debating a fool

The best part of the entire book of Proverbs, in this debate coach's opinion, comes in the 26th chapter.

4 Do not answer a fool according to his folly,
or you will be like him yourself.

5 Answer a fool according to his folly,
or he will be wise in his own eyes.

This, in essence, is the perfect answer to the question, "Should you debate an intellectually dishonest opponent?"

Yes and no.

Yes, because you have the chance to demolish the fallacies and point reasonable listeners toward the truth. And if you don't, someone less qualified (or capable) will try--and if they fail, they'll only make things worse.

No, because you'll fail anyway, not only because your opponent will use every trick in the book to "win" the debate (and your audience may not be able to tell the difference between a "win" and a win), but their mere presence on the stage will feed their PR efforts.

Of course, if you refuse to debate them, they'll accuse you of intellectual cowardice. Or you may come across as a bully. (Although that's subjective; I think Barney Frank is entirely appropriate dressing down a disingenuous opponent, but perhaps it's because I admire curmudgeons.)

So we're back to the paradoxical advice. Or, to paraphrase Yoda: Do, or do not. There is no win.

Martin Gardner, RIP

Martin Gardner has passed away at the age of 95. I can still remember the first time I read Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, one of the books that kick-started my critical thinking skills and made me wish I had double majored in English and biology rather than English and history.

Out of all the book's trenchant dissections of all sorts of pseudoscience, my favorite is the bit on hollow earth theories, including Cyrus Reed Teed's unbelievable notion that we live inside a sphere.

The entire cosmos, Teed argued, is like an egg. We live on the inner surface of the shell, and inside the hollow are the sun, moon, stars, planets, and comets. What is outside? Absolutely nothing! The inside is all there is. You can't see across it because the atmosphere is too dense....

One of the Gardner's key insights, in his analysis of crankish patterns of behavior, was to point out the crank's fondness for language games.

Like most psuedo-scientists, who wish to impress the reader with their vast scientific knowledge, Teed has a tendency to let his words carry him into obscurities sometimes hard to follow. Planets, for example, are "spheres of substance aggregated through the impact of afferent and efferent fluxions of essence...." And comets are nothing less than "composed of cruosic 'force,' caused by condensation of substance through the dissipation of the coloric substance at the opening of the electro-magnetic circuits, which closes the conduits of solar and lunar 'energy.'"

It seems hard to believe that at one point Teed--who began calling himself "Koresh"--had roughly 4,000 followers. But then, one skim through Fads and Fallacies proves that it's not so hard to believe after all. It takes the Martin Gardners of the world to puncture our propensity to be drawn to the cruosic force of the absurd.

enlightenment is copyrighted

No, really:

Trial is starting in Olympia in the lawsuit brought by the Ramtha School founder JZ Knight against another spiritual teacher called WhiteWind Weaver.

In the trial on today's calendar in Thurston County Superior Court, the Ramtha school in Yelm school accuses Weaver of using some of its teachings in her classes at Rainier.

Knight says she channels the spirit of an ancient warrior named Ramtha. Weaver attended a Ramtha seminar and signed a contract agreeing not to use the teachings for her own commercial purposes.

Weaver's defense: the teachings are either original to her, or in the "public domain."

I am looking forward to learning which principles of enlightenment are fully monetizable.

Andy Schlafly and his acolytes get eviscerated

PZ Myers holds the camera, and Dr. Richard Lenski wields the scalpel.

It is my impression that you seem to think we have only paper and electronic records of having seen some unusual E. coli. If we made serious errors or misrepresentations, you would surely like to find them in those records. If we did not, then - as some of your acolytes have suggested - you might assert that our records are themselves untrustworthy because, well, because you said so, I guess. But perhaps because you did not bother even to read our paper, or perhaps because you aren't very bright, you seem not to understand that we have the actual, living bacteria that exhibit the properties reported in our paper, including both the ancestral strain used to start this long-term experiment and its evolved citrate-using descendants. In other words, it's not that we claim to have glimpsed "a unicorn in the garden" - we have a whole population of them living in my lab! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unicorn_in_the_Garden] And lest you accuse me further of fraud, I do not literally mean that we have unicorns in the lab. Rather, I am making a literary allusion. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allusion]

Oh, there's more.

"S" stands for idiot

John A. Davison, step aside. Salvador Cordova, front and center.

The reason I would discourage Atheists from wearing of the scarlet letter “A” is that some Atheists are such bad apples, the bad atheists have given even the good atheists a bad reputation. These bad apples have caused the general public to form a stereotype in their mind that atheists are mean-spiritied amoral people like Madeline Murry O’Hair. O’Hair regularly courted criminals as her cronies and was punished by God through cruel death. But I know for a fact there are many atheists I would have no problem offering praise for and befriending….

However the fact remains, many associate “Atheist” with the likes of O’Hair and PZ Myers. Thus, it is easy to suppose that “A” doesn’t stand for atheist, but rather for Rectum. I would therefore encourage my dear atheist friends from wearing the “A” as people might perceive them not as atheists but rather as rectums.

It's filed under "Humor," and funny for all the wrong reasons.


[via PZ]

lunatic fringe

Peter Wall has discovered a group that believes that the only Americans are... well... here's a passage from an interview he carefully transcribed.

Laura West: Yeah, this is called Title 4 Flag Says You’re Schwag! Your Simple Guide to Sovereignty and what “Title 4 Flag” means is, there’s, our country, America, has only one flag, and it’s of specific dimensions and proportions of colors and, and size of shapes and, um, so we know that this is our American flag and of our country, which has a Constitution and Bill of Rights that protects us. But the United States, which is a corporation, and is not the same thing as the fifty states—in America?—they have taken this flag and, and kinda made their own version of it, you know like, longer, you’ve seen different shapes and sizes of them, and some of them have a gold fringe around them and that’s not actually the American flag. Most of the flags you’ll see flying are not Title 4 flags, and so we’re teaching people the difference between that, and how to declare sovereignty, which means that you’re born in America, if you’re born in America, in one of the fifty states, then you’re considered a “native American,” and so we are teaching people how to know to claim that, because a lot of people know their rights but they don’t know how to claim that these rights even apply to them.

There's more, much more of this frothy concoction of schizoid paranoia and juvenile pranksterism.

In other news, thank God that Tackamarks still exists on the Internet Archive. No, let me write that again, punctuationally: Tackamarks! On the Internet Archive!

Oh, and let's not forget the dumbest photo of all time.

no WordPress for you

Right now you can't access WordPress blogs in Turkey, reports PZ Myers, all because of a Turkish creationist's snit. (PZ also provides the way around the ban.)

Well, Seattle Sports Report? What have you done to deserve this? And what do you have to say for yourselves?

photos of our trip to Milwaukee

A few from today's visit. If you see five, click the timestamp or the title to see all 11.


Our major destination: the Milwaukee Art Museum, home to an impressive collection of works classical and modern, and itself a work of art designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. This is a side view of the Burke Brise Soleil [sun break], which moves to accommodate the sun, and, at times, to music. Photogenic from almost any angle.



Seen from below, inside.



What a difference three hours make: we entered the museum just as rain clouds rolled out, and left when the remainder burned away. Oh, and I should mention that the MAM was the only reason we drove two hours to Milwaukee, since Melissa had been talking about going since her return from Spain. Thankfully, it was well worth the trip.



A view of Lake Michigan from the War Memorial that sits atop the museum.


Milwaukee, like a lot of cities, has architecture.


Also, it has a distinct lack of architectural consistency.


You can lease some Milwaukee architecture, if you feel so inclined.

Sadly, we didn't have time to stop in Sturtevant and visit the University of Lawsonomy, which apparently consists of a barn encouraging passersby to "Study Natural Law." Alfred Lawson was a crank of cranks.

In the 1920s, he promoted health practices including vegetarianism and claimed to have found the secret of living to 200. He also developed his own highly unusual theories of physics, according to which such concepts as "penetrability", "suction and pressure" and "zig-zag-and-swirl" were discoveries on par with Einstein's Theory of Relativity. He published numerous books on these concepts, all set in a distinctive typography. Lawson repeatedly predicted the worldwide adoption of Lawsonian principles by the year 2000.

Perhaps Lawson's beliefs never caught on because his students couldn't keep themselves from distraction, provided in two classic Wisconsin forms:


The Bong Recreation Area...



...and the Mars Cheese Castle.

I love Wisconsin.

today's crank: Gordon Klingenschmitt

His first mistake was watching boorish boobs try to shout down a priest on the floor of the Senate. His second mistake was trying to wrap his quark-sized intellect around the spectacle. His third was making his thoughts public. Count the rest of his mistakes over at Ed Brayton's place, parts I and II.

God tells Kent Hovind to quit whining

Do you want to know what God thinks? Just ask Kent Hovind, tax-evader, self-appointed martyr, and flim-flamming creationist. Apparently, prison life sucks.

GOD: I know this is hard for you. How many men in there are away from their families?

KH: Nearly all of them, Lord. Some only see their family once a year—and some not at all. I know what you are going to say, Lord, that now I know how they feel and can be a better witness to them, right?

GOD: Very good, son. You are starting to get the picture!

KH: But, Lord, five hundred miles away?

GOD: You are still in America, son. Would you prefer…Siberia?

KH: Oh, no, South Carolina is just fine! Hey, Lord, why did you let me slip on those steps in Atlanta and bruise my ankle so badly?

GOD: I needed you to see the new prison doctor that just came from India. He knows almost nothing about Me, son. I know you didn’t have much time with him, but you did tell him about your Website. He will look at it and read the “How To Be Saved” article. That will start him on the road to salvation later this year.

It's almost as surreal as a trip into the mind of John A. Davison.

Almost.




[Link via PZ]

rogue's galleries

I've been getting scads of hits on a classic post, and wondering why, until I clicked through and saw that they're all coming from PZ's Killfile Dungeon, a collection of banned cranks, nutjobs, and asses. Check it out: it's a one-stop-shop of loons. (There are some benefits to being a small-time blogger.)

Meanwhile, if you want to see cranks getting their comeuppance, check out the most recent edition of the Skeptics Circle.

the proof is in the drawing

Brian Hayes, discussing proofs, explains why you can't trisect an angle--and, as a surprise to this fan of Hobbes, describes how the great English philosopher became a "notorious mathematical crank."

thanks for sharing

I nominate this...

What ho -
my identity
online.

Yes, this is my, Capt. Dylan Clifthorne's, haiku. I dedicate it to google. And God. Is that redundant? I don't know. Does god?...(Does Google?) Who are we kidding? Google knows everything. And for what out of everything they don't know, there's wiki"free"dia!

But really, I am interested in knowing why someone is interested in my letter, and why they disagree without disagreeing, and why Orwell is more than a socialist pig farmer, and why "Olympia in the know people", which I only circumstancially would identify myself as, should respond.

Sincerely,
Mr. Backwards Abraxas

...as the most intriguing and delightful and unsettling comment ever commented, on this blog or any other.

coming clean: I am one source of the Discovery Institute's secret research

Steve Reuland doesn't think much of Bruce Chapman's claims that the Discovery Institute's research into Intelligent Design (ID) is going on in secret, for fear of censorship by the Darwinian Establishment.

Reuland, though, is wrong to dismiss Chapman as a paranoid "fool." You see, I am one of those secret scientists, testing the predictions of ID and writing papers, waiting for the right time to expose the fraud that is Darwinism.

I can no longer sit in silence while my colleagues are assailed for their assiduous efforts. Though I place my integrity and my career on the line, I'm no longer afraid. Today I stand up to be counted. Today I'm coming out of the ID closet.

My Setup
Thanks to a $500,000 grant from the Discovery Institute, I have set up a laboratory in my garage, complete with beakers, Bunsen burners, nifty multicolored chemical mixtures that explode when combined, plenty of sublimating dry ice for that bubbling mad scientist effect, a gently used supercomputer waiting for the right programmer, a gigantic periodic table, an authentic replica slide rule, and last, but not least, a comfy leather chair with matching ottoman.

The grant also pays for two assistants, one to perform the experiments, and the other to make coffee and massage my feet after a hard day of calculating Complex Specified Information (CSI).

My Research
Quite frankly, there isn't much to prove. Darwinism has been so thoroughly dismantled by my colleagues--Dembski, Behe, Davison--that it sometimes seems like a fool's errand to prove ID. But I have the grant, so I suppose I'm obliged to do something.

Without going into specifics, since I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise, here are some of the studies that will be published in coming months.

"Complex Specified Information, or Specified Informed Complexity? The Difference is Substantial."

"Still Waiting: Evolving Wings on Frogs Through Genetic Mutation and Recombination."

"Life Cycle of Escherichia Coli Points to Playful Designer."

"No 'There' There: Analysis of over 50,000 Evolutionary Experiments Reveals A Dearth of Evidence."

"Retroviral Insertions in Related Species Too Similar to be the Result of Chance, Surpassing the Universal Probability Bound and Thus Proving Design."

"Laughing All the Way: Irreducible Core Components of the World's Funniest Joke."

My Prediction
Darwinism is in a permanent vegetative state. Science will pull the plug within a decade.

is the enemy insane or is he?

A reader sends this along (all errors and absurdity in original):

1:28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number ; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

Christians priests are not fruitful and contradict god : they are heretics and agents of devil. With baptism christians forgive themselfs from god's death sentence.

1:29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.

1:30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground, everything that has the breath of life in it, I give every green plant for food " And it was so.

Chirstians don't eat only green plant : they trust in god to contradict god. Eating cadavers for non nutritional reason is a pathological conduct. Like lion is parasite of gazelle, mankind is parasite of cow, for antinutritional and anticulinary reason : eating cadavers induce genetic reflex of vomiting.

It's the first such schizophrenic spam I've received that's offered an unsubscribe option.

scrounging through the mailbag II

A reader writes,

To all who bear witness to this message, heed every word for it is the truth. The time has come for God's will to be done.....on earth as it is in heaven. Each and everyone's fate is sealed, with the mark of the beast or the seal of God (truth). And, from now until that very hour, everyone who calls on His name will be saved. This is the little scroll revealed, God's purpose revealed; and the delivery of the message gives birth to Christ ---> all the people seeking and demanding the truth and justice, everyone who has been delegated His power and authority. Now the time has come. There have been many tears for years knowing these things as the insight and knowledge was unfolded on us, for the many atrocities and crimes committed against God and His servants, and for those who sacrificed themselves who are being persecuted by those who claim to be the "Chosen Ones" and their beasts, their instruments, was also unfolded. Now it is our turn.....to pour out His wrath onto these impostors, these anti-Christs (anti-truth) and the beasts, through His power and authority He has delegated to His Christ. Christ is all the peoples who seek the truth (Lamb), testify to the truth, demand the truth, and judge in the name of the truth and righteousness (for what is right), those who have been delegated His power and authority.

If you can make sense of this, you're more erudite--or more insane--than I.

big crank, keep on turnin'

John A. Davison still hasn't learned. Instead of creating a new post, he's gone and created a whole new blog, New and Unimproved Prescribed Evolution. Don't click through unless you have the mental and spiritual fortitude to enter Davison's crackpot universe.

scrounging through the mailbag

A reader writes,

Does the policeman hunt mad people or does he hunt sane people ?? (even better he hunts patology) The policeman hunts mad people, or he would be mad, by definiton. So there should be total identity, and unity of action, by the policeman, the general, the medical doctor, so we will not say anymore that a raper is a sane human. We can show why also crimes against the patrimony are not physiological conducts (if evrybody would go doing robberies.. what would happen?)

A conduct can be pathological (biological group self-destructive activity) or non pathological (phisiological), no external or middle case is expected. 90% of the people who killed a parent is declared mentally healthful, this means: non pathological conduct, phisiological conduct (genetic or non genetic), good doctor, not vector of functional or anatomical suffering.

Medicine is an exact science, jurisprudence is an exact science. Enemies and friends: of the mental hygiene only, war between doctors isn't expected value. "Fighting with islam against the devil" : this information is harmless and profitable.

Siegmund Freud lies not knowing to be lying: he is a conceptual pedophile who says children has sexual attraction for parent (edipus) and that mind is partitioned in 3 parts (ego superego es). False premiss brings wrong result: like Freud says, cognitive error is associated with pathological conduct.

"All fine at home? Do your parents act with you like with friends?": the medical doctor must suggest this or enhanced reflection to the habitants, for excluding non-genetic behavioral epidemics. Slapping child is a crime and a mania, like by the general rule, "if child doesn't born genetically stupid, handicapped, diseased, socially dangerous". Earth's habitants kill gays but children don't born gays, habitants corrupt and kill children doing a "sacrifice to the devil": this non genetic epidemic is familiarly but not geneticaly transmitted.

God created phisiology and patology and gave you the chance to choice. With baptism christians forgive themselfs from god's sentence.

1:28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
1:29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
1:30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground-everything that has the breath of life in it-I give every green plant for food." And it was so.

If vegetarian diet gives longer and better life than non-vegetarian diet, non-vegetarian diet is alimentary behavior pathology. Eating another human is a behavioral disturb; a cow has 96,5% dna perfectly matching with human dna. I am racist: i think animals is inferior race, so i don't have to eat cadavers, thing that induce a phisiological genetic reflex : vomiting.

This text describes a surgical practice, and can't be copyrighted; in every case you are authorized to the use u think is necessary, please forward this glossary. This is a final version or close, you will not receive notifications anymore.

Pity.

the dead ends of the blogosphere II

One blog, one post, 849 comments.

I know John A. Davison is a favorite whipping boy of this blog, but come on. 849 comments!

Visit if you dare.

from the mind of Mike Seaver

You haven't visited Kirk Cameron's website in a while? Ah, what you've been missing. Crawfish on a conveyor belt: a metaphor for the human condition.

The ones that reached the end of the belt dropped helplessly into a pot of boiling water, to be cooked and eaten by large, ravenous creatures (my lunch mates) waiting to crack open their bodies and eat their flesh. My only consolation was to know that death would come quickly to these little creatures and end their unimaginable pain. I couldn't help but feel sick. I wanted to run into the kitchen, break open the bags of imprisoned shellfish and yell, "Run! Run for your lives!"

But Kirk's sympathies extend only so far:

Three months later, the chickens are now full-grown and not so cute. They make more messes than my six kids combined and they still don't lay eggs. I regularly make chicken soup for dinner in hopes that the steaming aroma will drift across the chicken coop in the backyard, reminding those freeloading feathered friends to lay some eggs soon . . . or else.