nothing to see here

I love museums. If I'm forced to go along with a tour guide, I try to ask tough questions, to see if she really knows the material, or is just parrotting the placards.

I also love learning about hoaxes and scams. So, a museum dedicated to the world's most egregious pseudoscience sounds like a fun place to visit. But what about visiting with twenty-five skeptical experts in tow? The Institute for Creation Research's "Museum of Creation and Earth History" never really has a chance when Karen Bartelt shows up with some tough customers. The tour guide doesn't even make it out of the introductory video without being caught in a lie.

(But then, when your basic premise is that the world is less than 10,000 years old, you can handle more than a little cognitive dissonance.)

feel my pain

Fiancee and I spent all day Sunday pounding our feet to pulps on the Upper Lena Lake trail, a fourteen-mile round trip. The Forest Service pdf brochure notes,

Lena Lake Trail #810 to the Upper Lena Lake Trail is well maintained and has moderate grades with long switchbacks.

As you're going up, you think, "Gee, this is easy. The trail isn't terribly rocky, and it's cool in the shade. I can handle this." What you don't foresee is that on the way down, after you've gone twelve miles, each agonizing step will cause you to curse your inadequate Adidas cross-trainers (not to mention your inadequate physical fitness).

The Upper Lena Lake Trail is steep and receives less maintenance than the Lena Lake Trail #810.

Since the days of Paul Bunyan, in fact, the trail's only maintenance has come from the diligent pawings of mountain goats and the steady tramp-tramp of ignorant day hikers. The Upper Lena Lake trail is, at times, no more than a dried creek bed winding its way between boulders and Devils Club; at others, it's a series of too-short switchbacks where you can tell the original Civilian Conservation Corps lackeys got tired of making the trail easy, and said "Screw it, they'll just have to go straight up the mountain."

As we neared the lake, cheery descenders (with poles!) said, cheerily, "You're just about there... one big push and you've made it." Which brought to mind the apt metaphor: giving birth.

But the view is worth the pain. I think.

outta here

I'm off for the Hamma Hamma. Back Sunday evenin' or so. (Yes, I do have a life outside of this blog.)

local Democrats rejoice...

..as Washington state Republicans pick a doofus candidate for Auditor.

"Wow," Tacoma City Councilman Kevin Phelps said when he heard Baker was a party nominee for statewide office. Phelps' first council meeting in 1998 lasted just minutes before Baker was arrested for disturbing the peace.

Phelps said Baker is a former exotic dancer, an ardent conspiracy theorist and an intelligent person "who has the ability to put a train of thoughts together — they're just not real factual."

Of course, for a politician, that sort of intelligence is an asset.

nipped

I was sitting at the table with my fiancee, looking at a steel bowl full of biscuits. I saw my reflection in the bowl, and pointed to it. "Look, there I am," I said, and she immediately replied, "Nope, there I am," pointing to the exact same place.

I was going to bring up a salient philosophical point--that, given each of our perspectives, we had every justification to believe that we were right and the other wrong, while, really, we were both right, and that our perspectives made the difference, and that this might have an effect on the way we view epistemology and the validity of sense-data and--and then she covered up the reflection with a biscuit.

full tilt

Don Quixote

Attempting to add something new to the Quixote corpus would be like adding schmaltz to a Kincaid painting.... [read more]

Tom = Richard

sign of the times

This just in.

readification

As an addendum to a previous conversation, I point you, dear reader, to an article by Mark Edmunds on the re-socializing value of reading, which he calls "life's grand second chance," explaining:

All of us grow up once: we pass through a process of socialization. We learn about right and wrong and good and bad from our parents, then from our teachers or religious guides. Gradually, we are instilled with the common sense that conservative writers like Edmund Burke and Samuel Johnson thought of as a great collective work. To them, common sense is infused with all that has been learned over time through trial and error, human frustration, sorrow and joy. In fact, a well-socialized being is something like a work of art.

Yet for many people, the process of socialization doesn't quite work. The values they acquire from all the well-meaning authorities don't fit them. And it is these people who often become obsessed readers. They don't read for information, and they don't read for beautiful escape. No, they read to remake themselves. They read to be socialized again, not into the ways of their city or village this time but into another world with different values. Such people want to revise, or even to displace, the influence their parents have had on them. They want to adopt values they perceive to be higher or perhaps just better suited to their natures.

As an "obsessed reader," I count myself among the revisers.

Every now and then I pause to reflect that as little as ten years ago I used to vacuum up utter bilge like Frank Peretti novels, Dave Hunt screeds, Texe Marrs conspiracy theories, completely unaware of their lack of reality, never mind literary merit. (Later, in college, I even got into heated dorm debates about Peter Duesberg's crap; I apologize to all involved.) These were not a necessary component of my Christian upbringing, in which reading, especially reading scripture, was modeled and encouraged by loving, God-fearing parents. But since indoctrination was emphasized over education, and obeisant acceptance of "the Truth" over critical analysis, I had no experience, no critical faculty for seeing garbage for what it was.

"Train up a child in the way he should go," the Good Book says, "and when he is old he will not depart from it." Every proverb has its exception. Thanks to a college education, free libraries, and the all-magical internet, I can marvel at my former days of innocent ignorance, and know that they're gone for good, in both senses of the phrase. And, in adopting a healthy skepticism, I haven't abandoned the values my parents tried to instill--honesty, integrity, hard work, loyalty, love--but I no longer search for divine wisdom in a centuries-old mishmash of history and myth.

another book about Darwin?

Evolution from Creation to New Creation
Claiming the reasonable middle is risky in any debate. It upsets hardliners on either side, who deride it as sitting on a pointy picket fence--foolish, if not impossible. It's particularly risky to straddle the gap between dogmatic "creationists" and "evolutionists," whose idea of constructive dialogue is all woe-crying and warmongering, a church picnic with Sackloth Races and a Grenade Toss.... [read more]

the apocalypse nears

Seattle sits atop a pile of garbage that itself sits atop a fault line. Given the Pacific Northwest's history of violent temblors, geoscientists predict that a large earthquake is due to strike--and possibly destroy the city. Seattle also sits within range of an active volcano, fondly referred to as Mount Rainier, and a nuclear sub station at Bangor. So, O Catastrophic God of Jerry Falwell, now that a King County judge has ruled Washington's "Defense of Marriage Act" unconstitutional, what's it gonna be?

the royal we

Here at decorabilia (and, by extension, its sister blog, bibliocracy) we love all things nerdy, which means we take great pleasure in announcing the addition of another blog to the roll.

Philosophy of Biology has, in the words of a contributor, "...quite an impressive list of scholars contributing to this blog in one way or another." Check out Michael Ruse's Is biology different? to start.

hawking update

As reported earlier, Stephen Hawking had claimed that black holes actually emit radiation and information. In this week's New Scientist (not on the web--yet), though, Hawking's views are treated to a little more skepticism:

...[Hawking] tantalised his audience with concepts rather than mathematical calculations, and physicists in the audience were far from convinced.

"I didn't get that 'a-ha' experience," says John Baez, a mathematical physicist fom the University of California at Riverside. Theoretician Joseph Polchinski from the University of California at Santa Barbara was even more blunt: "We don't understand it," he said.

Which means you should still remember what your mother told you: don't stray too close to the event horizon.

just say no

Philosophy of Mind
Cartesian dualists, keep out. Jaegwon Kim's accessible, though difficult, survey of the issues and problems with physicalist conceptions of the mind wastes little time dispensing with substance dualism... [read more]

"An evil petting zoo?"

The Evidential Argument From Evil
If we grant that there is no logical contradiction in the statements "evil exists" and "God exists," we are left with a powerful objection: the empirical evidence for the former assertion compels us to doubt the latter.... [read more]

goodwill hunting

As you already know, the lummox responsible for this blog is a big fan of Goodwill, and, to no one's surprise, also shops at Ross and Marshall's. So you can understand his--my--disappointment upon reading these thrift store shopping tips, printed unthinkingly by The Daily Rag. (I offer my own advice, Onion-style, after Fisking the original.)

NEW YORK -- Vintage and thrift stores can be treasure troves of bargains, but shoppers might need a good map to find them.

No disagreement so far. If you're fond of polyester in all its forms, can tolerate the musty smell of secondhand furniture, love to sculpt in the golf club medium, or collect chipped commemorative mugs, thrift stores are garage sales writ large--provided you remember that half the merchandise there didn't pass muster at a garage sale.

Gina Cohen, a public relations and communications specialist with Savers, an international thrift store chain, offers this guide:
- Work department by department, systematically moving from one side to the other. If you look at the store as a whole, it might seem overwhelming.

This is known as "reductive shopping," which turns some consumers into nihilists who are unable to see the meaning and beauty of the whole in the moldy brokenness of the parts.

- Look for designer labels; you'll have a better sense of what kind of bargain you're getting because you'll likely have some idea of the garment's original price, says Cohen.

That is, unless you're some brand-hating hippie who smokes clove cigarettes wrapped in Adbusters.

All clothing at Savers, for example, is "gently worn," so shoppers shouldn't have to worry about stains or smells.

Stay away from thrift stores if you have a head cold; your nose is an essential instrument. That paisley pullover, no matter how great it looks, won't turn you into Tom Jones if it reeks. (Or maybe it will?)

Children's items often are brand new because youngsters go through everything so quickly and they don't have a chance to wear everything before they become too small.

As infant obesity continues to, well, broaden, expect this trend to continue.

- Pay close attention to the jewelry department. "Sometimes pricers make mistakes and they won't recognize a Tiffany ring," Cohen says.

My guess: if you're shopping at a thrift store, neither will you.

- Shop early in the day before the selection is picked over. "My biggest tip is to be persistent. ... You have to dig! I found a pair of 7 (for All Mankind) jeans, nearly new, for $6," Cohen reports.

Bring along a pick and a shovel. Depending on the state of the plastic thingumbobs aisle, you may have to crash through layers of petrochemical byproducts before striking metaphorical gold.

Sadly, this is where the paper's advice ends. So, dear reader, I offer you even more advice, gratis, as all advice should be.*

1. Bring several small, drooling children along. Let them wander the store, distracting other bargain-questers who might otherwise walk off with only working audiobook copy of Dianetics. No matter what the signs warn, unattended children will not be sold as slaves. This is America.

2. Only buy what you really, really need.

3. Mommy says to look but don't touch!

4. It is considered a crime in most cultures to leave a store empty-handed, even if it means spending twenty cents on a used teether.

5. Goodwill stores often post calendars of savings--all books 20% off on the last Thursday of the month, Red Tag Tuesdays, etc. Snatch all the copies you can off the wall and keep others from finding out. Ignore protests.

6. A penny saved is a penny spent at Goodwill.




*You get what you pay for.

another book down the hatch

God, Freedom, and Evil
Is it possible, in slightly over one hundred pages, to destroy the logical problem of evil and rehabilitate the ontological argument for God's existence? If Plantinga's arguments are credible, then yes... [read more]

what ever happened to...

...memorizing great poetry? Michael Knox Beran calls on educators to revive the tradition of committing whole poems, speeches, and essays to memory. The benefits, he claims, go beyond mere "cultural literacy":

...From The Cat in the Hat on up, verse teaches children something about the patterns and relationships that bind together the words of which it is composed. Poetry sets up an abstract system of order and harmony; the rhythm and the rhyme scheme are logical structures that a child can comprehend even before he understands the words themselves, just as he can grasp the rhythmic and harmonic relations of a piece of music.

What the child discovers, in other words, is not only aesthetically pleasing, but important to cognitive development. Classic verse teaches children an enormous amount about order, measure, proportion, correspondence, balance, symmetry, agreement, temporal relation (tense), and contingent possibility (mood). Mastering these concepts involves the most fundamental kind of learning, for these are the basic categories of thought and the framework in which we organize sensory experience. Kids need to become familiar with them not only through exercises in recitation and memorization, but also, as they proceed to the later grades, by construing, analyzing, and diagramming particular verses.... And of course memorization is a kind of exercise that strengthens the powers of the mind, just as physical exercise strengthens those of the body.

No less important, memorizing poetry turns on kids’ language capability. It not only teaches them to articulate English words; it heightens their feel for the intricacies and complexities of the English language—an indispensable attainment if they are to go on to speak, write, and read English with ease....

Kids who haven’t been exposed to the King’s English in primary school or at home will have a hard time, if they get to college, with works like Pride and Prejudice and Moby Dick. In too many cases, they will give up entirely, unable to enter the community of literate citizens--and as a result will live in a world of constricted opportunity.

Beran goes on to berate "constructivists" for their rejection of classic learning techniques, and here's where I say a hearty "amen, and pass the margarine." Certainly, teachers need to foster "active" learning--not just passive acceptance of time-honored screeds--but memorization is a form of sinking-to-swim, being tossed into literacy. Constructivists tip the balance too far in favor of anarchic learning, where the desires of the child form the philosophical center, conflating wants with needs, and forgetting that any form of progress requires an attainable goal--an objective, not subjective, position. While ostensibly in the pursuit of self-empowerment, pure constructivism is self-constricting folly.

So, "let's to't pell mell, if not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell."

much ado about

At long last, PZ Myers gets the chance to see, firsthand, a bold new Intelligent Design research paradigm. And here it is:















PZ's comments are worth quoting:

I do have to commend Nelson for having the guts to expose the hollow vacuum at the heart of anti-evolutionary thinking to the critical eyes of a swarm of practicing scientists, but there is another troubling problem here. This presentation is going to go on a list at the Discovery Institute of Intelligent Design forays into mainstream scientific venues. You know it's going to be presented to some school board or court someday, with the disingenuous claim that "See? We really are doing real science, really!" It isn't. It's non-science. It's bad science....

Nothing will follow from Nelson's presentation. There won't be any research done as a consequence of his poster--there's none that can be done. He may be a nice guy, but niceness doesn't count in science. And the absence of substance is what has to be emphasized to school boards and courtrooms where this kind of work will get cited.

Oh, and while we're at it: evolutionary processes can create prime number sequences; so much for Dembski's Contact analogy--that discovering a prime number sequence is proof of intelligent design.

Maddux vincit omnia

Greg Maddux has always been a nerd's pitcher, with his fabled studiousness, his geekish looks, and his unassuming disposition. Now he's up for win number 300, which would assure him a (well-deserved) place in the Hall.

Remember, kids. Nerds rule, even in sports.

Update: He failed the first try, thanks to a jittery first inning and heat exhaustion, but the Cubs won anyway.

Update update: He's got another chance. Also, Jayson Stark shows, statistically, that Greg Maddux is one of the all-time greats.

Final update: he did it. Hall of Fame, here we come.