Yesterday I had the pleasure of reading Roger Ebert’s eviscerating review of Ben Stein’s film “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.” I hesitate to link people there, because while it does a fantastic job of pointing out the poor logic and deceptive tactics used in the film, it also carries a tone of condescension that is sure to turn off anyone who might have fallen trap to the film’s dishonesty. Like most well-written screeds against the ideologies to which logic-minded people take issue, Mr. Ebert’s is clearly intended to “preach to the choir,” using language aimed at individuals sharing the opinions therein. Everything Mr. Ebert has to say is backed by logic and scientific evidence, but while saying it he sounds like a total asshole.

I think this one-sidedness is one of the many things keeping this ludicrous “debate” alive, ensuring that people on both sides of the issue keep fighting into the coming decades. I airquote “debate” in the previous sentence because the actual issue is extremely simple: Intelligent Design is not science, and thus doesn’t belong in science classrooms. See, Science™ is a protocol devised to get to the bottom of things logically and rationally, limited to what can actually be observed and tested. That’s it. No magic, no faith; just What You See is What You Get™. If you can’t observe it, it can’t be covered by science. If a theory cannot be backed up by testing and observation, it can’t be called science.

Rather than putting effort into explaining to the layman that science is a protocol designed to attempt the determination of how things work, using ONLY WHAT CAN BE OBSERVED AND TESTED, proponents of science (who are by definition anti-ID — not because of some hatred for religion, but because an Intelligent Designer CANNOT CURRENTLY BE OBSERVED OR TESTED FOR) feel the need to attack the misguided attempts by ID-proponents to attack the theory of evolution, and even science itself. Back and forth these attacks go, doing nothing but reaffirming what IDers already believe: that evolution is an attack on Christianity.

Unfortunately, I fear this is going to continue for a very long time. While I take issue with how the ID movement portrays science as “anti-religion,” I have to admit that many of the outspoken folks trying to cry foul of Intelligent Design’s methods, logic, and purpose happen to actually BE anti-religion folks, many of them of rather asshole-ish persuasion themselves. (I’m looking at you, Richard Dawkins.) I find this incredibly disheartening.

As of now, the opposition to the teaching of Intelligent Design in science classrooms is as follows: scientific theories are based upon the notion that observations and evidence overwhelmingly back them up. Intelligent Design theory posits no such testable, observable theories. All their time and energy is spent finding problems with portions of the evolution model, which, while actually pretty useful, is not the same thing as positing a theory of their own. The notion that everything was created by an intelligent force is a nice notion — one which I happen to believe — but it is not the same thing as a scientific theory. If you want to do science, then you have to do considerably more than just come up with a nice notion.

ID proponents (and Ben Stein’s film) portray themselves as being “shut out” by science, that what they’re doing is being ignored on the grounds that it attacks the accepted model, and that science is akin to persecution of religion. This simply isn’t true. If the ID folks actually were to do the work involved in creating such a theory, doing the experimentation and observation necessary to back it up and get their work peer reviewed, it WOULD be accepted by science. Unfortunately, the main proponents of Intelligent Design Theory have no interest in doing that; they’d rather just fabricate controversy, pretending that the mean-old scientists just won’t let them play because scientists hate Christians.

Sadly, it’s far easier to rile up congregations and make them feel persecuted than to actually do the science they purport they’re doing. By portraying evolution as anti-religion while claiming persecution at the hands of scientists, they’ve painted an inaccurate portrait of the “debate.” People with no understanding at all of science now feel that their viewpoint ought be represented where it simply doesn’t belong. This two-faced approach is nothing short of dishonest, and I personally feel that the level of dishonesty exhibited suggests that it’s not just misguided, but also intentional.

I’m not sure What Jesus Would Do™, but I’m pretty darn confident that he wouldn’t support lying to and misleading people in order to get them to believe the things he says.

Dangerous animal virus on US mainland? – Yahoo! News

The new Geneva collider will re-create the rapidly changing conditions in
the universe a split second after the Big Bang. It will be the closest
that scientists have come to the event that they theorize was the
beginning of the universe. They hope the new equipment will enable them
to study particles and forces yet unobserved.

This stuff boggles the mind… 

Had a mini road-trip today, during which I invented a new type of turn signal. Rather than indicating to other vehicles on the highway that I intend to change lanes, this new signal will indicate to them that they should do so. This is most useful when people are attempting to merge onto the highway, and would solve a constant frustration of mine. Seriously, people can’t merge on their own, and I feel that an additional signal would go a long ways towards solving this problem. (Initially my idea was for the indicator to CAUSE the other person’s car to change lanes, but I’m not sure that even I would be able to use that only for good — let alone all the idiots that can’t merge on their own in the first place.

I’m not even going to charge money to license this technology; I feel the good this will do for mankind far outweighs the potential profits from it. You’re welcome, world.

In other news, we’re off to an ‘adults-only’ member night at our local Museum of Science and Industry. A quick peek at the website has taught me that it’s not quite the evening I had imagined when D sold me on the idea a few months ago; rather it’s just an evening where no one under 21 is admitted so the adults can enjoy fancy appetizers and ‘sciency’ cocktails. My imagined version was much better, but the real one sounds like it might be fun too. What’s better than Chinese dinosaur bones? Slightly tipsy rich people to appreciate my sophisticated ‘bones’ humor all evening.

A new process to harvest the carbon dioxide from smokestacks and convert it into baking soda is exciting the scientific world.  By equipping industrial plants with this technology, we can prevent these large amounts of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.  It probably won’t solve our climate change problems, but it’s sure a step in the right direction.

This got me thinking, though.  If it’s possible to convert the CO2 emissions from industrial plants into baking soda, what’s to stop the same process from converting the exhaust from the millions of vehicles on America’s roads as well?

Remember when I suggested that we should be paving our roads white instead of black, so as to reflect more of the suns rays back out of the atmosphere?  Well, having every car on the road leaving a fine dusting of white baking soda everywhere it goes seems like a pretty simple solution for the short term.  This does cause a few problems, however:  1) the frequent overturned-vinegar-tanker incidents we have will suddenly be a lot more catastrophic, and 2) the amassing white powder might reflect TOO MUCH of the suns rays, putting us into a permanent winter.  Hopefully these two problems will simply cancel each other out;  when too much baking powder piles up, it will increase the frequency of vinegar tanker crashes, turning the baking powder back into CO2 where it can enter the atmosphere and encourage global warming.  It’s win/win, really.

This sudden abundance of baking soda could also provide one major missing piece of another plan I’ve been trying to get off the ground for some time: controlling the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.

We truly are living in an amazing technological time.

Several days ago I read an article in the New York Times about a scientist who alleges that he’s succeeded in “turning fat into bone” by utilizing harmonic vibrations. He was studying the effects of resonant vibrations on bone density when he postulated that certain types of vibration would result in denser bones, but was completely shocked to find that not only did bone density increase dramatically, but the amount of fat in the subject decreased proportionately as well.

“I was the biggest skeptic in the world,” Dr. Rubin said.““And I sit here and say, ‘This can’t possibly be happening.’ I feel like the credibility of my scientific career is sitting on a razor’s edge between ‘Wow, this is really cool,’ and ‘These people are nuts.’”

Other scientists are understandably hesitant to buy into this, citing that “correlation does not equal causation.” Just because the fat levels are decreasing while the bones get denser doesn’t necessarily mean that the fat is turning INTO bone. I think further study will probably bear out that there is some other cause for the fat decrease — like maybe the fact that the mice are forced to stand rather than lie down, thus expending more energy, or maybe that the vibrations excite them sexually and thus increase the metabolism — but the bone density findings are pretty cool. Imagine osteoporosis sufferers simply standing on a vibrating plate to strengthen their bones a few times a week, no longer worrying about going ballroom dancing or tying eachother up in the backroom of the bingo parlor.

If the findings are proven conclusive, however, it will be finally possible to say with utmost truthfulness that you’re not fat — just big-boned.