Lee's Blog

I may not have made clear what I would intend by a course that “teaches the controversy”. I would not expect to “convert” anyone. My goal would be to teach people how the ideas came about in the first place, and who came up with them. I use the word “ideas” in this case instead of “theories” because before you come up with a theory about how something came to be, you have to have an idea that it even could have come to be in the first place. So, for instance, you can’t have a theory of how the rocks in a given area came to be laid down unless you first have the idea that the rocks may have a history — that they did not simply materialize in their present form.

I have seen creationists contend that scientists went out to study rocks and fossils for the express purpose of denying God’s hand in Creation, and therefore nothing they say can be trusted. Presumably creationists get away with this argument because their audience never learned who first systematically studied rocks and fossils, why they did so, what conclusions they reached on what evidence, and how they themselves felt that their conclusions meshed with their religious convictions.

This is not to say that anyone who knows how the ideas of geology, paleontology, and biology came about in the first place, and who came up with them, must therefore give up their faith and “convert”. It is only to say that a creationist who knows this might view scientists with a lot less hostility — he would understand why they reached the conclusions they did: that it was through a process of reasoning underpinned by a huge amount of evidence visible to anyone, and not through some preconceived decision to injure religion in any way possible. That would be my hope, anyway.

“Teaching the controversy” is usually code for teaching criticisms of the modern theory of evolution, without regard for whether they are right or wrong, have been thoroughly discredited, or even made any sense to start with. The goal is, after all, not to encourage young people to think critically (though it is pretended that this is the goal) but instead to give them mantras to recite when they feel threatened in their religious beliefs.

But it has long seemed to me that one could, actually, teach the controversy in a meaningful way. What I see in many creationist arguments is that a lot of the evidence for modern biology, geology, and paleontology is dismissed because it is dependent on very complex and expensive technology, like radiometric dating, that the average person doesn’t have access to and the output of which they wouldn’t understand if they did have access to it, because you need a lot of training to understand it.

This is no slam against the average person, of course. You can show me the output of an X-ray or an MRI, for instance, and I would probably just stare at it blankly. I have no idea what things in the body are supposed to look like, other than that bones should be smooth and continuous and should fit pretty closely into their sockets. These things just take training.

However, the original evidence for the age of the Earth and the faunal succession didn’t require any elaborate technology because that technology didn’t exist. Scientists became convinced that the Earth was much older than 6,000 years, not because of radiometric dating, but because of the appearance and thickness of rock layers. Scientists became convinced that different suites of organisms lived at different times based on the appearance of fossils in rock layers.

There were arguments over how the fossils should be divided up into periods and where the dividing lines should be drawn, and those were resolved by looking at more rock layers. The result was a relative time-table, where the periods were known to fall in a certain order, but the actual ages of the periods were not known. It was only much later that radiometric dating was developed and the actual ages could be found with some accuracy. (I have a long comment about radiometric dating and foolish creationist criticisms of it here.)

I think that slams against the eeevil Darwinist conspiracy would be a lot less effective if the controversy were taught by starting at the beginning:

People had long observed that there were rocky things that looked very much like organisms, all over the world. There were arguments about what they were and how they got where they were. (I forget where I read this, but someone suggested that the idea of the Flood was suggested by the presence of fossilized sea shells on top of mountains: how could they get there unless there had been a flood sufficient to cover the mountaintops?)

The first lesson in my “Teach the Controversy” course would show the prevalence of such fossils all over the world, not the huge but rare dinosaur fossils, but the extraordinarily numerous shell fossils. If possible, I would show pictures of local limestone buildings with fossils in the limestone, so that the students could actually go to the buildings and look at the fossils, even physically touch them. The lesson would then go on to include various explanations of such fossils from early scientists — nothing modern, just the explanations given by scientists faced with a genuine puzzle. This would culminate with Steno and his principles of stratigraphy.

To be continued ….

I have another post in mind, but part of it is sort of tangential to the point, and is getting much too long. So I’m going to post that part by itself:

Creationists like to criticize the geological time scale with the claim that it requires circular reasoning: the geologists tell the geochronologists how old a given period is supposed to be, and the geochronologists do their radiometric tests and then tell the geologists that yes, indeed, it is that old. See here, for instance,

When dating a rock, the geochronologist (scientist who performs the dating procedure) must first assume the rock’s age before it is dated. For example, if a scientist believes a piece of rock is 4.5 billion years old, he or she may then use the uranium-lead dating method because it has a half-life of about 4.5 billion years. This involves circular reasoning, as is clearly evident in the article on dating in the Encyclopedia Britannica: “Most geologists must rely on geochronologists for their results. In turn, the geochronologist relies on the geologist for relative ages.”[71]

But this is untrue or at least a misunderstanding. For a less contentious example, the distances to the Moon, the planets, the Sun, and the stars were worked out in a relative fashion at least by Kepler’s time (late 16th Century), long before it was possible to determine their actual distances. But when scientists were able to determine their distances more or less precisely (by bouncing microwaves off Venus, for example), it is no surprise and no evidence of circular reasoning that the relative distances were found to be correct.

It is also possible to work out the relative distances of stars and even globular clusters and galaxies using various methods. Now suppose an astronomer wants to get the distance to a certain galaxy. Is it circular reasoning for him to look at the existing table of relative distances and conclude that the galaxy is too far away for certain techniques to work so he must use other techniques?

Suppose the astronomer tries to use a certain method (say, brightness of supernovae) to get a distance to the galaxy, but he finds that his results contradict the existing table of relative distances. Is it circular reasoning for him to go back and consider whether he has made an error in his observations or in his calculations? Or is it circular reasoning for him to consider that the contradiction perhaps indicates that there is something wrong with his method like, say, that there are different populations of supernovae with different characteristics?

There is nothing circular about looking at good prior work that used a different technique, and questioning your own results if they differ radically. Your own results may differ for reasons that indicate something significant (there really are different populations of supernovae), or prior work could be wrong. But it’s not circular to use prior work as a starting point even though you have new techniques.

Of course citing errors in the use of radiometric dating or imprecision in the results, as creationists always do, proves nothing. Imprecision and the possibility of error are recognized — that’s why scientists use as many methods as possible and do repeat tests, especially if the results contradict prior work.

True heroes don’t always wear costumes. This man is taking two cats to safety in the Midwest flood. I’m glad this man had someplace to go where he and the cats could both be safe.

During Hurricane Katrina, one thing that deterred people from going to shelters was that the shelters would not take animals. So people had to choose between taking themselves to safety and leaving their pets to die horribly, or staying with their pets and fulfilling the contract between human and pet: the human to care for and protect the pet; the pet to unconditionally love the human. I know which choice I’d make.

One thing that really annoys me about icanhascheezburger is the illiterate comments. Bad enough that the captions are illiterate, but that can be justified because supposedly the critters themselves write the comments. But the commenters — *shudder*. Sometimes I try to read the comments to get the backstory in a case like this. Who is he, are those his cats or a neighbor’s, or some cats that he found in distress and rescued? Was he able to take them with him to a shelter? (I read that there were shelters taking people with their pets, and I assume that he was able to go to one of those.)

In this case, I got through about three comments and gave up. These comments aren’t even spelled phonetically; they are deliberately misspelled and I have difficulty even sounding them out. Not to mention that it takes too long and is too much effort for me to read each comment aloud and try to “hear” the actual meaning.

Gloat, gloat, gloat!

The legal thuggery of Clifford Shoemaker (*spit*) has been sanctioned!

The Court spanked him but good, too:

The subpoena which I have attached to this order is breathtakingly broad. Mr. Shoemaker made no attempt to avoid imposing an undue burden or expense on Ms. Seidel. To the contrary, I find that he sought to burden her by requiring production of every scrap of paper related to autism, her web site, her tax returns, and her communications with the government. He improperly imposes a requirement to create documents, e.g., a list of “names of persons helping, paying or facilitating . . . these endeavors.” The documentation sought is exhaustive.

Shoemaker has not offered a shred of evidence to support his speculations. He has, he says, had his suspicions aroused because she has so much information. Clearly he is unfamiliar with the extent of the information which a highly-competent librarian like Ms. Seidel can, and did, accumulate. If Shoemaker wanted to know if Ms. Seidel was in part supported by or provided information by Bayer, he could have inquired of Bayer or limited the Seidel subpoena to that information. Instead he issued the subpoena calling for production of documents and a deposition on the day before he stipulated to dismiss the underlying suit with prejudice. His failure to withdraw the subpoena when he clearly knew that suit was over is telling about his motives. His efforts to vilify and demean Ms. Seidel are unwarranted and unseemly. [Emphasis added]

And then there’s the sanction:

As a sanction from this court, Clifford J. Shoemaker is ordered to attend within three months, a continuing legal education program on ethics and on the discovery rules in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. He is ordered to file a certification of completion of the programs.

Go back to school, Orc, and learn how to conduct yourself like a lawyer.

Sadly, this probably won’t have any effect on this Orc’s behavior. Continuing legal education is just a “show-up” sort of thing. You just have to be physically present and non-disruptive in order to get credit. There is no homework; there are no exams.

If it had been me, I’d have ordered him to take a class on Legal Ethics at an accredited law school, and not show his face in the New Hampshire courts until he passed that class and the legal ethics exam required before one can be admitted to the Bar. Though I suppose the judge didn’t actually have the power to order that. The Virginia State Bar could do something like that, though. One can dream …

This is my best psychic experience:

I was working in the law office one day. My boss had gone to lunch with another lawyer, call him Joe. When they came back, as they were walking from the elevator to the door, I heard my boss say, “Well, I can just ask. Lee will know the case.”

So they came in, and my boss came to my desk and said, “I’m trying to remember a case …” and as he paused trying to think how to describe it, I said, “Seldon?” (name changed to protect confidentiality). And he answered, “Oh, yes, that’s it. So in the Seldon case, we did …”, and started off toward his own office.

After a moment he realized that Joe wasn’t following; he was still staring at me. Finally Joe said, “How did you do that?” I didn’t answer because I was trying to work that out myself, but my boss didn’t even hesitate. He replied, “Lee reads minds.” And then he went back to talking about the case, so Joe had to go on with that conversation.

Later, my boss escorted Joe to the door and waited until we heard the elevator leave. Then he turned around and said, “How did you do that?” By that time I had something of an answer, and as with all psychic experience stories, it’s a lot more boring than the story itself.

Actually, what happened was that the name of the case was “on the tip of the tongue” or, more to the point, it was on his lips. Literally. As he was trying to figure out how to describe the case, I could see his lips forming an “S” — the “S” that began the name. I knew all of our recent cases and I knew the sort of cases Joe would be interested in, and putting that together with the “S”, well, it just popped out.

So my best psychic experience was a combination of extensive knowledge of the subject, long acquaintance with the other parties involved, and close observation. But it makes an excellent story if I don’t explain it — and I’ll bet Joe told it as a very convincing story of mind-reading.

A nice parody of Expelled (which I won’t link to). My favorite comment: “I’m of two minds about this. I guess it’s because I’m a Gemini.”

At the request of FutureQuest, I updated WordPress. It appears the new WordPress is utterly incompatible with the old WordPress. I am restoring posts by hand from backups.

Users will have to reregister.

Update: All the posts have been restored. That leaves the comments. It’s a good thing this isn’t a very active site.

Update: And now all the comments are back too. I’ve restored users, but of course without the correct passwords. I have emailed all users to inform them of the change.

Update: This is strange.  I entered all my link categories and links, but they don’t show up.  They are clearly present in the database, but they are invisible.

Update: Now I have all the links back.  The trouble was that I kept my old Theme — well, I like my theme.  I have the font sizes just the way I want them, and I don’t want that to change.  I ended up having to track down “bookmark-template.php” and change that.  I wonder how non-programmers deal with this kind of problem.

P.S. I have an amazing ability to break software. Operating systems, word processors, compilers, any software. So I guess it’s no surprise that I managed to completely break WordPress.

This story absolutely blows my mind.  This “teacher” knowingly and deliberately burned his students’ arms (three to eight students, he says — doesn’t he know?)  The parents of one of the students have sued him, saying, in particular, that the burn took three to four weeks to heal.  But only now have the school authorities gotten around to resolving that they intend to fire him, and even now the reason for firing him is insubordination, not criminal actions.

And then, his defenders are arguing that he didn’t really brand the students with a cross, it was only an “X”.  His detractors point out that it is quite obviously a cross.  So what?  He burned his students’ arms.  He branded them.

Can you imagine what would have happened if a student had showed up in class with a burn on his arm, the teachers had asked him how it happened, and he had answered that his parents knowingly and deliberately burned him?  He’d have been in a foster home and the parents would have been up on charges so fast it would make your head spin.  There are laws requiring schools to report suspected child abuse — but not, I guess, if they’re committing the abuse themselves.

This “teacher” should have been fired, arrested, and sued the day after he abused those children.

Yesterday I came home and found that my computer had spontaneously reverted to one 800×600 monitor.  Thank you very much, Vista.  At least it was fixable without plugging and unplugging.

Then, I put the computer to sleep just before going to bed (since it won’t sleep spontaneously).  After a while, I realized that its little light was still blue instead of orange, which indicated that it wasn’t asleep.  I turned the monitors back on (it allows the non-VGA monitor to go to power save but not the VGA monitor so I have to turn the monitors off manually too — sigh), and discovered that it had blue-screened.  Oh, thank you very much, Vista.  It wouldn’t turn off, either.  I finally shut it down by turning off the power at the power strip.

At least it restarted with no more than the usual hassle this morning.