and thus there could have been an evolutionary pressure that drove the development of language.

Human language was related to the evolution of the physical apparatus that enabled complex sound production along with the associated brain adaptations, though the causal links between them is not fully understood. Did the brain increase in size to cope with rising language ability or did the increasing use of language drive brain development? We really don't know yet.

The argument against a linguistic hierarchy in animals can be seen in the fact that different aspects of language can be found to be best developed in different animals.

The most receptive trainee for an artificial language with a syntax and semantics has been a parrot; the species with the best claim to recursive structure in its signaling has been the starling; the best vocal imitators are birds and dolphins; and when it comes to reading human intentions, chimps are bested by man's best friend, Canis familiaris. (Pinker, PS20)

It seems clear that we are unlikely to ever fully communicate with other species the way we do with each other. But the inability of other animals to speak the way we do is no more a sign of their evolutionary backwardness than our nose's lack of versatility compared to the elephant's trunk, or our inability to use our hands to fly the way bats can, are signs that we are evolutionarily inferior compared to them

We just occupy different end points on the evolutionary bush.

POST SCRIPT: But isn't everyone deeply interested in golf?

If you want yet more reasons why TV news is not worth watching . . .